The Leadership Hacker Podcast

Dr Ciela Hartanov was part of the founding team of The Google School for Leaders and Head of Next Practice Innovation and Strategy at Google, She is a psychologist and human behavioural expert and is the founder and CEO of  Humcollective, in this episode, you can learn:   Why some leaders run towards disruption with excitement yet others will be afraid? How we become our own psychological architects. What is "Innovating Next Practice?” The four perspectives of emergent mindset.   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Ciela below: Ciela on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cielarose/ Ciela on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CHartanov Humcollective Website: https://www.humcollective.co   Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you.   Dr. Ciela Hartanov is a special guest on today's show. She's an ex-Google executive, psychologist and the founder and CEO of humcollective. But before we get a chance to speak with Ciela, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: It's been a while since we've dug into the history books to find those lessons of leadership that we can draw on. So, I thought we'd start with a couple today. In the early 1960s, a marine biologist and author, Rachel Carson was working to overcome some immense personal and professional challenges. On top of writing what would ultimately become Silent Spring. Her watershed book, exposing the dangers of synthetic pesticides and their impact on the environment. Carson was fighting a battle on a whole other front, cancer. Professor, Nancy Cohen, chronicled the stories of her and others for Harvard Business School and Cohen focused on attitudes and actions in the face of crisis that made a positive difference to the world. Carson's moment of forging her crucible, stretched out for more than two years, Cohen writes, this long slow burn demanded again and again, that she find her way back from the perceptive despair and then recommit to her mission. Her ability to stay the course, finish her book and exert enormous impact was fueled only by her unrelenting dedication to a mightier cause. Despite being played by a series of health complications that took great physical and emotional tolls. Carson remained staunchly committed to her mission. Cohen described it as to bring the wonders of the natural world to the public and to spotlight the responsibility we each have to protect the earth and to sustain all life and Cohen notes that unlike many other prominent leaders throughout history known for their charisma or aggressiveness and assertiveness. Carson was shy in retiring, almost quite introvert whose leadership approach was characterized by a quiet, determination, resilience, and stone wall commitment to doing purposeful and driven work. Frederick Douglas was an abolitionist like Carson. He was driven by deep sense of mission. After escaping from slavery in 1838, he used his experience in bondage to become a leader in the anti-slavery movement and a champion for black freedom. In her book Cohen notes. Douglas realized that in order to enact large scale change, he had to be self-committed and to create his own internal, moral, intellectual, and emotional infrastructure, a framework for both understanding the power of slavery and how to consistently and effectively combat it. Douglas devoted a great deal of effort to building his framework within himself. He then used us to develop an effective leadership style. This would've been thorny and complicated work. We can often imagine the series of conversations he'd ever had with himself as he started to work through his own architecture. Cohen had written that these internal discussions had formed a cornerstone of Douglas's leadership, helping him make day to day choices, communicate with the mission and navigate through the moments of doubt and despair. All individuals who aspire to lead effectively must build their own foundation. Throughout his life. Douglas used his perspective and personal experiences as tools to fight for social change. He also used his writing and public speaking to inspire others, to stand with him and Douglas recognized that making a significant impact required motivating and empowering his fellow citizens and used his communication progress to achieve that objective successfully. Cohen goes on to write. We long for a leader like Frederick Douglas, who understood that the country could only achieve its full potential when Americans faced and write the critical wrong that Douglas led from the lecture hall and from the newspaper stand, which was as much or more than he did through the offices of elite politicians. He believed that positive change began with ordinary citizens and his work, a leader to help them affect the individuals who governed them. So, their leadership hack here is, whether you are a mid-career professional or an emerging senior leader or brand new to leading others. The stories that these iconic individuals in part are important, real-life lessons that we can learn from. So, by fostering engagement and cohesion, amongst your team, finding a purpose that connects your passion and developing a leadership approach that informs how you inspire and mobilize others. You can become a more courageous leader and take your career to the next level. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. Big shout out to Karen, one of our regular listeners. Who's introduced us to the work of Professor Nancy Cohen. If you've got any insights or stories that you want us to showcase, please get in touch. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Dr. Ciela Hartanov is our special guest on today's show. She was part of the founding team and the Google School of Leaders. She was Head of the next practice Innovation Strategy at Google. She's now a Psychologist and a Human Behavioral Expert and the founder and CEO of humcollective, and innovation strategy firm, preparing organizations for the future. Ciela, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: So lovely to be here. Thank you for having me. Steve Rush: So, I'm really fascinated to learn about how you meandered through corporate life to end up leading humcollective. Tell us a little bit about the journey? Dr. Ciela Hartanov: Well, meander would be a good description of how I think careers are built these days. When I started graduate school, I actually thought I was going to be an academic and that was my presumed path. And there was a sister school to my school that I was attending in cultural psychology in IO psych school. So, I started moonlighting and wondering, hmm, what are these other students doing? What are they learning? And I realized, you know, it was fascinating because I was learning a lot about culture, human behavior, and organizations from a very specific sort of academic lens. But on the IO psych side of the school, they were actually working with organizations, and they had projects where they were working with leaders who were struggling. And I just became really intrigued about how do you apply the theory in practice? Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: So, I started moonlighting even more and ended up doing sort of a dual degree in cultural psychology and human behavior with a sort of a subset in IO psych so that I could actually bring the theories and practices into organization. So, I abandoned the academic path and went into corporate. I started with a leadership consultancy called the Ken Blanchard Companies, which is a small family run company, which is very unique family run companies are, which we can talk about. If that's interesting to you? Steve Rush: Very well known nonetheless. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: [Laugh], yeah. And he wrote The One Minute Manager, which many people know is sort of a seminal leadership book. And I think that was an introduction to me around, gosh, how interesting? How leadership becomes this really critical and evergreen part of organizations. And so, I had firsthand ability to see that inside this consulting practice. And I had a wonderful mentor who threw me into a job that frankly I was not qualified for, but she saw something in me and said, hey, why don't you go and reorganize our international consulting practice. And I got to travel a lot, to England and Singapore and other places. Rethinking the structures and practices. So that was my first sort of foray into change management, and it really stuck. So, I have a real system thinking mind. So, I was like, okay, this seems like the right path for me. And at the same time, I was finishing my doctorate degree and this same mentor just pushed me out of the nest. And she said, I think you've done all you can do here, which was a really seminal moment for me and my career. And I ended up at that point moving into tech and I stayed in technology firms for the remainder of my career until now where I'm running my own consulting practice. So, it's like, I've come full circle. Steve Rush: Yeah, indeed. Of course, you were part of that massive growth in Google. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: Yes. Steve Rush: That must have been a fascinating time in your career to see that evolve? Dr. Ciela Hartanov: Absolutely fascinating. And speaking of leadership, I think you see this inflection point where leadership needs to look different and change. And I saw that firsthand not only for myself as a leader, but also for the leaders that I was leading. And that became a really important and critical pivot point for myself and my career and what I was doing at Google. When I started thinking about, you know, leadership needs to look different in the modern workplace, both for scale, but also because we're really moving out of the industrial era. So how do we do that effectively? And because of that, I pitched an idea to build an innovation practice inside the people function at Google, which I think is probably the first one that's ever been built. Hopefully now there's more. But what I came to realize is that we needed to have much more of an innovation lens on developing people on thinking about how the people practice needs to evolve and beyond the industrial area logic. And that puts a squarely of course, where most organizations are now grappling with the future of work. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: And that's true in every single organization across the board at this point, which is part of the reason why I left to build my own consulting practice, because I think every organization needs to find their way forward in a contextual way. And that requires some support and some expertise. Steve Rush: And as part of your time at Google. You talk about the future of work. Now you're perhaps ahead of the game a little bit in visioning and strategizing what the future of work could be at Google. And it's now probably form almost part of most of our routine lives today, and you've created the next practice innovation strategy there. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: Yes. Steve Rush: So, what is next practice innovation? Dr. Ciela Hartanov: So next practice innovation is using foresight and anthropological methods to anticipate what likely is going to happen next, looking at scenarios, and then merging that into a strategy that works for the organization specifically. So, what I am a big fan of is, it's called next practice for a reason, because I think replication is a really, bad idea when we're trying to look at what's next for an organization and help an organization leapfrog. So, I understand the value of best practice and benchmarking as a way of understanding but replicating becomes a challenge because then we all become the same. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: So, the idea about inventing next practice is the call to action that every organization has the opportunity to think wider and think bigger and be at the forefront of their industry, their people practices. And now more than ever, I see that when it comes to the future of work, organizations can't replicate what other organizations are doing because it needs to work in context. So, I see that across the board, when we talk about things like hybrid work, this is a grand experiment and every organization's going to have to grapple and take some next practice bets for themselves to see what will work inside their own organization. Steve Rush: And there's no playbook here either is there? Dr. Ciela Hartanov: No. Steve Rush: Because all organizations are so diverse and so different to your point, it's around just figuring it out and finding out what does work and doesn't work. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: So, there's no playbook, but there is an innovation process and practice. And that's what I want leaders to know is that there is a process to hold onto. The process I run is a three-step process that gets you all the way from scanning and the big ideas to thinking about what do you need to employ in your strategy now to build the next practice for your organization? And how do you look at that over time and adjust as you go and be much more, you know, adaptive over time. That all is a process that is completely possible. I'm leveraging the work that I did at Google building the innovation next practice lab. So, this is all tried and true, the process itself. So, there is no playbook, but there is a way forward. Steve Rush: Right. I love the unconscious anchor in the language next practice as well because it's forward looking. It's allows the unconscious behavior to be a little bit more visionary, doesn't it? Dr. Ciela Hartanov: Absolutely. And I think that's really exciting, you know, when we can unlock ourselves from the fear of uncertainty, which is a natural human reaction, when we don't feel stability, we feel scared, fight or flight, we know that. But what this gives us is an anchor and a hold to say, how do I, before were looking, and then how do I enter that place of awe and excitement about what's possible? And that's where human ingenuity comes from. It's within us. That's part of our human nature. Steve Rush: So, what's the core work you are undertaking there with humcollective? Dr. Ciela Hartanov: So, there's a few things that I'm really interested in right now. The one piece that I'm focusing a lot on is research that I think is going to become even more essential as we're looking at the new age of work. And that is how do we look and build the next practice of culture and connection inside organizations. So, we've spent a lot of time thinking about flexibility, personalization, and where we do the work. Now we need to turn our attention to how we do the work in this new context and how we build those essential connective tissues that make up an organization. So that's where I'm focusing most of my research and my conversations with organizations right now. I really believe that if we only focus on flexibility, we will lose the fabric of what makes an organization sing. Steve Rush: It's a really interesting cold concept, this hybrid world. I've noticed, you know, through the journals I've been reading, the blogs I have been reading over the last couple of weeks that people are getting a little bit uncomfortable with hybrid now, and we're starting to creep back to being more present in the office and less flexible. What's your take on that? Dr. Ciela Hartanov: I think that's because we haven't invented the next practice of how we build that connective tissue. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: So, my call to the organizations that don't want to backslide is, okay. Now's the time to think about what is the next practice in culture, connection, networking, and start building some of these next practices. So that there isn't a backslide because I understand why there's a backslide, because it's what we know about how we build bonds is by being in the office. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: And even employees I talk to are saying, you know, I left this organization that I joined during the pandemic because I don't feel any resonance or connection to this organization. And so, there's a longing on the part of the employees to feel that connection as well. So, the organizations that do answer that call are going to be the employers that are able to draw the best employees. Steve Rush: It's almost an unconscious corporate muscle memory, isn't it? Dr. Ciela Hartanov: That's right. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: I mean, it's like any habit change, you know? Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: Like it's so easy to go back to what we've known and where we've been. There's no judgment in sort of the backsliding because it's natural that we would want to gravitate and grab onto what we know, but this time is a time like any other where we can truly invent the modern contemporary workplace. And I hope organizations and leaders will take that call. Steve Rush: I think, you know, if they don't, there's a real risk to their future attraction and retention strategy as well, by the way. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: Yeah, and we're already seeing that of course. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: Right. That even though you know, the economics are different now than they were when this whole great resignation conversation started. I think what we're going to continue to see is that one, because employees have started executing more choice. They're going to be reticent to let that go. And the employer employee contract will continue to adjust whether or not organizations go kicking and screaming or not. It will still continue to be present and in an important conversation that leaders are having around, gosh, how are we defining this new contract? And are we getting ahead of the game? Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely. So, with so much uncertainty around the world, you can have a look at companies, locations, countries. There seems to be so much uncertainty and volatility around us at the moment. What is it that makes those leaders and those people in business run towards it and get, you know, excited about that disruption yet others might feel that this is something just want to avoid and hide away? Dr. Ciela Hartanov: Yeah, that's a great question. I think it goes back to what I sort of described about the human condition. If there's too much uncertainty, our brains simply cannot handle it. So, we retreat. And because this is sort of a cognitive issue, my recommendation for leaders is always to find a place of stability inside that uncertainty and those leaders who do find a place of stability are able to go towards the uncertainty with openness excitement, because they have a stable ground to come back to. So, I did a big study while I was at Google about what are those most transformative, agile adaptable leaders doing? And it was exactly to answer your question, why do some run towards the uncertainty with excitement and why do some retreats? And what we found is that the core of it was that they had a set of stability practices that they never would let go of. And that could be anything from, you know, showing up to dinner at 6:00 PM every evening with your family to a meditation practice, to an exercise regime. So, it was nothing grand, but it was specific and consistent. And if you find that consistency where you find that stable ground for yourself, then your brain will feel safe enough that it will allow in that uncertainty in a way that it'll look at it as novel and exciting. Steve Rush: That's really fascinating. I think, you know, I've studied this genre of leadership and you find that most successful leaders have these rituals that they put aside in their practices and routines. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: That's right. Steve Rush: To create either conscious stability or indeed recovery time. But I've never really noticed it as a tactical, almost safe location to go where you have that anchored routine. I think it's quite fascinating. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: And it was really actually surprising to me. I thought there would be something else that created that for these leaders. I thought, you know, maybe they had a background where, you know, they had grown up all over the world or traveled a lot or something had created inside of them, the ability to handle different conditions and no. Really it all came down to your point about having a ritualized practice around stability so that they were ready and able to take on the volatility. Steve Rush: Yeah, love it. So, if we think about the future of work that we're in at the moment, it's fair to say, it's going to continually be uncertain and there's going to be things that are going to be unknowns of the future. What kind of give maybe tools and ideas as to how we might best embrace that uncertainty? Dr. Ciela Hartanov: So, the first thing I think is important to realize is that the pace of change is not going to reduce. And so, the place that I always start when we are thinking about organizations and leaders, is building awareness about that truth, and helping educate around why that might be the case. So, I really do encourage leaders to get educated about driving the shifts in organizational life, but also just the colliding forces that we see. So, I do a lot of work with leaders, helping them see what are the shapes, the, you know, the future signals that are shaping, how organizations are going to change? Doing scenario planning. So doing all of this awareness building is another way for us to gain comfort around the uncertainty, because then you're starting to understand the shades of what might be possible. Of course, you're not predicting, but you're giving your mind and understanding around what might be possible. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: So that requires all of us leaders. But I think also just all of us employees who are working in the world right now to become a bit of a futurist. So that's the first piece of the puzzle I think, is really important. Is this awareness building around, why is this happening? Steve Rush: There's also a bit there as well, isn't there? About just being uncomfortable, being uncomfortable. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: Mm-Hmm, so that's the second piece I was going to say, which is going back to sort of yourself inside this uncertainty. I know that this idea of self-awareness gets overplayed a lot. I think it's because we misunderstand it, but one of the things that I'm writing, I'm writing a book right now. One of the chapters that I'm writing about is called the sensing self. And I think it's essential in this era of volatility, uncertainty. There's a lot of names for what we're experiencing right now, but we need to anchor and find ourselves and become what I call a sensing self, which is the ability to understand ourselves, but understand others and also understand the context that we're inside of. So, it's this elevated idea of self-awareness. So, I talked first about becoming a better futurist and understanding the context, but it's equally essential for you to understand yourself inside that context so that you know, how you can make moves to be effective inside that context. Steve Rush: Yeah, one of the things I love about your work, I read an article of yours in The New York Times. I think it was a few weeks back, was around this whole notion of psychological architects. And you have this real strong belief that we're in control of building that architecture for ourselves. I'd love to just understand a little bit more about that. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: So, for me, I think that, so I have a psychology background obviously, and one of the pieces of work that I spent a lot of time when I was at Google thinking about was mindset. Why and how do we build our world beliefs? And that these become sort of our operating system and they dictate our choices and our behaviors, and those mindsets don't have to be static. Those psychological ways of sort of viewing the world don't need to be static. We can work with them and change them. And what we've learned through neurosciences, that there is this cognitive flexibility that's possible. We see it all the time with children because children have a much more modular sort of minds. And then they start spaces in the mind, and then it starts to harden over time. But as an adult, we can still architect that for ourselves too, where we're examining our mindset and making it object to ourselves, and then we can work with it and change it. So, when I talk about self-awareness from a leadership standpoint, what I'm actually talking about is working with mindset at the deepest level around that sort of psychological architecture versus getting a 360 feedback, for example. Steve Rush: Yeah, so is it as simple as making a choice of which mindset you have, or is there some deeper activity that needs to take place for that to happen? Dr. Ciela Hartanov: So, there is deeper activity. The thing about mindset when we're really working with the deepest core of our mindset is that it's deeply attached to our identity. So, what starts to happen is if you believe something to be true about you, it's a bit hard to unravel that, right? So, where I see leaders getting most stuck about not being able to handle uncertainty or change is because them having to change, to grapple with whatever the situation that they're in hits that sort of a root issue around their identity. So, to have the biggest sort of impact around mindset, we're really talking about working with your identity. Now there's entry ways into that though, that don't feel so overwhelming. And the way into that then is to start working with what I call assumptions. So, looking at assumptions means that you start having other people or yourself name what you're assuming about a situation. So, an example of this might be, you know, I'm entering a situation with a colleague, and I always have an issue with this colleague, for example. We don't seem to see eye to eye. And so, what starts to happen over time, you might notice is that every time you enter that meeting with that other person is that you are coming with an assumption that that meeting is going to be dismal, for example. So, the work then is to start naming your assumptions about how you're entering into different environments. And then you start trying to shift that. So that would be as easy as when you're entering this meeting, you could say, okay, I know that I'm entering with an assumption that I think this meeting is going to be a disaster. How do I reframe that for myself? Let me just reframe that. And maybe you don't even believe it, but you're just repeating it to yourself a reframing, you know, this meeting is going to go well, this meeting is going to be unexpectedly excellent. You know, you just sort of start reframing in your own mind. And then what starts happening over time then is then your mindset actually starts to shift, and those assumptions start to shift. So that's the easiest place to start is just working at this sort of assumption level. Steve Rush: Yes, neat way of using assumptions because often folk use assumptions in a different way. And that creates other behaviors. So, paying attention to assumptions can often, without being really thoughtful about it, reinforce some negative behaviors, right. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: That right. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: That's right. Steve Rush: Awesome. Now you have this notion of emergent mindset. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: Yeah. Steve Rush: Which comes with some principles and some perspectives I'd love to get into them. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: So, one of the things I'm thinking a lot about is okay, if we are the psychological architects and we need to work with our mindset, then what might be some of the mindsets that we would want to be holding to handle emergence or uncertainty. And I use the term emergence on purpose because I think that's a more accurate representation of what's happening right now. So, what's starting to happen is we're living more and more in this interconnected environment. And because we're in this really interconnected environment, there's these emergent outcomes that happen all around us all of the time. And so, it means we have less control over the outcomes. And a great example of this, just to give you a visual is, there is a park across the street from my house, and there's a lovely walkway that's been built and paved, et cetera. Except now there is this path through the dirt that has been created because people have started walking through this dirt, right. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: And so, this happens all the time in parks. Like urban planners. This is their worst nightmare is, that they try to plan where people are going to walk and then people walk somewhere else. And then what happens is, then a brand-new path through the dirt gets built. That is an example of emergence because you and I didn't agree that, that we were going to do that. But what happened was each person sort of started doing that. And then it became a collective outcome that we couldn't have predicted beforehand. So, this is what I believe is happening inside organizations, inside societies is that we are all participating in this grand, you know, experiment of modern work. And it's really hard for us to predict where that walkway is going to be, for example, because we're all participants in it. So, in order to handle that kind of interconnected emergence, we need to hold a different set of mindsets. And this is true for leaders, but I believe this is true also for everyone who is working in the modern context. So let me share with you what I believe this emergent mindset is made of. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: And there's four sort of shifts that I ask people to think about and take on. And I would invite your listeners because we talked about assumptions. When I share with you this shift, think about what assumptions are you making about that shift? What assumptions automatically come up for you, because then you know what your mindset is that you're already holding and where your resistance might be. So, the first one is moving from predicting to adjusting. This one is essential because really businesses need to respond to the changing needs of the environment. And what this gives us is the ability to access human ingenuity against the context of something that's not predetermined. So, one thing that we've spent a lot of time doing in organizations is trying to set up sort of predictive strategies around what is going to happen. My question then becomes instead, why don't we ask ourselves what might happen and how do we adjust to the future? How do we build systems that are more adaptable and that maybe it's not a repeatable practice, but it's still essential so that we can adjust over time? So that's the first one from prediction to adjusting. Steve Rush: Like it. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: The second one is from simplicity to nuance and anyone who has read my work or any of the podcasts I've been on, I am on a big diatribe I guess you could say about us moving to a more nuanced point of view again. We have oversimplified the understanding of how organizations worked. We've tried to build structures that predict, like I said, and that we are really obsessed with this idea that there's right and wrong, and that's not how the world works. In complexity and emergence, what we're dealing with is that there's all of these sort of irreducible parts and it's reduction is thinking is not going to help us. What will help us is understanding more nuance about a situation. And that requires taking multiple perspectives and understanding and seeing all of the shades of gray versus turning our eyes from it. So that's the second one from simplicity to nuance. The third one is moving from data to insight. So, I know we have a lot of data. We have a lot of big data that we've worked with and I'm a fan of data. It's absolutely essential to help us create more multiple perspectives and more nuance if we use it in the right way. So, I really believe that we need to take data and make it more nuanced and more interesting. And by that, I mean, it's not enough for us just to push out a data set that tells us an answer. Instead, we need to look to what I call thick data. And anthropologists are the ones who came up with this idea of thick data. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: Which helps us delve deeper into sort of the meaning behind what the data's telling us and illuminate the human experience inside that data. And that's where true insight comes from. We need more insight these days. We don't need more data. We just need more understanding. And that comes from diving deeper into this idea of thick data. Steve Rush: Love it. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: And then the final one is from moving from linear to indirect. And this one I find is the hardest one for people to grapple with, because I know we all love a step-by-step plan. And often on podcasts, I get asked, you know, what are the five things that a leader needs to do right now? And I never answer that question because that's linear [laugh]. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: And that's not how we're going to make our way through. So, we need to get more comfortable with an indirect path these uncertain circumstances will lead us through sort of a murky winding road. And we have to account for that and how organizations are built and how outcomes are achieved. Steve Rush: And it's interesting because we are naturally drawn to linear step by step process, aren't we? Dr. Ciela Hartanov: Well, we've been taught that. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: But if you look at children when they play, that's not how they play. Steve Rush: No. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: So, I always look back to sort of the essence of the child brain, because we can pull that forward. And in brain science, they're learning more and more about the fact that the right hemisphere of our brain is not linear at all. And it's where the creativity lives, but it's all preverbal. So, once we start moving it into the language part of our brain and we try to articulate it, that's where we start getting the step by step, because we're trying to articulate something that's not articulate, can't be articulated, right. So, it's sort of the idea that how can we build back into our whole brain and allow that to thrive inside organizations because that right side of the brain has a lot of non-linear connections that are being made that can unlock a lot of potential. Steve Rush: Yeah, such great perspective. Thank you for sharing it. So, this is where we get to turn the tables a little bit, and I'm going to consciously not ask you for your top three. I'm going to ask you for your three most indirect nonlinear hacks. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: [Laugh] that's a great question. So, as you know, I'm not a big fan of hacks. And so the place that I will go is back to what we sort of talked about throughout this conversation, which is where and how can you get the space as a leader or otherwise to allow your brain to wander, to allow yourself that spaciousness where that right brain can start doing its thing, where you can start being more excited about the future, because what I'm starting to see more and more right now is that leaders feel so pressured and constrained and burnt out that the innovation part of their job has been completely crushed. And I think that is a real shame. So, if there was one called action, which is not necessarily a hack, but I think it's essential to deal with these modern times is get yourself some spaciousness, find your way out of the churn and the day to day so that you are investing in a long-term creative process that ultimately will create the next practice for your organization. But you can't do that if you don't get yourself off the hamster wheel. Steve Rush: Definitely so, and you know, I've said before, actually, you know, even though our show is called The Leadership Hacker, my job is to hack actually into your mind and into your experiences. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: [Laugh]. Steve Rush: Not to shortcut any solutions because we all know there aren't any right? Dr. Ciela Hartanov: Right, there are any and yet I think what we've learned from sort of the research on habit formation is, and I'm a real big fan of James Clear who talks a lot about how habits are formed is that it's about the doing so when I say something that is like simple, like make sure that you have at least some spaciousness in your week, what matters there is that you do it regularly. And that is what is probably the biggest hack if you will, is using the habit formation research to be able to change your behavior over time. Steve Rush: Yeah, and the next part of this year, we call it Hack to Attack. Essentially is where something hasn't worked out as well. We may have learned from it. It may now be a force of good in our life or work. What would be your Hack to Attack? Dr. Ciela Hartanov: Mm-Hmm, so when working in innovation research, you have a variety of different people that you're working to influence. All those people from those who are, you know, the operators who are spending most of their time on the job, building out outcomes and OKRs all the way to people who are much more visionary. And I've learned, I have to say the hard way that in order for people to get excited about the future, you really have to meet them where they're at with a story about, you know, how this relates to them. And this seems obvious in retrospect, but because I am such a big thinker and I'm always looking around the corner, that's what gets me excited. But if I come forward with that, for someone who is not like me, or doesn't think like me, that can feel really intimidating or even nonsensical. So, I've learned over time that to become an effective visionary, you have to be able to tell the story in a way and multiple ways that people can understand. And I think every leader who's created a vision probably has learned this, but I think it's essential that how we talk, the narrative that we build is just as important as the vision that we've decided on. Steve Rush: Yeah, that's very true. Very true. So, the last part of the show, we give you a chance to do a bit of time travel now. You get to bump into Ciela at 21 and give her some words of wisdom. What was it going to be? Dr. Ciela Hartanov: So, the words of wisdom that I keep thinking about right now that I wish someone would've told me when I was 21, is that it is about the process, not the product. And this is a bit counterintuitive of course, to how businesses are run, which is often about output and what is the product you're producing. But in life, it's really about the process and having what I've been reading about lately, which is called active patience. So, setting into motion your plans, your hopes, your dreams, your desires, and then making steps towards that. But alongside that waiting and have patience around that and enjoying being inside the process versus just waiting for the outcome to be achieved. Steve Rush: I love that notion active patience. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: Mm-Hmm, I'm loving it too. Steve Rush: Yeah, as you said it. I'm thinking I need some of this [laugh]. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: Dr. Ciela Hartanov: We all need some of this, right? Steve Rush: Yeah, I often find myself being impatient in delivery and I'm missing the journey, right? Dr. Ciela Hartanov: Absolutely, and you know, I think things are always unfolding in ways that we can't really always expect. And you could say this is serendipity or luck, but there is always an unfolding that's happening if you're doing enough work. I think one of the things that we've sold, that's a myth in the Western culture is that if you work harder, you try harder, you'll achieve more. That's not actually the sort of the physics behind outcome. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: You set something in motion, and it'll become like a flywheel. And that's why that active patience is essential because you don't know how that's going to evolve and change, but you can be part of it and do your one essential component. Steve Rush: I'm sold on the idea. I'm now going to be, as soon as we're done into some research to find more about active patients [laugh] and for our listeners, they're also, I'm sure going to want to learn to find out a little bit more about your work, when the book's coming out? all of that kind of stuff that you're doing now with humcollective, where's the best place for us to send them? Dr. Ciela Hartanov: So, if you could find me on LinkedIn at Ciela Hartanov, that's where I post most everything. And if you want to reach me, feel free to reach out via my website@humcollective.co. Steve Rush: We'll make sure your links in our show notes as well. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: Wonderful. Steve Rush: Ciela, thank you so much for taking time out your busy schedule. I know you are super, super busy at the moment, so it's been a great opportunity for us to have you on this show, dive into your mind and thank you for being part of our community. Dr. Ciela Hartanov: Real pleasure, Steve. Thank you so much. Take care. Steve Rush: Thank you. Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler their @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.

Adrian Simpson is a Co-founder of Wavelength leadership group; for over 20 years he's taken top leaders into the boardrooms and shop floors of the world's most successful, innovative and admired companies. Today you can learn about:   What makes a great leader? Why leaders learn best from leaders? How great leaders talk candidly about failure. The secrets behind some global transformative cultures.   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com   Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA   Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   #some audio issues in this show – thanks for your patience.   Find out more about Adrian below: Adrian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-simpson-b600139/ Adrian on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AdieSimpson Wavelength on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wavelengthleadership/ Wavelength Website: https://www.wavelengthleadership.com   Full Transcript Below     Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Adrian Simpson is a special guest on today's show. For over 20 years he's really been immersing himself in amongst some of the top firms around the world, including the likes of Apple, Tesla, Netflix, and Google. And we're going to dive into some of those leadership secrets, but before we do, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: Purpose is a real key part of all leaders' capabilities, but often leaders get it wrong. Commonly, we see leaders think that purpose should be the same as their company's vision, mission, or purpose, but it shouldn't. Believe writing a leadership purpose statement is not a onetime exercise at all. It's something that should evolve, and it should connect the individual to the purpose of the organization. It's incredibly important and it needs deep insight and deep thoughts. So, what is leadership purpose? Your leadership purpose is your statement about who you are as a person and how you bring those unique qualities into your world. First and foremost, leadership purpose is about your values and what's important to life for you. It's often also considered as your why statement or your reason, your beliefs. Think about your leadership purpose statement as being your beacon, enabling people to have a real clear understanding of what your direction in life and work is. In doing so, it'll help you drive the right behaviors on a daily basis and keep you engaged when circumstances around you can be challenging. It doesn't need to be overly complicated. Your leadership purpose statement must be a living and breathing document that you can share so, others understand it too. And it'll likely change as you change as a person, or your career grows or changes shape. So, you should always update it regularly. And remember your leadership purpose will not only help keep you grounded, and you stay on your path, will help you be a better leader and the leader you're meant to be. Most important, it sets a declaration of the kind of support you're prepared to give as a leader for the people around you. So, they can also buy into your journey. So simply put, think about the purpose, your why, and make sure it describes your values, your beliefs, and your vision, and how that aligns to the organization that you work and serve with. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. Let's dive into the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Adrian Simpson is a Co-founder of Wavelength leadership group. For over 20 years he's taken top leaders into the boardrooms and shop floors. Some of the world's most successful, innovative and admired companies, including Alibaba, Netflix, Apple, Tesla, Lego, and Google but a few. Andrew, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Adrian Simpson: Thanks, Steve. It's great to join you this morning. Steve Rush: Really looking forward to diving into some of the lessons learned from some of these huge conglomerates, but tell us a little bit about you, your background and how you've arrived to do what you've done? Adrian Simpson: Gosh, so yeah, so a very, very brief resume. Started my career in retail with John Lewis Partnership then decided at sort of age 21 to go off to University in Manchester, did a degree in business and marketing. And just after University, I managed to stumble into a role with the incredible Tom Peters Group. And for those that aren't old enough, Tom Peters was certainly in the 1980s, nineties, the most successful management guru of his time, his Jim Collins of his day, who wrote an amazing book called In Search of Excellence and sold many millions of copies and to give us sort of sense. So, I was putting him on stage in the 1990s at about $120,000 U.S. dollars a day back in those days. So, and then one day, yeah, after being at the Tom Peters Group where I was helping put him on stage and find some, he really wrote about companies that had kind of amazing cultures that really just sort of got it. And indeed, I'm still visiting some of the companies he wrote about wrote about 30 years ago, like Southwest Airlines. The phone rang and a small innovation company called What If was on the phone. And one thing led to the other and a conversation snowballed into a coffee, a coffee into a lunch, a lunch into a come join us. And I moved into to join What If for 11 years. When I joined, we were 10 people when I left, there were 355 countries. And it was the ride of my life and had an incredible opportunity there to provide our clients with some inspirations, started running for the study tour events, and then 14 years ago made the jump to co-found Wavelength. Steve Rush: So, what is it specifically that Wavelength do? Adrian Simpson: Our specialism is bringing the outside world in. Basically, we scour the world looking for examples of practitioners. What are the leaders? The organizations that have compelling stories to share with our clients and really providing our clients with a combination of what I would call inspiration, education and provocation. And our hypothesis really is at the level at which we operate at, is the leaders learn best from leaders. So, as I mentioned, sort of, you know, scouring the world, looking for practitioners you know, got real experience on topics that our clients were interested in. Albeit, you know, I was literally in America 10 days ago with a group of 20 leaders from all around the world. We had clients from Australia, from India, from Japan, from the Middle East, six across North America, the rest from across Europe, from lots of different organizations. They flew into Dallas Texas on a Saturday. We began on a Sunday morning with a sort of half day workshop. And then for the first day and a half, we spent going inside the legendary Southwest Airlines and Ritz Carlton, really focusing on excellence in culture and leadership and service. So, they can value the three and a half days, looking at innovation, disruption, new business models, what's next? And what's next? Next. Doing some set piece visits but also doing some incredible things like going for drives in the world's first, fully autonomous robots, taxis operated by crews to have no drivers in them at all [laugh] or doing metaverse meetings in the metaverse, Oculus quest headsets. So, we do things like that to very, very intense one-week immersions for very senior business leaders. We have at the other end of the spectrum, we have a digital only program called inspire, which is every single month. Typically, on a third Thursday of the month, we take a cohort of leaders from lots of different client companies live inside a great business, somewhere around the world of an audience with a really accomplished leader. Last week we hosted a session with Alastair Campbell on mental health. Next week, we have the former Prime Minister of Denmark. Helle Thorning Schmidt on how to lead the country. We've got Jesper Boring coming up IKEA Chief Exec. We've hosted Alan Jope Unilever's Chief Exec. We are hosting Tim Steiner, Ocado Chief Exec in September, and they are just short, sharp, regular doses of live world class inspiration for our clients. And we've got amazingly 700 people signed up to that program from around the world. So, we do, you know, whether it's digital only, short, sharp, live inspiration, whether it's weeklong, or we have other programs, one called connect, which is sort of, has about 50 people on it and is UK based, it runs about nine months or whether it's just, you know, helping clients bring speakers in for a particular offsite or conference. But again, any speakers we will use, will be practitioners. Steve Rush: How awesome. So, you managed to really bump shoulders with, and as you said, immerse other leaders with these great leaders from around the world. What's the reason your focus is heavily aimed at making leaders learn from other leaders. Adrian Simpson: I just think there is a relevancy that you cannot get and that applicability that you cannot get from any other kind of learning when it comes to leadership is in my view. Now I'm not for a second saying there is not a role for, you know, academics and business schools and some kind of provocative, rigorous thinking. I think there is a role for that, but I suppose my best sort of summary when I had a chief exec who has been with me, a chap. He was chief exec of a fortune 500 company. He came with me to America for a week. He came with me to China for a week. And I said, you know, John, why are you doing these programs? And he said, it was very simple Adrian. He said, my previous HR leader, he said, kept on telling me to go to Harvard. And I kept on saying to her, tell me where I should go to business school to learn about business from someone who never run a business and I'll go. He said she didn't. So, I didn't [laugh]. And I thought, and he said, so when, you know, she put in front of me the chance to spend a week in the U.S. alongside peers from different industries, different sectors, learning from companies and leaders that were perhaps bit further ahead of us in terms of their narrative. He said it was a compelling proposition because they know what it's like to sit in my seat. They know what it's like to sit it as a board director with multiple stakeholders, internal and external, limited resources, having to make informed decisions. And he said with the greatest respect, no academic, no guru, no consultant knows that reality unless they have also at some point run a major business. So I think it's that sort of you know, real applicability I think and I think it's, you know, what, I've, I've learned as well is that, you know, when you give clients the opportunity to hear from other leaders and learn from other leaders, you know, it's easier almost to swipe with glee, if you like, what it is that they've done, you know. I mean, I'll just give you an example. There was a, you know, I actually did a podcast myself with a tremendous guy called Fred Reid couple of months back, and Fred was the founding chief executive Virgin in America. He was the president of Delta Airlines, the president of Lufthansa. He went on to work with five years of Brian Chesky Airbnb and he also did a stint with Larry Page at his private company Kitty Hawk. So, you know, he is worked with Richard Branson, Larry Page you know, Brian Chesky, and also been a twice president and onetime CEO. And I was talking to him about the challenge of, you know, communication and how do you, as a leader, you know, build an understanding in the business of what business you are in and operational realities. And he told this fantastic story about when he was both at Lufthansa and Delta faced with that challenge, he decided to create a board game. And basically, what he did was he would invite cross sectioned cohorts of leaders from across the business, whether it's air stewart's, pilots, mechanics, ramp agents, didn't matter. And they would be invited to take a day out, fully paid to play this board game. But what the board game was full of was real operational data and decisions. And in sort of teams of eight, they have to like to make a decision. Are you going to give people a 3% pay rise? Are you going to buy new uniforms for the air stewardess? Are you going to pay the loan off on that plane? Are you going to buy the new plane? Are you going to make invest in the innovation fund? Because innovation director says we're not innovating fast enough. Are we going to, you know, are we going to hedge on oil right? And he said, throughout the day, they had to make real operational decisions based on real operational data that we'd given them from the airline. And he said, the only decision in the day they had to make was to appoint a president. And he said, it was hilarious. They all pointed each other and said, it's you, it's you.

Martine Kalaw is the author of The ABC's of Diversity, she's a speaker and DEI consultant helping individuals and organizations overcome unconscious beliefs and implicit bias. In this insightful show you can learn about: Martine's fascinating story from being a stateless, undocumented person to CEO What diversity really means, looks and feels like How has the hybrid world has impacted firms approach to DE&I? The ABC's of Diversity   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Martine below: Martine on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/martinekalawconsulting/ Martine on Twitter: https://twitter.com/martinekalaw Martine on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/martinekalaw/ Martine's Website: https://martinekalaw.com   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker. Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you Our special guest on today's show is Martine Kalaw. Martine is a DEI expert; she's worked with some of the world's top companies, helping them navigate through their organization's diversity, equity and inclusion, and created more diverse and inclusive workspace. She's also the author of The ABCs of Diversity. Before we get a chance to speak with MartinE, It's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: We all know that telling stories is a great leadership skill. So today I'm going to have a go. Once upon a time there was a beautiful kingdom ruled by a Prince. He took over the kingdom after the death of his father, the King, after a few months of ruling, the kingdom things started testing. There was no rain. Drought had brought losses to farmers and killed many animals, birds, and precious plants in the forest. It was followed by an unknown disease that caused loss of many lives. After a few months of pain, things started to improve gradually, but before they could recover completely, an enemy took over the kingdom, killing many people and imprisoning them. The young King managed to escape. He planned to meet his childhood friend, a King of a neighboring kingdom. On his way he was thinking about the past. He was born to be bred King of this powerful and wealthy nation. Now he's lost everything. He believed that he was cursed because nothing had happened to his father. It had only happened to him. When he reached the neighboring kingdom, and he met his friends. The guards did not allow him to pass because he looked dirty, and bedraggled. He tried many times to get access to the kingdom but failed miserably. Being cast outside the kingdom, he eventually took a job so he could buy food and clothes. Several weeks had passed and he'd now earned enough and ate enough. So, they allowed him to look presentable. So, he set off in a chance to get through the guards and to meet with his friend. After carefully navigating the guards and entering the kingdom. He was greeted warmly by his friend, the King of the neighboring kingdom, after explaining the sad story and things that had happened to him. The King took pity and ordered his people to give him a herd of a hundred sheep. While grateful, the King was a little surprised as it was expecting much more than just a hundred cheap. He was a King after all. He doesn't want to be a shepherd. Down on his luck. He realized there was no way out. After a few days of grazing his herd, group of wolves attacked his herd and killed all of them. And while the wolves were merely feasting on this new herd, the king ran away. He returned to his only allied at this time, his friend, the King from the neighboring kingdom. This time he gave 50 sheep in pity. But once again, he failed to protect the walls. He returned for a third time, and this time the King gave him 25 sheep with a clear message of, there are no more sheep. And this time the young King decided if he didn't protect his herd, he knew that he would be on his downers. So, this time he took a different approach. He examined the environment. He understood where the wolves were living, the areas where they would attack. He built additional fences and guards around the herd to protect them. He set up a schedule to monitor those key places and key times when he knew that the wolves would be most active, a few years had passed, and its herd had grown into a thousand sheep. His activities were monitored by his friend, the King and in recognition of his great feat in growing a herd, his friend had ordered his ministers to give him a whole state to rule. He asked his friend, why did you not give me the state to rule when I first come to help you? His friend, the King replied. The first time you came for me for help. Your mindset was like you were born and bred to be a leader. You were expectant. And the truth was far from it. The King went on to say, you may have been born with wealth, pride, and power, but you have never had proper education and training to lead your people. So, when I gave you the herd, I wanted you to learn how to manage and lead others. Dear friend, I have seen you suffer, return, be resilient, work out a plan. And now I believe you're ready to lead. The moral of the story and leadership hack if you like, is that, just being born into a powerful family or being born with privileges, doesn't mean you'll be successful. Being a manager or leading people in higher position does not make you a leader. Being in charge, such as a King or a Manager or a CEO does not make you a leader. Holding position is just a position. Leadership is a behavior and leadership is a service. The most important role of a leader is to build and develop other leaders. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. Let's dive into the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Martine Kalaw is a special guest on today's show. She's an author, speaker and DEI consultant. She's the founder of Martine Kalaw Enterprises and her firm offers strategy development, implementation, and education, and helps organizations overcome unconscious beliefs and implicit biases. Martine also published her second book, The ABCs of Diversity. Martine, welcome to the show. Martine Kalaw: Thank you so much for having me, Steve. I'm excited to be here Steve Rush: Now, you have a most fascinating backstory. There are not many people that you can say. I understand how that is because there's not many people would understand your position. Just tell us a little bit about that backstory and how that's really given you the passion to do what you do? Martine Kalaw:  Yeah, certainly. Born in Zambia from the Democratic Republic of Congo. My mother and biological fathers were from there and having been raised in the U.S. but having spent seven years of my life as an undocumented immigrant and stateless individual in the United States in removal or deportation proceedings for seven years has really shaped the work that I do around DEI, in the years that I, you know, navigated through. One being orphaned, two, being undocumented, three, being stateless. I was exposed to various communities. I actually had to, you know, I had to learn how to pivot into different communities as I navigated the world on my own. And so, what this taught me was to, it gave me a different perspective on how people show up and view different circumstances. It also gave me a level of sensitivity in how to and putting myself in somebody else's shoes and trying to see things from their perspective. And so, for that reason, I feel like I can be a bridge builder in a lot of ways across different communities. I also knew from my experience of being undocumented and stateless, I also understand the importance of having individuals invest in you rather than help you when you're marginalized, right. When your part of an underrepresented community, that's how we actually strengthen our communities, how we strengthen our workforce, is when individuals who have access recognize the access that they have and, or privileged, and some people are not comfortable with that word and then extend that to others and bring them in and do it in a way that's not charity like, and they're not positioning themselves as saviors, but really they're investing in others because they know they're also gaining something back. And in that way, we strengthened our communities. And so that was the experience I had as an undocumented immigrant and stateless person was setting it up so others can invest in me. And then once I, you know, navigated through my journey. Sharing that and passing that forward to my mentees and other people within undocumented stateless community, but then tying it into the larger conversation of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Steve Rush: Yeah, and I guess what you've really described is so extreme in its diverse experience, but to your point, gives you that sensitivity to be able to be really thoughtful in your approach, right? Martine Kalaw:  Right, absolutely. And just having seen, and just the intricacies of bias and discrimination in various facets. I mean, people don't necessarily think about immigration, and you know, statelessness and think of diversity, equity and inclusion, but it's a subset of it. Steve Rush: Yeah. Martine Kalaw:  And certainly, it's nuanced. I mean, we can see that with, you know, the war in Ukraine and we saw the response and how different communities of African immigrants, how they were treated, Moroccan immigrants. We saw that, right. We see that time and time, again in the policies that are enacted around immigration in the U.S. based on different subgroups within immigrants, you know construct. So, in that way DEI is a subset of immigration. Immigration is a subset of DEI, so, it can be a microcosm for the larger conversation around diversity equity and inclusion. Steve Rush: And diversity also transcends lots of different religions, colors, and creeds, doesn't it? It's not just about, you know, an atypical perspective somebody might have when they join a firm. What's your take on we pet peel, the layers back, diversity in its simplest terms? Martine Kalaw:  Diversity is about variety, right. And representation across variety of different groups, different backgrounds. So, in its simplest term, diversity is offering and embracing variety. Now variety, when we talk about diversity, I like to break it down into three different buckets, right. There's the physical biological bucket in terms of defining diversity. And that can be, you know, that's race, gender, race, it can be age, you know, all of the elements or subcategories of diversity that has to do with somebody's physical definers and their biological, right? Steve Rush: Right. Martine Kalaw:  Sexual orientation. And then the second bucket that I you know, I group diversity into is, cultural. So cultural can look like a number of things. It could be nationality. It can be your marital status. It can be your education background. It could be your socioeconomic status, right? So that's cultural. And then the third category especially within the work or business context is really around business. The culture or the persona you bring into the business. So, some people are introverts, some people are extroverts. You know, some people are more strategic in the way they show up to work. Some individuals are less strategic, you know, they're big picture thinkers or there, you know, detail oriented. So, these are the different categories, these three different buckets or categories, and they are interrelated. There are correlations between one bucket, right. The business persona that you bring into the workplace is influenced by your culture, the cultural, you know, associations you're a part of. And then that can be influenced by biological, you know, physical. And so, another way of saying it is, look, you know, as a black, you know, African woman in the United States right, these are some of the physical, you know, being black and African are some of the physical you know, associations that I'm a part of. So culturally, you know, perhaps if I grew up in a community where it was predominantly you know, black and predominantly African immigrants, right. That might influence how I show up in the workplace. If I go to work and everyone else doesn't look like me, everyone else ends up being white. And I'm the only African immigrant. It might actually influence my communication style. Because I'm responding right to the experiences I have and I'm responding to my outward environment. So that's how these three categories or buckets can be related or correlated. Steve Rush: The interesting thing that you just shared is a perfect example of how diversity can be seen different and that's where equity comes in, isn't it? Martine Kalaw:  Right. Steve Rush: Tell us a bit about that? Martine Kalaw:  Yeah, so, I'll say, you know, diversity, equity, and inclusion. I feel strongly that they are like a three-legged stool. You can't have one without the other. So certainly, you can have variety and representation, but that's not enough to keep people, right. You can have, you know, you have the representation, but if people aren't treated fairly, right. Equity is really about fairness. It's about distribution. If people aren't treated fairly and they're not given the same equitable opportunities, then why would they stay? What would be their incentive? I like to distinguish equity from equality, because people say, oh, well, you know, equity is about equality. It's actually not right. Steve Rush: No, it's not. And that's where people get confused, right? Martine Kalaw: Right, equality is what we're aiming for after we reach equity. But right now, across the globe, I mean, you know, this is not just specific to the U.S. or the UK or any one place, but across the globe, what we know is that there are different communities, they're different ethnic groups, they're different races and not everyone has had the same history in their country and have had the same access. In the U.S. we can see that because the history of slavery in the U.S. that was so prominent has made it, so, there have been systemic inequities in the workplace, in education, all of that has been the trickle effect from slavery, right. And as a result of that, it's still trickles. It's still there. It's still, you know, and so what happens is people show up in the workplace and they don't have the same experiences. They don't have the same access, right. someone who has grown up with certain privileges, access to certain academic institutions, access to certain you know, in a higher echelon of socioeconomic status, right. Might show up in the workplace with a different level of acumen, right. To the business and feel more comfortable navigating the workplace, feel more comfortable looking for a mentor, reaching out to the C-Suite Executives and asking for them to be a mentor and also feel more comfortable showing up in spaces. Like, you know, work off offsite events, right. Like lots of work offsite events, at least historically were like you know, usually they're sports events, they're, you know, happy hour, golf events, what have you. So, if you come from a space where you're familiar with that, it's easy for you to just an acclimate to that. If you come from a space where you didn't have access to that, it's a lot harder for you to navigate that space in the workplace and create more accessibility for yourself. And so that's where equity comes in. It's having the organization find ways to create that level of fairness. So, the best visual that actually someone shared with me, an anecdote is, you know, equality is giving everybody a pair of shoes, a pair of sneakers, let's say. Equity is giving everyone a pair of sneakers that fit their feet. Steve Rush: It's a great analogy. Love it. So, the workplace has changed over the last few years with the pandemic and our approaches and responses to that. How do you see that that's impacted on how firms are dealing with DEI now? Martine Kalaw:  Yes, that's a really great question. So, what I've seen is in the last two years, so prior to the murder of George Floyd, because I really think that's what sparked this new, you know, movement across organizations, quite frankly, globally, before that it's not that diversity, equity and inclusion didn't exist. It did. But at that, you know, before that it was really focused on diversity, right. Steve Rush: Right. Martine Kalaw:  It was focused on diversity and there was less of an emphasis on equity, less of an emphasis on inclusion. This is generally speaking. And you know, when you look at the numbers and the statistics in the workplace, white women were the prime beneficiaries of those diversity initiatives, right. And so then, two and a half years ago with, you know, the murder of George Floyd, things shifted, there was a greater awareness that whoa, you know, there's a lot of inequity, that's still trickling into the workplace, right. That's happening nationally, but it's trickling into the workplace because the same people that are in, you know, that are in society are also going into work, right. So, we can't distinguish these two, these two worlds collide and that's in the workplace. And so initially organizations, again, generally speaking, were responsive or reactive to what was happening, right. There was a level of reaction because employees or staff members were hypersensitive and hyper aware, right. And almost like daring the organization to do something, fix this. So, organizations generally speaking were reactive and trying to like quickly fix things and quell the concerns of their employees, right. The responses with that with, a lot of programs, let's come up with programs, let's give money to this organization. Let's have an internship program and bring, you know, look at interns from certain colleges and universities that we wouldn't have looked at before, at least in the U.S., historically black colleges and universities, HBCUs, right. Things like that, very reactive. So that's not a bad thing because I think the programming was important, but the thing is, there are two issues with that. When you have program without strategy, it's really hard to sustain the initiative. And when you don't have strategy, it's hard to position what you're doing as a real business imperative, right. It doesn't seem like a business structure. It seems more of like something you're just slapping on a band aid, and you know, wanting to move on. So that was the first challenge. The second was the fact that the same people were doing the work, we're being charged to do the work, mainly human resources professionals who don't always have the experience or the expertise. They are also oftentimes already overburdened by their workload. They were being charged with the responsibility of doing this work. As well as, you know, employee resource groups, basically employees who are part of underrepresented communities or are allies, right. So, the same individuals we're being charged with this responsibility, right. And that's exhausting. It also means that everyone else wasn't as involved. And what we know is that if not everyone is bought into an initiative, it's not going to work, right. You need leadership's involvement; you need manager's involvement. So that's really where we are at the moment. And the organizations that really want to do the real work are reaching out to consultants like myself, they're reaching out to others, right. They're bringing in chief diversity officers and saying, look, we want to go beyond just the performative and you know, with programs, we want to have strategy. We want to have our leadership involved in this. We want DEI to be positioned as part of the business strategy. We want to be able to tie metrics to things, right. We want to be able to connect our programs with a larger initiative so we can scale these programs. So that's where we are now, right. So not just about training and programs, training is great, but training has to be reinforced with strategy. So that's where we are now where organizations are at this, impasse where they can either keep doing what they're doing and being you know I guess their employees are feeling impatient and are putting the pressure on them or they can actually start to really build strategy and make DEI part of their business structure. Steve Rush: And let's be realistic here as well. Those businesses aren't, are also missing out, not on just massive opportunities to unlock human potential, but there's also a direct correlation to return on investment too, isn't there? Martine Kalaw: That's it. I always talk about the ROI of DEI. And so that is, one of the very first things that I do in working with organizations is, especially if I'm working with human resources, professionals, not directly with the like the, you know, CEO is getting that HR professional to identify what that return on investment is so that they can position it to the leadership, right. Discussing ROI is the common denominator. The challenge that we've had historically with DEI is, certainly there's an emotional quotient component to it. That's the most significant component. Stories, people's experiences, experiences of employees and how they felt marginalized. The biases they may have experienced, that is critical. But when we start with that approach, what we end up doing is, we exclude indirectly and unintentionally. Exclude anyone who doesn't understand that. Who cannot relate to this story, right. Steve Rush: Right. Martine Kalaw:  People feel either shamed or blamed or they just don't get it. So, they tune out, right. And then again, we're just reaching to the cryer, the same people who have the issue are the same people engaged in these conversations. So that's why I always recommend starting with return on investment, let's look at the value that DEI can bring to the organization. Let's look at the numbers. Like let's actually find what that metric is. If your business to business, business to consumer organization, there is a possibility, there's always a possibility of increasing market share. There are certain markets we have not considered if we're providing a service or a product, right. And so that is where DEI can actually help. If you educate your salespeople and they are much more savvy and they're representative of a larger group of individuals. There's more representation in your salespeople let's say, or if they have more sensitivity in navigating DEI, then they're more likely, they'll know how to reach and look for new markets, right. Explore markets they haven't considered. And once we've attracted those markets, it's building those relationships, that rapport with those markets. So that's one way, for example, that a business to consumer organization can benefit. Revenue wise, ROI wise from DEI. When we talk about business to business, same idea in terms of retention, in terms of building those relationships and attracting new partners, right. I mean, if you're business to business, think about the clients that your partners or that business you're supporting, think about who their clients are, think about who their customers are. And if we're supporting them, we also need to understand their clientele. We also need to help them or support them in reaching a larger market share. We also need to make sure that we're able to create more diversity in our partners, right. So, these are ways in which we can actually measure ROI. We can look at the retention of our partners. We can look at recruiting and gaining more partners. And what does that mean in terms of our dollars? So, there are direct correlations between DEI and return on investment. And what I encourage is for organizations to start there, start with that number, start with what the cost, right. What we think the estimated cost of bringing in a chief diversity officer, bringing in a consultant, you know, doing this work might cost. And then let's talk about what the potential return could look like. Steve Rush: Yeah, love it. Now you wrote the book, The ABCs of Diversity. Martine Kalaw:  Yes. Steve Rush: Let's quickly just spin through the ABCs and dive into a couple of them. Martine Kalaw:  Yeah, I mean, the ABCs is kind of what I, I alluded to this a little bit earlier, which was, a lot of the work is dumped on human resources and I use the word dumped intentionally, because that's how it feels like, right. It feels like a burden to them, to them and sometimes employee resource groups or diversity, task forces, because these are individuals that don't always have the expertise. They can come to this from a very emotional standpoint. And so, it's really unfair to expect them to have all of the responsibility around DEI. So, the ABCs of diversity, by the way, the subtitle is a manager's guide to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the new workplace. So really what this book really encapsulates are two main things. One is that when we approach the conversation of DEI, we make it sometimes over complicated, right. It's very ethereal. There's a lot of jargon. A lot of you know politically correct terms and people are so afraid of saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing, that they'd rather disengage and not involve themselves in DEI conversations. But what I want people to understand is that, okay, we don't have to focus so much on the jargon, the terminology, it's really the fundamental practices, the fundamental things that we do. And a lot of it can be driven by managers. So, when we think about who shapes and influences the makeup of an organization, there are two main groups, human resources, and managers, managers influence hiring decisions. They influence compensation decisions. They influence promotion decisions. They influence attrition when people decide to leave, right. All of that is influenced by managers and they're working in tandem with human resources. So, what we get to do is pivot our lens when we look at all those elements, those foundational elements of being a manager and consider how we can have more representation and less bias in these different areas, right. And so that doesn't require learning all this terminology and jargon. It just requires thinking a little bit more broadly. So, for example, as hiring managers, one of the things we can do differently, we're looking at resumes is, asking our talent acquisition or recruiting team. I'm seeing like a lot of similarities across these resumes. Like it seems like all of these individuals are from the same region. This is just me speaking, hypothetically. Is there a possibility that we can look at other resumes more broadly? Can we look at other resumes or can we look at candidates from other regions? right. This is just a small way as hiring managers, we're looking at, we're interviewing candidates and we immediately feel we have this affinity bias, right. Where we have a preference for someone because, oh, they went to this college and you've heard of this college, or you're familiar with this college. Well, what we can do is, manages go, oh, wait a minute. I'm picking up on the fact that, you know, I feel more, you know, I have this affinity, this person, just because of what I'm seeing on the resume, let me then assume, what if every other candidate went to the same college, right. Let's rule out. Let's take that one scenario or that one qualifier out. And let's focus on all the other, whether the candidates who actually can do the job, right. And when we're interviewing candidates, let's see how we can be consistent in the way, the order in which we ask questions. Let's also invite other people on our teams to interview these candidates, right. And when they are interviewing candidates to avoid influence, influencing our decision, let's have, you know, the other people are interviewing candidates, our candidates. Just share their feedback to the talent acquisition team rather than to us, right. And we don't actually hear, or, you know, know what they're thinking until the end, after we've made our decision on how we feel about the candidates. So, these are things that we can do as managers. Another example of creating, establishing inclusion as a manager or equity is mentorship, right. So, as you know, a lot of organizations, some organizations don't have formal mentorship programs. And as I mentioned, based on your background, some people might come into a company and feel really comfortable looking for a mentor. They might be invited to certain spaces like golf events, like a happy hour, where they will engage and build relationships and then ask someone to be their mentor. What I can say is not everyone has that familiarity or that confidence, not everyone is invited to the same events in the same spaces in the workplace. So as a manager, what we can do is, we can establish a way to make sure that everyone on our team has access to a mentor. We can invite mentors to come to our meetings, invite our senior leadership, to come to our weekly meetings or biweekly meetings with our teams and let people know that, you know, make sure everyone on the team understands that, you know, you can access and reach out to this person if you need a mentor, right. These are subtle things that we do to create equity, right. Create fairness, accessibility. So that's the ABCs of DEI, right. Its common knowledge. Things that we're already doing as managers, but we just don't realize that this is actually reinforcing DEI, right. And it's natural. It's much more organic than thinking, okay, I have to put on my DEI hat, and you know, I have to use this specific terminology. So that's really what the ABCs of DEI is. And it's really meant to be a workbook, you know? So, when you open it up, it really actually is a primer. It reads like a workshop, like you're in a workshop. And at the end of each chapter, it's 150 pages, not long. At the end of each chapter, there are two takeaway exercises. One is for self-reflection and the other is something you can take back to your team and implement as a manager. So, there's actual application. Steve Rush: Awesome. Now we're going to give folk a chance to get hold of a copy or find out how they can get hold of a copy in a moment. So, I'm going to flip the lens very quickly, do some quick, short fire, top leadership hacks. What be your top three leadership hacks? Martine Kalaw:  My top three leadership hacks would be you know, one is, to be transparent and vulnerable, right. I would just combine those two. Transparency. I mean, as leaders, we can't be completely transparent with everything, but at least walk people through why you're doing what you're doing. They'll appreciate it more. They feel like what they're doing, adds value to the end goal. So being able to be transparent in that way and being vulnerable. If you have challenges, if you have issues, things aren't going the way that you ideally wanted them to. It's okay to share that with your team as a leader because what they're observing is how you respond to it, the solutions, your problem-solving abilities, that becomes an example for them. So that's one leadership hack. Another leadership hack for me would be to find people who are smarter than you, to be, you know, part of your team. You know, I think as leaders, sometimes we're afraid that somebody's going to outshine us, but really what we want to do is bring people who have skills that we don't have, because what that ends up carrying us, if they grow, we grow, right. And so, I do believe that's a really important one that I've always you know, believed in and it's really been beneficial to me. And the third leadership hack would be, I have to think about this one. I would say, always be on quest to learn. So maybe that's more humility or just always learn. As leaders, we can never know enough. We're always learning, learn from our team members. The people who report into us. Learn across the board, pick up a book, read. There's always something we can learn as leaders, right. And so as long as we show up in our role as leaders in that way. We're always going to continue to grow and be better than who we were the day before. Steve Rush: Awesome advice. Now you shared the biggest Hack to Attack that we've ever heard, which is your story up front, but if you could give yourself some advice when you were 21, what would that be? Martine Kalaw:  Ah, that's a great one. If I could give myself advice when I was 21 was to, trust the process, right. Meaning like, I'm a little bit of a magical thinker in a sense that, you know, if you take action and you do everything that you need to do, sometimes things just need to kind of work themselves out, right. Kind of like everything has to sort of be synchronous, and it takes a little bit of time. And I think that's something that, you know, millennials, you know, Gen Z, like, you know, there's sometimes a level of impatience right, with things. And so sometimes, you know, put all the pieces together, do your part and then give it a little bit of time, right. For things to come together. So, trust the process a little bit. Steve Rush: That's great, and that's definitely been the case for you. You've a perfect walking example of that. So, thank you so much. So, Martine, conscious, we want to make sure we can get our guests to connect with you beyond today. Find out a little bit about the books that you've written and maybe buy a copy. Where's the best place to send them? Martine Kalaw:  Perfect. you can go directly to martinekalaw.com, www.martinekalaw.com. And when you go there, you'll have access to the link from my book, which is on Amazon. So, you can purchase the hard copy and you can also purchase the audio book on audible. So, if you go to my website, it'll give you the link to both of those sites. And certainly, on my website, you also have access to sign up for my complimentary, otherwise known as free master class, which is coming up on July 21st. I usually have a monthly one-hour monthly masterclass where I really work with human resources professionals. And I offer them the five things that they can do within the next 90 days to really drive DEI in their organizations. Steve Rush: Awesome. Martine Kalaw:  And so that's something that you can sign up for if you go to my website. Steve Rush: We'll also put those links in our show notes as well. Martine, I wish you had more time to chat. I really love chatting to. You're such a great advocate of doing exactly what's right for folk when it's right. So, thank you ever so much for taking time out of your super busy schedule, being with us on our Leadership Hacker Podcast. Martine Kalaw:  Thank you so much, Steve. I enjoyed it too. Steve Rush: Thank you, Martine.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler their @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.  

Timothy Bradshaw is former British Army Intelligence Officer and graduate of the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. His work as a Covert Human Intelligence Officer and Target Acquisition Patrol Soldier saw him recruit and run foreign agents worldwide and influence the outcome of extremely sensitive and dangerous situations. Recently, he's been running aid missions to the Ukraine. He's a keynote speaker and author of the book, “Because I Can”. This is packed full of leadership lessons including: Leaders need to make decisions under pressure, how different was that in the military and what can we learn from that. The secret sauce to resilience and overcoming challenges. Why wanting to quit is normal and how can we overcome that. Why is the military approach to leadership is a good blueprint for business.   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com   Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA   Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Tim below: Tim on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothy-bradshaw/ Tim's Books: Because I Can Tim on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TimBecauseICan Tim on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/timothy.bradshaw/ Tim's Website: https://www.timothybradshaw.net   Full Transcript Below ----more----   Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Our special guest on today's show is Tim Bradshaw. He's a foreign British Army Intelligence Officer and recruited and run foreign agents worldwide as a Human Intelligent Officer. He's also the author of a great book, Because I can, but before we get a chance to speak with Tim, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: Leadership is about us everywhere. And I wanted to dive in to find some funny, and innovative ways of us, bringing some of those leadership lessons to life. So, if ever you've watched a movie Star Wars or any of the Star Wars Trilogy, you'll find loads of leadership lessons packed within there. Yoda is one of my favorites. He has this great saying that said. Do or not do, there is no try. And I'm often using that lighthearted analogy with any of my coaching conversations, but a long time ago in a galaxy far away, the leadership lessons were created amongst this epic series of films. So, here's a few, it's been proven that being born with talent is not enough. As we all know, Luke Skywalker is born with a natural talent to be a Jedi. Yet when, we watch the movies. We know that was not a given. He had to work hard at that. We watched Luke come to grips with putting himself in challenging situations and homing in on that force. And there are traits of good leadership, but true leadership takes place, self-reflection and mentoring, which we also saw through their relationship with Yoda. Adaptability is also a key leadership lesson throughout the Star Wars movies, all of those Star Wars movies demonstrate that life does not always go to plan. And if you are rigid in your plans are stuck in your ways, you're not going to win. From Han Solo, adapting, a broken hyper drive by hiding by the rubbish shoot instead of a surprise alliance along the way. If you're able to adapt and think quickly, you're able to lead a team through any surprises. We know it's okay to ask for help as leaders. Sometimes you can't get yourself out of a situation without calling on someone else. When Princess Leia was in a bind, she'd always know the right people to call and ask for help without hesitation. Some good leaders need other good leaders to advise them on their journey. And the one thing that is really true across all of the movies that chasing power is the path to the dark side. Leaders undeniably have power and authority, but leadership is much more than that. Once you begin to be at attracted to power and to chase power, you are heading to the dark side. Good leadership is all about sharing power and authority and creating more leaders. It's about people with good ideas and evolving those good ideas so that everyone becomes more powerful. So, the next time you hear yourself saying, I'll try, just think you've been Yoda. Do or don't do, there is no try. Let's get into the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Timothy Bradshaw, is a special guest on today's show. He's a former British Army Intelligence Officer and graduate of the Royal Military Academy of Sandhurst. His work as a Covert Human Intelligent Officer and Target Acquisition Patrol Soldier saw him recruit and run foreign agents worldwide and influence the outcome of extremely sensitive and dangerous situations. Recently Tim's been running missions to Ukraine, delivering really, really important aid. He's a keynote speaker and he's also the author of the book, Because I can. Tim, welcome to the show. Timothy Bradshaw: Thanks Steve. Thanks very much for having me on. Steve Rush: Really looking forward to getting into the diverse world of Timothy Bradshaw. And remember from the first time that you met and how you described what you did in the army and in your work as an Intelligence Officer, I think I might have called you the James Bond [laugh] at the time. Timothy Bradshaw: I mean, that's very flattering and unfortunately every time somebody says that I caught so much flack off all of my friends, but. Steve Rush: [Laugh]. Timothy Bradshaw: I'll take it Steve. I've definitely been called worse things. Steve Rush: I think your response to me at the time, Tim, if I remember rightly was, and you might have had the work of James Bond, but you certainly didn't have the dinner suits and the expense account. Timothy Bradshaw: No, absolutely not. And I'm still waiting for the Aston Martin as well. Steve Rush: That's it, yeah. So, tell us a little bit about you Tim, your early backstory and give that listens a little bit of a spin through to how you've arrived to do what you do. Timothy Bradshaw: It's not that exciting, Steve really, which I think is almost kind of the point. You know, we talk about resilience and all this sort of stuff and actually I haven't done anything that essentially anybody else couldn't have done if they wanted to. I did my A-levels. I finished school. I kind of looked at university alongside everybody else and realized that I was doing that really, because that was kind of what everybody else did. Not really what my sort of passion was, and maybe there's a bit of a theme there that'll continue. So, I was offered a place to go to the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. I literally just turned 18 in the October and went in the January. So was really very young. I quite often laugh when we talk about leadership. My first ever job out of school was sort of leading 37 soldiers aged 19, by the time I got to that point. And frankly probably wasn't very good at it. Who's very good at their first ever job out of school, but I had a lot of training, and a lot of backups. So, made the best I could really. I've kind of never really done anything else. So very much experienced based career, I guess. And I did that and that was the kind of the mid-nineties. And I went out to Germany. Ironically, it's really funny looking back now, I say funny, slightly tongue in cheek, but obviously we were very much kind of the end of the sort of cold war doctrine and everything we were looking at was very much basically about the Russian Army coming across the Eastern German planes which with what's going on now, obviously out in Ukraine, seems a little bit surreal, to be honest. Steve Rush: Yeah. Timothy Bradshaw: But anyway, and I sort of did that for a bit and it was bit of a lull really, an activity, certainly for the sort of regular army at the time. And then I pursued a career in training after I served out my commission and subsequently once sort of Iraq and Afghanistan kicked off, I looked to go back to the military. I felt as though I had kind of unfinished business and hadn't finished serving yet. I've always had quite a strong desire to serve rightly or wrongly. So, I decided to go back and a friend of mine had said to me, oh, you should look at, you know, look at reserves and I said, crikey you're joking. You know, to me, the TA sort of, as was, was dad's army. And, you know, that's absolutely not the case anymore. So, I went through a patrol selection course, which is a particularly arduous sort of running over the Hills, big ruck sacks, small teams, very much becoming self-reliant, self-sufficient, relying on your teammates in small groups as a buildup, really to go towards Afghanistan. And then I kind of thought to myself, well, if I'm going to do this, I want to do something that perhaps my interim years as a civilian brings something to the party rather than putting me behind the curve. So Human Intelligence is, is exactly that, it's about building relationships and influence. And actually, you know, we always sort of joke, but if you having to use the cars as the guns, you've kind of got it wrong, essentially. It's absolutely about building relationships and influencing people. So, bit of a sucker for punishment, really, I put myself through yet another grueling selection process. Steve Rush: [laugh]. Timothy Bradshaw: Its theme isn't it, really. And we did that. I passed a course and then what ensued was a fascinating few years working with some truly inspirational people on all sides of the divide, really. Some of those obviously worked for essentially terrorist organizations. Some of those were people that absolutely keen to help their communities. But the theme was always the same. It was always about relationships and influence. And I was doing some keynote speaking the other day and I sort of laughed and somebody ask, how could you sum it up? And I was trying to think of a sort of corporate analogy. And I said, well, imagine trying to lead or influence somebody that not only do they not work for you, but in fact they work for your biggest competitor. And that was about the best I could come up with really. Obviously trying to persuade somebody who has very strong views of their own that actually there might be a different way or a better path and to give you, essentially feed you in intelligence. So yeah, so that's what we did. Did that for a few years, which was truly fascinating. Couple of tour Afghanistan. I did point out to somebody recently whose head went down a little bit talking about lockdown. And I think I calculated that I have actually spent more time in Afghanistan than I have in lockdown. Steve Rush: Wow, yeah. Timothy Bradshaw: And I don't actually know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, to be honest with you, but it is a fact. And then I think having left the military. Again, I have a very low boredom threshold Steve, which I think is, probably the theme. But actually, for me, I've always been quite a big advocate of mental health. I've always struggled a little bit with sort of depression and anxiety. It's not a good thing or a bad thing. It's just the way my brain works really. And you know, it's a bit like a bank account in some of the respects. You take out, so therefore you have to pay back in. Anyway, we decided as a team must that we try and climb Mount Everest and shout from the highest point on earth that it was okay to ask for help. So, we did, we picked the wrong year. We did it in 2015, which those of you that into mountaineering or the region will know was when all the sort of major earthquakes hit. So, we found ourselves in the middle of one of the biggest natural disasters sorts of ever to happen, certainly in that region, really. So again, it kind of turned on its head our whole outlook on what was going on and certainly tested our resilience in a very different way to the one we perhaps spent two years planning and training to do. Which again, I think we talk about leadership aren't we Steve really. For me, that's one of the themes is, it's that ability to flex, adapt and overcome actually, rather than when it's all going perfectly. Steve Rush: Yeah. Timothy Bradshaw: And then, yeah, and then having done that, we've transitioned into doing this and we do all sorts of wacky stuff. And then we now run a company. And for me it's about, can I share my lessons as accurately as possible? We were joking, weren't we Steve, just before we went live that there's a lot of self-help stuff around, you know, and it's like, yeah, get a growth mindset, do this and do that. And you kind of think, yeah, I'll do that, how? Steve Rush: Yeah, exactly. Timothy Bradshaw: And that's really what the book was about. The book was a kind of user guide almost to dealing with some of these problems. So rather than a kind of conceptual you know, big yourself up and feel better, it was right, do this. When this happens, do this [laugh] and I guess that then led, I was sitting on the sofa, we were watching what's happening in Ukraine. And my now wife looked at me and said, you could probably do something to help that couldn't you. And I said, yes, I can. And she said, well, then you should. So, we put a team together and we've now delivered three quite successful aid missions. But I would think the point I'd like to make is, that we've built a network of people inside Ukraine. So, we've got live communications almost on a daily basis. So, we know exactly what people need and what challenges that they're facing. And we are taking that aid specifically and delivering it directly to the people that need it. So, we met, appreciate we're not going to share their names here, but we shared directly, we drove out to Kyiv, which is where we were last week. And we met with these groups, and we hand over exactly what they need. And fortunately, that's captured the imagination of a number of large corporate businesses that have really helped us out actually. Steve Rush: Right. Timothy Bradshaw: But I think that's because again, it's not faceless. Steve Rush: Yeah. Timothy Bradshaw: Steve, I think that comes back to our theme of kind of leadership and relationships, right? Steve Rush: Does Tim, yeah. And homage to you genuinely. One of the things I know about you Tim, is that you see danger very differently to other people that I've, you know, come into contact with specifically in the business world. You almost see this as an opportunity, it's alluring for you. And I just wondered to, I wanted to unpack a little bit about that with you, because it seems to me that you are almost attracted to that danger and ambiguity that comes with things like running an aid mission to Kiev. Timothy Bradshaw: I think, I'm not I'm necessarily attractive to it, but I certainly see opportunity in it. So, we often at the moment sort of voker is quite a big thing, right? Vulnerable, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, and we can use all the analogies you want. But for me, there's always then opportunity because if everything is absolutely, you know, tickly, boom and perfect and jogging along then we often joke that's the point that you need effective management rather than necessarily an effective leadership. And I think if you look at sport as an example, you know, if you look at rugby in offense, you're trying to create a break in the back line, right. Or if you see a break in the back line, then there's the gap that you need to get through for your Canadian and American listeners, that's a real sport where you don't wear armor and helmet and stuff. Steve Rush: [Laugh], nothing like a little bit of counter finishing in the mix there. Timothy Bradshaw: [Laugh] But by understand that the theory is probably very much the same, you know, you are looking for that break in the back line, right, to go through the gap. And I think that the same is true. I'm sure it's true in ice hockey. But I think the same is true in business. If everything is the same, then you are unlikely to either improve or get a different result. And for me as an effective leader, really, you should be seeking out the change or the opportunity, but of course that's uncomfortable for people. So, if you can create a toolkit that enables you to initially deal, I guess, with like the biological reaction to change and stress and then see clearly and find the opportunity. So yes, I mean, Steve, I do see it as an opportunity, but that's because if something's changing, then maybe it's a chance to get in front, you know, if anyone watch the Formula 1 that was on at the weekend, the minute it rains, the teams down the back of the grid a little bit, see an opportunity, don't they? Steve Rush: Yeah Timothy Bradshaw: And it's the same theory. Steve Rush: Absolutely, yeah. So, in terms of your experience of diving into Ukraine recently, you talk about resilience in your work a lot. What have you noticed about the resilience of the people in some of those war tone areas you've met recently? Timothy Bradshaw: Oh, I mean, Steve. It's phenomenal. I was trying to describe this to somebody the other day. It's both harrowing and inspirational in the same breath. You know, you're talking to people, some people have lost their whole homes, their families and everything else, but then those same people have a look in their eye, and they are not taking a step backwards. They are refusing to take a backwards step. And that would be enough for me to want to support them regardless of any benefit to the UK or anybody else anyway. Because I just always think that level of courage should be at least supported if not rewarded. But again, you know, when we go into businesses and we talk about clear communication and perhaps more importantly, a unifying purpose, you know, a focus and outcome that we're trying to achieve, then that's the ultimate outcome isn't it, right? When somebody invade your country. Steve Rush: Yeah. Timothy Bradshaw: That defense of your home or your family. I mean, that has to be the kind of ultimate unifying purpose I would think. Steve Rush: And I suspect, and you'll know this more than most. In war tone situations, period, you find a deeper, more meaningful resilience than you'd ever have anticipated in the world of business. I mean, the things that we get stuck up and worried about and stressed about in our world of business, pale insignificance in those situations, don't they? Timothy Bradshaw: Well, there's no way-out Steve, which is what I think's interesting, okay. Steve Rush: Right. Timothy Bradshaw: So, I remember talking to somebody about special operations, special duties, special forces, selection processes, and the theme all over the world different, you know, every country has its own variance, but the theme is always one the same, it's adapted and overcome and adapt and overcome. But actually, if you talk to the selection teams, a lot of them will tell you that the biggest dropout rate is in fact, not on the course, is the day before because people get the jitters the day before they go, because they are anticipating what's coming. And they have an option. So, they don't turn up, they talk themselves out of it or believe it or not, the vast majority of people that go through all these processes, they don't get failed. They what's called VW, they voluntarily withdraw. In other words, they quit because they have an option to quit. Steve Rush: Right. Timothy Bradshaw: And I think when we work with businesses, there is always an option to quit. And I think when we, you know, implement something new, push ahead with a new process or a system or a change, whatever that might be, there's always the option to go back to where we were before or to opt out. And I think when the pressure comes on and when you get nervous that kind of opt out to your comfort zone becomes more alluring, right? Steve Rush: Right, yeah. Timothy Bradshaw: When somebody has invaded your country [laugh] and it's your home, you just don't have that option. So, you have to keep marching forwards almost at all costs. And that's why I think in these situations you see such, all inspiring levels of sort of courage and resilience because the option to sort of take the easier routes gone, is it's been removed. So, people dig really deep and they find whatever it is that's, you know, inside themselves. Steve Rush: I love the whole notion of there is no get out. There's no plan B philosophy. And that forms mindset that we talked a little bit about earlier. So, there's an example where you can't teach that, you have to experience it in order to shift and create the right set of mindsets. But I do wonder if we apply that level thinking, can that impact on our mindset, do you think? Timothy Bradshaw: Yeah, because I think once you've done it once or twice and you've proven to yourself, you can, which is for me where the sort of, title for the book came, Because I Can. Then what happens is, you kind of build confidence and it's almost like any new skill you pick up, you know, whether that's a sport or learning to drive or whatever. You go, oh, I can do that. And then you do it just once and you go, I can. And I always say to people, not enough people debrief the wins, you know, we're very quick to debrief the losses, but the problem is, we still don't know what good looks like. Whereas actually I mean, you know, I've been a ski instructor and stuff like that in the past. It's a passion of mine. And if you're teaching something to ski and they get it right, and you go, wow, that was amazing. Do that again, that was excellent. They can repeat it. And they have the confidence and the courage almost to repeat it, if that makes sense. And I think that's super, super important. And then you can start to instill that mindset in somebody. So, we have this expression that if you can reward the behaviors that you want to see again, that is ultimately how you change a mindset. And I think certainly professional services businesses at the moment, we have this impression that performance is this kind of perfect thing all the time. And somebody does something 95% correct but we jump on the 5% that they got wrong, and you know, we call them out on it. And then we're surprised when that person doesn't come back to us for more feedback. Steve Rush: Yeah, so what was the inspiration for the book, Tim? Timothy Bradshaw: I think it was an idea I had in my head for ages. I'm certainly not academic in any way, shape, or form. For me, it was probably the furthest I've ever been outside of my comfort zone, to be honest. So, I kind of started it and therefore had to finish it. And I just wanted to have a little bit of a user guide for people. You know, you do seminars and you do keynote speaking and you kind of hand out notes and PDFs and it's all bit old hat, isn't it? So, I just sort of let's do something a bit different. So, a lot stuff I talk about is in the book, but in terms of, don't do that, do this type of a way. So, I guess a bit sort of, I don't know, user guide, that was the idea Steve Rush: And the whole notion of because I can, is that self-talk almost to say that anything is possible, right? Timothy Bradshaw: Yeah, absolutely. The whole thing, because I think sometimes you just have to remind myself, I can do this. I can do this. You know, I've been through various selection processes. We've talked about before, down various big mountains and on a number of occasions, I've found myself having to remind myself like, you've got this, you can do this. And I think it's also, it's about finding ways to do something, finding ways to make something happen. You know, we were talking in the past about leadership and taking decisions under pressure. And how does the military impact on that? And I don't think that the military necessarily guarantees somebody becomes a good leader. But it does guarantee that you become a kind of a good decision maker. Steve Rush: Yeah. Timothy Bradshaw: But the one thing that is really interesting when you work with the military is there is never any question that we are going to do anything other than achieve the task, if that makes sense. Steve Rush: Yeah, it does. Timothy Bradshaw: So, the whole theme is focused on achieving the aim. And that's probably the biggest takeout and and that's a theme that runs through the book is, this is what we're going to do. So how do we make it happen? Accepting we're perhaps going to change course a couple of times and you know, it might evolve a little bit, that's okay. But fundamentally, how do we make it happen? Steve Rush: I'm pretty sure it was you in the past Tim, actually, that taught me that in the military, the first thing you get to learn as a leader is, you have to make a decision. Timothy Bradshaw: Yeah, that's right. Steve Rush: Tell me a little bit about that because I think that's a really interesting frame of mind that, you know, when you are still in a relatively young leadership position or indeed you're running a global organization, is that making the decision is key, right? Timothy Bradshaw: So, yeah, I think it wobbles. It's really funny. It's a great analogy, right. We've all done it. Imagine you are driving your car and you approach a big roundabout. And I live quite near the A9, the key roundabout, which is, anybody's ever been here near Scotland will know, because they'll have sat there for 40 minutes trying and get across it. And you approach a roundabout and the person in front of you kind of half goes then stops then goes to go, then stops. Steve Rush: [Laugh], yeah. Timothy Bradshaw: And chaos in ensues, right? Because you kind of go then stop. And then you hit the brakes, believe or not. It's the most common cause of accident, people hitting the back of each other and what's caused all that chaos is indecision. Now, if that person was either waiting for a huge gap, it's frustrating, but you can see what they're going to do, so you work with it. If that person, I swore then, says, I'm going for it anyway, drops a gear and goes for it. Scary as that might be, you can see what they're doing, and you can react to it. It's the indecision in the middle that causes the problem. And certainly, my experience at Sandhurst was, you don't fail Sandhurst to making a wrong decision. If you make a wrong decision, you learn from it, you evolve, but it's the indecision, it's making no decision that will make you fail. Because when you have sort of this sort of wobbly indecisive, that's when the wheels come off, that's when morale drops. That's when the good ideas club get together, that's when people start going off and doing their own thing in opposite directions. And me certainly, one of the biggest things I've learned across everything that I've done is, in high pressure situations, particularly when you're working with educated people is, you can need to provide reassurance and then direction. And that direction is where, you know, the decision-making is, part of giving that direction because you then get forward momentum. And to me, if you can gain forward momentum, then actually, everyone starts to move in that same direction together. And sometimes it'll be quicker than others, but essentially it does work. Steve Rush: Yeah, now you'd have been faced with a bunch of challenges throughout your careers. And I say careers because they've kind of, whilst it is still one career, there's been number of different facets to what you do. What's been your secret source to overcoming those challenges and turning it into a positive outcome? Timothy Bradshaw: I think sometimes firstly, understanding it kind of all things must pass, you know, at various situations throughout my life, I've, made mistakes, I've been impetuous, I've done stuff. And I think, oh, why did I do that? And you think the world's kind of ending around you, but as you get older, you kind of realize that actually, okay, it's mistake. It's going to be okay. And these things have a tendency to write themselves somehow and you come out the other side of it. So, I think, you know, accepting that you're going to make mistakes and get it wrong, take whatever lessons you can out of it. It is super important. I think at the moment, particularly we're quite vulnerable to people having huge opinions about things that they know very little about. And I think that's largely down to the ability for kind of social media, for people to kind of take a swing at you, if you like, actually without, you know, people you've never even met [laugh] essentially, and I think that can be quite damaging. So, I think accept the fact that you're going to make mistakes, focus on the bits you can control which is, which is your own performance and the way you react to staff and take feedback from the people you trust. But don't worry too much about the kind of naysayers or the people almost. I think we sometimes come across people, and I think it's a bit of a UK disease at the moment where we almost want people to fail and I think I find that a bit strange, but you see it quite a lot. Steve Rush: You do, yeah. Where do you think that comes from? Timothy Bradshaw: I don't know really. I honestly, for me, it's a bit of a complete anathema that is really, I don't really understand it, but whether that's a kind of jealousy thing or whether that's just, I think it's very easy. I can't recite the whole poem off the top of my head, but it's Roosevelt's poem, isn't it? Where he says, it's the man in the fight. You know, don't chastise those that try and fail. And I think sometimes people just, when we're outside of comfort zone or perhaps people are attempting something that somebody else hasn't wanted to try, they almost don't want them to succeed. I personally find that a bit strange, but yeah. Try to override it and get past it. Steve Rush: Yeah, I think business is becoming more receptive to failure in the old world of what failure might have been and most businesses that I certainly work with and know of, recognize that it's part of success, making those steps and pivoting to something else. Timothy Bradshaw: Yeah, no, Steve, I actually agree with you and actually if you want to push the boundaries, if you want to learn a new trick, so to speak, you're going to get it wrong a couple of times first, right. But if you want to adapt to overcome, and if you want to grow process, then by definition, you've got to develop and change. And if you're going to develop and change, you're going to do stuff differently. And sometimes that's not going to go quite to plan, I think, sort of accepting that and then also creating a structure within a business so that when that happens, we are supportive of each other. Yeah, we have this expression, covering each other's blind spots. Steve Rush: Yeah. Timothy Bradshaw: You know, so actually we are supporting each other rather than kind of going, oh my goodness me, look at that. Steve made a right mess of that. You know, we should be thinking to ourselves, actually it was brilliant that Steve had to go at that and actually that bit were quite successful. So, if we take those two bits out, support Steve, make sure he's okay. And then let's build on those two elements that work really well. To me, that's much healthier. Steve Rush: Super, now you mentioned a little earlier on you'd suffered with depression and anxiety in the past. Are you comfortable? Let's go there Tim. Timothy Bradshaw: Yeah, I don't mind at all Steve. I think it's important that we do talk about it. Steve Rush: Thank you. So, I know that this is a driving force for you now and you use it as a force of good to push you into other activities. But I wondered if you might just share with our listers a little bit about the journey you've been on and what some of your coping strategies are? Timothy Bradshaw: Yeah, I mean, for me, it's interesting, right. So, my brain works at speed, as you already know, rightly or wrongly, and I have an ability to latch onto something to focus on that, to not necessarily see some of the boundaries that perhaps other people see and to therefore drive towards achieving that. And that enables me to think very laterally, to get to a location that we need to get to. But that same way my head works if you like comes with a price and the price is that occasionally I then latch the things that I don't need to latch to, or I overthink people's reactions or I overthink the way people come back to me, which then causes me to go into a, we call it, like a negative spiral, sort of catastrophic thinking spiral which is not uncommon with other people. And I face people. I don't suffer from it. I live with it. I don't particularly want curing if that is a thing. Because I am me and the bits of that that make it very challenging. And my wife's amazing at helping me also made me really good at other stuff. So, to me, you kind of can't have one without the other. Steve Rush: Yeah. Timothy Bradshaw: But what I've tried to do, in 2018, we did a year of challenges, which was another terrible idea. And we essentially did an endurance challenge a month, every month for a year. We did like a half iron man triathlon. We climbed the Matterhorn amongst other things. I cycled L'Étape du Tour, which is a terrible idea for any people, in your audience that are mammals, middle-aged men in Lyra and who have push bikes worth more than their cars that they perhaps haven't told their other halves about. You know, it's the ultimate challenge. You get to cycle the mountain stages like Tour de France. And I was definitely not ready for it and not prepared for it. And it put me to a really dark place. But one of the reasons that we did all these challenges was almost a bit of an experiment on me for me to try and work out, you know, how'd you get through these things and how'd, you cope with it and kind of consciously deal with it. And I think for me, it's about momentum. So, the first thing, we have this expression, it's in the book actually, called fear, false expectation appearing real, and any bits ever suffered with a bit pressure anxiety, one often leads to the other will find the clouds kind of roll in and you start to think, oh, this is going to happen and that's going to happen. And Steve's thinking this off me, and if Steve's thinking that of me, then this is going to happen and now that's going to happen. But the reality of that is, although that feels quite real to me at the time, the reality is actually not real. It's a perception of what's going on around you. So, what you have to do or what works for me, I've never tell any what they have to do. What's worked for me is, focus on what's real. So almost list the facts. And our company strap line is intelligence, not information. So, list out the facts. This is what's real. This is what I know. And what you'll find is, I find is, that starts to then sort of push the clouds back because now I'm dealing with the reality of a situation, not my perception of a situation. And once that started to happen, you start to gain a little bit of traction. And then I have this other expression, which is, remember for your big goal. You know, why did I get out of bed this morning, essentially. Ignore the dangerous middle ground and get there by taking small steps. So, in other words, using the tour as an example, two mountains in terms of two of the four we had to cycle up. I was, you know, flat out, done, finished, couldn't do it. But I reminded myself, I was doing it for mental health charities. So therefore, I wasn't going to let them down. That was my big picture. Steve Rush: Yeah. Timothy Bradshaw: On mountain two, if I tried to think about mountain three or mountain four, I would've talked myself out of it, if that makes sense. So actually, what I did was then focus on the next aid station, the next peak, the immediate target in front of me, and we call it micro goal setting. And at one point I could have told you how many lampposts [laugh] were up the final street to the final climb because I was literally going one lamppost at a time. Steve Rush: Yeah. Timothy Bradshaw: But it's quite a good analogy. So, when that starts to happen, you set yourself a micro goal. So, it's like, okay, can I get this done? Yes, I can. Can I get to the next one of these? Yes, I can. And then gradually that builds momentum. And it sort of starts to take you forward. And I hope that, you know, I hope anybody listening, if that helps just one person, it's not easy. But for me, that's made quite a big difference. And the more times I do it, I now go into a little bit of a routine, and I can find myself start to deal with that Steve Rush: Amazing insights. Love it. Thank you for sharing that, Tim. I really appreciate it. So, this is where we get to turn the tables a little bit now. So, you've been a army officer, you've led businesses. You now run a really successful consultancy business. So, I want to tap into that leadership mind of yours. So, I'm going to first off, start by asking you to choose and pick amongst all of the lessons that you've collected on your journey and narrow those down to your top three. What would be your top three leadership hacks? Timothy Bradshaw: Have a toolkit, not a process. Everyone loves a process, right. Everyone, except me. Processes are designed to make sure you get the wing mirror on the car, in the right place at the right time on a production line. They don't work with people. And I'll argue that with everybody all day, so build a toolkit of skills and experiences and in the same way that if you had a problem at home, you'd go to the toolkit and go select the right tool for the right job, rather than blindly following a process, think to yourself, which tool is going to work, you know, for the job that I'm trying to. So, my first one would be, have a toolkit, not a process. Steve Rush: Nice. Timothy Bradshaw: The second one as a leader will be, pull not push. Somebody once said to me, always try and be a warrior, not a mercenary [laugh] so, and by that, what I mean is, empathy is an interesting concept, but try and put yourself in the shoes of the people that you are trying to lead and ask yourself, what is it they want out of life? What is it they want to achieve? And you know, the motto Sandhurst is, served to lead. So, in other words, the leader serves the team, not the other way around. And I think at the moment we have a tendency to go, well, I've made it, I'm the partner, I'm the CEO and whatever. The millions will now run around after me and doing my bidding. Whereas actually, if you can create a pool so that you have a company full of warriors, rather than mercenaries, that are working for a check, then to me, you will achieve far more. And certainly, when crazy stuff happens, like the pandemic or whatever else, that team of warriors are much more likely to rally round and find a way out, rather than sort of simply take the paycheck out, if that makes sense. Steve Rush: Love it. Timothy Bradshaw: And then I think my final one would be of the three would just be simply sort of, don't stop and keep reevaluating all of the time, keep reevaluating the situation. I'm a massive believer in John Boyd. The new Top Gun film is out, right. So, I'm about say it's brilliant. I was very skeptical, but no, it was brilliant. Steve Rush: Yeah, I'm with you. Timothy Bradshaw: But a lot of people don't realize is that the actual place, fightertown in Miramar came about because a guy called John Boyd who's a Colonel in the American Air Force came up with OODA loop thinking which is, observe, orientate, decide and act, and it goes round in a loop. So, in other words, what happens is, you gather intelligence, you interpret that intelligence, you take a decision, you carry out that action, like your life depends upon it. But then what you do is, you instantly start to observe the reaction if you like that you've carried out and is it working and adjust accordingly? And what that does is it means, rather than having this kind of linear decision-making process where the outcome is, be all an end all. In fact, any decision is simply part of this kind of ever rotating process, where you're constantly adjusting the course. And the best analogy I can think of is sailing. You know, you don't kind of set the course sail for 10 days and hope for the best, then check the compass again. You know, you're constantly checking the compass and constantly adjusting the course. And for me that would be it. Steve Rush: Great lesson. Timothy Bradshaw: So, that you're always adjusting. Steve Rush: Yeah, I love that. I love that last one as well, because the world isn't as linear as people think it is, people are not as linear. Processes and organizations are changing intraday. And having that ability to be fleet of foot is, is really powerful, isn't it? Timothy Bradshaw: Yeah, totally agree Steve, absolutely. And we're proving that more and more, you know, we kind think coronavirus, and thought, that's done. And then the Ukrainian thing happened and there will be another one, you know, when this is sorted, there will be another one. Steve Rush: Yeah, exactly. So next part of the show, Tim, we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something hasn't worked out as you'd intended, it might be something that's gone quite wrong, but you've actually taken that as an experience. And it's now positive in your life and work. What would be your Hack to Attack? Timothy Bradshaw: I think you've got to; you've got to seek out the positive outcomes from anything you can find to take the lessons out of it. And I think, you know, using an analogy and I guess this is not everybody can use it, but we can use the lessons that come out of. It was, we spent two years trying to pull off the Everest expedition and we got it all sorted. And we got to the mountain, and we thought, wow, this is it. We're going to do it. You know, we all joke sort, you know, book, deal and TV show. And then, when all the earthquakes happened and everything else happened around you, I think the first thing that happened is you kind of feel quite sorry for yourself. And you think that this is outrageous. I put all this time and money and effort, and now this has all gone wrong. And then you suddenly realize that the people around you have lost their homes and their families. So, whilst you can't help the way you feel, it puts it into context, and I think you have to accept that. And at the time, I kind of walked away feeling like a little bit like of a failure really. Even though they were situations so far out of my control, you know, it's not even fathomable to think you could have controlled that situation. But actually, now we use that experience to help school kids. So, we've spoken to over seven and a half thousand school kids about what it's like when it doesn't quite go to plan about how you adapt and overcome and about how you refocus and how you keep working the problem regardless of what's going on around you. So, in fact, that very negative situation, what was that 2015? So, the best part of 10 years later. Now is providing a very positive input and outcome to schools as to how to overcome the challenge that they faced over the last couple of years. So, I think, like I said, to take out the positive lessons, you know, wherever you can. Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely. And that was an extreme example of where learning happens, but sometimes the evaluation of the learning is sometimes afterwards, right? Timothy Bradshaw: Mm Steve Rush: Mm. Timothy Bradshaw: Absolutely, yeah. Steve Rush: So last part of the show, Tim, we get to do some time travel with you. You can bump into Tim at 21, probably just finishing or midway through Sandhurst. I suspect at the time, what would your advice to him be? Timothy Bradshaw: I think [laugh] when we take decision making or when I teach critical decision making now, which I do a lot of with big corporate. The first thing we tell people is take a tactical pause, which is just take a deep breath for a minute. You know, when you in an airplane, there's a reason why they tell you to put your own oxygen mask on first. And I think it would be, take your time, you know, just pause for a minute and respect the experience of those people around you. And kind of let it happen a little bit, let it come to you rather than necessarily instantly try and force every situation. So just take a minute, take in what's happening to you and have faith that whatever is, you know, is going to come to you at some point, don't necessarily sort of instantly try and force it Steve Rush: Very wise words. Indeed. So, then Tim, what's next for you? Timothy Bradshaw: So, we are busy at the moment with keynote speaking and we are currently talking to companies about kind of mindset development programs. I think we are really passionate at the minute. I think there's a huge opportunity at the minute for businesses to really reevaluate how they lead, how they make decisions, how they motivate their workforces and make a change. And I think probably now more than ever, there's a window for people to seize that opportunity and go, we're going to take lessons out of this. The workforce is up for it, we're up for it. And let's see if we can make a difference. So, we're quite keen to kind of be a part of that wave. And then the next mission, we're planning our next trip to Ukraine. The boys and girls that we were talking to the other week have got a massive problem. They haven't got enough vehicles to bring casualties back from the front line to the hospitals. So, we are talking to a few people at the moment, we've set up a charity called the Sandstone Foundation, and we are working to try see if we can't get some four by old fours out to these guys to help them and bring back casualties. So that's the next project, I guess. Steve Rush: Awesome, brilliant news. And for those folks that listen to this, Tim, I'm pretty certain, they're going to want to know how they can get a copy of, Because I Can. Find out a little bit more about the work you do with Sandstone Communications. Where's the best place for us to send them? Timothy Bradshaw: Two things, really. The book is on Amazon. Just simply search either for me or for Because I Can or Waterstones, I think have it as well. And the best way to find out or get in touch is via LinkedIn. So, Timothy Bradshaw on LinkedIn and I would love to hear from anybody. I love learning. I love talking to people. And particularly as I said, if you've got a lot of listeners across, you know, further up field, America and Canada and all over. I'm always fascinated to hear how, what we think resonates elsewhere. So please, yeah. Drop me a line on LinkedIn and then I'll always do my best to respond. Steve Rush: We'll make sure those links are in our show notes as well, Tim, but I'm just delighted that we've managed to get you on our show. You're an incredibly inspirational guy. You've got such a lot of experience that we can learn from in lots of different parts of our lives and work. So, Tim, thanks for being part of our community on The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Timothy Bradshaw: No, thank you very much, Steve. Really enjoyed it. Steve Rush: Yeah, thanks Tim.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler their @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the Leadership Hacker.      

Frank Forencich is an internationally-recognized leader in health and performance education. A Stanford University graduate in human biology and neuroscience, he has over 30 years teaching martial arts and neuro health education. Frank holds black belt in both Karate and Aikido. He's a multiple author, including the book, Beware False Tigers: Strategies and Antidotes for an Age of Stress. We can learn lot's from Frank, including: What are “False Tigers” and how to recognize them. The "primate's predicament" and "the state of the human-animal." How to notice the big stressors of our time - The real tigers? The consequences of high stress on business leaders? Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com   Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA   Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Frank below: Frank on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frankforencich/ Frank's Books: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/507966.Frank_Forencich Frank on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ExuberantAnimal Frank on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/exuberant_animal/ Frank's Website: https://www.exuberantanimal.com     Full Transcript Below   Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   If ever you wonder what the relationship was with the animals in the Savannahs of Africa and our own emotional intelligence, you can find out today. Frank Forencich is an internationally recognized leader in health and performance education. Having studied human biology and neuroscience. He's dedicated his life to understanding the relationship we have with our brains. But before we had a chance speak with Frank, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: You'll know if you're a regular listener, there's always top tips and ideas to help you on your way. But we're going to flip that round today and look at things that we can avoid. So here are the five common mistakes that both young and experienced leaders make and how to avoid them. Number one, in properly delegating work, failing to properly delegate work is a number one, common leadership blunder, good leaders, hand out assignments, according to skills and interest. Don't assign a writing assignment to a developer and vice versa. You know, that just makes no sense, right? Another way to innovate and get results is to award certain work with those who volunteer for it. By taking a chance, you might discover unique skills from the person who least expect it. Number two, communicating poorly, feel like you're not providing enough feedback to your team. And it's time to revisit the lines of communication, make it a priority to have open communication, regardless of who it is. Reiterate this need to have weekly meetings, stress the importance of timely replies. Just as long as your team will answer, and you do the same. You can create a huge swell of energy that's positive. Overcommunication in a crisis is even more relevant, but the hack is to set out sometimes and set out some expectations of what it is you are intending to send and receive from your team. Number three, focusing too much on strategy and not enough on day-to-day tactics. Some leaders get blindsided by the alluring strategy rather than the day to day, but it's these everyday tactics require strong focus in order to arrive at your final solution in the first place. I used to call these BBCs or basic, but critical behaviors, things that you expect to see happen that are task driven and focused on outcomes. They're all people centric, and you're able to connect the dots to your strategy, but those daily basic routines help you on your longer journey. Number four, failing to balance a hands-off approach with micromanaging. Many leaders are either two hands off or they over manage. The optimum solution is to find the balance between the two and to help you get there, accountability and empowerment are the two triggers. Get your accountability and empowerment imbalance you create more leaders and high performance. Number five. Forgetting to teach, train, motivate, and reward. Ongoing training and learning and development is not only vital for the individual, but for the entire company. There are thousands of online seminars for pretty much any discipline, especially in things like digital, many are free. And for those that aren't, you might be able to pay them through relationships. Doesn't have to be a direct cost. And of course, the biggest learning comes from doing. The experiences you have that naturally occur across your organization. Sometimes helping people recognize that actually that is exactly what's happening. They are learning is part of that process. Next is motivation. Now you've pretty much worked out I would imagine that you can't actually motivate anybody, but you can create the right environment for those to be motivated in whether it be a senior group of people or junior staff. It's more important that you find those good old-fashioned things that are really important to them. Understanding their internal and intrinsic motivations will really help you connect the dots and the purpose of the work that they do. The things that make them tick. And it's a mistake, but many leaders just don't even ask, what is it that motivates you? And lastly, reward, if an employee excels, provides more bonuses, small gestures of thanks, doesn't have to be huge amounts of bonuses, but again, linked to intrinsic motivation can make a world of difference. And of course, it'll be different for everyone, but find out, ask a question, how do you like to be rewarded? And you'll also get some great data that you can rely on as a leader. Leadership mishap and blunder are an inevitability. We're going to do it. The most important thing is to learn from those blunders along the way. So as leaders, we can truly be in the service of our teams. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. And thank you to Rebecca, one of our listeners who encourage us to look at this from a different lens to flip the context and to look at this as a lesson learned activity, let's dive into the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Frank Forencich is a special guest on today's show. He's an internationally recognized leader in health and performance education. He's a Stanford University graduate in human biology and neuroscience. As over 30 years, teaching martial arts and experience around health and education. Frank holds black belt in both karate and aikido and his many research trips across the world, including Africa, has helped him really get into and study the human origins and ancestral environment. And that's where he got his inspiration from his new book, Beware False Tigers: Strategies and Anecdotes for an Age of Stress. Frank, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Frank Forencich: Delighted to be here. Steve Rush: So, I'm really intrigued at how you can get two black belts and two martial arts, as well as all of the experience you pull together. Frank Forencich: [Laugh]. Steve Rush: And written many books, Frank. So, I can't wait to get into the journey. Perhaps for our audience. You could just give us a little bit of the backstory as to how you've arrived to do what you do today? Frank Forencich: Right, well, I first became interested in the martial arts in my early twenties. And this was when I was an undergraduate at Stanford and I was studying human biology and I was fascinated with physicality and with movement. And I thought that there was something there that was very important. And as an educational experience, the martial art was just fantastic for me. It was a time to feel really focused. And I had a lot of really fantastic teachers. And at the same time, I had a professor in human biology who said, if you really want to understand the human animal, you have to go to Africa and study our history. And so, I took him up on that and little by little, all these various pieces started to come together. And later on, I studied athletic training and massage therapy and it's been a really exciting journey to look at the human body where it came from and how it functions. So, I've, been exceptionally lucky in this to have all these opportunities to do. Steve Rush: And many scholars that kind of walk in your path almost have gone to Africa into the Savannahs and have used that as a backdrop to really understand human behavior, as well as animal behavior, haven't they? Frank Forencich: Right, and I think it's so essential that we are involved in this because the modern world is kind of an illusion. We tend to believe that the world has always been the way it is now, and we've kind of parachuted into the modern world. But in fact, we have a history, and that history is deep and important. Steve Rush: And that history I suspect that you talk about is where we had no distractions. We were kind of in our original settings and that's how we were programmed physiologically to behave, right? Frank Forencich: Right, you can study the stuff directly. But I think for people who haven't studied it is to have a look at the movie. The Gods Must Be Crazy. And you might remember that one where, the first half of the movie, actually the first 20 minutes of the movie, they look at the lives of the Kalahari Bushman in South Africa. And they compare that to the modern, urban people living in Africa. And they really show the mismatch between our original experience and what we experience today. Steve Rush: So, some of our folk will be familiar with that fight or flight freeze and appease that comes with that physiological response to an environment. But the irony is, that what was created through our evolution to protect us and service in times of danger and need, actually, we now trigger for this, you know, being late for work or I'm behind on a Zoom meeting or something like that, right? Frank Forencich: Right, and that's sort of the irony. We've created a world, a modern world with a lot of comforts, but at the same time, we've created a lot of new and unique threats to our bodies and our lives and things like computer viruses and phishing attacks and all of these fine print sort of things didn't exist until recently. So now we have, you might say new tigers in camp. Steve Rush: Yeah, so hence the title of the book, right. Beware of False Tigers. Frank Forencich: Yes. Steve Rush: So, what was it that compelled you to write the book and tell us a little bit about it? Frank Forencich: Right, well, this goes back to my experience in massage school, because of course there was a lot of talk about stress and reducing stress. And the more I looked at that, the more I started to realize this is a major, major theme for the modern world. It's not just feeling a little bit anxious, or it's not just a threat to your own personal longevity or health. This is something that afflicts the entire human population now in a way that's historically unprecedented. Steve Rush: Right. Frank Forencich: So, this is a major theme for all of us. Steve Rush: Yeah, you call these tigers. How do you recognize tigers? Frank Forencich: [Laugh], well, we recognize them through the limbic system of our brain and our autonomic nervous system. And this is something that happens oftentimes below conscious radar. And we experience a feeling, a threat to our personal welfare. And then we get to try and interpret what that is. You know, the voice of stress is not always that articulate. And we may feel a threat to the organism, a threat to our welfare. And then we get to try and decode what that feeling is all about. So, it's an exercise in learning the world and an exercise in learning who we are. Steve Rush: And the whole notion of them being false tigers is, we're probably releasing the tigers unnecessarily? Frank Forencich: Right. Steve Rush: Would that be a kind of fair take on things? Frank Forencich: Right, it's always about perception. So, if you have an event in your life and you interpret it as a tiger, but maybe it's really not an actual threat to your life, then you're turning on your fight flight system. Steve Rush: Yeah. Frank Forencich: Unnecessarily, and if you only do that, occasionally, if you get it wrong, occasionally that's no big deal, but if you get it wrong consistently over the course of months and years, then that's going to degrade your health, but not just your health, but your cognition and your ability to function in the world. So, it has huge ripple effects across your entire life. Steve Rush: The one thing that struck me when I started reading your book, Frank is, why don't they teach us in high school? And why don't they teach us in, you know, kindergarten and junior and primary schools? Frank Forencich: Oh yeah. That's a big pet pave of mine because this is something that's so important to our ability to function. And yet we mostly ignore it. And the way I pitch this, I say, for the human animal, we have to have an understanding of what's dangerous in the world. And in the paleo, this was always obvious because everybody, even little children in your tribe, in your camp, would've known that carnivores and predators are dangerous and that wildfires are dangerous and fast flowing rivers are dangerous. That sort of thing, and danger, would've been palpable and easy to understand, but now we have all these new threats, and we don't educate for that. It's unlikely that any of your listeners have ever taken a course called what is dangerous. Steve Rush: That's right, yeah. Frank Forencich: But we should be doing that. And that would help us sort out genuine dangers from false dangers. And that would seem to be a fundamental part of human education now. Steve Rush: Yeah, I agree with you. So, within the book, you talk about a couple of things I'd love to unpick them with you. One of which is prime makes predicament. Frank Forencich: Yes. Steve Rush: Tell us about that? Steve Rush: Yes, what is the state of the human animal right now? And then there's of course controversy about all of this. But from my point of view, we are under such a high level of stress. A total stress burden that we're carrying around with us means that we have a population level predicament here. And some of the numbers are staggering. There's like 1 billion people in the world now who have in mental health problems.1 billion people in the world are living with chronic pain. That's like one out of eight. So those are huge red flags that the human animal is having trouble adapting to the modern world. And this gets back to mismatch this idea that we have. These ancient bodies trying to make a go of it in the modern world. Some people do pretty well with that mismatch. And some people adapt easily, but an enormous percentage of people are struggling with that challenge. And by and large, we aren't taking it seriously. Steve Rush: What's the root cause to that mismatch. Do you think? Frank Forencich: Well, it's kind of a byproduct of our intense creativity. We are really good at devising innovations and short-term solutions and the world becomes progressively more complicated ever since the industrial revolution. We've had this just escalating series of innovations that the human animal hasn't really had time to adapt to. All of this innovation has happened in the blink of an eye and boom. Now all of a sudden, we're in this new world. Steve Rush: Yeah, and if we kind of fast forward to, you know, the next 10 years. Thinking about the real stresses of our lives and our times and the real tigers, how do we kind of figure out what's real to us versus what we are fooling ourselves as false tigers? Frank Forencich: Right, well, I think the number one thing that we have to be doing right now is listening to the science and especially climate science that is without question, the alpha tiger on the planet right now, that is the biggest threat to human welfare, human civilization and our ability to have any kind of a future. So that is the tiger that we have to be working with right now. Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely. And it's, I guess you could call it a real tiger because we've got the evidence that comes with that. Frank Forencich: Yeah. Steve Rush: So much like in the paleo, we could see the, you know, the burning forest. We could see the rapids in the water. We can actually see that happening around us now. So, I guess it helps us make that awareness that it is a real tiger. How do you convince those who are maybe less aware that it is real? Frank Forencich: Oh, that's a great question. And what I'm seeing is a lot of frustration in the climate community among climate scientists who are saying, we need to convince people that this is real. There's a lot of frustration there. A breakaway group of climate scientists now have become activists. And they're saying the conventional channels really aren't working. So, I'm not sure what it is. I think it's going to take some shocks to the system that are going to make this obvious to more people. But right now, it's an uphill battle. Steve Rush: You used the word that I just want to explore, which is activist and activism. And I know that's something that you've been really passionate about, but people also get confused with the word, don't they? Because they see it as something that's aggressive and it's contrary. And actually, you have a very different spin on it. I wonder if you could just share that? Frank Forencich: [Laugh], right. Well, the book I'm currently writing is about activism from a martial arts perspective. Steve Rush: Okay. Frank Forencich: The idea here is that we are immersed in a world where their conflict is inevitable. And once again, we don't have much training for that at all. Our educational systems basically ignore that fact of conflict and we don't teach young people how to deal with that. So that's why there's so much angst, I think in people who are trying to make a difference, we basically don't know how. We don't know whether to be hard or soft in our various styles, whether to be linear or circular in the way we approach conflict. So, there's a lot of work to be done there, but I think activism is essential. There's plenty of research to show. It actually improves the quality of our health. When we act on things that we find meaningful, then the body tends to do better. Steve Rush: That's really interesting perspective too, isn't it? Frank Forencich: Mm-Hmm. Steve Rush: And it is that act on something that you're really passionate about, which kind of underpins that whole activism bit, I guess, that what you see in the press and on the TV of activists is usually the far end of, the extreme ends of where people have already been triggered and are probably overplaying that, right? Frank Forencich: Right, yes. And it's easy to focus on the spectacular acts of activism, but there's a lot of invisible activisms that's going on as well. And it may not be spectacular, but there's a lot of work that people are doing currently that is very important and may not be as dramatic. So, we need to keep that in mind as well. Steve Rush: Now, for many of the folk listening to this show, they'll be either leading teams or businesses or even leading themselves. And therefore, from their perspective, what do you see as the certain consequences of them not getting hold of this in terms of their managing their stress and their energy? Frank Forencich: Right, well, there's a whole list of consequences that come when people are under chronic stress. And one of the most interesting for me is called reversion to the familiar. And we all know this in our own personal lives, because if you're having a hard day, what do you want to do? You want to go home and sit in your living room, a place that's familiar to you and you want to read the same books you've always read. You want to watch the same movies that you've always seen. You want to eat the same foods. You want to go back to the familiar and for people who are leading teams, this is also important because maybe you need new ideas. Maybe you need creativity going forward to come up with solutions to the problems you're facing, but the stress, it inclines people to revert to what they already know. And that makes sense, and it's fine in moderation. Steve Rush: Yeah. Frank Forencich: The dose makes the poison here. So, if you go home at the end of a hard day and you revert to the familiar, that's good for you. But if you, do it all the time, you're never going to make any progress. Steve Rush: Ironically, it could even make the stress worse in the future because the gap between the intention and the act gets bigger, right? Frank Forencich: Right, exactly. And that's what we're seeing in the world of climate and ecosystem. Collapse is, that as the stress escalates, people are going to just double down on what they already know, and that's going to make solutions even more difficult to arrive at. Steve Rush: There is a notion too, isn't there. That stress is actually not a bad thing if you get the dose, right? Frank Forencich: Right, and the way I say it is that stress is a frenemy. Steve Rush: I like that. Frank Forencich: And it's a wonderful thing for the body and the mind, small doses of stress are good for us. And this is the job of the teacher, the coach, the therapist, and the leader in an organization is to be precise in how much stress we put people under. And we have yet to really do this in any kind of systematic way. But it's essential to remember that there's an inverse U-Shape curve to this. A little bit of stress is good. A little bit more stress is even better. And then of course there's a tipping point and a reversal where stress becomes bad. But this idea in the standard narrative, that all stress is bad, and that the ideal life is a stress-free life. That's not very helpful. Steve Rush: Is there another word we could switch out for stress? Because I think it actually has a word itself, it's probably unhelpful. Is there another word you might use that would kind of help us think about stress in a positive way? Frank Forencich: Right, and that's a good point because it's been worked so hard in the popular press. Everybody seems to think that they know what it is and it's kind of a pigeonhole problem, right. So, one workaround that I use there is, I talk about our encounter with novelty. So, a little bit of novelty is exciting and therapeutic, young children love novelty, right. And they seek it out. Young adults love novelty, more is better, up to a point. And so, you can think of stress of in the same terms. This is our encounter with novelty. A little bit is good. A little bit more is great. Too much novelty becomes toxic. Steve Rush: I love the reframe because as you've just alluded to, as soon as you mention the word, novelty, people are intrigued. They want to find out. They want to learn a bit more don't they? And that gives them that unconscious permission to dive in a bit deeper. Frank Forencich: Right, and it's an essential part of our creative process is to have that encounter with novelty. But there has to be limits. There has to be guidelines, and there has to be a recognition that you may be encountering too much novelty. And then you've got to take care of yourself. Steve Rush: Maybe you can just take us through some of your tried and tested methods for relieving, some of that stress or some coping mechanism solutions, call it what you will? Frank Forencich: Right, yeah. Well, I've got quite a list here, but the first one of course is to ask the question, is this a real tiger? Or is it not? And that, it seems such a simple approach, but it really works. And it's worked in my life where I'll be worrying about something, and something has dominated my consciousness. And then I take a step back and I say, okay, is this a real threat to my life? Is this a real threat to my future, my welfare? And if the answer is, yes, I have to take action. If the answer is no, I can safely let that thing go. So that's helpful. Steve Rush: That's really powerful, right. Because in that moment, you're able to pretty much evaluate that whole, is it a real threat or not? And therefore, unconsciously will trigger different chemical reactions in our mind, won't it? Frank Forencich: Right, right. And you can always revisit it. You can always reevaluate whether it's a genuine threat or not, but it is a powerful starting point. The other bit of advice that I give people is just to say, give yourself a break. I mean, this climate predicament that we're in, this level of mismatch that everyone is experiencing, this is universal across the planet. It's not just you, [laugh], that's experiencing this. And just knowing that in itself can be helpful. Steve Rush: And if I'm stressed out right now, I'm in the moment, I'm listening to you Frank. What would be the one thing that would enable me to kind of step out of that? Frank Forencich: The scanner prescriptions are quite good here. I mean, focusing on the breath is really good. And the other bit, I think that's really important is just slowing down. This is another part of a modern world. That's so difficult for us is, that a sense of urgency is very contagious among hyper social animals. So, if the people around you are in a big hurry, which is often the case, then that tends to rub off on us. And then we start speeding up as well. So, the reminder here is, whatever you're doing, slow down. Steve Rush: And in your experience, Frank, having traveled the world and worked in different locations, studying, not just humans, but also animals. Is there a blueprint we can look at in the animal kingdom that is replicated in how we behave as human sapien? Frank Forencich: Well, yes. And I had an insight into this when I visited a museum in the American Southwest, and it was a desert museum, and they had all the types of things that you would expect in a desert museum. But we walked around into a courtyard at the museum and there was a large cage there with a wild Jaguar, a wild Panther that had recently been captured. And this was an extraordinary thing to watch that this Panther was pacing back and forth in the cage and exhibiting what you might call hyperactivity or ADHD or whatever you want to call it. The animal was very anxious. And from a modern perspective, you might say, well, that animal was having some sort of a neurological problem or a lifestyle disease or some sort of anxiety disorder. But on the other hand, you look at that animal and say, no, that's an absolutely normal response to being incarcerated. Steve Rush: Yeah. Frank Forencich: And so, for me to look at animals in that kind of situation, and then to look at humans and this epidemic of depression and anxiety that people are experiencing now. I tell people, look, you are not diseased. If you are feeling this way, this is the normal response of a normal animal to these kinds of difficult surroundings. So that's a big stress reliever right there, because. Steve Rush: Yeah. Frank Forencich: Once you realize that your body is behaving the way a normal animal would behave, it's not you [laugh], it's your animal life. And so that I find very helpful. Steve Rush: You do a lot to help people get out of that environment, don't you? So, you use things like movement, your martial arts as an example of that. Just tell us a little bit about how some of those things can help. Frank Forencich: Right, well obviously getting outside is crucial and a lot more people are recommending this now, and it makes sense, but it's not just the experience of being outdoors. It's this psychological identification with nature that I think is what we really need to see as native people have done for a very long time now, this thing called nature is not other, it is actually itself. It is actually us. So, when you look at a forest or you look at the ocean, you look at some natural terrain, that is an extension of you. It's an extension of your body, the native people call this the long buy. So that is a very helpful way to look at this as well. The other part of your question there is, with the movement and the martial arts, this movement in a social setting and touching other human animals that has a very therapeutic effect as well, developing rapport with other people through the body that eases our sense of fear, and it makes us feel great. Steve Rush: Awesome. Really fascinating. I could spend all day picking your brains but. Frank Forencich: [Laugh]. Steve Rush: Unfortunately, we won't have the time. One of the things I would love to do now though, is just to turn the tables a little bit and dive into your brain, thinking about some of the things you've experienced from a leadership perspective over your 30 plus years in teaching leaders and others to get to grips with their human self, what would be your top three leadership hacks? Frank Forencich: Well, the first one, and I love this one because it's kind of counterintuitive, I say, treat people like animals. Steve Rush: [Laugh], right. Frank Forencich: And, for some people, this sounds so surprising. Steve Rush: Yeah. Frank Forencich: And so shocking because when we use that phrase, we were treated like animals. We tend to think that that was a bad thing. We were on the airplane, and they treated us like animals because that's, I guess, what we've done historically is, we've treated animals poorly, but I turn this thing upside down and I take a veterinary approach to leadership or teaching or coaching, any of these things, look at your people, your students, your clients, your patients as animals first and foremost. And if they're coming into your setting and they're already hyper stressed, now you've got to work with that. Maybe they need more stress. Maybe they need less, but you have to look at what their experience is right now. And that is a whole new domain I think of leadership because we have to look at the physical experience and the psychological experience that people are bringing to the setting. Steve Rush: Yeah. Frank Forencich: Now some people have suggested, well, we need to measure their cortisol levels and that would be a technical approach. But they, I think there's another approach there, it's just more humane and means listening better. Steve Rush: Yeah, love it. Frank Forencich: Other leadership hacks. The other one I like from the native and indigenous tradition is called contextual leadership. And this simply means that people are leaders, not across the board, in every situation, but in certain domains. So, you might be a really good leader on the hunt and people in your tribe would recognize that. But when you get back to camp, you might not be such a great leader at preparing food. You might not be such a great leader telling stories around the campfire. Other people are good at that. And this is part of the indigenous tradition that people say, well, you are a leader in this situation, but not in another one. And I think this is something that we can also take to heart and assign and invite people to become leaders in other roles. Steve Rush: Yeah, and if you think of yourself as an animal in a tribe or a pack, they all have their roles to play and that's good old fashioned, situational leadership, isn't it? Frank Forencich: Right, and I think in the modern world, we often get this wrong because we say, if a person is a good leader in one domain, then they must be a good leader in all things, but that's best crazy. Steve Rush: Yeah. Frank Forencich: And then the third leadership hack, I think is, just to recognize the power of story and this is so important because the stress response is driven by our perception and our interpretation of reality, which means there is a story body connection. There is a connection between story and the autonomic nervous system. And if we can change or reframe stories, then we can literally working with people's bodies and we need to be better storytellers. Steve Rush: Love those, their awesome. Thank you, Frank. So, the next part of the show we call Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something hasn't gone well and maybe been catastrophic, but we've taken the opportunity to learn from it. And now is a force of good in our life or work. What would be your Hack to Attack? Frank Forencich: Right, well, looking back at my life and some of the mistakes I've made, I can trace some of this back to having a poor understanding of what's called the drama triangle. And you may have heard of this, is a popular theme in the world of psychotherapy and counseling, where therapists have recognized a common pattern. And that's when things aren't going well. We tend to describe ourselves as victims. And when we do that, then we typically blame perpetrators for our situation. And then we go in search of rescue. So those are the three points of the drama triangle. And this is a very popular thing [laugh] that people do. And it sucks us in, because we say I'm a victim. There must be a perpetrator out there somewhere. And so, we blame these people or governments or institutions for our unhappiness. And then we'd go looking for rescue from ideas or ideologies or substances, whatever it is. And when we get immersed in this drama triangle, things tend to spiral out control. Steve Rush: Yeah. Frank Forencich: So, the way out of the drama triangle, as most coaches and therapists recommend, they say, look, you have to be creative, stop blaming perpetrators, stop looking for rescue and start focusing on the creation that you want to do in the world. Steve Rush: Nice. Frank Forencich: And that took me some years to realize Steve Rush: [Laugh], it's nice. I like it a lot, yeah. So that last part I show Frank, we get to do with you is taking you on some time travel. You get to bump into yourself with 21 and you get to give yourself some advice. What do you think it might be? Frank Forencich: Yes, well, I would say to my 21-year-old self, that taking responsibility, and this goes back to the drama triangle. Taking responsibility is powerful because the more you take on the more meaningful life becomes. Steve Rush: Mm. Frank Forencich: And you don't have to just take responsibility for your own personal life. No, you take responsibility for the entire world. And so, for example, I didn't cause climate change, I don't cause racism or sexism or xenophobia or anything, but I do want to take responsibility for those things in the world and doing what I can. So that is a path towards meaning and that is a path towards fulfillment. And my 21-year-old self really would've benefited from that. Steve Rush: Yeah, mine too. I think [laugh], wise words. So, what's next for you then Frank, on your journey? Frank Forencich: Well, I'm really excited about this book about martial artistry and activism. The title is The Enemy is Never Wrong and I'm excited about the title because this is a teaching that I had from a martial art teacher some years ago. And he advised us to stop getting emotionally involved in the rightness or wrongness of our opponents. He said, look, whatever the enemy does is just what you have to work with. Don't get attached to any particular strategy or outcome. You have to just take the enemy as is, that's a good teaching there. And that's something that we can do as activists. Steve Rush: Yeah. Frank Forencich: So, I'm really excited about that title and that concept and that's where I'll be going for the next year. Steve Rush: Excellent, and I love that notion as well, because more often not, you can get so easily involved in the problem or the solution rather than just seeing it as it is, which when we wind it back to 1.1, being present and in the moment stops those false tigers, doesn't it? Frank Forencich: Yeah. Yeah. It's a powerful teaching, so. Steve Rush: Awesome, so how can our listeners get copies of many of your books and indeed find out a little bit more about the work you do beyond our conversation? Frank Forencich: Right, well, it's easy to remember the website. It's all there, it's exuberantanimal.com and if you type in exuberant animal, you'll get it. Steve Rush: Cool, and we'll put those any links you have to the various books and work you have in our show notes as well Frank. Frank Forencich: Nice, nice. Steve Rush: I've really enjoyed chatting. It's such a fantastic parallel to our world and your work has brought it into the world of business because it's a real thing. We all have tigers. Some of them and in fact more of them are probably more false than real. Frank Forencich: Right. Steve Rush: And just understanding them and being able to deal with those can help us become better leaders and better people to work with. So, thanks for sharing your information, Frank, and thanks for being on our community, on The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Frank Forencich: Oh yeah. It's been great fun. I've enjoyed It. Steve Rush: Thank you, Frank.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler their @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.

Dr Bob Nelson is author of the multimillion-copy bestseller 1001 Ways to Engage Employees, he's also is president of Nelson Motivation, Inc. and the world's leading authority on Employee Recognition and Engagement. He has published 31 books that have sold over 5 million copies that have been translated into over 30 languages. In the humorous and insightful show you can learn: How "Work" and "Fun" go together in the most successful workplaces to motivate employees Why do employees rank “Fun” at the top of the list at the Best Companies to Work for What the best companies do to find the latest value in employee reward programs beyond gift cards and handshakes Innovative and creative ways businesses can amplify their culture and increase productivity with “Fun" Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Dr Bob below: Dr Bob on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/drbobnelson Dr Bob on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBobNelson1 Website: https://drbobnelson.com   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker. Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you Today's special guest is Dr. Bob Nelson. He's a world's leading authority on employee recognition, motivation and engagement. Dr. Bob has authored over 30 books, which have collectively sold over five million copies. Before we get a chance to speak with Bob. It's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: In the news today. We're going to explore how social media can really make a difference to any business of any kind anywhere. So, we're going to look at a fast-food joint when from a local eatery to internet stardom, thanks to iconic memes and a catchy theme tune. And this is a story of Binley Mega Chippy. Now, for those that are in North America and around the world, a chip shop in England is a place where you go to buy French fries and fast food. It started out as unassuming, local, fast-food joint, and it's now arguably the most famous fast-food joint on the planet. For years, it was just like any other English eatery, serving French fries, chips, fish, and of course, other really unhealthy, deep-fried foods. It's not particularly attractive to look at. It's a vision of red and gold, but it's a reliable Oasis to many people in and around Coventry, but the Internet's taken Binley Mega Chippy and turned it into a TikTok fiesta for culinary destination for anybody visiting this part of England. Owner, Kamal Gandhi, 70-years-old. Now has a huge number of customers. Some of whom have apparently traveled from as far as France, America and even Australia. So how did this local chip shop go from a small fry to a huge gastronomic location of choice? Well, the first mention of Binley Mega Chippy hit the internet in just 2009, and it was a simple kind of nod to here's where we are and what we do. Fast forward to 2022, Binley Mega Chippy began to appear, but still continued on relative obscurity, not knowing what's to come. Viral hysteria hit the fast-food outlet. In 2022 when it featured in the slideshow of multiple UK, fast food joints and TikTok in April. It's first month, there were 82,000 views and 11,000 likes. Fast forward now, millions and millions of people are using this as a backdrop to other memes and are joining in with the chant of the song. Decades of research and millions of dollars and pounds of advertising who have shown that society loves a good jingle, and it helps sell a product. And the same appears to be true for fast food outlets. On the 25th of May, binleymegachippyfan53 posted just a ten second clip with a static picture with a Bingley Mega Chippy Jingle. Now for obvious marketing reasons, I'm not able to play that for you now. I'm sure you can find it if you choose to. That short clip now has just over 2 million views and has spawned various spinoffs and remixes. And now hashtag Bingley Mega Chippy has over 500 million views and naturally people have been visiting it from all over. So having fun, better jingle, the power of the internet can change the lives of anyone and good luck to Kamal Gandhi and his store, we wish him all the success. The leadership hack here is, marketing could be as simple as a ten second clip. It could be something that you say and do. What makes a difference is that emotional connection. So, the next time you're communicating a message or you're building a story or you're creating an internal marketing campaign or external, is it going to hit those real emotional keys to get people stirred into emotional action? That's been The Leadership Hacker News. Let's dive into the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Dr. Bob Nelson is a special guest on today's show. He's a multimillion best seller author of, 1001 Ways to Engage Employees. His latest book, Work Made Fun Gets Done. He's also the president of Nelson Motivation Inc. One of the world's leading authorities on employee recognition and engagement, and Bob's published over 31 books and sold over 5 million copies and been translated in over 30 languages. Dr. Bob, welcome to the show. Dr. Bob Nelson: Thank you for having me, Steve. Steve Rush: I'm really looking forward to getting into this because I remember the first time you and I met when you also then started to think about this. Over 15,000 ways to reward employees and over 1,001 ways to engage employees. It was a bit of a kind of a journey for me to get my head around those numbers. So, I'm delighted that we get a chance to dive into some of them, not all of them today. Dr. Bob Nelson: Excellent. Steve Rush: Before we do that, Bob, let's give our listeners a little bit of a backstory if you like on the journey that is taking you to where you are today. Dr. Bob Nelson: Well, well, well, I've always been a writer and going back to high school, I remember my English teacher passing out papers and she stopped at my desk and she over hitch, she weighed my paper and said, best paper in five classes. And I was kind of embarrassed and surprised and went back and reread it. And, you know, and I just got the message that I could write. And so that's always been a backdrop for me, and I published my first book when I was 21, a guide on job hunting and have just recently finished my 31st book. So, it's a hard activity, somehow, I keep coming back to it, I guess, like a moth to a flame [laugh]. Steve Rush: Yeah, and do you think that moment in that English class, when that teacher kind of gave you that feedback at that time, do you think that was a catalyst for you at that point? Dr. Bob Nelson: Well, it's certainly, anytime someone gives you feedback, I think, we all need to see how other people see us and if it's in a positive light then that's good news. You need to hold onto that one. And I think, you know, John Lynn's said, life's what happens when you're making other plans. So, you got to work into the plans, what people tell you you're good at. And then of course, things that you enjoy doing is important as well. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: Mark Twain said the two most important days in anyone's life is the day they're born and then secondly, the day they find out why, so [laugh]. Steve Rush: That's great, yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: It's ongoing journey for each of us to say, what was I meant to be here for? And if you get clues from those around you, who give you feedback, you need to hold onto those and listen to those. And so, I feel fortunate for the career I've had, I've been blessed with having worked with some true experts, each which I've learned from. Ken Blanchard, went to work for, he published the One Minute Manager, which has sold 14 million copies. And so, I learned a lot from him about selling books and I got my PhD from working with Peter Drucker, the father of modern management. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: And I'm currently a personal coach for Marshall Goldsmith. Who's the number one voted executive coach in the world. Steve Rush: That's right, yeah.  Dr. Bob Nelson: So, I've been very, very blessed to have some great people to learn from and lean on. And I like passing it on to others when I can. Steve Rush: Yeah, and we are going to pass that on for sure today. You know, I heard something that I probably read it. You'd coached or had worked with something like 80% of the fortune 500 companies, is that right? Dr. Bob Nelson: I have, yes. Steve Rush: Wow. Dr. Bob Nelson: Spanning 25 years, you get around. And that included, not that long ago, wrapped up a six-month project working for the United Nations. So that was a fun, fun activity. So, you know, life takes you a lot of interesting places and if you can go for the ride, it's usually pretty enticing. Steve Rush: Yeah, it is. Isn't it? Dr. Bob Nelson: I found anyway [laugh]. Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely so. So, you've managed to find a real niche or a passion, if you like for employee recognition and engagement. What was that defining moment for you when you realized actually, this is the thing that really excites you and makes you tick, and others tick as well? Dr. Bob Nelson: Well, again to me, it's piecing together the pieces. I was taking a graduate school class and we were talking about; it was a control systems class and professor was talking about the informal control systems. And he made the offhand comment that has proven as the principle for informal reinforcement is, there hasn't been a lot of application in the business world. And I remember thinking I'm going to do something about that [laugh] and actually that evening after my hour and a half drive home from graduate school class in Los Angeles, I typed out a letter to president of publishing firm in New York City and sent it overnight and spent two weeks trying to get him on the phone. And finally, could heard his assistant say, this guy keeps calling, would you talk to him? [laugh] and literally the president of the company, he goes, what do you want? He answers the phone like that. And I said, well, my here's my name. And I sent you a letter about a book and he cut me off. And he said, you sent us a letter about a book. We'll, we'll never do a book based on a letter you sent us, you have to do a proposal, of the 70,000 books that are published this year, that year anyway. Why yours has to be one of them? And why we're the only publisher could possibly do it right. And literally as he's hanging up, he goes, and by the way, we get 10,000 proposals a year, we publish 24 books to click [laugh]. Steve Rush: Nice. Dr. Bob Nelson: I could have said, well, well, you know, gave it a try, but I said, hey, game on, time to do a proposal [laugh], so maybe there's a lesson there, you know, don't accept defeat. Steve Rush: Did you go back to this guy though? Dr. Bob Nelson: I did actually [laugh]. I did the proposal, I got an agent and then next time I met with him, I was sitting across from him though. I flew to New York at my own expense, and he had the proposal in front of him and he opened it up. And my agent had said, well, it'd be helpful if you could lay out a few pages, see what it was actually looks like. I explained it. That should be good enough. No, no, no. It would help people visualize it. So, I did that, and then she said, well, could you do a few more. I go, oh, come on. And I did a few more. And darn, when I'm sitting across him and he doesn't open the proposal to those pages and he goes, this could work. The guy was very visual. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: Up here working, was his name. He was a creative genius. And, he only did books that where he personally saw that it could work. Does he see it? Does he see what you see? And so, now he's still on project. He still doesn't know about me. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: And so [laugh], he turns his attention to me and starts asking me questions. I go, well, I'm an administrator for this company in San Diego. And, but that's not what I really want to do. And he goes, what do you really want to do? And I said, be a bestselling author. And I could see a little twinkle in his eye and done deal. And that was [laugh]. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: Yeah, they sent me to 27 markets at a time when that wasn't really done anymore. And in the first, gosh, I think of, in the first two months, the book sold 40,000 copies. Steve Rush: Wow, yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: Yeah, which is stunning. And as a business book and now it's in its 64th printing and sold over 2 million copies. Steve Rush: That's amazing. Dr. Bob Nelson: So yeah, a lot of people ask me about the book story, because there's a lot of books out there. Over a million books are published year now. When this book came out, seventy thousand. Now it's a million books a year. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: Publish each year, and that's with self-publishing and Amazon and you name it. And there's not more readers, but there's a lot more books. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: So. Steve Rush: And there's still an opportunity for the same folk to, you know, face into the resilience you did, get in front of people and say, look, you know, if you've got a compelling story, just tell it because there will be people who want to read and listen. Dr. Bob Nelson: Yes, yes. It's, definitely more difficult because it's more constrained and for a typical publisher, the first thing they want to know is, what's your platform? What vehicle do you have to reach people, you know, in terms of number of followers? Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: Or do you speak, do you do public speaking or are you in media, you know, are you on TV every night? You know, all that kind of goes in the mix. Steve Rush: Does. Dr. Bob Nelson: As a result, just a few books get published. Steve Rush: I remember when I published my book, which was probably about six years ago, having the same conversation with an agent. And at the time I was starting out on my entrepreneurial career, a few years into it and having this kind of light bulb moment that felt I'm not worthy because I haven't got a million followers on Instagram and I haven't got all of this, but you know, what I had was something that was interesting, yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: Imposter syndrome. Steve Rush: Oh, totally. Dr. Bob Nelson: Yeah, you got to trust your gut. I think, my moment of doubt was, I knew I could write, but then, trying to understand my motivations for writing. That cost me a couple years because I couldn't, hard time starting, why do you want to do this? Is it to make money? Is it for fame? Is it to help people? And that really had me in a bind trying to sort that [laugh], and finally I decided it's for all those reasons. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: Yes, I want to help people, but yes, if I make money from it, I could help more people because I could, you know, get the book a wider audience and so I've never quite looked back from that point. I've have done, like I said, I've done 31 books and each one is, writing is difficult. It's very hard. It's exposing your mental thoughts to the world. And man, you better be braced to [laugh] take the feedback and [laugh]. And so, but I've had good success and I love helping other people with the same journey, because there are a lot of good messages to go out there and lot of messages that could help others. And if you have one like that you deserve to be in print. Steve Rush: Very much so, yeah. And then your last book, Work Made Fun Gets Done. It's one of those titles that when you read it, you go, yeah, that's absolutely true, of course it is. Dr. Bob Nelson: [Laugh]. Steve Rush: And everybody buys into it. Yet, we also find that that doesn't happen everywhere [laugh] and that some people go to work and it's not fun. Dr. Bob Nelson: Well, some. Most people actually. Steve Rush: What did you find out in your research? Dr. Bob Nelson: So, my books, I tend to favor kind of proven truths or maybe obvious truths that are not obvious in practice. And so, the Work Made Fun Gets Done is one of those, it's part of the mix on having motivated employees and staying with the job over time. And the younger employees, 59% of millennials say they want to have fun at work. So as more and more workers are from that age group, almost 75% now, you know, it's a topic you've got to take seriously as a company. What are we doing to make sure that people are having fun while at work? Now, if you're a cynical or old-line manager, the answer is simple, hey, here's an idea. They can worry about that on the weekend. We're paying them to work, God damn it, you know, and so, Steve Rush: Yeah, there's still a lot of those around, unfortunately. Dr. Bob Nelson: Yes, there are. So, you got to say, well, I could see where you would think that, and that makes a lot of sense, but let me tell you, have you looked at your exit interviews? Why people are leaving? You know, on the positive side, for this book. We did research. We looked at the hundred best places to work in America. And we dug in their data. We found that that one of the variables they ask about is, this a fun place to work. And for those companies that work for one of the hundred best companies to work for in America, 82% of their employees, when surveys said, where they work is a fun work environment. And we contrast that to those companies that applied for that award but didn't receive it. Only 61% said it was a fun place to work. That that 20-point differential was actually one of the largest in their database [laugh] on sorting successful companies from also ran. So, if you want to look at the positive data that supports making fun, a serious part of your business, it's there. And that's why, you know a lot of companies have even made it a core value of their firm, like Best Buy, it's their number one core value is have fun while being the best or Jet Blue, number four, LinkedIn, number six, Mercedes-Benz number three. So, it's workday number five. So, not everybody, but a lot of companies are staking it out saying, yes, yes, we agree. This should be a core value for what we do every day. And if we do that, if we do that well, then guess what? People will pass it on to their customer and to the colleagues. And it'll be easier to come to work, because you're enjoying who you're working with and who you're serving and just everything will go more swimmingly, you know. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: So, it's a simple, it's a simple thing, but common sense, not common practice, an observation first made by Voltaire in 1640. Steve Rush: [Laugh]. Dr. Bob Nelson: Those things that are common sense are not very common he said [laugh]. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: And hey. Steve Rush: Wise words. Dr. Bob Nelson: Still true, still true today. Steve Rush: And there's also direct correlation to revenue here as well, isn't there. So, the companies you just mentioned are all profitable or high revenue generative businesses. Dr. Bob Nelson: Yes, yes, yes, they are. And so, it's a flip side of you know, if work is fun, it's going to be more profitable. If it's more profitable, then of course it's more fun and we're able to pay people better and have better benefits. And so, it's kind of a chicken and egg type thing. I know what comes first. We think that, just make sure it's part of the mix. It doesn't have to start with that. And increasingly we share stories in the book about how people found their way to this. Like the President of Belmont College in Nashville, Tennessee, he did a year sabbatical where he examined high performing companies and he came back and he said number one thing he learned is that every place he examined, high performance companies, they were all fun places. And so, he said, we got to have more fun here. And he immediately created a fun committee and volunteers and charged them with, to do fun things, you know, find out what needs to be celebrated and work it into our culture. Had a group and focused on that. Maybe gave him some budget, and when there was a time, the morale is low, or we have good news to celebrate. Let's do that very well. Let's do it as a group. Let's do it as a team. Let's do it individually. And that's what they do, or I'll tell you another company. I was in Seattle years ago, I was presenting to 800 people and this person in the front row, go, you look really familiar. And she goes, yeah, yeah. I met you six weeks ago when you were speaking here before, back in Seattle again, after six weeks. And I had to come tell you what happened. I go, well, tell me what happened [laugh]. And she worked for a company. She said, I left your presentation with one thing in mind. I said, this is real. It's happening. I'm going to do it. I'm not asking permission. I'm doing it [laugh] because I believe in it. And that's what she did. I said, well, what'd you do? She goes, I did a bunch of stuff. Like I created a happiness committee in my department, and it had three members of it. No one knew who they were, but anyone could say, it's time to do something. I go, well, something like what? She goes, well, we held a picnic up on the roof in downtown Seattle to celebrate. We bartered meeting space with a company on the next block. That was a limo company, so now we have limo rides we can give people for letting them in our meeting space once a month and you know, on and on. They are just you know, didn't start with a big budget, started with some creativity and some fun. And what difference did make? And she goes, it had a stunning difference [laugh]. People could see it, it changed how they came to work. And she said, I had other managers saying, what are you doing in your department? Your people are so excited. You're on fire. You go, hey, come to the next meeting. We're don't having any secrets here. And it just grew organically. And you know, and now she's giving me part of the story. So, I went back, and I wrote it up and I put it in the press and navigated external validation for what she's doing internally. Well, fast forward 18 months from that first day I met that woman, that company, Perkins Coie, a law firm of all things, entered the best places to work in America. Number 23 on the list. Steve Rush: Amazing. Dr. Bob Nelson: I would content from one person, one person standing up, not at the top. Sometimes we feel only the CEO can make a difference, you know, but in the middle, she was a finance manager in one department. And I would suggest that she personally converted that culture and made it more recognition savvy, where people felt more valued for the work, they were doing every day. Anyone listening can make that same thing happen, where you work. Steve Rush: Great story. Dr. Bob Nelson: You could light the fuse. It doesn't have to all be on you, but you can get it going, get going in your walk, in your realm of influence, whatever position you have and invite other people on board. And you can make something happen. Steve Rush: It's because fun is infectious. So too is misery by the way. Dr. Bob Nelson: [Laugh]. Steve Rush: And I suspect, you know, that's why, you know, you get that dichotomy between different firms, different teams and in different organizations. But if you were given some advice to our listeners today who may be thinking around, yeah, I want to take some of this fun and energy and ideas forward, but I know that I'm going to bump into maybe a stuffy boss or a stuffy culture. How would you think that would be the best way to maybe break into that? Dr. Bob Nelson: One of two approaches, either ignore that and make it happen anyway, for the people that are interested. So even if the boss isn't interested, get it going with others, or the second thing is make a personal appeal to your boss and say, this is why I like to do it, or why we should do it and try to sell them on being on board or let's try it. Let's try it for a month. Let's try it for three months. Let's do a pilot program, because I think, you know, I think for example, that if we did this, it would impact our turnover rate, which it will by the way [laugh]. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: If you create a culture of recognition where people are valued for what they're doing. Research indicates you will be seven times more likely to hold onto your people if they feel they're in an environment where people are celebrated and thanked for doing a good job, as simple as that. Seven times, seven times for their career by the way, not just for another, for another six months or another year that they will once they feel that they will want to stay working for your company for their career. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: So that's the price of admission right there, right now. Steve Rush: Right, yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: In the midst of the great resignation, where at least in America, four and a half million people a month are leaving their positions. This has been for the last 18 months straight. Four and a half million a month are leaving their positions. And often they find another position and now they're leaving that one [laugh]. Steve Rush: I know. Dr. Bob Nelson: So, because they're in search of a place that you know, the pandemic taught us anything. It's like, you know, life is short and unpredictable. You better have a good job now, better enjoy what you're doing now. And so maybe what a lot them realize that what they're doing, it's not worth what they're being paid for, and they're not getting enjoy from it. And they, they hate their job. They hate their boss and time to [laugh] go, to seek out something that's more meaningful to them that gives them, makes them feel they're part of something larger themselves, where they can have pride in working there and enjoy the people they're working with and who they're serving. Those jobs are out there, and they are they're plentiful. And so, if you hold your sites to that type of standard, you will find it. Of course, you have to have the skillset. So, it's a mix, clarity of purpose and mission. But I know people, for example, I worked with Walt Disney World for 15 years, and I met people that moved to Orlando Florida, because they had to work with this company, had to work for this company and they got there, and they didn't care what the job was. They had to be a part of this organization. They'll pick up trash in the. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: In the park, you know? Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Bob Nelson: And maybe they started there, but they quickly moved on up and man, oh man, because people are treated right. And then they blossom and then you get more of them and their best thinking. And then all of a sudden you got a career. So, it could be frustrating for people that feel that they're in a dead-end position or a position they don't enjoy. How do I get to a different area from where I'm at? But you know, maybe that starts in the current job you have. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Bob Nelson: Maybe look at that differently. Because a lot of times you can get to the job you want, start with the one you have and start to ask for responsibilities or make it known what things you're interested in doing. And that might be a selection for responsibilities and assignments, especially for a small company. They need people to wear many hats, you know. And so, there's more of flexibility and variety that you can help morph your job towards what you want to be doing. Steve Rush: Yeah, you mentioned reward and recognition as being a key component of that fun and you cited that, that law firm's growth was one of the reasons that they focused on was kind of how they step into recognition. And when you think of the subject and the notion of recognition, most organizations typically have a recognition program, which could have, you know, e-cards and buttons and gifts and. Dr. Bob Nelson: Yes, years of service awards. Steve Rush: But it's way more than that, right? Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: Yeah, but often, they're doing stuff, but it's not the stuff that matters to people. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Bob Nelson: So, I've never met an employee that, you know, stayed another day at work to get their 10-year pin, you know, it's sort of like [laugh]. So, along the way, the topic was started in an incentive industry with people trying to move merchandise. And this is another way if we can get, you know, people to buy you know gifts for employees and we'll sell a lot more merchandise and that's kind of how the market started and for many companies, that's where it ended too. So, it never really got to the motivations. It got to, hey, you get stuff, you know, and it becomes really a money substitute to get points or gift cards to be thanked for a job well done. So that's fine, but that's a limited view on this topic because I tend to find that the most powerful motivators are things that don't cost money at all. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: So, a personal, thank you, or being part of a team or being asked your opinion, being allowed to pursue an idea you have, being thanked, certainly when you do, do a good job or for helping someone else. And if you make a mistake, you know, it's easy to criticize someone that makes a mistake. You know, they already usually know they did something wrong. Why don't you embrace it and say, hey, what'd you learn from that? That's the more important thing here [laugh]. And take the long-term view of the relationship instead of being critical in the short term, be supportive in the long term, you know, Bill Gates, former chairman of Microsoft, he once said, you could tell a lot about the long-term viability of any organization simply by looking at how they handle mistakes. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: Because if you embarrass people [laugh], and in front of their peers and make them want to quit, they probably will [laugh]. And, yet it's opportunity to take a long-term view into, and to say, we're bigger than that. And that's good news. You made that mistake because that's the best training you'll have all year. I'm glad you made it. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: And see what else other people can learn from it. So fundamental difference in a simple choice that comes up daily, really. Steve Rush: Culture plays a massive part in this. And I think what I heard you talk about directly and indirectly was, those organizations who have fun embedded into their values, embedded into their culture, their employer brand have a better chance at not only acquisition, but also retention. Dr. Bob Nelson: Yes, and they got to the, you know, they didn't start with that. Maybe they put it on the table. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Bob Nelson: As the core value, but it's working the value to say, what does that look like in practice? And if we were having more fun, how would things be different? And maybe they'd say, well, maybe upper management would be more involved. I worked with in California, the pension fund. Teachers' Pension Fund of California, which is a nine billion. Steve Rush: That's huge. Dr. Bob Nelson: Billion-dollar fund. Yeah, and they brought me in, consultant and sure enough, they had very little recognition. And when I brought the topic up, they go, no, we can't do that stuff because, you know, we're a public entity. I go, really, that's what's holding you back from doing the right thing. Yes, yes, it is. We got to think about something we might do might end up in the headlines of the newspaper and that will not be appropriate, our fiduciary responsibilities. I go, well, I'll just hold on a minute [laugh]. What if I brought you a list of other federal state and local governments that are doing this type of stuff, what exactly they're doing? The legislative authority, they have to do it [laugh] and the contact information. And they go, that would be very interesting. And I [laugh] created that you know, it was like a 20-page list, and they took it into a board meeting. They came out and they said, we're doing it. Steve Rush: Good. Dr. Bob Nelson: And they started investing in low-cost ways to thank people. In fact, one of the first things they did out of the shoot. This is a state government, okay. They decided to make a music video that they had their senior managers all sign up to be in a music video to talk about the changes they're making in the direction of the firm. It was an enormous hit [laugh], you know, because people saw that their leadership was coming, you know, was now part of them and helping lead the charge. And it was very exciting, and it was very fun. Steve Rush: It is often a mindset shift for some of the senior executives in these firms and organizations, isn't it? Dr. Bob Nelson: It has to be, it has to be. Yeah, so it's okay if you're not comfortable with something, but, if you have the logic, if you have the data, especially if you have the data from your own employees where you know why they're leaving, or what would make them stay, you know, right now, one of the big things is on flexible working hours and ability to work from home. God, we've got enormous data on this, 36% of employees said they would skip a pay increase if they'd have the ongoing flexibility to work from home, 40% said, you can give them a pay cut if they. Steve Rush: Yeah Dr. Bob Nelson: [Laugh], you know, if you give them the flexibility and the time they work from home, because that's more enjoyable to them, it's more convenient for their life that not even counting the, you know, the commute time, you know, the hour or two hours or three hours that they have to waste a day to get to a central office and to get ready for that. And you know, besides saving that time, they've got more control over their life, and you know, and you want the data. It's like overwhelmingly people are allowed to work from home are more productive. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: And I've tracked this with my own employees. I had people log their time. It turned out to be twice as productive, you know, like I could see the work of the results they got, because they weren't interrupted. There wasn't as socializing. They were able to dig in further and get more done. And so, it all makes sense. What holds a lot of companies back is, senior manager saying, well, that's not what I'm used to, you know, or if I can't see them, I don't know they're working or the CEO of JP Morgan in New York City finance firm said, if you can go out to dinner in New York City, you can come to the office and work in New York city. So, okay. Well, that's a point. Narrow minded point, but you know, I guess if you pay people enough, you can force them to do anything. And so, but over four and a half million people moved out in New York City during the pandemic, because when we shifted to allowing people to work from home, if all of a sudden, they didn't have to be in New York City anymore. So they went to work in a smaller town or where their family's from. And a lot of Zoom towns popped up, you know, where people preferred to live. If they can live anywhere, they're going to go live in Bend Oregon. They're going to live in you know. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: In places that they can enjoy living more. They can work from anywhere. And, people are holding onto that, 65% of employees that had a chance to work from home during the pandemic said, they want to continue that flexibility. It worked better for them. It was more productive. And, if they're forced to come in, which is kind of the dance we're in right now, where companies are saying, no, you have to come back to the office. Fortunately, only 4% of companies have said everyone has to come back five days a week, but you know, half the people say you have to come back, you know, at least three days a week. And the other half have more flexibility. So, my wife's a virtual employee. She has to come in one day a week, you know, and that's that kind of borderline for her, you know, [laugh], she does it begrudgingly the whole time. She's kind of swearing on the commute, but yeah, one day a week is, you know, and that'll work. If they increase that, she will definitely quit. I was surprised that she stayed just for that because you could get another virtual job, you know, and we already proved it works. Steve Rush: Right, yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: [Laugh] so it's like, we don't need to keep proving it works. We know it works and well, we can make excuses while you can't be as collaborative. Well, maybe make some adjustments to be more collaborative, you know. So, Anyway, we're still on the journey on that one. And again, you know, fun would be part of that, recognition would be part of that. And, you know, or what I find is like, I say, well, we're on Zoom calls now, how can you, you know, we can't do recognition. Oh, yes, you can, you know, come on, you know, next Zoom call you have, before we get in our agenda, I like to just take a few minutes and go around the group. And as I call out someone's name, I like everyone else to say what they most value about working with that person. Let's start with John, okay. Now, Mary, now Sally, and 10 minutes later, where are you? Everyone's gotten personal feedback about what the people they work with most closely think most highly of what they do and their work, they contribute. Well, that's pretty powerful. Make people feel great about the job they're doing. I guarantee you that whatever they're called out for, they're going to do more of that same thing, because what gets recognized gets repeated. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: So, it's a universal rule. And then, you know, the groups could be tighter working unit because they now have insights into each other, and they know so it's going to be more of a team going forward. So, you could do that in, you know, 10 minutes in the Zoom call. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: You know, I call that a praise barrage. You just take time and we're just going to focus on praise. No negative feedback, just praise, just thanks and praise from open mic from employees to other boys. Steve Rush: Love it. Dr. Bob Nelson: Very powerful. Very simple. Steve Rush: Very much so. So, we're going to turn the tables a little bit now. We're going to start to hack into your mind. Now of the 31 books and the 1001 Ways to Engage Employees. We're going to try and dis distill all of that down now into the top three leadership hacks that you can share. What would they be Bob? Dr. Bob Nelson: There you go. Okay, well, here it goes. I'd say all motivation starts with the person. So, ask them what motivates them. Don't try to guess. Just ask them, ask them individually, or as a group, would be the first thing some, again, advice I'm going to give you is going to be very simple, because this is what I swim in. So, ask the questions, take the answers seriously, do the top one or two things that they mention. So today that might be you know, and managers often are scared to do this because they say, well, when people are going to say they want more money, well maybe they will. And you know, is that valid? Then maybe they should be paid more. I don't know. But more times than not, I find that the things that come up are, do not involve money, but being thanked by someone, they hold in high esteem by their manager or upper manager. As I indicated. Being involved in a decision, especially one that affects them, 89% of employees say, they'd like to have that. 92% say they'd like to be asked for their ideas and suggestions. And if they have a good idea, given autonomy and authority to pursue it. So again, from my research and application of these concepts, most of the things that come surprisingly amazingly delightfully don't cost money to implement, just a little bit, you know behavior. So, a little bit of insight, a little bit of thoughtfulness. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Bob Nelson: And then actually doing it. So, it's not good enough to know you should do it. You got to actually do it in your practices, in your daily regimen as a leader. So, ask, prioritize and do. That'd be the three I would say. Steve Rush: And it sounds so simple that we get caught up in our busy worlds. And it's just one of those things that we don't pay attention enough to. So, I love that, great stuff. Dr. Bob Nelson: Yes. Dr. Bob Nelson: Next part of the show we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something in your life or work has not worked out as you'd planned, might have been quite catastrophic at the time, but as a result you've learned from it and it now serves you well, what would be your Hack to Attack? Dr. Bob Nelson: Well, I'd say, not just me. For a lot of people doing a switching gears and tact, and what you're doing when somebody's not working. So, the pandemic change work for a lot of people. I was making my living probably 9% of my revenue was from physically speaking at conferences and traveling to work with companies and that kind of all stopped overnight actually [laugh] and so. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Bob Nelson: They go well, okay. So, I pivoted to do, you know, other things and to do things that were not in person. So, a lot of that's virtual. I've done a lot of webinars and I've been doing more consulting. So, you know, I think pivoting would be my recommendation when something's not working, try something else. And if that works a little better, then do more of that. And actually, my personal [laugh], strategy over the last 30 years has been, if I've got three or four or four or five strategies in play, then, you know, two or three are going to pay out and that has happened in my career. So that, I think [laugh], I think that canon could work for anyone. That whatever you're doing right now, isn't working for whatever reason, you could fight that and fight that, or you can change and modify and pivot and try something different, maybe build off of what you're doing, do something different. And, then you try different things. One probably going to work better than another. So, there you get your own feedback, right there will take out in that direction. Steve Rush: Yeah, paying attention to oneself is really important. That you're often the barometer of those decisions, but we. Dr. Bob Nelson: Yeah. Steve Rush: Sometimes get a bit stubborn when it comes to ourselves. Dr. Bob Nelson: Yeah, and it's easy to say, well, this should work. It worked before. Well, okay. Times changed somehow. And for whatever reason, it's not working now. So, you could sit in that in state for a long time and you can begrudge why the world has changed, or you can. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: You can change with it. I'm far more taking positive action to make your life better. Steve Rush: So, the last part of the show, Bob, we get to give you a chance now to do a bit of time travel. You get to bump into Bob who wasn't the doctor at the time at 21 and give him some advice, what would it be? Dr. Bob Nelson: I would say double down more on my instincts. So I, which I think is good advice all the time, to trust one's instincts, but you know, a lot of times we don't because we feel well, we don't know much about this topic, or, you know, and so we override our instincts, even though our gut tells you this doesn't seem like a good person to work with, or this doesn't seem like, you know, we stick with it. And I would trust my instincts more. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: You know, because when I've had those, they've been good and I would have gotten even better results had I'd done more of that. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: There you go. Steve Rush: Awesome. Dr. Bob Nelson: Opened myself up to you there. Steve Rush: [Laugh], thank you for that, Bob. Appreciate it. So, we're coming to the kind of top of our show now, and I think it's really important that we allow all our listeners to tap into some of the fun and energy that you bring to your work and that your career has proven to be so successful around Bob. How can we best connect our audience to you? Dr. Bob Nelson: Well, I've got, wouln't you know, an email and website, my email is bob@drbobnelson.com. That's d-r-b-o-b-n-e-l-s-o-n.com so they can email me or even call me directly, 8582185049 in San Diego, California USA would be ways. I have a website. My website's had some glitches here lately, so it it's been on and off, but it's www.drbobnelson.com. That's d-r-b-o-b-n-e-l-s-o-n.com. I've got an online store and a lot of my books are on that store at discounted prices, cheaper than Amazon or. Steve Rush: Cool. Dr. Bob Nelson: You know, and then of course the book is available wherever books are sold. My books, Work Made Fun Gets Done. Latest, the one before that is 1001 Ways to Engage Employees. And the one that most people know before is, 1001 Ways to Reward Employees Now in the new addition, 1501 Ways to Reward Employees. Steve Rush: [Laugh], and as you keep collecting them, the books are going to keep growing and evolving, I'm Sure. Dr. Bob Nelson: I guess, yeah, I guess. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Bob Nelson: It's an ongoing story [laugh]. Steve Rush: You're probably the only guest we've ever had on an international show, like ours to give away their phone number. So fantastic, and homage to you for that! Dr. Bob Nelson: Yeah, no, I love hearing from people. I love helping people. And of course, if you have an opportunity that you'd looking for a speaker for your organization or for an event or for your association, I still do a lot of that and would love to help you out. Steve Rush: Awesome, bob. We'll make sure those links and information's all in our show notes as well. So, people can demonstrate over to your website and have a look at some more of the stuff that you do. From my perspective. I just want to say, thank you. It's been super fun. You've been really insightful, some great stories, and I'm just delighted that we are connected through this medium and welcome to our broader community, The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Dr. Bob Nelson: Thanks so much for having me. Steve, it's been a pleasure. Steve Rush: Thanks Bob. Closing Steve Rush: I want to sign off by saying thank you to you for joining us on the show too. We recognize without you, there is no show. So please continue to share, subscribe, and like, and continue to get in touch with us with the great new stories that we share every week. And so that we can continue to bring you great stories. Please make sure you give us a five-star review where you can and share this podcast with your friends, your teams, and communities. You want to find us on social media. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter @leadershiphacker, Leadership Hacker on YouTube and on Instagram, the_leadership_hacker and if that wasn't enough, you can also find us on our website leadership-hacker.com. Tune into next episode to find out what great hacks and stories are coming your way. That's me signing off. I'm Steve Rush, and I've been your Leadership Hacker.  

Simon Alexander Ong is an award-winning life and executive coach, keynote speaker, an author of the book Energize. This show is packed full of leadership hacks, tools and ideas that will get you energized, including: How we can awaken our power. The benefits of rewiring our energetic state. Why we need to manage our energy and not our time. How to supercharge our impact. Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Simon below: Simon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonalexanderong/ Simon's Book: https://getenergizebook.com Simon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SimonAlexanderO Simon on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simonalexandero/ Simon's Website: https://www.simonalexanderong.com   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   I'm delighted to welcome to our show today. Simon Alexander Ong. He's an award-winning life and executive coach, keynote speaker, an author of the book Energize. But before we get a chance to speak with Simon, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: What would you do with an extra two hours a week? Just two. Now, imagine if you could even create more free time, here's an equation I want you to think about. Structure plus discipline, equals freedom. Do you believe that to be true? The reality is, by giving us disciplines within a structure creates capacity for us to do other things. But if we get caught up in the moment, here's a few tech hacks will help us unlock capacity. Set up email filters. in a perfect world we'd only have emails hit our inbox for those that we really needed. The reality is, our inbox gets inundated with emails, not only internally, but from marketeers and those who choose to spam us. Given the fact we don't already have enough, right? You can set up rules that help you filter emails. There's software out there as well. But your firm will probably just let you use the one that you are used to use. But most email service providers let you automatically create labels, filters, and folders. And rule of mine, when I'm on vacation, CC into the delete box. And only if it's resent as a main message, I'd read it. Asynchronous and automatic meetings. Now asynchronous meetings means that you don't have meetings per se, but you use other mediums to communicate through Teams or Zoom or slack or whatever it is you use. Collectively the stuff still gets done, but in a more flexible way, other ways of course is using automation. And according to a recent survey by Dialpad, 83% of professionals spend between at least four to twelve hours in back-to-back meetings. And in my experience, I'd love it to be so few. To help you. You can use automated meeting calendars and you can ask your teams to work with that calendaring system. Also just create space and blocks so that others don't take advantage of your open calendar system. For those of you, a little late adopter to computers, talk to type functions, you might want to take a look. Speech recognition software can really speed up how you take notes, prepare meetings, and you can even use your computers, talk to type function, to dictate emails or other documents, or even play emails back to you invoice while you are walking the dog, or you are in between meetings. And while voice recognition software has come a long way. It's not perfect. So, you'll need to make sure that you use it in the right way and double check it, particularly if you're going to publish to anywhere. And in the hybrid world, we're in, this is not necessarily a tech hack, but a hack it is nonetheless. Let somebody else do the cooking. If you're working from home, weekday meals could take up a lot of time, including the planning, shopping, preparing, cooking. And if you find yourself running late or nipping to the store, by the time you've got your produce back and you cut your vegetables, you might already have wasted another hour. You can use lots of pre-cooked meals or boxed meals to help you become more efficient in the way that you work and the way that you prepare your dinners. Our greatest commodity is time. And once we spend our time, we can't get it back. As of today, 48% of people say that they don't have enough time to do what they want. So, take control of some of the technology and some of the innovation that is around us and give it a try. Remember, there's a bit of learning here, so you'll have to spend some time figuring out what works and what doesn't work for you. For that reason, look for apps and look for other technologies that support you in your approach to being awesome. So, get out there and have a go. That's been The Leadership Hacker in News. Don't forget you can always share your ideas and things that you want us to talk about in the show, by contacting us through our social media.   Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Simon Alexander Ong is our special guest on today's show. He's a personal growth entrepreneur, coach, and speaker. He's also the author of the book Energize. Simon, welcome to the show, my friend! Simon Alexander Ong: Steve, thank you so much for having me on. Steve Rush: I'm really looking forward to today. And the whole subject of energize is probably the most timely for everybody. All of that will become much more apparent as we dive into the themes. The tagline of the book though, Simon is, Make the most out of every moment. And that's exactly what I intend to do with you. So, let's jump straight in and learn a little bit about Simon and your backstory and how you arrived doing what you're doing? Simon Alexander Ong: Sure. So, I was born here in the United Kingdom, Steve to Malaysian parents. And I grew up with this mistaken and belief that success was determined by my job title, be a banker, be a doctor, be a lawyer, be an accountant. And so, my definition was limited to a few choices that I believe would make me successful. Steve Rush: And it's interesting, isn't it? Those labels kind of set you off on a trajectory, didn't they? So, you ended up in a career in banking and then before you knew it, you were doing something else, right? Simon Alexander Ong: Definitely. I mean, I ended up going down the bank route at what was probably the worst possible time, Steve, because this was in the middle of 2007, I had just graduated, and this was also year before the financial crisis. And the first company I started was with Lehman Brothers. And so as, you know, that company collapsed into administration in September, 2008, and now while it was painful at the time, I mean, for anybody who's gone through a redundancy, it is never a nice experience, but at the same time, in hindsight, it was a blessing in disguise because it kick started for me the journey to where I am today, because it got me to question those beliefs that I had held for so long about whether they were really true and whether that was serving me or actually hurting me. And so that was where my interest in the word of entrepreneurship started. And, then it wasn't until 2012 that I really started to focus my energy on what I now get to do today, which is to coach those in leadership positions to speak at conferences and companies. And more recently having finished writing my first book, Steve Rush: Those sliding door moments, isn't it? Where, you know, in the face of adversity, you leave a job that you'd been primed to do all of your life to then find actually it was the sliding door that opened another path. Simon Alexander Ong: Mm-Hmm, mm-hmm. And it's interesting because when I think about that sliding door and I guess many other sliding doors as well, it's that what I've come to understand is that those moments in which we feel at the time are setbacks or failures are actually the very moments that equip us with the wisdom to create the best moments of our life, to step into a path that were completely transform what had come before. Steve Rush: And how much of your growing up with that kind of real strong influence of your folks to say, right. You have to get yourself an academic career and get yourself into a role. How much of that you now still rely on, but in a different way? Simon Alexander Ong: I think I rely a lot less now, obviously because I am not following those definitions now, but I think taking the, I guess the human values from my parents, from my dad's side, I think it has definitely been the hard work element. My dad has always been very committed to what he does. And I think I've taken a lot of that on board. When I do something, I want to see it through to the end. I want to make sure I've given it my best shot. For my mom's side. It has been the empathy, my mom, when you know, before she gave birth to myself and my brother, she was a nurse, and she was very understanding about what other people were going through. And she was able to connect with others in a very powerful way. And so, I think I've taken some of that on board in the work that I do, because coaching, speaking, they are very much a people business. And so, when you engage with someone, it is very important to have that level of emotional intelligence to be able to relate to other people. So, I think those are the values and those are the characteristics that I feel I've taken from my family. Steve Rush: Yeah, awesome. So, then fast forward, you've now just published, Energized, and I have to say, it's a fantastic read. And most importantly, it's getting loads of coverage and you must be really pleased with it, how it's been launched. In fact, I go, as far as say, every time I turn on my social media, there's you and [laugh] and so, you and your marketing team are doing a fantastic job by the way, but I marched to you for that. So, tell us a little bit about that journey. Simon Alexander Ong: Thank you so much. So, I think whenever you start a business, there are lots of roles that you have to take on board because you become your own financial officer, you become your own marketer, your own publicist and so on. And I think when you run a business, you have a natural preference for certain activities, more than others. And for me, because I've always enjoyed speaking, I've grown up with social media, if you like when I was finishing university, I very much enjoyed the marketing side. So, for me, in getting the book out to the world, once the marketing campaign kicked in, I was very much in my element, Steve, because I was looking at ways that we can take videos of the journey. I was looking at partnerships that we could create. I mean, we partnered with The Connaught Hotel to create a signature cocktail inspired by the book. We put together a video trailer in the same way that movies do before the film is released in the cinema. And just last week we partnered with two companies to host one of the world's first book launches in the metaverse. And so, for me, that's what really gives me energy is, to explore this creative side of my brain especially when it's been around the book, which has also been a very important milestone for myself. Steve Rush: Mm-Hmm indeed it has, yeah. So, what was that defining moment then Simon? When you thought I've got something here? I need to kind of put pen to paper. Simon Alexander Ong: [Laugh] well, what is interesting because if I look back at the book journey, Steve, I wasn't actually planning to write a book. I mean in the middle of 2019, where I sat down and reflected on the first half of the year and started to plan for the second. Writing a book was not on my top three or even top five priorities until towards the end of that year, I got approached by a boutique publisher. And they asked if I was interested in writing a book and I thought, well, it doesn't hurt to have a conversation. And so, I went along, I had a coffee to hear what they had in mind. And I came away from that conversation thinking, well, if I was to only write one book, would I be happy with what they were sharing and working with them? And the answer for me was, no. I mean, I had a feeling inside of me that would regret if I didn't think bigger than where I was at the moment. And so, I went away, Steve and I started to reach out to the Penguins, Simon Schuster, Harper Collins, Hay House, some of these big names in the publishing world. And out of the people I reached out to, Penguin was the only one that responded. And so, in January 2020, we met up in person. And still at that point, I didn't know what I was going to write about because I didn't even know if I was going to get a book deal and if this was going to progress. And so, after that conversation, they came back to me and said, Simon, we would like you to put a book proposal together. And I think that was the time that I started thinking about what this would be about Steve. Steve Rush: Yeah. Simon Alexander Ong: And the book is called Energized. But at the time submitting the proposal, the title I put as a working title was actually originally energy is everything. And the reason I put forward that title is because it spoke a lot to my own journey, but also to the fact that when I study some of the most successful leaders in any industry, what I've often found is that they're not necessarily the smartest, the fastest or the strongest, but they are the best when it comes to managing and sustaining their level of energy, because they know that you cannot show up as your best self, if you're always feeling exhausted and drained. Steve Rush: Yeah, and that's cuts across every genre, whether it be business, sport, you look at those that are in peak performance of anything is how they manage their energy to get that optimum performance, right? Simon Alexander Ong: Definitely, definitely, because. Steve Rush: Yeah. Simon Alexander Ong: You have to realize that unless you manage your energy in a sustainable way, you're going to very quickly burn out. And if you want to achieve anything of, you know, on a big scale, you are going to need a lot of energy. And so really understanding how to manage and optimize that will help you in the long term. Steve Rush: Yeah, and energy is everything. Simon Alexander Ong: [Laugh]. Steve Rush: And there's no question, but let's dive into some of the themes within the books and our listeners will be dying to hear about them. Now you've developed four key components as I've called them. They're probably kind of big blocky chapters with lots of really great hacks and tools and tips within them. And I thought it would be really interesting to be able to spin through them and maybe dive into a couple of those themes. Simon Alexander Ong: Definitely. So, I split the book into four parts, part one, awaken your power to rewire your energetic state, three, protect your personal energy and four, supercharge your impact. And the reason I did that is because that takes the reader very much through the journey that I have been on as well as touching on important areas that I've learned over time that can really help us show up as our best selves. So, in the first part, awaken your power. This speaks a lot to the beginnings of my journey. Transitioning from a corporate world to the path of an entrepreneur and how you've got to have some baseline of energy before you can apply some of the knowledge, the strategies, the tips, and hacks that you may hear about. And for me, that always starts with our health. I mean, if there's anything that we've learned over the last couple of years, Steve, is that health really is the first wealth. Steve Rush: Absolutely right, yeah. Simon Alexander Ong: You may have lots of dreams, hopes, and wishes, but unless you're healthy, unless you're able to put those things into action, they will just remain a distant dream. A good way to think about it is this. A healthy person will have lots of things they want to do. The sick will only have one, and that is to get healthy again. And so, once we've put in place some healthy habits, once we've prioritized our health, then we've put a powerful foundation and platform to really build upon. And so that leads into the second part, which is rewire your energetic state. Understanding that it is often the state that we're in that determines the actions, the choices, and the behaviors we take. And then the third part is protecting because once you've got to a point in which you have a lot of energy in your life, it's in a question of, well, how do I protect that? So, I don't leak it away doing things that actually drain me of energy. And I think that can be very challenging for a lot of us, especially when we are ambitious, or we have lots of things we want to do. We forget that creating boundaries to protect our time and breathe oxygen into the things that matter most, just fall by the wayside. Steve Rush: Yeah. Simon Alexander Ong: And so, we have to be aware and conscious of protecting our energy that is aligned to what we want to do in the long term. And the last part really speaks to legacy. You know, I think ultimately, we all want to leave a good legacy behind. And so, the final part, supercharge your impact inspires the readers on how they can go about doing so. Steve Rush: So, let's dive into a couple of things, because there was a few things as I read it that really pricked my conscious, the first one, ironically, was under your, awaken your power. You talk about how we can elevate our consciousness and be really in the presence and in the service of our thoughts. Tell us a little bit about what that really means and how as a leader, I might do that? Simon Alexander Ong: Sure. So, what that speaks to is the fact that you cannot have self-development without self-awareness because you simply can't change what you're not aware of. And so, by elevating our consciousness, it's understanding that beginning of true wisdom is knowing ourselves and that begins with our thoughts. So, when I encourage readers to take up the practice of writing or journaling, what I'm really doing is getting them to better understand themselves because the activity of writing is the cheapest form of therapy. As you get to know yourself, your thoughts, your desires, your challenges, you get greater clarity and understanding on what to do next. But most of us, we keep all of that in our mind and we don't download it onto paper that it can feel overwhelming. Steve Rush: Yes, right. Simon Alexander Ong: But when we can transfer that clutter from our brain onto paper, what happens is that we're able to organize our thoughts in a way that opens up the path to knowing what the next step is. Steve Rush: And that's really quite a powerful thing to do, isn't it? And for those people who haven't yet experienced journaling, it does also take a bit of practice and a bit of discipline too. Doesn't it? Simon Alexander Ong: Definitely, and I think the key with any new practice, Steve is not to pressure yourself on whether I'm doing it right or whether I'm doing it wrong because there's no right way to journal. For some of us, we may need prompts for others we may just want to write down whatever comes to our mind. I mean that's something that was encouraged by Julia Cameron as a concept of morning pages, how I just download whatever's on my mind and then I can filter food out after I put it onto paper. So, the key is, as long as you're journaling, however you're journaling. That is the most important part. Steve Rush: So, as we spin forward, I've kind of raised myself awareness. Now my power is definitely awake. We often find ourselves bumping into what you call energetic blocks. Simon Alexander Ong: Mm. Steve Rush: How would you describe that to our listeners? Simon Alexander Ong: So energetic blocks for me are things that stop you, making progress towards where you want to be and often those can be mental. To give you an example is that if you desire to achieve something, but your critic jumps in and says, you can't do that, it's too difficult. You're too old or you're too young. What's happening is that you have blocked your path of achieving what you want to do. You're setting up these obstacles, these blocks that are going to prevent you from making progress. So, once we understand the nature of how this works, of how energetic blocks will actually prevent us from making progress the way we want to be. We then have to understand how we can rewire the way our mind works. So that actually those blocks will melt away and allow us to make the steps forward to where we want to be. And very often it simply begins with speaking to ourselves in the same way we would to someone we care about. Because even when we achieve something, Steve, what happens is, the critic was still jumping. Steve Rush: Right. Simon Alexander Ong: You know, when you finish a marathon, despite finishing that challenge, your mind often doesn't focus on the fact you finish it. It says, well, I didn't get the time I wanted, I didn't do this. I didn't do that. And what happens is that we're always focus on what we didn't do rather than what we did. Steve Rush: Yeah. The voice in the head is so powerful. Isn't it Simon? You know, the one that we wake up with in the morning or the last voice we hear before we go to bed and I often have shared before, you know, it's also going to be the last voice that we hear before we die. So, this voice has got to help us out. It's got to be an empowered of us rather than the limit, right? Simon Alexander Ong: Totally. Because the person and you alluded to it just now, Steve, the person you are going to speak to the most in your lifetime is yourself. And so, words do have power. I mean, they have the ability to serve a prison sentence to your potential or free and awaken it to achieve and express its full creativity. Steve Rush: I love that. I'm going to write that down. Prison sentence to your potential. That's a belter. I love that, Simon. So now we've managing to get round our blocks. What we often find is that we perhaps don't pay enough attention to our energy states and indeed where we get our energy from and how we manage that. And my favorite chapter in your book is managing your energy, not your time because you know, you can't manage time. Time's going to manage us, but we've got full control over our energy, right? Simon Alexander Ong: Definitely. I mean, when we think about productivity, a lot of us jump exclusively to managing our time better. But the issue with is that if we only focus on managing our time better, we forget that our energy is not constant. When we only focus on managing our time, we mistakenly assume that our energy's uniform for the whole day when in fact it isn't. And so, if I'm opening up my calendar and I look at the afternoon and I go, okay, I'm going to block out four o'clock to five o'clock to go and do a workout. I'm then going to tackle this big task at six o'clock. What actually happens in reality is you never get around to doing so because on average, our energy starts to decline as we move through the afternoon. And so, what you're doing here is you're working against your energy rather than with it. And so, once we start understanding our own energy rhythm, so for some of us, we may be early rises. Others might be night owls. Some of us might be energized in the afternoon. Some of us might get a slump in the afternoon. Once we understand those data points, what happens is that we can begin working with our energy and not against it. And so, if you are an early riser, then it makes sense to tackle your most important task first thing in the morning, if you are a night owl, then it makes sense to do some of that work at the end of the day. Steve Rush: Yeah. Simon Alexander Ong: But you won't know that until you understand at a deeper level how your energy fluctuates throughout the day. And that's why a term that I used in the book; Steve is being a better CEO. Steve Rush: Yeah. Simon Alexander Ong: Energy officer. Steve Rush: Yeah, exactly. And if you look back over the millennial, this has been written about by all sorts of different religions and gurus that energy as its key source is what's going to create your capability or your productivity. And I know you quote quite a lot of different themes of energy in the book in including, you know, the Chinese Chi and that's very much kind of central to making sure that you are productive. Simon Alexander Ong: Definitely. And that's why when you see somebody, and we would've all come across people like this. You will notice that those who have high energy can get more done in days or weeks than many will get accomplished in months or even years. Steve Rush: Right. Simon Alexander Ong: And that is because how they show up in the same hour that others show up is infinitely different. Steve Rush: And also, I know that this isn't just about being on your game all of the time, a key part of managing your energy is recovery and managing that energy flow too. Isn't it? Simon Alexander Ong: Indeed. I think what we're missing here, Steve is the fact that we are very quick to schedule into our diary, work meetings, social events, and holiday plans, but not so quick in scheduling in me time. Steve Rush: That's right. Simon Alexander Ong: And so just imagine if we were to schedule into our calendar me time, as quickly as we do those other things, I think what then happens is that we start to prioritize those moments of intentional rest rather than just being on all the time, because we can't be on all the time. We're not built to be on all the time. And so, we do need those periods to reset, rejuvenate and recharge. Steve Rush: Yeah, and one of the things into this part of the book, I love as well is, you call it how you can go about electrifying your environment. Tell us about that? Simon Alexander Ong: I've gone through a number of experiences that really electrified my environment, Steve. So, one of the messages I often share with clients and audiences is that the fastest way to make progress is to design an environment that makes it impossible not to succeed. And a lot of that comes down to how you are electrifying your environment, because if you are in environments that simply electrify you, open your mind to new ideas, elevate your thinking from big to astronomical. Then what happens is that you have a constant supply of energy from that source. Now your environment, isn't just people you spend time with. It is also what you watch, what you listen to, who you follow on social media, your physical environment, your digital environment, all of these things act as a force and an influence are not only how you see yourself, but what you see as possible for your future. Steve Rush: And we often don't realize that our environment has changed so much over the last ten years. Some of the things like news, media, TV, and social media, that's so accessible to us now, if we're not really thoughtful about where we consume and indeed what we consume from those channels, it can have a massive impact on energy. Can't it? Simon Alexander Ong: Definitely. And that's why it goes back to the point of being aware. You know, if we're not a aware or consciously aware of how our environment is influencing our behavior and our energy, then what happens is that we simply become a victim to external events. But when we begin to take responsibility for where we are and where we want to be, that's when we actually deepen our awareness of, are we spending time focusing on things we can control or we're focusing on things we can't? And for many of us, it tends to be on the latter. Steve Rush: You also talk about the environment being broader than what we just talked about indeed people as well, that you actually can infect and be infected positively adversely by people's energy states too. Simon Alexander Ong: Definitely. And this is why you know, being aware and curating your environment is so important because energy is neutral in the sense that it doesn't care if you're spending time around negative or positive sources, you simply become infected by whatever quality of energy you spend time with. So of course, the more time you spend around negative sources of energy in no time, you're going to feel very negative. And likewise, if you spend a lot of time around sources of energy that are positive, in no time, you're going to start feeling very positive. And this is why we have to be very careful about the energy that we expose ourselves to. Because very quickly we become like the energy that we are associated with. Steve Rush: You can't always visibly see this, but you can feel it. It's almost like a, I don't know how you'd describe it, but like it radiates from people. You can physically get good vibes, bad vibes, call it what you like from people. And that draws people to people, and it pushes them away. Doesn't it? Simon Alexander Ong: Definitely, I mean, there's an interesting study that I came across in the research from my book, Steve, that showed that young children especially those under the age of three or four actually understand this in a way that we don't. So, to give an example, under the age of three or four children are still learning to speak fluently. So often they still speak quite broken, but if they were to walk into a room in which you know, parents have had an argument, a child can sense that and will react very differently to if the parents were very happy and were showering the child with love because they can't articulate those things in words, but they do it through emotion and body language. It's been shown that children actually can feel the energy of a room. Steve Rush: It's fascinating, isn't it? In fact, I was chatting to a future guest last week. Simon Alexander Ong: Mm-hmm. Steve Rush: And they do leadership work with horses. Simon Alexander Ong: Mm-hmm. Steve Rush: And apparently horses can also feel energy from people in a very similar way. And, you know, they've described taking leadership teams to stables and the horse's kind of spooking because they're not particularly effective. And conversely, you know, you can see these animals physically manifest when there's a positive energy with this team. Find it really fascinating. Simon Alexander Ong: Definitely. Even if we look at organizations, I mean, those in positions of leadership are like the thermostat of the energy field of an organization, the leader is. Steve Rush: Yeah. Simon Alexander Ong: Constantly emitting positive energy and vibes, then guess what? The people beneath him or her will feel exactly the same. And it's seeing when they show up with. Steve Rush: Yeah. Simon Alexander Ong: Negative energy, of course, everybody around him or her will start feeling negative. And so, that's the same thing when we think about organizations Steve Rush: And you close off your book with supercharging your impact, and ironically, the title of the book that you had planned was the last chapter of your book. Simon Alexander Ong: [Laugh] Steve Rush: Energy is everything. And how would you just kind of summarize the whole kind of energy and energy state? Simon Alexander Ong: Sure. So, to summarize, think of it this way for the listeners. You may call it Chi. I mean, we've touched on that before, you may call it Chi if you come from Chinese culture. If you come from Maui culture, you will probably call it Mana or if you're a fan of the Star Wars film franchise, you will call it the force. Now, whatever we are referring to, it is the same thing, which is energy as a life force. And for me, once we start to tap into that from a spiritual and emotional and mental and a physical perspective, we begin to not only unleash our deepest potential, but what happens is we actually start to contribute to a story that will positively influence all the lives of people to come into contact with us. And that for me is how we supercharge our impact. It's by understanding the relationship we have with our energy as a life force and then to sharing that with other people so that they will be inspired to step out of the shadows of their own story and into the light of their hero potential Steve Rush: Love it. I think it's amazing. So, we are going to share with our listeners at the end of the show, how they can get a copy of the book and learn more about you. Before I do that, though, I'm going to just flip the lens a little, and I'm going to hack into your great entrepreneurial and developmental brain and try and get you to distill all of that wise learnings and research into your top three leadership hacks, Simon, what would they be? Simon Alexander Ong: Sure. So, if I had to extract free leadership hacks, the first would be to ask for help. The second would be to help others. And the third would be to diversify your inputs. And I'll just elaborate briefly on each one. So, the first ask for help. Simply taps into the concept that we never get to the top alone. And unless you are humble enough to embrace that eternal student mindset and to ask for help from other people, people that may be better than you in some respects with regards to skills or knowledge or insights, then what happens is that you start to think more innovatively and creatively. So, ask for help would be the first one. Second would be help others. You know, something I learned from one of my mentors, a man called Bob Burg, who co-authored the book, The Go-Giver is, that the secret to success is giving. And that is because our value as a human on this planet is determined by how much more we have given to the world than we have taken from it. And I think that the more we can help others, the more that we can unleash other people's leadership potential. Then what happens is that through that process, we are demonstrating leadership ourselves. Steve Rush: Perfect example, of course, is when you give energy to people and you give the right attitude and environment, you get it back. Simon Alexander Ong: This is Kamer in action. Steve Rush: Yeah. Simon Alexander Ong: And the third one there is to diversify your inputs. And this is what I mean by diversity your inputs. If you only look at your competition, you can only be as good as your competition. And that immediately sets a bar to your growth because you're only using your competition as a benchmark. But once you open your mind to people from very different industries, from different walks of life, from different experiences, you begin to awaken your creative potential. And this is how innovation is born. It's not born by looking your competitors. It's born by looking at people outside of your industry, and then bringing in the impact and influence of those inputs into your own so that you are seen as innovative. So, to give an example, the idea for the cocktail to mark the launch of my book, Steve, that came about from being connected to the bartender, the world's best bar, The Connaught Hotel. The idea for the video trailer came from my conversations with a friend who directs movies. And so, by diversifying the inputs I have into my environment and my mind, I'm able to really explore my creativity. Steve Rush: Yeah, I love it. Super hacks. So, in the next part of the show, Simon, we call it Hack to Attack. Simon Alexander Ong: [Laugh]. Steve Rush: So, this is typically where it hasn't gone well. Now, you've had an incredible success journey, but there have probably been times as all of us where, you know, it's all gone wrong, and it's not worked out as we'd intended. So, as a result of that though, has there been a time where something's gone wrong and it's now serving you well? Simon Alexander Ong: Definitely. I think the first example that came to my mind as you asked that question, Steve was the beginning of my speaking journey. And you may record a story actually because I shared it in a chapter in my book and it was when I got invited for my first paid speaking. I'd never done that before. I mean, I've done free talks before, but this was my first paid speaking. Steve Rush: Yeah. Simon Alexander Ong: And so, I prepared rigorously for the delivery. I had notes, I had bullet points on what I wanted to cover. And I made my way to the event, which was held in Canary Wharf in London. It was at the top of one of these skyscrapers and fifty minutes before we were about to start, I checked him with the team. I said, are we all good? Can they see my slides? Does the tech work? And everything was okay. And then as I started to put my notes on the keyboard of my laptop so that I can reference them throughout the delivery, I noticed that in my rush, out of my house, I brought with me the wrong set of notes, i.e., the wrong set of paper. And suddenly I was thinking, do I continue? Or do I stop. Steve Rush: One of those moments, isn't it? Simon Alexander Ong: Where your kind of like, well, I didn't expect this. And so, I had to really regroup myself. And just for context, keep in mind this wasn't like a Ted Talk that was only 20 minutes long. This was a 90-minute workshop. So, this was a lengthy delivery, but I stayed there, and I followed through and delivering to the audience. And if there's anything I took from that experience, Steve, it's how to buy time when you need time to think about what you're going to say next [laugh]. Steve Rush: Yes. I've been there many times. Simon Alexander Ong: And so, I remember a point saying to the audience when I needed the space to think what was going to come next, because I didn't have my notes with me. I would say things such as well. I would like you to take a moment now to turn to the person to the left and right of you and share your thoughts to what I just asked. And I would give them around five or six minutes or so. And I would use that time to think about what I'm going to say next, or what was I meant to say next? And so that taught me how to speak when things don't always go your way but also to speak without notes. And I think that has served me well since then, Steve. Steve Rush: Super example. So, the last thing we get to do is give you the opportunity for a bit of time travel. Simon Alexander Ong: [Laugh]. Steve Rush: And you can bump into Simon at twenty-one and give him some words of wisdom. Now, what do you think that might be? Simon Alexander Ong: So much to share so much to tell Steve. I think the first thing that comes to mind, if I were to sit in front of that twenty-one Simon would be trust what your heart is telling you more than the approval of others. Because listen to your heart may not always get you to where you want to be, but it will always get you to where you need to be. Steve Rush: Yeah. Simon Alexander Ong: And it's far better spending a time doing that than it is seeking validation from people who don't really care about your success. Steve Rush: It's an interesting use of phraseology as well, listening to your heart because actually people argue, you probably have people at the end of their devices now going, how do you listen to someone's heart? The irony of what you've just described actually is listen to your energy. Meta physicians around the world will tell you that that's what's happening. It's the energy, right? Simon Alexander Ong: Definitely because that's why I described in the second, I think it's the second or the third chapter that the longest journey we make as humans are the inches for my heads to our hearts. Steve Rush: Yeah. Simon Alexander Ong: And the reason, it's never an easy journey because as you say, Steve, it's really about listening to our body and our energy. And some of us got the opportunity to do that when the world was in lockdown, because when you couldn't go outside, the only place you could go was inside. Steve Rush: Yeah, that's right. Simon Alexander Ong: And so, as we reflected at a deep level about where we were in life and whether we were doing this sort of work, that brought fulfillment, it made many of us question what our next set of actions would be. Steve Rush: Mm-Hmm. Simon Alexander Ong: And I think a lot of that did contribute to this experience that is going on in America. And I'm pretty sure elsewhere in the world called the great resignation because people are now awakening to the fact that maybe I should give what I really want to do a shot. Steve Rush: Yeah, and we're seeing that everywhere in every walk of life, which is really fascinating too. So, what's next for you then Simon? What's on the cards? Simon Alexander Ong: [Laugh]. So, for me, I'm just enjoying as much as I can now, Steve, the book being out in the world, seeing in people's hands. I'm due to speak in India next month, next month, being June. So doing a free city tour and then Dubai in September. And I'm going to start thinking about book number two, because I'm already flush with lots of ideas on the back of this book. And so, join us for a moment, Steve, and then I I'll slowly see what's next. Steve Rush: Fantastic. Sounds like episode number two for you. Simon Alexander Ong: [Laugh]. Indeed, indeed. Steve Rush: So, Simon, where can our listeners get a copy of Energize and tap into the great resources that you're putting out to the world right now? Simon Alexander Ong: Sure. So, to learn more about the book and purchase a copy. You can head to getenergizebook.com. That is energized with a Z. And if you would like to connect with me or ask any questions on the back of this conversation, then you can find me on all social media platforms. But the two that I use the most are LinkedIn and Instagram in which my handle is at @Simonalexandero. Steve Rush: Simon, thank you ever so much for coming and join us on the show. I am pretty certain that there is a massive opportunity around a corner for you. You are putting great energy out there and I'm certainly benefiting from it personally. So, thank you for that, and thank you for coming on the show and being part of our community. Simon Alexander Ong: Steve, thank you so much and very grateful to have been invited onto your show. Steve Rush: Thanks Simon. Closing Steve Rush: I want to sign off by saying thank you to you for joining us on the show too. We recognize without you, there is no show. So please continue to share, subscribe, and like, and continue to get in touch with us with the great new stories that we share every week. And so that we can continue to bring you great stories. Please make sure you give us a five-star review where you can and share this podcast with your friends, your teams, and communities. You want to find us on social media. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter @leadershiphacker, Leadership Hacker on YouTube and on Instagram, @the_leadership_hacker and if that wasn't enough, you can also find us on our website leadership-hacker.com. Tune into next episode to find out what great hacks and stories are coming your way. That's me signing off. I'm Steve Rush, and I've been your Leadership Hacker.  

Joseph O'Connor is the founder of the Neuroscience Coaching Centre, Co-Founder of the ICC, The International Coaching Community. Joseph is one of the worlds most renowned experts on NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming and written dozens of articles, over 20 books and education material on NLP and Coaching. In this show you can learn about: What Neuroplasticity is and how we could develop it. How can we coach the brain? The difference between experiences vs. the medical parts of the brain What is hot cognition and why it is so important?   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services.   Find out more about Joseph Joseph's website: https://www.coachingthebrain.com Joseph on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephlambent/ Joseph email: joseph@thecreatorsclub.net     Full Transcript Below   Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach, or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker. Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as The Leadership Hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you The Leadership Hacker News How many leaders does it take to change a light bulb? Well, the answer's one, however, it takes seven or eight leaders to decide that it's the right light bulb to change that it needs changing now, and that we have the right technical kit and equipment to change the light bulb. So where am I getting at here? Well, I asked a question. What is the optimum number of leaders that we need typically in a quorum to make the right decisions? There's lots of research about this. So, I dove into Harvard Business Review and Governance today. Harvard Business Review claims that seven is the right number and odd numbers in fact of any criteria is a good thing. While Governance today said it was eight to ten. Getting back to your actual number, think about the benefits of a large group. The more people you have, theoretically, the better chance you have getting the best information. However, if that said seven or ten have really opened channels of communication, have created a flow of information through their workforce, then it is probably the right number. What is critically important however, is the diversity of that seven to ten, making sure they bring social sensitivity to situations, making sure that they reflect the true voice of their workforce in those meetings and have the real clarity understanding of expectations from not only their workforce, but their shareholders too. Going way back to the 1970s research concluded by Hackman and Vidmar on the Optum size of groups for membership, communication and outcomes actually composed an optimum size of four point six. This is based on research and science and still holds true somewhat today. Their study concluded that senior teams operate best when the optimum size of number is about seven. Correlated with our recent research, the research and studies provide evidence that the more the numbers are in a team and particularly a leadership team, the more likely the team is to encounter problems with its functioning and its outcomes. So, getting the size right, get the diversity of your team, right, tick, but let's not forget. Engagement of that team is incredibly important, and size alone is not sufficient in creating a winning success. That success depends on you as the leader of that leadership team, encouraging, engaging, and facilitating great conversations so they put their energy to the front so that you all collectively can achieve your goals. And for those listeners here today who have maybe smaller teams than seven in its entirety, who's on your personal board? How do you extend that team? So, you get diversity of thinking input and ideas. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. Let's dive into the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Our special guest today is Joseph O'Connor. He's the founder of the Neuroscience Coaching Center, co-founder of the ICC, that's the International Coaching Community. And he's one of the most renowned experts on NLP Neurolinguistic Programming. Joseph's written dozens of articles and over twenty books on the education of NLP and coaching. In his new book, Coaching The Brain, he explores how we can use our knowledge of the brain to help ourselves and others learn. We're truly in the presence of one of the world's global thought leaders in this space. Joseph, welcome to the show. Joseph O'Conner: Thanks Steve. It's great to be here. Many thanks for those kind words. Steve Rush: You're very welcome. You have an incredible history. There are very few guests that I get to speak to where I already have a bunch of their books that have taught me on my journey and yours is one of those. So, I'm delighted that we have the chance to speak it through. Tell us a bit about that, journey for you? Joseph O'Conner: Originally [laugh]many years ago, I was professional guitarist. I was a professional musician, and this got me into an interest, of course, in how we perform? You know, how people do well or not. Because if you're playing classical guitar in front of a group of people, it's quite nerve wracking. So, I found that with most players, I could teach them how to play, but I couldn't teach them how to be able to give their best in front of a challenging audience. If you see what I mean, you know, that's just the first thing. I think in any kind of skill you can teach the skill, you can learn the skill, but it's something else to actually be able to do the skill when you really need to, especially if it's under challenging conditions. So, this really got me interested, in first of all, NLP, coaching you know, in a game of all sorts of things and really how we can get out of our own way when we really need to deliver. Steve Rush: And since then, you have really dedicated almost a lifetime's work in that subject of NLP and coaching. What were the things that really drew you into that as a genre and as a philosophy, if you like? Joseph O'Conner: Well, I've always been interested in the inner game as it were. It's fantastic to see people who are really, really good at something, you know, whether it's athletics, music theater, presentations, teaching, it doesn't matter, in anything. You see someone who's really, really good at something and it looks easy. I can remember as a kid seeing these great guitarists and thinking, hey, I could do that. You know, that looks really easy. And then when you actually come to do it, it's not, it's quite different. So, it's like what goes on inside as it were, these great people that allow them to not only do so well, but also to make it look so easy. And I guess this is what interested me all through when I was learning anything, that inner game thing, really. Steve Rush: And the inner game as you call it, it's almost where NLP really overlays particularly well. So, the neuro is the neocortex, the part of our brain that's kind of supportive. And then of course. Joseph O'Conner: Yeah. Steve Rush: Neuro and linguistic is in how we teach our brain to perform in a certain way. And it is about teaching in habits, isn't it? Joseph O'Conner: Yes, it is. I mean, I got on to NLP [laugh] again, through music, which was funny, but yes, neuro you know, the brain, the mind, how we think? Linguistic, how we communicate? Because language is just so amazing. There aren't that many words, but the ways that we can put them together to be able to communicate with ourselves and with others is just incredible. And my father was an actor and a writer as well. So, I kind of got that quite early and then programming, because I don't think the brain really works as a computer. I think that's an out molded metaphor, but the programming in the sense of how do we accomplish things, you know, how do we actually do things? How does it all work together in order to get things done? I think that's the basis of NLP. And then of course those things in terms of, what do we want? What are our goals? What's important to us? What do we believe? How do we act? This is all really important in coaching and getting the best from ourselves and from other people. Steve Rush: And the irony of course is, that we've all been programming our brain broadly unconsciously from the moment that we were aware of the first environmental things around us. We started that coding and programming from a very early age, often that send us on a track, which we either recognize is helpful or hold us back, right? Joseph O'Conner: Yeah, well, you know, when we're babies and children, we just take in the world and we don't discriminate very much about it you know, we don't make judgements about it so much. So, we are very, very sensitive. I think that's the great strength of human beings. We're incredibly sensitive to each other, to language, to the messages we receive. And we're always, always looking to try and make it mean something. To try and understand it, and to help to predict what's going to happen because a random world, you know, where we just don't know what's going to happen next. We can't prepare for it. It's awful. It's an awful idea. So, we're always trying to predict, we're always trying to have ideas, beliefs, mental models that allow us to predict and find our way through the world in the best way. And yes, we are very sensitive to this, and of course our great strength and weakness is our ability to learn and to take in information and on a neuroscience point of view, it's that neuroplasticity of the brain, it's the brain's ability to change itself in response to experience. So, I like to think of the brain as a verb, you know, when we think of the brain, we kind of think of a big lump of whatever. It's a bit like soft butter, really, but it's stuff, but it's really a verb. It's really an organ for converting our experience into nervous tissue. Steve Rush: Mm. Joseph O'Conner: And then the nervous tissue in the brain in turn influences our experience and what we do and what we can do on from that. So, it's an amazing dynamic process. And our brain's changing all the time you know, my brain's changing, yours is changing. Our listeners brains will be changed after listening to this podcast. You can't help it. We are influenced by that. And that's both a blessing and a curse because in terms of the brain, the brain doesn't discriminate between some really poor messages and some really good ones. Steve Rush: Mm. Joseph O'Conner: So, it doesn't matter whether people are telling you or you are telling yourself more insidiously you know, I'm no good, I can't do this. This'll never work. All of these repetitive thoughts are going to build up the connections in the brain. That's going to start to make that a habit of thinking. In other words, a thought that's going to be the default easiest thought to fall into, in response to whatever happens. Steve Rush: Yeah. Joseph O'Conner: So, the brain doesn't discriminate about that. If you repeat that and if you get those messages, that's what the brain learns. Whereas of course we don't want to learn that sort of thing. We want the messages of, you know, you are good. You can do this. This is great. This is interesting, but we've got to take charge of our own learning very often. Steve Rush: And the reality is as a species, a human being, human sapien, we really want it to be as straightforward and as easy as possible. We often look for the quickest, fastest, easiest route because our body doesn't like to face into the emotions that come with that challenge, right? Joseph O'Conner: No, indeed. And we're quite lazy thinkers. There's this idea of the cognitive mind, you know? Steve Rush: Yeah. Joseph O'Conner: It's hard work to think clearly and well and we tend to move away from it, which means that sometimes the sapien part [laugh] doesn't work so well. Steve Rush: That's right. Joseph O'Conner: My sapien ends. Steve Rush: And I noticed that you drew a correlation early in your studies, when you were looking at professional musicians who were incredibly well versed, and you facing that kind of ambition to want to do the same. If we apply the approach of neuroscience to those individuals who are excel at anything actually. Joseph O'Conner: mm. Steve Rush: The two or three things that you notice that happen alongside is, one. There's repetition and practice. Because without that, you don't get good. Joseph O'Conner: Yeah. Steve Rush: But also, there is a definite conditioning of the mind that said I can, which keeps people going rather than I can't and holds people back. And that's also a core part of NLP teachings, isn't it? Joseph O'Conner: Oh, yes. Yeah, absolutely. You know, there's that saying? Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you are right. Steve Rush: Yeah. Joseph O'Conner: Because in that sense, you've conditioned yourself to, or put it this way, if you're going to succeed, it's good to believe it, right. You go into it fully, wholeheartedly, committedly. You're much more likely to succeed than if you go into it thinking, oh, well, maybe, you know, I'm not so sure about this. I'm not so good. That's kind of setting yourself up for failure. Now, there's no guarantees in the end of course. You may or may not get what you want, but you're more likely if you enter into it with those more positive intentions and positive ideas. Steve Rush: Yeah. Joseph O'Conner: And the repetition is important, absolutely. That's the way that we build habits. And we want to build habits because habits just help us to do things automatically. And we don't want to have to think over carefully, everything that we possibly do, these habits are really important, there's the saying, I think from the Chinese originally, that habits start as cobwebs, but they may end as chains. You know, we want to be careful what sort of habits we form because they're incredibly powerful. Steve Rush: Yeah, be careful what you wish for and all that, isn't it? Joseph O'Conner: Absolutely. Steve Rush: Yeah. Joseph O'Conner: Absolutely. Steve Rush: So, we're going to dive into a little bit about coaching the brain and neuroplasticity and neuroscience in the moment before I do, though, I'm just intrigued to dive into the whole community that you set up and founded. So, the ICC is definitely one of the most recognized international coaching communities in the world. And that must be a fantastic experience to have seen that grow from a little acorn into hundreds of trees all over the world now. Tell me a little bit about the ICC? Joseph O'Conner: Yes, well, we started the ICC myself and my wife and partner, Andrea. We started it in Brazil. In fact, around about 2001, we wanted to form something that encapsulated those three words. Like coaching, yes, absolutely. We were both coaches. We were both passionate and are passionate about helping people to be the best they can be as well as ourselves. So coaching, yes, international, we started internationally. The first was in Poland, I think. The second was in Rio Janeiro. The third was in Arboga in Sweden. So, it's like, it was international right from the start. And, you know, there's something about coaching something about people and helping people in this way that is international, it's transcends culture and country. When you dig down, we're all human beings and we all respond to the same basic things of what we want and what's important to us. That international was very important from the start and then community, we chose that word quite carefully because a community is a group of people that wants to be together that shares value. I think very important for a group of people, because yes, you can kind of group together, you can be together, but do you want to be together? Do you share those values? And that for us was really important. So yes, we started then and now the ICC has, oh, I don't know, the exact numbers, but something like sixteen thousand trained certified coaches in over sixty countries. And we have fifty trainers all over the world. Steve Rush: Yeah. Joseph O'Conner: So, it's wonderful to see. Steve Rush: Amazing legacy, amazing legacy, and then fast forward to today. What's the focus of both you and Andrea's work today? Joseph O'Conner: Well, I'm particularly interested at the moment in creativity, this kind of strange word you know, we say creativity, but it's really a process. Again, it's really about, how are you thinking? What are you doing? And it's probably the most valued and valuable commodity, process, gift, whatever you want to call it, talent that there is around because, you know, as the world moves so far, especially technologically. You can create good products and have good ideas, but then, you know, [laugh] maybe a year, maybe months, maybe weeks later and the world's caught up and you've got to continue to do it. And I think you can see this really clearly with businesses. The businesses that are doing well are, the fast, nimble creative ones that are always being able to change and adapt and come up with something that works rather than the more monolithic you know, here's the product and this is great, and this is how it's going to be. You've got to keep changing. So that ability to come up with something new, that works, that's appropriate, that fits, is just so important and something that I've got really interested in and how it relates to our intuitions about what to do and what works. Steve Rush: Yeah, and I've also had a passion for creativity and studied it too. And delighted, we can kick this around, because what I've found in my research and exploring this whole philosophy is, this is something that as young children, we did incredibly well, we were naturally intuitive and we were naturally would go with our gut feel and we would be creative and we would play. But as we got a little bit older and more mature in our years and our days, it often was squeezed out of us unconsciously or consciously in some cases by our environment. What's the reason from your perspective, do you think that some people really struggle with this whole label of creativity? Joseph O'Conner: Well, yeah, a lot. I mean a lot of people think they aren't creative. They think that it's some kind of magical talent that you are born with or not. And I don't think that's true at all. I think we're all naturally creative just by virtue of being human. Steve Rush: Right. Joseph O'Conner: I mean, you're quite right about children and being creative. And I can remember myself and I think we all can of those feelings when we were young, when it's just, yeah, we could just think and play, and it would be very spontaneous and flowing. And then gradually as you say, this tends to go. And I think, I mean, there's many reasons, but I think one of the reasons is the way sometimes that people are taught, like, here's the right answer, okay. Steve Rush: Mm-hmm. Joseph O'Conner: And this is how it's done and well, yes, this is all very interesting what you are doing, but you know, you're not quite right. This is a little bit silly. This is how it's done. This is the right answer. And we get imprisoned by the bars of the right answer. And then we forget all about the other answers and we forget that the right answer is only right in terms of the right question. It's the question that's important. Not the answer. Steve Rush: Yeah. Joseph O'Conner: The answer is only a response to the question. If you generate interesting, good, powerful, and new questions, you are going to get better answers. And I remember reading a statistics somewhere and I can't remember it exactly, unfortunately, but it's something like at the age of seven. The average child asks something like two hundred questions a day, right, [laugh]. Steve Rush: Wow. Joseph O'Conner: By the age of twenty-seven, it's down to about four questions a day. Steve Rush: Blimey. Joseph O'Conner: Of which one is probably, what's for lunch? [Laugh]. Steve Rush: [laugh]. Joseph O'Conner: But you know, you can see that and that I think encapsulates what happens with us and how we tend to kind of sink into this well yeah. But all the answers are out there, let's just fit into them. Steve Rush: And do you think there's something to do with habit here as well? We get out the habit of being creative. We get out the habit of play. We get out the habit of asking questions. Joseph O'Conner: Yeah, we do. You know, for again, from the neuroscience point of view, habit is something that you've practiced with attention. And if it's a good habit, it fits, and you've done it and you've built it up consciously. So, you forget about it. You know, all of these things that we do automatically, we don't have to think about them. We forget about them. I think there's something really important about choosing your habits well. You choose your habits well, including habits of thinking, then you are going to do much better. And if one of those habits is thinking yes, of course I'm creative. Even if it's only in small ways, I am creative, I am intuitive. I can do this. And to give yourself the opportunity to do it and to continue to repeat doing it. Although of course you're not always going to be so successful as you would like, it's that repetition, it's the attention. It's the emotion and the value behind it. That's going to drive you forward and you'll get better at it. There's no doubt about it. Steve Rush: Yeah, and there's part of the limbic system called the basal ganglia, whose job it is to keep us in that habit. And as soon as we don't give it attention, it starts to lose that habit. And all the, while we think that habits formed, we can also lose habits as quickly as we can repeat them and gain them. Joseph O'Conner: Yeah, we can lose habits. And of course, a lot of people want to lose habits. Steve Rush: Yeah. Joseph O'Conner: And that's fine. And you can, of course, and the way to lose a habit is to replace it by another one. I like the metaphor of the ski slope. It's like, you've got the ski slope with this unbroken snow, which is like the metaphor for the brain. And there aren't any connections. So, then the first skier goes down and makes a track. There's already a track in the snow, tends to follow that. And the third and the fourth. So, after a while, because so many skiers have gone down in the same way, you've got this track and that's the habit. Steve Rush: Yeah. Joseph O'Conner: And that's the connection in the brain that's been worn down. So that's the default way that people will go down. Now, if you want to change the habit, what you have to do is, to ski down another way, not use the ski track that's already there. Steve Rush: Yeah. Joseph O'Conner: And if you continue then to ski down the other way, you'll make a track there and the snow will cover over the first one. So, we are more in control. We are in control of our habits as long as we feel that, and we can change them when we become aware of them. And of course, the difficulty is always, the habit is easy, it's the path of the least resistant. Steve Rush: It's a fabulous analogy. I'll be absolutely using that from today onwards. Thank you for sharing it. Joseph O'Conner: [Laugh], good. Joseph O'Conner: So, let's dive into the book, Coaching The Brain. What was the inspiration for you having? And if I can be so bold, you've covered pretty much every genre across the whole NLP and coaching landscape that I can see. Then coaching the brain seems like an obvious place to fit because that's pretty much all of the teachings I think you've had in the past. But what was the inspiration for the book for you? Joseph O'Conner: Well, two things. I like to write books on things I'm interested in, and I want to learn about, so I don't like to, I don't want to write a book on something that I feel that I know a lot about, and I'm an expert on, and it's just kind of filling in the pages. I want to write something that I'm interested in. I've always been interested in neuroscience and from a coaching point of view. Well, from any point of view, really, I like to look at the gaps, what's missing in some study? In the same way that as a coach when you ask questions and when people are talking to you, it's of course, interesting to know what they're saying, but it's also very interesting to know what they're not saying. What's missing? What could or even should be there in order to understand what's going on. So, in the same way if we go back a few years, there wasn't a great deal of representation of neuroscience in coaching. Steve Rush: That's right. Joseph O'Conner: And I thought this was a gap, and I thought it was important because the more we know about the brain, the more we can understand the purely psychological models of what works and what doesn't work, and we can refine them, and we can also change them. And we can also get new ones because the cognitive neuroscience is the biology of the mind. So, to understand that biology of the mind is going to help us to understand our mind and others and to use it better. So, the book came from that. It's like, yeah, neuroscience is interesting. I think I want to learn about this. I think it needs to be in coaching. So actually, I went first of all to New York to get a brain scan for myself. Steve Rush: Ah. Joseph O'Conner: [laugh] it's like, you know, let's start with yourself of course. I wasn't ill in any way, but I did want to do this and to find out. So, this was very interesting, and I came back with a lot of highly colored photographs and a lot of insight into how I think and you know, some kind of explanations about, oh yeah, that's always puzzled me. Well, yeah, that's how it works after all. And so, took the book from there, talking with many people, of course, reading and putting it together, but always with a sense of the subtitle of the book, which is practical applications of neuroscience to coaching. Steve Rush: Yeah. Joseph O'Conner: Because, yeah, of course neuroscience is interesting and you can really delve into it how the brain works and you can go into all the Latin names of all the, bits that are there. But in the end, unless you can actually use, for me, anyway, unless you can actually use that to make a difference for yourself and for other people, then for me, it's you know, it's only the first step, so, you know, hey, yeah. How can we use this? What's important? And that's how the book came about. Steve Rush: And I observe in my coaching career, so I've been coaching professionally and as an amateur coach, probably for twenty-five years. And it wasn't until I really understood the impact of neuroscience on my coachee that I really changed my coaching game because it is as simple as just understanding some of the subtle levers we might want to pull or not, as the case may be, the language we could choose, the environment we're in, all of these have an effect on an outcome, don't they? Joseph O'Conner: Yes. Oh yes, they do. Steve Rush: So how do we go about coaching the brain specifically? Joseph O'Conner: [Laugh] well, when you say that's phrase, it's an interesting question, because paradoxically my immediate response would be, we got to be careful not to isolate the brain and to think about when your are coaching somebody, you are just coaching their mind or their brain or any particular part of them. And of course, as coaches, we know, and all good coaches know that you are coaching a human being, mind, body, spirit, all the time. So, in terms of that metaphor of coaching the brain, it's well, how does our understanding of the biology of the mind help us to be better coaches for our clients who come to us and indeed for ourselves in order to be, you know, healthier, happier and more productive? There was three important things. I think, if I could pick the three biggest, most important things that came out of my studies for that book. Steve Rush: Sure. Joseph O'Conner: And they're not rocket science in a way. And you know, anyone listening may think, well, yeah, that's obvious, isn't it? Well, yes. In a way it is, but that's again, you know, when we look at something and say, oh, that's obvious, I knew that. Then sometimes that's an excuse just to forget it and think, well, okay, fine, you know, been there, done that, got the t-shirt and we can forget about it again. But if you take these things seriously, they make a huge difference. So, the first one was sleep. Sleep is really, really important for our brain and for our health. You know, there's only a few things that you die if you don't get them, one is air of course, very quickly, another, is water, food, and the fourth is sleep. If you don't sleep, you die. Takes a few weeks, but you do. And the brain needs sleep in order to consolidate the memories and the skills that you've done. The brain needs rest and healing every night, it's really important. And one thing really struck me with regard to some of the statistics which is, in the UK, of course we have this daylight-saving time where at the end of March, the clocks go forward, I think, and you have one hour less sleep. And even on one hour less sleep. The road traffic accidents due to people not paying attention, spiked dramatically the next day. Steve Rush: Wow. Joseph O'Conner: Even, you know, one hour less sleep. So, to expect people to function well on poor quality and poor quantity of sleep is crazy. And it's such a shame when, you know, hardworking executives will say things like, well, you know, yeah, I can do fine on four hours sleep at night. There's a lot of work to do, right. It's more important than sleep well, in one way, it is. But in the other way, they're working against themselves because if they took an extra two, three hours of sleep, they'd actually do better with the work that they had to do during the day. Steve Rush: Yeah, just one observation actually around sleep. If you think about it in simple terms, if you didn't eat for a whole 24-hour period at worst, you'd be hungry. But if you didn't sleep for a whole 24-hour period, you'd start pumping into psychosis. Joseph O'Conner: Yes. Steve Rush: That's the difference between the two kinds of approaches, isn't it? Joseph O'Conner: [Laugh] yes. Well, I don't know, I'm tempted to say we've all done it and pulled an all nighter. I certainly have, and you're just useless the next day. Completely useless. It's you know, you just lose a day [laugh] instead of doing some good for yourself at night, you just lose the next day. So yeah, absolutely. Steve Rush: So, what were the other things that came out? Joseph O'Conner: Well, exercise, physical exercise, because of course the brain is embodied, it's part of the body and if the body isn't healthy, then the brain doesn't do well either. So physical exercise very important. And the third is meditation, some kind of meditation or mindfulness practice has really iron clad research, in terms of benefits for emotional intelligence, emotional stability, focus, concentration for the brain. Steve Rush: Yeah, all form part of resilience as well. Ironically. Joseph O'Conner: Yes. Steve Rush: Yes. So, when I dove into the book, there were a few areas I'd just love to explore with you. One was hot cognition. Tell us a bit about what that is? Joseph O'Conner: Hot cognition. Yeah, well, I guess the metaphor here and there's been a metaphor like this for thousands of years, the Greeks had this metaphor of the human being as a charioteer. And they have two horses drawing chariot. One is black horse, which represents emotions. And one is the white horse that represents reason. And in the metaphor, which I think Plato used first. The chariot is always trying to get these two horses to kind of work together. And the problem is, very often the black horse of emotions kind of going off their own way and drawing the chariot to one side where they don't want to go. And sometimes that indeed is our experience of emotions kind of take us over and we do or say things that we regret afterwards which is a pity because emotions have enormous energy. And to be able to harness that energy in a constructive way is, really, really important rather than allow the energy to either, you know, explode like in anger or to kind of implode like in anxiety or fear and stop us doing something or in anger, you know, make us do something that we didn't want to do. So, you know, that's one metaphor. Now, the metaphor that I prefer is the hot and cold streams, because all of our thinking is warm to some extent, right. You don't get anyone who's completely cold, rational, logical thought outside Star Trek, you know, outside the Falcon. Steve Rush: [Laugh] yeah. Joseph O'Conner: It doesn't exist. You couldn't do it actually. You couldn't make decisions for a start. So, there's always emotion there. There's no thinking without emotion, there's no emotion without thinking. It's just that our thoughts change temperature, depending on what we're thinking about, who's with us and these sorts of things. So sometimes the thinking is much hotter. It's got much more of an emotional component. So, the parts of brain, particularly the prefrontal cortex that's involved with emotion and integrating emotion is more active. And at other times, the part of the prefrontal cortex is more about rationality and reason, and logic is more active. Most of our thinking is fairly lukewarm. Occasionally maybe if we're doing math's or something, it gets quite chilly. And then if we get really angry, it gets very hot indeed. So, how do we manage that? I think is, the important question in terms of coaching neuroscience and this idea of what sort of thinking and how do we best manage that emotional intelligence as well? Steve Rush: And one of the other areas that I really liked, and I often find itself presents when I'm coaching is the whole notion of identity, the labels people wear. Joseph O'Conner: Mm-hmm. Steve Rush: And I wondered if you give us your spin on how identity forms are part of a coaching conversation and how we might want to help people pay attention to their identity? Joseph O'Conner: Oh, wow. Yeah, how long have we got? [laugh] A couple of days? [laugh]. Well, identity is a strange concept. And again, bit like creativity or the brain. I think it's a process. I don't think it's a thing. I think that once you kind of decide your identity and fix it, then I think you've lost something. I think you've lost an important part of living. Here's just a couple of thoughts. I think irreducibly we all are aware. We can all say I am, and that is in a sense, quite impersonal and the absolute bedrock of our identity. Everyone can say, I am. Now the things that then get pulled on top of that, where people start to say, you know, I am a coach, I am a leader, I am a father, a mother, a child, a teacher, a good person, a bad person, whatever it might be. Those come from the process of living an experience. And sometimes we identify with those for good or bad. So, I think the quick answer would be identity's a process that's always under construction. We all have a bedrock to it, the foundation of it, which is this feeling of I am. And I also think that it's more mutable and more changeable and more chewable perhaps than we sometimes think. Steve Rush: And it can often also create behaviors based on the identity you choose to wear. Joseph O'Conner: Mm-Hmm. Steve Rush: Because as you rightly said, you can choose that identity in different scenarios, and that comes with a different set of behaviors, right? Joseph O'Conner: Yes. Yes. I mean, in many ways we're fully functioning schizophrenics, you know, we are two different people, depending on the context. You know, we all know when I'm with my daughter, I'm a different sort of person to when I'm standing on stage giving a training or when I'm coaching or something like that. Steve Rush: That's right. Joseph O'Conner: We're very flexible in that way, amazingly flexible. But at the same time, there is something there underneath that we can always come back to and know clearly. Steve Rush: Yeah. Joseph O'Conner: To ground ourselves. Steve Rush: So, we're going to give folk an opportunity to dive into the work you're doing. Find out about the book in a little while. Before we do that, though, this is where we turn the table a little and we get to hack into your years of experience of leading teams and leading others. And just dive to find out what your top three leadership hacks would be? Top tools, tips, or ideas. Joseph O'Conner: Oh, wow. One would be authentic, be yourself. Don't try to pretend to be something that you aren't because it doesn't work. Usually, people will see through it. So whatever leadership context you're in, be authentic. Secondly, and this may be a bit of a paradox. You need to adapt to other people, as to what they are. I think one style of leadership for everybody doesn't work. And I think leadership has evolved over the last fifty to a hundred years from a time where it was, this is what you do to be a good leader, you know, learn these characteristics and you'll be a good leader, kind of laundry list thinking. Two, well, there's a whole set of skills here and people are very different. And leadership is a very mutable changing kind of skill that you've got to be very flexible in terms of, you know, it's not just about, I am a leader, but who are you leading? Because a leader, without anybody, as it were to follow them doesn't exist. You know, you can't be a leader on your own crying in wilderness. So, you've got to pay attention and adapt to the people that are with you. Let's put it that way. So that would be the second one. The third one would be the ability and willingness to say no where necessary because you know, people who are good leaders are usually pretty good at delay thing. Therefore, they are under a lot, people ask them, you know, the better you are at something, the more people will ask you to do stuff. And this becomes a vicious circle whereby you start being pretty good at something people start asking you then overburdening you. And very soon, because you're trying to do too much and spreading yourself too thin you lose that edge that you had at the beginning. So, I think again, part of being authentic is to say, this is what I want to do. And these other things, while very interesting. And I wish you the very best with them. They're not for me. Steve Rush: Power of no, really important. Love it. Joseph O'Conner: Yes. Steve Rush: The next part of the show we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something in your life or your work hasn't worked out well, could have even been quite catastrophic, but as an experience, you now use it as a force of good. What would be your Hack to Attack? Joseph O'Conner: There's many examples. Just maybe a more trivial one. Some years ago, I was involved in some marketing, I think it, through some social media or LinkedIn or something like that. And I sent out an email, which I meant to send to one or two people. I sent it out to a list of some thousands of people. And, you know, you have that horrible. Oh my God moment. Steve Rush: Yeah. Joseph O'Conner: You've just pressed send, and then you think just a minute, did I do that right? And then that horrible thinking feeling where, oh God. Steve Rush: Yeah. Joseph O'Conner: So, and you know, a lot of people didn't like that at all, and I felt embarrassed and there was a number of emails back from people, but it taught me lot. It taught me to be able to, and I can remember this now after it happened, it's going, you know, initial panic. Yes. Absolute panic. And then you go, okay, well that's happened and there's no way I'm going to get this back. So, you better deal with it [Laugh]. And so, in that sense, it was a very clear example because often these things take much longer to happen. You know, you do something, and it carry on doing it and it takes maybe a few weeks. And then you think, oh my God, we know what have I done? And then there's a lot of trying to take things back or trying to change it or say, no, I didn't really mean that or whatever it was, and which can sometimes make things worse or covering it up. You know, they say that it's not the crime, it's the cover up that gets you into trouble. Steve Rush: Yeah, that's right. Joseph O'Conner: So, I think this was a good example where it's like, okay, that's done. No way to get that back. So, you better deal with it. So that was one lesson, and second lesson was, I've never done it again. I [laugh]. Steve Rush: Yeah. Joseph O'Conner: I made sure that I learned in excruciating detail how these things work [laugh] so that, you know, I was much more a master of communications and marketing than before. And even now I have an email address where there's a two-minute delay that's programmed in so that I press send. And if it's wrong, then I know, oh, thank God it hasn't sent yet. It won't send for two minutes. Steve Rush: That's a perfect example of where neuroscience has created an instant reaction in you and created a really big, thick layer of neuroplasticity. Joseph O'Conner: [Laugh]. Steve Rush: Neuro pathways. I'm not going to repeat that one [Laugh]. Joseph O'Conner: Well, yes. You know, with neuroplasticity. If you repeat stuff, you learn, but also you have one big emotional experience. Steve Rush: Yeah. Joseph O'Conner: That also it's like a very heavy skier [laugh] or like a bulldozer going down the ski slope. Steve Rush: That's it. Tracks already made. There it is. Joseph O'Conner: It make a really big track. Steve Rush: Yeah, so the last part of the show, Joseph, we want to do is, we get our guests to do a bit of time travel. You get to bump into yourself at twenty-one and give yourself some advice and some words of wisdom. What would it be? Joseph O'Conner: Twenty-one, oh my God. Oh, I don't know. It it's like, hey, man. Yeah, I love you. You're going to be alright. Don't sweat the small stuff, you know, sleep well and it'll be okay. Steve Rush: Awesome. Sometimes that's all it takes, right. It's just that little bit of reassurance. And I like that, yeah. Joseph O'Conner: I mean, you know, from that perspective, you know, what would you say to your twenty-one-year-old self? But supposing you are twenty-one and some guy comes, suddenly appears in your room and goes, hey, it's going to be alright. Steve Rush: Yeah, I'm not sure I'd ever paid huge amounts of attention. Joseph O'Conner: But how would that change your life? Steve Rush: Indeed? Joseph O'Conner: Or would it? Steve Rush: Sliding doors maybe? Joseph O'Conner: Yeah, yeah. Steve Rush: Yeah, so that's the whole kind of crazy notion of time travel, isn't it? Is that, you know, you are who you are, you've created what you've created because that Joseph at twenty-one gave you the permissions to do what you did. If you change that, then who knows what the future would hold. That's a whole deeper, meaningful conversation. Let's not go there. Joseph O'Conner: [Laugh] yeah. Steve Rush: So, I've loved chatting. I'm really delighted to be part of our community on The Leadership Hacker Podcast, Joseph. So how can our listeners get hold of a copy of the books? And I say books, there are many, and find out a little bit more about the work you've done? Joseph O'Conner: Well, first of all, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Facebook as well. So can contact me there. coachingthebrain.com is the website where you can read about the courses there. And I'm just starting the creator's club. So, if you're interested in creativity, intuition and hacking into to that, then you can get me at joseph@thecreatorsclub.net. Steve Rush: Brilliant. We'll put those links in the show note and you can count me in. I'm absolutely in. Joseph, thanks ever so much for coming on the show, some great stories, some great lessons, and thank you for helping the world on the journey you've been and personally thanks for helping me on my journey too. Joseph O'Conner: Well, thank you, Steve. It's a pleasure. Yeah, we do what we do and it's like we all drop pebbles into the lake, don't we? And the ripples go out and we have no idea where the ripples go to, and we hope that they ripple against the shore in some good places. And I'm really pleased that it's happened. So, thank you and wish you the very best. Steve Rush: Thanks, Joseph. Really appreciate it.   Closing Steve Rush: I want to sign off by saying thank you to you for joining us on the show too. We recognize without you, there is no show. So please continue to share, subscribe, and like, and continue to get in touch with us with the great new stories that we share every week. And so that we can continue to bring you great stories. Please make sure you give us a five-star review where you can and share this podcast with your friends, your teams, and communities. You want to find us on social media. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter @leadershiphacker, Leadership Hacker on YouTube and on Instagram, the_leadership_hacker and if that wasn't enough, you can also find us on our website leadership-hacker.com. Tune into next episode to find out what great hacks and stories are coming your way. That's me signing off. I'm Steve Rush, and I've been your Leadership Hacker.

Fred Joyal was founder of of 1-800-DENTIST, which for over 30 years has generated over a billion dollars in revenue. No he's a keynote speaker, coach and author of the book Superbold: From Under Confident To Charismatic In 90 days. This amazing show uncovers: What boldness really is? The PRIDE method, so you can unlock boldness. What “Dosage” is and what happens if we have too much or not enough. Why having an “Every Day Action” can transform your life. Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Fred below: Fred on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredjoyal/ Fred on Twitter: https://twitter.com/fredjoyal Fred on Instagram: https://instagram.com/fredjoyal Fred's Website: https://fredjoyal.com   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach, or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as The Leadership Hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Today's special guest is Fred Joyal. He's a speaker, author and business coach on the superpower of boldness and the author of Superbold: From Under Confident To Charismatic In 90 Days. But before we get a chance to speak with Fred, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: We're going to explore names, names matter. My name is Steve. Everybody introduced themselves with this one special gift that we were given from the moment of our birth. Yet, how often do we get people's names wrong? And how often do we give ourselves the permission to say, oh, I'm terrible with names, but I'm great with faces. A somewhat convenient excuse, maybe. We live and work in a really multicultural society. Our names come from all over the world and not necessarily from the location you are in, they sound different, they have different spellings, they may be shortened names that are nicknames almost in replace of their real names but come in many different ways. Some of my kids in fact have even changed their names. Well, metaphorically changed names growing up because they thought they weren't comfortable with this particular label, but soon changed it back. Whichever way we think about our names, it's our identity. You must know how it feels when somebody gets your name wrong and that's because getting someone's name right really matters. It may take a bit of extra effort. You may have to ask them to spell it. However, often minimal effort as a leader can really engage people when they know, you know them, and this demonstrates you're willing to take an interest in them and from wherever their name derives their culture too. So, is this such a big effort? Let's have a look. The acknowledgement, firstly, that the name is tricky for you is okay. Let people know that if they have got a tricky name. That demonstrates you care enough; recognize you may need to take time to practice somebody's name. And as much as that sounds crazy, it will make a huge impact to the relationship. Ask the person for clarification if you are unsure. I've made loads of mistakes on this podcast initially, when I've had guests come on the show and made an assumption on how their name was spelled. Only to have to re-edit episodes to get their name right. And by practicing and persevering until you do get it right, you create a bond between the individual and you, when we address your colleagues by name, especially in team settings and meetings, it helps collaboration, and that behavior will help create effective teamwork. Saying people's names is a strong signal that you see them, you value them and that you want their input. So, make this an everyday practice, greet people by their names, look in their eyes as you do so, and introduce colleagues to each other by their names and let's get it right. So, the next time, you're not sure on how to say somebody's name. Just politely ask. I'm not sure how to say your name, please can you help me pronounce it or just be brave and go for it and ask them, did I get that right? You'll soon find out. And most importantly, demonstrate once more that you value them. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. Let's go ahead and dive into the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Fred Joyal is a special guest on today's show. He was the co-founder of Futuredontics, the parent company of 1-800-DENTIST, which for over 30 years has generated over a billion dollars in revenue. He's just written a fantastic book called, Superbold: From Under Confident To Charismatic In 90 days. And it's an Amazon and Wall Street Journal bestseller. He's also been a TV and commercial actor as well as a standup comedian, and now sharing his learning through coaching, speaking and other business consultancy. Fred, welcome to our show. Fred Joyal: Steve, excited to be here. Steve Rush: So, I've just finished reading Superbold, and I can tell our listeners without hesitation. It is an amazing read. And personally, for a middle-aged guy falling into habits, I still found myself thinking, wow, that's me. So, we're going to get into some of that a little bit later, but before we do, it'll be really great for you just to share some of that very varied and wide experiences that you've picked up along the way. Fred Joyal: Yes, I'm happy to do that. I started many years ago as a junior copywriter as an ad agency, and that was the first job I really liked. Like, it was the first groove I really found. I was wandering and trying all sorts of things. I was fairly directionless, and then when I hit the advertising world, I thought, oh, I could actually do this for a lifetime, you know, for a career. And it led me to starting my own business, which was 1-800-DENTIST, which is a referral service for dentist, where we run advertising, run a call center to attract the calls and then disseminate those calls out to dentists. And I did that for about 30 years. I owned the business and sold it about five years ago. And it was much more successful than we imagined. But tons of twists and turns, you know, you run a business for 30 years, you know, through recessions and internet booms and busts and all of that. And plenty of good and bad things happen along the way. And that's actually what I coach businesses on now is, how to hit different potholes than I hit or not hit them at the same speed that I hit them so that they can accelerate their success. Steve Rush: Right. Fred Joyal: And then of course, got to the point where, you know, Superbold became an emerging theme that I really wanted to get out. Steve Rush: So, when you hear the word Superbold, you call it Superbold because you actually have come to the conclusion. I think, as I have having read the book that it is a superpower, right? Fred Joyal: Absolutely, yes. I mean, if I had to give my child one thing, it would be the confidence and understanding that confidence is the foundation. Boldness is taking that confidence and going into action and learning what happens when you're bold that bold people have always understood whether they learned it as children or they never unlearned it. But they learn all of these things that all of the great stuff in life really occurs when you're bold. Steve Rush: Right. Fred Joyal: And that's how you can have the most impact on the world. Steve Rush: And you cite in your book, actually, a bunch of successful business leaders and entrepreneurs just share some of those that you share in the book. And actually, we probably all noticed that there is boldness that comes with that. Fred Joyal: Yeah, certainly you know, somebody like, Sir Richard Branson is constantly making bold moves. He'll jumps from industry to industry which is a fairly reckless thing to do for most people. But he had learned that if you approach it in a certain way and you protect your downside risk, amazing things can happen. And you can take that brand from a record business to a telephone business, to a soda business, to an airline, to outer space. And now a cruise line and hotel line, all of these things, he has 400 brands under the Virgin emblem, as far as I know. Somebody like Tony Hsieh who started Zappos and he didn't start it. He actually came into Zappos as the CEO and had made millions very young. He and his brother had made a very successful exit early on that gave him tens of millions of dollars. By the time he was done, he had poured every bit of it into Zappos. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: And Zappos reached a billion dollars of revenue in 10 years. So, he generated a hundred million dollars of growth a year by just saying, I could go into the shoe business by approaching it in a completely different way and pushed all his chips in the middle of the table when he had complete financial security, but he went to the next level. Steve Rush: And people like Elon Musk at the moment, who's continually reinventing himself, just bought Twitter. And everybody's asking the question now, what does this guy want with Twitter? Fred Joyal: Yeah, and he's not going to tell us right away. Steve Rush: Exactly. Fred Joyal: But it fits into his grand scheme or it's just something he said, this has to be done differently. Just like, he looks at transportation as being needing to be disrupted and satellites and outer space. And, you know, like why would you launch a rocket and throw away the booster? You know, he looks at things like that. You know, why would you build a car and not use the battery as the chassis for an electric car, those kinds of things, and why not dig tunnels under cities? Why not create that technology? Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: What Twitter's got to do with that? Who knows? Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: But he guesses right quite often. Steve Rush: He does, yeah. And to your experience, when you think of entrepreneurs and businesspeople, can you actually be successful and Uber successful without being bold? Fred Joyal: I don't think so. Because you need to go into action without certainty. Steve Rush: Right. Fred Joyal: And actually say, whatever happens, I'm going to learn from it. I'm going to absorb that knowledge and make whatever changes or go in 180-degree, different direction. Because the marketplace has told me something about, that what it wants, and it wasn't what I thought I wanted. Steve Rush: Hmm. Fred Joyal: But they gave me a big clue and now I can go in that direction. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: You know, he started, even when, you know, Elon Musk started you know, the Tesla, it was a little Lotus with an electric engine, and it was a sports car. It really, only was fast. It wasn't comfortable. It wasn't useful as a car. It was a toy. Steve Rush: Mm. Fred Joyal: But then he said, okay, what people really need is a multi-passenger vehicle. And he actually created a seven-passenger vehicle. And the reason a lot of people don't realize that the original Tesla sedan was seven passengers, because he's got five kids. Steve Rush: [Laugh] practical as well. Fred Joyal: Yes. Little things like give feedback takes boldness, except feedback takes boldness, meeting people. The cornerstone of anybody's success is their ability to meet whomever they want. Steve Rush: Yeah. Steve Rush: Whenever they want and create a real connection with those people, not network, but actually connect. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: With people. And that takes stepping up and it takes developing those skills. Boldness allows you to develop these skills. You can read about them all day, if you're not bold enough to put them into action, you'll never develop the skill. If you want to learn to be a great public speaker, there's a hundred books on it. You could read them all. You'll still be a terrible public speaker. Steve Rush: Yes, right. Very true. Fred Joyal: But get on stage and suck [laugh] and watch the video of it and you'll get better. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: And every time you get on stage, you'll get better. Steve Rush: So, in its rawest sense, how would you describe boldness? Fred Joyal: It is chasing your dreams, however, going after an opportunity, a moment, whether it's fun, whether it's meeting somebody, whether it's taking a chance on a business, it's putting your idea out there, putting yourself out there, bringing your full self to the world, whether it's in a personal situation or business situation, personal situation could be say, I really want to meet that attractive young man or woman across the room at this party. Or it could be, I need to raise 10 million from my business and I have to pitch it so that they believe that I will execute it. And you know, if you know investors, they bet on the person, there's millions of ideas out there. They call it, we bet on the jockey, not the horse. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: Is what they say. Steve Rush: I've heard that before, yeah. Fred Joyal: Yeah, and so you've got to, it takes boldness to say, I can make this happen. I will do whatever it takes to make this happen and project that. You can't succeed without it. And it is, just allowing your full self to blossom. You don't become somebody else. I'm not somebody else than who I was as a young man, very shy. I am the full me. I can bring the full me in every situation. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: And that's impactful. Steve Rush: What's the reason that some people often get boldness confused with either arrogance or confidence in your experience? Fred Joyal: Because they confuse a narcissist with somebody, bold. A narcissist is actually extremely, under confident, extremely insecure. Whatever you think of former President Trump, he had an incredibly thin skin. Every little slight offended him. And that's very typical of that type of personality. That's not bold. True boldness has an element of humility in it because you know that there's so much more that you can become rather than pretending that you are enough or more than enough, or amazing or great. It's, you're moving through the world saying, I can be better. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: Because that's what true boldness teaches you is. Wow. Just like what you're saying with my book is, you consider yourself probably a fairly bold person. But as you read the book, you say, wow, that's like five areas I could be bolder. Steve Rush: Definitely, yeah. Fred Joyal: As you mature in life, you become more humble because you appreciate how much more there is to know. But to me, boldness is, you want to have as much of a positive impact on the world. Because that's mature fulfillment. It's not about taking advantage of people or conning people. Because that's what a confidence man does is con people. He convinces them to trust him, and that takes a certain amount of boldness, but you've feeding the dark side. Steve Rush: It's almost misguided boldness, isn't it? Fred Joyal: Yeah. Steve Rush: Yeah, and the irony behind Superbold as well, Fred is, that you learned the techniques that you scribe in the book, but not in 90 days, but in 30 years, right. So, you were a really shy individual, struggled with boldness. How did that transformation come about? Fred Joyal: You know, I get to really examine it as I was writing the book and I realized that it was just a tremendous amount of frustration that actually I was angry at myself at times because I said, wow, you actually have missed a great opportunity. Whether it was meeting a terrific woman or speaking up in a certain situation or missing out on you know, a great adventure or just a very powerful moment or very important moment, like giving a eulogy for a friend and you know, so many people do this. They say, oh, I'm not good at public speaking. I hate to be in front of people. It's like, really? Your best friend just passed away and you're not going to get up and say something. You're never going to get another chance, that window's going to close. And that's analogous to a lot of things in life. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: These windows of opportunity shut, whether it's that person across the room that you want to meet and you say, oh look, nobody's talking to Jeff Bezos right now. I can go over and talk to him, and it takes you 10 minutes to get up the nerve. Meanwhile, somebody has walked up and talked to him and now you can't interrupt, or you have to interrupt, which is going to be even hard. I'll take you 10 minutes more to get up the nerve to do that. Steve Rush: You describe a bunch of situations in the book actually, where you've shared situations where you'd missed out or you thought you could do things. And it was only after the event that, that kind of boldness aha moment presented itself for you. Fred Joyal: And I saw bold people and I would say, why are they like this? Why are they not processing rejection the way I do? Why does it bounce off them? They just go in fairly uncertain about the outcome, but they don't care because they know they're going to discover something. And once you start doing it, once you start behaving boldly, you say, oh yeah, this thing was totally unexpected, but this thing's great that happened. I was hoping to do this, but I was open to anything and then something completely different happened that was better. I love to emphasize this, especially early on because a lot of people don't realize this, and bold people know this. It's almost as fulfilling to try and fail as it is to try and succeed. Almost. It's very similar. What hurts? Is not trying, that's painful. That nausea at you for years, if not forever Steve Rush: Moments lost almost isn't it, you know? Fred Joyal: Yeah, but if you tried, you go a lot easier on yourself. Look, I walked over, and I talked to that woman, and she told me she was married, and I turned around and I said, well, that's lovely to hear, nice to meet you and walked away. Instead of saying, geez, I really should have met her because she's the girl of my dream. Now what bold people also find out is, they're wrong about those things. They know is like, I could stand here and fantasize that person is my soulmate, a bold person walks up and realizes, wow, there's very little to connect with this person, but they're not as concerned about the outcome. So, they don't project the giant fantasy on top of it. Steve Rush: Yeah, now all the way through this spine of Superbold, you've created this methodology called pride, which is really an acronym of a couple of activities that really help people along the journey. I'd love for us to dive into that because it was when you were describing the pride method, particularly a couple of things that will come out as we kick it through. That's definitely when I had my aha moment and I'll share with you and our listeners kind of some of those experiences too. So how did the pride method come about for you? Fred Joyal: You know, when I first started teaching boldness, I said, I have to break this down into how I did it and how you could apply it. What would you summon to develop this boldness muscle and have the tools in any situation to know how to react? And pride means something. That word is very special because I tell people it's not being modest. It's about living a life that you're proud of. Why wouldn't you want at the end of your life, be proud of that life you lived. And that means you left it all on the mat. You took every opportunity. You took every chance. You didn't stack up the regrets. And so, let's break down the acronym. The P is preparation. R is relaxing. I is insight. D is dosage and E is everyday action. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: Let's start with preparation. Steve Rush: Good place to start. Fred Joyal: What a lot of people don't realize is that we prepare for all sorts of things like driver's test or the bar exam or whatever it is, getting a fishing license even. But we think we don't need to prepare for social interactions and that sort of very specific behavior. They say, I don't know what I would say to somebody, it's like, that's because you haven't thought about what you would say. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: Break it down to something simple. I want to meet somebody. I'm going to talk to a stranger. By the way, this is what I recommend to everybody is, talk to a stranger every day. Steve Rush: And I do that now. Fred Joyal: Yeah. Steve Rush: That's one of the keys learns for me is, I don't even know how this happened, right. Because I would've said quite bold. I can walk through my village and my town head down, right. Quite comfortable in my own skin, but actually just smiling and saying hi, makes such a difference. Fred Joyal: Yeah, and why not uplift somebody else with expecting nothing in return. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: And so, people say, they put all this pressure on themselves. Oh, I want to meet this person. So, but I can't think of anything interesting or clever or funny to say. It's like, wow. How about being nice? [Laugh]. How about just introduce yourself, take the pressure off yourself because if you come up and you're that clever, now you've set the bar high. They have to come back and be clever or just admire you. Is that what you needed? Did you need to be admired or did you just want to meet them? And when you prepare yourself to connect with somebody, it's simple, a compliment, ask a question, just say your name and say, hi, I'm Steve. I'd really like to meet you. That's you know, that's such an interesting pair of glasses you got on. I would love to know where you got them. Steve Rush: Hmm. Yeah. Fred Joyal: That's all you have to do. And you prepare yourself to do that. Now, you move on through life and say, okay, I'm going to look for a promotion. I need to prepare how I'm going to have that interaction with my boss. I'm going to rehearse that. I'm going to know what I want to say. I'm going to prepare my speech to go raise money from these investors. You're not going to walk in there and say, oh, I know my business really well. I have watched so many entrepreneurs, grossly unprepared to walk into investor meetings. And they think because they know their business so well, they can talk about it really well. Instead of preparing a methodical laying out of their business. Their biggest problem is, they know too much about their business. Steve Rush: Hmm. Fred Joyal: You say, what does it do? And tell me what it does. I actually just did this weekend. I said, tell me what your business does in one sentence, this woman talked for five minutes. Steve Rush: [Laugh]. Fred Joyal: I went like, that was a long sentence. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: And I'm not sure what you do, because you gave me so much detail that I missed the bullet. Steve Rush: That's right. Fred Joyal: And, so, preparation is critical in any sort of interaction. And, once you get good at it, here's really important fact. Preparation is the foundation for spontaneity. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: You can be spontaneous if you've got the backup. If you know what you could say, I've walked up to plenty of people knowing I'm just going to say hi, I'm Fred, nice to meet you. And in the moment, I noticed they have amazing eyes or something like that, or an interesting piece of jewelry or they're reading an interesting book, whatever it is. And now I can talk about that. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: But I got my backup and it's the same thing on stage, you know? Steve Rush: So, relaxation and insight are they correlated? Fred Joyal: Yes, because the part of relaxing is understanding that you can control your state. And a lot of people don't realize that you can control it just by breathing. Now I go into detail in how you do this. But if you check your physiology, because we tense up in certain situations. And if you just relax your body, before I walk on stage, I just shake off any excess tension in my body. And I take three deep breaths. Breathing will relax you. And there's more techniques that I talk about, but you can relax yourself, but it doesn't happen when somebody says, why don't you just relax? That just makes you more nervous. Steve Rush: It does. Fred Joyal: Because it's like, oh I didn't realize I looked nervous. That makes me more nervous. But once you relax yourself, it reverses the process and you say, oh, I can control my state. And you know, as a public speaker, you turn that into energy. You're not like so relaxed that you're like a sloth. You are just, you've taken all that anxiety and turned it into energy. So now you're bringing your full self to the stage. So that's the key is, is learning the simple ways that you can relax yourself. And some of the ways you relax yourself are the insights. Bold people have key insights. The number one thing is, people are not thinking about you anywhere near as much as you think they are. Steve Rush: [Laugh] yeah. Fred Joyal: Who are they thinking about? Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: Themselves, right. They'll think about you for about four seconds before they rotate back to themselves. But we think twenty years later, they're still thinking about that embarrassing moment that we had with them. And if you get to talk to them about it, they say, I have no recollection of that. And you go, no, really, I was so humiliating for me. And I was like, it's been nagging at me for decades. And you say, why would you do that? And so, this is what bold people do is, they have a tiny, tiny group of people whose opinions really matter to them and everybody else's, they don't, they say other people's opinions of me are none of my business. And they act that way. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: It's very powerful. Steve Rush: It is, isn't it? Yeah. Fred Joyal: Yeah. Steve Rush: Now your next one, I've got to tell you, was probably more aha moments thinking about dosage and how I behaved and how I continued to behave than any of the other things in the book, because this is where you either overplay for something or underplay it and just don't get it right. Tell us about what dosage means for you and how we could use it? Fred Joyal: It means controlling the intensity of the experience as you build your boldness muscle. And it's the same principle as exercising. If you were trying to get in shape, you wouldn't start by trying to bench press three hundred pounds. Because the bar's going to fall on you. And basically, decapitate you, you would start with lighter weights. This is how you build your boldness muscle is, you do simple things that build that strength to interact with people. Start by smiling at people, talk to a stranger every day, one or two sentences. What people do is, they overload themselves. They say, you know, I got to stop being shy. I'm going to go to a party and meet people and I'm going to meet five people and they don't meet one person because they've made it too challenging for themselves. Say, I'm going to go to this party and I'm going to say hi to three people. I'm going to introduce myself to one person. You control that dosage so that you don't retreat back into your shell. And what happens is, you gradually expand your comfort zone wider and wider and wider. And you look back at yourself and if you do it the way I lay out in the book, you look back at yourself three months ago and you say, wow, that was really challenging. Now, it's nothing. Anybody in the coffee line, I'll walk right up and talk to them, and I'll think of something to say. And before I know it, we're engaged in the conversation. Steve Rush: Yeah. Steve Rush: And you'll say that was impossible for me. And you know why? Because you built up gradually, people do these things, they put themselves in situations where it's so intense. There's so much at risk that when it fails, they're tormented by it. Instead of, you know, if you want to meet your soulmate, start meeting everybody so that when you actually meet your soulmate, you can talk like a normal person and have a normal interaction, not overload the whole conversation. And you also learned that maybe who your soulmate might actually be or not be, don't not be prepared by leaping into a situation that's way more than you can handle. If you going to do public speaking, don't start with an audience of four hundred people. You're going to crumble. You're going to be tongue tied. You're going to sweat bullets. And you'll barely get through your presentation. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: Start with five. Steve Rush: And when I reflect back on the things that I've done really well, it's probably because I got my dosage right. Where I've got it really wrong is because I've usually got way too much going on and I've been overconfident because I think that's the right thing. Or I've been over bullish trying to make a sale. And that's definitely been a bit of a moment for me. My mom and dad would've probably told me as I was growing up, don't run before you can walk, which used to frustrate the hell out of me because I wanted to run. Fred Joyal: Yes. Steve Rush: But if somebody described it as just get the dosage, right. You know, lift the right amount of weights before you do your three hundred pound bench press as an example, you can start to think that actually we all have to find the right level of dosage. Otherwise, you will never be confident enough or feel confident enough to be more bold. Fred Joyal: And it's a very personal thing. You have to decide what dosage is right for you. Everybody's developing their confidence and boldness from a different starting point. So don't compare yourself to somebody else and say, well, this person, they just walk through the party, and they meet everybody they want to, I want to be that. So, I'm going to start doing that. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: You are where you are and you're going to work your way up from there. You'll can get as far as you want to go, but it's a steady, upward climb. It is not serious of quantum leaps. Steve Rush: Indeed. It is. Yeah. So, when I look back on my career, I think I've actually forgotten to be bold. I've got up the habit of being bold and what you've allowed me to rethink and reframe is your Ian pride, which is everyday actions. Recreating those simple habits to become more bold. Tell us a little bit about what that means? Fred Joyal: Yeah, and this is really a life skill is to know that if you want to accomplish something, if you want to achieve something, whether it's personal growth or building a business or writing a novel or whatever, or learning an instrument, work at it every day. Even if it's for five minutes. I learned this from someone who was talking about how they wrote a book and they said, I had a requirement that I was going to write one sentence of that book every day, no matter what. And they said, you know, what happened is, sometimes I'd write a sentence and I'd let myself off the hook because I was tired or whatever, but I always wrote a sentence and then sometimes I'd write a paragraph. Sometimes I write a page or two pages. I'd hit a sweet spot in a way I'd go. But the fact that, they got to it every day tells your brain, this is who I am. And if you don't, if you do it on the weekends or you do it, when you feel like it, you're a dabbler and your brain say, oh, we're a dildock, we're a dabbler. This isn't important to us. And I ask people to say, well, I write when I really get in the head space, really feel like it. I said, wow, do you only exercise when you feel like it? Because that would only be like twice a year for me. Steve Rush: Exactly right, and me.  Fred Joyal: [laugh], you know? And so, and the other thing about setting a goal to do it every day is you don't have to decide to do it or not. It's like brushing your teeth. You're going to do it. It's just when, and you'll get to that point where you say, oh my gosh, it's like seven o'clock at night. I haven't talked to a stranger. I'm going to go to the grocery store. Steve Rush: [Laugh] Yeah. Fred Joyal: You know, I'm going to talk to somebody in the produce department just because it's like, I can't go to bed without doing that. Two things happen. The first thing is the brain said, we are a person who meets people comfortably. We know how to behave boldly. The other thing that happens is, just like controlling the dosage. It aggregates. Everything that you work at every day, no matter how little, aggregates. You want to learn a language, learn three words a day. At the end of the year, you know, a thousand words, that's fifteen words, in any language, you can have a conversation with anybody. Steve Rush: Yeah. It's powerful stuff, isn't it? Fred Joyal: So, it aggregates, it builds gradually and your dreams decay. Not because they're so hard, it's because you don't get to them. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: You think you will get to them. I can get to that next year. And you and I have both lived long enough to know how fast the decade goes by at this point. Steve Rush: Totally. Fred Joyal: Yeah, and that's a harsh, harsh lesson Steve Rush: Indeed. So, we are going to give our listeners an opportunity to find out how they can get hold of some tools that you got on your website that will help people with some of these activities. But before we do that, we are going to just flip the lens a little bit. This is where we hack into your leadership brain. And I'm super looking forward to this because you have such an enormous back catalog of experiences to draw from Fred. But we're going to ask you to dive into your top three leadership hacks, there your top three tips, tools or ideas, what would they be? Fred Joyal: My favorite one that I tell everybody. And it's because I have to tell myself every day too, is, one word, start, just start something. It's amazing how the hardest thing for human beings to do is to start and then you get through it. Whether it's working out, I've begun more workouts by saying, look, I'm just going to do some pushups. Because I don't have any time and I don't feel like it, but I just drop the floor and I do them. What happens next? I do some sit ups and then before you know it, I'm saying, I might as well go for a run or a bike ride, but I started. But what we do is, we do everything but start and we'll burn two hours sometimes. I was reading that the who wrote the Alchemist, I'm forgetting, Coelho is his last name. I'm forgetting his first name. But he was saying, I do everything possible in the house before I start writing [laugh] he said, I will clean everything. I'll sharpen pencils. I'll walk the dog; I'll take two showers. He said, it's like, finally, I'll sit down, and I'll start. We all do it. We torment ourselves. So that thing, if you just start to say, I'm just going to start right now, sit down, do it. And all of a sudden, where you go, whatever it is. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: The other big hack for me is, to celebrate failure as a step up to say, it's a two-stage process. You can feel terrible about it for ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes, whatever it takes. And then now you're going to say, okay, what's in this for me? How do I mine this for information? You allow yourself the emotional reaction, but you don't stay attached to it for the rest of the month of the year or forever. You say, all right, there it is. I had the emotional outburst for what happened. What's in this for me? There's a term in Aikido where it's called embrace the hit as a gift. And the more I've done that in life, the more I've said, wow, this is terrible. What's in it for me? And then it turns into something really interesting, and I've lost a million dollars on stuff. It was expensive tuition, but I learned from it, and I turned it into a multiple of learning from that. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: So that's very powerful. And then the other hack is to get really good at asking for help, try to figure out who can help you. It keeps you from being a micromanager or a soloist because collaboration is amazingly powerful. I am a much better speaker because I get feedback all the time on it. I have a personal coach that talks to me every week and it's painful sometimes because he ends every session with an action plan. Like, what are you going to do? Like, I'm doing a Superbold workshop. And I've been wanting to do it since I put the book out. And so, he finally said to me, so what's the boldest thing you could be doing, which of course is a very painful challenge. He knows exactly how to come at me. And I said, well, that would be the workshop. He said, okay, how long would it take you to put a workshop together? I said, yeah, probably about 90 days. He said, all right. So, what's the date? Okay, June 24th, June 25th. He said, all right, put it on the calendar. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: That's what I'm doing. I'm aiming for that date. I have to make it happen. Because I booked the rooms. This is another hack. Let the door lock behind you. Don't give yourself a way out. So, you have to figure out what to do. Steve Rush: Yeah, love that. Fred Joyal: They call it, you know, burning the boats in the Harbor or whatever. But it's like, if you say, well, if this doesn't work out, I can always just do this. The entrepreneurs, I know that succeeded. They get in so deep. They couldn't get out. Tony Hsieh was in so deep with his money. He had to make Zappos work. Steve Rush: Very true. Fred Joyal: I get in so deep with 800 Dentists, I had to make it work. I owed my family money. I owed $200,000 in media that I had to figure out how to pay. You know, I had a personal guarantee on the rent. It was like, I had three doors locked behind me. Steve Rush: Mm. Fred Joyal: My partner and I had to figure it out. Steve Rush: Focuses the attention. Doesn't it. That's for sure. Fred Joyal: Yeah. Steve Rush: So next part of the show, we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something in your life or work has not worked out at all well, maybe even screwed up and been catastrophic, but as a result of it, that experience is now serving you really well in your life or work. What would be your Hack to Attack? Fred Joyal: A lot of people fall for this, and I certainly have, which is the whole sunk cost thing. Where you say, I've got so much into this. I have to keep putting money into it. Instead of cutting it losses, saying, look, take the pain now, because it's just going to get bigger. And you know, sometimes it's about money, sometimes you've put so much money into something. You've bought this piece of technology and you're trying to make it work. And it's the wrong technology, [laugh] it doesn't fit or it's too old or you know, whatever, and you just have to sell it or park it and get the right technology or it's the right person versus the wrong person. Everybody I know in business fires, that person that they know they need to get rid of months after they know they need to get rid of them. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: You got to sunk cost in that person. You say, I spent so much time and money training them. I think I can make them better, you can't. Steve Rush: [Laugh] That's very true. Fred Joyal: Abandon the sunk costs. So that's, been, you know, just applying that to money and things that I've put time and money into and people. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: It's benefited me so much now because, I got so many scars from it. Steve Rush: Yeah, the last thing I want to explore with you is, you are now twenty-one years old, your toe to toe with Fred and you get a chance to give him some words of wisdom. What would it be? Fred Joyal: Nothing bad happens unless you decide to label it that way. Steve Rush: Nice. Fred Joyal: And all these things you're afraid of are things you really want to do, so do them. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: Be willing to be afraid and do them and use the fear as a directional signal for yourself. Steve Rush: And of course, fear is one of the very reasons why we avoid boldness in the first place. Fred Joyal: Yeah. Steve Rush: Yeah. Fred Joyal: Because we are incredibly good at calculating the worst-case scenario in our heads and the voice in our head loves to come up with all of these things, but really terrible at calculating the odds of it actually happening. Steve Rush: Yeah, very true. Fred Joyal: You know, smiling at 10 people a day, somebody's not going to smile back, but a really shy person said, nobody's going to smile back, but until you do it and you realize nine out of ten people smile back. The tenth person, who knows why. It could be the worst day of their life; they could have bad teeth. When you learn not to take it on, that's a really powerful thing. I'd say that to Fred too. You don't have to take any of this stuff on. Just keep moving. We're all flawed human beings working our way through life. Billionaires and homeless people. We're all in a struggle. Nobody is perfect. And trying to be perfect before you leave the house is a failed strategy. Steve Rush: So, in terms of dosage, I would love to have more of a dose of Fred, but we're coming to the top of the show. What I would love to do though, Fred is to let our listeners know how they can get hold of some of the tools you talked about. Maybe get a copy of Superbold and learn a little bit more about the work that you do beyond what we've talked about today? Fred Joyal: Yeah, easiest place is to go to fredjoyal.com. You can download the first chapter of the book there. You can buy the book on Amazon, it's in hard cover and Kindle and audible, and it's me reading it. And if you do the digital version of it, you can go to fredjoyal.com and download the exercises because there's a whole bunch of exercises. You're going to want a physical copy of them. So, there's a PDF of them in the website. You can also see a couple of boldness lectures that I've done there. And if you're in LA or if you're willing to fly in. The first workshop is going to be June 24th and 25th in Santa Monica. And then I'll going to be doing them around the country and who knows? I might have to go to London, you know, I'll, do it. Steve Rush: Yeah, exactly right. So, Fred, I just wanted to say thanks ever so much. I knew the first time I met you, that there was a reason I've met you. Having now read your book and you've been on the show. You have definitely shone a light on the lack of boldness I didn't even know I had and helped me reinforce some great behavior. So, I just want to say personally, thank you, but also thank you for being part of our community on The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Fred Joyal: Thank you. It's been a real pleasure. I hope everyone benefits. Closing Steve Rush: I want to sign off by saying thank you to you for joining us on the show too. We recognize without you, there is no show. So please continue to share, subscribe, and like, and continue to get in touch with us with the great new stories that we share every week. And so that we can continue to bring you great stories. Please make sure you give us a five-star review where you can and share this podcast with your friends, your teams, and communities. You want to find us on social media. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter @leadershiphacker, Leadership Hacker on YouTube and on Instagram, the_leadership_hacker and if that wasn't enough, you can also find us on our website leadership-hacker.com. Tune into next episode to find out what great hacks and stories are coming your way. That's me signing off, I'm Steve Rush, and I've been your Leadership Hacker.    

Matthew Cox is the CEO and Founder of the Never Give Up Foundation, he's a coach,  speaker and Co-author of the book, The Courage to Learn Differently. In this remarkable conversation learn about: How Matt became a successful entrepreneur despite his learning disability How your emotions can be a gift? What is emotional growth and how to unlock it? How as leaders, we can tune in to the emotional needs of our teams   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA   Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Matthew below: Matthew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-cox-64228256/ Matthew on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewLCox1 Matthew on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matthewlelandcox/ Matthew's Website: http://www.matthewlelandcox.com/   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach, or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as The Leadership Hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Our special guest on today shows Matthew Cox. Matthew was diagnosed with a learning disability in high school where he was told he would never attend college and he wouldn't amount to anything. However, Matthew was an incredibly successful businessman. He's the co-founder of the Never Give Up Behavioral Services and Never Give Up Foundation. But before we get a chance to speak with Matthew, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: For any organization to be successful. It must find a way to develop talent. It isn't always possible to hire great talent in leadership, particularly from outside the organization. So being able to develop leaders within the organization is a key success factor and will help the company grow and meet future needs. I'm going to share with you four principles that really help drive leadership development and leadership potential for 2022. The first principle is taking ownership. This is about being fully responsible for your leadership team and their personal development in that journey. And it's different from being in charge. Taking ownership is simply about empowering people around you, but being fully responsible, knowing that it's actually a shared responsibility, great leaders make it their job to keep pushing things forward. They didn't sit back and wait for tasks to be given to them. They search for new ways to improve. That includes developing them and their teams. Learning through mistakes and continually being brave enough to make them. When everyone takes ownership, people are willing to do what's needed without finding ways to skirt responsibility. By taking ownership, this is also creates consistency and consistency creates routines, habits and patterns that others can also learn from rather than just one off activities. Principle two, use next level thinking. How do you know if you did something right? Most people look at the task. Did you accomplish it or not? Did you do what you said you were going to do or not? Well for leadership, we need to shift our thinking. Each task is important, and we consistently need to measure our productivity versus key performance. But next level leadership requires a shift in a perspective, helping people move away from linear thinking is really important. Linear thinking follows quick snap decisions without much analysis and a usually short term. Instead, we need to think systems thinking, see the bigger picture. Interconnection between the various parts of a system. In doing so, it gives us the ability to have much broader perspectives and allow better decision making. And if we think of systems thinking as the full business system, not individual parts, it gives us the ability, much deeper, more meaningful decision-making. Principle three, respect time, your time and others. There is an old adage of time management. And if anybody's ever worked with me, you'll know that it's a myth and I encourage you to think of it that way. You can't manage time. You can only manage you. The hack here is I want you to think about reframing time management to prioritization. And if you're able to look at tasks and compare them in terms of their urgent and important status, what you need to tackle first, that creates space providing you, create the space for recovery and wellbeing in your plan, create a model of the week that you want to see happen and feature into that model time for you and for others, but also encourage others to do the same, because by respecting others' time, you'll be able to be more efficient. You also need to micromanage and principle for focus on progress. Not perfection. Nobody is perfect and chasing for perfection means we forgo, experimenting or testing things because we don't want to screw up. You may be familiar with the terminology trial and error. By definition, there mean there will be error and that's okay. Doing so means continuous improvement. Create the space for people to feel psychologically safe so they can experiment. That means that they've learned it removes the need for criticism. The key learning here is that every time you win a step forward, it's a step of progress towards a goal, but not perfection. Of course, there are more than four principles that are going to keep us well for 2022. When we start thinking about our leadership development and I'd encourage you just to focus on what's working for you but take a step forward. Not a step back. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. Let's dive into the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Our special guest on today's show is Matthew Cox. He's a CEO and founder of Never Give Up Foundation. He's a coach, speaker and the co-author of the book. The Courage to Learn Differently. Matt's story is even more remarkable as whilst he's an entrepreneur having sold multimillion dollar businesses in the past. He's also learning disabled. Matthew, welcome to the show. Matthew Cox: Thank you. Well, thank you, Steve. Appreciate it. Steve Rush: So right off the bat Matt, when you hear the word learning disabled, what does that really mean? Matthew Cox: Well, it can go two different ways. Learning disabled is a learning disability or intellectual disability versus the physical. So, when somebody's learning disabled, they struggle either with some sort of element like dyslexia, illiteracy or something that impairs them to not learn the way what's called normal society [Laugh] Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: So, it's been based on if you can't read or write, if you can't do something a certain way, you're a learning disabled. If that makes sense. Steve Rush: It's a label that most folk aren't particularly comfortable with, but you seem to have grabbed hold of this and created it as part of your identity. I'm keen to just learn a little bit about how that came about? Matthew Cox: Yeah, it wasn't always tough or easy. Growing up, it was trying to get, as you hear that saying, getting comfortable in your own skin. And so, throughout my youth I struggled with it like anybody. I didn't know why I wasn't able to keep up with all the other kids in the classroom. Now, if I was on the soccer field, that was another thing. I was pretty good at that. But when it came to the classroom, I hated tests. English was like a foreign language to me. So, it was tough that way. Until I got into my thirties, I finally got comfortable with it. But growing up from an adolescent to about then, it was always trying to hide things, was not comfortable. And then it just clicked one day. I just finally realized through some personal work, having a coach and having mentors, having good people around me, I finally just realized, it doesn't define who I am, and the definition of learning and art today is like reading and writings. It's not something that's been around forever. It's something we created as a society and we make decisions on scoring our kids, scoring our people around us that if they do X, then they're intelligent. So, it wasn't telling my thirties, Steve, that I finally just kind of got comfortable with it with a mentor that kind of guided me through it. And then from there on it's just been, it's, you kind of miss out, if you don't get to know me. So, when I do presentations, I don't stress anymore if I spell wrong on the board. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: I've kind of embraced it, which is freedom in its own self. Steve Rush: So, I'm not sure many listeners actually know this either. Actually, I'm dyslexic. And I've also written a book. Albeit it, was the best couple of thousand dollars I'd ever spent hiring an editor [laugh] to rewrite my book. I'm not sure that she was anticipating the amount of work and rework that was going to be required. But I too had found that actually, stood in front of a flip chart having to write up people's notes. I was able to get away with it by just squiggling on the board and people just, not even. So, if I just got a little word blind, which often still happens by the way, I can get away with it. As long as you were confident enough, did you actually find any of that play out for you? Matthew Cox: Oh, all the time. I have code, but before I was so forward about it, I used to try to just say, oh, I'm just going to abbreviate it or put a code up here for you. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: And I kind of get around it that way until. Now when I do a presentation, I tell my story. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: And I say, look, if you're a spelling Nazi in the audience, you're going to have fun. It's going to drive you crazy today. I wish you well. Steve Rush: Exactly, I like that. Matthew Cox: And so, I just make humor of it. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: And usually when you're vulnerable and you make that humor, people embrace it and I've never had an issue with it since then. Steve Rush: And often, it is about that disclosure that makes it safe, isn't it? Matthew Cox: Yeah. Steve Rush: Finding this out and this level of comfort in your late thirties is really quite interesting because up until this point, you've gone through quite a lot of different twists and turns in your career and. Matthew Cox: Yes. Steve Rush: You've gone through some personal tragedies, and you've come out the other end and been a successful businessman. I'd love for you to just share a little bit of the backstory. Matthew Cox: Yeah. So, you know, through all that fun time growing up, I learned early on, I was an entrepreneur, I'll start there, and I think it was after we lost my father when I was younger. I think I was ten at that time. And I had seven other siblings at the house. So, my mom raised us all. So, I started finding ways to make money. Because after that loss, we were struggling financially, and my mom did her best. And I remember my first business was a yard care business. I was mowing lawns for neighbors. And then I just kept building it and took it to the extreme and by buying trailers and buying a truck and buying more equipment. And so, at seventeen, I realized the power of entrepreneur. I was making four thousand U.S. dollars a month as a seventeen-year-old, still in school. And I was going, wait, there's something to this. And it wasn't until I started listening to Stephen Covey, kind of switching that mindset. And then that's when my business bug kind of just went from there. And then I started several other businesses after that and had a few failures in there, like any entrepreneur. And then when I was in my twenties, I was introduced to mental health. What I mean by that is, helping kids in foster care, helping kids at risk. Because I was one of those kids growing up where, when we lost a father, I struggled, I started hanging out with wrong crowds. And I talked about this in my book. Just the journey I went through because it was easier to get accepted to the wrong crowds when you're struggling with self-esteem as a LD Kid and growing up. So, in those twenties, I learned that I could influence kids on the soccer field and then somebody introduced me to foster care. And that's when I started my journey down that whole road. And I've been in that field since, and I'm 44 now. So, it's been a long journey. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: But it's been really, really rewarding because I've found that was my gift. And I think in any situation, Steve, a lot of entrepreneurs when they find their sweet spot, just like a basketball or a professional star or sports person, they always told me when I would work with them, coaching them and stuff they'd say. There's a sweet spot when you're playing your game. And I think as an entrepreneur, you have to find that. And in my life, I found it and it was helping people. Steve Rush: That sweet spot often referred to as purpose. Matthew Cox: There you go, purpose. Steve Rush: It's now played full round, isn't it for you? And the Never Give Up Foundation that you now run is focused entirely on giving people the opportunity to grow. Tell us a little bit about the work you do? Matthew Cox: Yeah. So now currently what happened is, from the foster care I moved in 2009, I moved to Vegas, and I started an outpatient company, which that means, outpatient in the mental health world is, people come in for therapy or medication management. And we serviced four to all the way up to ninety or a hundred or on, so there is no age gap from the limit. Me and my wife started that in 2012. Then in 2016, my brother approached me and says, hey, let's start an inpatient and for adolescence. So, we started that in 2016, we were the first one in Nevada. So, we were the first ones to do this type of work or inpatient. It's called a psychiatric adolescent facility. And it's for residential where they stay nine months to a year within the facility where all services are under one roof. And then they transition back into the community. Currently that facility has hundred and forty-four beds, and it serves adolescents from eight to seventeen. And then we have Sober Living Company that we started right after that. And the Sober Living serves adults, all ages and they stay there while they do treatment. When we did something unique with that sober living, we actually don't charge rent for them. We pay the rent and then we provide services around that. So, it's kind of a unique model that we run there. And so that's kind of been the journey for the [laugh] since 2009 to now. When I came into the state of Nevada and then we're now expanding into other states, we're buying other facilities around the U.S., and it's been a pretty crazy journey, but I've enjoyed every step. It's a very needed, especially after the pandemic, it's got very busy with mental health. Steve Rush: Indeed. And I guess globally now. The whole issue is magnified because of the pandemic. Matthew Cox: Globally, yes. Steve Rush: And from your perspective, how have you seen the patients and associates you work with change because of that? Matthew Cox: Oh, wow. We've seen, I'll start with just the adolescence. I mean the acuity level from when it was prior to the pandemic is a lot worse. When I say acuity, kids are trying to harm themselves. Eight-year-olds are trying to drown themselves in pools. Just the cases I see or hear. It's got a lot worse and then adults and colleagues, the anxiety and stress level has went off the charts, just the what ifs or the unknown. So, in the adult's people, are just worried about the economy and what's going on. Steve Rush: And neurologically, of course, we're built to look for certainty and pattern and comfort and routine, and the pandemic's throwing that up in the air, for many people, right? Matthew Cox: Yeah, and I think it's that sense of reality or that purpose, right? Steve Rush: Mm. Steve Rush: So, like you said, that reality or that normal mundane everyday thing we do, just got disrupted. And so, in the world of psychology, it's that, hey, my story or my baseline. And that's where a lot of people, when I've coached a lot of my professionals or business owners, a lot of them are worried about what's going to happen to the economy. Am I going to have a business? And I think half the time our session is, in my high performers, I say, hey, you can't control that. What can you control? And you got to live today, not tomorrow, not five days. And so, a lot of people are doing too much, living way ahead. And that's when it causes a lot of mental health issues when we're thinking too much or too far ahead. Steve Rush: It's the traditional power of now, isn't it? Matthew Cox: Yes. Steve Rush: You can only control the moment you're in, rather than the one that's gone and the one that's ahead of you. Matthew Cox: Correct. Steve Rush: But that takes courage to think differently, which is exactly what the book talks to, of course. Matthew Cox: So, we create it in our outlines. The courage to learn differently was designed for kiddos or parents that have kids with learning disabilities. And so, when we went to start writing in it and Steve, like you said earlier, my coauthor bless her hearts, Erica Walkingstick. She's, the coauthor of True Colors. She's she wrote a book on the basis of temperament; her husband was the founder of True Colors. And it was founded in 1937. And it's a temperament theory using four colors to define your personality. Steve Rush: Mm-Hmm. Matthew Cox: It's based on Myers Briggs, all those different ones. They're all kind of, every one of them, yeah. Steve Rush: Similar to any of the jungian personality types you might see, right? Matthew Cox: Pretty much. And it's pretty accurate. I've been using it for a long time. So, what we did is, we took it, and we developed this book around that concept of temperament theory and developed it to where the temperament theory helps us understand how these kiddos or parents needing to understand how the kids learn. So, for me, I'm a high blue orange. So, a blue is very emotional. Orange is a risk taker. And so, knowing that as a learning disability, if you have a kid with an LD and you know, their personality types, you know one, how to one teach them or approach them, and it works in as adults. And so, we use this within our business and it's really good just around the book. So that's why I've I started, I wrote this book because I wanted a tool and it's actually a workbook for teachers, special ed teachers within any school district. It doesn't matter if you're whatever, wherever you're at, it doesn't matter what part of the country or world you're in. This will apply to whatever it is with a kid with an LD, or if you're a parent or a special ed teacher or a teacher. Because a lot of times Steve, in the mainstream classroom, most special or most mainstream class teachers, don't get a lot of training to deal with us, ADD kids or us dyslexic kids. Steve Rush: That's very true. Very true. Matthew Cox: Because when we're younger, we're a little more frustrated because we're not seeing things. Now, the books, all designed around my story of my life, growing up with it. So, you get a little bit of different struggles. Then me and Erica do what's called a brainstorming session and we kind of do a dialogue back and forth and she didn't know how much work it was going to be either Steve, when she was helping me write. Luckily, she's a great writer. So, she did a lot of the ghost writing and so it's been a great journey and we're excited. It's going to hit the stores here soon, in all online stores as well. Steve Rush: What I particularly love about it, having had a sneak preview is, it is really super practical. Matthew Cox: Yes. Matthew Cox: And whether you are a kid or whether you are a parent or teacher, like you said, it just gives you a bit more visibility of the treatment strategies, the approaches you might want to take in order to get the best out of people. And that what I particularly love about it. Matthew Cox: Yeah. And that's what I was shooting for. I wanted to make it simple but have some really strong principles in there. So, it's an easy read, but you can follow the storyline really easy. Steve Rush: So, what's the reason it does take courage to think differently? Matthew Cox: I think the courage to think differently or learn differently is, it took me courage to rethink or learn different because I don't learn the same way as mainstream education teaches and something you got to think is, kids like us or adults like us. We don't learn that way. School's designed for a certain type of personality. It's designed for the gold green kid. And so, for us, orange, blue kids or kids that struggle, we have a tendency not to really form in school. And so, school's tough for us. And so that's why we either really do well in sports or we do well in something that's more hands on. I think that's why it takes courage because when I was in school, I just, wasn't never comfortable unless I was on the soccer field. If that makes sense. Matthew Cox: Yeah, it does. So, I'm blessed with having four children all come with a completely different set of skills, behaviors, and attitudes and where I see the courage is the courage and the conviction that if you're not as academic, then it's almost the courage to hold on, have that conviction that you will find your sweet spot. It will be there for you, but it's holding onto it without getting stressed and caught up in the moment of not having the best grades and not having, you know, some of the other things that other kids may have. Matthew Cox: Yeah. And I learned that throughout my high school, but also my college career. Because I flunked out college about seven times. When I first went to my basics here in the states, you know, that bachelor's degree or the associates. Steve Rush: Yep. Matthew Cox: The associates was a nightmare. I mean I couldn't get past math and [laugh] I remember going to the math department and crying to the head of the department after I fell so many times, I'm like, please don't fail me [Laugh] and what I did do is I learned how to shop teachers. So, I think what my disabilities taught me as, is to be creative and to be a problem solver. So, in my business, all my executives call me when they need something solved in a matter of minutes. That's my sweet spot. I've learned that from this, it created a superpower. So, I'm embraced and I'm grateful. I think it was God's gift of keeping me humble. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: And also giving me the directions because I don't use logic. I go, okay, that's a bummer. We're there. What do we do next? So, I immediately always go into it. So, I remember when I was trying to solve the math one, I immediately went in and started interviewing every teacher. And I finally found Mr. Bowler. He was a lawyer. He only taught on summers and the summers in the states are very short. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: That's only a few months versus a whole semester. And I said, I'm going to take your class and the only class I'm going to do. And I sat down with him and told him, and he helped me through, and I got a C minus, and I said, piece out, thank you so much. Steve Rush: That'll do, yeah, it's a pass, right. Matthew Cox: But I learned you had to shop. We can either be victims our circumstance or we can solve it and move on. So that's one of the lessons I learned in that. Steve Rush: Emotional intelligence is a core foundation that you see in many entrepreneurs. And actually, I did the research for my book and looked at what the key themes were between entrepreneurs versus, you know, some very good successful businesspeople who were less entrepreneurial. And ironically, there are more entrepreneurs who have learning disabilities than don't. And I found that really quiet a remarkable, statistic actually. Matthew Cox: Yeah. Sir Branson. I always forget his first name. Steve Rush: Richard Branson? Matthew Cox: Richard. Steve Rush: Yep. Matthew Cox: He's highly ADHD. Steve Jobs, Steve Rush: Job source. He was, yeah. Matthew Cox: He was kind of more autistic or somewhere up there. He was off the chart somewhere. And then you have Microsoft guy, Bill Gates. He has something going on there and I think it engages certain types of the brain. I remember going into my master's degree. I had to do some testing and to get accommodations for the school because you know, having a learning disability, you can get accommodations throughout your schooling. And the guy that was doing it, he was a good friend, but he was also a psychiatrist or psychologist. His previous career. He worked for the CIA. And so, he used to go in and try to get people to go to our side. That's the kind of psychology he did. He would profile the individuals. And so, when he was doing my testing, he did the normal IQ test. He says, Matt, you're 109 as an IQ. You're normal. He said, but he went on and did some other testing. I don't know what it was called. He said, but your IQs around 160, 165. Steve Rush: Blind me, that's pretty high. Matthew Cox: And it's because of the effort you put in. And he said, most people that have high IQ don't go past because there because they don't put in any more effort. It comes easy for them. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: He said, you have to work at it. And it was an interesting insight. I remember that conversation with him. He's a great man. He's passed on since then, but it was just really interesting because his career and where he'd been, and all the trials and we talked for a while. I think that's why you see all these entrepreneurs, like we're talking about Steve, that's why they're so off the charts because they put more effort. Like Elon Musk. A lot of people think he's an odd duck, but he just has a lot going on. He's firing off. If you hear his memoirs, he talks about when he is a little kid, he just was having ideas from a little kid. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: And that's just, I think they're gifts. And these individuals just finally kind of click in and use them. Steve Rush: And thanks to the work that you and others like you, Matt are doing by the way that are bringing this to the front of our consciousness, because there is no direct path to success. Matthew Cox: No, there isn't. Steve Rush: It's about getting the right people to do the right things at the right time. And recognizing that some people are just really good at school. Matthew Cox: Yes. Steve Rush: And others are really good at life. And actually, you know, never the twin you'll meet sometimes. Matthew Cox: No, and I have a lot of doctor friends. I have a lot of lawyer friends, and they're good at it. And like even my wife is very good at school. She was a nurse but there's a balance there because she's good at what she's good at. And I'm good at what, and it's a good partnership just like in partnerships like my brother, and I are business partners as well. And I think I shared with you that when we were talking prior is that we have a joke. I'm Walt Disney, he's Roy. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: And he tells you, and I liked what you said, you know, business, a lot of entrepreneurs, if they're honest, you fall into success. One day you wake up and you're like, wow, we made it [laugh]. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: Because you fumble and you make mistakes and there's a lot of messiness to get to where the end result is, right? Steve Rush: Absolutely. And the opposite is also true. Matthew Cox: Yeah. Steve Rush: Academics tend to stay in academia. Matthew Cox: Yes. Steve Rush: Because that's what makes them good. And that's what makes them successful. They've got the ability to learn, research, regurgitate, apply, learn, and so on. Matthew Cox: Yes. Steve Rush: And you just don't see that in entrepreneurs because they're in the moment. They're attaching their energy to the emotions that are presented for them and the opportunities that come along for them. Matthew Cox: Yeah. Steve Rush: And that's the dichotomy perhaps those two genres, right? Matthew Cox: Oh, it is. My brother's very academic. He has the gift of entrepreneur, but I mean, he can sit down and read anything and understand it after he reads it. I'm the visionary that has twenty ideas and only three are good, right? Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: But I'm constantly looking at the trends of the market. I'm constantly looking at things that most people don't see, it's like the matrix, right. Steve Rush: [Laugh] exactly. Matthew Cox: I see it and I'm like, hey, this is what's going to happen. And then he's like, okay, because he is very laser focused. And he has to move from one thing to another. I can kind of juggle five things at once. So, it's good to have that visionary and integrator. Because if you have that, if you have a visionary in what you're doing and then an integrator to help bring it down to the ground, I think that's where our success took off. Because when we put that combination in, it was game over. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: But before then when you have too many visionaries, if the visionary is doing everything, it's a nightmare for the company. Because the visionary is all over the place, right? Steve Rush: Yeah, exactly right. Matthew Cox: Yeah. Because we started, but we need the help and that's what I found as an entrepreneur, you got to put good people around you. Steve Rush: Yeah. And it's having the emotional awareness to recognize that too, from my experience having worked, coached and spent time with some superb entrepreneurs, is that emotional trigger if you like is very acute. Matthew Cox: Yes. Steve Rush: They know their strengths, but they also very much know their weaknesses. Matthew Cox: Yeah, and it takes them a little bit to figure that out after so many failures. Steve Rush: Yes, indeed. Matthew Cox: I'm not a CEO, I'll never be a CEO. I'm just not a CEO type. So, I create positions within my organizations like visionary or strategic officer because the CEO needs to be a very gold or (A) personality type, where they get things organized and they love to attend meetings. I hate meetings because I'm more high vision, bigger things, bigger ideas, bigger relationships. So, I think when entrepreneurs really figure that, especially if you're the founder or visionary entrepreneur. The founder of your company, when you finally figure out where you're good at and like we're talking about you get into that sweet spot, it helps everybody around you. Steve Rush: Yeah. You've also now taken your learnings of work and business and how you've learned, and you coach others. Matthew Cox: Yes. Steve Rush: And one of the key things you focus on is the application of helping people with their emotional growth. Now for those folk that maybe aren't aware of what emotional growth is, be great if you could just explain it and maybe give us some insight as to how you coach that. Matthew Cox: Yeah. So, a lot of times, I find in high performers or individuals that are performing at that high level or executives, there's a lot of emotional. I mean, so many coaches out there and a lot of the coaches forget about that emotional growth. And I think having the mental health background and dealing with my own emotional health as that visionary entrepreneur. I really focus on that with them, the founders of the companies, the ones that get off the ground, because I can teach you all the systems in the world, but if you can't manage your emotion and your emotional stability, you're going to drive everybody crazy around you. Because we're odd ducks. I mean, if you think about all those guys that we talked about, like Steve Jobs, they struggled in their personal lives because we think so high level that a lot of times, I drive my wife crazy. So, I have to find my own person to go to that kind of can grasp my overload and that's my business partner and brother and he knows, he knows how to address it. So, what I usually do is, I start with your emotional stability as the higher performer. Once we figure out where you're at, then we go down and start working on traction and getting the system in place and envision because that emotional health, we have to have a people plan. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: And the most important person is you because everything ripples down. If that makes sense. Steve Rush: Yeah. It makes bucket loads of sense. Yeah, for sure. Matthew Cox: Yeah. Steve Rush: And actually, it's one of those things that doesn't crop up in the classroom. Matthew Cox: No. Steve Rush: You know, nobody teaches you this stuff, right. It's one of these things you either bump into, you learn or you find out as you are learning from mistakes and challenges, there is definitely this bit that comes along with it, which is, innate radar to maybe spend more time focusing and being aware of people's emotions because you have to, but this is also something that you sometimes need another person to help you with, right? Matthew Cox: Yes. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: I encourage all leaders. And this is why I tell them, you know, hire somebody like me to walk you through it or hire a therapist if there's more emotional growth that you have to do, therapy's not a bad thing. And when I tell high performers this, they're like, what, everybody could use the therapist or somebody they can go to work on certain things in their life. Everybody has something to work on. And when you discover that, you know, I had to discover when I worked with my individual person that I worked with, either it was a counselor or coach. Each of them would always teach me, you just got to slow down a little bit. Because being ADD, I kind of would go too fast for people. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: Or I would capitalize the conversation when I'd call an employee because I see a division, I see something coming and then by the time they're overwhelmed after a 30-minute conversation on the phone. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: Because it's kind of like an emotional dump, if that makes sense. Does that make sense, Steve? Steve Rush: Absolutely, yeah. Matthew Cox: I see this coming and as a high visionary, it was too much. Even my brother would say, hey, you got to break it down. So that's where that emotional growth as a leader's going to come. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: And so, when I teach leaders, I say, hey, you got so much going in your head when you call your manager or whoever's under you, you kind of throw up on them. Steve Rush: [Laugh]. Matthew Cox: And so [laugh] pick one thing. And so, we calm issues. I say, pick one issue. So, if you can get three issues in that week, you've accomplished more. So, we, you know, one of the things I do as coach, I teach them how to run a more effective meeting. So, when they come in they don't do the whole soup. They don't throw everything into the kitchen, in that soup and start stirring. I say, only bring three or four issues and let's talk about them and round table and they find that it's a lot more effective and then they just have this ongoing issue list that they just kind of work at. If that makes sense. Steve Rush: I like it. Yeah, really practical, yeah. Matthew Cox: Yeah. Steve Rush: So, here's the thing. Do you think that we're all broadly on the spectrum of some sort? Matthew Cox: Oh, I think everybody has something. Yeah, I think everybody struggles with something. I call it that everybody does have a learning disability, some sort. We just don't embrace it. It might be an emotional, like you might be quick to get anger. You might be highly intelligent. So, everybody to you is dumb. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: That is a disability. It's an impairment because it's not true. Not everybody around you is dumb. It's just, they don't think the way you think. So, I think it is, I think everybody needs to step back and kind of see what they struggle with and be aware of it. Because we're all human beings. We put our pants one leg at a time, and I think the best thing I ever heard from a personal friend is said, you know, a good friend or somebody that's going to lead you as a coach. I'm going to tell you, you have a booger in your nose and your zippered down, you know, and that's, what's hard for a lot of high performers. I'm going to be honest with them. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: And sometimes, I've scared some away, but if you're wanting to grow, don't hire somebody that's not going to be truthful to you. Steve Rush: And there is still stigma with accepting that you have an issue. Matthew Cox: Oh yeah. Steve Rush: Or you have some needs that are different. Matthew Cox: Yeah. Steve Rush: That need a different treatment strategy, right? Matthew Cox: Yeah. Even some of my high performers, I said, you need to go get, you need to go get therapy. I've had to tell them that. I said, there's some traumas there that are causing you to be a bad leader. And they're like, well, what do you mean? And we had to walk through it. And I had some that said sure. And they did it. And they've had very successful careers and some chose not to, and they've struggled. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: Yeah, so a lot of them don't want to accept it. And I here's what, I just encourage any leader, listening, not everybody's broken. Brene Brown's one of my favorite authors. It's just that daring to lean into it. If you ever want to read some good books, go read her stuff. Because she kind of addresses that society norm that everybody numbs out. Like most of my high performers that are numbing out, they're either using some sort of substance. They're staying up late, their workaholics and that's a form of numbing out. And so, you have to understand why that is. You have to have a good balance if that makes sense. Steve Rush: It does, yeah. So, we're going to give our listeners an opportunity to find out how I can get a copy of the book and a bit more of your insights in a little while. But before we do that, we're going to just flip the lens a little bit. Matthew Cox: Yeah. Steve Rush: And I'm going to hack into your leadership brain. And I want you to share with our listeners, your top three leadership hacks, Matt? Matthew Cox: I'd say my top three leadership hacks, or you know. Have purpose, lead with purpose and understanding, but help others understand that purpose. Number two is, just let go. Once you hire somebody, let go, let them fell, help them understand their seat. Be very clear, what the expectation is. And then number three is just have fun. Enjoy the people you work with and love but have passion in what you're doing. If you don't have passion, it's going to be tough. Every day is going to be tough. Because being an entrepreneur is tough. And the last thing I'd just say is have a coach, because everybody needs a coach. Everybody needs somebody to guide them when they hit the ceiling. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: Because you will hit the ceiling. Steve Rush: Awesome advice. Thank you, Matt., Matthew Cox: Yeah. Steve Rush: Next part of the show we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something hasn't worked out. It maybe been catastrophic even, but as a result of that experience, it's now serving you well in your life and work. What would be your Hack to Attack? Matthew Cox: I think as an entrepreneur or business owner, when you're wearing all the hats and you need to start hiring and increasing your team or grow your team, I've hired some bad people, and these are people I've known. So, I've had one that I hired as a head nurse, and I'd known her for years and it was the worst hire that I ever did. Because you don't know people until you start working with them, you might know them in a community base. You might know them somewhere else. So, from that experience I learned it's okay to hire people but hire slow and fire fast. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matthew Cox: And so from that experience, I learned that. Steve Rush: It's interesting dynamic, isn't it? When you only have a social view of somebody who can talk a great game. Matthew Cox: Yes. Steve Rush: Seeing them apply it is often sometimes different. Matthew Cox: Yeah. The way you live your life, it does ripple into how you work. Steve Rush: Yeah, does. Last part of the show, we get to give you some time travel. You can bump into Matt at twenty-one and give him some advice and some words of wisdom. What would it be? Matthew Cox: If I bumped into myself at twenty-one, oh geez, I'd say never give up. And that's the theme of my life has been, I'd tell my twenty-one-year self, I say listen to people around you that are good mentors. But I would probably just tell, him, take a break and enjoy things on the way as well. Steve Rush: Good advice. And taking a break is part of that recovery system that gives you the emotional capacity to go on and do great things, of course. Matthew Cox: Yes. It rejuvenates your battery. You need it. No matter what phase you're in. I think a lot of us entrepreneurs, we think we need to keep working all the time and I tell you don't do it. Steve Rush: So, I absolutely love the work you're doing Matt. I think you are making a massive difference. I think the book is going to be a game changer for many people around the globe in helping them understand their approach to other people who are somewhat different to maybe what they think they are. And I'm really excited for you that you are on this journey. If our listeners wanted to get a copy of the book and find out a little bit more about the work that you do, where's the best place for us to send them? Matthew Cox: You can reach me on LinkedIn. I'm actively on there. You could also email me @matthewmctraining.com or it's going to be available here soon in all the Amazon's online book, Barnes & Noble, all the different online ways to buy it. So, it'll be coming out soon or go to the website, matthewlelandcox.com. Steve Rush: We'll put all of those links in the show note, Matt, and also as, when the book arrives in the various different jurisdictions, we'll help you get it out to our audience and our listeners. And we wish you all the very, very best with it too. I just want to say thank you for being part of our community in coming on The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Matthew Cox: No, thank you, Steve. Appreciate it. Steve Rush: Thanks Matt. Closing Steve Rush: I want to sign off by saying thank you to you for joining us on the show too. We recognize without you, there is no show. So please continue to share, subscribe, and like, and continue to get in touch with us with the great new stories that we share every week. And so that we can continue to bring you great stories. Please make sure you give us a five-star review where you can and share this podcast with your friends, your teams, and communities. You want to find us on social media. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter @leadershiphacker, Leadership Hacker on YouTube and on Instagram, the_leadership_hacker and if that wasn't enough, you can also find us on our website leadership-hacker.com. Tune into next episode to find out what great hacks and stories are coming your way. That's me signing off. I'm Steve Rush, and I've been your Leadership Hacker.  

Our very special guests are global business guru Pepyn Dinandt and Military Cross holder, ex-army Colonel, Richard Westley OBE. They teamed up and wrote the book Business Leadership Under Fire. This is such a compelling show, packed full of hacks and lessons including: Why establishing leadership can stop your platform burning The “Who Dares Wins” approach to strategy and tactics Building and managing an excellent leadership team Team and organization structure to maximize business impact Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Pepyn and Richard below: Website: https://businessleadershipunderfire.com Pepyn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pepyn-dinandt/ Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-westley-obe-mc-66875216/   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach, or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as The Leadership Hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   What do you get when you smudge one of the world's global business leaders and one of the UK's top Army Colonels? The answer, Business Leadership Under Fire, our special guest today are Pepyn Dinandt and Richard Westley OBE, and they wrote the book, Business Leadership Under Fire, but before we dive in with Pepyn and Richard, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: Have you ever heard, focus takes you where it takes you? Inspired by a blog by Seth Godin many years ago, he had a focus of depth of field, and I'll share a story with you around how and why focus is so important. Picture the scene. There are two runners, both have exactly the same capability, exactly the same pace and the same injury, an injured left toe. The runner who's concentrating on how much their left toe hurts will be left in a dust by the one who's focused on winning. Even if the winner's toe hurts just as much. Hurt of course is a matter of perception. Most of what we think about is, we had a choice about where to aim that focus, aim that lens of our attention. We can relieve past injustices, settled old grudges, nurse festering sorts. We can imagine failure build up its potential for destruction and calculate its odds. Or we can imagine generous outcomes that we're working on. Feel gratitude, feel compassion for those that got us here and revel in the possibilities of what's next, we have an automatic focus are instinctive and cultural choices, and that focus isn't the only ones that are available to us. Of course, those are somewhat difficult to change, which is why so few people manage to do so, but there's no work that pays off better in the long run than focusing on positive and progressive outcomes. Remember the stories that you tell yourself, your story is your story, but you don't have to keep reminding yourself of the story you've told yourself before. If that story doesn't help you change positively for the future, it's probably not the right story in the first place. So, focus on the future stories that you want to tell yourself, and guess what? Those stories become a reality. That's been The Leadership Hacker New. Really looking forward to our conversation with Richard and with Pepyn. Let's dive into the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: I'm joined by two very special guests on today's show. Pepyn Dinandt is a business executive with 30 years' experience successfully leading and restructuring companies in challenging situations as CEO and Chairman. Or in Amsterdam, Pepyn has lived in a number of countries over the years, including Turkey, Ireland, Switzerland, South America, and UK, where he attended University and now lives with his family in Germany. And he's joined by Richard Westley, a military cross holder, who's commanded soldiers and operations at every rank from Lieutenant through to Colonel and environments of desperate situations, including Albania, Afghanistan, Balkans. He retired from the army in 2010, having been responsible for pre-deployment training for forces bound for Iraq and Afghanistan. Between them, they teamed up and wrote the book Business Leadership Under Fire: Nine Steps to Rescue and Transform Organizations, Pepyn and Richard, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Pepyn Dinandt: Hi Steve. Yeah, good morning. Happy to be with you. Steve Rush: Me too. Hi Richard. Ricard Westley: Hi Steve. Steve Rush: So, a little bit about your backstory independently, and then we maybe find out how you kind of collided to come together to write the book. So, Pepyn, a little bit about your backstory? Pepyn Dinandt: Well, after leaving University, I somehow ended up in Germany and after spending three years at McKinsey, which was my paid business school, as I like to say, I landed my first CEO role in Eastern Germany, which was then just, you know, unified with Western Germany. And I ran a company which had a revenue of 50 million euros, but also losses of 50 million euros. So that was my first contact with the challenge of rescuing and transforming businesses and challenging situations. And I had so much fun. I mean, obviously it was very tough at the time, but I had so much fun doing that, that I have kind of never left that type of challenge. Steve Rush: Brilliant. And I guess it's the thrive of being able to rescue those firms that has kept you in that space, right? Pepyn Dinandt: That, plus the fact that you know, these are environments where you need to learn, because if you're not willing to listen and learn, you know, you're going to fail. These are always very, let's say complex situations, they're fast moving, they're fluid. And you know, it really kind of sharpens your skills and obviously, you know, some cases have been more successful than others. You never have only just big successes, but I thoroughly enjoy helping teams be the best version of themselves and you know, rescue these companies, rescue these organizations. Steve Rush: Yeah, and Richard, before what you do now, have you always been a military man? Ricard Westley: Yes, I joined the military pretty much straight after school and spent 25 years as an infantry officer serving around the world. Almost exclusively in operations and training roles. I managed to avoid the major staff roles and the ministry of defense for my 25 years. And then I left earlier than I, perhaps needed to, but I was ready to move. And I spent the last 12 years working in a number of appointments in commercial companies and now run my own consulting business. Steve Rush: Great. So, when did the stars align for you to both meet? Pepyn Dinandt: Well, I have been always interested in the application of military best practices in business. And I had met about four years ago, a gentleman called Tim Collins. The famous Tim Collins and you know, I had been discussing these ideas that I had about this crossover between the military and business. And he introduced me to Richard, that's how the two of us met. Steve Rush: And then Richard, from your perspective, what was the moment you thought, how we are going to do some business together, we're going to write a book. How did that come about? Ricard Westley: Yeah, so Tim. I was working with Tim at the time, and he mentioned Pepyn. So, he would you be interested in a conversation. I said, well, I'm always interested in conversations, and I generally like meeting new and successful people. So, you know, Pepyn and I had initial discussions and then some supplementary conversations and started looking at some sort of solution for leaders. It was a discussion over a number of months really. And then the book was a nice fallout because at that time we were in lockdown, and I think Pepyn, and I were both looking for something else to occupy our minds. And hence the hence the book, Steve Rush: Of course, when you think of the role that the military play versus the role that the commercial enterprises play, there's such a lot of crossovers in this sphere of leadership isn't there? Pepyn Dinandt: Yeah, I think, you know, when we sat down and this is interesting because as Richard just said, you know, we started working together without actually having physically met each other. We were basically, you know, we got to know each other digitally and spend a lot of our early relationship on Zoom. So, you know, we used these experiences, both Richards and myself to kind of look at our learnings, our insights, you know, from good and bad experiences, as well as insights from research we did on successful leadership cases, as well as fade leadership cases and developed from that, the concept for, you know, the book, including obviously the nine steps and Richard being, you know, a very hands on guy than me. So ultimately being somebody who's you know, a hands-on executive, I think developed a book, which is very much rooted in real life experience, has a down to earth approach. We believe is straightforward to understand because it's nine steps, with which we try to really cover all angles that we believe is important for leaderships facing transformation challenges. And ultimately, we produced, we believe a very practical guide for leadership when transforming organizations. Steve Rush: Yeah. It's a very chronological approach to how leaders can really consider how to transform and continue to grow their business, which we're going to dive into a moment. But I want to come to you first, Richard, just to explore the parallels from military leadership to commercial leadership, we've been very fortunate to have a number of major generals appear on the show already. And the one thing that's been really consistent from them is that leadership as a behavioral almost has been drilled from the very moment you join an organization, but actually that's often learned in the commercial organization. Been interested in your spin on things. Ricard Westley: Very much so. I mean, the military has the luxury of being able to devote time and resource to training and developing their people. And officers go through the RMA Military Academy Sandhurst. Mottos, serve to lead and behaviors are really focused from the get-go. So, you know, a young graduate who spent three or four years at university in quite a selfish sort of environment is suddenly thrust into a very pressurized, initial six weeks of a yearlong course where they're put under significant amount of pressure and strain to behave in the right way. And doesn't matter how good or well prepared they think they are, or how fit and robust, or how intellectually gifted they are by about day 10 of the RMA Military Academy Sandhurst. You are so stretched physically, emotionally, mentally, you are quite exhausted, and you have to reach out left and right, and grab people and say, look, we need to work together here. This is not about me. This is about us. And so that team bonding which then translates into the leadership of that team you know progresses and then going through your military career, you know, you are prepared for every new role you go. You are course trained and you are developed. And then at the collective level, you know, units or battalions or regiments will prepare for operations, deploy on operations, recover from operations, then start that circle again, that cycle, of course, in the real world, in the commercial world, companies don't have that luxury. You know, they are on operations 24/7. And so, it becomes really important at that stage that the leaders make time to develop their people and to nurture their talent. So, I think there are things that both can learn from each other. The final point I would say is that business find themselves in very, very volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous circumstances most of the time, and certainly now, and the military is designed for that voker, uncertain world. And so, to me, it's a natural progression for the military to talk to business because they're comfortable and are designed for that voker world. Steve Rush: Yeah, Pepyn, I wonder from your expense of being chairman and CEO on a number of businesses, whether or not there's room for that preparation to take leaders out of the operation space and really immerse them into some intense training and support. Pepyn Dinandt: Well, look, the practice in most corporations is unfortunately completely different to what Richard has described. In other words, people are not really prepared systematically for leadership. And in the book, we talk about the so-called career X point, which is an interesting phenomenon we've seen with many failed leadership examples where people, you know, over time, they do learn initially, and they advance in their career. But when you get to a certain level in organizations, you suddenly believe your now CEO, head of big division, have been successful in the past that you don't need to learn anymore. When the learning line crosses the career line, which keeps going up and the learning line flattens, we talk about the career X points, and that's when people basically start making mistakes in business. Steve Rush: Yeah. Pepyn Dinandt: And that's why it's fascinating to look at the crossover because especially the British military, you know, very, very actively train their leaders to be good, not many businesses do it that way. It's more always, you know, advancement by chance, advancement by opportunities, but not those systematic. Steve Rush: Yeah, that makes those sense. So, let's dive into the book and the nine steps and maybe get some perspective from you as to how the steps within that book can help us and Pepyn we start with you. The first step in the book is that building platform, you call it establishing leadership. Tell us about that? Pepyn Dinandt: So, Steve, you know, you coach leaders, you coach people that run businesses, you know, so you're seeing a situation where there is an obvious problem with the business. Steve Rush: Right. Pepyn Dinandt: Financials are declining, for me, for us. When we define the steps, especially the first step, we said, you know, this is an environment. This is an opportunity. This is a window where you take that situation, and you call out a burning platform. And with that burning platform, you basically achieve two things. First of all, you establish yourself as the leader, that's going to take charge of this situation. You know, that's about conveying the fact that you are safe of hands, having simple messages on, you know, what's happening and what's going to happen and projecting certainty as a leader, in a sense of conveying to people. You have a plan; you're going to get this done. You're going to save the situation. So that's the establishing leadership part. The other part, and this is very often something that you see with formally successful businesses. You know, the organization, which is ultimately the people that work there are in the comfort zone. That's very often the reason why the business in trouble in the first place. And one of the things you need to really focus on is to galvanize the organization into action, into a change mode by explaining why they need to change. And that's why it's so important to do that in the very first step. If you don't get people in a mentally ready for small or big change, you're going to have trouble later on with the other steps. Steve Rush: Yeah. Complacency is a real killer in most organizations, but often people don't even realize they're in that comfort zone until others like you or I, or other people on their team pointed out to them and go, this is a problem [laugh]. So, step two, Richard, you call in the book analysis and determination of mission targets. So very much a military focus. Tell us how that translates? Ricard Westley: Yeah, so the military has a command philosophy called mission command. What we would call you know, empowerment and it really centers around telling your people what you want them to do and why, but not telling them how to do it because they should have the technical skills and they may well be considerably more able than you to actually do the, what. What this chapter is about is really making sure that you understand the intent of your boss or bosses or board or shareholders at whatever level, making sure that everything you do and all the direction that you give to your subordinates is in line with that. And what's required here is real clarity, real clarity of vision to make sure you've got it right. And then clarity of expression to make sure that everybody, you know, from other board members down to the people on the shop floor, really understand what you are about and why you are doing this, so that's what it is. And chapter two really digs into that idea of getting the big idea, right. And then conveying the message as simply as possible to your people. Steve Rush: And it's that simplicity that often gets lost in translation, because my experience tells me that the more simple people can align to a common goal, purpose, mission, vision, the more likely they're going to achieve it, the more complex it becomes, then people lose that through a bit of diffusion. Pepyn Dinandt: Yeah, you know, Richard and I, we had a discussion about step one and two in the sense of what comes first, but we like to use the following analogy. I think, you know, if you're going to be the new chef of a restaurant before you actually get told, you know, what the goal is, what the mission is, it's good. That's step one, to get to know the kitchen and the team before you do that discussion. Why step one first and then step two. Steve Rush: Yeah. It makes sense. There's been lots of debate about which comes first. And I think I concur with you that you have to, what if you just think of the chronological order, you get hired first before you decide what you're going to do exactly. And it follows that same principle, doesn't it? Pepyn Dinandt: Yeah. Steve Rush: And in step three, you talk about the evaluation of the environment. I kind like this theater of operations. Tell us about that? Pepyn Dinandt: You know, steps three is, ultimately very big step, but we like to keep it simple and practical. It's the moment when you look as a leader closely at your competition or in the military term, your enemy, as well as your, you know, your customers, your market that you are serving, or in the military term, the environment that you're operating in. And we've seen my own experience, learnings, you know, good and bad, but also from the research we did, we've seen a truly great business leaders, never underestimate their competition. Everything they do is centered around staying ahead of the competition. And, you know, I talk about the degree of skill and business acumen. So, what's important is to know your business very well from both an inside perspective and from an outside perspective, know your strengths and weaknesses and those of your competition, because very often when people develop strategies and we'll talk about that in step four, you know, they overestimate their own strengths, and they underestimate the strengths of their competition. And interesting under step three is the fact that you may find things. You may find out things about your business, about the competition, where the mission you've been set under step two becomes maybe not even only just difficult, but maybe even impossible. So, you know, we do write in the book that after step three, it may be necessary to revisit step two, depending on what you find out. Steve Rush: Is it fair to say that there will be a continual revisiting of step two as their business and their firm or their mission if you like starts to evolve? Pepyn Dinandt: No, I think if you do it properly, and there's a great Chinese general called Sun Tzu who wrote a book, The Art of War two and a half thousand years ago, you know, and in my experience, as he says, if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of one hundred battles, but if you know, neither of the enemy, nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. So, in other words, if you do your homework properly and you really know your business well, and you really know your competition, well, I think you can then move on to the next steps. I think could be that instant that instant where you need to go back once to step two. Yeah, but at some point, you just need to have done your homework. Otherwise, you're in trouble as a leader. Anyway, Steve Rush: I suppose it plays to the philosophy of having no plan B. Pepyn Dinandt: Yes, exactly. Steve Rush: Yeah [laugh] like it. Yeah, so in step four, I love title of step four, who dears wins. It's a very common used phrase in the military. I think this comes from the SAS, if my memory is correct. And this is about strategy and tactics, Richard. Ricard Westley: Yeah, and step four. I mean, I guess the theme that runs through step four is that simplicity rules. The military uses the acronym kiss, keep it simple, stupid, or keep it short and simple. But that strategy for me is about getting the big ideas, right. Giving clear instructions to your people as to what you want them to do. Supervising the execution, but not getting too close. And then having a good process for lessons identified in order to inform best practice. And the chapter actually draws on some work by Michael Porter, where he talks about cost leadership, differentiation and focus in niche markets in order to ensure that, you know, you can deal with your competitors, but stay on track. And as Pepyn says, it builds on, you know, you build on your strength and you attack your competitor's weakness, which is very much in keeping with the military maneuvers approach, which is, you know, find the enemy's weak point and exploit it whilst defending you know, your center of gravity. Step four, gets into an idea about risk taking and how you manage risk, how you mitigate risk and accepting the fact that you can never rule out risk. So, it leads on to stuff that we talk about later, such as contingency planning. And it also indicates that occasionally you have to go back to your mission and say, okay, something's happened. Something's changed. Is the mission still valid in its format at the moment? And therefore, you know, am I okay to crack on, or do I need a little bit of work here so that I can get on with the other steps? Steve Rush: It's an interesting spin on risk too. Because research has provided loads of evidence over the years that those organizations and entrepreneurs and business leaders who avoid risk actually prevent growth and stifle innovation. Ricard Westley: Absolutely, absolutely right. Steve Rush: Yeah. Ricard Westley: You know, from a military perspective, I always encourage my junior commanders to take risk. You know, my mantra was, go now with a 75% solution and tweak it. Because if you wait for the hundred percent solution, somebody will get there first. Steve Rush: Yeah. And I guess that spins then into step five Pepyn in the book, which is around determining the best course of action. And I guess the question I had was, is there ever a best course of action? Pepyn Dinandt: Well, that's a good question, Steve, but if we take a step back, one of the fascinating things for me, you know, looking at the crossover between military and business is that. Step five is something which in the military, in the best practice cases of the military is always done very, very, very well, but in business, not done very often. And the reason it's the following, you know, in business, a situation is typically where the leadership and the let's say top team develop a plan and then basically give the plan to the organization to get done. But what we say in step five is that, you know, if you want to do it properly, what you do is, you sit down as the planning group with the execution group and you get, you know, you brief them on what you want to happen, and they are allowed to give their feedback. And you know, you have to take the time to get that feedback. You, you know, you really have to also be open for a reality check of your plan. And the SES here is brilliant because, you know, in their mission success cycle, which is plan, brief, execute, debrief. The brief part is so important where the guys that have planned go to the guys that are going to execute, present the plan, but get feedback from the people that will be executing the operators and then maybe even change the plan because they see that from an execution perspective, things that are not well thought through maybe even unrealistic. And this reality check, that's step five. Entails is something whereas a leader, as a CEO, you need a healthy ego, you know, to be able to deal with that. Because it means that somebody may criticize your plan. You know, one of the people that you are going to be hiring or that you're going to be entrusting with opening the French office of a company that is up to now only sat in Britain. You know, he may be telling you, well, this plan's not going to work because ABC and you have to be able to accept that criticism and go back and redo the plan. So that's why step five is critical. And it's unfortunately not seen so often in business, you know, not well done in business. Steve Rush: And I love the notion of healthy ego. Again, similarly, there's been a lot of research that, and in fact, to be fair, there's been lots of publicity and things written, ego is a bad thing, and it is if it's overplayed and it's not helpful, but having a healthy ego gives you confidence, direction and purpose. And I wondered what your spin on that would? Pepyn Dinandt: Every leader need ego. By definition, a leader has ego, but the problem that we have, and we saw this when we did the research, especially for the bad leadership cases, you know, many of these leaders are egocentric. And we see this, for example, again, in the military, the special air services I think is very, is a great example here. You know, you can have great leaders that haven't healthy ego that are, let's say, aware of their own limitations, are open to criticism. And basically, as you, in that podcast mentioned, you know, they don't have a centric ego, but rather a healthy ego. And I believe that that you know, good business managers, good business leaders, not necessarily founders entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos, but the people that are entrusted to lead these businesses in the second-generation. Key is for them to have a good, healthy ego, because it's so important to creating a learning organization. Steve Rush: Yeah. Pepyn Dinandt: And that stops you from, at some point in the future, getting into a problem where you need to do transformation. Steve Rush: And that also will help you find other people around you who bring additional strengths and characteristics, which is leading into step six, which is about building and managing that excellent leadership team. Richard, this is essential in the military as well as in the corporate world, isn't it? Ricard Westley: Yeah, it is. And you know, this, whole idea of pulling together and then maintaining a high-performance team is absolutely crucial to mission success, as is, you know, spotting and nurturing potential. And we've already mentioned you know, committing time and resource to developing your people to make sure that team that you've selected is then maintained and developing your team to make sure, you know, they've got clear aligned, you know objectives and values. Those teams need to be encouraged to communicate frequently and effectively, they need to be collaborative, you know, that sort of collaboration breaks down the silos that can often slow up business. And that team needs to build trust through relationships, but it also needs to be able to learn and adapt. And we get onto that in step nine, but it is, it's about making sure that you get the right people and that you don't default to just people, you know, but actually getting the right people and the right job, and then giving them the responsibility Steve Rush: And step seven plays into that lovely, doesn't it? As part of that whole organizational structure in order to get the right people in the right place to get the best results. Pepyn, what's your experience of making sure that in that space you've got the right people? Pepyn Dinandt: Yeah. Look, I think, in my own experience, very often you come into a company that is in trouble and you have to very quickly, you know, go through your steps and act. So, one of the key questions is to look at the culture of the organization and to try to understand, because often, as I said before, these companies have been successful. So for example, find a customer centric culture in this company, or is a very technical culture. It's important to understand, you know, what you're dealing with because ultimately, as I said before, the organization is, another way of saying, you know, five thousand people, ten thousand people, you know, whatever the size of the company is, you need to get them to do something different. So, is it a dynamic organization or is it a company that is clearly in the comfort zone? You need to understand this because then you have to organize yourself to take that plan and make sure you develop the structure that has maximizing the business impact from what you're trying to achieve. My own experience, Steve is that in general, smaller units are much more effective than large units. But the thing that ultimately guides, you know, the structure that you're going to be implementing is, what you are facing in the market. In other words, are you competing against smaller competitors who are organized in smaller entities? Is it a local market? So, you know, once you have all this information, you can then develop and define the structure that you believe. Steve Rush: Yeah. Pepyn Dinandt: Is going to be most effective. But what you need to do is, change it, only for the sake of getting it out of its comfort zone. So typically, I find larger structures, more functional organizations, and typically I define them smaller. And I like to call these business units that have, you know, delegated responsibility, or as Richard said before, you know, where the people leading these smaller entities take responsibility and have freedom. Steve Rush: Yeah. Pepyn Dinandt: And degree of decision making. Steve Rush: That makes load of sense. So, step eight, Richard, there's two words in there that have really interesting connotations. Campaign delivery. So, for me, when I read that, the first thing I thought of is, oh, this is wrapped up in a campaign strategy at IE. There's a start and end. There's lots of moving parts all in the right places. And of course, the one thing that's essential in every business is you have to deliver, what does it speak to? Ricard Westley: Yeah. So, you've got your plan and you're probably feeling quite proud of your plan. But how can you stress test it? And how's it going to survive contact with a competitive arena. And that's absolutely based on the military assertion that, you know, no plan survives contact with the enemy because your competitors or your opponents on a sports field for that matter, they have a vote. And have you contingency planned against their likely responses you know, what is the market going to do when you introduce some new product or service in there, which disrupts, what is their default setting going to be? And how do you plan against that? And this whole idea of contingency planning is that, of course you can't plan against every possible contingency. And I always in the military planned against the worst case and the most likely case, because if you've got a contingency plan for those two, anything else happens in between, you can sort of tweak it, but it is about war gaming and red teaming. And this is not confined to the military or to business. One of the examples we cite in step eight was the way that the British Olympic Committee approached their metal chances and the matrix that was created by the likes of John Steele and Peter Keen in the committee that they would go and pour over, you know, twice a week to make sure that actually they weren't missing something. And if they need a contingency plan against, you know, an outbreak of, you know, foot and mouth in the country just before, what were they going to do? So, war gaming and red teaming, you know, which businesses should do, but often pay lip service to become really important. And finally, it comes down to accountability. Yeah, it's the leader's responsibility. You know, you take the credit when things go well, I'm afraid if they don't, then you've got to be held accountable. And it's all down to you at the last at the last count. Steve Rush: When you start to get people to think about plan for the end planned. The mindset will take you to what you know, or broadly what you can anticipate. But I bet that's changed in the last two years. Me included by the way, got caught out big time with how the pandemic through that perspective to us. And I wonder if in the future organizations will be more thoughtful to that because of what's happened in the last few years. Pepyn Dinandt: I think Steve, you know, step eight is, obviously, it's the execution of the plan, but it's so much more than that. And, you know, I learned for example, an interesting military term, which I believe is also very applicable to business, which is UDA. You know, this is something developed, I think during the Korean war where they saw that the inferior U.S. jets were winning against superior Russian jets flown by the North Koreans. And somebody figured out that the reason was because the pilots flying those American jets were much more in tune in what was going on in the world, let's say, applying a concept that was later called UDA, which is observe, orientate, decide and act. In other words, they were, you know, able to adjust to what was going on in the field. So as Mr. Von Moltke a famous I think Prussian General once said, you know, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. And that's why we also emphasize in step eight that a leader needs to be close to the action. Needs to see what's going on in the field with his plan so that he can adjust real time. You know, as Richard just said, have a contingency plan, but make sure the leader is leading that change of plan together with this team. Steve Rush: Which is why step nine is also then so important, which is that final after-action review. Pepyn Dinandt: Yeah, and the after-action review is something for me personally, that was completely new. I learned this from Richard, you know, Richard can maybe add to this because he was very instrumental in bringing that to the British military, but this is a very interesting concept. And this is by the way for the SAS, their last step in their four-step model. So, you know, when you have finished your transformation program, be it, you know, a cost take out exercise or a relaunch of a growth initiative. You know, you sit down with everybody which includes the boss, but also the people that have been, you know, executing parts of the plan and you have an open and frank and honest discussion as to what went right, what was good, but also what did not go right? And what can we learn for the next time? So, it's seldom a business leader. I have to say that is, you know, able to sit there in the room and take constructive feedback, open bracket, maybe sometimes criticism, you know, of their plan and then take that and think about it and, you know, change things for the next time. But as I said before, this is something which is so important to do, right. Because you create with it, the ultimate learning organization. And I, myself, you know, as I said, this has been a great, interesting learning for me personally. I have seen it in very successful organizations where this is practiced. Maybe not so systematically as we describe it here in step nine, but it's definitely something I would recommend for all companies to do because it's so powerful. Steve Rush: Yeah, and it stops repeating mistakes in the past and focuses you on building on the strengths that you've achieved as well. Pepyn Dinandt: But also, you know, just a signal from leadership to do this, to you know, sit there and take criticism. I think it's so powerful for the organization because it just sends a signal. You know that there is a culture of openness where if it's constructive, if it objective, you know, people can step up and say, look boss, I don't think this is the right way. I think we need to do it differently because 1, 2, 3. Steve Rush: It's a really pragmatic nine steps. I'm really delighted that we were able to dive into them and get into them and we'll allow our listeners an opportunity to find out how they can get a copy and dive to learn a bit more about your work later on. But first I'm going to turn the tables a little bit. And this is part of the show where our listeners have become accustomed to where we get to hack into your leadership minds. So, I'm going to come in turn and quick fire, top three leadership hacks from you both. Pepyn kick us off? Pepyn Dinandt: My top three leadership hacks. One, you know, as I said before, absolutely paramount to get your first step right in a transformation situation. If you don't get that right, you're in trouble. Second, the plan is nothing. The planning is everything, you know. So, I love that saying from Benjamin Franklin, fail to prepare and prepare to fail. And three, if you want to be a really good leader, then you need to have a healthy ego because that is a key to being very impactful and leading a learning organization. Steve Rush: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Love it. Richard, what about your top three leadership hacks? Ricard Westley: First thing I'd say. Two leaders is a need to learn to listen and really listen. Not, listen to respond, but to really listen, to understand their people because otherwise they'll miss so much more than just the technicalities and the practicalities. They will miss stuff that involves culture and culture is important. Second one is, you know, whatever you do, issue clear instructions, let people know the intent, the why, and empower them to get on with it. And thirdly, you are there to make decisions. And as my first colour sergeant said to me, you know, at the end of the day, Mr. Westley, you have to make a decision, good decision, great. Bad decision, regrettable. No decision, unforgivable. Steve Rush: Yeah. And bad decisions lead to learning as well [Laugh] you know. Ricard Westley: Indeed. Yeah, yeah. You've got to fail to learn and thrive. Steve Rush: That's it, yeah. So, the next part of the show we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is where we ask our guests to share an event, a story or experience where something has particularly not gone well for them in their work or their life, but as a result of it, they've learned. And it's now a force of good in what they do. What would be your Hack to Attack Pepyn? Pepyn Dinandt: Yeah, look. First was when I was a, you know, first time CEO I had come from McKinsey, and I thought as many McKinsey do, that I could walk on water and do it all alone. But I was lucky because through fortunate circumstances, I very quickly learned that it's individuals that may play the game, but teams that beat the odds. And that's been one of my mantras ever since. And the other one is that later on in life, I learned the hard way that not every mission is accomplishable, yeah. So as a leader, you need to be brave enough to stand up to your board, sponsor, owner, and explain that this mission that you have been set is impossible and will not work as envisaged, you know, and not many leaders are brave enough to do that. Steve Rush: That's very important lessons learned there, and I can particularly resonate with the last, because there comes with a fear of particularly if you're leading somebody else's strategy, letting them know that they've also screwed up in the process. Pepyn Dinandt: Yep. Steve Rush: Yeah. Richard, how about you? Ricard Westley: Yeah, I'd harp back to a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia that very nearly failed. I mean, very nearly failed. It nearly brought down the UN and the British Prime Minister, John Major offered his position up to the cabinet because of what had happened to us. And we managed to model through and the town that we were defending did not fall unlike Srebrenica just up the valley and sadly but I would say what I learned from that is, you know, the depth of mine and other people's resilience and how you have to keep working at that and keep topping up their resilience banks when times are tight. I learn to never give up, to keep thinking, keep moving, and again, keep contingency planning at every level, Steve Rush: Really powerful lessons, particularly in times of crisis like that as well. You can rely on those foundations to help you through, can't you? Ricard Westley: Indeed. Steve Rush: So, the last part of the show is you get to do a bit of time travel and all the years of wisdom you've been able to attain in your more mature days, you get a chance to bump into yourselves at 21 and give yourselves some advice. What would Pepyn advice to Pepyn at 21 be? Pepyn Dinandt: Well, by the way, I wrote the book or we wrote the book or the idea for the book came about of providing my younger self, something useful and practical to work with. But to answer your question directly, I think for me, knowledge and experience, you know, the realization that these are greatest weapons in times of trouble that, you know, the good and experienced people that have trained it and done it a hundred times before. They are so valuable to you as a young person. And as a young man, I would advise myself to adopt the scout mindset. So be curious, be open, be grounded and learn. So, to listen and learn from those more experience around you, because typically, you know, young you, does not know at all, even if you think you do. Steve Rush: And the scout and soldier mindset are those kinds of different perspectives. And we can use a metaphor of almost a kind a growth and curious mindset versus a fixed and closed mindset, right? Pepyn Dinandt: Yes, exactly. Steve Rush: Yeah. Richard, 21. I guess you were heading off at Sandhurst, weren't you? Ricard Westley: I was pretty much passing out at Sandhurst at 21. Steve Rush: Oh, yeah [Laugh] Ricard Westley: What I would say to myself there is, the one thing I really learned is the most, for a military commander, but also in business, I guess that one of the most important information requirements you have is time. How much time have I got and when do I have to achieve this by? And so, I would say to young RJ Westley at 21 or 19, get better at time management. Because I don't think I was terribly good at it. And of course, I was fueled with the mindset of most young infantry officers that wanted to go and earn their spurs, go and prove themselves and yeah, and go into violent situations and win. And I guess what I would say to that young person is be careful what you wish for. Steve Rush: Yeah, very good advice, indeed. So, I've had a ball talking, I could spend the rest of the day diving into these subjects because as you probably already know, I'm a bit of a leadership geek and you have an enormous amount of lessons that we can learn from. So firstly, thank you for sharing them so far, but if our listeners did want to get a copy of the book, learn a bit more about the work that you both do now. Where's the best place for us to send them? Pepyn Dinandt: Well [laugh], there is a website, www.businessleadershipunderfire.com where they can learn more about the book. And then there is a link on the website to go directly to Amazon where they can then order it. I think that would be the recommendation for your listeners. Pepyn Dinandt: Perfect. And we'll include that link along with any social media links that you have in our show notes. So as soon as people listen to this, they can dive straight in and find a bit more about what you do. It just goes without saying, to say, thank you ever so much for coming on our show, joining our community here on The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Pepyn, Richard, thanks very much. Pepyn Dinandt: Steve. Thank you very much. Ricard Westley: Absolute pleasure. Thanks.   Closing Steve Rush: I want to sign off by saying thank you to you for joining us on the show too. We recognize without you, there is no show. So please continue to share, subscribe, and like, and continue to get in touch with us with the great new stories that we share every week. And so that we can continue to bring you great stories. Please make sure you give us a five-star review where you can and share this podcast with your friends, your teams, and communities. You want to find us on social media. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter @leadershiphacker, Leadership Hacker on YouTube and on Instagram, the_leadership_hacker and if that wasn't enough, you can also find us on our website leadership-hacker.com. Tune into next episode to find out what great hacks and stories are coming your way. That's me signing off. I'm Steve rush, and I've been your Leadership Hacker.  

Matt May is Founder and CEO of Premier Team Building and Interactive experiences, he's also a speak and author of the Book, "Take the Fear out of Team Building." In this engaging and fun show, you can learn: Why “team building” is not a “bad word.” Why grown-ups have developed fear and anxiety around play and team building? How do you go about having fun/play yet keeping the learning real and authentic? How do you get folks to participate who just don't want to get involved.   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Matt below: Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattmayptb/ Matt on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PremierTeamBld Matt on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/premierteambuilding/ Matt's Website: https://premierteambuilding.com/   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach, or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker. Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as The Leadership Hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Our special guest on today shows Matt May. He's the founder and CEO of Premier Team Building & Interactive Experiences Company. He's also a speaker, an author of the book, Take The Fear Out Of Team Building. But before we get a chance to speak with Matt, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: The values and culture play a real part in leadership post pandemic. We're going to look at how environments have changed dramatically over the last 10 years and particularly since the pandemic. It's exposed weaknesses and for some businesses strengths and the effectiveness of company values and how they're put into practice. I want to dive in and have a quick look at how leadership drastically changes company culture and how values inform it. There's a fantastic report from the ILM called leading through values if you get a chance to get your hands on it, which gives you much more context and detail about the things I'm going to talk to you about. And just to throw something else into the mix that helps inform culture and values, right now. I wrote an article in CEOWorld Magazine and on LinkedIn called Mind The Gen Gap. For the first time, we now have four generations in the workforce, Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials, and Gen Zers or Gen Zers if you're in the UK. And the reason this is important is because values is the principles, the rules of the game, and we all have perspectives based on our generations. And whilst these are not scientifically proven, it's a good barometer and we should take it into consideration. The ILM research found that 69% of people will reconsider a job if the company culture seems to be toxic, 77% felt that company culture was incredibly important to them and the values that their boss also brings to the culture and 56% ranked opportunities for growth as more important than their basic salary and package. So, the top values that impact on culture are having a person centered and authentic approach with the core elements, being congruence. In other words, your words and actions make sense to your employees. Being genuine in essence, empathy, having a deep understanding of what it feels like for employees of every grade and every level and an unconditional positive regard for the individual. And only if there is a genuine approach to demonstrate these values from senior leadership. There can be congruency throughout the organization. You'd expect wellbeing of employees to be up there and of course, it is. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, CIPD. Run a survey of over 3000 individuals in the UK. And the survey consistently found a 38% of workers experience work stress on a weekly basis. The problem in a lot of companies is that there is no clear standalone health and wellbeing strategy. In fact, only 8% of companies had such a strategy And at least 34% of managers expressed a need for independent authority and feel unempowered to really do anything. My observation here is if we have a people centered approach, wellbeing should be part of that, and we don't necessarily need to have a strategy or strategic. We do however need to be more thoughtful and compassionate. And as a talent management and learning and development, professional. It's music to my ears, to see self-directed on autonomous learning to sit up here in the top tier, there's been a significant shift away from organizations investing in organization-wide learning programs and much more focused self-directed autonomous learning and it's becoming more prominent in most company's culture. And this means that the company values are the basis of helping employees engage when it's meaningful and when it's right for them. But this strategy provides some challenges, too. Some people really struggle to learn on their own. They do need guidance, support, and others to help them on their journey. There are people not able to extract and absorb the information in the same way and still need that for face-to-face facilitator led sessions. And there's such a thing too, to have too much freedom. The number of possibilities can create overwhelm and anxiety. So, we have to sometimes help people direct them to the most appropriate resources. And their last one on my list today is recognition. Remuneration is important for sure but recognizing staff for good jobs well done is most important and a significant indicator in value-based leadership. Many employees want to feel that their work is being valued and valuing values plays an important role in this because they should stipulate in some way that there is a recognition of the hard work outside of the salary and the direct results as a result of their work. This will also inform great culture and culture can be formed so that this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The final thing I want to draw our attention to is your company's purpose is not your purpose and your mission, but finding that connectivity by what you do to why they do what they do will really help you find true purpose in your work, as well as in your life Values based culture gives you the principles to accelerate progress together and purpose will anchor the activities that bring people together to drive great culture. That's been The Leadership Hacker News, lets dive into the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Joining on the show today is Matt May. He's the founder and CEO of Premiering Building & Interactive Experiences Company. Who's putting the fun and energy back into play. He's also a speaker, an author of the book, Take The Fear Out Of Team Building. Matt, welcome to the show my friend. Matt May: Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. Steve Rush: So, I'm really looking forward to our interactive experience today. But before we get into that, maybe you can just give our listeners a little bit of the journey from where it all began in theater to you and how you ended up running in interactive experiences firm. Matt May: Absolutely. So, I was in music and theater in high school, middle school. I always was creative. Hey, let's put on some sort of a show or a presentation or do something for the family and the parents and the yada, yada in the backyard, in the garage. And when I went to school undergraduate, I went for theater. I earned a dual major in theater and arts administration. So, I got that business side. I also was a camp counselor when I was a teenager. I went through a three-year counselor in training program as a camper. Took some psychology courses in undergrad, as well as a number of leadership courses. And I don't know if they're call all seminars or what but opportunities that were presented through a variety of organizations within the university setting. So that kind of all sorts of came together for me after I graduated school, I went to New York city and did the professional entertainment thing for a while, but I also was always kind of had an education thought in my head. So, I really did a number of different things. I finally left New York after five years. I said, I'm moving to sunnier pastures because I want to be able to have my coffee outside, whether it's January or June. Steve Rush: That's right, yeah. Matt May: [Laugh]. I moved to Florida in the states and really haven't looked back. But when I moved there, I started working in administration at a performing arts high school and college and had a number of different opportunities that I embraced and did. And finally sort of fell into team building per say. I happened to be bartending at a comedy show on campus at the Fort Lauderdale Performing Arts Center, the Broward Center for the Performing Arts. And the stage manager happened to be staffing an event, a team building event, just helping the company, which is actually based in Massachusetts. So not even close by. And she said, hey, do you want to do it? And I said, yeah, absolutely. And that was my first official team building as an assistant staff. And I said, oh, huh, there's something about this. So, jump ahead, several years I was facilitating, I started doing a lot of producing because of my theatre background. I was able to do production and logistics and whatnot, and finally said, you know what? I quite honestly, I'm tired of being on the front lines and not having control and what goes into all of the preparation beforehand and created my own company. And I like to call it a perfect storm because I have my logistics and my business and my entrepreneurship and my sales skills. And by the way, sales is my least favourite thing to do. But I get guess I have some sort of a knack for it. But then I also, when I facilitate jump on stage and I'm able to get people working together and be entertaining and whatnot. So, I'm able to use all of my experiences and all of my different training, whether it be from education or professional or theatre or business, and it kind of a perfect store and collides together. So that's kind of how I got to where I am now. And looking back, of course, hindsight is always 2020, I think. Oh, all right. Well, that's why I did all of those different things and worked in education and professional theatre and, you know, did some temping offices and whatnot so that all of this came together for me to where I am now, Steve Rush: Steve jobs, I think famously said you can't always connect the dots forward, but you can definitely connect them back. And that's perfect example, right? If you were trying to create the path to where you are now, you'd probably never get there. Matt May: No. And you just made me think, I don't know if I'm the only one, but I remember as a kid, when we would try to do mazes, you know, the mazes that you draw, the pen or the pencil through it all. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matt May: Some reason, they seem to be easier going backwards. Steve Rush: Oh, that's interesting perspective. I wonder if that's something to do with the way that our brains are wired as well. Matt May: It must be, I've never really researched it, and until you mention that Steve Jobs quote, I hadn't really thought of it, but I think that's on my to-do list this afternoon. Steve Rush: Shout out to all amateur neuroscientists, or any professional ones that listen to the show, they can maybe contact us and let us know. That'll be interesting to have a look at. Matt May: Yes. Steve Rush: So, the work that you do now, it's very still theatrical, isn't it? So, you get to be that front to stage guy, but also then be that production guy as well. Is there a natural kind of thing that you prefer? Are you more of a front man or more of a production man? Where would you say you're kind of true passion lie? Matt May: Geez, that's a tough question to answer. You know, certainly being a performer as I was younger and going to school for it initially, that's instilled in me, but it's funny. I will have clients who are new clients often come up to me after an experience ended and say, where did you come from? And the first few times that happened, I didn't understand it. But now I do, when I walk into a ballroom or whatever, and I'm setting up and managing staff and we're getting ready, it's very organized and logical. And you know, I'm just doing what needs to be done and I'm talking to a client or whatever, and it's very professional, but something happens that when I jump on stage or jump in front of a crowd or grab a mic or whatever, I just inherently turn it on if you will. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matt May: And that's what they refer to now. The challenge is, in my line of work is. I'm not there just to entertain, right. And I'm reminded of the late Alex Trebek from Jeopardy. He was never wanted to be introduced as the star of the show Jeopardy. It was always the host of the show because his feeling was that contestants were the stars. Steve Rush: Yes. Matt May: And I try to keep that philosophy that the participants in the experience, they are the stars, the light shines on them. When I start a program, I'm doing kind of what I like to think of as audience warm up. And yeah, I do my skit and whatnot, but that gets people going. But then once the experience really gets going and they get hands on, it's all about them. Steve Rush: Yeah. And of course, the biggest thing, most of all is, you're there to facilitate a learning outcome. Matt May: Exactly. Steve Rush: And that's the one thing that is different from a performance, because actually as a performer, you are still having an ambition to want to entertain, but you are not having to be as thoughtful of the specific way that you construct an experience so that somebody takes away a different learning outcome, right? Matt May: Correct. Correct. And when we're watching as patrons watching entertainment, whether it be on a screen or on a stage. We are there for them to entertain us. Where in my line of work, I'm not here to entertain you. As you said, I'm here to facilitate the experience. So, you put in as much as you're going to get out of it. Steve Rush: Exactly right. So, when we start to think about the whole concept of team building, when you mention that word to groups of individuals, what's the reason you get a different response. So, some people will love it and some people will running in fear from it. What causes that? Matt May: The simple answer in my opinion is bad experiences. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matt May: They have been thrust into experiences that didn't have positive outcomes for them, for whatever reason. So many people think of team building as trust falls or paintball or zip lining or white-water rafting, you know, extreme sports, if you will, or sitting in a room and being told, this is how you work together as a team, while watching a slideshow, right. I don't do any of those things. And I think it's because people have been thrust into those things, or that's the majority of their experience. They just have a negative connotation in their head that team building is a bad word. Now there's also, as you mentioned, some people are very excited about it. People who are extroverted and tend to be well, extroverts generally like it more because they're excited and their energy is locomotive full speed ahead. Where people who are more introverted and maybe have anxiety, or even if it's not full-blown anxiety just don't like to be in a crowd or don't like to be in a small group because they can't hide as easily. Those people have more apprehension. So, when they hear team building, I think their negative thoughts are even more heightened. Steve Rush: Of course, in any audience, you are going to have a mix of those types of individuals, because many will be extroverted and thinkers and feelers, and others will be introverted thinkers and feelers. How do you make sure that when you are constructing a session that you are thoughtful of those different types of personalities that might come out? Matt May: Well, our experiences are designed in such a way that everybody is on an even peel, equal, right. I generally tell clients; I don't want to know who the boss is. The CEO is here, okay great. Don't tell me who he is, or she is. I don't want to know because I want to treat every single person the same. Now Murphy's Law inevitably comes into play nine times out ten, and that's the person I wind up picking on [Laugh] just organically. And then, oh, that's the CEO, well, thanks for playing [laugh]. But generally, most of our experiences, Steve call for teams of ten, and we start off having everybody in the team of ten, doing a group exercise, and they're all doing the exact same thing before they even break out into, quotes, unquote. And I'm using air quotes here, roles and responsibilities that they will be in charge of, if you will, during the experience. Everybody does the same icebreakers and the same introductory games and challenges and activities. So that everyone is completely even keel. Then a lot of times when you break off into the experience, say it's building bikes for kids. For example, some people are more mechanically inclined, or they're really good with wrenches and they want to put something together great. Somebody else is better with puzzles and mind games and mind solving great. They'll focus more on that. Other people are better at marketing. And so, they'll kind of work on their team presentation more, but by the same token, a lot of times people say, well, you try this. This is not your forte or what you would normally gravitate to, this particular component. Why don't you try this? And that allows people to see their colleagues in a whole different light. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matt May: For example, sometimes the CEO or the C levels or the Directors, whatever will be on teams with somebody who's the front desk receptionist. And that person will, for whatever reason, wind up in more of a leadership role or whatnot. And then next thing you know, the boss is saying, you are totally underutilized signing for packages and answering the phone. We need to talk next week. And, you know, ultimately the person becomes an office manager or whatever, because he or she was seen in a different light. Steve Rush: I suspect that having the opportunity to throw away the natural conventions of the work labels gives everybody the opportunity to see how others behave and perform. Matt May: Absolutely. Steve Rush: Yeah, I love that. So as kids, when, you know, you first got up in front of your folks and did your, you know, theatre production and, you know, I probably did the same. What is it that causes some people like you, Matt, to continually have this energy to want to continually innovate and play where others like me will, you know, be a bit stuffy and go, well, I don't do any of that kind of stuff anymore? Matt May: Well, I don't know. I don't know if there's a certain quote unquote thing that is in me or not in you or whatever. I think some of it is inherent and its personality and as well as likes and desires, you know, what we follow or chase, but I think a big part of it too Steve is that we are conditioned as we grow up. Now I can only speak for the States, right. I can't speak for European school upbringing, but for the States, and this is changing to a degree, but for so long, it was sit at the desk, take the information that's presented to you, go home, do some exercises, commit it to memory, come back and regurgitate, wash, rinse, repeat, right? Steve Rush: Right. Matt May: So, as kids if we look at it, their favourite, well, I'm generalizing. Often the favourite part of the day is recess because they get to go outside and play. But as we get older, recess is removed from the school day. And by the time we're out of primary schools and into middle school, junior high, high school, and then certainly in college, we go, and we ask people to give us information and educate us that we are then going to theoretically use, but the play is gone. So, I think that's a big part of it is, just society. And don't get me wrong. Look, adulting is hard [Laugh] okay. Steve Rush: That's true. Matt May: We all have responsibilities. We can't play on the playground all day. We have to work so that we can survive and support our family or if we don't have a family, at least keep a roof over our head and keep us fed and clothed. But the fun element in our work and our workday seems to have been removed. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matt May: And it, takes like going on a boy's weekend to have our fun or the girls. I'm going out with the girls tonight or whatever. That is how we have our fun. Well, why can't we still have fun in the workday? And I know fun is not necessarily something we use to measure success or productivity, but it doesn't mean it can't be prevalent. And it doesn't mean it doesn't help success and productivity. Steve Rush: I think you actually might be able to measure that. So, when you look at things like employee engagement, you'll see fun represent itself in different ways. So, commitment to the organization, prepared to stay, creativity, innovation, elements of peer group recognition, that kind of stuff. But often we don't apply that three-letter word to it because we feel it's got less relevance in a workplace. Matt May: Correct. Steve Rush: Would that be fair selection? Matt May: Absolutely. I think that's very fair. And I will let you in on, well, I guess it's not going to be a secret because I've already told other people coming out there right now. I am a Hallmark movie junkie. I fully admit it. I'm a sap. I'm a big romantic at heart. I love Hallmark movies. And there was one that I watch about a year ago now. And there was a line that I sort of kind of touched on a moment ago, but the line was, and I know that fun, isn't typical metric in the corporate world, but you know what it's worth because fun allows people to relax and be fully themselves, which makes them productive and more engaged. And that affects the bottom line. Steve Rush: Right. And is that something also that helps remove some of that fear and anxiety around team building as well? Matt May: Absolutely. And I've had, I don't want to say arguments. Discussions with people who have said anything competitive is not valuable in team building. Well, hold on, going back to the whole paintball, I will agree with you on that. I don't, for me, that is not exciting. That is not team building. That's just crazy, whatever. However, the majority of our team building experiences are competitive in nature. However, we're not talking about tackling each other and taking each other out with guns. We're talking about light-hearted competition. People are naturally competitive, Steve, right? Steve Rush: mm-hmm. Matt May: Again, I'm generalizing. Steve Rush: That's a fair generalization, yeah. Matt May: Yeah. When we start, we go to school, we earn, or we are provide with good grades for positive work and productive work. The mother of all, and I don't know if you have this over in the UK, but at least over here, the mother of all winnings is the lottery. People play, whether it's scratch off or the big one, people go to a casino for a night out, whatever, but they put their coin in the machine, pull that lever and they want to get the pay-out. We are competitively, we like to win things. So, when you tell people, hey, you are doing this for the winning title, and yes, you're going to win a gold medal at the end, whatever. It's just fun. We're just there to have some light-hearted competition, but people inherently enjoy that. Then they start talking smack to their colleagues. You're going down, whatever. Just again, it's all light-hearted fun. Nobody really means any ill will to each other. But doing that in an environment outside of the office allows you to see your colleagues in a different light Steve Rush: And neurologically, of course. It releases dopamine. Matt May: Right. Steve Rush: And that's a rewarding chemical transmitter, neurotransmitter that we thrive on. And you get a hit from that. So not only is it fun, it's also a learning, so you want more of it. Matt May: Exactly. We crave more of it once we've had the burst of it. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matt May: And like I said, the whole medals, I have a discussion and I usually talk about it on when to do team building exercises. I always say, if you have people that don't know each other and coming out of the pandemic, I have hear from more and more people, we're doing the sales meeting and 75% of our team has not met each other, other than on Zoom. Okay, well, then I would recommend doing it at the beginning. Well, we wanted to wrap up the three-day conference with it. Okay, we can do that. But if you're telling me, people don't know each other yet, do it at the beginning, they're automatically going to know nine other people from their direct team. The winning team is going to win gold medals. Maybe they'll wear them at lunch that day. Maybe they'll wear them that night to the cocktail reception. We'll encourage them to wear them the rest of the three days to remind everyone that they were the winners. Good for them. Well, that's a conversation piece right there. Somebody else might come up and say, we were robbed. Yeah, well, sorry. We got the medals, right. So, it automatically creates conversation. And again, it was based on that fun competition factor. Steve Rush: So, during your experiences as well, one of the things that I've noticed through the work that you do, Matt, is that there is always a purpose behind what you do. So mentioned kids for bikes earlier. So that's something that you use, exercise as a team together, but something that's also serving communities well. Just tell us a little bit about some of the things you do. Matt May: Well, as far as the philanthropic experiences, yes. Building bikes is for kids is one. We have an experience where we build wheelchairs for veterans, or maybe not even veterans for people who are mobility challenged. Foster care programs, kids entering foster care. Kids that need snacks. They don't get them during the school day when they're on vacation, places that they can go to get the snacks because they're underserved and maybe their parents can't afford to give them a snack every day. So, all of those types of things, many companies have CSR, Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives. And if we can align with them, that's great. Because, let's say, let's be honest. If we can get something out of it, i.e., getting our teams to work together, having fun, doing something out of the norm of the workday and give back, well, then it's win-win for everybody. Steve Rush: Yeah. Ticking all the boxes, right? Matt May: Exactly. And it doesn't have to be philanthropic. It could be a culinary program and your company, I don't know, maybe your company makes salsa. We could do a salsa margarita challenge. See, oh, wait, maybe that is the next new recipe for your brand, right. Or for an alternate version of your salsa, or maybe you make hospice sauce and, well, great. Let's use your sauce in this culinary team building experience. So, there are ways to incorporate the company as well. Steve Rush: Yeah, exactly. Love it. So, have you ever had a time where you've just had a participant who's just, you know, folded arms, stuffy, I'm not getting involved in any of this? Have you ever experienced any of that? Matt May: Yes [laugh]. Steve Rush: How do you deal with that? Matt May: To be honest with you, I don't, and I'll tell you why. Usually, well, it's never not happened. So, knock on wood. The person ultimately says, well, I look like a schmuck standing over here, and I'm the one who's not having fun. Who wants to be in the corner? Right. All by him or herself. If your colleagues bring you in and you insist upon being that stuffy jerk. Okay, fine. You're only hurting yourself. So, peer pressure I guess, is the bottom line. And I say that in a positive way, not a negative way. That ultimately your peers are going to say, come on, let's go. You're being a jerk. Steve Rush: [Laugh]. Matt May: And it happens, right. If somebody doesn't have the realization by themselves, that there are only hurting themselves and look like dunce. Somebody else, or several other members of the team are going to say, come on, let's go. Now, I'll be patting myself on the back. That rarely happens because our experiences are designed in such a way that you really can't sit out, starting right at the get go. And when I facilitate, and our other facilitators have been trained to really put on the charm immediately, put on the energy immediately. So, we inherently, not we, but the participants inherently say, okay, I'm already in this. Steve Rush: The one thing I notice in those experiences as well is the other thing of course, is that, that individual's looking at everybody else having loads of fun, thinking. Now I'm losing out. Matt May: Correct. Steve Rush: So, I know over the last couple of years, Matt, you've had to really pivot your business model as we were going through the experiences of the pandemic. But I wonder having had the experience of being face to face and virtual, what the pandemics really taught us about how we participate or get involved if the case around things like team building or activities, what's it really highlighted for us? Matt May: Well, I think that it's proven to us that face to face interaction is necessary. And it's certainly good for us. We learn so much more and we get and give so much more when we're face to face. When you're on a video call, yes, you can see the person, but you may not see the person's hand gestures because the camera is close, right. And you don't get the body language. You don't get the nonverbal cues. You don't get touch, right. Human beings need touch. There's a wonderful book and its old. And it was Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom. And there was a movie made with Jack lemon and Hank Azaria, many, many years ago. And I'm paraphrasing here, but Morrie was diagnosed with ALS, and he basically taught this former student, Mitch Albom life lessons. And one of them was, when we come into this world, we are cradled by our mothers, right. Until we learn to walk. And even then, we are constantly cradled by our parents. Craving human touch. When we die, nobody wants to die alone. I know this is a grim thought. And I apologize for doing that on the podcast, nobody wants to die alone. Steve Rush: Right. Matt May: So, we crave it, but why do we push it away for the majority of our lives? Why do we begin and end with it, but not continue to make it so important to us during our adult lives? But again, going back to face-to-face, handshakes. Now, I know people are still, some of them are nervous about that and whatnot, okay. Then do an elbow, bump, whatever. But when you touch someone's hand and you grasp it, you are having a physical connection that you don't get virtually. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matt May: Now, team building experiences and other were very valuable. They still are. We do them. I personally prefer face to face, but I know a lot of people are saying, we're just not ready to go back yet or we don't have the ability to bring in everybody just yet. We've got it six months down the line, but we want to do something right now. Great. So, it's still valuable because you're getting people interacting and hopefully having fun. But the face to face in person is just so much more valuable. Yes people were doing virtual events. I get that. But this wasn't even in our brains, right. As a thought, this conversation right now. Steve Rush: Right. Matt May: Because of the pandemic is why we're having this discussion. I can't articulate this. I don't know why, but going back, we never would've thought about that before. Steve Rush: That's true. And it's fair to say I think that people certainly in my experience in the last three to five months, I would say, are really grateful in when people come together as a group, there's definitely much more appreciation for that now. Matt May: Yes. It's not just, well, we're going to a sales meeting. It's oh my gosh. We're going to a sales meeting live and in person. Steve Rush: [Laugh] and therefore there's something deeply intrinsic that you refer to as that kind of cradling. That is a, also a very real metaphor for us wanting connection with people, isn't it? Matt May: Yeah. And when we're in face to face, at least in my experience. Observe people being more organically involved, right. When you have a computer screen behind you, how many times have we seen somebody looking down and we say, oh, well, he or she's checking text messages right now, or, you know, or, oh, oh, he's reading his email, we can tell. You're not as engaged because you have so many more distractions and there's no real accountability either. Steve Rush: That's right. Matt May: And I don't use that as a negative term. I use it as a positive term, even to ourselves, we're just not accountable because we have so many other things right in front of us on that fancy screen, that when you take that away and what's in front of you is an actual face. Oh my gosh. Okay. I'm totally engaged with you right now. Steve Rush: Well, fingers crossed for wherever anybody is listening to us in the world. They're going to get back to some level of connection and normality pretty soon, anyway. Matt May: Yes, I hope so. Steve Rush: So, this part of the show, Matt, is where we start to turn the tables, you've learned lots of different teams and had lots of different leadership experiences over your career. And I'm keen to really hack into those now. So, what I'm going to ask you to do, if you can, is try and think of all of those experiences and just distill them down to your top three leadership hacks. What would they be? Matt May: One is to utilize people's strengths and not only participants, but also staff and facilitators, right. In an office setting, in an assembly line, in a factory, whatever. We hire people based upon their qualifications and skills. So, let's do the same thing in a fun atmosphere. Now, again, this is going back to what I said before. Maybe let people get outside of their comfort zone, but at least for me with staff, I always want to find the right staff person, not only the experience, but the client. Steve Rush: Right. Matt May: What's the demographic of the client who is going to work best with that demographic? So that's one. Utilizing people's skills and strengths. My catch phrase is regress to kindergarten. Take off the sport coat, take off the tie, take off the high heels, whatever you're wearing. You're in a safe space. Nobody's judging you, if they are, judge them right back, because they're probably doing the exact same thing. It's not going to go anywhere. It's kind of like what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. What happens in this room stays in this because if you don't have those inhibitions, you're going to organically be in a much better place to give of yourself for your team and the experience. And the third leadership hack. Geez, I would say. It's really kind of, my new catch phrase is, take the fear out of team building, which is the title of the book. And that is, let's give people experiences where at the end of it, they say, okay, so my goal is, when you see me walk in six months from now, you're not going to go, oh, that team building guy. Hopefully say, Ooh, what are we doing today? Or at the very least say, all right, let's see what he is got out of his sleeve today. Let's see how it compares to last time. Steve Rush: Mm-Hmm. There must have been some magical experiences you've had over your careers. If you could just maybe call one out. The most fun, extravagant experience that you've had with a group or, an individual in a group, what would that be? Matt May: It's hard to pinpoint one. And I can't remember the exact number. I facilitated a military care pack program. This is probably seven years ago or more. Those always get me. I'm a big supporter of the U.S. Military. And I know you're over in Europe, but I'm a big supporter of people who put their lives on hold to make our lives better. Steve Rush: Absolutely. Matt May: That is very important to me. So military care pack programs always hit me pretty, pretty tough. They hit me hard in a good way. Also, when you see a kid who is part of a boys and girls club or whatever, come into a room and they don't know why they're there. And then all of a sudden there are 12, 24, 50, bikes, and they're then told these are going to your organization. The look of huh, on their face is just amazing. And little ones are just, I don't have kids. I'm too old to start at this point, but boy, some of the things they do and say they just melt my heart and make me just crack up [laugh]. Steve Rush: Makes it all worthwhile, right? Matt May: Exactly. I'm always appreciative for that. Steve Rush: Well, the next part of the show we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something hasn't worked out for you. Maybe been pretty catastrophic, could have screwed up, but as a result of it, you've learned, and it's now a force of good in your life or work, what would be your Hack to Attack? Matt May: [Laugh] be careful what papers you sign to be quite honest. Steve Rush: [laugh] yeah. Matt May: Really and be careful with whom you go into business and protect yourself because you're the only anyone that's going to protect yourself. And I don't want to sound cold and snarky, but it's true. You can be a wonderful person and be very giving and loving and generous and still protect yourself. Steve Rush: Yes, you can. Matt May: And that's the business side of me, careful what you sign and know who you're getting into bed with proverbially. Steve Rush: Yeah. You're not the first guest mine you to have said that over the two years or so, we've been running the show. We must have at least half a dozen of our guests have, you know, some really similar circumstances where the greatest trusted relationships have gone wrong because of one piece of paper. Matt May: Exactly, exactly. And it's bad that happens. But it's the reality of the world we live in. Steve Rush: Certainly is. Now the last thing we're going to do is you get to go and give yourself some advice at 21. So, if that time travel happened now. You stood right in front of Matt. He's 21, you're in front of him. What's your advice? Matt May: Probably to embrace the opportunities that you're presented with wholly, don't be fearful of them. Again, hindsight is 2020. The older I get; I do subscribe more to the philosophy of everything happens for a reason. And for whatever reason right now, this is where you're supposed to be. And it may not be the happiest of circumstances, but what do you need to do to not only get through this but thrive beyond it and learn from it. Steve Rush: Great advice. Matt May: That would be my two words. It's okay. Steve Rush: Hmm. Love it. So, what's next for you and the team? Matt May: Well, we are very excited to be getting back to face-to-face experiences. Really trying to provide those to people who are ready. I hope more and more people continue to be ready and jump on this. My hope is that now, companies who are allowing people or have just made the decision to, we're not going to own real estate or rent real estate anymore, because we know work from home, works for us. Great. That money that you're saving, bring your people together. At least twice a year, quarterly is better. Have an all hands. Even if it's just lunch, an address from the CEO and a team building experience where people get to play and work together, hands on, do it. It's more important now than ever. My dream would be that it becomes instilled in everyone's minds that this is as important as ordering copy paper. Steve Rush: Right. DNA and the fabric of an organization should have all of those experiences to really exploit some of those unlearned or unobserved behaviors that you talked about earlier, right? Matt May: Exactly. Steve Rush: Yeah. So, when folks have listened into this Matt, where's the best place for us to send them so they can bump into some of the work and maybe get a copy of the book? Matt May: The best place is the website, which is premierteambuilding.com. It's premier as in like number one without the E at the end of it. But if you do happen to put it in, it'll direct you to the correct place. There's a contact form there. There's a links to Amazon where the book is. All of our social media links are there. You can follow us there. I love to travel personally. So, we do programs throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, abroad. I'd love to get over to the UK at some point. So more than happy to do that for anyone who's listening over there. Steve Rush: Course of action. Yeah, exactly. Well, Matt, listen, I've love chatting to you and you know, there's no surprise that you've been a success in the business that you're in and the energy and focus you bring to it. So, I just want to say thank you and we'll make sure all of those links are in our show notes. So, when folks have listened as well. They can dive straight over, but thanks for being on the show. Matt May: Thank you, Steve. Closing Steve Rush: I want to sign off by saying thank you to you for joining us on the show too. We recognize without you, there is no show. So please continue to share, subscribe, and like, and continue to get in touch with us with the great new stories that we share every week. And so that we can continue to bring you great stories. Please make sure you give us a five-star review where you can and share this podcast with your friends, your teams, and communities. You want to find us on social media. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter @leadershiphacker, Leadership Hacker on YouTube and on Instagram, the_leadership_hacker and if that wasn't enough, you can also find us on our website leadership-hacker.com. Tune into next episode to find out what great hacks and stories are coming your way. That's me signing off. I'm Steve Rush, and I've been your Leadership Hacker.  

Jill McAbe is a bestselling author of “It's Go Time: Build the Business and Life You Really Want.” Jill's recently been ranked #1 in Entrepreneur Magazine's inspiring education Entrepreneurs to watch in 2022. We dove into a bunch of topics in this awesome conversation, including: Jill's involuntary life reset and how that shaped her future. What is a “hot goal” and how you don't need willpower to achieve them. Learn about the MOMA method. What “all-in” really means. Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Jill below: Jill on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garydfrey/ Jill on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jillmcabe Jill on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jillmcabe Jill's Website: https://www.jillmcabe.com/   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach, or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker. Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as The Leadership Hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you Steve Rush: Jill McAbe is a special guest on today's show. Jill is the bestselling author of Its Go Time. She's also a teacher, coach, and a business guru, but before we get a chance to speak with Jill, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: We all know leadership can be tough, right? Despite the success. And sometimes a glory leadership can bring, the lows can be incredibly low. The job can feel quite lonely at times, especially when you have to make unpopular decisions. As leaders, we must all deal with stress, but the very best leaders handle the ups and downs with ease. They let things slide off their backs with resiliency, grace and grit, and it's not easy to do. Leaders can't afford to break down, lose their cool and be oversensitive. Instead, they must be steadfast, tough, no matter the up and downs. In an article from Entrepreneur Magazine, Kerry Siggins talks about five things that can make a big difference. Be determined. Determination is often overlooked as a leadership attribute but is needed to get through the difficult situations. You must be resolute in your vision, decision making and resiliency. During the early days of the pandemic, the uncertainty was unbearable. Like so many of the leaders many had to make difficult decisions about expenses and staffing. Kerry Siggins planned and kept one thing in the front of her mind, her determination to succeed. And that grew stronger than as she arrived in into the pandemic in the first place, determination helped drive her decision making and kept her focused and resolute. Know when to let things go. The flip side of determination is knowing when to say enough is enough. And when things aren't really working, and resiliency is not about consistently pushing through. Resiliency is also about letting know when to let things go to move on. There are times when you must be tough enough to back down, let go, change your mind, pivot, whatever words you want to use. Just because you think you are right doesn't make it so. So, when people around you and the evidence suggest that you are moving in the wrong direction, make the toughest decision of all and let go. It's quite natural to get defensive when you receive tough or unpleasant news through feedback, but it doesn't mean you should allow yourself to go there just because it's a natural response. If you want a toughen up as a leader, you must handle yourself with grace and hearing hard things as being part of the way we do things. Kelly's trick for doing this is to look for the truth in the information. She recently hired a consultant to perform a leadership competency assessment for her executive team. When going through the results, she was told. The reasons you haven't got grown the company faster is it takes you too long to assess and tell the people on your team that they haven't got what it takes. You let things is slide for too long. You must give this type of feedback faster and more directly. It's a problem for you. She was hurt by the words. She was inclined to defend herself and going to say that she did give people feedback all of the time and she wasn't afraid of those conversation. But instead of vocalizing those thoughts, she analyzed what was shared by compartmentalizing, the feedback. She could see that the individual consultant was right and gave her an opportunity to reflect and adapt her approach. She looked for the truth in his words, and face to feedback with action, Find gratitude. When most people think of gratitude, they envision what they're grateful for in life, such as family, health, and possessions. A more profound gratitude practice considers being thankful for the hard things in life as well. So, if you want to be stronger leader, you must look for the good that comes out of difficult situations. What are the hardships you're grateful for? What are the challenges that you've been faced with that you've now are faced and overcome? In her article Kerry talks about the overcoming addiction has been something she's really grateful for. And even though it causes pain is suffering for her life. She wouldn't change anything. And she's grateful for the lessons it taught her. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. It's harsh but true. Exceptionally leaders require us to stop feeling self-centered and sorry for ourselves. Being a leader is difficult at times and can be really thankless, but that's what you've signed up for. We can't allow ourselves to take things personally. We need to let things slide off our backs. We need to make sure that we face into every opportunity. That situation with passion and energy, our job is to make good decisions for our team and our company. Not necessarily to manage people's opinions. Our job is to lead, so lead with confidence. With leadership comes great responsibility, responsibility to make good decisions, be transparent, give good feedback, with standard our setbacks and to be a great leader we must toughen up. So, the leadership hack here is finding the sweet spot between awareness, compassion, and self-care. Getting that right means you can focus on the things that matter. Thanks Kerry, for sharing the article. Thanks all for listening to our Leadership Hacker News. Let's dive into the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: My special guest on today's show is Jill McAbe. She's a bestselling author, teacher and coaching the business success and finding one's purpose, particularly around the science of high performance and change. Her bestselling book. It's Go Time. Build the Business and Life You Really Want. Teaches the order of operations for building expertise-based businesses. Jill's also been recently ranked in entrepreneur as magazine as top 10 inspiring education entrepreneurs to watch in 2022. Jill, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Jill McAbe: Thank you very much, Steve. I'm really happy to be here. Steve Rush: Jill. What's really great about your backstory is it's not followed traditional path to get you to where you got to. In fact, there's lots of bumps and twists and turns along the way. And we'd love for you to maybe just share a little bit about the backstory that led you here? Jill McAbe: Oh, wow. Alright. The super quick backstory that led me here, I would have to say as most stories do started when I was young, probably trying to figure out what I was going to be or do when I grew up, but that was a really difficult decision for me because I was very unsuccessful in school. I struggle with fairly significant dyslexia and what was called ADD now often termed a ADHD growing up. And so, I really struggled in school and my grades were poor, which made me realize that a lot of my options were limited at that time. It just felt like I wasn't going along a traditional track. And I very exceptional siblings. I like ridiculously exceptional siblings, you know, one scouted for professional sports, I'm Canadian. My older brother was invited to be a U.S. citizen upon the submission of his masters because it was so brilliant. And I had a sister who excelled in the arts and sports and academics and looked a little bit like Marilyn Monroe. So, it was really tough growing up. And my goal was simply to learn how to be successful because my mother used to, you know, worry about me and she'd say to me, Jill, some people are good at school. Others are good at life, and you'll be good at life. You're wise. Steve Rush: That's a great lesson. Isn't it? Wise words though seriously. At such a young age, because it would be really difficult to disassociate that, you know, some people just aren't academically gifted and others are, right? Jill McAbe: Yeah. It's interesting because when I ended up going back and doing my masters, I got (A) plus pluses across the board. So, the academics, it was really about not fitting into the way of learning that the schools liked to taught and my brain needing to comprehend information differently. Steve Rush: Yeah. Jill McAbe: And I think that led me. So, what got me here was frankly, a very bumpy road of trial and error. Sometimes I'd hit and I'd, you know, and I'd get a home run and I'd do really well. And other times there was a lot of hit and misses and I have spent a lifetime really studying and understanding and creating tools that help me be smarter than I am [laugh]. So, I love creating like tools to make decisions or tools to make things happen. And I love taking all this research and turning them into practical tools. Had a scientist tell me once, he's like, you're like a translator, you take our work, you make it very easy to apply. Steve Rush: Nice. And the tools that you created along the way, is that also a bit of a coping mechanism to help you with your dyslexia? Jill McAbe: Yeah, I'm sure it is. You know, what I understand. So, I was very fortunate, much more than many people who might have been in that situation because my mother actually is at the forefront of research at that time for how to rehabilitate people such as myself. So, I had a great deal of support and rehabilitation that a lot of people might not have access to that kind of help, but what I come to understand about people like me, and I'm sure there's some listeners who are going to relate is that I like to dive deep into things and the tools are actually a result of that. So, you know, I'm the person in class who sometimes annoying asks a hundred questions. So, if the teacher says something I say, but I read this other thing and no that's not consistent with. And if you look at this person's information, so I've always been someone who will find the question in something and dive deeper and explore it rather than accepting. Instantly what's been said, if it goes up against something I've heard that that doesn't fit with, but it's also allowed me to find consistencies from very diverse places. So, I found consistencies from leadership research you know, Neuroscience, Daoism, Christianity, you know, any of the religions really with, you know, business teachings. Like I will actually spot the through line and go how fascinating. And that's when I create the tool, when I see it come from all sorts of different directions. Steve Rush: Nice. What a gift too. Jill McAbe: Yeah. Yeah. You see, there you go. It's one of the things, it didn't feel like a gift growing up. Steve Rush: Right. Jill McAbe: But it can be used as a gift. Steve Rush: Definitely so, yeah. Now you had a moment in your life, which in your book, you actually called it, your involuntary life reset. Tell us a little bit about what happened? That was so significant and how would that then set you on a different path? Jill McAbe: Yeah, I was 40 and I thought my life was humming along really. In my early thirties, I found my first sort of calling, which was a restaurateur, and I opened a restaurant with my brother in Toronto and we actually became internationally successful, which was, you know, really, we just had a lot of passion. He was the chef. I was very good at operations, management, and leadership. And those two things together really brought together an incredible business and ended up selling that. Because this is a leadership podcast, I'm actually going to veer off a little Steve and just going to share something really fun. Steve Rush: Go for you. Jill McAbe: So, restaurants are known for having a lot of turnovers because they're known for having very transient workforce, but we had sort of high-end food and, you know, the sommelier where our servers. So, we had sort of a more educated staff and we were known for being, you know, a group where people didn't leave. When we sold it after seven years, the average person was with us for six years. Steve Rush: Wow. That's quite unusual in catering and hospitality, isn't it? Yeah. Jill McAbe: Yeah. And at the four-year mark I got, you know, I had these new ideas and so I started saying to the team, hey, you know, hey, let's try this, let's try this. And I thought I was this great leader, you know, because we were so successful, and my team was so happy, and they really resisted. And that Steve, I understood that there is a different kind of leadership to forged straight ahead than one who wants to turn a corner. In fact, that became, I didn't talk about this in my book. Because it wasn't, you know, necessarily just a leadership book, but that became my lifelong quest to really understand what does it take to turn a corner? How do we make a change? And my team would say to me, we're so successful. Why do we need to change? And I'd say, because we're successful because we forged ahead four years ago. Now everyone's copying us. It's time to be fresh again. And I started going to all sorts of courses and studying leadership. And I went to act my team who didn't want to, you know, try anything. And I said, listen, guys, I'm bored, I'm bored. And I need to be able to try this. So please will you please try these things for 30 days? And if you nix them, they're next. But if we like them and we enjoy how things are running, then we move forward. And I basically made this bargain with my team. We had about 30 staff just to give you a sense of the size of the business. It was small and that became my leadership lab. And then I'll fast forward. So, we sell the business and I really want to move off in this like leadership growth direction. And I got pretty good at understanding what motivated individuals and people and off I was going to go into this consulting direction, and I'd sold the business and clients were coming to me from all sorts of industries. And I'd say, what do I know about your industry? I'm a restaurant person. And they said, Jill, you know, we watched your operations for years as clients, they were tight. We'd like you to work for us, for sure you can help. And that's how my career started. But the involuntary life reset, I was hit by a car. The driver was talking on his cell. It was a very serious accident, both on his side and mine because he critically injured a couple of his children because they were not in seat belts and me. When the ambulance drivers came to my car, you know, one of them remarked they didn't think they were going to find a live body inside. So, it was 18 months of recovery. The life reset was that prior to that accident, I was pretty excited about being good at leadership and good at operations and good at cleaning up businesses. But after that accident, and it probably was relevant that the client that I had at the time was really horrible to his people. And so, he was sort of truly one of those people who was making money on the backs of others, there was thousands of people in his organization and the way he treated people was terrible. And so those two things at the same time really, really got me thinking about, am I just going to help people like that make money? Steve Rush: Right. Jill McAbe: I have to do something more meaningful. Steve Rush: And from the first time that you and I met, one thing that really struck me is you have a laser focus to serve others and it's unwavering. And I wonder how that moment shaped how you think about things now? Jill McAbe: Wow. yeah, I think, that's a great question. I think I was ashamed to be helping this man make money. There were people in his employee for 10 years making minimum wage. Steve Rush: Yeah. Jill McAbe: And he was so happy with the operational you know, one thing I have with this, I'm really good at mathematical. Like figuring things out. I have a real creativity to see solutions. I'm exceptional at it. And I was with his company for months and he offered me a lot of money to stay. And when I saw people who had worked in his employee for 10 years, it was a food manufacturing facility, and they were making minimum wage, which you can't live on in Toronto. And at the end of every day, if there was any, you know, food or any waste or whatever, all went in the garbage, he wouldn't let them take it. I was so sickened. So, I think growing up sort of sitting on the outside, not fitting in, made me someone who just watched people and cared about people. And I just realized I couldn't do that. Steve Rush: Yeah, yeah. And then fast forward to all of the experiences you've had, you managed to kind of collect them together and you created a real system now that helps people achieve high levels of motivation productivity within their work and their lives. At what point did you recognize that, you know, what you had was a thing? Steve Rush: Yeah. I created a tool called mind code, and I think that's the thing, you know, when I think about what the thing was that really changed the game because there was a lot of, I did all this research. I mean, for over a decade on, you know, goal setting or planning. And then I ended up getting certified in changed leadership. And then I did my master's in leadership. And I looked at all these different things. The behavioral science aspects really became powerful. A lot of us are looking at goal setting, planning, and implementation as different skill sets. And I realized, well, any project needs all of that. I'd studied project management but that was often overly complex for the needs of a small department or team. And I think I realized when it was a thing. First of all, when I would apply change leadership in organizations, and despite the fact that the organizations would look at me and say, this is not going to work, like point blank. I've had that said to me so many times. Steve Rush: Yeah. Jill McAbe: And we have succeeded anyway. And it's like, you're powerful to stop this? Or you're beyond saving. But the truth is, you're powerless to stop us when we understand change leadership. And Steve, I know you get that. Steve Rush: Mm-Hmm. Jill McAbe: It's like, no, you don't understand. I can rearrange your environment. I can add people and subtract people and you'll change and not even know you did. Steve, you know what I'm talking about, right? With change leadership. Steve Rush: I totally do, yeah. Jill McAbe: Yeah. Change is a equation. And once its supplied, change happens. Steve Rush: Right. Jill McAbe: So, I became sort of amazed at the power of this tool. When people would say, Jill, this will not work, and I will not do it. And I'm like, it will work anyway. One of my clients was like, oh my goodness, you can move mountains. And I'm like, it's not me. It's this tool. It's amazing [Laugh], you know, what's good about me is I'm willing to follow it. I'm willing to go through the steps. So really the system is not mine, you know, it's what I've learned. And my willingness to apply it, one of my clients and their organization did about 40 million and we're having a chat one day and I'm feeling pretty chuffed, you know, look at the great job I've helped you guys do this year. And he was not happy. Like he was visibly not happy. And I'm thinking what is going on? And he just said, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, it's good. I'm really happy with the organization, but I'm personally not happy. And I said, well, look, you know, we just use this tool that got an entire, and this was about 300 people that just got a, you know, a massive shift occur in your organization. What do you say we rework this and make it a personal transformation tool? And I later found out Steve, that the reason a lot of people don't create these tools for personal transformation is because there's no money in it. Steve Rush: Of course, yeah. Jill McAbe: Organizations simply pay more for that. And I've learned that the hard way because I tried to sell it. And I went from doing very well to not doing very well. So, I did learn the hard way. There's some truth in that, but yeah, I reworked it for a tool that individuals or teams can use. And that's a tool I called mind code and I share aspects of it in my book. And I think that's the moment when I realized when I reworked it, we used it on him first, it worked, then I used it on me. And now I've worked with dozens of people. I sell it as a standalone tool. I work closely with clients and use it and time and again, I mean, people have breakthroughs in their performance, and they have it fast. Steve Rush: Yeah. And a lot of breaking through performance is about decoding, almost our neurological pathways and our thinking that causes to get where we need to get to. And you have spent an enormous amount of time, energy, studying and focusing around behavioral science and neuroscience. And how has that really shifted your perspectives on the art of the possible? Jill McAbe: Wow. You know, what comes to mind? So, I'll say it is, my research started with behavioral science, which is, you know, really for the listeners, it's really thinking about what are the aspects in our environment that lead us to behave the way we do. And behavioral science would look at, you know, our social influences, our influence, our beliefs from growing up, our abilities, our personal abilities and our environment. And that was the first really profound. That was very profound research for me. I guess it goes back to this nurture versus nature question. Steve Rush: Right. Jill McAbe: And really understanding just how much in our environments, socially and physically were really causing us to be the person that we are. Like I used to think I was this autonomous thinking in control person of my life. And when I studied behavioral science, I understood, I was like a pinball in a pinball machine. Steve Rush: Yeah. Jill McAbe: I went wherever the people who had control of certain social and physical aspects of my reality wanted me to go. And we've seen that, you know, we've seen that in social media, like, come on, we've seen it over and over how fake news and environments and people can pull some levers and absolutely change. Steve Rush: Totally Jill McAbe: Yeah, absolutely change belief systems. Steve Rush: Yeah. Jill McAbe: So, I think that was when I realized, that's what got me interested there, but then there was this problem and this problem was, I couldn't seem to do it for me [Laugh]. Steve Rush: Right. Expert for everybody else, yeah. Jill McAbe: [Laughing] Like why isn't my life going the way I want to? You know, and when I got really honest with myself, there were some big things that I didn't seem to be able to do for myself. And honestly it was a fluke. My dyslexic brain wanted to, why, why, why, why, why does everybody talk about goals? Why does everybody talk about vision? And I decided to study the neuroscience underpinnings, and I'm fortunate to have a good friend who's a leading international academic, which means I have access to leading international academics, which means that somebody who had not normally give the time of day to someone like me, actually, you know, would sit down and have several conversations and guide me to cutting edge research that was, you know, just being published. And hadn't gotten down to the levels of press yet and consultants. I wanted to understand what was it about a goal that would make it work? Because if a goal worked, then all goals should work. So why were only some goals working? And that's when you know, I used to have the popular neuroscience of, you know, reticular activating system that almost infuriating neuroscientist, who's one of, you know, William Cunningham. Who's a leading neuroscientist in the area of goal cognition and the brain. And he just, please, don't talk about that. And, you know, because they really care about specifics and accuracy. And for some reason, it just really helped me to understand what created the kind of goal that was likely to be achieved? And then I was able to modify. And as I talk about in the book, I describe there's a popular system of goal setting called smart goals, which is you know, specific, measurable, attainable. I think realistic and timebound, and or something like that. Sometimes people change the acronym. Steve Rush: You're absolutely spot on. But it's commonly taught, isn't it? When you hear goals, they have to be smart. Jill McAbe: They have to be smart and smart goals have a critical flaw in that. Steve Rush: Yeah. Jill McAbe: They're not often meaningful and gives to the willpower of peace, but they're actually good for strategy. They're actually good for developing strategy, interestingly, strategy, fancy word for plan, right. But they're not a good tool for developing goal or outcome statements. And what do we want to be true at a later date? And that was really a flaw. And I ended up getting to speak to, I actually ended up getting to speak to, you know, one of the foremost goal researchers in the world as well and look at his, you know, 2000-page book on goals, like no joke. I've really got into studying this. I was so fascinated and really started to understand how we need to change the way we think about the outcome slash goal development piece to make our brains naturally want to work. And so, one of the things that's made mind code such a powerful tool. Mind code is an acronym that stands for eight steps of goal setting, planning, and execution. And one of the main things that makes it powerful is the act of doing it helps whoever uses it to automatically program their brain to want to work on it, which of course is very important for any goal is the application of your energy behind it. Steve Rush: Yeah. And you call these hot goals in your book, right? Jill McAbe: I use a term that I learned from a neuroscientist. So that's a term from a group of neuroscientists actually, oh, gee. I want to say his name was O'Reilly, but it's not, it might not be fresh at the moment, but it is a group of neuroscientists who studied the kind of goals that are the ones that determine how you behave. And so, it's a term from neuroscience that describes the trigger of action. And so, if you're hungry, for instance. The hot goal might be, you know, life, right? Like I want to keep living, so I need to eat. So, it's sort of the top goal. And if you're making a decision between two things, it's, you know, whatever it is that you're spending your time on or moving yourself toward, that's currently the hottest goal. So, it's a neuroscience-based term for what it is that's actually leading your behavior or triggering your behavior. Steve Rush: And what I particularly like about this focus, and certainly the focus you put on this is, it's actually directly correlated to mindset as well. So, you talk about having prevention and promotion goals. Well, I have often referred to mindset as being a prevention and promotion mindset, which I direct behaviors away from risk averse to protection. That's a prevention to promotion, which is, you know, what can I do next? What can I explore? What can I find new? what's alluring? How does that correlate to helping people get that depth of clarity in their goals? Jill McAbe: Absolutely. I think mindset is, this is sort of the prevention and promotion is really what I was looking at there, which fits beautifully with what you were saying is the biological push/pull Steve Rush: Yeah. Jill McAbe: Of why we do what we do. So biologically we are really moving ourselves. There's a part of our brain that we don't have cognitive access to. That's making decisions about our behavior. And that part of the brain is making decisions about, what we see, say, and do. Millisecond, up to ten seconds in advance of us even becoming aware of what we're going to see, say, or do, which is incredible. And it's basing those decisions about action on prevention goals, which is preventing us from harm. So, and that could be emotional or physical threat. And so that tends to be automatic. Our responses tend to be very automatic that prevent us from harm. And I actually share one with your listeners in a second, that I think will really help them understand an aspect of their lives of something that they might feel held back in at the moment, whatever it is. And then there's promotion goals that the brain is using, are to move us towards more life. And the promotion goals, the big one is to have babies, right? And so, it's like more life. Preserve humanity. And so, the problem with promotion goals is that more money, more happiness, a lot of the things that we strive for just aren't biologically understood as necessary to live. And so that's why we have to put a little more effort into forming our goals and outcomes and objectives so that they are understood biologically sort of by this part of the brain, the amygdala. So that the action center of our brain is actually going to automatically take action. And so, I really used it from this level of, so if I was going to link it to the mindset of the promotion things and what we want, what would be important is taking those things that we want and really deepening our clarity about what they are, so that this part of the brain that you can't. I talk about these two parts of the brain, having two different languages, one's using ideas and thoughts and concepts, and the part that we need to program, if you will, hot goals with promotion things, what we want, it doesn't understand words. So, we need to give it images. We need to give it emotions. We need to give it feelings, which is why we really need to create clarity around our future desire state in terms of visuals and emotions. Steve Rush: And of course, the bigger and deeper that emotional connection is the more likely of achievement of those goals, right? Jill McAbe: Yeah. Because the part of the brain that's determining our actions, milliseconds up to ten seconds in advance of the action being taken is the part of our brain that's connected to our emotional center. So, it's like a way of translating because if it can't understand ideas and concepts like success, what's that, right? Oh, you want a blue, two-story house, three blocks from the ocean. I can get that. So there needs to be a concreteness to what we want in a way that we can see it in another little hack is to see how it's good for others. Steve Rush: Hmm. Yeah. Jill McAbe: So, a lot of times we look at, you know, in my case where I'm helping individuals build businesses. But even when I was working with leaders and their team is to really take the time to explore the benefits to the group is actually very motivating for this part of the brain, because social, you know, being a safe part of a social circle is critical. And so when we understand something we want to achieve is going to be good for the collective that makes it more motivating. And what I see happening, or, you know, what I know when happens with groups and leaders is that we think that that's just a given, we have an objective and we're like, well, it's just a given that that will be really good. But unfortunately, that would be like saying, you know, going to a country where you don't speak a language and saying, it's just a given that they understand everything that you want. No, it's not just a given. We have to really make an effort to translate our concepts into the kind of images and emotions that the parts of our brain who will decide if we do this or not [Laugh]. Steve Rush: It's great perspective. Jill McAbe: So, we have to take a minute and onboard that part of the brain Steve Rush: Love it. It's a really interesting perspective. So, if we get our goals, we're really methodical about this. I'll say that again. Does willpower play into this? Jill McAbe: Yeah. So, I have a cheeky chapter in my book, you know, who needs willpower? So, no, right. It's just an easy home test. Everybody can do this. If you have a stated goal and you're working toward it, then you know, it's a hot goal. It's something that you're automatically working on and you're good. You're just going to keep moving in that direction. However, if you have a stated goal for yourself or your organization, and there is not regular progress being made on that goal, then you know, it's not hot and you know, you're not going to, which is a problem. So, willpower is not needed once you've properly established a goal. Steve Rush: That's fascinating. I think it's a common misconception that people think you must have to have willpower, but to your point, if you've articulated it so well, and it's got all of the right drivers that are neurologically linked to you, then it's just going to happen. Jill McAbe: You can't stop yourself, Steve. Steve Rush: Right. Jill McAbe: You actually cannot stop yourself once you have properly established a goal. I work with some organizations, one of my passions is helping companies develop vision and strategy. That's my strength, who I use sort of a bigger version of mind code for that. And we'll do their strategy for the next three years or five years. And when we're revisioning, that's why it's so important to be careful about the goals so that because when they're set properly, you actually can't stop yourself from working. You physiologically impossible to stop yourself from working on them because you've literally coded yourself. Because again, I think it's more than 90% of our action is triggered milliseconds up to ten seconds in advance. So, like that was the moment Steve, when I realized we have to stop focusing on the actions we're taking and start focusing on programming, the part of our brain that's taking action. It's like, we were looking at the wrong thing all this time. No wonder there are so many frustrated initiatives in the world. And so that's like one of my, you know, I get really excited. And then that's when I say, hey, be very careful what you decide to program in your subconscious, because not only do you not need willpower, you'll have to use willpower to stop working on it. Just so I'm accurate, because like my brain needs to be sort of accurate. Sometimes you need willpower to program the goal. So, you don't need willpower [laugh]. Steve Rush: Yeah, I get it. Jill McAbe: That's where you can use some willpower. Steve Rush: So, willpower becomes part of the goal setting process. Jill McAbe: Yes. It's part of the goal setting process. Steve Rush: Once it's set up. Jill McAbe: Yeah. Steve Rush: You're off. Jill McAbe: Yeah, exactly. Steve Rush: Got it. Jill McAbe: You're off. You're done. Steve Rush: Excellent. I love that. And I've never really, until I've read it in your book, I've never really had that aha moment that actually if you program your behaviors and you're thinking right at the outset and they're strongly aligned and they're hot goals, it just takes care of itself. Jill McAbe: Yeah. And it's not so instant to do that, but it is so worthwhile. Steve Rush: Yeah. So, you often hear people saying, you know, unless you're all in, it's not going to happen. So, when you hear somebody articulate the words, you have to be all in, what does that really mean for you? Jill McAbe: I personally use the term all in for my book. Probably what it means to me is faith. I mean, that's what it means to me. There was a point at which I was wondering, you know, am I going to be successful in developing my own education company? Or am I going to have to work as a consultant, some nice clients, some less nice clients, you know, what's my future look like? And there was a moment at which I really needed to make a decision if I was going to follow my heart and really try to make a go of my company, or go back to a world that I knew I could succeed in. And I guess having the life reset of the car accident, the stakes were a little higher because my life felt very empty after that car accident, I really felt like I lost it all. And I wondered what I had lost. I'd really gone into this 18-month rehabilitation but also significant depression and real questioning of what was the point of life. And all in for me was, like, well, I had to give it all.   I had to try my very best. I couldn't go back to just tolerating things and it meant going all in on my dreams and that's what it meant to me. And then it was also having the faith because I noticed that I was very good at helping organizations make striking advancements and teams make striking advancements when we'd work together. I'm very good at bringing forth the power of the individuals in the room. And then I thought, what is going on with me? Why have I been so successful at their businesses? And then in my own been, you know, lackluster result. Because after that crummy client, after my car accident, I only accepted clients who I really, really, really believed in. And I realized, yeah, I get results for people because I'm all in for them. And I have a hundred percent belief in them, and I was not taking action as though I knew I would succeed, but yet when working for my clients, I would take action with a singular focus that we would succeed. Steve Rush: Yeah, that's great. And now you're all in for you. How's that changed? Jill McAbe: [Laugh] most days. It's still harder. It's still harder when it's me! Steve Rush: Uh huh. Jill McAbe: But how has that changed? No, it's changed a lot. I've had, you know, is really, every day could be a slightly different answer. Some days I'm definitely feel like, you know, I can achieve anything and other days it's still running your own business is so challenging and there's lots of ups and downs. I think what's changed for me overall. Oh, well, I mean, the big picture is, when I really went after my dream. I mean, now I haven't established business. Back then I was not paying my way, you know, I'd gone from a fancy consultant to, you know, not being able to buy cereal and having my partner supporting me and you know, it was very humiliating for me. And now, I do, I mean, I have a business that, Entrepreneur Magazine is recognized as number one. Steve Rush: Exactly. Jill McAbe: You know, to watch in 2022. Like pretty important, actually. I'm pretty excited about that, but it's the people I also get to call, you know, it's the relationships that I've built along the way. There are so many extraordinary people who I call up and say, hey, you know, would you teach, you know, my people in BOOMU, would you teach them the stuff that know and they're like, sure. And that gets me every time, how many people I've reached out to and wanted to speak to or asked for them to do something for my community. An they say, yeah, and honestly, that's been one of the most exciting things is that I've been building something somewhat secretly. And even just now were sort of forming the outer view of the world. A lot of people who are only in our, like clients and students only see this because we are in a building phase, but it's truly a collection of incredible people sharing their gifts. And it's a dream. It's a dream come true. And I guess, because I almost got taken out of life with that car accident and I think COVID has helped us all see the need to maybe seize the moment. I'm really working towards building something that outlives me. Steve Rush: Awesome. I love it. So, this is a part of the show where we are going to turn the tables a little bit. We all know that you can't hack leadership, but I can hack your mind. And the objective of the next part of the show is, I want you to share with us your top tips, tools, ideas around leadership. So, what would be your top three leadership hacks, Jill? Jill McAbe: My top three leadership hacks. I'd say, this is just so small, but I think one of my favorite things. I teach, but I have a teach a collaborations course, and I think leaders listen first. And I think we know that leaders listen first, and you know, listening is power. Because understanding someone else's point of view before inserting your own is how to truly guide someone as opposed to speaking first. So that can be as simple as I have a very rigorous rule to always socialize for a moment before jumping into work. And in fact, it got me a quarter million-dollar contract once because I was representing a client and a possible investor came along and he was jumping in, you know, and he was like, all right, let's go. Let's talk business. And I looked at him and I held up my finger. This is the person with all the money. And I held up my finger and I said, just a moment. It's Monday morning, we socialize before we jump into work, how was your weekend? And he just looked at me like, who are you? We went to lunch, and I did a big project for his organization. And I do think that just taking a moment to be with people is critical. I'm going to say a leadership hack is definitely vision and having a clear vision. When I did my master's in leadership, I was amazed, you know, I thought I was going to go find the unequivocal way forward in leadership and discovered there are as many leadership theories as there are theorists. So, I realized, oh, there isn't one rule. And of course, my dyslexic brain wanted it to be easy, but it wasn't. But then there was the power of vision, which for over a century, nobody had been able to disprove could actually help you know, leaders outperform their competition by two to twelve times, which is staggering. And it got so boring to researchers. They couldn't disprove it. And vision, by the way, fancy word for big goal, right? Steve Rush: Big goal, yeah. Yeah. Jill McAbe: And so, these visions are really critical that they be underscored by purpose and long term and not all visions have that. I do have an article on LinkedIn about the kind of vision that has that. So, I'd say that's a hack because once you do that and get your organization on board, they're automatically working to worry about willpower. I mean, you don't have to worry about procrastination and willpower and people not working. Steve Rush: Totally. Jill McAbe: It's such false economy not to take that week and bring in a facilitator and get that vision done because it's such false economy just going to work. So that's a hack. And then the third one I'm going to say is, I have a tool for decision making. ABC decision. I'm pretty sure there's an article about that somewhere. I teach these courses as well through my website, but that one really helps us go back and it helps remind us where we are. (A) is aligned to your long- and short-term goals. (B) is broaden your options, always choose from at least three. (C) is compare contenders and do not use pro and cons, those are really bad. And then (D), detach before you decide so that you don't make emotionally biased decisions. And I think that once you have that vision, you have the ability to use something like A, B, C, D decisions to navigate and stay on course, those are my three hacks. Steve Rush: Brilliant. I love that last one, particularly because it's one of the things that we often are knee jerk about making decisions and just being ordered and considered gives you the space to think. Jill McAbe: Yeah. Steve Rush: Love it. Next part of the show we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something has not gone well in your life or work. Now you've already shared a couple of hacks to attacks already, but was there maybe something else in your work or your life that was maybe an aha moment that you've learned from that's now serving you well? Jill McAbe: A mistake that I seem to make regularly [laugh], which is embarrassing. In light of the show is, that I think I can outsmart my tools because I created them. Steve Rush: [Laugh]. Jill McAbe: [Laugh], you know what I'm talking about? Steve Rush: I totally understand that, yeah. Jill McAbe: So, I don't sometimes use them and then my projects don't go well, it's totally embarrassing. But I would say going back to really setting, I mean, for me, the tools, mind code and ABC decisions, I use the two of them in conjunction, but for me, it's going back and creating that second half. For me, it's that I stop using particularly my goal setting and planning tools, my execution, I'm pre-programmed on execution. I'm excellent execution because I program myself to be, so it's going back. Yeah, I have big fails or projects that are super lackluster, and then I realized I didn't start them the way I teach other people to start. Steve Rush: It's ironic. I, however Jill McAbe: [laugh] Steve Rush: It's reality. The reason that those tools were created in the first place, because it gave you results, it gave you processes, it gave you a methodology and you know what, we're human, aren't we? At the end of the day. And it's easy sometimes just to leave out some of those foundations, but the fact that, you know, that is a really powerful thing. Jill McAbe: Yeah. Like they bring out my smarts, right. I think I'm so smart. But the point is, they actually draw forth my smarts. Steve Rush: Yes. got it. So last part of the show, you get to do some time travel, bump into Jill at 21 and give us some advice. What would your words of wisdom be? Jill McAbe: So, this one is not leadership related at all. Steve Rush: Cool. Jill McAbe: Or business related. When I think about this question, I think about what would 21-year-old me actually listen to? And that's key, right. Because I might say a lot of things to 21-year-old me, but I have to go back and ask myself, what would 21-year-old me actually take action on? And so, with that in mind, I would tell 21-year-old me to go find the course in miracles. Steve Rush: Mm-Hmm. Jill McAbe: And I think 21-year-old me who was, you know, not into anything around faith and prayer or meditation or anything like that, I think almost really anti all those things because of how I had grown up. Would've been fascinated by a concept that there would be such a thing as a course in miracles. And I think that that would have helped 21-year-old me accelerate my career dramatically faster. Steve Rush: If only I could have bumped into a course of miracles at 21, in fact, I probably wouldn't have even listened to anything. I'd have said to me at 21, if I'm being brutally honest, but hey, that's another show. Jill McAbe: [laugh]. Steve Rush: So, I've absolutely loved talking with you. You are an incredible example of learning by doing and turning it into something powerful that's a force of good. And just delighted that we have the opportunity to share your story and some of your models and tools with our audience. If our listeners wanted to get hold of a bit more of your insights, how to access a copy of the book, It's Go Time, find out a little bit about BoomU, you where's the best place for us to send them? Jill McAbe: Come on over to my website would be a great start, jillmcabe.com with just one C a atypical spelling and or boom-u.com. And that's where free copy of my book can be found or link to my brand-new podcast, Thinking Vitamins, where I am sharing actionable ideas and practices that boost abundance and anyone interested in learning about MindCode would be able to learn all about that there and my other sweet of performance skills for leaders and entrepreneurs. So, I think that would be the place to send them. Steve Rush: And the good news is, is that if they're listening to this right now, they'll also find them in our show notes so they can head straight over as soon as they're done listening. Jill, I just want to say thank you for being part of our community. I've loved to chatting with you. And it's no surprised that, you know, Entrepreneur Magazine have recognized you as someone to watch this year. So, thanks for being part of our community. Jill McAbe: I'm grateful for the opportunity to be on the show. I've really enjoyed speaking with you. Steve Rush: Thank you, Jill.   Closing Steve Rush: I want to sign off by saying thank you to you for joining us on the show too. We recognize without you, there is no show. So please continue to share, subscribe, and like, and continue to get in touch with us with the great new stories that we share every week. And so that we can continue to bring you great stories. Please make sure you give us a five-star review where you can and share this podcast with your friends, your teams, and communities. You want to find us on social media. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter @leadershiphacker, Leadership Hacker on YouTube and on Instagram, the_leadership_hacker and if that wasn't enough, you can also find us on our website leadership-hacker.com. Tune into next episode to find out what great hacks and stories are coming your way. That's me signing off. I'm Steve Rush, and I've been your Leadership Hacker.  

Rhamy Alejeal is the CEO of People Processes, he's also an author and an HR guru. In this fun and engaging show we talk about: What comes first people or processes? What the HR systems are that business can't live without? The differentials between human and resources What common changes occurred to people and processes since the pandemic   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com   Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA   Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Rhamy below: Rhamy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RAlejeal People Processes Twitter: https://twitter.com/people_process Rhamy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhamy/ People Processes Website: https://peopleprocesses.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peopleprocesses/     Full Transcript Below   Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach, or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as The Leadership Hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Today's special guest is Rhamy Alejeal. He's the CEO of People Processes. He's an author, an HR guru, but before we get a chance to speak with Rhamy, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: One of the main reasons that keep business leaders awake at night, I ask that question to my network and reached out to over a hundred business leaders. And this is the top six things that they came back with that keep them awake at night. Number one is planning, planning around the short term, financial, their tactical, their team, and their strategy. Having a bad or an ill-informed plan keeps people awake at night, which is also strange. Because number two is long term strategy. So, it goes without saying, if you don't have a short-term plan, you're never going to have a long-term strategy. But long term to me is beyond five years. Beyond the linear. The next thing on the list was dealing with market changes and in particular, how they've responded to COVID, but generally how supply chains are moving and changing around. Hybrid working wasn't before on the list but how they can gain access to their team's insights and behaviors while being remote and distant from them. Number five was around staff retention. We've heard lots of discussion in the past about the great resignation but holding onto real talent has become a real challenge for many business leaders and a final one coming in number six was finding enough diversity in their workforce through either gender, race, or just deep thoughts, because thoughts is about differentiation too. And there of course is then the elephant in the room. So, for those who listening to this who sleep peacefully at night, there's also a reason for that. And that reason is that you've likely gone from an intention to an action. You've made something happen. You've made a decision; you've closed it off before the end of the day. And therefore, you can do what your brain's designed to do when you get to bed and that's repair and recover. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. Thanks to a number of you in the community who have raised us as a subject that you wanted us to feature on the show. So please also get in touch if there's something that you want to hear. Let's dive in. Strat of Podcast Steve Rush: Joining me on the show today is Rhamy Alejeal. He's a CEO of People Processes, or if you're in North America, of course it's Process and they provide the entire HR department for your business. He's also the author of the book People Processes, How Your People Can Be Your Organization's Competitive Advantage. Rhamy, welcome to the show. Rhamy Alejeal: Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here. Steve Rush: Me too. Now you have a really fascinating introduction to the world of business that started much earlier than many of us. In fact, you started out your first gig when you were 13 years old and actually made a bucket load of cash as a young man. I love for you to share the story with our listeners and how you got there? Rhamy Alejeal: Yeah, well, I was a lucky kid. I had an amazing grandmother and I loved to spend time with her. She was in insurance sales, she sold what are called Medicare Supplements. So, for people internationally, when you turned 65 in the U.S., you get to go on the Government Health Insurance Plan. There's a nationalized healthcare plan for people over age 65 called Medicare. And my grandmother would call them you know, right around their birthdays. And she got a big, long list of them. And I wanted to spend more time with my grandmother, but she would never let me spend the night on weeknights in retrospect, probably because she sure didn't want to spend [laugh] needed a couple nights off, but she told me it was because, hey, those are my cold calling nights. I can't have you come. So, at 13 I told my granddaughter, look, I could cold call. I can figure this out. Let me cold call for you so I can spend the night. And she somewhat, I think to humor me, gave me a copy of her, you know, 24 cassettes of call training and the big Medicare Supplement Guide and scripts and told me to read and listen to it all and she'd be happy to have me cold call. Well, I don't know that she really thought I'd do it, but I did. And I loved it. And I came in and said, hey gran, I'm ready. Let me cold call for you. And she, you know, this was back in the nineties and, you know, she said, well, let's give it a shot. She sat me down at her desk, handed me the big, you know, line printed green and white paper. Came in a big, long green, you had to tear the edges off. Steve Rush: Yeah, I remember them well. Rhamy Alejeal: Of everybody turning 65 and a zip code and said, get to calling. And it was, you know, first call, didn't go great. But on the second call, I said, hi, this is Rhamy. I know you're turning 65 soon. And my grandmother, she helps people who are turning 65, figure out Medicare, and she'd love to meet with you. And it turns out 13-year-olds calling people turning 65 and saying, my grandmother wants to meet with you was just the perfect, [laugh] the perfect phone script for a cold approach. And it started worked very well. I wound up setting a lot of appointments for my grandmother. And then I wound up growing that into a little bit of a dance with a couple of other agents and setting appointments for them. And by the time I was 14, I was making, you know, $50-60,000 a year setting appointment for Medicare Supplements Agents in my hometown. So that was my introduction to the world of business. It lasted for a few years before we figured out that, hey, there are some compliance problems with this, but it all went great and really gave me a good basis for understanding that world of rough cold calling and learned a lot about insurance and dealing with clients and having systems to make sure you're consistently performing. And it was a great start. Steve Rush: And your journey into entrepreneurialism started that way. And I think from the last time we kicked this around, didn't you end up in insurance at some point? Rhamy Alejeal: I did, yeah. So, I worked with my grandmother till I was 16. After that I launched a lawn mowing company for a few years that also, you know, turns out mowing lawn over the summer with three other guys and some trucks make some decent money. At 19, I bought my first investment property. My wife and I bought a foreclosure in 2007, the height of the market. Moved in, it had no floors, no walls. We learned how to renovate ourselves. And after graduating, I actually launched Poplar Insurance Agency. I got my bachelor's degree in finance and economics with minors in math and physics, you know, so I could sell insurance like you do. And totally made a lot of sense to me. And over the years that company, Poplar Insurance Agency. 13 years later has morphed into People Processes and really helped me find my niche and the people I love to work with. Steve Rush: And you've done that through a series of acquisitions, and you've now got a really successful business, which is predominantly around helping organizations with their HR and their people processes, right? Rhamy Alejeal: That's right. It started in the insurance space of dealing with employee benefits, right? So, making sure you had attractive reasonable benefits to make sure you can attract and retain good talent in your industry. And very quickly that morphed into also managing the payroll side of the business, because that was a big part of benefits at the time, you try trying to figure out how to keep all that stuff straight, get the bills paid, which led to compliance problems and understanding. In the U.S. Obamacare, the affordable care act came out in 2013. And that really changed a lot of how benefits as a regulatory environment needed to behave. And each time the market became more complex, we either acquired a company or launched our own internal so that we could provide those services broader and broader. And by 2015 or so, we were simply functioning as an entire HR department. Not just benefits, not just payroll, not just compliance, but also looking at things like recruit and retention and performance management, retirement plans, the whole piece of it. Steve Rush: And of course, when people hear HR, it's human and resources and they're actually quite different things, aren't they? Rhamy Alejeal: Yes, [laugh]. you have a lot of humans and no resources, and sometimes you have a few humans, but plenty of money to go around. It's an interesting world. Steve Rush: And however, big, however, small you are, you need focus and attention on those humanistic things and the resources and processes that come with it. What's the reason when organizations scale, they might see HR as being a side gig rather than an integral part of their business. Rhamy Alejeal: Ah, well, especially, you know, your smaller businesses when they start out, I like to break into three stages. Imagine you are, I don't know, a guy selling insurance, just to use a random example. You start off, you have a product, how you wound up in the industry may be relevant, may not be. Your product is likely very similar to that of your competitors. Your pricing is likely very similar. There's a stage in the early part where you have to focus on your product to make it unique or valuable, find your unique proposition. Another way I like to put, is you just have to start by not sucking at your job, right. You have to learn how to be a provider that doesn't suck. You've got to fulfill your promises. Those promises have to be unique or good in the market, and it's a tough journey. And a lot of small businesses fail there, right. Your average tire chain shop starts off with a completely homogenous product that doesn't differentiate, and they have to figure out how to make their product, their company special. From there, they scale their operations. They start realizing, hey, I've got a thing that people want to buy. I've got new clients coming in through the door and they realize I can't just change all the tires myself. I need other people. And they focus on what I call operations processes. This is the E-Myth Revisited, right. This is writing down your standard operating procedures and figuring out how to benefit from labor arbitrage, where you can have somebody else change the tire, but you can focus on the overall business and continue to grow. That step alone eliminates 90% of businesses. They have enough trouble figuring out how to scale their operations, Steve Rush: Right. Rhamy Alejeal: But once that's done, you now have a new problem. You may have standard operating procedures for the standard things. In my business for example, we realized, hey, we've got you know, when we were in one state, in really one city with 25 clients, we developed processes. We grew our staff to around 10, 15 people, and everything was going fine. But then we started to really grow. We entered 50 states. We had clients who were headquartered in LA and in New York and in Memphis and in Kansas City. And the thing that started happening is that new items came up. Not just every once in a while, but every day, things that couldn't be written down as a standard operating procedure. My wife and I worked together; we started the company together. All we really had to deal with was the new stuff. The new stuff happened three times a day. And we were dying. That's where people processes come in, people process. So, first product doesn't suck. Then your operations are standardized. Then you need processes to develop people who will make the same decision you would make. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rhamy Alejeal: But without you, right. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rhamy Alejeal: And that requires a lot. That requires they have guidance on behavior. They need to know how you think. And in a small business with four people, maybe the answer is they start off changing tires and then they drink a beer with you every afternoon and you hang out and they get to know your family. And eventually they just think like you would. Steve Rush: Right. Rhamy Alejeal: That can work. It may take a year and a half, but eventually you got somebody you can trust to make decisions. You've got a leader you can trust, but that not scalable. People processes is this operating system basically that allows us to take an enthusiastic new hire to someone you can trust to make decisions when you're not there. Steve Rush: So, here's a chicken and egg kind of question for you. What comes first? Is it the people or the processes? Rhamy Alejeal: It's a tough question, when I first thought about that question, my answer was actually people come first in that if, you know, if you have a process for requesting time off, but your top guy, you know, breaks his leg and needs to go to the hospital, and he doesn't fill out the form first. Well then obviously people come first, the process is secondary, and that is true. You have to be a human, right. You got to treat your people with respect and realize that processes can create a bureaucracy that can harm your relationship. So, you don't want that. On the other hand, I believe the development of those relationship so that you can trust people to not abuse systems so that you have the ability to say, hey, I know that Steve would never just not do a thing because he doesn't want to do it. It's because there's a good reason and I can trust him. The development of that trust has to be a process. Steve Rush: And it's interesting, isn't it? When you start to think about how that they're not mutually exclusive at all, that they're entirely intertwined, aren't they? Rhamy Alejeal: Absolutely, especially you were talking about, how do people start valuing this HR side of the business. When they start off, they're all external. They think all about how do I get new clients? How do I make my product better? How do I make it so that the promises I've made actually get delivered upon? They're thinking externally. And they're constantly looking at that framework. The internal process is what allows you to scale up your business. And those internal processes are around people. The only thing that does anything in your business, people. So, it's kind of like saying, if you look at it from an external focus and you think, well, what comes first? Client or product delivery processes or sales processes. And the answer is, the clients come first, but you're never going to talk to them or they're never going to stick around. You're not going to be able to do a good job for the client if you don't have those processes in place, it's the same for your employees. You have to have the processes in place, or you're not going to be a good employer. Doesn't matter how deeply you care about them. If you have to reinvent the wheel every single time for every little part of the employee process, you're not going to do a great job. Steve Rush: Guess a lot of the systems as well that you are talking to are actually when you are small in scale often unconscious or at the back of, you know, the own operators mind. But as you grow, they need to be shared and people need to understand them. Rhamy Alejeal: A system exists. Absolutely. It may just be that you know Steve makes a decision [laugh] every time and that's a system, but until they are standardized, public trained, some of the key pieces that are necessary to implement a process across an organization, it's very difficult for them to be improved. That's the genius of a system or a process. What I often train my small business clients to do is not try to invent whole cloth a better way to deal with an employee performance management, a performance management process. Maybe that's a bonus structure at the end of the year or an evaluation of their behavior or even a goal system. Don't start with that. Start with what you do now. Write that down, publish that, put that in front of the employees and say, this is what we do. And you will find within weeks, a lot of times. There are obvious, you don't need an HR expert to tell you, hey, that's kind of stupid we should do it different. Steve Rush: mm-hmm. Rhamy Alejeal: Right. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rhamy Alejeal: And make a small improvement to it. Systems processes, the great genius of it is that you can make a change and see the result, make a change, and see the result. And until you actually make it a public system, as opposed to one that just exists in your head, those iterations are very difficult to actually stick. So, the advantage isn't that having a system, lets people know what to do. Though that's not a bad one. The advantage is, is that the system allows itself to improve over time. Steve Rush: Yeah. So, I heard you talk about standard, standardization quite a bit Rhamy and I wondered how that sits alongside being agile and innovative and does one suppress the other? Rhamy Alejeal: It can, I mean, bureaucracy can kill a business. Steve Rush: Right? Rhamy Alejeal: I would say, you know, there's a line between chaos and order and you want to straddle it, right. You want the flexibility so that people can rapidly make decisions and experiment, but you need the order to make sure that everyone's going in the same direction. The information is shared freely so that good decisions can be made. There's a balance to be had there. What I find in most small businesses before hierarchies are heavily developed is that they are more chaotic than orderly Steve Rush: Right Rhamy Alejeal: Now when you're talking, for me, a 1500 person or 2000-person organization, I'm sure in 10 and 30,000 person organizations, it has been processed to death, right. There's a process for everything. They just may not be very good ones. They may not provide the flexibility necessary for employees to be able to well exist and grow inside of them, but in small businesses anyway, I often find that they're too far in the chaotic sphere. Steve Rush: Yeah, and it creates this discipline in the space, I guess, then to give that individual the opportunity to be innovative. Rhamy Alejeal: Absolutely. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rhamy Alejeal: Well, think of it. Think of it. Anything that has a process removes, significant mental load off those who need to figure it out, right. So, let's take a maternity leave as an example, right. I'm going to have a kid, I'm pregnant. It's three months in. I've got six months to figure out what's going to happen with my maternity leave. That is not the time for the business owner to be deciding what does maternity leave need to look like in our business. Steve Rush: [Laugh] Yeah. Rhamy Alejeal: That decision needed to be made while ago, right. And it may be that the decision they made a year ago and put in place and communicated and is easily accessible to the employee is not the optimal decision. It may very well be that. It's better to have made a decision in most cases so that the employee knows what to expect and knows how this is going to go then to have not made a decision and have to figure that out when you're staring down the barrel of a choice, a fun way to think about this is, perhaps you should think up the name of your child before the baby comes, right. Or at least before the epidural and you're knocked out on drugs, sorry, I've got a four-month-old. So, I'm a little into this world, right. We had to at least narrow down the list a little bit. Because if Liz, my wife had to make that decision, you know, under the epidural with the baby there, like I don't know what we would've been named, but I know she really loved Godiva Chocolate during the last couple months there. And I'm pretty sure it would've been Godiva [laugh] even if, David was born, so we got to put some time in upfront to make those decisions better. And I think that having the decision, having been made, having it as a process allows you to remove a lot of uncertainty. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rhamy Alejeal: And that uncertainty is a huge mental weight on your staff and you. Doesn't mean you can't improve it. You should improve it. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rhamy Alejeal: See how it goes, run it through. If there's an immediate obvious, problem fix it, but allow it to be a process rather than the whims of how you're feeling that week or, oh my gosh, we can't let that employee go on maternity, she's too important. I tell you that kind of stuff comes up and you lose that employee. She's too important to go on maternity. Well guess what? She's way too important, not to, right? Steve Rush: Yeah. Rhamy Alejeal: So those are the kind of decisions we want to make upfront. Steve Rush: Now Rhamy, you've had the opportunity of work with thousands of different people in businesses over the time and create and work with them around their systems. And I just wonder if there's a natural leveling or a pecking order on the systems particularly that businesses can't live without. And I just wondered if there was maybe one that sticks out above the others as being the most critical HR system or process that I might want to have in my business? Rhamy Alejeal: Well, gosh, I think, you know, I love all my children. You need to pay your people on time. You need a payroll system. You know when they work, you need time and labor. You need to know when they're going to work, you need scheduling. You need to know how to recruit. You need a recruiting system onboarding, off boarding. God, you need a way to fire people. And what happens when they quit? All of them are important, but I will say the one that separate the big boys from the newbies, right. I can often tell how developed an organization is by the existence at least, or complexity and depth of their performance management system. Now if you're a small business, the truth is, if you have seven employees, you know what all of them do, [laugh], you know, if they're doing a good job. You may not need an in depth, performance management system outside of maybe setting expectations, right. So that the employees know what to do, at least that, but you probably don't need an in-depth dashboard that connects and executives and HR and make sure that everything is connected. But what I often do is, one of the first things I try to deep dive in is, where are they in this performance management spectrum? On one hand, a small business where the owner provides nearly no expectations and nearly no review. And everyone is surprised when they're in trouble. That would be the bottom of the spectrum up to something like Google, where every single keystroke, metric, time spent, thought had, contribution made is analyzed by a machine learning algorithm to generate analytics and demographic data. And they know that you're going to quit before you do. Like, there's a whole other world all the way over there that honestly, I like to read about, but I don't get to play with much. If you are at marginal scale, say 20 to 50 employees, focusing on your management of your existing employees, your performance management can often have an outsized impact in both your turnover, your employee satisfaction, and your ability to deliver to your clients. Steve Rush: And that's where you get your marginal gains, right? Rhamy Alejeal: They come from everywhere. But absolutely it's much better to have a system in place that allows good employees to become great employees, right. And allows you to keep your great employees than not. And that's probably less work or less financial investment anyway, than a system that allows you to rapidly replace top performers with new people, right? Steve Rush: Yeah. Rhamy Alejeal: That's an important system too. Your top performers will leave eventually, and you need a way to do it, but for many businesses they could cut their turnover significantly just by really focusing in on that performance management piece. Steve Rush: And I wonder as well, the whole notion of performance management can sit differently with different focus or can't they, so some will thrive in the opportunity of having clarity and guidance and the process that follows that where others might feel a little bit uncomfortable and uneasy as they start to evolve that as well. What's your experience about some of the psychology that sits alongside performance management? Rhamy Alejeal: Well, that's a very good question. People creatives, which by the way, entrepreneurs and artists have the same brain, it's the same high risk, high reward drive a lot of times. So, you find that systems that constrain behavior are very important in a hierarchy. It's very important in a system, a business to give people places to go and know what to do. But you will often find that creatives and those who are more entrepreneurial, like a salesperson may find those constraints significantly more constraining [laugh] right. They may chafe under that pressure or the limited pieces there. For them you want to design performance management systems that are primarily around them setting their expectations, right. And then a method of making ensure that their expectations or goals align with the company's expectations and goals. It's a lot more a system of alignment than it is say, giving them a track to run on. Whereas in an accounting organization, you can be significantly more focused on very specific, measurable pieces. There's actually a great story of a company that did customs management. So, every time someone would come in, every time a shipment would come in, they'd have to fill out all this customs paperwork. And they moved to measuring their primary KPI for their direct frontline agent was not number of cargos filled out because some cargos required hundreds of pieces of paper, some required two, and counting the pieces of paper, which were government forms that had to be filled out by hand or in a typewriter. These weren't even digital forms because it was a customs international thing. They did it by the ounces, by the weight, by the weight of paper, they moved, literally. They had their intake and outtake replaced with scales. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rhamy Alejeal: And that was their primary metric every day and said, hey, are we improving or not? That sort of micro level of performance management may suit some, but likely would not do well with a group of aggressive salespeople, right? Steve Rush: Yeah, absolutely right. Yeah, I can see that. So, you managed to gather all of this experience and you threw it into the book, People Processes. Tell us a little bit about how the book came about and what was in inspiration behind it? Rhamy Alejeal: Well, People Processes the book came about because of a podcast that I did call Don't HR Alone. I did a daily podcast for about a year and a half, closer two years, really. Couple hundred episodes. They were daily 15 minutes, hey, we're going to dive in on this issue or there's a new compliance update, or gosh, Minnesota's changing their minimum wage. And what does this mean for you? Whatever I could find honestly, to fill a daily podcast but it did pretty dang well, and that actually led to the book deal. The book truthfully, I wrote almost 400 pages, single spaced in word over the course of six months. I'm effectively made an HR textbook. My editors took that and laughed at me and said, what are you trying to make around Rhamy? Because this thing, ain't no one going to read. this. [Laugh] right. Are you trying to make a college textbook that people will assign, or are you trying to make a book that your clients or your target clients would like to read? And that really changed everything. People Processes is a broad guide that lays out the key sections of the employee life cycle from onboarding to offboarding, right through termination and even alumni management. It lays out what the key processes are, what a good process looks like, what a bad process looks like. And then the last quarter of the book is actually almost a workbook. It's exercises for you to actually lay all this out in your own organization. The first quarter is justification for small business owners and boards on why they should invest in the time and energy in necessary on these. And the idea was, and again, I give credit to my publisher on this, was that this book would be an excellent book for all business owner to read, to get their head around or for an HR professional to read quickly. It's nothing earth shattering in there. There's some good fun insights and some great stories, but to read and then pass on to the executive or the boards that they have to work under because it will show them both why it's important, and how it can be accomplished in a reasonable manner. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rhamy Alejeal: And that's where the book sits. If you're an HR professional, who's Sherm certified and done this for 10 years, you're going to find the book to be fun and entertaining and cover all the basics [Laugh]. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rhamy Alejeal: But if you're a small business owner, who's looking at maybe be turning in inward for a little while, you've got the business growing, but you're realizing that the pieces inside your company, aren't up to the task of delivering on the promises and clients that you've been able to make and gather. This is the book for you, because it will give you the steps you need to get this well, moving inside your organization. Steve Rush: Awesome. And if you think about the journey that we've all been on over the last couple of years through the pandemic, as we hopefully start to move beyond the pandemic, how have you seen people change their approach to processes and their people? Rhamy Alejeal: Well, HR has been a hot topic over the last few years, of course. In the U.S., especially we had lots of diversity equity and inclusivity issues, and then the pandemic changed everything. And suddenly CEOs started realizing that their processes for keeping up with their people were heavily reliant on management by walking around, right. You had managers and they just kind of talked to their employees every day and sat next to them. That was a big part of management. That doesn't work very well in a remote world. It doesn't work in a global world where it may be 9:00 AM my time and 3:00 PM your time. Many companies were able to adapt very quickly to the pandemic and remote work and hybrid offices and the globalization of the marketplace very well, because they were already there. They already had the processes in place to manage remotely and not just rely on the gut of the manager, right. But the ones that didn't were hit very hard and they, I think over the last two years, three years have learned that they have to have processes in place to be able to scale that people's side of their operations. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rhamy Alejeal: Both over a larger staff, but also over time at distance. Steve Rush: Yeah. It's that moving from one place to another place, but if it's not there in the first place, then you're going to end up back in that chaotic basically you articulate earlier, right? Rhamy Alejeal: Absolutely. Steve Rush: Yeah. So, we're going to flip the lens a little bit now. You've been leading people and teams, since you were 16 years old from those grass cutting days, right the way through to now where you've got a really large organization. So, I'm really keen to hack into that leadership experience of yours. If you had to dive in and think about the top three things, the top three leadership hacks, what would they be? Rhamy Alejeal: I think there are a few places where everyone can improve. Of course, one piece of leadership is to understand and embrace that you are on stage, that what you do matters. It is the price of leadership. And it's not really a hack. It has nothing to do with people processes to a large degree but know that your organization is a reflection of you. And I find that often my business does best when I think about improving parts of my life that are not relevant to my business, right. Being in better shape and having a closer family and having a better balance, it shows, and it matters. So, no matter what processes and what technology and where your industry's at. Know that by signing up to lead an organization, either through entrepreneurship or in an executive role, you are signing up for a public role, a role where you will be judged in a role where the things that are not necessarily exactly tied to your performance at work matter, it's a public role. So, some people just need to hear that and understand that is what it is. Steve Rush: Like It. Rhamy Alejeal: It's a tough thing. Next up would be that the genius of processes, as we mentioned earlier, is in their iteration and improvement. Many people, especially leaders are high performing individuals who have turned in perfect papers, their whole life, right. Who have been at the top of the pack, the fastest runner, the best player, the top academic, and they've done it through hard work and perseverance. Business is a little different. Business never has an in season. Well, most of them anyway, unless you're running a football team. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rhamy Alejeal: But most, it's going to go on forever. And the great genius of systems is that you can put one in place and then improve it and improve it and use the scientific method. Change one thing, see what the effect is, change one thing, see what the effect is. It's so much more valuable for you to put something in place and then improve it than it is for you in your great leadership genius, to sit in a dark room with Brandy and think hard for hours and come up with the perfect answer because you won't, there's no chance of it. It's just too complicated. So, I try to pull back my clients from feeling like their unique genius has to be expressed through any system inside their organization, allow it to exist and then make sure that a part of the system is to improve itself. And it will over time become significantly better than anything you alone could have dreamed up. Steve Rush: Great. Rhamy Alejeal: The final piece of leadership hack that I would say is, just a random kind of piece of information is to always think at the front lines, many organizations and a lot of times in the smaller organizations, as well as the larger ones, the executives think about other executives. If you ask a small business owner, who do you want to hire? It's always me, right. I want someone who's going to read my email, reply to it as if it were me, make my decisions, handle my books, and talk to my clients and just do me. And that's unfortunately not going to happen. Steve Rush: That's right. Rhamy Alejeal: Instead, look at what you do on a day-to-day basis and break it into the smallest job possible. The most focused job possible. One of the exercises I have my client go through as a true hack is to design your org chart for what you envision the future of your company to be. Recognizing that there are only 12 of you now, or 20 of you now. In my organization, our org chart is about twice as large as we are currently. We actually review that org chart quarterly, and that org chart is about half empty. And we've done that since we had three employees [Laugh] Steve Rush: That's great. Rhamy Alejeal: We had six people on our org chart and that gives you a direction to go and recognize that you, as the executive in a small business are probably doing seven jobs and your top people are probably doing three or four and that's okay. But think about them as unique individual jobs that have different requirements, descriptions, metrics, goals, competencies, skills. Recognize that in a small business, you may be doing multiple jobs, but think about them as individual ones. And that will give you a path to growth significantly faster. It will help you understand where your next hire are going to be and what needs to be done. And then fill in from the bottom to the top, the number of seven-person, small businesses I've spoken with that have a CEO, a chief marketing officer, a director of finance, a COO, a receptionist and a bookkeeper, right. And I'm like, wait, hey, hang on, buddy. You got to always start. And especially if you're new to hiring and scaling a business, start with the smallest job, you're going to screw it up. Might as well be that rather than a partner, Steve Rush: Next part of the show, we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something has not gone well, might have even screwed up, but as a result, you've learned from it. And it's now a force of good in your work or life. What would be your Hack to Attack Rhamy? Rhamy Alejeal: I've screwed up so much. It's hard to pick. When I started my company at 22, I had $105,000 in the bank. I rent a quarter floor and a high rise because I needed a beautiful place for my clients to meet me. I was spending $5,000 a month on marketing and advertising, and I didn't know would be successful. Six months in I had $4,000 in the bank and a payroll due of five and a rent due of five in like three weeks. And it's only gone down from there. We did well. We survived that, but multiple times throughout my business, I have come to these points of near utter failure. I have sobbed in my office. When I first launched payroll eight or nine years for example, my sister who'd worked with me for years. Young college student, she really took it over. She took over payroll. She helped me find the company that we purchased, which she helped me with every client. She was the head of payroll. And after graduating and then getting her master's degree, well, I couldn't afford to pay her as much as a big accounting firm. And it was right for her to move on. But man, I sat in my office and cried [laugh], why are you leaving? I thought we were going to grow this together. And it was incredibly painful. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rhamy Alejeal: Some of the lessons I've learned, every single one of those issues has forced me to find a better way. And they have been the points of the greatest growth in my organization. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rhamy Alejeal: Every single time, every single time without fail, I have actually come to like when reality steps up and punches me in the face and says, you're doing it wrong. There's a major problem. So, try in that moment to take a deep breath and think. I'm so lucky that it happened now and not two years from now, two years of wasted work when I'm just building further into the structure that doesn't work. So, look out for those moments and consider them an opportunity. Steve Rush: Super advice. Thank you, Rhamy. The last part of the show, we get to give you a chance to go and do some time travel now. Bump into Rhamy at 21, give him some advice. What would it be? Rhamy Alejeal: I'm going to say 22, because that's when I started my company. 21-year-old Rhamy was going to be a physicist. He was pretty sure. So, that didn't work out. But 22, the day I opened my company. Some of the advice I would give me. Some of it I wouldn't need, but reading, learning every day is a huge value. I don't know that I need to tell myself that I've read and listened every day. So, it made a big difference. I think for most, it shocks me the number of successful businesses who don't just look at a library and salivate and go, oh my God, there's just so much success in there. I got to go look at it. I got to go read it. So that's my number one piece of advice for a younger person. For personally. It would be that this is going to be harder than you ever expected. And the spreadsheet you made, you know, everyone makes a spreadsheet a couple months before they start their business. Steve Rush: That's right. Rhamy Alejeal: And they project out and say, hey, five years, I'm going to be making money. And in 10 years, I would tell myself, that my spreadsheet is way optimistic for the first five to seven years of my business, that I was underestimating how incredibly difficult and hard this will be. But I would also say that my spreadsheet at 10 years has way underestimated how good it can be. Steve Rush: That's nice. And that leads me to ask of you Rhamy, how we can get our listeners to connect with you? Find out a little bit more about the work that you and the firm do, but maybe you'll get a copy of the book? Rhamy Alejeal: Oh yeah. Well, peopleprocesses.com is our website. You can search People Processes on Amazon to find in the book. It's also linked from our website. @peopleprocesses.com. We have some great free resources for subscribers, including things like overall templates to use, great onboarding checklists, ways of setting up a performance management system. Up at the top there's an academy where you can sign up for courses. That'll help you develop this in your own organization. And of course, right on the website, there's a contact us where you can reach out and schedule time with my staff or even me to figure out if we can work together. We work in the United States, but our academy is internationally focused and can help you with anywhere across the world. Steve Rush: Excellent. And we'll make sure that's in our show notes so that as people finish listening, they can dive straight in. Rhamy Alejeal: Wonderful. Steve Rush: Rhamy I've really enjoyed chatting to you, and it's no surprise that you've made an enormous success in helping others build their business in the way that you've built yours. So, I just want to say thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule, to be on our show and thanks for being part of our Leadership Hacker community. Rhamy Alejeal: Thank you, Steve. I really appreciate it. Steve Rush: Thank you Rhamy. Closing Steve Rush: I want to sign off by saying thank you to you for joining us on the show too. We recognize without you, there is no show. So please continue to share, subscribe, and like, and continue to get in touch with us with the great new stories that we share every week. And so that we can continue to bring you great stories. Please make sure you give us a five-star review where you can and share this podcast with your friends, your teams, and communities. You want to find us on social media. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter @leadershiphacker, Leadership Hacker on YouTube and on Instagram, the_leadership_hacker and if that wasn't enough, you can also find us on our website https://leadership-hacker.com Tune into next episode to find out what great hacks and stories are coming your way. That's me signing off. I'm Steve Rush, and I've been your Leadership Hacker.    

Gary Frey has served as president of a number successful companies, including Bizjournals.com, a business news portal which he helped transform from a three-person organization to a $100 million company which he sold to Microsoft. In this show you can learn about: The most important attributes of successful leaders today The role gratitude plays in leading others The philosophy of just connecting with good people How to use the Thrive-Wither self-assessment.   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com   Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Gary below: Gary on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garydfrey/ Gary's Blog Page: https://gfrey.wordpress.com   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach, or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker. Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as The Leadership Hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you  Our special guest today is Gary Frey. He's an entrepreneur, multiple C-suite executive, and now super coach. But before we get a chance to dive into the conversation with Gary, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: In the news today, we explore how to balance employee happiness and building business expectations. Toxic workplaces are nothing new. We've likely heard of horror stories of offices run on terror. What is new is, few workers are willing to put up with such conditions, a recent study for the Human Resources Management, SHRM. Completed the study that indicated one in five have left their job in the last five years because of company culture. So that culture is not only bad for the health of employees, but it's also bad for business with an estimated cost to businesses of being over 200 million pounds. Clearly, then keeping employees happy is critical to run a successful enterprise but needs a balance, and that balance needs to be achieved so that you get productivity too. And we can't become subservient to the needs of every employee, or we lose sight of the business needs. In 2017, Google's apparent overcompensation of some staff politically was incorrect at the time called the F.U. Money, but colloquially led to a departure of many, and they took their hefty paychecks and used them to pursue other roles. And if you're underpaying employees so much that they can triple their salary elsewhere, well, then they should leave. However, if we allow every person who is headhunted to jump ship, we won't be left much talent at all. Those do stick around most likely to be under performers and unable to get a job elsewhere. And therefore, the companies left scrambling again. So, we have to create the right environment that fosters loyalty and motivation, so that talent feel the need to stay and want to continue on that journey. And of course, some businesses may not have the budget or flexibility to pay more, but it's still vital to show employees that ownership or leadership of a firm are doing all they can to cultivate happy and healthy work culture. Paying more doesn't necessarily mean you get results. And this is where the key to balancing employee happiness lies. It's critical that we first communicate clearly and transparently any responsibilities that are tied to a position. If performance doesn't match that position, then there needs to be some open dialogue about standards, expectations, and the consequences of positively achieving and negatively achieving those outcomes. And honest, candid conversations can motivate individuals to work hard, to improve their skills while simultaneously given them a reason to stay finding their purpose. There'll also be times when it's in the best interest of the employee to leave too whether we'd like them to stay or not. Someone may get an offer that comes along, gives them new opportunities. In that case, I know that moving on is likely to be best for the individual in the long term, albeit it's going to be painful for you. The goal for each staff member is to thrive in tandem with the business and as leaders to clearly communicate honestly and identify the circumstances that will allow them to thrive and clear communication and openness fosters trust. So, show people your engage with careers so that that helps them want to succeed. And the hack here, with clarity, trust, and mutual understanding on both sides, you are more likely to achieve your expectations and outcomes and therefore standards are adhered. Expectations are met and positive consequences achieved by all. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. Dive into our social media and let us know what you'd like to talk about. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Joining me on the show today is Gary Frey. He served as president as a number of successful companies, including bizjournals.com, a business news portal, where he helped transform the business from a three-person organization to a hundred million dollar plus company, which ended up selling on to Microsoft. He's now done two turnarounds and held executive positions in two Fortune 100 Companies, and now runs an incredibly successful coaching business and community. Gary, welcome to the show. Gary Frey: Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be with you. Steve Rush: Looking forward to diving into learning a little bit about the journey you've been on so far. And we'd like to kick things off by our guests, just giving our listeners a little bit of a perspective on how they've arrived to do what they do. So, what's the backstory for you? Gary Frey: Oh man, we don't have enough time. I started out as a graphic designer early in my career and did my first turnaround when I was 28 years old. I had no credentials whatsoever to be able to do that. But we did in nine months, which was really cool. I thought it was going to be my forever home. It became the Morris Frey Agency. So, my name was on the door, and we grew it into a really cool creative small but powerful little juggernaut. It was only a dozen people or so when we turned it around and then caught my partner, you know, his hand in the cookie jar one too many times financially. And I had to leave my own company. And so, I always thought I'm just going to, you know, I define myself as a creative director, you know, a designer and creative director and a guy in the ad agency world. And you know, again, kind of, I planned God laughed and my career journey has been anything but to typical. And it's been an amazing journey, actually terrifying in many times and exhilarating in other times and taking me into places that I would've never imagined. So, as you had mentioned, I've run four companies and done a couple turnarounds and I've been inside the belly of the beast of two Fortune 500 Companies and that's where the MacGyver in my title comes from actually was one of those Fortune 500 Companies, which was really cool. But you know, being able to look back in the rear-view mirror and, you know, it's easy to see patterns when you're looking backwards. It's hard to see it when you're in the fog of war. Steve Rush: Yeah. Gary Frey: Anyway, I'm extremely grateful. It's taken me into industries that I had no business doing, including bizjournals, you know, I was not a publishing guy and I was not, you know, a tech guy and yet, you know, I was running a .com in the middle of crazy .com stories. And I got some amazing, funny and wild stories from that time too. But, you know, on insulating glass manufacturing company, like what do I know about that? Nothing. When I look through all of these things, all of my jobs, except for two were because of somebody that knew me or had worked alongside me and saw something, typically they saw something in me that I didn't see myself. Steve Rush: Right. Gary Frey: So anyway, and I've had great leaders and I've had really terrible leaders and I've learned from both. So, you know, you're talking about, you know, leadership hacks, you know, that's awesome to be able to have worked under some really powerful and wonderful leaders that demonstrated servant leadership. And then under ogres that demonstrated just because you're sitting in a power perch, doesn't make you a leader. Steve Rush: Exactly, right. So, when you head did off on your entrepreneurial journey and you started bumping into these opportunities, was there something that was common amongst them that was alluring for you? What was that one thing that drew you towards the opportunities you had? Gary Frey: You know, it's funny. Relationships actually, quite frankly, a lot of it. And I would say early in my career, you know, there were some star gazing moments of, you know, I'm going to, you know, put my name in lights or whatever, and that was pretty short lived, you know, one thing about it, you get kicked in the teeth a few times and then you lose that luster. But one of the things early on, when I was 31, I caught my partner doing some financial impropriety things that he shouldn't have been doing and caught him twice, you know, which, you know, when you got to leave your own company and I chose to leave, because I wasn't going to destroy him, you know, he had made some bad choices, were all one stupid choice away from disaster, I think. Steve Rush: Yeah, you're right. Gary Frey: And I didn't want to destroy him, and I didn't want to destroy my own name. And I would've had to do that if I would've taken the company across the street, everybody in town and Wichita, Kansas knew who my partner was. He had been the head of corporate communications for Cessna Aircraft, and he was 20 years older than me. And you know, that's a big, small town, you know, a few hundred thousand people. And so, my choice was, I'm not going to destroy him and I'm not going to destroy my name. So, I got to start all over again. And one of the things that I did was at the ripe old age of 31, did this really simple T-Chart that I call thrive, wither. And you split the piece of paper in two. On the left side, you right thrive. And on the right side, you write wither. And I didn't have a ton of experience, but I had enough to know what environments and the kind of tasks and the kind of responsibilities and kind of environments that made me come alive. And on the right side, the wither side, I also had enough experience at that point. I've got a whole lot more now, but enough to be able to say, what are the things that I might even be good in these things, but they just drain my tank. Steve Rush: Yeah. Gary Frey: And you know, one of the things that I learned really quickly when we did that, turnaround, everybody quit except for me and my partner, we had to take 20% pay a cut. Everybody hit the doors except for me and my partner. And so, I had to do everything except for the PR, he was a PR guy. So writing, designing, selling, billing, that all fell on me. Steve Rush: Right. Gary Frey: Then when you scale, you got to divide and conquer, and you got to find other people that will never do it just like you did. And I had to find three people in particular pretty quickly to take some of the things off of me and, you know, we didn't have a lot of money. So, I had to hire younger folks, you know, with less experience, but had kind of batteries installed already. And so, I learned really quickly, you know, more about how to communicate better. I wasn't perfect at it, but, you know, set the sites on what the target is, let them find their own way to hit it as long as it doesn't violate core values and who you are as a company and what you're trying to instill, they're going to find a different path than you would've taken. And that's okay. So, I would say, you know, keeping, you know, true to my, you know, what makes me come alive. I started looking at all these additional opportunities that eventually came and some of them, they came on the heels of destruction, you know, quite frankly, where you're just forlorn, wondering, you know, if the world has fallen, you know, do you have what it takes to continue to move on, et cetera. I started really trying to evaluate, well, does this fit me and my unique giftings and that sort of thing or is it asking too much of things that I might even be able to do or that I really suck at that would drain my tank because that's not going to be a good move if that's the case. So hopefully that answers some of the question. Steve Rush: Sure does. And one thing, I guess I've just noticed in all of the things that you've just shared is that in entering those entrepreneurial journeys, you were pretty confident you had most of the attributes that were going to get you there, but not all. And therefore, there was definitely this energy that comes with that around confidence and conviction, as well as having a majority of the attributes, but not all of them, right? Gary Frey: Yeah, and quite frankly, in some cases, I didn't think I had any of them. Steve Rush: Right. Gary Frey: You know, it's really funny. That turnaround, that was kind of the first of many times where I've felt completely outgunned, completely unworthy, you know, completely like they've tapped the wrong guy on the shoulder. In some of those cases, in some of the biggest moves I've actually been brought into, which had me terrified. And I thought, oh my gosh, no, I'm not the right guy, because you know, then once I take that job, then they're going to see the emperor has no clothes. I don't know what I'm doing. In all of those cases, people identified stuff in me. So that first one, this guru that was brought in from Richmond, Virginia. He was a really a business development guru. And it was a Hail Mary because my partner was basically bankrupt. I mean, it was a last-ditch effort to try to keep from going bankrupt. And this guy was extremely expensive. I mean he was 10,000 bucks a day plus expenses in 1991. Steve Rush: That's a lot of cash. Gary Frey: It was a lot of money, but it was, like I said, a Hail Mary. And when they called me at home, we didn't have cell phones at the time. I didn't know him from Adam, and he said, Gary, you know, I know you don't know me, but here's the opportunity that I'm looking for. I've talked with a number of people and your peers around town, your name keeps coming up. And I said, I don't know anything about, you know, doing a turnaround or anything. Like, he goes, yeah, but these are the things that we need, and you know, the kind of position in the marketplace they were wanting to own. And I had worked for the top firm in town that had that position that they wanted to have. And that firm ended up selling to a larger company. And so, kind of destroyed a lot of the stuff that made it unique and special. And in all of those cases, bizjournals.com, same thing. When their top publisher said, Gary, you're the guy, we've got national search looking for somebody to be president over this entity. And I said, Ed, I don't know anything about, you know, publishing, I don't know, I'm not an early adopter technology guy, that's not me. And he goes, no, no, no, but here's what we need. You have started, run, and turned around companies and we need somebody to take this three-person entity and grown into real Bonafede business. Two, you're a bridge builder, you know, you connect really well with people, even in warring factions, in big companies. And I'd done that in a couple big companies. And he said, we got 41 publishers that basically run their own businesses. And they are terrified of the chairman announcing that we've got this .com entity and it's a separate entity. And they think they're going, by the way, the dodo bird, they're very defensive and we need your bridge building skills. And then the final thing is, it's called am city.com for American City. The holding company was American City Business Journals. And he said, it doesn't make sense, that name makes no sense for papers that are called business journals. And some of them are business chronicles. His was the Atlanta Business Chronicle and he was the top publisher. And he said, so we're going to have to rebrand this thing and you're the right guy to do that. So, he outlined very succinctly three things that I would was really good at, but I was terrified of going into a situation where I was going to fail because I didn't have those credentials. Oh, and by the way, I'm a college dropout. So, you know, I have two years of college and was offered a job at the height of the great recession actually before 2008-2009. But in 1982 is the highest unemployment in U.S. history since the great depression. And so, I had this job offer and my advisor said, ditch the paid scholarship and take it because grads aren't finding jobs. So, I had this additional achilles heel or, you know, albatross around my neck that was following me around everywhere saying I'm not good enough. Steve Rush: In hindsight, Gary, do you think that the fear of the unknown has actually been a driver in many respects? Gary Frey: I don't know if it was a driver, but it was definitely there. And the responsibility of providing for my family, you know, I got married at 21 and my wife was 19 and we're still married 39 years later. And we had kids, you know, a couple years later her after we got married and she stayed home with the kids. So, I had no option, you know, I had to provide for my family. I wanted to provide for my family. Steve Rush: Right. Gary Frey: And in many cases it threw me into situations where if I would've had an option, I wouldn't have taken the option. I would've taken a safer option. So, you know, the best boss I ever had was still one of the top execs at Bank of America, a woman. And she would often say, Gary, we have more confidence in you than you do, which was very true. But she did the same thing where she would just push me and encourage me, you know, you've got more under the hood than you think that you do. And sometimes a little bit of that kind of encouragement and cajoling combined with the necessity of, I just got to do this. has pushed me into it, but she would often say, Gary, you're just so entrepreneurial. And this place was a pretty entrepreneurial place. We went from 80,000 associates or employees to 160,000 in two years with the three largest bank acquisitions in history at that time. And so, it was a whirlwind all the time and she would say, you know, you're an entrepreneur. And I'd say, you know what, actually I'm not. I'm more of a turnaround guy. Entrepreneurs, like they see the non-existent and they call it into existence. I've worked for some I'm amazing entrepreneurs. And sometimes you would go, well, you're lying but they would go, no, I'm not lying. I can see it, even though it's not there yet. And that really isn't me, but I am a problem solver, and I can see things. And so typically I love to come in alongside, in bizjournals, the same thing, three people, we turned it into a real business, but you know, somebody had gotten that thing off the ground, they got it moving and then they needed some additional oomph to take it to the next level. Steve Rush: That must have been some moment though, when you know, Microsoft come along. Hundred-million-dollar company at this time, and you sell out. That must have been a really proud moment for you, right? Gary Frey: It was very interesting. So, they bought 20% of the company for $20 million. And before that, that was the second all offer that we actually had. And that was a year after the .com bubble blew up. And so, we had .com wasteland everywhere. The one before that though, and this was only a few months into my time there as the president, I was meeting with a competitor in San Francisco, we put a million dollars in this competitor, and it was before I got there. So as soon as I got there, the chairman said, I need you to go out to San Francisco, meet with these guys. I put a million bucks into them. I go, why'd you do that with a competitor? And he goes, and he just kind of winked at me. And he's like, I like to keep my enemies close, like smart, right. And so, I go meet with these guys. And then shortly after, within a few months I developed a pretty good rapport with them, but one of the first meetings was really hilarious. They were losing 40 million a year, burning it. They were just spending money like drunken sailors. They had a million-dollar top line, not quite. And I asked the guy, he was an Oxford educated, really brilliant Egyptian guy. And I said, Timor, you know, I was just blown away. They had big screen TVs everywhere when they were about $15,000 a piece, you know? And like, it was just crazy. Hundreds of people running around, bringing you lattes, doing neck massages between meetings. I'm like, what the heck is this? I said, what is your business model? And he says to me, look, Gary, it's a very nimble business model driven by eyeballs. That's what he said, word for word. And I said, so Timor, what you're telling me. I said, I'm not a real smart guy. And I didn't go to Oxford, but what you're telling me is you don't have one. And what you do have is advertising. Steve Rush: Yeah. Gary Frey: And he goes precisely. Well, they sold about a month later. He calls me and he says, Gary, you got to come out here and you got to meet with all these investment bankers. We're having this big celebration party. We sold to NBCI for $225 million. We're rich, and I thought, you have freaking got to be kidding. After they sold, they wanted to buy 20% of our company. And they had that same valuation. But we were going to have to take all of our traffic and run it through. It was called allbusiness.com. And so, I take this to my chairman. He has to think about it for a few weeks and he comes back and he says, you know what, that's mind blowing. But he said, I don't think these guys are going to be in business in 18 months. He goes, Gary, this whole .com thing is going to blow. And he called it to the month. He called to the month, and we ran extremely conservatively. I had gone from running tens of millions of dollars in marketing budgets at Bank of America. I had to arm wrestle this guy for, I think, 7,500 bucks for the whole year of marketing. But he called it. And so, when the next year when Microsoft came through and I mean, that really validated what we had, you know, a .com that sells to NBCI for stupid money in the stupid world of the .com crazy at the time. That was novel, but it, you know, toysrus.com had a much bigger valuation and they were losing money, hand over fist versus their brick and mortar, so that was kind of not real. Microsoft made it legitimate. But what that also meant was I was not going to be having the reins that I did and, you know, things were going to change. And so that's when I left actually to go, I had merged two companies together when I was at Bank of America. I was consulting with two friends who owned separate firms. And I actually merged those things together. I made the introductions, they asked me to be the third partner. And I said, no, you know, I'd been through the partner fiasco that I'd bitten once, I'm not doing that again. Steve Rush: Right. Gary Frey: Well, they came back after they heard about the Microsoft thing and they said, you know, why don't you come and be our third partner? We'll still give you a third of the company. You be president, so it's truly a merger because I don't really actually believe there are mergers. Somebody acquired somebody. And then the person that got acquired, they're made to feel better by yeah, we merged in with them. Well, you actually, he got acquired. In this case they really did merge. They both had very complimentary groups of people, their places in the marketplace. And by having me come in as president, it wasn't, well, one acquired the other is like, I'm completely a neutral party. And I actually brought those guys together. So that was kind of a cool thing. So yeah, it was cool with Microsoft, but it also meant that okay, things are going to change and I'm probably not going to enjoy a lot of it, you know, beholden to somebody out in Seattle Steve Rush: When one door closes another open though, right? Gary Frey: Well, yeah. And it did, yeah. Steve Rush: It led you to do what you do now, didn't it? Gary Frey: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Quite frankly I loved what I was doing there, but I'm glad I'm not in publish, you know. I mean, I loved it and I loved the people, but I've been in private equity since then. I've been in some really interesting places that I would've never been brought into had I just, and I actually took a pay cut to leave that gig and, you know, joined these two partners. Steve Rush: And one of the things that I remember from the first time that you and I met Gary, is you have this philosophy that cuts across all of the work you've done and that's just connecting good people with other good people. And that's been a real tenet of yours, isn't it? Gary Frey: Oh yeah. I love it. If I was a billionaire and when I was in private equity, we actually had a couple billionaires in the group, and I learned so much from these extremely high net worth people. But what I learned from them is even if they were in their eighties and some of them had run the largest oil companies in the world, you know, I mean just some amazing human beings. They were still engaged in what they loved to do. And, you know, rarely were they out playing golf. Steve Rush: Right. Gary Frey: You know, they were engaged in business. They were engaged actually in helping other people. And that was one of the things that I did within that private equity group, where we had 300 ultra-high net worth families in the group. I had actually invested in it a year before they bought my company. And I was small potatoes compared to all these other guys, quite frankly. But what I learned from them was, and what I learned about myself I guess was, I became the connecting rod in between these people, because they're all high value targets. They can't trust anybody for a good reason, you know, everybody is coming at them with an angle, and they want in their pockets quite frankly. Steve Rush: Yeah. Gary Frey: And so, it was an honor and a privilege to be able to connect these really amazing people with other people that they could trust. Because it's very lonely. It's very lonely, actually running a company and at the top of a company, but I can't even imagine being a billionaire or worth $350 million. And when you've gone from not much to that, and then all of a sudden, you know, everybody's coming at you for something rather than for who you are. Steve Rush: It's an interesting perspective, yeah. Because people then see people that high net worth as a commodity, don't they? Rather than a person, Gary Frey: Oh, big time. Steve Rush: Right. Gary Frey: Big time. Steve Rush: So, you're now focused on coaching some super big hitters, as well as some startups and a really nice diverse portfolio of coaching. What's next for you on your journey then Gary? Gary Frey: Well, so here's, what's interesting. Coaching is really lonely and every time I've done it, somebody's tried to hire me. So, the biggest one that I got to work with was the CEO of Yokohama Tires in California. And it was because the top American introduced me to them because after he had gotten to know me for about a year or so, I was helping them on some challenges that they had. He's like, you need to meet Mr. Karashima and so I did, and from what I can tell, I was the first kind of American outsider that was allowed to come into the inner circle, which was really cool. That was wonderful. And then they tried to hire me, you know; we did this huge project. And it was re really successful even to the point where a number of years later, when I talked with Jim, who was the top American, I said, you know, and this is right in the middle of the rubble of 2009, when the decimation of the great recession was everywhere. And our company, our private equity firm blew up 30 million bucks, most of us got wiped out, including me. And I just felt extremely low at that time. And I said, Jim, did we make a difference? And he said, do you know how many people we had to let go during the recession? And I said, no, I was just going to be even more depressed. And he said, zero. I said, are you kidding me? He goes, no, we didn't have to let go one person. And he goes, you know what? Karashima still says to this day that, that exercise and, it was kind of a repositioning and getting them really clear on their core values and their purpose. They had been chasing, you know, each CEO would come in after, you know, they'd do a three- or four-year stint and they would chase and put their own mark in the American market of whatever they were chasing. And they'd kind of lost their way, quite frankly. And so, all I did was help them using some research, but then also guiding them as to no, you guys need to own this market, hold fast, don't waiver. And, you know, they saw great success. Well, he said that was the single most impactful thing. He said, Gary, and I think we charged him a quarter million bucks for this. He said, you could have charged us 10 times the amount and it would've been worth it. And I thought, wow, this is amazing. But I've kind of taken that bait one too many times. But as soon as you take the bait and you go on the inside of the company, you lose your voice as the coach. And so, I've got kind of the best of both worlds right now. I rolled my coaching practice into a regional CPA firm. I'm not a CPA, don't want to be, but it's very unusual because 11 of the 80 of us have started run or turned around companies using our money. That's extreme unusual in the CPA world. And we work with privately held companies. We love helping them grow. So, for me, one of the things I learned early on part of my thrive, wither was, I got to be part of a team to really have fun. I could make more money just being a solo guy, coaching. And all you got is, you know, your brand and your time. And if you can, you know, one to many it by doing programs and stuff like that. But I love being part of a team. I swam my fastest splits when I was a swimmer in high school and college on my relays because I wanted to win more for the team than I wanted to a win for me. And so, I think, you know, I'm probably going to be the first non CPA to become a partner and buy into this company, because even if they changed all the tax laws and you could mail it all in, what we do is help business owners who know their industry and they know their company, run their companies better, more financially prudent and smarter to where they understand those things. But also, on the culture side to where they can get above the three line and not have to just be working in the business but working on the business. So that's kind of my happy spot. Steve Rush: Excellent stuff. So, this is the part of the show where we turn the tables a little bit. Gary Frey: Yeah. Steve Rush: And I get to have the great honor of diving in and hacking your great leadership brain. And if I could, I'd ask you this to get those leadership hacks down to your top three belters, what would they? Gary Frey: Yeah. So, the first one, and there's no substitution for this, in my opinion. And it comes down to, are you going to adopt the position of I'm going to serve or I'm going to be served. And only each CEO can really ask that, or each leader. Is my objective to be served or am I going to serve? That's the number one, the best leaders I've ever had and worked around. They had the disposition of humility, and I am going to serve. I'm going to choose to serve, and they walk among the troop. They're the ones that stay in the fight versus issue edicts from a position of safety. That's hands down, the number one thing. Number two would be, understand kind of your own thrive and wither. Like what makes you come alive and what makes wither? Because if you do that and then you do it among your team, then all of a sudden, what I do with my high growth coaching clients on a yearly basis, we'll go through kind of their thrive, wither. And then we'll look at how their functions are working you know, do we have bottlenecks where too many people are going into this, you know, are waiting for this person where they've got too much on their shoulders. And I do, I call it horse trading of responsibilities. The CEO is still the CEO, the CFO is still the CFO but sometimes stuff that they've willingly shouldered because there was nobody else do. It's dragging them down, kind of like barnacles on a boat, slowing the boat down, you got a dry docket. And then you see, oh gosh, we got barnacles, scrape them off, so that's really an important number two. And it is in that order because you could do thrive, wither and all that, but if you still have the disposition of y'all are serving me, well that's, you know, it's going to show, and you aren't going to go real far. Steve Rush: Yep. Gary Frey: And then the final thing is, really how do you, and you got to keep asking this question because you never really arrive, but getting the team, your team one, your core team around you. Aligned, focused and executing on the important versus the tyranny of the urgent. Those are my three. Steve Rush: Awesome. I love this whole notion of thrive, wither. Because it not only is it visual, but you can actually almost anchor energy to what makes you thrive and what makes you be aware of dragging that energy away from you as well. Love it. Gary Frey: Yeah. It's so simple, man. I'm again a T-Chart. you split the piece of paper vertically into two and you write and do a horizontal line at the top and you write thrive on the left and you wither on the right. And I have everybody do this. I say, give yourself 30 minutes, quiet, turn off all the distractions. And seriously just give yourself 30 minutes. Stream of consciousness, all the stuff that makes you come alive, the environments, the variety, or the routine, whatever those things are, focus on, what the positive first then move into the wither and think about even the stuff that you've accepted, because you may be good at it. You may be the expert in pivot tables, but you just hate doing pivot tables. Well, put it down. Steve Rush: Yeah, super. Next part of the show we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is to where something hasn't worked out well, but as a result, you've got some good learning out of it. And it now serves you positively. What would be your Hack to Attack? Gary Frey: You know when I was at Bank of America. Early on, I was given a team because I had to go figure out why did this acquisition, why is it not working? And why is our attrition high and blah, blah, blah. They thought it was a communication message. And you know, having run Ad Agencies or whatever, that's why they thought. And I was from that part of the country, this 11-state region in the Midwest versus the East Coast. And so that was another reason why I was in there. But what was interesting is, one of my lieutenants, she was really good at helping me kind of navigate the organization because you start in and you know, everything's new. But I had a very young associate vice president that was on her team. And what I was doing was I was actually micromanaging some stuff like; I wanting status reports probably too frequently on some stuff. I mean, we were moving at the speed of light, it seem like anyway, just trying to, you know, assimilate these acquisitions and then getting stuff done and dealing with problems and all this. And they were long days and short nights for sure. But this Lieutenant came to me and said, Gary, you know, Lisa, you are just killing her, you know?  And I said, well, first of all, I'm really glad that she raised this to you. I wasn't aware that I was doing it. Steve Rush: Right. Gary Frey: So, she has complete access, and I was a senior VP, and she was, you know, three rungs down. She can come to me anytime if she sees me kind of grab up in the wheel again, she has a permission to spank my hand. Like, no, no more of that, and I will adhere to it. So that was one thing but another one that was kind of hand in hand with this is, she said when's the last time you ran? Because I was a big runner and I said, oh, it's been a few days. And I said why? And she kind of looked at me, she's go, Aah. I go, what do you mean? And she goes, well, your kind of edgy. I go, really? She goes, yeah. And so, she said, I'm going to take over your calendar and I'm going to make sure that at least three days of the business week, because on the weekends, I would run anyway. But at least three days, we're going to put meet with Jim and that's code to get your butt to the gym, strap on those running shoes and go run. And that was a huge thing for me, and my wife acknowledged that. She's like, yeah. And so, I know that I'll get more edgy. I want to get more controlling. If I'm not physically exerting myself and getting exercise to clear my head routinely. So not six days a week, period. I don't miss it. Steve Rush: Awesome. Gary Frey: So that's another one. Steve Rush: Yeah. And the last part our listeners have become really accustomed to and love diving into is you get a chance to give Gary some advice when you were 21 and do that time travel. What would your advice to Gary 21 be? Gary Frey: Well, I would've said ditch the Tom Selleck mustache that I was trying to hide behind first of all, it was ridiculous. But seriously I'm actually writing a book right now with this is the working title and it's ignored the imposter, give me anything but typical. And the imposter syndrome was really heavy with me. College dropout, every job I was up for was masters preferred, bachelors required. And yet somehow, I landed these jobs, but I always felt less than, and I was always comparing myself to somebody else. And it's been working with so many CEOs and entrepreneurs that I've realized that they have had some. There's this woman, she had 10,000 employees at one point, privately held business. And she's become a very good friend and she had two years of secretarial school. She never even had a CFO, even a fractional CFO when she had an organization that big, and she said, Gary, I don't know what I'm doing. I said, Tana, I know people that don't even have a hundred employees that they still can't survive without a fractional CFO or a CFO. You are far better than you thought. And some of those conversations just reinforced to me. Oh dang, you know, we're all created uniquely. We all have unique fingerprints by design. And so, I'm very, very passionate about helping people understand, like, you know, that imposter syndrome none of us are immune to it necessarily, but there's a way you can silence it and that's, you know, and some of that kind of goes back to thrive, wither and being true to yourself is, you know Shakespeare said, right? Steve Rush: Yeah, very much. So, Gary, I've loved chatting with you. You got loads of great stories, and I'm confident that our listeners would be thriving versus withing as a result of the conversation. Gary Frey: I hope so. Steve Rush: But how can we make sure that we can get them in touch with you? Gary Frey: Yeah, probably the easiest thing is just connected with me on LinkedIn, you know, it's just Gary Frey at LinkedIn and that's probably the easiest way to do it. I'm also on Instagram and again there, I'm just Gary Frey. Steve Rush: Brilliant. Gary Frey: But I love writing about leadership and things. Some of the crazy things that I've experienced to hopefully help and bless somebody else and give them encouragement. I'd be remiss if I mentioned we started a podcast like you. Steve Rush: Absolutely Gary Frey: A couple years ago and it's called the Anything But Typical Podcast. And we just feature privately held business owners and entrepreneurs. And primarily in my City, Charlotte, I've had people from around the globe say, hey, can we be on that? And typical, I say, no, because I want to continue to elevate what's happening in my own backyard first. Steve Rush: Well, Gary this goes without saying thanks ever so much coming and sharing your stories with us and thanks being part of our Leadership Hacker Community. Gary Frey: No thank you. It has been a blessing and just a ton of fun. So, thank you. Steve Rush: Thanks Gary. Closing Steve Rush: I want to sign off by saying thank you to you for joining us on the show too. We recognize without you, there is no show. So please continue to share, subscribe, and like, and continue to get in touch with us with the great new stories that we share every week. And so that we can continue to bring you great stories. Please make sure you give us a five-star review where you can and share this podcast with your friends, your teams, and communities. You want to find us on social media. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter @leadershiphacker, Leadership Hacker on YouTube and on Instagram, the_leadership_hacker and if that wasn't enough, you can also find us on our website leadership-hacker.com. Tune into next episode to find out what great hacks and stories are coming your way. That's me signing off. I'm Steve Rush, and I've been your Leadership Hacker.    

Matt Schlegel is the Principal of Schlegel Consulting and Evolutionary Teams, he's an entrepreneur and ex Tech Executive and now author of Teamwork 9.0. In this show you can learn: How Matt evolved Teamwork 9.0 and why numbers and not letters? How Teamwork 9.0 plays to “Whole Brain” thinking Neuroscience and the Enneagram How to build problem solving muscles Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com   Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services.   Find out more about Matt below: Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattschlegel/ Matt on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MattSchlegel Company Website: https://evolutionaryteams.com   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach, or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker. Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as The Leadership Hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you Matt Schlegel is joining me on the show today. He's an author, consultant speaker, and founder of Schlegel Consulting. But before we get a chance to speak with Matt, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: We've all heard of the great resignation, right? However, employees say and sustainable workloads and expect are the things that are driving to quit. In a recent article by Emmy Lucas of Forbes. She describes that not only unsustainable workloads or one of the top factors contributing to the great resignation, others such as uncaring managers, inadequate compensation, lack of career development are all contributory factors. However, survey completed by McKinsey recently, which queried nearly 600 employees looked at those who'd left without another job lined up and those who returned to work. Much of the analysis of how to solve the great resignation is really focused on giving workers higher pay, better career opportunities and nicer perks and days off and mental therapy and help and better family leave. But there's been less attention paid to actual workloads employees have. And how employees plan to address that issue. 35% of respondent said unsustainable work performance expectations were they reason that they left their job without another in hand. And the same percentage said that they would leave uncaring leaders or a lack of career development. Following these reasons were a lack of meaningful work, better support for employee health and wellbeing, inadequate compensation, but ironically compensation ranked six as a reason of leaving, suggesting that evidence that pay isn't everything. It means something, of course, the report showed that those who work in an environment, they like also find purpose in their work and have better relationships and therefore, probably stick around. When it comes to returning to work. 47% of the 600 respondents polled and about a quarter of those return to non-traditional work, whilst three quarters went back to traditional employment and of those 600 respondents who left without another job lined up, 44% of them said that they'd have little or no interest in returning to the same job doing the same work in the next six months. The highest-ranking reason for why people did return to work in the work they were doing previously was having a strong identity and policy that addresses workplace flexibility. So, post pandemic workplace flexibility includes not just ours, but flexible places, space, time, empathy, understanding. Commitments to the work that they're undertaking. So, organizations and employers really need to take a hard look at whether they're ready and can actually deliver on making the right structural changes to actually deal with things like work overload. As we move into the next phase of change, we're already in the future of work. So, it's really important that the work itself is prioritized. We tend to want to make those quick and easy solutions, but it will take us all effort and time to readjust in the hybrid world or whatever label we choose to give it. So, my leadership hack here is. Often when people leave an organization, we conduct exit interviews. I wonder if it is time for us to have stay interviews, to really get to the heart of understanding. What's really driving the needs and desires of people who want to stay here. And if we listen, adapt, and create the right environments for our teams, our coworkers, and our organization, we're all going to be the beneficiaries of that. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. Really love for you to share any stories, insights on either our social media or through our website. Let's get into the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Our special guest on today's show is Matt Schlegel. He's the principal of Schlegel Consulting and Evolutionary Teams. He's an entrepreneur and ex tech executive. And now the author of teamwork 9.0. Matt, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Matt Schlegel: It is a delight to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Steve Rush: It's our delight too. And we always like to kick off our shows to dive in, to find out a little bit about the man behind the magic. So, tell us a little bit about how you, Matt ended up doing what you're doing now and moved away from the tech business to help lead Evolutionary Team. Matt Schlegel: Oh yeah. thank you so much. Yeah, so like you said, you know, I started out with a tech background, studied engineering, electrical engineering. And as I, you know, proceeded through my career, my boss came to me one day and said, hey, Matt, you know, we want you to manage a team. I'm like, why do you want me to manage a team? I know nothing about leading people. I only know about leading electrons. And he is like, don't worry, you'll be fine. Well, I'm not the type to be not worried. So, I was worried. And when I get that way, what I do is, I go and study and get my hands on everything, you know, information I could find and learn about, you know, what it is that I'm embarking on as you know, a leader of people. So, along that journey, I encountered a system called The Enneagram and Enneagram is, you know, commonly understood as a personality system, has nine types that are in the system. And by the time I had encountered The Enneagram, I had already been exposed to other you know, personality systems in the workplace like Myers Briggs and Disc and Strengthfinders, there's a bunch of them. And so, I kind of put it into that category and, you know, I want to use it and I tried it and I used it for myself and my family just to kind of test it out. And I found that it was so powerful and fascinating and helped me understand myself in a way that I'd never understood before and understand my relationships both professionally and personally as, you know, my type interacted with the other types. And so, yeah, so, you know, that fascination just led me on this journey of exploring it more and more. I started to use it in the workplace and had incredible results and that's why I went on to build a consulting practice around that. And you know, eventually wrote my book Teamwork 9.0 to share, you know, some of the learnings that I had along the way. Steve Rush: And was there a pivotal moment for you? Because, you know, let's speak quite frank about it. You're quite modest. You had some big roles in some big organizations, you know, you were part of the PalmPilot evolution, you know, back in the day, there must have been, you know, you were riding the crest of a corporate career at one stage and there must have been a pivotal moment you thought, you know what, I can take what I'm learning and I can share it with others, what actually happened there? Matt Schlegel: Yeah. So, my career you know, it started out in tech. Started in San Diego, I was raised in the Bay Area. And so, when we had children, we wanted to move closer back, you know, to where our families are to raise the kids. And so, I started on the, you know, just that journey of startups and it was just exhilarating to be in that environment, and you know, and developing new products, you know, cutting edge all the way. And so, you know, being in that for, you know, 15 years or so, just very intensely, I got to the point, and I guess it was around 2007, it was during the downturn. And I just had this idea of, you know, one day I wanted to go into consulting and have my own practice. And at that point in my career, I said well, if that's kind of what my long term path is, why not test it out? Why not see if I can start a consulting business and run a consulting business now and, you know, if it works, great, because then, you know, in my dream role, you know, earlier than anticipated. If it doesn't work out, then my Plan B, you know, go back into tech. Well, fortunately and gratefully it did work out really well. And so, I was able to just go down that path and build my consulting practice. And I've been doing it now for 15 years this year. Steve Rush: Yeah. Excellent story. So, when you talk about The Enneagram, it's revolved around nine numbers, which I guess is what's driven the whole Teamwork 9.0. Matt Schlegel: Right. Steve Rush: What is it about the numbers then that is so different with what you do versus then some of the others which are letter driven like Disc and Myers Briggs and the like? Matt Schlegel: Right, as an engineer, you know, one of the things that I found really satisfying about The Enneagram as opposed to some of the other systems is that it, really speaks to, you know, our evolving over time, how our behaviors change over time. And those behaviors will change depending on our stress level. Are we feeling secure or insecure? And our level of maturity. Are we younger? Are we older? And so, this is one of the fascinating things. And if you look at The Enneagram diagram, you'll see these lines within the circle. And that's what those lines are talking about is, how it moves. Well, so that was one aspect. But then I did ask that question, why are they numbers rather than letters? And it turns out there's a reason why they're numbers and it's because it speaks to motion around the outer circle. And so, if you look at The Enneagram, you just look at the circle and numbers, it looks like a clock, right? And just like the hands of a clock, go, you know, clockwise around the circle, The Enneagram is also describing a dynamic of clockwise motion around the circle. And when I thought about it more, I realized, oh, this is describing a process. And these are the steps, the order in that process, one through nine, and it describes the way humans solve problems. It's a problem-solving process. Steve Rush: Right. Matt Schlegel: Once I had that epiphany, I'm like, oh, now I have a problem-solving process. I can work with my teams on. And there is a personality type that's perfectly tuned for each step-in problem solving. And once you have that, you know, model, then you can have, you know, great success with teams understanding how to work teams around problem solving to get results. Steve Rush: So, it's almost kind of decoding the problem inside out, isn't it? Matt Schlegel: Exactly, exactly. And it lets you understand, you know, where your teams are going to be really good at problem solving. It's going to tell you where they might struggle or where, you know, steps they might skip altogether, just because there's no dynamic represented by the team at that point in problem solving. Steve Rush: And from the top to the bottom of those nine steps, there's a neurological and chronological order in the which way we do this, right? Matt Schlegel: This is another thing that before I really dove into The Enneagram, I wanted to make sure that there was some neurological underpinning to the system and it's still very early. And we don't have, you know, really good understanding yet. But I found a fellow who described a model of how you could get those nine distinct types out of two parts of the brain, which is the Amygdala and The Prefrontal Cortex. Each one of those parts, since we have a Bicameral Brain, you're going to have right dominance, left dominance and then a middle, Ambi or Ambiguated. And it's the three states of the Abliqua, times the three states of The Prefrontal Cortex give you the nine types. So that's a model that I came upon and it seems to match well, the behaviors described by those states of the Abliqua and The Prefrontal Cortex match well to the behaviors described by The Enneagram. So, it kind of gave me, you know, at least two ways to look at the way people are behaving that were consistent with one another. Steve Rush: When we first met Matt, I had this kind of look bit of an aha moment around the fact that this is where it can really start to engineer great teamwork and thinking, because if we're thoughtful of what triggers a reaction or a threat response in our Amygdala, which is that part of the brain that regulates the emotion. Matt Schlegel: Right. Steve Rush: We can maybe think about tactically, how we can avoid them. And then we can practically spend more time in our executive thinking, which is that Prefrontal Cortex. And it was that aha moment for me around, ah, that's why there's nine and that's how they kind of fit together. Matt Schlegel: Yes, exactly. And you bring up such a good point. And this, you know, speaks to one of the ways that an individual can use The Enneagram is, once you understand, you know, that  Amygdala trigger in yourself and what that feels like, and what you know, that's going to cause you to do. Once you have an understanding of that at intellectual level, then when you do go into that state, you know, you can know it better and manage it better and then, you know, bring yourself through it and back out to, you know, a more secure and healthy state without inadvertently just letting yourself be taken over by that emotional state. Steve Rush: Right, yeah. So, let's dive into the nine themes. Like, it'd be really helpful just to get a sense of what are they and how they work and how they all related? Matt Schlegel: Right, right. Yeah. So, you know, I'll go around in order and also describe how each one of the types helps in problem solving. You know, so, you know, what's the first step in problem solving? It's, you know, hey, there's a problem. It shouldn't be like that. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matt Schlegel: It should be like this. Well, that's the dynamic of type one. Often called the perfectionist and the perfectionist is the one who's going to like identify, hey, things shouldn't be like that. They should be like this. So, that's the dynamic of one. And then the dynamic of two, speaks to, you know, who cares, right. And that's the next step in problem solving is like, you know, if there's a problem, then you need people to care enough about the problem to actually want to do something, to solve the problem. And type two is called the helper. And so are there are ones who identify, oh, there's something that needs to be done and I'm going to help get that done. So that's step two, and that's the dynamic. Then, you know, step three in problem solving is just coming up with ideas for how to successfully solve the problem. And the dynamic of three is, they're often called the achiever and they're the ones who want to succeed. And there always scanning for, you know, what ideas can I work with and execute for ultimate success. And they also have this wonderful ability to suppress their emotion because every time somebody throws out an idea, you know, most of us are going to go, oh, that's a great idea or, Ooh, that's a terrible idea. Well, the three doesn't have that filter and so when they start throwing out ideas, they can generate lots of ideas, kind of unfiltered. It's like throwing spaghetti against the wall. Steve Rush: Right. Matt Schlegel: Right. So, then you get to step four because step four is to see what sticks, right. It's that, oh, that's a great idea. You know, it's that emotional reaction to any idea and type four they're often called the romantic. But what it's saying is that they are the most emotionally tuned in to, you know, the emotional content in their environment. But it also in problem solving gives you kind of this emotional filter to pass ideas through so that you outcome, you know, the most positive ideas. The ideas that the team wants to pursue and has the emotional energy to pursue because, hey, we still have a long way to get the problem solved, right? Steve Rush: Right. Matt Schlegel: So now we move over into, what's called the head group. The head group is the five, the six and the seven. So, after you have your positive idea, then what you want to do is validate that idea. You need to test it; you need to analyze it. You need to, you know, so you do your pro, con analysis, your cost benefit analysis, and maybe some prototyping to make sure that the idea's going to work. Once you have validated your idea, then you need to build, oh and by the way, type five is called the analyst or the observer. They're the ones who like dig in and go very, very deep and explore ideas and collect lots of information. So, then you go to six. Type six, it's kind of like a planner. They're always thinking about the future, and they map wherever they are, connect the dots into the future to a successful completion of the goal. And so, you have that idea. Now you map into the future, and you create your plan, okay. Next step is, you need to sell the plan to, you know, the rest of the team or the broader collect of stakeholders and get buy-in and that's step seven, that's called often called the enthusiast. So, you can imagine a cheerleader, you know, saying, hey, we found a great idea. Let's go, let's go solve the problem. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matt Schlegel: And get everybody excited, okay. Now what have we done steps one through seven? Talk, talk, talk. Now we get to eight, time for action. The type eight is one of the most action-oriented types and they want to get stuff done, you know, they want to just get to the point and just move forward. And the type eight dynamic is essentially wanting to secure control of the environment. So, it's really a take charge, get stuff done, type of dynamic. And then finally we get to nine, you know, you think, oh, after the eight's done, you know, oh, okay. We solve the problem. And inevitably whenever you have any kind of transformational change, some feathers are going to be ruffled and some toes are going to be stepped on. And so, what you want to do is, you know, have the conversations to smooth out and integrate the solution with the broader community. And that's the dynamic of nine, is listening, understanding other people's perspectives and trying to reduce and conflict and harmonize with everybody. And inevitably in those conversations, people are going to identify new problems, which is why The Enneagram is a circle Steve Rush: And it goes round again. Matt Schlegel: Exactly. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matt Schlegel: So that's in a nutshell, that's the dynamic. Steve Rush: So, if I completed an assessment on Enneagram, would it give me a kind of a push and a pull kind of, so I might be strong in a nine, but less in a one, how would it kind of play out as a result? Matt Schlegel: Right, and that's a great question. And, you know, I advise people when they take an assessment to just, you know, use it as a process of eliminate because whenever most people take the assessment, they score highly on two or three types and low on other types. So, you eliminate the low scoring types, and you keep the higher scoring types. Steve Rush: Right. Matt Schlegel: And, you know, the first time I took the assessment, I scored highest on type eight. But I'm not a type eight. It turns out I was a type six and that was my second highest scoring. But I was in an environment where I had to behave like an eight and environment the encouraged me to be like an eight. And so, when I'm taking the assessment, it's like, yep, I do that, yep, I do that. Yep, I do that. But it wasn't really speaking to, you know, the way I would like innately, you know, respond is just my environment was encouraging me to respond in that way. So, you know, that's pretty common. And so, when you have, you know, high scoring on several types, then you have to kind of go to that next level of understand those types, understanding the underlying motivators of each types, and then identifying which of those motivations best match with your internal innate motivation. Steve Rush: Got it. So, is there a naturally occurring opportunity or is there a natural occurring time when it's best to do this? Matt Schlegel: Oh yeah. It's probably okay to do it anytime if you are interested in, you know, knowing more about yourself, knowing what, you know makes you tick and knowing that, you know, having that knowledge will make you, you know, a better leader, a better entrepreneur, you know, it just can improve, you know, all of the relationships that you have in your life, both personally and professionally. So, you're ready for that, then that's the best time to take the test and then start to ask those questions about yourself. You know, what is making me tick? You know, where is it that I excel? Where is it that I'm not as interested? And I want to put people around me that can, you know, compliment my skillset so that we can be an ever stronger and more effective team. Steve Rush: And I love the whole idea as well, that, you know, when you first did it, you came out as an eight, but actually you recognize you're more of a six and it's important that we don't just do this once in isolation, that we may be revisit it from time to time to ensure that we fully understand that, how the environment's impacting on our behaviors as well, right? Matt Schlegel: Exactly. And once you do understand your dominant type, you know, and I kind of look at it this way, it's like handedness, you know, our brain has dominance that drive our handedness and it will, you know, people will say they're right-handed or lefthanded, or maybe you know, they're ambidextrous, well, the same way with your Prefrontal Cortex and the same way with your Amygdala. And so, you know, one of these Enneagram types tends to be more dominant than the others. And that's kind of your starting point. And then you can, you know, once you know that, then you can see yourself change over time based on that Enneagram model and those lines within The Enneagram. Steve Rush: So, is there a perfect map for a team? So, you've just studied this for years, and I'm just curious to find out whether or not you've noticed a pattern occur over that period of time that said, in order to have the perfect mix across a team, this is what it might look like. Matt Schlegel: Yeah. And so, you know, I'll start off and say, you know, it's highly unlikely that any team that you come across is going to be completely and well balanced. For whatever reason, you know, you're not going to have all nine types represented on your team. Steve Rush: Right. Matt Schlegel: When you start to, you know, work with a team to try to, you know, solve a problem, you know, if you have an initiative that you want to, you know, bring your team together to tackle, what I found is, you need to pull people in from whichever starting point they're at. Pull them into the dynamic of that step-in problem solving, right. So, you know, step one is that, you know, let's define the problem and take the time to get everybody to think through what is the problem from their perspective. And then also think. Once the problem is solved, you know, what will the world look like? So, in that step, you're essentially getting your list of things that need to be solved, and then also creating a vision for the team of how the world would look like once the problem is solved. And, you know, and even though you might not have any type ones on your team and type ones would just naturally get this, but you can pull people into that if, you know, direct the team to actually focus on it and make sure that all the voices are heard. And so that's how I use it. I just pull people into that dynamic and then work through the various steps so that the team systematically hits each one of those energies. Steve Rush: Yeah. And I suspect also, if you are highly dominant in any one of these nine, then that also becomes then a development area I suspect. Matt Schlegel: Right. Right. And, you know, and this speaks to, you know, how people want to play to their strengths, right. So, they want to jump to that, you know, point in problem solving where they're naturally gifted, right. So, the eights want to jump right into action, you know, so they already have a sense, I know what needs to happen, let's just go do it, you know, and they want to jump straight to type eight, or excuse me, step eight, without having worked through, you know, the other steps. And so, you'll see this in teams, you know, so if you go into a team that is dominated by a type eight leader, you know, you'll find that the team has kind of learned to just, you know, do what the eight said. And then, the type eight leader might confide in me and say, you know, I really wish the team would take more initiative and you know, come up with ideas and execute them themselves. Steve Rush: Mm Matt Schlegel: Well, right. And I'll say, well, you know, you would need to let them do that in their way, working through those steps, because the team might not have that same intuition about what to do that you do. So, if you want to encourage them to, you know, take initiative, you have to allow them to do it in their way, which won't be your way and give them the space and the time to work through this process. Steve Rush: Hmm. Matt Schlegel: So, that's one of the ways I guide, you know, my clients who are type eight leaders is to, you know, let them work through the process and let them kind of build that problem, solving muscle themselves. So, they're not always relying on the type eight leader for direction. Steve Rush: Right. And I also wonder if a type eight leader might make assumptions by jumping straight in at eight that could have been identified by going through the steps proceeding that? Matt Schlegel: Well, of course, you know, when you jump straight to action you know, you are having assumptions and you're making assumptions and, you know, the interesting thing about the type eight you know, they're in the intuitive group, which is the eight, nine and one. So, they already have intuition about what it is that they want to do. The other interesting thing about eight is that they don't really dwell on, you know, failure, you know, they're happy to just jump in, try something, hey, it doesn't work, okay. Let's adjust and you know, do a course direction and start going in this direction, right. So, they will, you know, just, you know, by always acting iterate towards the solution without necessarily stepping back and taking time to think things through. This works great for type eights, but, you know, for those of us who aren't type eights, it can be a little uncomfortable because, you know, like type six right. We're trying to map the dots into the future, right. And we're thinking, but if we do this, then this could happen or that could happen. And then our brains start racing on, you know, all of the problems and that we want to try to mitigate, but, you know, rather than, you know, crashing into the wall and then changing direction. So, you know, and that's where a dynamic, you know, that's just like a six, eight dynamic that happens on teams. Steve Rush: Yeah. So, you wrote the book Teamwork 9.0. Matt Schlegel: Yeah. Steve Rush: How does that differentiate from the traditional Enneagram? What would be the kind of the extra layer of context they get from that? Matt Schlegel: Right. So, the thing that I really wanted to focus on in my book was that dimension of problem solving, and, you know, there are many books about The Enneagram as a personality system. So, I didn't want to write another book just about the personality side of The Enneagram. What I wanted was to take that and then build onto it that dimension of working through that outer circle of The Enneagram in order of those steps with teams to you know, show that The Enneagram has this other dimension to it, of a problem-solving process. And so that's where I talk about the problem-solving process. I give some case studies and anecdotes. I talk about as a leader, you know, how do you respond when your team doesn't have a specific strength in problem solving and how to overcome that? How to get each of the team members to step up, I call it shared leadership, you know, because if you know, you have somebody who's really strong at a certain point will then encourage them to take the lead at that step and problem solving. I talk about the creativity, you know, each type brings a distinct creativity to problem solving. So, there's, you know, a number of aspects that you can apply The Enneagram to when it's in the context of team, problem solving. Steve Rush: Love it. And we'll have an opportunity to share with our listeners at the end of the show, how they can get hold of some of that information too, before we get there, want to dive into and hack into your leadership brain. Now having led and worked with numbers of teams all over the world to distill all of that great knowledge and learning you've had on your career, Matt and hack into those top three leadership hacks, what would they be? Matt Schlegel: Right. So, you know, the first thing that, you know, I mentioned at that opening story, you know, is, I realize that you know as a type six, that worrying is a part of my dynamic and that is caused by anxiety. So, you know, the five, six and seven are in the thinking group or head group, but the underlying issue for us is anxiety. I have this like feeling in my gut, that's kind of a constant friend I have, and I could feel it kind of go up or down. I like a thermometer and The Enneagram gave me a word for that. It's like, oh, that's anxiety. That's, what's causing that. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matt Schlegel: But it's also, you know, it's like a nuclear furnace for me. It gives me tremendous energy. And now that I know what's going on, I can use that and say, okay, well, where am I right now? Am I feeling comfortable? Are we headed in a good direction or my Spidey senses telling me, oh, you know, something amiss and we need to kind of reflect and look back? So, you know, so that's one way as a leader learned to just be more conscientious of my internal state, both to, you know, understand myself, but also to make sure that, you know, whatever is causing my anxiety, doesn't spill out over into my relationships with my team that, you know, might adversely affect our forward progress, right. Steve Rush: Right. Matt Schlegel: So that's you know, I think just that self-awareness is super important. And then, you know, the other aspect is, you know, once you understand yourself, you can really start to understand the dynamics of the other folks on your team. And they really appreciate this because you are understanding them in a way that helps you better communicate with them, helps them better motivate themselves, you know, and you can put them in roles where they can really thrive and show off their natural gifts and allows you to have deeper, more meaningful conversations with your team, so that you can better build rapport and trust with them, which is another key to leadership. Steve Rush: And your third Matt Schlegel: And the third I would say is, you know, once you have that, then you can understand what your, you know, the strengths and weaknesses of your team. And then what you want to do is like realize, okay, I have gaps in my I team. I want to make sure that, you know, we have a diversity of perspectives and so many people are talking about the need for diversity on teams. And there are many dimensions of diversity, but I would also say that, you know, be aware of style diversity. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matt Schlegel: Because people tend, you know, to like people like themselves. That's why we have the saying, you know, birds of a feather flock together. And, you know, if you're a hiring manager and then you're hiring people, you like, what's going to happen is, you're going to build a lopsided team. So having the understanding of, you know, the value of having a more diverse team in terms of styles, you're going to get, you know, a better set of ideas to work with. And you're going to have, you know, better overall outcomes, because you have all of these different perspectives that are adding to the overall success. Steve Rush: I love that last one. Difference makes a difference. Matt Schlegel: Yes, exactly. Steve Rush: So, the next part of the show, we actually call it Hack to Attack. Matt Schlegel: Okay. Steve Rush: So, in essence, this is where something is just screwed up. It hasn't worked out well, maybe it's been catastrophic, but as a result of the experience, you've now taken that as a learning, and it's now a force of good in your life or work, what would be your Hack to Attack? Matt Schlegel: Yes. And you know, so one of the things that I've learned, you know, as a person who is somewhat based in anxiety, I tend to be on the cautious side. And so, I might overcompensate on being too cautious. And so that's one of the things I have to, you know, I've learned about myself. And then I learn, you know, and this is where I can, you know, value the perspectives of others who, you know, aren't necessarily as prone to that perspective. And then, you know, tap into that dynamic when I need to. And that's been a great learning for me, and it's allowed me to better appreciate the other perspectives and the other members of my team so that I can, you know, rely on them when my anxiety might start to, you know, get too much. So, I would say, you know, one of the, you know, bigger learnings I've had to, you know, deal with personally and overcome personally Steve Rush: All starts with self-awareness again, though, doesn't it? Matt Schlegel: It does. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matt Schlegel: It does. And I think, you know, that was the starting point. That self-awareness was the starting point for some of, you know, the best learning and experiences that I had in my career. That's why I got so excited about this and wanted to pursue it and write the book Steve Rush: Exactly. Last part of the show. We get a chance for you to do a bit of time travel bump into Matt at 21 and give them some advice. You have a chance giving some words of wisdom, what would they be? Matt Schlegel: Yeah, that's a great question. And if you ask my kids, they'll tell you what it is because they know, and that's you know, learn The Enneagram. Learn that, you know, style is, learn, you know, how that's influencing your behaviors and your decision making and learn that, you know, your style, isn't the only style. It's not the correct style. It's not the right style, you know, and once you understand that, you know, there are these distinct styles and that you can now put them into context of, you know, it's valid to just be, you know, like the type four swimming and emotions, what does that bring to the party? How does that help the team move forward with that, you know, connection to emotions or, you know, where are the intuitive people that sense of how is that informing the team? And so, just that appreciation of you know, where each type is coming from is hugely important. And I think as a young person, to be able to appreciate that and understand the value in it, you know, just makes you have a better appreciation for all the people in your life. Steve Rush: Great advice, as you are sharing that, you know, I'm thinking I need to get my young teenagers and my kids in their early twenties into this, because actually the more dynamically they're aware of things, the more it can help them. And also, I wonder if this works across the family as well, right? Matt Schlegel: Absolutely. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matt Schlegel: You know, and this is really, you know, how it's commonly used to help people, you know, understand, you know, the dynamics with, you know, in your personal relationships. It's, you know, very valuable for that, because then you can end up you know, avoiding, you know, conflicts and understanding if you do go down the path of conflict, why that's happening and then how to get back out and great tool for that. And then young people, you know, they're experimenting with different relationships in their life, you know, and then, you know, having a framework for, oh, okay, well, I'm a type eight. And I was, you know, I had a relationship with a type nine. And what did that feel like? How did that work? Is that feel right for you? You know, and at least understand and navigate those relationships a little bit better when you have that framework to work with. Steve Rush: Awesome stuff. So, as folk have been listening to this, Matt, I'm pretty certain they're thinking I need to get a copy of Teamwork9.0. I need to find out a little bit more about The Enneagram. And of course, you've got a bunch of resources that can help them. Where's the best place that we can send them so they can connect with your work? Matt Schlegel: Oh yeah. Thank you so much. So, my website is evolutionaryteams.com. So that's all one-word evolutionaryteams, and there you'll find you know, some resources, there's a complimentary assessment. Enneagram assessment that you're welcome to take there. And also, you can find out information about teamwork 9.0, and then I blog and share, you know, different topics on leadership decision making and teamwork. And I'm doing a series of interviews with leaders who are using their essentially self-awareness about their emotional state in their leadership practice and how that motivates, inspires, and drives their leader of behaviors. So, it's really fascinating stuff. Steve Rush: Great. We'll put those links and the links to your social media connections as well in our show notes. So, folk can connect with you as soon as they finish listening to this. Matt Schlegel: Well, thank you so much, Steve. I really appreciate it. Steve Rush: Matt, it's been fascinating talking. I am incredibly excited about the different dynamics that Teamwork9.0 brings about, and actually how that can help other teams become more effective in their work that they do. And thank you for coming and sharing your stories and being part of our community on The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Matt Schlegel: Well, thank you so much, Steve. I really enjoyed the conversation. Steve Rush: Me too. Thanks, Matt.   Closing Steve Rush: I want to sign off by saying thank you to you for joining us on the show too. We recognize without you, there is no show. So please continue to share, subscribe, and like, and continue to get in touch with us with the great new stories that we share every week. And so that we can continue to bring you great stories, please make sure you give us a five-star review where you can and share this podcast with your friends, your teams, and communities. You want to find us on social media. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter @leadershiphacker, Leadership Hacker on YouTube, and on Instagram the_leadership_hacker and if that wasn't enough, you can also find us on our website leadership-hacker.com. Tune into the next episode to find out what great hacks and stories are coming your way. That's me signing off. I'm Steve Rush, and I've been your Leadership Hacker

Michael Sahota is a thought leader, author, and speaker in the Agile industry. He's also the co-founder and CEO of SHIFT314, and he's joined by Audree Sahota, Chief Metaphysics Officer and also co-founder of SHIFT314, together they wrote the book Leading Beyond Change. In this amazing show we discover: The story behind SHIFT314 What is emotional science and how that could that help me as a leader Why leaders find it so hard to unlock the right energy in our lives The SHIFT314 Evolutionary Leadership Framework (SELF) Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com   Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA   Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Michael and Audree below: Michael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelsahota/ Audree on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/audreetara/ Michael on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MichaelSahota Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shift314_leadership/ Company  Website: https://shift314.com     Full Transcript Below     Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach, or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Our two special guests on today's show is Michael Sahota who's the founder and CEO of SHIFT314, he's a speaker, a thought leader. And the author of Leading Beyond Change. His co-author is Audree Sahota who's also the co-founder and Chief Metaphysics officer at SHIFT314. But before we get a chance to speak with Michael and Audree, it's The Leadership Hacker News.   The Leadership Hacker News   Steve Rush: It turns out in times of crisis, that's a perfect opportunity for us to do some self-reflection and think about what's really important to us. According to some recent research completed by Microsoft, workers' sense of worth grew during the pandemic and during 2020 during terms to crisis, so did their expectations. For almost a year of publishing the first study, Microsoft shared results of another iteration of the Microsoft world index. And it's a study run across 31 countries, 31,000 people along with analysis of trillions of productivity signals in Microsoft, 365 trends on LinkedIn and labor trends. Some findings found that flexible working is here to stay. And leaders seemed out of touch with employees while workers were highly productive, yet also exhausted. Gen Zed or Gen Zers if you're in the U.S. needed, re-energizing due to a lack of networking opportunities. And finally, talent availability grew with the hybrid work, but the word hybrid work means so much to so many. Organizations still grapple to get an understanding of what hybrid work really means to them. What comes out in research from Microsoft is that COVID changed our relationship with work forever. 53% of employees are more like to prioritize health and wellbeing over their work compared to that pre pandemic. And in addition, 47% of responders said that they're most likely to put family and personal life first ahead of any work commitments. Employers must be ready to accommodate the needs and trends that are playing out or risk losing their talent to competitors who might offer exactly what they're looking for. The study shows that many hybrid employees, in fact, 51% say they'll consider a switch to remote working over the next 12 months. And even more remote employees, 57% said they would consider a switch to more hybrid. And while the two data points could be confusing, they clearly speak to the role of hybrid working is here to stay, providing the flexibility needed to lead a more blended life while offering opportunities to stay connected with coworkers. And it clearly shows that deciding what's best for your talent will not be a one size fits all affair either. Needs will be different based on the seniority within the company, the type of job, how long somebody's been with the organization, their home circumstances. It's also critically to fully understand and embrace hybrid work so that it requires more than just offering working from home. It really does mean making sure the employees feel part of their work at home and are also being seen and communicated as if they were in the office. And the final data point I wanted to share with you is that 54% of leaders felt that productivity had been negatively affected since going to a more of a remote and hybrid working environment. Although 80% of the same employees said that there had been an improvement in their productivity since that shift. Getting people back into the office must be driven by the employees and those who want to have a real desire to build connections. But particularly for those who were joining during the pandemic and may have not yet had the opportunity to form strong relationships. And the leadership hack here is, it's not just about flexible work location, flexible environment, but most importantly, flexible mindset and a flexible mindset from business leaders who understand their talent, know that it's not the same as it was two years ago. And they also know that their needs have changed. Understanding intrinsically what's driving each individual on your team could be the one thing that really unlocks true high performance. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. Looking forward as always to hearing your tweets and information about what you'd like to hear and see on the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: I'm joined on the show today by our first ever husband and wife duo, who are also business partners, Michael Sahota is a thought leader, author, and speaker in the Agile Industry. He's also the co-founder and CEO of SHIFT314. He's developed unique IP to unlock success with agile, digital, and lean, in other new ways of working. And he's joined by Audree Sahota. Chief Metaphysics Officer, and also co-founder of SHIFT314, and Audree has a mastery over many practices and techniques for rapidly shifting consciousness, which I can't wait to explo.re. Welcome both, to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Audree Sahota: Thank you. Michael Sahota: Yeah, pleasure to be here. Steve Rush: So, first husband and wife duo, first question. Who made the first move? Michael Sahota: That would probably be me. Audree Sahota: Well, yeah. Considering I didn't really like Michael, when I first met him, Steve Rush: Which is often the case, isn't it with relationships? Audree Sahota: Right, yeah. He was kind of a thorn on my side. We actually met in India in a really incredible personal growth and transformation course that we had both been involved in for many years. And they put our classes, no, you skipped, did you skip a grade? Michael Sahota: Yeah, I did. I did two courses back-to-back. Steve Rush: You, only just found out now, right Audree? Audree Sahota: Normally you're supposed to wait six months and then join the next course. And I was in the course ahead of him. I think I was in the pilot program, and he was there, and we had some mutual friends and so eventually as I got to know, Michael, I was like, oh, this guy is kind of different on the inside than what he's projecting on the outside. So, you know, it's a longer story. But what I found was that when I needed help and I was working through a really, really deep block, that was probably the biggest block that I had that was blocking all of my success in my life. We were sitting around the dinner table with a bunch of people, and I was expressing what was going on with me. And it was like 10 o'clock at night. We had all been processing and doing these like crazy, very intense, deep, personal growth and transformation processes that included a lot of breathing and dark spaces and stuff like that. So, we were all pretty crispy and everybody one by one just kind of left the table. And it's just Michael and I sitting there and Michael's like, well, do you want to work through this issue? And I said, yeah, I want to remove this block. And he said, well, I'll only work with you if you go all the way through, like, I don't want you to stop, I want you to opt in fully into this process. And I said, yes, I'm totally ready. And so, as he was working with me and kind of holding a space and facilitating my process, which was touching into some really, really deep, deep issues, I was like crying. And it was just like really intense. And at the same time, every time he would say something as a facilitator, I would be like, oh, that's what I would say. That's exactly how I would work. And at the end of the whole entire process, which was incredibly liberating for me, I went back to my room with my roommate, and I said, hey, you know, that Michael Sahota guy just helped me with a really deep issue that I had. And he works exactly how I work, how I facilitate. And I've never met anybody like that. And she's like, oh, he's your other half. And I was like, no, not Michael Sahota, there's no way, he's not my type. And she kept saying it. And I think that, that was the moment that I knew that there was something else deeper going on, and then it went from there. Then we started discussing like our kind of, like our dreams and our hopes and our life purpose and stuff. And turns out we had the same life purpose, which is, take it away Michael. Michael Sahota: Yeah. So, it's really about helping people evolve from their current limitations. Like this deeper level of work that gets ignored, that isn't fully addressed by traditional means to allow us to show up as the partner we want, the parent we want to be, the leader we want to be, which ultimately is what we need to create, create high performance environment. So, it's really about creating a better world, a better workplace, starting with ourselves. Steve Rush: In my experience, having spoke to hundreds of very successful business leaders and coached many, it often starts with ourselves. Michael Sahota: Well, yeah, there's this funny saying, everybody's heard this, and everyone knows this true. You can't change anyone else. You can only change yourself. Everyone knows this, but 98% of leadership behavior acts as if this statement doesn't exist. Steve Rush: What do you think the reason is for that? Michael Sahota: Oh, there's a really simple reason. It's the ego, our default egoic conditioning causes to look outwards for the problems rather than look inwards. Steve Rush: Hmm. Audree Sahota: Right. Michael Sahota: Basically, we're all tricked by the ego. Audree Sahota: And we always say, you know, we're the problem and we're the solution. But I think that we don't really know where to go with all of that as well. So, part of it is the ego blocking and the other part is, if you don't have the tools, the techniques, mostly the knowledge or the education about what's actually really going on, it's very difficult to start to explore your inner world. And so, I mean, we found ways to do it through our own, I think our own evolutionary process and our own journey. Michael Sahota: Our basic view is that everyone is innocent. Audree Sahota: Yeah. Michael Sahota: Like, so if someone is listening to this call and they, well, geez, I'm not doing that. I'm mostly focused on outward. And how do we make changes around me, blah, blah, blah. You're innocent, and the reason is because, you don't have the tools. You don't have the knowledge and awareness and understanding. Even if you discovered that there's some sort of inner block inside of yourself, actually work through it. And that's really what our work is about is, giving leaders, the evolutionary capabilities for not only the self-evolution, which is one part of it, but it's also how to put that into practice, right. There are lots of people who go to yoga classes, they go to a, you know, 10-day meditation retreat and they go back and it's the same thing all over again, like nothing's changed in their regular world, right. They have a little bit of stillness and then it fades off. Steve Rush: Right. Michael Sahota: As they go through their day. And so, it's really about how do we integrate that into our regular work? How do we do that in every single thing that we do at every single interaction as a leader, as collaborator, as a parent? Audree Sahota: We even think about coaching and leadership. And we always say that it's a transmission, like transformation is a transmission. You're very being, who you are and what you've been through, and all of your experience is what is going to shift and change another person or another organization. And we find the clarity in that statement, you are the transmission, a very powerful perception to have when we're looking at organizational change, or we're looking at working with our clients who, you know, want to show up as better leaders or create high performance, or we, you know, for our own selves personally, in our relationships with our family and our friends and in our partnership as Well. Steve Rush: And the whole evolutionary framing that you have, and you talk about. How did that come together from your different work experiences to create what you do now? Because you both have very different backgrounds that have now come together as SHIFT314. Audree Sahota: Right. So, I have a little weirder background. I'm a professionally trained energetic healer. So, what that means is I didn't take a weekend workshop and I became a healer. I actually went to eight years of formal training. I worked on a medical team for five years. I worked with very, very ill people. But what that really means is I've studied the psychology of disease. So, I learned in my profession, thoughts, belief systems, behaviors, lifestyle, all these things contribute to a healthy body or an unhealthy body. And so, I believe that looking at the psychology of disease, you start to look at, what's going on in your mind? What's going on in your consciousness? What's going on in your perceptions? And so, that's where I take this weird thing of energy, kind of mixed with psychological background. And then I start to work with my clients in a way, not only to heal, but also then to transform their lives. But in order for me to do that, my training has always been you first. Steve Rush: Right. Audree Sahota: Always, I'm the transmission of the work. If I'm clear and clean in my perceptions, my glee systems, my psychological makeup, and my body, I'm able to transmit a very high vibrational frequency that will aid in the healing of somebody else. So that's kind of where my background is from. It's like the weird stuff. Michael Sahota: Yeah, my background is the exact opposite. It's an engineering. I worked in research. I've published papers and artificial intelligence, robotics. I went professionally, started working as a software developer and had management roles and got involved with a thing called agile, bringing organizations to like a more people-centric way of working, a more evolved way of working. And that eventually led me to this realization. Well, wait a second. It's really hard to help companies make this shift because the leaders don't get it. The leaders are stuck in these traditional mindsets, these traditional patterns that are totally incompatible with these new ways of working, what they call agile, digital and so on. And then I looked at it, I said. Well, how do I help these leaders like transform? How do they help them show up as leaders that we can create these amazing work environments, we can actually get high performance? I said, well, the only way to help them to solve this is to help them grow. And I thought, well, am I equipped to do that? And the answer I got back was well, no Michael, you're a well-intentioned hassle. You can see everything that's going on, but you are not showing up in a revolved way. So that's what kicked off this realization that I'm the problem and I am the solution. That I am the limit for everything that I want to create around me. And so, kicked off this you know, really broad scoped search for, how do I grow myself? How do I evolve? And I had no idea. So, I just started doing random things. And eventually this is one path took me to India, right, and that's where I met Audree. But really, I think this is true for me still today is, that I am the limit of everything that I want to create in the world. And I continue to invest in my own personal evolution. That's why I got a lot of humility around this. It's not like, well, oh, I'm better and blah, blah, blah. It's like, hey, we're all on our journey of evolution. All of us, every single one of us, the only question is, how much energy are we putting into our own evolution? Number one, and number two, what are the rate of progress we're making? And what we've seen here is a lot of leaders are at zero rate of progress and zero investment in their evolution. And as a result, they're continue to be the same leaders that they've always been Audree Sahota: Because it's so hard. Steve Rush: Yeah. Audree Sahota: The pressure to succeed, the pressure to get things done actually takes you backwards. So, you have to be very, very careful because that's where you get tripped up. It's like when something's happening and the organizations in a crisis or your teenager just, you know, crashed the car, it's either one. Michael Sahota: And It's kind of weird, right? Because I started as an engineer, right. And scientifically running experiments of like, what can we do to a system to improve performance? And I followed root cause, eventually it said, wait a second. The only way to do this is through inner evolution, integrated with, you know, external models, tools and so on. And that's what we've created is this technology, this co-creation of Audree and I, we didn't like wake up one day and say, here it is. It's been this evolution over like the last decade of both of our work. Steve Rush: Yeah. Michael Sahota: It's called the self-framework. Audree Sahota: Right. Michael Sahota: And it's just really this beautiful tool kit, Audree Sahota: And we didn't even know that we had a framework, we had no idea. We were just trying to explain to people what we did. And it was through writing the book. It was through that process of writing the book that it actually really homed in Michael Sahota: What it is we're doing. Audree Sahota: Yeah, what it is. First the intention that we had no idea what we were doing. Steve Rush: Yeah. Audree Sahota: We were just doing it. Michael Sahota: Be very successful. Audree Sahota: Very successful. Michael Sahota: Training thousands of leaders around the globe and giving them transformational experiences and like, this is the thing, is like, you know, on the outside, okay. It looks like we're leadership trainers, looks like we're organizational consultants. So, we help companies with agile. That's the external, right. That profile fits lots of organizations around the world, but there's some something special and deeper about what we do. That's very human where it's not just about the workplace. People who go through our trainings realize, oh, wait a second. This is actually more important to me with my family. Steve Rush: And the reality, I guess, of what you've just described is that evolutionary journey that people take. But if you went to an organization and started with those energetic, emotional science-based conversations, most organizations would go, whoa, hang on a second. That's a bit too deep, but they could probably understand and contextualize the broader conversations around leadership development and organizational consultancy, right? Audree Sahota: Right, and high performance. Steve Rush: Yeah. Audree Sahota: Because everybody wants results. Everybody wants to do well. Even people sitting in a yoga class, why are they there? It's because they want to make their lives better. So, I think it's a natural occurrence in nature. Nature is always perfecting itself. And it's really, really beautiful, you know? We think of like having a disease or birth defect and transitioning or not living as something that's really, really terrible. And we look at the way nature functions. It is always trying to perfect itself and we're doing it everywhere. It's not just in nature, but we are nature, we're animals. It's the natural progression in the life cycles of an organization that we're looking at where things have to get destroyed in order to create something new and something better. So, we tend to forget the natural cycles that occur in life. Steve Rush: Yeah. Audree Sahota: And when we start to look at, we're just wanting to create high performance and that's okay. It's okay. Michael said all the time, in our courses, he goes, I don't care if you're here because of financial success and you're worried about the bottom line or you're here because you want to make workplaces a better environment for people. We don't have any judgment of why you're here, but what is that there's this merging together of, oh yeah. I want both. And why can't we have both? Steve Rush: Right. Audree Sahota: Yeah, and it makes sense that if your workplace is healthy and people are happy and engaged and love what they do and they're supported, there's a benefit to the organization and it's a financial benefit. Steve Rush: And there's loads of science about. Audree Sahota: Yes. Steve Rush: That happy workplaces create better productivity, better productivity creates better and happier environments and therefore more purposeful business. And it becomes self-fulfilling, doesn't it? Audree Sahota: Yeah. But it's an old way of thinking in the traditional work environment, it's oppressive, it's slave like mentality and it's this old way of how humans existed in society. That is beginning to change because we realize, oh, oppressing people doesn't actually work. You know, having poverty and lack doesn't work. Michael Sahota: I mean, no manager goes into work and thinks, oh, I'm going oppress people today, right. Nobody thinks that, but everyone is caught up and this is why I see people as very innocent. We're caught up in this industrial machinery, this structure's is a business as unusual and we're just like hamsters running around the hamster wheel. And so, it's about helping people wake up to say, wait a second, do you see what's going on? You're just following in this traditional pattern, traditional management path and these are the consequences. That's where we start. We don't talk about any of the personal shift, any of that stuff. Because like, hey, let's just have a conversation about what's going on in your organization and how's it working for you? And it's never working out well for organizations. Everybody is struggling out there. Steve Rush: Yeah. Audree, you spend quite a lot of time with metaphysics, energy, you know, the root of kind of what drives people's behaviors. I'm keen to just understand a little bit about why it is that organizations and often individuals who lead those organizations and teams find it really difficult to peel the layers right back to where they need to be effective and explore some of that? Audree Sahota: That's a great question. And I actually don't know the answer. Michael Sahota: I know the answer. So, the answer is, we don't ever try to get anyone to do anything. Audree Sahota: But he's saying like a general, like. Michael Sahota: Why is it happening? Audree Sahota: Why is it happening? Steve Rush: Why is it so difficult? Audree Sahota: It's a really deep conversation that I'm not going to go into right now. And a lot of it is that, oh, it's way too deep to go into. But I can't tell you that. We're raised from birth in a way that we're just in this command-and-control habit, we're in a habit of fear and anxiety. We're in a habit of thinking and believing. We're duped into believing that we deserve eternal punishment. Michael Sahota: Yeah, and everyone listening to this. Well, that's not me. And it's like, well, if you don't know that's going on with you, you just don't know what's going on with you, but it's going on with everyone until you're actually enlightened. So, it's there and most people aren't aware, but we don't even start there. I just want to back up, this is not a good starting place. The starting place is what we actually do in our trainings, which is saying, well, okay, great. We're here to talk about how do you create business agility? How do you be high performance leaders? Right? So, the egos invested. People want the result. People want the outcome. And this is what our whole book Leading Beyond Change goes through. This is the anti-pattern of what you're doing in your traditional business. And this is the pattern for what is happening in healthy organizations that get really extraordinary performance. And we just take people through a series of patterns where they realize, wait a second. What I am choosing to do every day creates low performance. Audree Sahota: Nobody wants to understand the fundamental fabric of why humans are in suffering. Steve Rush: That's right, yeah. Michael Sahota: Yeah. Audree Sahota: Except for me. Michael Sahota: So, what we get people to do is realize, wait a second. When I try to drive a change program, I'm actually create a lot of resistance. When I mandate things as a boss and use my power without listening to other people first, I'm creating damage. Audree Sahota: And inner more advanced courses what we do is, once you can see that behavior, that I'm creating damage, then when you have the tools and the techniques and the understanding, then it's easier to look inside. And we always ask, what does it feel like in your body when you're trying to drive change? Steve Rush: Because your body's a good barometer to tell you exactly what's going on, right. Audree Sahota: It is the thing, that is the radio receiver. So, the body will tell you, it's like, oh, I feel tight. Oh, it's hard to breathe. Oh, there's a knot in my stomach. And then we have the tools to help to dissolve that because those are patterns from the subconscious part of the egoic system that are actually, it's like the root cause of why you're trying to drive change to begin with. It doesn't mean that you're not going to create change. Steve Rush: Yeah. Audree Sahota: But an impact change, but it's going to come from a very different place where there's a release within your system and you're letting go. You're not attached to the outcome, which is very, very hard to do. But when not attached to the outcome anymore, you're no longer pressing onto the system and creating that resistance. And there's an opening that happens. Steve Rush: Yeah. Audree Sahota: We always call it the secret to the universe. Steve Rush: Wow. If only we could all tap into that, it sounds incredibly. Audree Sahota: We all can, and we all deserve it. Steve Rush: Yeah. Audree Sahota: Like every single one of us deserves to be successful and happy and productive Michael Sahota: And having an amazing day at work every single day, Audree Sahota: Every single day. Steve Rush: And the reason why some do, and some don't is completely about how we are showing up, thinking about or how our mindset is driving, how we're thinking and showing up at work. Audree Sahota: Oh yeah, and that's a choice. Michael Sahota: Well, actually there's two factors. One is internal. What is our internal composition? And how are we choosing to perceive the reality that we're in. The other one is the external system because a really beautiful organization can help people uplift, to help people heal and help people grow. Whereas their traditional organizations are taking people down. Steve Rush: Yeah. So, you both talk about a series of patterns, which are the series of patterns that you explored and bumped into as you started to write the book Leading Beyond Change, and you talked about this self-evolutionary framework. I'd love to get into a little bit about that and explore some of the elements of what that is and how I might use it? Audree Sahota: Well, let's start off with the name. SHIFT134 Evolutionary Leadership Framework. Michael Sahota: The abbreviation is the S E L F or the SELF. Audree Sahota: And then we went, oh my God, about the self, it is the self. Michael Sahota: Think about it? Audree Sahota: But it was an accident. Michael Sahota: Yeah. Audree Sahota: I just want to say that's how miraculous it is. It was an accident. Steve Rush: So where does SHIFT314 come from? Michael Sahota: Ah, okay. So, everyone has heard of this number 3.1415, and you go, oh my gosh, it's Pi. Steve Rush: Pi. Michael Sahota: A Pi symbolizes the universal timeless principles of the universe through mathematics. With SHIFT314 we give the universal principles, the timeless principles of human dynamics and organization dynamics. We're talking about how do things actually work. Not some, you know, popular, made-up theory, do these three things and you'll have success and blah, blah, blah, blah. It's actually worth the laws of cause and effects of human beings. And when human beings working together and creating change in organizations Audree Sahota: And how to mitigate the damage. Michael Sahota: Hey, so here are the patterns. Hey, do you notice when you do this, when you oppress people, here's how you're oppressing people. It actually disengages them, demotivates them so on. And when you create a space for people to contribute, they can, and they're happier and they perform better, like very simple, simple ideas. And we go through, I think about 40 patterns in the book to give people like a really clear sense of wait, when I'm stuck in this matrix, this mindset, trap of traditional business, or even slightly, some of these progressive things are actually, very weak sauce countermeasures, you know, oh, wait a second. I'm not getting high performance. What I'm doing today is not high performance, it's the opposite. Audree Sahota: And a lot of it is common sense. It's just that we don't set our intention to really think about it. And I believe we don't do that, and I'll go back to it is, we don't have the tools and the techniques to move through these patterns. So, like for one of them is, we talk about leaders speaking last. So, when you go into a meeting, you allow everybody else to speak first, before you give your opinion, give an answer to the problem, you know, give a solution. Michael Sahota: Yeah. I show you the anti-pattern, hey everyone, you know, here's my idea for this. What do you guys think? Yeah right. Versus like, hey, you know we need to solve this problem. I've got some ideas, but we're all smarter together. Why doesn't everyone share their ideas and then we'll have a conversation. Audree Sahota: And everybody goes around the table, gives 30 seconds or a minute. Shares their perspective, shares their opinion. Michael Sahota: Then we get the deeper truth of well, okay, but this is not a trick. It's not a tactic. For a leader to do that they have to get their ego under control. They have to stop trying to be the smartest person in the room and create a space for others to be leaders and to want to build other people, to be leaders. That's the inner journey. That's why people need tools to make it. Steve Rush: Is there a particular pattern that you've recognized through these different of patents? Is the stickiest, like people get stuck the most. Michael Sahota: Command and control habit. Command and control habit. We don't understand that we're addictive. Audree Sahota: Very different and we're exactly the same. Michael Sahota: We don't understand. We're addict. Gender is the commanding control habits, is actually two different words to the same thing. We don't understand. Like right now, everyone listening to this probably said, I'm not addicted to command and control habit. That's what everyone's going to listen to, is going to say to themselves, I'm not addicted to it. Audree Sahota: I give people their freedom, let them explore. I give them autonomy. Michael Sahota: Guess what? Get into one of our trainees. And you'll see that you actually don't, and you'll see the damage you are causing. And it's going to wake you up to an extraordinary journey. That's going to change, not just your workplace, but all of your relationships with your partner, with your kids, everything. That's what happens because we're stuck trying to use the same words that everyone else uses, you know, leadership and culture. Audree Sahota: Mindset. Michael Sahota: And blah, blah, blah. But we're doing something at a very different, very deeper, much more personal level, touching the core of our being. Steve Rush: Which is where energy plays that vital role because you're dealing with then raw emotions, much of the time, aren't you? Audree Sahota: Yes, my philosophy on healing has changed quite a lot. I mean, and I've been doing this since probably 1994. So, what I can say is that I no longer believe there's has to be a story. I no longer believe there has to be something that takes a very long time. I do believe in instantaneous healing, I believe up and out, up and out. Michael Sahota: Not just believe, we live that with our own work on ourselves and the work we do with our partners, clients and those in our training programs is like the, you know, we tell people, if you get stuck, don't stay stuck, just reach out to us and we'll get you unstuck. We've got a lot of tools. Steve Rush: Mm. Audree Sahota: Right, and I think the biggest thing here is that it's a choice for everyone, no matter what you're doing, whether it's like our work or somebody else's work or your own work or whatever you are doing in your life. But we really believe that if you're having an issue or a problem that you don't have to, you have a choice. And when you understand that you have the choice, that becomes a very different perspective to live by. And when you make the choice not to have the issue or the problem, the solutions come, it just makes it easier if you have the tools and the techniques ahead of time, on purpose, you know, striving towards creating more success. Steve Rush: That's the essence of metaphysics as well, isn't it? You know, it's the kind of the whole energy. Allowing the energy to feed your direction, so to speak. Audree Sahota: Yes, and energy is moved by thoughts. Michael Sahota: Yeah. So, this is where it all ties together. Like, you know, our oppressive behaviors, our anti patterns of traditional business, our low vibrational frequency, like it's actually like stuck trapped energy in our bodies. And we're walking around basically emitting all this like sort of toxic radiation. That's most traditional leaders right now are walking around emitting toxic radiation, acting as a beacon of a very destructive, oppressive culture, which is why so many people are disengaged. Now really effect leaders aren't doing that. They haven't evolved consciousness. They're pure in their being, they're operating in from a higher vibrational frequency. They're emitting positive energy around them, and people just feel good around them, right. It's not just what they're doing. So, what we're saying, it's a transmission. And, you know, taking it back to the energetic layer, they're actually admitting, you know, good vibes, right? Steve Rush: Yeah. Audree Sahota: But Michael, what if you're not the leader and you're just in an organization with those toxic leaders, then what do you do? Steve Rush: That's a great question. Audree Sahota: I will interview Michael. Michael Sahota: Well, first of all, the first thing you need to see is that how those toxic leaders are taking you out and you are now part of the problem. Audree Sahota: Exactly. Michael Sahota: And so, what we see is that anyone and everyone can be a leader. Our approach or framework is about leaders at all levels that anyone at any place in the organization can create change starting with ourselves, because we can't control everyone else, but we can control ourselves. So, change, therefore, is 100% possible if we choose to do it. Audree Sahota: And it's a moment-to-moment choice. You can, you either choose to be in resistance and negative, in anger, in frustration and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or you can choose to be in peace in harmony and calm in not getting taken out by the drama and the chaos that's going on. So, you can actually just show up and function with your full intelligence. Michael Sahota: Yeah, we're calling it almost like radical responsibility, like just taking full 100% responsibility for one's interstate of being, thoughts, actions, energetic stake, and taking responsibility in stewardship and taking action and looking after it, the way you look after, you know, a child that was in your care. So, we need to look after our interstate of functioning. Audree Sahota: Yeah. I think as a society on a whole, we're generally in a low vibrational state, we're always in the state of fear, anxiety, worry, anger, blame, all these different aspects of who we are. And it becomes an addictive pattern. There's actually an addiction going on in your body. So, if you start to really slow down and feel like, just watch the news, that's a really great example. While you're watching the news, what's going on in your body? Oh, I'm feeling this searing burning sensation and this, you know, tightness in my chest, sit with that searing burning sensation in your chest for a while. You'll start to feel like, oh, that feels really good. And then start to notice how many times a day do you actually instigate that sense and that feeling in your body, there's a chemical release going on in your body. There's a biological reaction to whatever emotional state is happening. You know, that's caused by the environment and what happens is our bodies become addicted to those chemicals, the cortisol and all that stuff that's going on in the body. So, you really have to almost like take back control of this addictive patterns. That are not only, you know, psychological patterns, you know, with emotions, but it's also. Michael Sahota: It's like energetic, it's physiological, its neuro chemical, it's societal, it's in our environments and the conditioning. So that's what we're talking about, breaking out this matrix, we're trapped in, right. And that's where, you know, our work is very, very different because we're looking at, you know. Audree Sahota: Everything. Michael Sahota: Universal principles, what is really going on here? Oh, I'm in fear. So therefore, I'm not getting blood supply in my frontal cortex, therefore my brain can't operate. Ah, okay, no wonder, now I know what's going on, right. Audree Sahota: And just taking it back to something really simple because you shouldn't believe anything that we're saying at all, it should be an actual personal experience to validate your own belief system. And so, this is what I always offer people. Find somebody that you can't stand, that you have a huge problem with. And let's just say, it's your boss okay. You could pick a lot of other people, but let's just say, it's your boss, because this is an easy one to work with. There's somebody in your organization that you have such a hard time with and spend a bunch of time, maybe 30 minutes just sitting and feeling positive about this person. Like what if everything I thought about this person was wrong? What if, and just start to calm the nervous system down, calm your body down, calm your mind down, open your heart and change your perception of this person. Just do it, make the choice and just do it. No matter what the external circumstances are. I guarantee everybody, if you do this, that relationship will automatically shift. Steve Rush: Like it. Michael Sahota: That's the advanced step. Most people aren't ready for. The first step. Steve Rush: Yeah. Michael Sahota: The first step for that is just see how you don't want to do that. Just see how you not want to do what Audree just described. That's how you are the problem right now. You're not ready to let go of that anger. Audree Sahota: Oh yeah. Because you're addicted to it. Michael Sahota: Yeah. Audree Sahota: It's an addiction. Michael Sahota: It's not your fault. You just need to be aware of it. Step one. Audree Sahota: It's like drinking, smoking, doing drugs. It's the same thing, right. We love it. Oh, we love getting angry, oh my God. Michael Sahota: At that person. We tell other people about it, yeah anyway. Audree Sahota: Right, sometimes our identities are wrapped around, you know, certain situations that we're having. For me personally, when I started to look at, why do I want that? Why do I want the negativity? And then I was like, oh, wait a minute, I don't. Why do I want too not be successful? Well, wait a minute. I want to be successful. Why would I create something that's you know where I'm going to fail? Steve Rush: Addiction. Audree Sahota: Why would I do that to myself? Steve Rush: Yeah. So, this is where we turn the tables because I could spend all day talking to you by the way. You are in incredibly fascinating and I'm getting juiced up listening to you. But this is a show that we have thousands of people listening to all over the world and it'll be rude for me to not exploit the opportunity to hack into your years of experience and wonderful learnings. So, I'm going to now ask you to tap into your top leadership hacks. So, if you consider the things that you've experienced, things that you've done, and of course we know leadership's not hack, you've got to work at it, but what would it be if you were to distill top tips, ideas or tools? Michael Sahota: Listen to other people's ideas before sharing your own. Audree Sahota: I think for me, it would be. Asking what if I'm the problem? Just what if I'm the problem. Steve Rush: That's a fabulous reframe, isn't it? To think of a different perspective. Audree Sahota: And then the other one for me, this is my favorite question. How can I help you be successful? Turn the tables instead of it being about you, how can I help you be successful? And that might mean that you're on a team and the whole team is like, how can I help another team be successful? Steve Rush: Really, really like that last one. So, the next of show, we affectionally called it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something in your lives or work has gone, particularly not well. It's been more catastrophic. It might have been a complete failure, but as a result of that experience, you now have that tool that is useful in your life and work. What would be your Hack to Attack? Michael Sahota: You know, it's really interesting, it's really a great concept and our answer is, everything. That's one of our teachings is, everything that's going on around you is a gateway to learning. Steve Rush: I like that. Michael Sahota: And most of our lies, we ignore everything, all these gateways to learning and evolution, but it's every single moment, every single frustration, every single you know, thing we perceive as failure, everything we're resisting and we're not flowing with life is the gateway to evolution. Steve Rush: Yeah. Audree Sahota: Oh, I would say my marriage, my first marriage. Steve Rush: Well, without that serendipitous moment that you had in India, of course you wouldn't be where you are today either. Audree Sahota: No. Steve Rush: So, the last part of the show, we get to give you an opportunity to do some time travel, bump into yourselves at 21 and give yourselves some advice. Audree, you go first. Audree Sahota: Oh my God. I would say stop partying so much. And, you know, I don't really know. I think for me it would be things are going to get better and you stop sabotaging your own self, yeah. Steve Rush: Great. Michael Sahota: Yeah, for me it would be Michael, you're not going to believe me because one of your problems is you think you have it all figured out and you don't need to listen to anyone. So, I'm not going to ask you to believe anything I'm saying now, but just keep in your back pocket when things are going to go wrong, because they're going to go wrong. And when they go wrong, I just want you to think about this. Steve Rush: That's super. Michael Sahota: You can't help anyone else until you stabilize yourself and your own healing and growth is the most important thing you can do. And I know it will not make any sense to you now. I understand that, but when things are going wrong, it's not about what's happening around you. It's what's happening inside you. Audree Sahota: I think you told yourself at 21, you're going to go to India and meet some hot girl and to pay attention. Steve Rush: Yeah, absolutely. If only we could have a crystal ball, right? So, I'm pretty certain that you've inspired people to want to learn more about what you're doing and maybe get a copy of Leading Beyond Change, diving into some of the communities that you work with and run, where is the best place for us to send them? Michael Sahota: The best place is our website shift314.com. Audree Sahota: Yeah, we also have another book, Emotional Science, and I think you can get through to both of those books, Leading Beyond Change and Emotional Science from shift314.com Steve Rush: And we'll make sure that links to the website and how people can get hold of the copies of the books are all in our show notes as well. Audree Sahota: Thank you so much. Steve Rush: I've really enjoyed this conversation. I hope it's not our last. I'm pretty certain it won't be, and I'm really delighted that we have you both on the show to share some experiences and get us to think differently about a few things that you've really poised today. So, thanks for being part of our community on The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Audree Sahota: Thank you so much for having us here. We really appreciate it. Michael Sahota: Yeah, our pleasure. Audree Sahota: Yeah. Steve Rush: Thank you both. Closing Steve Rush: I want to sign off by saying thank you to you for joining us on the show too. We recognize without you, there is no show. So please continue to share, subscribe, and like, and continue to get in touch with us with the great new stories that we share every week. And so that we can continue to bring you great stories. Please make sure you give us a five-star review where you can and share this podcast with your friends, your teams, and communities. You want to find us on social media. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter @leadershiphacker, Leadership Hacker on YouTube and on Instagram, the_leadership_hacker and if that wasn't enough, you can also find us on our website leadership-hacker.com Tune into next episode to find out what great hacks and stories are coming your way. That's me signing off. I'm Steve rush, and I've been your Leadership Hacker.  

Richard Medcalf is Founder and CEO of Xquadrant and an executive coach to some of the world's most impressive and successful CEOs and their teams. He's also the host of the Impact Multiplier CEO Podcast. In today's show you can learn about: The productivity paradigm and the infinity trap. Why we don't need a productivity hack, we just need a mindset shift. Why many struggle to focus on higher-value tasks and prioritization. How to kick start our strategic thinking. Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Richard below: Special Link to resources: https://xquadrant.com/hacker Richard on LinkedIn: https: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardmedcalf/ Richard on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rmedcalf Podcast: https://xquadrant.com/podcast/ Company  Website: https://xquadrant.com/   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach, or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as The Leadership Hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you Joining on today. Show is super coach Richard Medcalf. He's the founder of Xquadrant, and he's an Executive Coach of some of the world's most impressive and successful CEOs and their teams. He's also the host of The Impact Multiplier CEO Podcast. But before we get a chance to be Richard, it's The Leadership Hacker News The Leadership Hacker News Time is a valuable commodity that should not be wasted. A marketer is likely to be concerned with both time and money about the value they create. Luckily, plenty of thought leadership techniques are also available for those who do not mind spending time on their strategy, but don't wish to spend a lot of money on marketing. Thought leadership is a leader's best friend for promoting what they do. Recently I researched Services, a global thought leadership agency that focused on evidence-based research, published a list of techniques and ideas to help leaders in the space of thought leadership. And I'm just going to share with you the top four. Be accessible. Thought leadership is about being visible. You can boost your visibility by making yourself accessible to others. Sharing your expertise freely and having your team do the same. Don't be afraid to speak to media outlooks or bloggers or write articles. It can all help you get your brand out there and your message to the audience. Always create content. Consistently creating content can take time, but it also can help you build an audience for your brand. Additionally, it can help you create more ideas, content creations is an excellent way to show that you're aware of your industry. You're aware of the news and you're aware of what's trending. This can really help you become an industry leader, become more renowned so that people can see your content and become familiar with who you are and what you stand for. Hone your problem-solving skills. Problem solving is a life skill and one you should hone. It shows that you can identify, analyze, and solve a problem. It also shows that you are innovative and capable of being an industry leader and helping others solve problems with you, demonstrates credibility. Be a leader. Thought leadership is about being a leader in your industry. This means that you should express ideas and take action when the opportunity arises. While you shouldn't strive to jump into every issue of controversy that abounds, you should also not be content to sit on the sidelines, particularly if it concerns your industry, it's all about having balance. So don't be afraid to try any these techniques for your thought leadership. It will cost you nothing. It might cost you a bit of time, but you'll get loads of value, and you'll learn along the way. So good luck with your thought leadership. That's been the leadership hacking news, and we are looking forward to sharing more news as the weeks go by. So please let us know if there's something specific, you'd like us to talk about. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Joining me on today's show is Richard Medcalf. He's the Founder and CEO of Xquadrant. He's an Executive Coach and coach some of the world's most impressive and successful CEOs. He's also the host of The Impact Multiplier CEO Podcast. Richard, welcome to the show. Richard Medcalf: Hi Steve. It's great to be here. Thank you for inviting me Steve Rush: Looking forward to getting into the mindsets behind some of the work that you do and the work that Xquadrant do with you and your clients. But before we do that, we'd love to get the opportunity for our guests. Just give the bit of the backstory as to how you arrived doing what you do? So, tell us a little bit about Richard? Richard Medcalf: Well, sure. Obviously talking about myself with my favorite subject. So, you've got a spare five-hour, strap in and we'll, no, just kidding. So, my background is that I'm a bit of a strange hybrid. I like to describe myself sometimes as what you get. If you take a kind of a McKinsey Consultant, a slightly unorthodox pastor, and an entrepreneur, and you put them in a blender. Steve Rush: That's interesting. Richard Medcalf: I'm a Brit', but I've lived in France now for twenty-two years. My first role having studied Oxford, got my master's degree there. My first role was in strategy consulting. I was asked by one of the partners in that firm to come over, to help him build out the Paris office for a year or two, sounded like a good idea. And then 22 years later, I'm still here. I married a lovely French lady and have kids and everything else. So that was how life evolved. I really enjoy strategy consulting; I think have a strategic brain naturally. And that all work really well. I became the youngest have a partner in that company, worked with a whole load of really interesting clients at board level, mainly the tech and telecom space. And then I was head hunted by Cisco, just at the point I'd been in the partner role for a couple of years. And I felt, you know, perhaps it was time to do something new and keep learning. And so, I joined Cisco, obviously a huge tech company. So, I became a smaller fish in a much bigger pond and cut a long story short after about 11 years again, I had a really interesting ride at Cisco. The last role was in a small team set up by Cisco CEO to really catalyze board level business initiatives with partners and customers. I'd like to describe it as fulfilling rash commitments made by the CEO in executive meetings. Steve Rush: Which happens a lot, right? Richard Medcalf: Yeah, so they both get excited about, you know, let's do something together in enterprise, you know, Wi-Fi, or I don't know, in internet of things or in the cloud or whatever the subject was, and they'd get like very excited and then we'd get the phone call to say, okay, there's some excitement to the CEO level, but now you need to help these organizations find something in that space that is strategically meaningful, operationally feasible, and both sides actually want to do at the actually operational level. So, it was really interesting role. For various reasons though, I kind of started to think after a couple of years of that, you know, although it was a lot of fun, I was thinking, you know, what's the legacy I really want to create in my career, in my life? What do I want to be telling my great-grandchildren when they're on my knee? You know, at age 90 or whatever it is. And I realized that although I love creating business results and I still love doing that. I didn't just want to tell my great-grandchildren that I helped increase, you know, AT&T and EBITDA margin by north 0.5% or whatever, you know, that wasn't quite enough. So, I decided to really look at what did I do really, really well, you know, what was my unique secret source? What's the impact that I really wanted to make in the world? And I kind of came to the conclusion that what it was, was helping already competent successful leaders make an even bigger and more positive impact in the world. And to do that, you have to obviously make a bigger impact in your organization, in your people and on the mission that you're there to create. And I think that was for me, the heart of it, was saying, you know, how can I actually help people who have already got a success formula that works really well as evidenced by their track record? How can I help them reinvent that success formula and think strategically and get past their own fears, perhaps of change or of failure or of stretching too far to actually create the impact that they can make? And that's really what sets me on fire today. And so, I set up Xquadrant a few years back, it's basically a small boutique coaching and consulting practice where we help leaders generally often CEOs or Founders, or sometimes other C-suite members, generally of tech firms or firms going through a lot of technology, disruption and shifts. It really help them find what their next level of impact is going to be? And to do that, it's always about thinking more strategically and operating more influentially and that's it. Steve Rush: Got it, yeah. So, the title Xquadrant, is there something in the name there? Richard Medcalf: Yeah, there's a few things in the name, obviously, apart from the fact that the domain name is available. Steve Rush: So, it was a good start, right? Richard Medcalf: Yeah, there's a few things. So, you know, the first one is a bit of a, you know, a nod, right. Consultant's love drawing two by two matrices and drawing an X in the top the top right corner to say, that's where you need to be. And so first of all, it kind of speaks to ambition, right. The second one is, is often, insight is found when we realize that it's not an either-or choice in front of us, but there's perhaps a new option that allows us to do both things, right. So, you know, we either support our team or we challenge our team. Well, you know, what happens if we created an environment where we really support them with high support, but we also create really high challenge? Right. Suddenly something feels like an either or becomes a both and. Steve Rush: Yeah. Richard Medcalf: And that is also kind of, if you like that X on that two by two represents to me. And the final reason for Xquadrant is, the X stands for multiplication. And this is really key for me. It's easy in a sense to continually add value and play the game of being incremental, but I'm really interested in what does multiplication look like, right? How do we create an exponential curve for people? Where behind us, it looks flat and ahead of us, it looks vertical because we're on such a curve, and that's what excites me. Steve Rush: I like that, really nice. So, when we are talking around exponential and matrices. From the last conversation you and I had, I'm going to be talking about a lot of execs get stuck in this productivity paradigm. So, tell us a little bit about what that really means and how I get out of it? Richard Medcalf: Yeah, so the name I like to use for this paradigm is the infinity trap actually. So, the infinity trap is, you know, we live in a world of infinity, right. There's an infinite number of tasks, of people, of content out there. So, there's always more to do and we just can't get through it, right. The more books we buy, the more recommendations on books we get, the more emails we reply to, the more emails we get back. It's never ending, right. And so, we can't use productivity to break out of that because you can't defeat infinity with productivity. There's always more to do. And so, the infinity trap, and I see it all around and is, just for people going, you know, I'm crazy busy or even I'm good busy, but people are so focused. They're running, they are perhaps very clear on what they're trying to achieve actually, but they've got their heads down trying to achieve it. And so, what happens is, they haven't got enough time to think. They know they're not really thinking about all the big issues around them. They've got tunnel vision, in fact. So, in a sense, they might be really focused, but perhaps they've even lost serendipity from their lives, lost a bit of randomness or lost a bit of contexts. So, it shows up in different people in different ways. Steve Rush: Yeah. Richard Medcalf: But I think the infinity trap is really where we are running fast. It feels good. We kind of feel that we are making progress. We kind of feel that we are perhaps being the super leader in our organization and, you know, lifting things on our shoulders and everything else. And we know it kind of works in a sense, but actually progress is becoming incremental at this point. Steve Rush: Yeah. Richard Medcalf: We can't see it. Steve Rush: However, I guess the flip side of that is, we still need to keep productive and improve productivity where we can. And I remember, again, from the conversation we had before, there aren't any real productivity hacks. It starts with yourself, and it actually starts with shifting your mindset. From your experience what's playing out there? Richard Medcalf: Yeah, so obviously there are things we can do to kind of organize ourselves and do things differently and create an environment around us that's conducive to the work we need to do and all those things, right. But I think the fundamental limits to all that are, it's what we believe, right. It's what we believe is necessary desirable or achievable, possible around things. It depends on the self-image we have, right. How do we achieve things? How do we get things done? Right. What has to be true for us to succeed? What is success? All these things actually shape us. So let me give you an example. A couple examples come to mind. Let me just start with this one. I was talking with an executive, just being promoted to board level in a seven-thousand-person firm. It's pretty big firm and he'd got operations around twenty different countries. And I was being asked to help him really onboard into this executive role, into the C-suite and maximize his impact as he does that. He was clearly a high performer. People loved him, but he knew he really wanted to play bigger game. And so, we identified together a couple of big transformational projects that he was going to champion throughout the business. Things that had never been done before on a global scale. And he was really going to move the needle. And he was very excited about this, and all the stakeholders were excited, and he was working on them and making some great progress. And then one day he came to me and said, you know, Richard, I'm just stuck in my email. I'm just like, I'm not getting enough time to work on these projects. They're not going as fast as I wanted. And so, I kind of asked him, well, why is that? You know, why are you spending so much time in your email? He says, well, you know, I just want to be a good team player. I want to be trustworthy and reliable. I don't want to be the guy that people have to chase up. I don't want to be that person, right. The one who never replies to emails, who is a bottleneck for everybody else, who's not pulling their weight in the team. And indeed, he was a people person, right. He really wanted to do his best with people. And so, I stopped, and he was asking me for a tip, you know, Richard, what tips can you gimme about email? And I said, well, you know, if you're coming to me for a tip, it's probably a waste of your money, right. You can probably Google the tip, right. I don't think that's what you need from me. In fact, I can just tell you that whatever tip I did give you, you wouldn't do anything with right now. I can't help you on that level. And he was like, what do you mean you can't help? I said, well, you've just told me that the reason you do your email and you spent so much time there is, because you want to be reliable and trustworthy and a team player. So, I'm not going to tell you to be an unreliable, untrustworthy, non-team player. You're never going to buy it. So, he was like, ah, that's a good point. So, I said, well, let try it another way. If the CEO was in the room with you, what would he be asking you for? He had to think, and he said, well. Yeah, work on those big transformational projects. Because he's really excited about the benefits that's going to bring. Okay, what about the investors? What would they be asking for if you were in, one of those board meetings? Oh, well. I guess same thing I suppose, because that's going to make a really big difference on our financials if we can shift the employee experience in this way, okay. What about the employers themselves then? What about the team? What do they most want you to be doing if they could be in this room with us right now? And he thought, he said, well, I guess the same thing, right? Richard, the same projects, because they're sick and tired of the old ways of working and the inefficiencies that we've been working with. And what about customers, if they could talk to us, what would they be telling us? And he said, well, they won't know so much. Because it's a bit of an internal project, transformation project, but I guess it'd be the same kind of thing. Because if the employees can focus less on internal admin, they can spend more time with the customers and solving customer issues. So, I said, okay, so at this point, you're telling me, that all these different stakeholders really want you to focus us on these two or three transformational projects? Yeah, that's right. Okay, so let me put it to you that you're being untrustworthy, unreliable, and not a team player when you are busy getting to inbox zero, you know, and managing all these inbound requests. And at this point, you know, the penny drops, right. And he's like, oh, you're right. Like, this is not who I am anymore, right. I need to be playing a different game. And so, at that point he didn't need me to tell him how to set up a filter in Gmail, right, or how to turn his notifications off. Although those things always help, right. I'm a strong believer in turning notifications off, right. I mean, these are proven things, but the key shift was in that identity, you know, thinking actually, what is the trustworthy and reliable thing for me to do? Steve Rush: Yeah, and then choosing that right identity creates the right behaviors and beliefs that come with it, right? Richard Medcalf: Yeah, exactly. I was working with somebody else, and he was explaining how he couldn't possibly delegate to his team because things had to be done at certain level of quality and he wasn't sure if his team was able to do it. So, I just kind of made up a concept on the fly and said, oh, so you're telling me you're being the high performing janitor. Then you want to be the high performing janitor, you know, wiping those floor tiles to perfection. Whilst there's a business to be running. And again, he just a little aah. I know you're right. Perhaps I'm focusing on doing low level tasks incredibly well. Steve Rush: Yeah. Richard Medcalf: And perhaps not getting on into the messy business of working on the big issues. Steve Rush: Yeah. Richard Medcalf: Which I'm not quite so certain on. And again, it's these kinds of shifts that when you make this shift, then the productivity stuff finds its natural flow. Steve Rush: And the story you just shared, ironically is not, you know, an isolated incident. You get a lot of people, certainly at the senior level, also getting drawn into those menial tasks. Richard Medcalf: Certainty. Steve Rush: From your perspective, then Richard, what would be the reason that many executives and this is not exclusive to executives by the way, this could be, you know, junior team leader, right the way through to senior executives. I think most people will struggle with this. What's the reason we then struggle to prioritize in the right way typically? Richard Medcalf: I mean, there're actually a bunch of possible reasons, but I think some of the common ones are, yeah, number one is instant gratification and the comfort zone. Have things put in front of us that we deal with. So, you know, if you're always getting notified by your email, then it's easy just to deal with emails as they come. Because they give you instant gratification, right. It's not the important work necessarily, but it's some something. So, I think that's part of it. I think the comfort zone is another, right. In other words, there are some areas that we know how to do pretty well, but those are probably areas which actually are not the cutting edge of the work that we need to do. But we do know that we add value when we do them. Steve Rush: Yeah. Richard Medcalf: So, there's a bit of fear. I may as well just do the things that I'm really good at, and I know that's going to do some benefit, right. Rather than tackle this kind of other stuff, which I probably should be doing. But it's a bit less clear and that's really the third point is, ambiguity, right. We don't often take the time to really define what are those high I value tasks? Right. If I had five minutes, how would I actually proceed on them? Once we can define how you'd spend five minutes, then it's quite easy to do that five-minute task. But if it's like, I'm just need to do some strategic thinking. Where to begin on that? Right. It's really difficult. So, I that mixture of that kind of comfort zone, instinct gratification, and then this kind of fear and ambiguity on what are these higher value tasks that we want to be doing. But all those things play together Steve Rush: And there's some chemical reactions that go on with us as individuals that happen there. This is not kind of an instinct. That instant gratification, and it gives us that dopamine rush. It makes us feel good in that moment. And therefore chemically, we're also drawn to those quick hits rather than the other chemical reactions that come with uncertainty and fear and challenge that can sometimes hold us back as well, right. Richard Medcalf: Yeah, exactly. So, it's also important to try to hack those emotions a little bit, right. And celebrate when you start to feel those, right. I've defined something that was a bit ambiguous, like give yourself a fist pump, right. Actually, reward yourself for making a dent in those ambiguous fluffy areas that are actually the important ones. Steve Rush: Yeah, and you mentioned strategic thinking there as part of that kind of role that we all have and strategic thinking's quite overplayed in my experience. I'd love to get your spin on this, by the way. So, for me, strategic thinking is just about thinking about what we don't know yet and thinking about what we don't know, that we can then translate to what we actually do know. And again, role agnostic, whether you are a junior team leader or a C-suite executive, it's all of our responsibilities to think that way. What's your experience about how strategic thinking plays out in our workplace, these days? Richard Medcalf: Yeah, I mean, you're right. I mean, there's a couple of ways you can look at strategic thinking, right. For me, strategic thinking actually is a laser, right. Or it's a lens, right. For me, it's a lens that focuses us in, right. So where do we put our focus and our attention? What are the subjects where we need to focus? So that's part of it. And I think the other part is the more diffuse one, as you said, which is like, what is it in the environment? What are the factors that I'm not, that we're not folding in at this point? And I think those are both important ways to look at it, right. But I mean, but for me the most pragmatic way or most is to think about, there's a book I called The One Thing. And it's quite a helpful question they ask, which is, you know, what's the one thing that if we were to achieve that would make everything else easier or more relevant? Steve Rush: That's a great question, isn't it? Richard Medcalf: And I think just focusing on that, so what's the one thing right now that we most need to do? Right. I think that's just a really simple way of thinking about this. Steve Rush: Yeah. Richard Medcalf: And the answer to that lens, right, that focus. My particular angle on strategic thinking is, I suppose I kind of call it exponential leadership, right. So, I'm always thinking, you know, how do we multiply impact rather than add value? How do we multiply value, not add value? How do we multiply things? And the way to think about that is, what's the constraint, right? Where is the constraint in the system in which we're operating at the moment? There's pretty more than we can get into right now on that and exactly all the constraints, but for example, we have limited time, we have limited attention, we have limited resources, you know, there are kind of things. We might have limited ambition, right. I need to understand, like what frustrate me personally, as a leader and also in the organization. And again, the goal here is to find, what's the one area that if we were to address and improve would allow all this whole system, this business, for example, to kind of expand up to the next level of impact or to the next level of results? And for me, that's kind of the question. So, it's about rather than just turning the handle on the machine, it's trying to step back and look at the machine we've built and think about, you know, what's the one thing that's holding back performance? Just a little point on that. If people are interested in this idea of exponential leadership and moving from a more of an incremental, to more of a multiplicative mindset, I've actually written a short email series is about, I think, six emails and people on my newsletter have just been going through them. And I think I've had more feedback on that one email series than anything else I've ever written. So, it's really resonating with people, it's called The Exponential Leadership Principles. And it walks through, you know, these different constraints and what and do to overcome them. If people are interested, they can just go to xquadrant.com/hacker is a simple way for them to find their way there from this podcast. Steve Rush: We also make sure that links in the show notes, because as you said, it's just a simple process that gets people to think and reflect, and that's half the challenge, isn't it with strategic thinking? It's giving yourself the capacity, the time that you need to be thoughtful about what it is you're doing. Richard Medcalf: Yeah, it could because just one insight can change anything, right. One insight can certainly make us see the world in a new way, see the options we have differently. See, what's not working, that we're spending so much time on or whatever it is. And so often it's just encountering new ideas, new people, having new conversations that opens us up, right. To get onto a different trajectory. Steve Rush: Yeah, absolutely right. Yeah. Now you managed to interview some of the world's largest CEOs on The Impact Multiplier Podcast. And it's really interesting to dive into, I've listened to quite a few of your episodes now, and they all bring different perspectives and different stories, but there are still some commonalities. And I'm sure you find, as I do with many of our guests, that there are some common themes. From your perspective in having those conversations, Richard, what would you say is the maybe the most common challenge that keeps representing itself in and amongst these CEOs and Executives? Richard Medcalf: Yeah, I've seen this. Yeah, right on the podcast and in my own work with these kinds of leaders. Actually, there's a couple of things on trends. I mean, a bonus point, I'd almost say one of the things I've really seen as a success component actually is a theme, you know, is (A) genuinely being interested in people, right. And (B) really thinking about creating structures that multiply in fact, right. I interviewed some of the CEOs of the fastest growing companies in Europe and in the U.S. and like their common refrain was how they pushed down decision making responsibility, created independent little entities, you know, and empowered leaders who could build their own subparts of the business, and really, really interesting. In terms of the challenges. I mean, I suppose what I really see is, I think there's an internal challenge actually in a lot of people, which is even at that level, it's about confidence and imposter syndrome and all those things that's always there. There is that kind of focus challenge of getting out the weeds. I think, you know, they all say, you know, my next level is going to involve me living behind even more operational tasks, right. Trusting in my team, even more. Focusing, even more on some of the new areas, perhaps it's, you know, it's an acquisition plan they want to roll out or whatever it is. And so, continuing to get out the weeds and focus on higher level tasks. And the third one is, that one around nailing the critical conversations. So, you know, leadership is delivered one convers and at a time, and you can have all the plans and strategies you want, but actually just slowing down to master that one conversation with that one report, that one stakeholder, whoever it is, perhaps bringing them on board to what you're trying to achieve is really important. And so, I think perhaps those three areas that, you know, be in a game of confidence, the kind of higher-level activities and those critical conversations would be the three themes that I see come up. Steve Rush: Awesome. Yeah, good. And delighted you share those now, however, I'm going to turn the tables a bit and hacking to your top thinking and your top tips for the future. And I know we think about tips and hacks and ideas. People kind of have this different perspective about what they mean. And in essence, hacking for me is just shorting into your great thinking. So, if you think about your career as a leader and what you do now, if you had to kind of get them into your top three tips or hacks, what would they be? Richard Medcalf: Number one would be play the long game, which means they'll always be so transactional, right. It's easy to kind of get transactional and just focus on the thing in front of you, but, you know, build relationships for the long term. Think about where you want to be, you know, a little bit longer than the next year or the next quarter. Play the long game, right. And build relationships that last, right. So that'd be number one. The second one would be, go in the direction of your discomfort. See the discomfort zone is where you learn, that's where you grow and therefore treat imposter syndrome as a feature and not a bug. In other words, when you're feeding imposter syndrome, it generally means that your confidence is lagging your competency, in fact and it also means that you are actually playing a bigger game, right. You're pushing yourself; you are seeking to add more value and as a result, it feels a little bit uncomfortable. So, I think that second one, go in the direction of your discomfort. Steve Rush: I love that. Richard Medcalf: And then, I think the third one would be, I guess it comes back to what I talked about earlier is, focus on the key constraint, think about multiplication and not addition. Goes back to that email of course, I mentioned. Goes back to that thinking around yeah. How do I stop just using my time, doing the same tasks, time and time again? And how do I invest my time? Steve Rush: Yeah. Richard Medcalf: To remove constraints Steve Rush: Three fantastic hacks. I particularly love the idea of playing the long game. I guarantee many people listening to this will be going, ah, because we often don't think long game. We think, you know, this quarter, this year, next year, but actually it's all part of the long game, isn't it? Richard Medcalf: Yeah, it's what I said. I thought about, where do I want to be when I'm 90? Steve Rush: Yeah. Richard Medcalf: One thing I love to ask my clients, you know, is what's so important to you that you have to 100 X it? What really matters, right? What do you really want a 100 X? So, for me, for example, wouldn't it be amazing if I got a 100 X, you know, the number of leaders who really point to me as a real catalyst for the impact that they've had in the world, right. As somebody who's really helped them a 100 X their impact. So, I'm on a mission, you know, I said, let's actually do that for a hundred leaders, right. Let's actually a hundred X the impact of a hundred leaders, that'd be a fantastic legacy. So that's what I'm excited about, but play the long game, think about, what would that 25-year vision be? What would be bring a silly grin to your face? Because it's so exciting, get a bit embarrassing. Because you're not sure how you're going to do it. Steve Rush: Yeah. My unconscious thinking though, is just worrying and ticking as I'm thinking about my own long game. So, I'm hoping that it's inspiring our listeners in the same way. Next part of the show, Richard, we call Hack to Attack. So, this is affectionately where we dive into something in your life or work that has not worked out as you'd planned, could have been a complete catastrophe. It could have been a minor hiccup, but as a result of that event, it's now serving you well as a learning in your life or work, what would be your Hack to Attack? Richard Medcalf: Yeah, I think when I look at my time at Cisco, I think there was a period at that time and perhaps it was okay. It was just life. There was a bit of a time in that 10-year period where I think I stagnated a little bit I, my kids were very young. I was in my comfort zone, shall we say, right. So, I was delivering, I was performing, people like my work, but I think I had not necessarily growing and not necessarily increasing my impact for a period. And looking back, I felt that's a bit of a missed opportunity because just like putting money in the bank, you know, things compound over time, right. If you want to play an exponential game, things compound over time. One example that's recently come to my mind is, you know, dominoes, right. If you lineup dominoes and you knock the first one over, it can knock over another domino, that's 50% bigger than itself. And then that one can knock over another domino that's 50% bigger and that's again, exponential, right. And so, I think I got into a time at Cisco where my dominoes were all the same size, shall we say, right? Steve Rush: Yeah. Richard Medcalf: And it was okay. But I think that also started to kind of, I got to a think at a stage where I realized that perhaps I'd missed some opportunities and again, I had a good career, right. Good thing, and I got into this amazing team that was, you know, reporting to the CEO. And so, it wasn't a bad moment, but I think within that, before I got into that team, there was a phase where perhaps I wasn't making the most opportunities that I've been presented with. Wasn't my eye on the ball. And so, I think that's something I've really thought about now is, invest in myself, you know and reinvent. I think probably reinvent is probably the best word, right. So, I always say to people, what's your Madonna moment? You know, Madonna who, you know, turns up and she's like, we got a new style and, you know, whatever it is or any other rock band or pop star, who's been around for a long time. And most of them have had moments where they've reinvented themselves and they've changed things up. Steve Rush: That's right, yeah. Richard Medcalf: And I did when I left Cisco, you know, I changed things up. And it's worked really, really well. And I think continuing to reinvent ourselves, not to leave things behind actually. We think we are leaving things behind, but we don't, we just build upon them, right. And we add to ourselves, we become more multifaceted, and I think that's what I would say. So, reinvent ourselves. Steve Rush: Yeah. Richard Medcalf: Get stuck. Steve Rush: Cool. Now the last part of the show, we've affectionately become used to giving our guests some time to do some time travel. And you get to go and bump into Richard at 21 and give him some words of wisdom. What would your advice to Richard at 21 be? Richard Medcalf: I think, I'd say read self-development books. Invest in yourself more, generally, never be scared of investing in yourself. Don't always wait for your company to do the investing in yourself and always be wary of the comfort zone. And I kind of knew that in some ways. But I think all those things I kind of learned more and more over time. Yeah, so now I invest in myself more than, you know, more than ever by orders a magnitude. I remember when I was in the corporate world, I was invited to go to a conference by a friend who's running the conference. I knew it was going to be a really, really good conference, but I didn't go because I had to pay for like a 200 Euro, you know, Eurostar ticket or something, right. The company wasn't going to pay. And so, I said, oh, I'm not going to go then, and ridiculous right. I mean, and nowadays I write checks for, you know, five figure checks, right. I wrote check for $25,000, the other day for my own self development, right. Because it's so important. Steve Rush: Yeah. Richard Medcalf: And yet, you know, there I was in a well pay corporate job and even spending a few hundred euros, seemed like a bit of an ask. It's completely ridiculous. So, investing ourselves is the best investment we can make. Steve Rush: Great advice. So, what's next for Richard and Xquadrant then? Richard Medcalf: Well, there's quite a few things. This year we're kicking off a CEO mastermind group. I've got a group of really, really incredible CEOs. Some of them are running kind of startups, scale up. Some of them got million-dollar companies in the U.S. and in Europe and other places around the world. And we're creating that community, which is really, really exciting because, you know, iron sharpens iron, right. You know, you get these really impressed, capable leaders together, often of whom they don't get enough of that peer input. And that's really exciting group. And then I'm also doing another program for kind of the slightly lower-level leaders as well, but another kind of community for them called Xquadrant Core. We kicked off the first session of that a couple of weeks ago. And that was a really strong start as well. So, there's a couple of kind of programs I've been up to. And moreover, what I'm focused on is that mission right. Of helping a hundred top leaders multiply their impact by a hundred. That's what gets me out me of bed. Steve Rush: Yeah, awesome. And if we want to connect our audience with you beyond today, we know we've got that one link that we shared a little earlier, but where's the best place for us to send them? Richard Medcalf: Yes, absolutely. So obviously, if you go to xquadrant.com/hacker, that's going to be a blog post. You can sign up at the bottom to my email and newsletter, The Xquadrant Insider, which is where basically once a month, I talk about something around this whole idea of multiplying impact. And you can deep dive into different topics if you're interested at that point. The podcast you mentioned as well, right. The Impact to Multiplier CEO Podcast where I interview some really interesting business leaders. And people are always happy to look me up on LinkedIn. Just if you send me an invitation request, just customize your message so that I know why you're connecting and where you found me. And I'm always happy to have a conversation, right. Because play the long game, build interesting relationships with interesting people, add value and generally good things come back to you over time when you take that approach Steve Rush: And we'll help people play that long game by making sure those links are in our show notes as well. Richard Medcalf: That's perfect. Steve Rush: Richard, I've really enjoyed chatting with you and looking forward to you and I working together in the future. And I'm really looking forward to letting our audience find out a little bit more about the work that you do and explore some great things together. Thanks for being part of our leadership packet community Richard. Richard Medcalf: You're welcome. It's been fantastic. Steve Rush: Thanks very much.   Closing Steve Rush: I want to sign off by saying thank you to you for joining us on the show too. We recognize without you, there is no show. So please continue to share, subscribe, and like, and continue to get in touch with us with the great new stories that we share every week. And so that we can continue to bring you great stories, please make sure you give us a five-star review where you can and share this podcast with your friends, your teams, and communities. You want to find us on social media. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter @leadershiphacker, Leadership Hacker on YouTube and on Instagram, the_leadership_hacker and if that wasn't enough, you can also find us on our website leadership-hacker.com Tune into next episode to find out what great hacks and stories are coming your way. That's me signing off. I'm Steve Rush, and I've been your Leadership Hacker.  

Rasha Hasaneen is the Vice President of Innovation and Product Excellence for Trane Technologies. A former executive with global businesses, Rasha also leads the Center for Healthy & Efficient Spaces as Executive Director. In this show learn about: Why, when the world is diving into ESG and Climate measures we are not normally drawn to consider inside spaces, – why is that? Why is how we live indoors so crucial to a sustainable future? What is the impact on productivity loss due to unhealthy indoor spaces? Covid 19 is not the first pandemic and not likely to be the last, learn about the “extra layer.” Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Rasha below: Rasha on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rashahasaneen/ Rasha on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rhasaneen Company Website: https://www.tranetechnologies.com   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach, or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as The Leadership Hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Today's special guest is Rasha Hasaneen. She's a Vice President and Executive Director, at Trane Technologies where she runs Center for Healthy & Efficient Spaces. Rasha is also a board of advisor member, a board member for a number of technology and climate tech companies and councils. But before we get a chance to speak with Rasha, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: In the news today, we explore whether or not organizations and leaders are taking ESG seriously. And if they do, how it can directly correlate to great results. The letters ESG of course stand for Environmental, Social and Governance, and are typically how organizations structure activities and commitments to each be it greenhouse gases and emissions and waste, that's E. Staff, labor, relations, employee safety, that's the S or board diversity in supply chain management, that's the G and while most organizations will have a view and a lens. Having tactical and focused activities can be really relevant to the business world and more and more shareholders and stakeholders, as well as customers, staff and consumers are starting to take more notice around ESG and ESG ratings. The momentum towards ESG has not slowed with the pandemic. The crisis has intensified and reinforced the important issues of ESG. George Serafeim, a Harvard Business School Professor and ESG expert said COVID 19 has caused us to dive deeper and integrate our ESG inside organizations around them management and their strategy. And it's no longer just about feel-good issues. We're talking about even more important value drivers. So, let's have a look at how ESG can really drive shareholder return and maximize value for the organization. In one HBR Study, they found that $1 investment yielded $28 return over 20 years for companies that focused on ESG. And those that didn't focus on ESG measures only returned $14. In a recent study by McKinsey's, they explained executing ESG effectively can help combat rising operating expenses. Affecting operating profits as much as 60%. For leaders who want to reap such reports, they should immediately begin measuring ESG metrics alongside other KPIs. Of course, companies can then demonstrate what they measure and the impact that has to returns, and ESG helps with talent too. According to Wharton, Professor Peter Cappelli. Most hiring is a result of drastically poor retention. This issue has only been compounded in recent years with Mercer Global Talent Trends, 2020, calling the great recession. Revealing that nearly half, that's 46% of C-suites believe that their organization is ill equipped to attain, attract, the right talent. Though ESG and talent may seem unrelated, they are deeply correlated. A study from Marsha McLean & McLennan found employers with an attractive ESG strategy, attract, and retained the best talent in the marketplace. In addition, saw performance roughly 25% higher than average employers. There's enormous amount of evidence pointing that ESG is a value driver and will be even more of when moving forward. So, if leaders want to win, they should be putting those three letters, ESG at the heart of their strategies. That's been The Leadership Hacker News, as always please get in touch, in news, stories or insights that you might have. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Rasha Hasaneen is our special guest on today's show. She's the Vice President of Innovation and product excellence for Trane Technologies, a former executive with Global Businesses. Rasha now leads the Center for Healthy & Efficient Spaces as Executive Director for Trane Technologies, Rasha welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Rasha Hasaneen: Thank you, Steve. It's a pleasure to be here. Steve Rush: So, you and I have taken an absolute age to try and get together, right? With the moving schedules, global pandemic but we are finally here at last. Rasha Hasaneen: Yes, agreed. It's been a little crazy. I mean, every time we think there's, you know, there's light at the end of the tunnel, there's more to come. And so, I think we're all trying to navigate it as best we can Steve Rush: Indeed. And the first time you and I met, we were talking around climate change and the role that Trane Technologies plays in that. And if anything, timing's perfect because the world has just really grab hold of the whole climate change initiative, hasn't it? Rasha Hasaneen: You bet, absolutely. Steve Rush: Yeah. I'm looking forward to getting into that in a moment before we do, though, we love our guests to give our audience the opportunity to share their backstory and understand a little bit about how they've arrived to do what they do. Tell us a little bit about Rasha? Rasha Hasaneen: You bet. So, I'm originally Egyptian. I moved to the United States very young. My mom came here to study. And then, you know, I spent my formative years between sort of the U.S. and the Middle East. Came back to do University, actually in Canada. So, I am also Canadian. Then worked for a few years, came back to the U.S., did a Masters, then sort of dug in on the digital side of things. So, I worked in Silicon Valley for a number of years. Decided I was really interested in sustainability with a big S, versus sort of sustainability with a little less S. Sort of doing stuff at home and composting and doing all the cool stuff. I wanted to really understand how I could impact climate change at the time. I will not date myself by telling you when the time was, but it was before climate change was cool. But I realized that sort of the combination of digital technologies with actually the industrial world was going to have a much bigger impact than the combination of digital technologies with the consumer world, which was kind of all the rage at the time. This was the early days of Amazon, again, dating myself. The early days of Amazon. You know, I had an iPod before the iPhone came out, which a lot of listeners may not remember. Steve Rush: Yep. Rasha Hasaneen: But it became clear to me that actually the integration of digital and industrial was really where it was going to be. And so, I went back and did the Doctorate, focusing on sustainability, but really focusing on industrial businesses. Made my change from Silicon Valley to sort of oil and gas and power. Finished my Doctorate. And then I was really on the supply side, I would say of climate change. So, power generation, you know, fossils versus renewables, et cetera. And then at the time Ingersol Rand, which then became Trane Technologies, came to me and said, hey, how would you like to be on the demand side? And they presented a very compelling argument about what it means to be on the demand side of climate change and really understanding how to reduce consumption through efficiency and so on. And so, they convinced me, and I joined the company to do product excellence and innovation and have never looked back since. Steve Rush: Awesome. So where did the bug come from? Because the whole career so far for you has been around sustainability. Rasha Hasaneen: Yes. Steve Rush: And where did that kind of a little S turn into a big S? Rasha Hasaneen: For me, you know, I'll share a very personal story. When I was working in Silicon Valley, I got really sick. I was in the hospital for about nine days in the intensive care unit. I was very young. And until that point I was kind of invincible and so was the world. And then you kind of examine your own vulnerabilities at that point. And then, for me, it was more about what, you know, you get to a point where it was like, what do you want to do with your life? And you want to do something that matters, right? And you also want to do something you're good at, and that you enjoy. So, I knew I enjoyed building things. I enjoyed, you know, building teams from scratch, doing things that were completely new and what I loved to do. And so, when it came to where I could apply my skillset in a way that would really help, sustainability became sort of part of the narrative for me personally, right. It was like, you know, how do we make businesses more sustainable? How do we make it better for people all over the world? Not just people in certain economic situations or in certain countries. And how does that the ubiquity of climate, how do you impact that? It was a big problem to solve, and it seems really overwhelming. And that was kind of, you know, it became a big puzzle for me, like, it's overwhelming, how do you break it down into kind of bite size pieces? And so, I started to understand it more and I wanted to really work on something that would really like change the world. And, you know, at the time, you know, apps were growing in popularity. And so, people would make apps for everything, right. I think at one point there was an iFart app. I was like, that's not what I want to work on. And so, I started to really sort of get the bug back for, you know, industrial businesses, I'm Mechanical Engineer by trade. My Masters is in Industrial Engineering, so I kind of missed that sort of the tangibility of being part of a business that builds things. But I also knew that it was that combination of my digital experience, bringing it to sort of the heavy metal type industry that was really going to make a difference. And every time I looked at something that was made better by digital, it was like the gains were humongous. And, so for me, it was really about doing something of import with sort of your superpowers. And that's kind of how I landed here. Some of it was serendipity of course. But a lot of it was really just having an internal sort of self-reflection over a period where your kind of most vulnerable, I think. Steve Rush: It's a great reflection. So, when it comes to climate change, our listeners are probably thinking, you know, traditional ESG measures. It's unlikely that when they do think of climate measures that they think of indoors. Rasha Hasaneen: Yeah. Steve Rush: And being drawn to consider indoor spaces, what's the reason it doesn't get the same profile, maybe as some of the other more explicit things that folk are undertaking right now? Rasha Hasaneen: Absolutely. Great question. And it's a question I think about a lot. So historically it has taken a very long time, even for climate measures to become acknowledged as quote unquote real or something that we need to pay attention to. It took focused effort by science and researchers. It took, you know seasons and seasons of intense weather for sort of this very deliberate approach to take hold among the population. Indoor climates are very similar. They're intangible, right. Like your indoor climate is fine until it's not. Steve Rush: Right. Rasha Hasaneen: And it has to be really bad for you to want to do something. Like, just think about your own home, right? Like you're in your home, if you're a little cold, you put on a blanket, right. You know, if it's a little stuffy, you open a window or you kind of deal with it. And it's not until like somebody burns something that you're like, okay, I got to turn on the hood vent. I've got to clear out the smoke and it's got to really be irritating. And humans tend to go to the bad, like I want to make the bad better. I rarely want to make the good, better if it's good, it's fine. And indoor spaces are no different. The impact of negative indoor environments is chronic. It's not acute. So, it happens over time, and it could be so many factors. And like, is it genetic? Is it this? Is it that? Why do I have asthma? And so, in the south here, in the United States, we call it the boiling frog syndrome, right. If you put a frog in really hot water, it jumps right out. But if you put a frog in cold water and you heat up the water slowly, it can boil to death. I know it's very gruesome, but without realizing that that's what's happening to it. And that's kind of how indoor environments are. You can't see it. Most of the times, you can't smell it. You can't feel it. And so, these indoor environments are not given as much attention by individuals. Steve Rush: Mm, and also. People perceive climate change to be an outside thing. They don't actually make the association that it's everything around us. Rasha Hasaneen: Inside, exactly. And so, were so focused on planetary health and sort of, you know, our very existence that we won't always then come back and think about human health. And if you just think about ESG metrics, the E gets a lot of attention. The S gets a little bit of attention, but not nearly as much. And human health is really a part of that social piece, right? Steve Rush: Right. Rasha Hasaneen: So, if you think about, you know, environmental, social, and governance, that social piece, that human health, the health of employees. The health of communities, it's something that's very big. It's very nebulous, very much a like climate change, but hasn't gotten the same attention. And people don't realize that, you know, you experience 90% of the outdoors in indoors, right. Because that's where you spent most of your time. And if you're bringing outdoor air in, if you're bringing in, you know, outdoor lights, you're bringing that in, but you don't think about it that way, because those walls are up and it feels very safe inside and you could be creating some negative health effects or maybe not negative health effects, but they're not super positive, right? Steve Rush: Right. Rasha Hasaneen: They're okay. Steve Rush: Yeah. What are the things that contribute to inside sustainability? The things that are around us at work and at home we can be thought full about. Rasha Hasaneen: That's another really great question. So, I think that what people most associate with is thermal comfort, right. Am I too hot? Am I too cold? If I'm too warm, you know, I can't sleep. I can't work. I can't get creative. I have to sort of get to the right temperature and that's absolutely part of it, but you also have a number of other factors. Air quality is one of the main one's. Different levels of what we've historically measured as a proxy, CO2 can improve or decrease productivity and the amount of CO2 in a space can make you sleepy, but it can also make it very hard for you to think and process information and complete tasks. In addition, you know, with respect to air, you know, there's compounds that are generated all the time, either by the materials in your room or by activities of people, we call them volatile organic compounds. Those can be pretty harmful. They can be irritants. You hear about allergen, so air quality is a huge part of it. Lighting is another part of it. We've seen a lot of focus on lighting recently with the capability that LED gives you. So, when you had incandescent bulbs, you know, it was just one temperature, it was on or off, and so, you took it for granted. The productivity that came with the introduction of electricity and indoor lighting will far outweighed any potential issues with lighting. But as we started to have more access to light emitting diodes, now you could vary dimness, so light intensity, you could vary the temperature of the light. Is it white? Is it yellow? Is it sort of darker or lighter? You see daylight bulbs come out; does it simulate daylight? So, lighting has a huge component on our circadian rhythm, but it also plays a huge part in how well we also process information and so on. So, the third one here is lighting. And that's part of a bigger sort of piece around visual comfort. And that includes things like outside views. It includes things like, is there enough greenery? You know, our bodies are programmed to feel better when we are exposed to things that are good around us. And we're programmed to love plants and love outside views and so on. So, lighting and visual comfort is really important. And so, the last part of this is really acoustics. So, acoustics is really about sound and noise and really poor acoustics that you get from either equipment in a building or even externally coming in. So outside noise pollution can have a huge impact on how productive you are, how well you sleep. So, you might be able to sleep. You might be able to work, but the quality of that sleep and that work matters. And that has a lot to do with ambient noise, whether it's noise intensity, or noise frequency. Steve Rush: That's really insightful actually. And as you were spinning through those different themes, I'm putting myself in that scenario in my office and thinking about, oh, I'm not got enough light here or you know, I know how frustrated I get when I hear some outside noise and I get distracted easily. Rasha Hasaneen: Right. Steve Rush: They're all things that contribute to that. So not only is that sustainable, but absolutely has a direct correlation to people's wellbeing, doesn't it? Rasha Hasaneen: Exactly. That's exactly right, right. So, we think about LED lights, for example, we use the lighting example as being a phenomenal way to reduce energy intensity in the home or in the office, right? So, you see all these sort of LED projects where I'm like I'm going out and replacing all of the lighting in a skyscraper, all of the lighting in a mall. But what you don't understand is, what we are starting to understand is that that also improves wellbeing. So, that technology has enabled us to vary lighting temperature in a way to make, you know, and commercial organizations have known this for a very long time, right. The type of lighting you have changes, you're buying behavior. So, if I want to buy something, it's got to have the right lighting around it in order for me to be attracted, to buying that. Or if I'm at a restaurant, I have to have the right ambiance in order for me to feel relaxed or romantic or whatever it is you're aspiring to do in terms of the restaurant. Steve Rush: Right. Rasha Hasaneen: LED lights have turbocharged that, right. So, in an effort to reduce energy intensity and improve outdoor kind of sustainability or the carbon footprint of the built environment, we've also introduced a tool that can improve human health indoors, but you have to use that tool. So even though for example, LED lighting is very dimmable, most switches are still on, off. The dimmability of light is very important, right. You need to reduce light intensity throughout the day so that you can sleep at night, so you can be healthy the next day, so you can be productive. And, we're still learning in the built environment, how to do that. Air quality is no different, acoustics are no different, right. And so, as we're starting to learn about the impact of these different elements on human health, we can start to change how we build things, how we implement these systems in a way to take full advantage of not only their impact on sustainability, on climate, the big climate, but also their impact of the indoor climate on human health and start to tune these environments in a way that allow you to have different environments for different situations. Steve Rush: It's far more scientific than most people give this credit, right? Rasha Hasaneen: Absolutely. Steve Rush: You are talking about it in almost a forensic way, which I love by the way. I think it's really insightful, but I wonder how many people have to struggle with getting as thoughtful about that? Rasha Hasaneen: You're absolutely right. And we did a survey recently of just homeowners, right. So commercial spaces are a little bit different because a lot of times, you know, facility managers and building owners are really focused on employees, but the home tends to be where kind of your average consumer is. And when we talk about indoor air quality, for example, it's like, so what are the types of things you would do to improve your air quality? It's like, we light a candle. And you're like, oh my, right. Because it's like that fantastic. Except you know, there's so much more to air chemistry, you know, than lighting a candle and you could be making it worse. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rasha Hasaneen: Funny story, we're doing a project with a company in India and it's an indoor air quality sensor. And they had put it in these locations and every day and around the same time, they would see these particulates go up, right. And particulates are not great for a lot of reasons. They kind of get into your lungs and they cause asthma. But they also kind of carry viruses, bacteria, et cetera. And some particulates would go up and they would spike around the sensor. And so, they went to this place, and it turns out they were like lighting incense to worship. And it's like, okay, well, you might not want to get too close to God right now, right. Or in this way, there's other ways. But they were lighting incense right around this sensor. And the incense was creating, you know, this really crazy indoor environment. Now, again, in the grand scheme of things, right. Huge space, little stick of incense, not a big deal, but that's how people think about this kind of air quality. It's very unspecific, unscientific, but really the impacts on human health, super scientific, lots of studies out there that show the impacts of different elements of air and light and acoustics on productivity and health. And so, there's a lot out. And the challenge we're going to have through the pandemic have been sensitized to this is really bringing that science to the average consumer in a way that they can understand it and that they can digest it, right. And then really developing solutions where I don't have to have the consumer know every scientific detail to implement those solutions where they can just say, hey, I want a room for an asthmatic child. Can you please dial that in for me? Steve Rush: Yeah. Rasha Hasaneen: Right, and somebody else who understands the science, who understands the situation can help them really get the best indoor environment. Steve Rush: And it's like anything with, if you take the whole climate or journey to net zero, whatever your focus is right now. Rasha Hasaneen: Yeah. Steve Rush: It's everybody taking personal responsibility to do their bit, that will make the big difference overall, right? Rasha Hasaneen: Absolutely. And there are definitely strategies just like with anything else that could give you a really fantastic indoor environment that could have a really devastating impact on the climate, which then creates a poorer outdoor environment, which makes you have to work harder to create this really good indoor environment. So, I'll give you an example of that. If you in an urban environment, a lot of times the immediate microclimate around where you live or where you work is not fantastic, right. So, then you get the indoor environment, and you know, guidance that says, hey, you need to ventilate. The easiest way to ventilate is to open a window. Well, if you're out in the country, or if you're in a suburban environment, chances are your outdoor air is fantastic. And if you open up a window, you're going to create a really great indoor environment. However, if you have an HVAC System, if you've got your air conditioner on, summer, you have your air conditioner on. It's going to have to work harder because your kind of air conditioning, the world, right. All of that cool air sort of goes out your window, and the hot air comes in. So, it's going to work harder. It's going to use more energy. A lot of that energy is still very much fossils, and you're going to start to get a degrading outdoor environment. So even when you now open the window, you're not going to get the environment you want. If you're in an urban environment, you're already there. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rasha Hasaneen: When you open a window in an urban environment, a lot the CO2 and all of those things that are accumulated inside, they dilute, that's great. But what you're bringing in could have different things going on, right. You could have different pollutants coming in, allergen, smoke, VOCs, et cetera, depending on where you are in an urban environment. So, it's not easy, right. It's not easy. And your actions as an individual have a direct impact on climate. So, if you do one of these things and you have to use more energy to do it, multiply that by 7 billion people. Steve Rush: Right. Rasha Hasaneen: Right, so if everybody, and not 7 billion, not all 7 billion people have air conditioning systems, but a billion, let's talk about a billion, right. If everybody opens their windows and keeps their air conditioner on, or if everybody opens their windows, turns it off, then everything gets hot or everything gets cold depending on whether or not summer or winter or where you are in the world. Then you have to bring down the temperature again or bring up the temperature again, if it's cold, that air conditioning unit is working so much harder, multiplied by a billion. Steve Rush: Yeah, exactly Rasha Hasaneen: Right. And so that's the issue, and that's just homes, right. Now, let's talk about industrial environments or commercial environments and so on. And so, there are things that if you do them, could give you a negative environment on climate and give you a positive outcome when it comes to indoor environments. And the key is to get those indoor environments in a way that also reduces your greenhouse gas footprint, because you don't want to do one at the expense of the other. And that's why, you know, we call it The Center for Healthy & Efficient Spaces. It's because we want to make sure that the actions we're recommending to our clients, we want to make sure that the actions that I recommend in these podcasts are actions that will have a positive impact on both indoor and outdoor climates. Steve Rush: Yeah, it's all about pulling levers and getting balances. Isn't it? Rasha Hasaneen: Exactly. That's exactly right. Steve Rush: Yeah. Now you mentioned this a little earlier on, as you were talking through the different things that we could be thinking about, and you mentioned productivity, and there's a real business case that sits behind this, alongside that sustainability case, isn't there? Rasha Hasaneen: There absolutely is. So, if you look at a given building, right, let's say you're renting a space in a building or you've got a building and you've got a small business, you're an entrepreneur. The amount of money you spend on energy is a 10th of maybe the amount of money you're going to spend on people. It could be as much as the hundredth, right? So, it's a much smaller amount of money that you're going to spend on things like utilities and that's sort of our proxy for energy consumption, right. But your people are probably going to be one of your biggest assets and the health of those people becomes a huge economic lever for you as a business owner. We know, for example, that indoor air quality can have a productivity. So, let's just take indoor air quality as an example, and we can do this. We have studies on lighting. We study on acoustics, but I like air for a couple of reasons, you know. It's not just about sort of direct productivity every day, cognitive function, et cetera, but think about airborne pathogen transmission, which is still, I think, top of mind for a lot of people with the pandemic kind of still raging. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year is lost in productivity due to absenteeism. Steve Rush: Right. Rasha Hasaneen: Same with schools, then you combine both, absenteeism as a result of kids being sick from school. And then there's hundreds of billions more of loss productivity as a result of employees working while sick. Now think about that. I don't even have to make everybody perfectly safe from pathogen transmission. Like, I don't need to reduce a hundred percent of pathogen transmission in a building to improve this. If I can just improve the air quality in a building such that I reduce transmission of cold or flu, or COVID in this particular case by 10%, tens of billions, right. 20%, like, just think about that. Those are not big numbers, but if I create these environments in such a way that I can just reduce absenteeism, that's hundreds of billions of dollars. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rasha Hasaneen: And that's, just one part of the productivity. We know that air quality impacts asthma, chronic illnesses, which reduce productivity without creating absenteeism, right. If you're a chronic sufferer asthma or upper respiratory disease that has an impact on your productivity, but also impact cognitive function, right, as much as 30%. You can have poor indoor air quality and just your ability to process things and do tasks at work goes down dramatically. Steve Rush: That's a significant amount of time too, isn't it? Rasha Hasaneen: Absolutely, and learning, right. So, we think about school systems and the measures they have with student learning. Let's take out absenteeism for a second, right. Like just kids being sick. We found that, not we, researchers have found that the indoor environment can have as significant and impact on test scores as grades. So just think about public test. You want to predict how well a student is going to do on a test, okay. On a public test. There's a number of factors that can give you an indication of how well that student is going to do. The most common one we think about is, are they a good student? Do they get good grades? That has a really strong correlation with how well they're going to do on these tests. As strong a correlation, how good is their indoor environment? Steve Rush: Wow. Rasha Hasaneen: As strong a correlation on how well they're going to do on this test is whether or not while taking that test, do they have a good indoor environment? And that includes acoustics, it includes lighting and includes air, and it includes temperature. And so, you're thinking about this and you're like that child's ability to score on a test is that dramatically impacted by indoor environments. Like it boggles the mind, right. And these are, I mean, these are scientific studies. They're peer reviewed, they're out there. You can kind of see them, but I mean, these are, you know, they've done control groups and testing doing these things on days where it's good indoor environments, days on bad indoor environments, it's amazing to me and that's the type of productivity we're talking about. And so again, there's so many people on the earth, right. Multiply that by hundreds or millions or billions. And you're talking about a huge sort of impact, not just on human health, but also on sort of economic productivity. Steve Rush: Yeah. It's amazing when you start to just think of the tiny little changes we could make and then multiplication across the globe, we can make a massive difference, not just for sustainability, but also productivity and wellbeing. Rasha Hasaneen: Absolutely. Steve Rush: Really fascinating. Rasha Hasaneen: And then when you think about, just to close this up, when you think about the places that have poor indoor environmental quality, it's typically those places that don't have a lot of investment. Steve Rush: Right. Rasha Hasaneen: And therefore, they're in disadvantaged communities and disadvantaged areas. So, it exacerbates any equity issues we have, right. So, you just think about social equity and having sort of high-quality indoor environments as a human right almost, right. To say, look guys, like kids in school and disadvantaged communities, have the card stacked up against them already. And this is yet another card that's kind of stacked up against those who are less fortunate. And so, you start to look at the equity impacts of this and how much this exacerbates that. And you start to realize that a lot of where we think about human health and social equity, it comes right down to, you know, can I create these indoor environments for people in different economic situations, in such a way that I'm leveling the scales a little bit as it relates to social equity. Steve Rush: So, ponding, how many of our listeners right now are thinking about their environment as they listen to this? Very interesting to get some feedback from our listeners about that, wouldn't it? Rasha Hasaneen: Oh, you bet. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rasha Hasaneen: Absolutely would love to hear from listeners on that. Steve Rush: So, we're going to flip it a little now, and this is where I get to hack into your leadership brain. Rasha Hasaneen: Awesome. Steve Rush: But before I do that, I just wanted to get a sense from you that if I was a listener listening to this and I was a leader or an entrepreneur, where's the first place I should really start to think? What's the immediate kind of win I can make? Rasha Hasaneen: When it comes to indoor environmental quality, it depends on your situation, right. If you're working, you know, from home, if you have control over the environment, definitely you can start by doing things as simple as improving your lighting, right. You can get LED lights pretty much from any hardware store, you can get dimmers. You can improve of your lighting. You can connect with your HVAC provider, make sure you have the right number of air changes that you're getting enough ventilation, that you've got filters, right. The simplest thing is make sure your filters are changed on a regular basis. You know, there's a lot you can do when it comes to acoustics, to insulate things like window coverings and in fact, now there's actual window coverings that say on them, how much energy they save. You know, there's a lot you can do when it comes to your own space or the space for your employees. And then you can also consider in room type solutions. If you don't have access to those broader systems, right? So, we carry an in-room air purification solution, you just plug it in and run it and away it goes, and you do a little bit of maintenance. You can do an in room HEPA. You can think about opening windows on a regular basis to make sure there's enough ventilation. So, there is a lot that can be done by the individual, by a small business, an entrepreneur just by being conscious of this, if you want to do things that are more sophisticated, definitely, you know, you would need to connect with a professional. And I would say, if you do have a larger business or a larger building, it's not a do it yourself. Steve Rush: No. Rasha Hasaneen: Right. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rasha Hasaneen: It's definitely not, because you want to make sure you're balancing energy or make sure you're balancing the different elements of indoor environmental quality. So definitely if you're a listener, and you're a building owner or you've got multiple buildings, you're a real estate investor, or you've got sort of a number of opportunities to improve people's and their environments. Don't try to tackle it yourself, definitely reach out to a professional and have them come in, do an indoor air quality assessment or indoor environmental quality assessment, understand where some of the gaps are. There are fantastic certifications, right. Out there for building performance. So, whether it's wealth certification, fit well certification, there's a number of certifications out there that can be done to ensure, and to communicate to your tenants, that these buildings are optimized for indoor environmental quality, Steve Rush: Great advice, good hacks too. So, leadership hacks time. Rasha Hasaneen: Awesome. Steve Rush: I want to dive into your experience. You've led businesses all over the world, different types of businesses and different types of teams. And I want to try and get into your top three leadership hacks. What would they be? Rasha Hasaneen: That's a really good question. So, my leadership hacks, or I think there are things that I do deliberately that if I were to say them, you would be like, of course, but most people probably wouldn't do subconsciously. I know I wouldn't do subconsciously. So, the first thing I do is, you know, so most of the teams that I lead are innovative high performing teams. And I think there's a leadership approach that says you have to have a vision and the strategy, and you have to have the answer as a leader. And the answer is you don't. And it's very jarring for employee or for team members that are used to kind of having a more autocratic approach. So, I take collaborative to the sort of, to the extreme and I work with my teams and have for years to build strategies, to build visions. I don't expect to, you know, I don't expect to come up with the vision and kind of have everyone follow. So, for me, it's really around early and often with the team. Talking about the team's vision and the mission and how we want to be seen. And so, that sort of extreme collaboration, I'm not going to call it delegation, but really working with your team and giving them ownership of not just the tactical execution, but also of the strategy. Really for me, has worked exceptionally well. The outcome is a lot better. It's scratchier, and so that's my second sort of leadership hack, which is, don't be afraid if people are uncomfortable, don't be afraid to be uncomfortable because that's when kind the best outcomes are. And I always feel like afterwards people really appreciate discomfort. Steve Rush: Yeah. Rasha Hasaneen: I've had a couple of team members that are just, oh my gosh, I never want to do that again. But most of the time people start to get it and they're like, oh, I get it now, right. And it's like, there's no epiphany there. It's a really uncomfortable place when there's a lot of disagreement about where to go and feels very chaotic, I think at first. So that's the second one, is to really get comfortable with other people's discomfort and your own discomfort, right. Of not having the answers and maybe being seen as vulnerable. And that leads me into my third one, which is really sort of leaning into the vulnerability piece with teams. And again, a lot of times there is this view that the leader has to be a strong leader and you have to kind of carry the burden. And I don't actually think you do, you know, being comfortable with not having the answer, being vulnerable with your team, being very authentic. Like I tend to hear on the side of being transparent. Steve Rush: Right. Rasha Hasaneen: And again, for some people that's very uncomfortable, but for a lot of people, I think having that context and transparency, even if it takes a little bit more time matters. And what that then leads me to do is I actually have unstructured time even during the pandemic. I have a lot of unstructured time with people I interact with. And I feel like people really appreciate that. So, by unstructured time, I mean, like we're in a meeting, it's 30 minutes. It may only take 10 minutes to get the work done. But you know, taking that extra 20 minutes to get to know people, having them get to know me. Being really transparent about what's going on just in your life, just creates this sense of empathy with others and with yourself that gives sort of, and I may use a very Southern term here, that allows people to give and get grace, right. Like there's so much of business interaction that is very businessy. Steve Rush: Right. Rasha Hasaneen: Get the work done. Don't waste my time. And it's like, no, no, there's grace too. Like no one is perfect. And so, if you know people's circumstances, you can give them grace, if you know people's circumstances, you can be empathetic. And so, when they do make mistakes or if deadlines are missed, there's a very sort of collaborative approach to it versus being very adversarial. And I think that comes with really getting to know people and showing them that kind of grace in interaction. I know they're very wishy washy, but those are my top three. Steve Rush: Awesome advice. No, not wishy washy at all. The next part of the show, we call it Hack to Attack. This is typically where something in your life or your work hasn't worked out, but there's a real learning that come from that, and it serves you well, what would be your Hack to Attack? Rasha Hasaneen: I thought, didn't I already share the time I almost died. Like that was my thing in life that didn't work out well. But you know, that to me is probably the standout one. I've had many sorts of things that haven't worked out well. In Innovation you tend to have something called a pipeline conversion, which is, how many things have to fail, fail is a bad word, but how many things don't turn out the way you expect it before you kind of have something succeed, right. And for me, I look at it like, if things don't break when you're doing them, you're probably not taking enough risk. Steve Rush: Yeah, exactly right. Rasha Hasaneen: And so, things go wrong around me all the time, right. And the question just is, what are you learning from that? And how are you turning that kind of into a positive experience? And I feel like I do that all the time. I've had a couple of big ones, or probably the biggest is when, you know, you expect your body to do something, and it doesn't want to comply. I like if you expect your body to breathe and it doesn't want to breathe, that's not a good thing, but I did learn a lot around sort of work life balance or work life management, whatever you want to call it, making choices about who to work for, where to work and being sort of an understanding that you're blessed enough to be able to make those choices, because that again, leads to a lot of grace when it comes to working with others. So, for me, it's hard to point to one thing outside of almost dying. Steve Rush: Yeah, maybe dying kind of does it though, doesn't it? Rasha Hasaneen: Yeah. That kind of trumps everything you possibly could do. Steve Rush: So now, the last thing we get to do. You get to do some time travel, bump into Rasha at 21, give her some advice. What would it be? Rasha Hasaneen: Don't color your hair. That's the advice. Steve Rush: If you have hair, of course. Rasha Hasaneen: If you have hair, of course. But me at 21, I did, and I had a lot of it, and it was starting to turn gray. I remember at 21, I was started to get gray, and I was obsessed with coloring the gray and it led to about 20 years of hair damage, which I have now thankfully reversed. Steve Rush: On a serious note, though. That's really serious advice. If it starts to happen to you, it can change your future outcomes for sure. Rasha Hasaneen: Yeah. Well, that's it, I mean, for me, it does come down to sort of being really authentic as a leader. Don't color your hair is just a euphemism for that, you know, at 21, man, I had just graduated college. It was my first kind of job. I was still a competitive martial artist and appearances really mattered and they kind of don't anymore. Steve Rush: Talking of which, little bird tells me, you were actually national karate champion, is that right? Rasha Hasaneen: I was, I was. And so, I will tell you at 21, I was pretty oblivious to a lot of stuff going on around me and I grew up in a very sheltered sort of, high school. It was a small girl finishing school in the Middle East. And you know, my graduating class was like 10 people. I was very sheltered, when I went to college, I didn't have the same college experience as everyone else, but I will say, you know, at 21 that would be the one thing is, sort of, you know, while I would say at 21, I was definitely judged differently because I didn't have a lot of the credibility I have now. I do feel like I spent an inordinate amount of time sort of maintaining appearances and I was very naive. And I feel like, one. I trusted people too much, but at the same time I felt like I only trusted them so far, which was kind of the worst of both worlds, right? Steve Rush: Yeah. Rasha Hasaneen: So, you're either all in, like you're all in, on being kind of your authentic self and your kind of over the top or you're sort of super reserved and it's kind of in the middle that confuses people a lot. And I was definitely in the middle for a long time before I embraced being all in on authenticity. So, I'm glad I did that, but that would be the one thing. Negotiate your salary. That would be another thing like, yes, you can negotiate and no, that's not enough. And the third thing I would say, would be, definitely look at work relationships differently than I did. I would say, I probably didn't understand the role of sponsors and mentors and sort of those work, call it friendships. I didn't understand how important they were at 21. And I made some sort of real mistakes in terms of getting that kind of sponsorship early on. And so, it took me some time to get there, but that's it. That's what I would say. Steve Rush: It's some great advice for people listening to this, for sure. Rasha Hasaneen: Yes. Steve Rush: So how do we get people who are listening to this to connect with you and Trane Technologies? Where's the best place to send them? Rasha Hasaneen: So, couple of things. Definitely they can reach out. We know tranetechnologies.com I think, is what it is now. The Center for Health Efficient Spaces has a spot under sustainability there. And you can definitely connect via the inbox. In fact, that likely get a faster response since the team definitely monitors that and there's a lot of great resources on The Center for Healthy Efficient Spaces. All of those numbers, I quoted about productivity. We have a primer on indoor environmental quality if people want to learn more. I would definitely recommend they go to the Trane Technologies website and look us up at Center for Healthy & Efficient Spaces. Steve Rush: We'll drop those links into our show notes as well. Rasha Hasaneen: Absolutely. Thank you. Steve Rush: Rasha, thanks ever so much for taking time out and I know you have a really, really busy schedule, so I am super grateful that we've been able to connect and get you on the show. Thanks for being part of the community. Rasha Hasaneen: I appreciate it as well. You've got a lot of fantastic guests, and this is a great podcast. So, thank you for having me and help helping us tell our story. Steve Rush: Thank you, Rasha. Closing Steve Rush: I want to sign off by saying thank you to you for joining us on the show too. We recognize without you, there is no show. So please continue to share, subscribe, and like, and continue to get in touch with us with the great new stories that we share every week. And so that we can continue to bring you great stories, please make sure you give us a five-star review where you can and share this podcast with your friends, your teams, and communities. You want to find us on social media. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter @leadershiphacker, @LeadershipHacker on YouTube and on Instagram, the_leadership_hacker and if that wasn't enough, you can also find us on our website https://leadership-hacker.com. Tune into next episode to find out what great hacks and stories are coming your way. That's me signing off. I'm Steve Rush, and I've been your Leadership Hacker.  

Shannon Russo is the Chief Executive Officer for Kinetix, After a successful career as a finance executive Shannon founded Kinetix with the goal of creating a firm that could help growing companies get the talent they need to compete. In this special show, learn about: How to pivot in a pandemic. The six flavors or “potential factors” for success. How has the workforce changed and how you need to change in it. The Great Resignation, is it just a moment in time or a change to how we work for good?   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com   Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA   Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Shannon below: Shannon on LinkedIn: https: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannonwrusso Shannon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kinetixhr Shannon on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kinetixhr/ Company  Website: https://www.kinetixhr.com   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach, or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Today's special guest is Shannon Russo. She's the CEO of Kinetix, has a background as an executive with companies, such as M&M/Mars, Kidder Peabody & Company, and after riding the corporate wave, she opted to run her own firm and founded Kinetix, with a goal of creating a firm that could help grow companies, get the talent that they needed to compete. But before we get a chance to speak with Shannon, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: The great resignation is a real thing and it's happening to many people around the world, but of course it even impacts on global enterprises as well as global superstars in the world of business. Tesla, CEO, Elon Musk has joined the great resignation, or has he? He's tweeted numerous times over the last few months that he's quitting his job to become an influencer. But while he still sits as a CEO, his role has significantly shifted to appeal to his lifestyle choices in philanthropic adventures. Shareholders, customers, and regulators haven't always appreciated the humor in Elon Musk's approach to his Twitter or high jinks, 2018 Tesla shares plummeted after he posted an April fool's day message saying the company gone bankrupt. He quoted earlier this year that he was going to dispose of all of his shares and equally had a massive impact. Tesla shares fell from about 20% from November to now, as Musk has offloaded his shares. And he tweeted in December that he would be able to buy by a poll that he took whether or not to sell his stake in the car maker. So even Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and space exploration technologies cited to be the world richest person with a fortune and an estate worth 266 billion dollars. Even Elon Musk has been affected by the world around us over the last couple of years. So, if you're a leader, listening to this, pay attention to how our teams are performing and behaving. Some of the idiosyncrasy, and little idioms that you might notice in people's behavior could be a sign that they're being restless and actually having conversations to help people find their purpose is really what it's all about. Finding out what your team need, want and expect from you as a boss is incredibly important as well as appealing to their intrinsic motivation, and that can really help the great resignation become the great retention. So that's been The Leadership Hacker News today. Please continue to get in touch and contact us through our social media. We'd love to listen to your insights and ideas about what we can talk about on the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Our special guest on today show is Shannon Russo. She's the chief executive officer for Kinetix. After a successful career in finance, as an executive, Shannon founded Kinetix with the goal of creating a firm that could really help growing companies get the very best talent that they needed too to compete in a marketplace that is really tough. Shannon, welcome to the show. Shannon Russo: Thanks Steve. Great to be here. Steve Rush: So, I'd love to hear about your journey from finance executive to Kinetix. Tell us a little bit about kind of what happened and indeed before that? Shannon Russo: Yeah, absolutely, thanks. Really, and it's a sort of a joke because prior to forming Kinetix, which now has been 16 years, crazy. I was a finance person for an HR company. For a workforce solutions company for the prior 10 years. So, while I was doing finance, I was helping drive the strategy for a company that was in the workforce solution space. So, I've had a much longer perspective. I think what finance gave me was really this ability to drive analytics into the HR processes and talent acquisitions specifically. And so, when I went down the path of forming Kinetix, it really was because I saw some opportunities to really bring value to clients. And it was my finance background and the analytics that I did. Sort of looking at it that helped me come up with, there's a better way, right? These multi-billion-dollar companies do it and outsource their recruitment, but smaller companies never think that they can do that. And I came up with a model in which small and growing companies up to big companies, could do it in a way that's slightly different than what it was done before. So, it kind of helped me feed what I was doing if that makes. Steve Rush: Yeah, and I remember from the first time that we met as well, it was kind of almost born out a bit of frustration from you. Watching how others were getting it wrong and how the opportunity was just almost there for the taking, right? Shannon Russo: Yes, well, and part of it is that the relationship between recruitment providers and clients, right. Hiring leaders and companies in my mind is very much like the real estate. I don't really like that relationship. And so that was the other thing we were trying to do is, really go at it a little bit differently. We can really provide some leverage, perspective, process, you know, a lot of that kind of stuff that, especially if you're a growing company you don't have, but we could also provide this perspective if you're a large company that said, you're doing it wrong, you're taking too long, right? You're caught up in your own things and bring that to the table and really provide value. So, it's really been an interesting ride because of that. I don't want to call it a conflict, but just difference in terms of what, the historical way that firms deal with each other, to what we've been trying to build. Steve Rush: Right, yeah. And there's a double sword question for you. Shannon Russo: yeah. Steve Rush: Interesting to learn a little bit about the work you do specifically now, and just wondered as a result of the crazy world we've been in over the last couple of years, how that might have changed? Shannon Russo: Yeah, thanks Steve. You know, what I would tell you is, the media loves to talk about the great resignation in air quotes and how this is this amazing opportunity for workers and while in some cases that is absolutely true. I think that the mist that we are living through that my team and my clients, and hiring leaders are living through painfully is, for many folks. They think that that has given them the right to be in many cases, unethical in doing things and really not to realize that this is some kind of a relationship that's happening. And when you're going down the path to get a job, you should decide who you want to be with. And if you accept a job, you should take it. So, what we are seeing is sort of the dark side of the great resignation is this willingness for people, again, to be unethical, in that. They will accept a job and then take another job before they even start and just ghost the first job. Steve Rush: Yeah. Shannon Russo: Just doing things that are really horrendous and somehow thinking that that's okay and the world is all about them and there's no honesty and things, it's okay if you don't want to work for someone, right. That's the whole reason that you go through this recruitment process is to figure out if it's right fit for both parties. Steve Rush: Right. Shannon Russo: If it's the right fit for you, take the job, don't look back. If it's not the right fit, say no, move on. Steve Rush: Yeah. Shannon Russo: This sort of, we're seeing it. And it's not just low end. We're seeing six figures plus people doing things horrible things like that, where they take a job and two weeks later, they take another job. Steve Rush: Wow. Shannon Russo: That's ridiculous. Steve Rush: And do you see that this being generational as well? Because I think I might have shared the story with you before that when my son who's 22. His most recent job he's in now, and it is the one he stuck with. He was kind of almost lining up these opportunities and in so much as he was going to have like a juggling game at the end, when they'd all offered. And I said to him at that time, you know, hey, this isn't right. You know, focus on one role, the role that you want, because ultimately there's people in the process at the end of this. And actually, you're taking up space for other people at the same time, right? Shannon Russo: Yes, without question you are, yep. And I do think that the younger generations have been, they're less jaded than us on the one hand, but because of it, they're more enamored with this. It's all about me perspective. Steve Rush: Yeah. Shannon Russo: And so, I do think there is a little bit, well, we've seen it. Irrespective of age, I do think that what we are seeing is a little bit more willingness to do that. If you are slightly younger than myself, I'll say. Steve Rush: And I guess, that comes with a little bit of naivety, maybe you can be a little bit green around the gills, but actually, at one point in time, you're also going to become the hiring manager. And at one point in the future, you are going to be in a position where you have a group of people applying for a role. And I think, you know, what goes around, comes around. Shannon Russo: Steve, that is exactly the right perspective. And part of the reason that they're so willing to do it is because they haven't had it happen to them for someone who they were really excited to join their team. Steve Rush: That's right, yeah. Shannon Russo: And that might hopefully change their perspective a little bit, but that's an experience thing, right? That's a time thing. Steve Rush: Totally. So, you talk about the great resignation and it's, you know, everywhere you turn, somebody is quoting it, somebody's referencing it. I'm curious from your perspective, because you hire thousands of people into different organizations, right. And I'm just curious to find out, is this just a moment in time for us or do we think that maybe this is something that's going to be with us for a while? Shannon Russo: Great question. I wish I knew the answer to that. What I would tell you is right now for the next 18 to 24 months, it's with us. Steve Rush: Right. Shannon Russo: Beyond that. I don't know that I can give your perspective because I'm hopeful that instead of this dialogue about, we just have people that have been beaten down and the great resignation is them fighting back. That we have a dialogue around the actual realities of what the employees are doing, right? So, this is a relationship and both sides have a part to play. And it's not all one sided in terms of who's wrong and who's doing things that are not so great. And so that's really where I don't know how long it'll be around is because the media loves to play that. But here's what I could tell you that, is a significant shift that's going to be with us for a while. Steve Rush: Yeah. Shannon Russo: Because of that. And because of really some of the workforce mentality and shifts that we are seeing a tremendous difference in the volume, we are needing to contact in order to get to the same number of candidates to be interviewed. So, we call that the funnel and so the top of our funnel has gotten significantly bigger in terms of the amount of outreach that we have to do because less people are responding. Even if they're saying like, hey, not interested. And then because of some of these other things, we just talked about. Less people moving through the process, because we have people dropping out in the middle which doesn't necessarily bother me except for their ghosting us instead of saying, hey, I took another job. I'm not interested or whatever it is, any of those things are okay. So, it's just making the recruitment process from a delivery standpoint, more challenging, right? You're talking to more people; you're reaching out to more people. I don't that that's going to go away for a while. I don't love that, but it's sort of what I'm seeing, and I can't see until sort of the mentality starts to change. Steve Rush: Sure. Shannon Russo: Some of that changing and then we have all the demographics that are working against us, right? Aging population, people retiring, right. People getting tired, all of that stuff that just makes it where we really have to kind of build up the younger generations to where there will be enough people for certainly some of the technical jobs going forward. Steve Rush: And from your experiences. The great resignation just for those specialists and technical jobs because the talent pool hasn't significantly changed in the last two years, right? Shannon Russo: Nope. Now, that's the rub, right? So, here's what I would tell you. You're seeing it across the board for the niche's skills, you're seeing it, but you're seeing it for things that you and I might consider pretty basic, where there's a pretty good volume of employees or candidates, you're seeing it there as well. And so, I think that's driving a lot of dysfunctions across those. I literally have a client in the Midwest. I'm not joking. We are hiring candidates that I consider to be making a decent amount of money. So, between 45 and $75,000 a year, so not low, low end, right. These are not $10 an hour workers. And they are having one half of their hires drop off after they have accepted an offer. Steve Rush: Wow. Shannon Russo: Between then and start. Steve Rush: That's massive in terms of cost for hiring, isn't it as well? Shannon Russo: Think about that. Steve Rush: Yeah. Shannon Russo: Yes, just in terms of the volume and what you're doing, and we've been working hard together to kind of shorten that, so right. Because time is part of it. But also, how do we kind of close out people? Yay or nay. It's more we, right? The hiring processes are not taking so much time with people that are not going to make it to the finish line. Steve Rush: How do you expedite that as a process then to make sure that you do, you know, speed up that early kind of vetting if you like? Shannon Russo: Yeah, it's a great question. So, you try to truncate the recruitment process once the person has been, right? Are they qualified and interested? Once you know that. For us, that's around the submittal. Then the interviews should be fast, right? Even if you do some of them via video and some of them face to face, so you don't want to have this really long 10 step recruitment process. And then at the very end in your kind of pre onboarding and onboarding for some clients, we're actually starting candidates while the background check is finishing. So, for some states where the background check process is long because the court systems are slow, we're having people accept, what we would call a contingent offer as long as their background comes back clear, they start early and they get paid for that, right? So, there's nothing untoward happening, but we're doing things to kind of speed up that onboarding. Steve Rush: Yeah. Shannon Russo: To lessen the time from when you accept the job to when you start. And obviously that depends on if you're coming from another job, then that has to be two weeks, but just how can we make that as tight as possible? Steve Rush: And having you talk through kind of the process, I wonder how many of your hiring managers maybe have changed their approach in so much as maybe feeling a bit more anxious or bit more, you know, desperate almost to hire people because of the environment we're in now and whether or not that's going to help hold people back? Shannon Russo: You know, I think it's interesting, you're right. The ones who are really taking it on the chin right now, they are starting to adjust. Where I see as big of a challenge in terms of people being willing to be flexible are folks that maybe don't hire as much and don't have as much experience in the world that we're living in right now. Still thinking that, oh, everybody wants to come work for me. So why don't I have ten candidates to review for this, you know, very nichey job. Well, the reality is, that the world has changed and you're going to have to move faster. You are going to have to actually sell the candidates at the same time, as you are vetting the candidates to figure out whether or not they fit you. So, it's a very different challenge than some of these older mentalities. It's not an age thing, older mentality. Like if you were a hiring leader three years ago, your perspective is very different or needs to be different than it is today in terms of how you deal with the candidates that you are talking to. Does that help clarify a little bit? Steve Rush: Yeah, it does. Shannon Russo: Big shift. Steve Rush: Yeah, and of course it's in parallel to future employees and candidates having the opportunity to completely reevaluate what's important to them in their work and life at the same time as well, isn't it? Shannon Russo: It is, 100%, and that's what we're seeing. And one of the things, and you'll chuckle, your son may have done the same stuff. Sometimes the candidates have unrealistic expectations of what they're getting and they just sort of lay that out for hiring leaders, which they think they're a little bit smug in that, oh, hey, this is what I want. And this is what I got to have, and I'm all that, right? And sometimes they're off in what they're thinking, right. In terms of the reality of, you know, this is a job where, I'll give you some limited examples, that'll make you laugh, right. The big call now, along with the great resignation is a hundred percent remote. Everything has to be a hundred percent remote. Well, if the job requires you and I to touch each other or face each other, or do any of those, then guess what? Steve Rush: Exactly Shannon Russo: Not remote. Steve Rush: Yeah. Shannon Russo: And so, there's a little bit on the middle of the spectrum where, you know, there's some myths where people have a job. We did something for a manufacturing company, and they needed the person to be on site because they're actually doing quality, right. How else can you do that? Steve Rush: Exactly. Shannon Russo: But for us to have to actually have the conversation to be like, no, you can't check the quality of what's happening on the line unless you are physically there. Steve Rush: Yeah, exactly. Shannon Russo: And so, some of those things are, you know, in some ways surprising, but some of the shifts with this where people maybe aren't, they listen some of the stuff in the media and then they don't think it all the way through, into the reality of either their kind of job or any of that. And whether they do or not, they want some of the other stuff. Steve Rush: And you know, you and I have seen these cycles a few times in our careers. I'm sure Shannon, and one thing is for sure, is that in a few years' time, 2, 3, 5, 10, whatever the number of years is, there'll be a time where jobs are scarce, and the tables will have turned. And it's important that we're just really thoughtful of that in terms of our behaviors, isn't it? When we start to proceed on these journeys. Shannon Russo: It's 100% vital. And what I would tell you, unfortunately. I agree with you, who knows when it's going to be. But the inflation that we're seeing is kind of making me a little, you know, stressed about how soon it might be. But what I can tell you this time. This will probably make you chuckle Steve, is the whiplash is going to be very harsh. Steve Rush: I think so too, yeah. Shannon Russo: Because if you are really trying to hire right now, how you're getting treated by candidates. Yeah, it's going to come back to bite some folks on the other side, I don't disagree at all. Steve Rush: So, there's one thing that you have created, which I really love. And you call it the Kinetix Code and it's definitely not a playbook because I know you say it's not a playbook. It's not a handbook. It is really a set of principles, or you call them flavors actually that are just really potential factors that you not only help your clients with, but it's also key to your team. And I'd love for us to just get into those six principles or potential factors. Shannon Russo: Yeah, thank you Steve. So, you're exactly right, right. In the United States specifically, handbooks are very typical. And in many cases, you need them. Same for us, right? Steve Rush: Right. Shannon Russo: Certain things in terms of the basic expectations and legal requirements and what we're expecting when you have to start work, when you finish, how does pay time off work? All of those kinds of policies, HR policies necessary. For us, we know that's important, but coming out of the HR space, one of the things that we felt like was missing and that's the Genesis of the Kinetix Code and then I'll get into the potential factors. As part of this, and you heard me talk about it, right? You're vetting candidates, but you're also trying to share with them and either, on the one hand sell them. But, but conversely, maybe repel them, if who you are, isn't a fit. You don't want them literally. You don't want them. Think Zappos back in the day, who used to give you a bonus to leave. If you weren't the right fit, it's sort of in that model that says on the one hand, I want to be as transparent as possible to have everyone understand who we are as a company and how we operate and what the expectation are. And if you like that, that's going to lean you in. If you don't like that, my hope is, it's going to lean you away because I don't want us to dance and waste each other's time, right. So that was sort of the first part. And we wanted more than just the policies, which is sort of the, you know, legal jargon. But we set about with the Kinetix Code to really introduce you to how we think about things and what kinds of people are successful, so we could get you there. And then the potentials as a key part of that, the potentials for us are what other companies call their culture or maybe their values. That's probably the best comparable. So, if you think about your values, our potential factors, our values. And I'll talk about them in just a second, but what I would tell you is they flow through everything. They're not just in the Kinetix Code, as what we think is important. We use them when we give kudos to each other, on a daily basis and when we do performance reviews. Your job is one part and those potential factors, right? Our values are the other thing that we rate you on when we try to decide kind of what's next for you. So, most companies have values, for us taken that to the next level and put it into as much of everything that we do. So, if you are an employee of ours, you know what to expect, how we're going to rate you. What's important to us and all of that. And so that's really how we came up with it. And as you mentioned, we have six, we tried to do five. But we just couldn't get it done with five. And so, when we came up with it, the last one is KICK ASS TEAMMATE, and it's really important. Plus, we call it a plus one because what we found is, the people who are the most successful, that is one of the traits of who they are. And Steve, you know, you've worked with people who that's, who they are, and you've worked with people by the way, who that's not who they are. Steve Rush: Definitely. Shannon Russo: And so, when we were doing it, we just ended up adding that to the table. Because when we thought about who, was the most successful working for us? That was something that with the other potentials or values, however you want to frame it, that might have been missing in that. So hopefully that gives you the framework. Steve Rush: Let's dive into them, just maybe give us a bit of a framing on each of them and what that means. And as a leader, then how I can think about using that with my team. Shannon Russo: Yeah, yes. So, one of the things you'll notice, and you heard it from my sixth one that I just mentioned, these are not things. So, we actually spent more time than average thinking about them and I'm going to piss off some folks with what I'm about to say. Steve Rush: Go ahead. Shannon Russo: They don't include something like integrity. And I'm sure there's a lot of people whose head's going to be like, what do you mean? Integrity's one of our values. Yes. Integrity is something that we find very important. Here's the problem with integrity. How do I measure it? You either have it or you don't. And I typically only find out if you don't, when it's too late. Steve Rush: Yeah. It's not one of those things you can jump on an e-learning course to see, you know, I'm just going to take a course on integrity and top that up, that doesn't work. Shannon Russo: Right, and so while we value it, since we were using the potential factors across how we're going to rate you, how we're going to decide if you're the right employee, how your performance management is going to go. Integrity, because you either do it or you don't, or you have it, or you don't, how do I, to your point, how do I say, you're doing really good Steve, let's do a little bit better on your integrity. That's not how it works. It's a switch. Steve Rush: Right. Shannon Russo: Right, either you do, or you don't. And so, we spend a lot of time really making sure that the things that we have as our potential, our values, that they were also things we could articulate. And they were also things that we could measure and rate people on. Steve Rush: Got it, yeah. Shannon Russo: So, all right. I'm going to go through the six. I'm just going to them one at a time. And Steve, please give me your comments. Steve Rush: Sure. Shannon Russo: So, the first one is, get stuff done, because for our perspective, listen, it's a job, right? We're hiring you to do stuff and to execute what's in front of you and to not get distracted by all of the things that can help you slow down. So, for us, getting stuff done very important, we operate at pretty high pace and our clients are relying on us. So that's a really important one for us. Steve Rush: Yeah. Shannon Russo: And we brought it down to something that makes sense, right. Get stuff done, Steve, I'm pretty sure you know what I mean by that. Steve Rush: You don't get paid for effort, do you? You get paid for results. Shannon Russo: Exactly. Exactly. We also call it shipping product, right. Getting stuff done, executing and moving things forward, yep, that's it. The next one is, figures it out. Again, Steve, I'm guessing, you know what figures it out means. We call it the smart factor and we spend a lot of time because politically, that doesn't sound nice, right. But here's what we mean by that. This is not an IQ discussion. This is, we're going to give you incomplete direction sometimes. And we need you to dive in and figure out what we mean by that. Ask questions. Do any of the stuff to figure out how to execute on what's in front of you and what your job is. That's what matters to us, not high IQs, willingness to figure it out, take the next step to deliver for our clients. Steve Rush: Yeah. Shannon Russo: So again, we try to dive in a little bit deeper. So, the next one is one that we found some of our most successful people have this as part of who they are. And that's passionate innovation. This one was a little harder, frankly, for us to kind of dive in. But I feel like we got to a good spot and so passionate innovation. If you asked just about anyone, Steve, Steve, are you passionate? Do you believe in passionate? Yes, right. Like, are you going to pick up the garbage? Steve Rush: Yeah. Everybody's passionate. Everybody says they're passionate, right? Shannon Russo: Right, but here's how we define it. So again, defining these so that someone can understand what you expect more than just saying you're into it. What we are expecting is that you love what you do so much, that you routinely spend discretionary effort. Let me be really clear, discretionary effort, which is more than average, more than expected, extra time learning things that can make you better. Experimenting on things to make processes better. That's how we define it. Not just some esoteric. Oh yes, I'm passionate. No, how do you do things routinely that help you and us do better, get better? Figure things out. Steve Rush: Like it. Shannon Russo: All right. So, the next one is self-evident, given that we are a recruitment firm connector, right. You've really got to be able to connect with people for all different ways, right? So, you're doing it because it's who you are. These kinds of people connect when they're at the coffee shop, right. It's just how they are. And they also, as part of that for us, we include a little bit of that paying forward because I might connect with someone or you might connect with me, Steve and I might not be able to help you fill a role you're working on right now, but a good connector at Kinetix means I'm connecting with you and I'm getting your information because tomorrow I might have that great opportunity for you. And so, we see it as a little bit, even more than that, all right, I'm coming into the home stretch, Steve with this. The next one for us, again, we're kind of keeping these front and center, but they are real in that. These are things that make Kinetix a successful company. The next one is called likable. Yep, we said it, likable. Steve Rush: It's one of those those things that people are quite uncomfortable using that word these days, because it doesn't feel particularly quantitative, but actually we all feel it. Shannon Russo: That's right. And again, it's similar to the other ones, we've dove into kind of tell you what we mean by that. So yes, for us likable means authentic, means professional, means that you have command of what you are doing in person, on the phone, how you write and communicate with people. So, it's very much around communication. But at the same time, you're viewed as approachable, and you can work with teams. So, this is something that we actually spend a lot of time on. We talk about being classy honest. That's the other part of being likable is being real enough to tell the truth, even if it's not what the person wants to hear, because ultimately that does make you likable because you're trustworthy. Steve Rush: Yeah, and without that trust and likability, you actually can't be honest with people. So, if you wanted to give some feed forward or feedback to somebody and you didn't like them, it would be really uncomfortable. And it would be really hard to execute because you have this unconscious worry about offending them. But if you have that trust and likability with somebody, then that communication's going to be more, free flowing anyway. Shannon Russo: 100% Steven. We even take it a step further with our views on being classy honest. Here's what we would say that aligns perfectly Steve, with what you just said. I could give you Steve, some feedback on the job you did for me yesterday. And I probably could get that done in thirty seconds to a minute in terms of giving you very direct feedback, Steve, that might not be how you can receive it. Steve Rush: Right. Shannon Russo: So, as a leader, I need to take a step back and maybe I need to take five or ten minutes to give you that feedback in a way that you can hear it and that you can a simulate it and not burn you up. Being honest does not mean I need to scorch the earth with you. I just need to be honest and truthful about the situation, especially if it's a performance thing and communicate that to you, but the likability part for us comes in. I don't need to burn you up to get there. I can take a little bit longer. I can be a little more caring in giving that feedback. Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely so, and when you think about your six flavors, your potential factors, how has that evolved your teams since you've introduced it? Shannon Russo: What I would tell you is, it has really helped, and this is our view of what's critical about how you manage culture at your organization as a leader. One of the reasons that we spent so much time on the languaging was, we want people to use it in their regular conversation. We want people to reference it and that Steve is the benefit, that is what has happened. So, we literally talk to each other about man, Steve, that call that you were on, you were so likable, right? You really showed that. As I mentioned, you know, way back in the old days, we used to put it on cards. We had six of these cards that you could write on and put on my desk, but now we actually use an app where I can share kudos with the whole company on an app, and tell you Steve, the great things that you did. So, we've really kind of brought it into our day-to-day culture and the app that we use, which is called Recognize, we buy it. It actually integrates to outlook what a great way to be able to just get it done. So, we tried to make it as simple as possible for our team to recognize each other and recognize when they are executing on these potentials. And then to cement it, we use it for performance management, but let me tell you what really gets people going. At the end of every year we have, and if you didn't know this by now, I'm sure you do. Orange is one of our main colors. Steve Rush: Exactly. Shannon Russo: And so, we have the bleed orange awards. How do you get a bleed orange award? You ask Steve. You get it by getting the most of these kudos Steve Rush: Love it, yeah. Shannon Russo: So, we're keeping everyone very, also focused in their day to day, because it's really easy to lose kind of those cultural tenants if you don't make them part of everyday conversations. Steve Rush: Yeah, and so many come make the mistake of just having words on wall. And that's the perfect example of creating some themes and making them part of what you do rather than words on wall. Shannon Russo: And that that's how we make a difference. It makes it easier for us to recruit people. Here's what I could tell you. Like so many people, 2021 was a heavy recruiting internally year for Kinetix as well. We have doubled the size of our team. It helps them because here's something that I hear from new employees regularly. What's amazing is how consistent everyone is and how everyone that I meet kind of displays the same value, is like, by the way, for me, as CEO, I'm like, oh, can I hug you? That's exactly what I want. Steve Rush: Exactly. Shannon Russo: Because that's how we're successful, right? And the bigger you get, the harder that is to do. So, continuing for us to focus on it, is really how we think, you know, we continue to be successful. Steve Rush: Well, kudos to you. So, this is part of the show where we get to flip a little bit and dive into your leadership brain and tap into your years of experience and leading teams and others, as well as, you know, coaching other leaders around the way that they do things too. So, the first thing I'd like to ask you is, if you could try and dive in and think about what would be your top three leadership hacks? Shannon Russo: Whew, big one. So top three leader hacks are a little bit aligned with some of the stuff that I talked to you about on values. So, I'm not cheating, but that classy honest that you heard me talk about in terms of being likable, being a leader is very much about making decisions, executing on stuff, or driving execution as a leader, right. And then holding people accountable and performance managing that. So that classy honest is a leadership hack. Steve Rush: Yeah. Shannon Russo: That too many people on the hard, and I'm very hard driving, but on the hard driving side miss that I would tell you is a critical one. Here's the other one that some folks, especially people trying to get into leadership. Often what I hear people say is, I can't wait to be a manager and have to do less. Like you don't really understand what's coming. Steve Rush: No way. Shannon Russo: And so that's the second part because I do see this sometimes, especially with candidates that come from very large organizations where their ability to actually do stuff gets limited by the nature of the organization. So, my leadership hack is being willing to dive back in at any moment. Now that doesn't mean you always do that, but I had a situation. I'll give you an example of where it kind of came back to me and it made me smile. We had a situation where we were working on a presentation for a client, and I'm not normally in the middle of all of that, right. As you might expect as the CEO of the company, but the account leader really was struggling with a couple things, and I had some history, and we knew that. And so, I dove in with her and we worked together one afternoon. And unfortunately, because the presentation was the next day into the evening, she was like, oh my gosh, it was so amazing that you were willing to dive in. And when I heard that, you know, I thanked her, but I was like, but that is being leader. Not just let her fall. Steve Rush: And it's the willingness bit that's most important is just letting people know that you are willing too. Shannon Russo: That's right. That's right. And here's what I would tell you about that person that works for me, she will never doubt me again. Steve Rush: Right. Shannon Russo: Now, I didn't do it for that. But after she told me and I thought about it, I was like, wow, wow. That's not why I was doing it. I was doing it because I wanted her to be successful and I wanted us to be successful. But the reality is, I was building my leadership profile with her in the process without even realizing it, last one. I would tell you; this is a mixed bag because some of the worst leaders do this too much, but I still call it a leadership hack. Because for me over the last two years, it's really been a rough two years, like so many people, and I've really had to work on this and that is, take time for yourself. Don't be embarrassed about that but be willing to do it and balance it, right. Don't bleed it through everything that you're doing but be willing to kind of take that time for yourself, whatever that is. Steve Rush: So Important. Shannon Russo: Right. Steve Rush: So important, right. Shannon Russo: And so, I know you didn't probably think I was going to give you that as a leadership hack, but I would tell you it is, because that's about sustainable leadership. Steve Rush: Totally, yeah. Shannon Russo: Those are my three. Steve Rush: Awesome, really great hacks, great lessons for people to dive into. Next part of the show we call Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something in your life or your work has maybe screwed up. Hasn't worked out as well. But as a result of the experience, you've now got something that you can use as a force of good for you, what would be your Hack to Attack? Shannon Russo: So, my Hack to Attack was, I formed Kinetix. So, I had come out of the finance as you know, I'd come out of the finance side, which means. I was in the corporate infrastructure of a very large company; we were Fortune 500. And so, when I formed Kinetix, right, I didn't have a ton of experience running a small and medium size business. And so, I have lots of learnings, but the learning that really was a challenge that now has become better from my life and from work is realizing a couple things. And that is, I don't know, everything. And by the way, it's 100% okay. Steve Rush: Yeah. Shannon Russo: Right. So that was the biggest thing because coming up in the corporate environment of a very large company, you really were known for what you knew, right. And so, you sort of build this up in yourself and when you sort of, I don't want to say I started over, right. But I sort of started with a small business that I was going to grow into what Kinetix is today. But the reality is, there was so much, I didn't know. And so, my willingness to ask questions and be opened to feedback, because some of the feedback that I got, I did not want to hear. And I did not like, but being opened to do that, because it really, you know, listen, I was not a young kid when I started Kinetix, right. I was in my late thirties and like so many folks in their late thirties, right. A very successful Fortune 500 top five person, LA, LA, LA, LA, LA, all this stuff that says I'm good at what I do, whatever, yeah. What about the stuff you've never seen before? Steve Rush: That's right. Shannon Russo: What about the situations you've never had to deal with? And so, the big learning, some of them did not go well. And my takeaway that I really feel like has made me better today is, darn you know, don't let my ego get in the way of being willing to learn every day from anyone. Because that was the other thing. Working for big companies, right. You're working with all these very smart, very professional people. You can learn as much. And I did from somebody who really doesn't articulate very well. Steve Rush: Yeah. Shannon Russo: But they can teach you some hard lessons and they can teach you good lessons. So be ready and willing to accept that learning wherever it's going to come from because that's literally a hack. Steve Rush: Yeah, totally is, isn't it? Shannon Russo: To getting better. Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely so. So, the last thing we get to do today, Shannon, is you get to do a bit of time travel, bump into Shannon at 21 and to give her some advice, what would it be? Shannon Russo: Oh shoot 21. Wow. That's a long time ago, Steve. But here's what I would tell myself. There was some things that I feel like I've learned later. The biggest one is, when you've done all the work and you have gotten all the perspective, don't be scared and don't waste time before you make the decision. I had some things that I ended up getting involved in as I was coming up in my career were looking back, if I had, you know, an example was. I needed to let somebody go whose role I was taking over, but I was afraid. I didn't know what they knew. There was all this other stuff. And so, I waited six months. That was the worst decision of my life. I should have let them go immediately and taken the risk. That's the kind of coaching that I would give myself because I only got it by hard learned results. And so, I would tell myself again, not to be ego, right. So don't be ego. Be careful, make sure you're getting all the information, but once the decision has been made and you're ready to go, go, take the risk. And a lot of times it's around things like letting people go, right. Liberating them, freeing them, freeing you. Steve Rush: Yeah. Shannon Russo: Be willing to just jump off the cliff. Once you're prepared, don't wait, nothing good can come of it. And that's probably the coaching I would give myself at 21, that took me a while to learn. Steve Rush: Yeah. It's lovely. I like it a lot. Thanks for sharing that, Shannon, great stuff. Shannon Russo: Yeah. Yeah. Steve Rush: So, for folk, listening to us talk today who might be curious around the work that Kinetix do, maybe getting their insight around the Kinetix Code, but also tapping into you and your network. Being true connectors in your potential factors. How can we make sure we connect them with you? Shannon Russo: Absolutely. So, our website is kinetixhr.com. That's K I N E T I X hr.com. You can get a little bit of scoop about us, connect with us. Any of that kind of stuff. Also, that kinetixhr is my handle on Twitter. It's my handle on Instagram. So, if you want to find us there, LinkedIn is name obviously. And then if you want to dig in a little bit more to The Kinetix Code. One of the things we did for recruiting as well, but it's an opportunity for you. You can go to the kinetixcode.com. Steve Rush: Awesome. Shannon Russo: And that's where it is, and you can actually see it all. So, it's not locked up in some vault. We want it to kind of be living and breathing and it can give you a perspective on who we are and kind of how it makes us tick if you're thinking about that kind of thing for your company Steve Rush: And we'll dump all of those links and connections in our show notes as well. So, it's dead easy for people to connect with you beyond today. Shannon Russo: Wonderful, wonderful. Steve Rush: Shannon, I've loved chatting. You had I had some really interesting and deep conversations about the world that we're in and how it's changing and evolving. And I'm just delighted that we've got you on the show so that we can share that story with our wider audience. So, thanks for being part of the community. Shannon Russo: Steve, thanks for having me. It's been really fun, kind of talking through some of this stuff. You made me think about some things that I haven't thought about for a while and I think that's always super helpful. Steve Rush: Thank you, Shannon.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.          

John Reid is the president of JMReid Group. He's an entrepreneur and author of multiple books, the latest being the Five Lost Super Powers, why we lose them and how to get them back. In this show explore: John survived cancer 4 times, find how that builds resilience. Why context is king. Compassion with Empathy is life changing. Explore the Five Lost Super Powers and if you need to get them back. Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com   Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA   Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about John below: John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-reid-a3007a2/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jmreidgroup/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jmreidgroup/ Company Website: https://jmreidgroup.com/   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach, or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker. Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you Joining me on the show today is John Reid. He's the president and founder of the JMReid Group, a global behavioral change organization, specializing in leadership development, sales effectiveness, and skill enhancement. But before we get a chance to speak with John, it's The Leadership Hacker News.   The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: Recently, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella pointed out the power of empathy in an interview with Harvard Business Review. He connected empathy with not just taking care of people, but also to design thinking, to innovation, customer care, and ultimately the bottom line. We've been taught since school, that empathy means stepping into somebody else's shoes and seeing the world from their perspective, but truly powerful forms of empathy, neither start nor stop there. They reach all areas of our life and work. They help us feel seen and safe, connected to others and empowered to manage conflict with kindness and inclusivity. A truly empathic leader is proactive. Good leaders just don't solve problems when they arise, but they actively seek out ways to smooth the path for their people and smoothing the way and removing obstacles requires empathy. It requires the ability to understand the wiring, the needs, the pace of people, and to respond accordingly. This kind of proactivity may require you to do your homework on the people you work with, understand their strengths and their challenges. It may also be required that you occasionally push back on things. And it's difficult as those things may seem, the kind of investment in your people. The compassion you need will really drive empathy and pay you back richly. Cognitive empathy is just what it sounds like. Empathy based on cognitive understanding. Somebody else's perspective. It doesn't require emotion from us, but it does require understanding and a willingness to engage with what is their understanding. Effective empathy is empathy that is based on emotion. When somebody cries or feels anger. This is effective empathy at work. A truly empathic leader is inclusive. More than just seeing someone else's perspective. Empathy means slowing down and seeing others' needs, speeds, and creeds, and then helping them find the environments that work best for them. An empathic leader is a leader who understands that not all of our brains are wired the same. Taking time to see other people's perspectives. Seeing them as individuals with unique wiring, with unique needs and unique motivations that creates them as an individual. So, if you want the best work from the people that you work with to encourage innovation, design thinking, all of the good things that come from psychologically safe environments, then take your compassion and your empathy muscles out for a workout. Building empathy as a leader is a skill and it's a great investment. You can do it for yourself, your people and your organization all at a time when the world needs kindness more than ever. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. We'd love to hear your insights and your stories, so please get in touch with us. Start of Podcast. Steve Rush: My special guest on today's show is John Reid. He's the president of JMReid Group. He's an entrepreneur and author of multiple books. I'm delighted to have John on the show. John, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. John Reid: It's great to be here. Thank you, Steve. Steve Rush: We always like to dive into our back stories of our guest, because they provide such a great landscape to how people have arrived at doing what they're doing. So maybe we can start John by this digging into a little bit out your background and how you've arrived to do what you do. John Reid: Why, thank you. I think everything's, you know, everything's important and sometimes nothing's important, but I'll leave that to the audience, I'm the youngest of five, and I grew up in Maryland, went to the university of Maryland and got an undergraduate degree. At that point in time in America, anyway, companies would come interview you on campus, and I got interviewed and got hired by Dow Chemical. What's interesting there, is that I'd never taken a chemistry course in my life and there was a brief period where Dow would hire people that they thought were good communicators for sales roles, despite having no chemical background. Steve Rush: Right. John Reid: And I joined them and that's the beginning of my chemical career, which I had great success in. I was actually in chemical week magazine as a rising star of the chemical industry back in the early nineties. So I was in sales, marketing, business — I had P&L responsibility, sort of the classic path. Left all that behind to join the training and development industry because I had a real passion around that. Around the idea that people could get better and wanted to get better if the development training was better. So, I got into that industry and worked for several different companies and ultimately started my own company 13 years ago. Steve Rush: And what was that pivotal moment for you when you thought, okay, now it's time for me to lead my business versus work for others? John Reid: It's a great question. And the truth is, I'm a four-time cancer survivor. And in America, again, at that time, when you have cancer, you need health insurance. I had four kids and I was the worker. So, I had to have health insurance and it's hard to have health insurance. So, I changed jobs to work for a company in Dallas, Texas, and we were negotiating to be the head of sales. And I was asking for, you know, a compensation, should they decide to let me go. And they said, no, that'll never happen. They'll never let me go. But I did negotiate health coverage for a period of time. And within three months they let me go. They were having real cash flow problems and they couldn't really afford me they thought. Interestingly enough, they called me two weeks later and asked me to come back because I made the point to them that they had a revenue problem, not a cost problem, but they thought they had a cost problem, let me go. That was the driver to start my own company, because I had that safety net of having health coverage and I could take a chance finally. Steve Rush: Yeah. It's funny, isn't? How unconsciously, we sometimes just need a little bit of security to give us that entrepreneurial flare of spirit to moving different directions. John Reid: Yeah, absolutely. Because we're always making risk reward calculations. Steve Rush: Right. John Reid: That's part of the work that I think about when I do leadership or sales training — you watch current behaviors and how they're behaving, you know, unconsciously, they're making this risk reward calculation and oftentimes they're making it incorrectly. And that's why they're behaving the way they are. And so sometimes you have to— you need to have them see a different calculation for some of these behaviors. Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely so. Nonchalantly you just said, yeah. Four-time cancer survivor. That is, one. It's incredibly unusual to survive cancer four times. But what I've learned from having met you previously, John, is you have this huge amount of resilience that comes from having been able to battle through these different events, time after time. And I just wondered, you know, how much of that drives your current approach and how much of that helped you with resilience? John Reid: Oh, it's helped me greatly. I had a type of cancer that you should frankly die from. It was a spindle cell sarcoma, which is a very rare sarcoma, and they don't know much about it and all that good stuff. To survive that of course you need others. So, I had a strong social network, particularly my wife Rose. So, you know, you need to have that. What it does give you — I had a friend who was a New York Times a writer and he had the chutzpa or whatever to ask me, you know, so what's good about having cancer? And I thought that's a gutsy question, you know, but it is a good question. And what's good about it is, it does give you perspective, you know, it does make you step back and what really matters? Like what am I doing? What matters? Steve Rush: And for your perspective's, been massive, isn't it? In all of your work in life. And I've seen that through, you know, some of the articles that you've read and some of the writings that you've done. There's lot re recall to perspective and get people to think about that context. John Reid: If I could wave a wand across the world and if I had my wish, I just wish everybody knew they're just walking around with a perspective. They're not, objectively, right. They're just not, it's all subjective. So, it's just— we're people walking around with perspectives. And unfortunately, we quickly because of the way our brain processes and all the stuff we know, we quickly go to right, you know, and us versus them and right versus wrong. When no, it's just a different perspective. Steve Rush: I love the framing of that because we all do have a perspective, but from often we come from a position of being sure or being right or being wrong about things. How do you get people to think about reframing that perspective so that it can serve them well? John Reid: When we look at learning and development, we're very learner centric. We're very much “who's the learner and where's their head at and why are they acting the way they do? Do they even know that?” And we don't approach anything from right wrong or from bad to good. People aren't behaving— I mean, bad is bad and bad is obvious. So, we don't, you know, we're not going to say— but most people are behaving good. They just could be better, better versions of themselves, better decision makers, build trust in a different way. So, they could be great, right? But most of us behave in a good way. So, to get the learner there, you've first got to say, hey, you know, we all make inferences and assumptions and that's quickly easy to do. You can have an inference test where people make all these inferences and you say, look, and then you show, them like the ladder of inference, how we move from data to selecting data, to assumptions, conclusions, and forming beliefs. And then you can have them explore another person's ladder and show that. And so, you can get people to quickly realize, yeah, I just have a perspective. And then what's cool is, we have this activity where we have a list of hot topics and not that hot, but topics like, I think vegan stuff is nonsense, or I think college should be free. Whatever the issue is. And the other party selects a topic that they have some interest in, that they have a point of view in, and then they're required to ask questions to a different point of view. So, I'll play the other point of view and adults simply cannot ask a good open ended, curious question about a topic that they believe they're right in. The questions are leading questions. Don't you think? Wouldn't you agree? How about, you know, it's just, we struggle. We can be curious in stuff we don't know about, but once we have a point of view, we really get in our own way. Steve Rush: Yeah, I love that. And curiosity is one of the things you were called out for when you were in your sales career at Dow, when you were on that rising star and RMB telling me it was that curiosity that really set you apart from all the other salespeople. Tell us a little bit about what happened there? John Reid: Yeah, and it was a blessing, right? These are all hidden blessings. So, I get hired by Dow. A lot of chemical engineers, chemistry degrees, technical experts. And there's little old me, you know, with the university of Maryland marketing degree and I'm going out and I'm actually one of the most successful salespeople in the company. And they had a rating system. And anyways, I just simply was. And I was because I would ask questions because and you know, I didn't know anything, but turns out, surprise, surprise, something with all know, people like to talk about themselves. People like to talk about what they do. They like to talk about their machinery. Now I wasn't going around acting like a complete idiot, but I was like, geez, you know, I don't know much about this operation. Why do you do it this way versus a different way? And people would talk. So early on I realized, you know, let the client talk. I do believe that salespeople work way too hard. Steve Rush: Yeah. John Reid: By that, I mean, they're just talking too much. Just ask questions and let them talk. They'll come to you; you know. I was lucky not to have that knowledge. There is a curse of knowledge. There is the technical expertise trapp. The more I knew, the less curious I got. There were people Steve who would say, I would never ask that question because you should know that, but I don't know it. Steve Rush: Even if you did know it, you should still ask the question. John Reid: Yeah, and it's not fake until you make it. A lot of technical salespeople by the way, what they do, having observed them now year after year, they'll hide their technical expertise in the question. Steve Rush: Yeah. John Reid: You know, ‘what do you think about a high membrane ion exchange system?' It's like, okay, what are you doing there? What is that? You're trying to show what, you know, in your question. That's terrible. So yeah. There it was a good blessing to be who I was at that time. Steve Rush: Yeah, exactly. And it's an interesting notion, the whole sales thing. So, you know, at some point in my future, I'm going to regurgitate this in either in articles or maybe even another book, but this whole notion of, if you want to be really successful at selling, don't sell, ask, be curious, ask questions, find out, learn. And by default, if you have a product that helps fill those gaps and problems and solutions, then people will buy it from you. John Reid: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I would say the other part of that, which I'm sure you agree is, listen. Steve Rush: Yeah, absolutely. Starts with 1.1, right? John Reid: A colleague of mine has a great quote that the customer will tell you what your next question should be. What I see, you know, because of how people have been trained is that they prepare a list of questions and they're going to be consultative, but they're really not consultative. They're quasi consultative because they're only asking questions about stuff that drives to a sale. Steve Rush: Right. John Reid: They go through the question in order. And so, the buyer could say anything, to the answer the first question and there's no, let's chase that rabbit. They go right to the second question, right to the third. So, they're not really listening and then going in a conversation. So, we're doing a lot of work now on just, how do you have a conversation? We need to untrain salespeople on, how do you have a consultative sales call, where you ask questions and then, you know, position yourself, versus having a conversation, which is much more fluid. Steve Rush: It's ironic, isn't it? That if you've got a list of 10 power questions or whatever, you know, the buzzword in that organization is, you can't be listening because you're cueing your next question. John Reid: Ah, it's even worse than that. And we have insight selling and hypothesis selling and it all makes great sense. The idea that before I go in, I ought to have a point of view. And I agree with that. I go in with a point of view, but it's so hard to unwind somebody that, you know, your point of view could be wrong. Steve Rush: Yeah. John Reid: Right. Your point of view is not objectively right. Just having a point of view going in, they get trapped by their own point of view. Steve Rush: Goes back to your perceptions and assumptions. John Reid: Yes, Steve Rush: Exactly right. So, in your latest book, The Five Lost Superpowers. Title, which of course I absolutely love and it's around why we lose them and how to get them back. And you talk about these five key elements that as leaders, if we were thoughtful of them, we could pay attention if we started to lose them or indeed lost them, but here tactically, how we could put them right. And I wondered John, if we could just spin through each of those five, just to get a sense of how I might pay attention to them and notice them and maybe tactically, how I might go about fixing them. First one, ironically is curiosity. John Reid: Yeah, a fan favorite with me, of course, curiosity. And it was the first one that I came up with. So, years ago, I would say, I would teach it as a lost superpower in the sales training. And of course, at one point I said, there must be at least five lost superpowers. And so, I got a team together and we brainstormed, and we came up with these five and they had to be independent. They had to research based. I mean, you know, it wasn't just an opinion. It had to be something grounded in research, curiosity is for leaders. I mean, it's critical, right? It gets back to this. You don't know everything. One reason why leaders make terrible coaches. We actually ask this question, Steve, you know, we ask people, ‘what do you have to believe to coach somebody?' And people will say, oh, that they're motivated, that they have skills, they have capability. They miss the most important thing that you have to believe to coach somebody. And that is that the person you're coaching knows something you don't know. Steve Rush: Yeah. John Reid: Otherwise, why would you ask questions? Except for, to lead them. But we act like we know it all. It's just the human condition. We act like we know every everything, you know. And so, curiosity's critical to be more curious about why this person's behaving this way, doing this thing, you know, how did that get done? How can we leverage that? What we talk— it all gets squelched, by the way, most of these get squelched, you know, in school. Steve Rush: Yeah. John Reid: And with our parents, right?  We have our parents to blame. We have society to blame. I mean, it's just, you know, we grow up wildly curious and all of a sudden, we stop asking questions and we're rewarded for answers and all that good stuff. We say here, cast a wide net, read fiction. That'll make you more, well there's a variety of things that fiction does, but you know, cast wide net, read a lot of different things, be a person of interest. You know, ask better questions, questions that make the other person think, questions that demonstrate you really care. Not just, how's your day going? Which, you know, do you really care? Do you really want to know? Is that the best you can come up with? Steve Rush: Yeah. John Reid: So, there's better questions in there. There's perspective seeking, of course. You know your own perspective, you love your own perspective. You want to be… great? Good for you. Who cares? Steve Rush: Exactly. John Reid: Find out a different perspective and learn something. Steve Rush: Yeah, that's really neat. John Reid: You know, and then of course the whole system is sort of designed. I came upon this in the research. I can't remember the researcher but explored then exploit. Like the idea as we explore stuff. And then as we get older, we exploit what we know to make money, to make a living to do that. And we sort of lose that explore part. Steve Rush: Yeah. John Reid: So, I like the explore exploit idea. They continue to explore. Steve Rush: I like that too, yeah. Your second lost superpower is resilience. Now, if ever there was time, we needed to grab hold of some resilience is now, right? John Reid: Oh, absolutely. And it's doable, right? It's teachable. It's not something that if you're not resilient… it's not a fixed state, right? It's all learnable. The key things around resilience are always, you know, the network, your tribe, your group. Do I have a group that supports me, or do I have a group that brings me down? In other words, when things are going bad, they, is it ‘hey, you can get through this' or do they say, ‘yeah, you know, they took advantage of you. You ought to leave. You know, they don't like you'  you know, what group am I hanging around? So, the tribe matters. Of course, optimism, right. Having an optimistic viewpoint. And that's all the, you know, ‘Is this permanent? Is this temporary? Can I get through this?' But there's an Optimism— Seligman from University of Pennsylvania calls, explanatory styles. How do I explain things when they happen to me? Do I explain them if I'm a victim? Or do I explain them in a different way, that's more optimistic. Of course, meaning. Finding meaning in what you do with what you do is a way to get through resilience, find something of meaning. So, there are techniques and of course being present. Steve Rush: Yeah. John Reid: You know, being mindful, being in the moment. I don't subscribe to, you know, go out and meditate. I'm not one of those people, you know, I meditate it every day. Because I think it's all up to us. I had cancer four times. I'm almost always in the moment. Steve Rush: Yeah, I should well imagine that. Gives you a sense of focus that meditation just won't give you, right? John Reid: People will say, oh, you know, I'm always in the moment where, but I know that people in other places are worrying. Whatever their words are, searching for. But you know, they're worrying about the future. They're thinking about the past, but I'm pretty much in the moment. And you have to decide for yourself. Now we're not necessarily good, right, at self-assessments, but nevertheless, you have to figure out what what's going to work for you. Steve Rush: Yeah. John Reid: But the point is, you want to be present when it comes to resilience. Steve Rush: And it's got to be right for you. There's no good trying to read a journal or replicate somebody else's behavior. So, it doesn't fit for you, right? John Reid: Yeah, context is king, which is, you know, it's the number one premise of my company. When I went through training in the chemical industry, what I was shocked to find out and still happens is that, you know, a training company built something let's say in 1980 and there you are in 2021, and it's the same program being delivered to you and voila. They just happened to have designed it in ‘80 for you. It's the silly season. Steve Rush: Right. John Reid: I mean, nothing off the shelf was designed for you. Does it have value? I guess some, but we all want to be considered unique. We want to be appreciated. We want to be respected. And you do that by understanding the context and, you know, treating me with some respect versus treating me as an empty vessel that you've got to fill with a model. Steve Rush: Sure. Now authenticity is your third superpower that we've lost. Now, it's interesting because 10 years ago, everyone was blogging around authenticity and it's almost become a little bit cliche in so much as a little bit overused, perhaps. How do you think we did end up losing some focus around authenticity and how do we get it back? John Reid: Yeah, that's a good question because I think it's anything, so authenticity is just the latest, you know, in the bag, is the answer, right? So unfortunately, there is this desire for simple answers to complex problems. Steve Rush: Yep. John Reid: So, the simple answer is empathy. Oh, the simple answer is grit. The simple answer is purpose. The simple answer, you know, it just drives me up the wall, frankly, as a learning professional, and these people participate in it. I mean, the people that create this stuff, you know, don't say, no, this is just an answer. It's not the answer. Steve Rush: Yeah. John Reid: They go full in it. This is the answer. Authenticity, you're right, it was in the mill. I think it gets it because, you know, people know when they see it and there's genuine authenticity and transparency. And there's something that you learned in a classroom that you're trying out, which by definition isn't authentic, Steve Rush: Exactly. You know, the other funny thing I hear a lot is I'm going to be my authentic self. Well, one, if you're having to tell me that, then you're probably not going to be. And because you've given it a label, you're probably not going to be. John Reid: I always think I've operated under an…. So, you know, there's a better version of yourself, right? That's why we're all after, right? We're after a better version of ourselves Steve Rush: And that's the right language John Reid: And there is a better version of yourself, right? When you fly off the handle, you know, there's a better version of you that wouldn't have flown off the handle. When you were gossiping, there's a better version of yourself that doesn't gossip, whatever it is, there's a better version. You want to be the best version of yourself. And that best version of yourself, you know, is authentically you, it's your true self that we're after. So, we have a relationship with a company called The Wise Advocate. The idea that there is this wise advocate inside of us, all, you know, there's two mental pathways. One is the habitual sort of reactive “How do I get out of the situation?” The other one gets in the executive center and says “what's the right thing?” And what we want to encourage people is to take that other path and think about, is this decision, is this behavior aligned with my best true self? Steve Rush: Yeah, absolutely spot on. Allied with that is compassion, which is your next lost superpower. Tell us it about that/ John Reid: Well, Compassion's probably my favorite, again, I had other authors, so I should have said this earlier, not just me, but there was Corena Chase, she wrote Authenticity, Lynae wrote Resilience, Andrew Reid, my son wrote the chapter on compassion. So, I have other authors here, which I should have mentioned earlier. Compassion, I love compassion. And I'll tell you why I love compassion because I was tired of empathy a little bit on so many levels. Steve Rush: So, here's the thing, what's the difference then between empathy and compassion, is there a difference? John Reid: There is a big difference, and it depends on whose definition. So, everything becomes definitional, but I think the majority of people would agree that compassion is empathy with action. Steve Rush: Nice. John Reid: Empathy is, “I feel your pain. I can take that perspective. I feel what you must be going through” but I don't do anything about it except for verbally maybe acknowledge it. Compassion has risk. Because now I put myself in that situation, that's personal risk. I take action. So, compassion is, I think what we ultimately get judged on, not what you say, but what you do. And we want to encourage people to take more action, an inclusive environment. It's not like sitting around going, oh, you know, it's got to be tough. And I know, you know, I've thought about this a lot and being different but what am I going to do about it? You know, am I going to become an ally? Am I going to risk my neck? Am I going to say something? So, Compassion's the right word. Steve Rush: Yeah. John Reid: And I think Compassion's the next authenticity, unfortunately. As you point out that authenticity might be dated, compassion might be, I might be cutting edge on compassion. So, part of my problem with empathy, and this is debatable, but I had cancer four times and I did not want empathy. I wanted sympathy. Steve Rush: Yeah, big difference too. John Reid: And Brené Brown acts like sympathy is some horrific thing. And I'm like, she's wrong about this! She's brilliant. I think she's brilliant, but she can be wrong, right. And I don't know. I would like to have her on the podcast now to explain, maybe I'm understanding it wrong, but all I know is in that moment, I wanted sympathy. I don't want you to say, oh, I know what it must like to have cancer four times. You have no idea. You just have no idea. Steve Rush: Absolutely. John Reid: And you look foolish and why are you putting yourself into my pain? If you're not going to do something about it. So, the other thing about empathy that is problematic Steve, is that we are empathetic to people who are like us. This is the us, them quandary. I'm very empathetic to people that look like, me act like me or who are in my socioeconomic. It's the them's that I have trouble with, right? Humans now, not me personally, but you know that doesn't get talked about enough. We get told either that we're not empathetic, which is not true. And we know it's not true because we are empathetic or, you know, so we ought to be told, hey, we teach empathy, we do, and we do in terms of emotional intelligence, we say, look, you're wildly empathetic. We tell that to the participants, right? Because they are when it comes to people like them. So, we say, hey, here's the data, here's your empathetic, here's the bad news. So, we have to expand, we have to have a different way of viewing the ‘them's' in a more inclusive way or a more belonging way to think about the others in order for us to tap into our empathy. Steve Rush: And for me, compassion is a little bit more experiential as well. It means, I'm actually really thinking and immersing myself into that situation so that I can change either a behavior or a skill, or indeed my approach to other people in different situations, right? John Reid: Yeah, it takes bravery. The five lost superpowers, we have the superpower theme. So, we try to carry that through the book in some degree that wasn't hokey. But for each of the superpowers, we have like a tool belt and the tool belt for a compassion is BAM and the B stands for brave, right? It takes a level of bravery to be compassionate. Steve Rush: It does, yeah. Because you put yourself out there, right? John Reid: Yeah, you're putting yourself out there. Steve Rush: Yeah. John Reid: You're taking personal risk. I mean, he took personal risk, obviously again and again and again. So yeah, compassion is very deserving of being a superpower. Steve Rush: Your Last Lost Superpower. I absolutely love, and I'm really excited to kick this around with you. And it's a whole notion of playfulness. Now, as kids, we had no boundaries and we would've done this willingly, vast majority anyway. And yet it's something that when we get to become more mature and we get careers and jobs, we do less, and it can unlock such a lot of greatness in our lives and work. Just wondered if, what your take on that would be? John Reid: Yeah, I mean. I loved playfulness because, you know, I'm writing a book for businesspeople and, you know, there's risk, right? With playfulness, you know, we don't want to be silly and we're adults now and we shouldn't be playing. And that sounds like a waste of time. I mean, the biggest thing is that being playful sounds like a waste of time, you know? But in fact, if we look at imagination, we look at creativity, we look at innovation, there's a sense of playfulness you have to have. So, we went playfulness versus the other words. The time I came upon playfulness in the business context, when I was reading, unfortunately, the report about the towers, the 9/11 report, and it starts with, it was a lack of imagination and I thought, wow, that's, you know, we never could see that happening. We weren't imaginative enough. Which lends itself to… we're taking ourselves so seriously we couldn't just go there and think wildly. And then as I got in the business world, I ran into this theory by Lev Vygotsky that really transformed our thinking around this. Lev Vygotsky was a Russian psychologist who talked about children on the playground playing a head, taller, meaning he observed that five-year-old played like eight-year-olds and eight-year-olds play like twelve-year-olds. We took that quote to mean that kids from a playground would take these risks. They played head taller. They took risks, but eventually we play a head shorter and that's tragic, right? We don't take those risks. We don't extend ourselves and it's not the best version of ourselves again. And so that really struck me. And then when I looked at like things like brainstorming, I always had this resistance to brainstorming. This idea, that great ideas come in this antiseptic where no ideas are judged and everybody's ideas the same. And I always thought, boy, when people are being creative, they're having fun. They're laughing. They're making fun of your idea. That's a stupid idea, it's just like, we forgot to have fun. Now it needs to be safe, and people need to be respected and talented, but you can interrupt people and laugh at some idea or, you know, be a fool yourself, and I think you can get more creative than what we've been led to believe by a lot of this stuff. So, and I think we know that now to, even to a large degree, but playful is an exciting one to think about. It's not being silly. It's just not taking ourselves so seriously. And there is a gift of going second. I love this idea, Steve. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but if I, as a leader can be playful and make fun of myself. I'll give you an example. Can I give you an example real quick? Steve Rush: Yep, yeah. Please shoot for it. Yeah. John Reid: So, I'm six foot four and I weigh too much, but I went paintballing once in the woods and there was a tree and I tried to hide behind tree, but the tree was a small tree. And so, people were pelting me with paintballs because they could see me. Well, years later years later, I find this picture of a bear hiding behind a tree. So, I send it to all my employees. I say, this is me at the paintball game. Now they thought it was funny, but that allows them to be silly. So that's the gift of going second, if you, as the leader can say, you know, we're all human. We have foibles, we do stupid stuff. I'm like you, and you get people's again, you get their best self at work. You get their playful self, their imaginative self, a 'try this' self, a sense of that can take risk. You know, not everything is life or death. I mean, I think you want that in your environment. I'm glad you like that chapter. And I think it deserves its own space. Steve Rush: And also, this is not about whether somebody's introverted or extroverted because there's also an unconscious assumption that if I'm introverted, I can't be playful. It's just a different style of playfulness. John Reid: Yeah, I'm one of those introverts who can do extroversion obviously by the pace at which I talk and all this, but I am, you know, much more regenerated when I'm alone reading, thinking, or small groups than I am in large crowds. It's where you get your energy from and it's so easy to judge somebody quickly or you're an extrovert and like, see, you don't even know what it means and that's not good. And why are you putting me in that box? And what does that mean anyway? Steve Rush: But it happens all the time, right? John Reid: Oh Yeah. We love boxes. We're trying to make it simple. Steve Rush: Labels. John Reid: Labels and boxes, and you're one of them and you're DiSC style is this. And your insight style is that, and therefore this and you do that. And it's like, oh my gosh, what's that about? Steve Rush: Well, listen, I'm delighted we had the chance to spin through those. We'll give you an opportunity at the end of the show so we can connect people to find a copy and the rest of what you do. Before we do that, though, just going to turn the tables a little bit. Now you've been a successful leader in lots of different businesses, including of course leading your own successful group. So, I'm going to tap into your leadership thinking and your leadership brain right now, John. And I'd like you to distill those down to your top three leadership hacks, what would they be? John Reid: I would say, what we did, which was very clever of me by accident, I think. We didn't declare values until we lived them. So, I had a company that was going on for four or five years and I said, okay, what are our values? Because we give grace, have a perspective, you know, but we actually lived the values before we declared them. So, I like that, well, I like the idea of having alignment, right? If you're going to say you're about this, you got to hold yourself accountable to that. Because people are going to look to when you're not. So, I think as a leader, you always want to be very clear. You don't want to leave it to people to try to figure it out. You want to be able to articulate. Here's what matters to me, and here's what it looks like. So, people have trust in you. So, there's building a trust. I would say the other one related to trust, because trust is the coin of the realm. As a leader, you've got to show an interest in the whole person. So, if they say, hey, I'd like to take off, my dog's sick. You've got to ask, oh, what's wrong with your dog? Most leaders are like, okay, no problem, you can work later or something tomorrow. They miss the opportunity to build a human-to-human connection. And then they wonder why people don't trust them, don't like them, don't confide in them, don't leave, you know? Well, because you just missed all these rapport cues. Steve Rush: Compassion again. Of course. John Reid: Yeah, it's just taking that extra step to show you're listening and oh, and that doesn't mean you have to care about this person's dog. No, what you care about is this person and you know that to care about this person, have a relationship. The dog's important to them. So, I'm going to ask about the dog. People get all caught up and that's not authentic, that's not me. I don't care about dogs. No, you do care about a relationship though, right? So, get out of your own way and ask about the dog. So, there's rapport building, there is aligning your values or whatever it is. I think the last one and this is where the training industry always gets it wrong. Not wrong, I shouldn't say that. But candor is a compliment. Being honest with people about their performance is a compliment, good and bad. Oh my gosh. Could talk so much about this. If you do nothing else, start recognizing people more. When they do something, right, thank them. That was great. I like how you did this. That makes having the difficult conversation so much easier. Steve Rush: Exactly. John Reid: You can just go right into it because you've got that. You've done that. You've told them when they're good. It's much harder when you've never said anything good to them. And now you want to deliver some bad news and then you try to hide good news in it and create that infamous crap sandwich. So, people that work for me never have to wonder what I'm thinking about their performance. They just don't, that burden's gone. Sometimes they'll say, wow, that's terrible. Oh, don't do that again. What was that? You know, but I do it in a playful way. We shank that one, we talk about that in the book, ‘shankapotamus' - I shank that one. But that's what you want to do as a leader, you want to recognize people and then be honest about their performance. People deserve honesty. People deserve to be treated a like adults, not children. And they deserve the truth in a way they can hear it. Not just let it all hang out, but in a way that is intentional about the way they can hear it. Steve Rush: Love that, great advice. Next part of the show, John, we call it Hack to Attack. Now this is typically where something in your life or work hasn't worked out. But as a result, the experience you're now using as a force of good. Now, we've already talked about surviving cancer four times. But if there was a moment in your life where you look back and think, well, that's definitely something that was pivotal for me. What would that have been? John Reid: I think the moments that are pivotal in my career were when I was under stress, and I didn't deal with things in the best way. And that happened a lot. And so as much as I said, I was mindful in the moment, I still had stress, right? Because you have cancer. You've got kids, you have kids in college. And I worked for some managers who were great. And I worked for some managers who were really not good human beings. They were really, you know, dysfunctional human beings and those dysfunctional human beings got to me. And one of them made me cry. I was like 50 years old or 45 years old. I don't know. It's a long time. It was like 45 years old. And I'm crying because this person is making my life hell. And it was funny when I did my exit interview, I said, you know, you made me cry. He said, do you think I meant to? And I said, I don't know what you meant to do. All I know is I cried. And I've never cried before, but I think those turning moments are, you know, not dealing with it, trying to wish it away, not taking control of it, not taking action on it, but just becoming a little bit of a victim, right? Where you look at things that are being done to me and losing your sense of agency. And that's where I first fell in love with the word agency, right. That we have to have agency and we don't have agency if we're so helpless until we've got to regain it if we don't have it, we've got to find a way to regain it. Steve Rush: And that's where it'll make you stronger and you'll become more resilient and more effective as a result of the learning that you get from that experience. John Reid: Sure, and I want to give people agency, I want them to know everything. I mean, I tell my employees, we just had a meeting and here's all the numbers. Here's everything you need to know. Here's everything I know. So, you know, you're making choices with full information. Because you're an adult and you're entitled to that, and you have agency and I want you to know how we're doing. Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely so John Reid: The right thing to do. Steve Rush: So last thing we get to do today is we get you to do some time travel, bump into John at 21 and give him some advice. What would your words of wisdom to him then be? John Reid: Well, I would say to John at 21, there's some things about you that the world is going to say is wrong, but it's actually your secret sauce. So, the secret sauce was, I was always authentic. I was never anybody, but me. I was always curious and always playful. I think those three qualities I had from the beginning, what I would tell 21-year-old me is, you know, it's not about you though, right? I mean, I was that guy. I was a little bit too much of that. Hey, look what I did, look what I accomplished, and nobody likes that guy. And also, there was a better version of me, a sort of a more controlled. I used to walk in a room of people. This is what I would tell younger me. I would walk in a room, a group of people, 21 and probably just start talking. And I would defend that behavior by saying, well, that's me and the people around me go, that's John, look at John, only John can walk in a room and just start talking. But you know, there is a good percentage of people in the room are like, you know, I hate John, John's a jerk. I was talking and John interrupted me. And this John that some of you like is kind of a jerk. And it took me a while to realize that you can be authentically John without being a jerk. And you know, I think that's what I would tell 21-year-old, John. I hope he would listen. He wasn't a good listener, either 21-year-old John. Steve Rush: Well good news, it kind of all figured out at the end, right? John Reid: Yeah. Steve Rush: So, John, listen, I've really loved chatting and I could spend all day chatting or be at our listeners will probably drop off about now, because this is typically where our shows kind of run to and from, but before we wrap up our conversation today, how can we make sure our global audience can connect with you and the work that you do, maybe get a copy of some of the books. John Reid: Yeah, please reach out. A couple ways, one, is the website, http://www.jmreidgroup.com and I'll give my email. Can I do that Steve? Steve Rush: Absolutely. I know you're really connecting with people, so please do. John Reid: It's John, J-0-H-N at J-M-R-E-I-D group.com. And please email me, any emails I get I'll send a copy of the book if it's in the United States of America area. But the book also available. Steve Rush: Hashtag expensive international postage. John Reid: Exactly. But you know, we're on Amazon. We've had good success with the second book and the first book. So, you know, they're readily available. We're going to have an audio version coming out, I think in the next month. Steve Rush: Sure thing. We'll make sure that the links to your books, as well as to the JMReid Group and your email are in our show notes. So, folks can click straight into when we're done. John Reid: Great. Thank you, Steve. Steve Rush: John, I've had a ball and thank you ever so much for being part of our community. Wish you ever success. I know that you are in the moment, and I know that there are some great things ahead for you and the JMReid Group. So, thanks for being part of our community. John Reid: Thank you. Closing Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers. Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handle there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.    

Dr Kerstin Potter is an Executive Coach with over 30 years in international business the private and public sector, She is the Founder and CEO Visual Metaphors at Work. Explore these topics: What is the difference between metaphors and visual metaphors? The unconscious thoughts and neuroscience triggered by visual metaphors. How visual metaphors help leaders express themselves in situations they find difficult. It's not about being a leader of – but a leader with.   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com   Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA   Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Kerstin below: Kerstin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerstin-potter/ Company  Website: https://www.visualmetaphorsatwork.com Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach, or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker. Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you Our special guest on today's show is Dr. Kerstin Potter. She's an executive coach with an enormous amount of international experience, and she's now the CEO of visual metaphors at work. But before we get a chance to speak with Kirsten, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: How can use in the news today, we explore how we can control our brain for optimal functioning, that mighty three-pound organ that sits in amongst our skulls. How do we get that to work for us instead of against us? When we are preparing for significant events in our careers and our work, we tend to focus on preparation. For a big presentation to do we practice until we get comfortable. If we have an interview for a new job, we'll practice some research so that we understand what the obvious questions might be. When we take this approach however, we're only doing half the work of being effective and successful. How often do we take time to prepare our brains? What do you do to ensure that you keep that pivotal organ in the game? Not just your body in actions, it's fair to say that physical preparation is what controls the brain, but there are specific things we can do to ensure that our brain is as prepared as our body for those important career situations. Let's dive into a few areas. Thoughts play a massive part in how our brain is used. Truth is, we can manage emotions, but it starts with controlling our thoughts. Every emotion we experience comes from a thought which occurs consciously or unconsciously. Then we experience one or more emotions based on it. And if those thoughts don't serve you well, it can be pretty destructive. You might find yourself getting into a Whirlpool that takes you away from the work that you're at distracted, and therefore will reduce your opportunity for peak level performance. The hack for brain training here is to be thoughtful around whether or not your thoughts are helping you move forward, or they're going to hold you back. Take the time to consider these thoughts and replace them with data by asking yourself specific questions. These questions can help you replace the thoughts with information that could be really helpful. An example could be consider how many times you've given a successful presentation and then do a quick mental scan of what it was that helped you accomplish what it was that you set out in that presentation. What were the things that helped you? Do you have evidence to support your experiences, aligned your education, your previous jobs and your career accomplishments, all will give you data to reinforce your capability in order for you to do a great job. And when you provide your brain with evidence and data, it doesn't have to do the hard work of finding the information to fill the uncertainty, but reminding your brain, you have the skill sets to take on the task that you have the background to be credible on the topic. Your brain will create the right emotions that align with these thoughts, replacing anxiety with confidence, the power of words is a really important hack to continually evolve and build brain power. As a professional, you're like to be aware of the power of words. It can be used to motivate, demoralize, strengthen, undermine. But how often do you think about the words which you use on yourself? Yourself talk. Such words might be conscious ones that you say to yourself, as well as the unconscious words that whisper around in your ears when you're thinking to yourself. The problem here of course, is that words create thoughts, thoughts create actions. So, these words have to be the ones that serve you well. And I've been quoted in saying before, this is the voice in your head that you wake up with. It's the one you go to bed with, and it'd be the last one you hear before you die. So, it has to serve you really well. The heck here is to avoid the words that don't serve us well. And there are a few examples could be, should, have to, need to, must have, which create thoughts of you not doing enough or not being enough. They may experience feelings of guilt or put you under a position of pressure. To avoid creating an internal climate of negative thoughts and emotions. Replace these pressure words with power words, such as, want, will, do. Instead of telling yourself, you should going to work to review X, Y, Z, use the words I will. Changing the pressure word of should to will and want. Shifting the focus from my making a mistake to building confidence puts you back in control of your thoughts and emotions and builds brain power. And with the hacks that we've shared so far, we've talked about the thoughts that are creating actions in the way that we do things. These all stem from mindset. When you work on a project for your organization, do you plan to start and only complete 50% of it? Of course, you don't, but this is a metaphor of how we've been engaging our brain when it comes to preparation for our professional roles. Overall, how you function is your choice, it's a mindset. You can determine what thoughts you want to encourage to create beneficial emotions, your mindset related to create the thoughts you need to get you closer to big performance. And that mindset will allow you to decide what words will generate the right behaviors and actions that align with you achieving your goals. And you can tell your brain where to focus and in doing so unlock the results that you want. These simple strategies and hacks will help your brain become a better tool for you and remember mindset triggers, your thoughts that triggers your behaviors. That's been the leadership Hacker News, we'd love for you to share your stories and insights with us so please get in touch. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Joining me on the show today is Dr. Kerstin Potter. She's an executive coach with an enormous amount of international experience of over 30 years in leading both private and public sector businesses. She's now the CEO of Visual Metaphors at Work. Kerstin, welcome to the show. Dr. Kerstin Potter: It's great to be here. Thank you. Steve Rush: I'm delighted that we've got you to come on our show for two reasons. One, the first time that you and I met, it was a kind of a bumping into visual metaphors. And then subsequently I've been coached by you. And it was an enormous experience for me. And I just wanted to get our listeners to feel how that might have been for them. But before we dive into the whole notion of what you do, let's get to know a little bit about you. What's your backstory? Dr. Kerstin Potter: Right? Well, I was born in Sweden, and I spent my early childhood there. And then when I was 13 years old, my family moved to Switzerland. I was placed in a convent school where only French was spoken. And I didn't know where to French at the time. And my family wasn't religious. So, I didn't understand any of the rituals either. So, I felt very much as a mute, you know, for six months I had to really get by, by looking at how people were acting, what they were doing and the tone of their voices and so on to try to understand what was going on. And at the beginning I made many mistakes and didn't really get it at all. And then I got better and better at really looking at what's going on around me. And after six months, I was ready to then with my French to start the normal school. But I think with hindsight, that time of newness was what made me really interested in how people work and operate and listening and looking at people in that way. Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the life and culture in the French part of Switzerland. So, I stayed on there and trained as a scientist by reading chemistry at the University Lund. I was interested in how a scientist mind worked in the observation experimentation, looking at feedback from systems and then making changes and looking how that worked. I then had a brief interlude in Sweden, reading history of art. This is where images came in, I think. And this was really because I needed to see Sweden or this culture of Sweden from the viewpoint of grownup, rather than a child, because many people were asking me about Sweden, I couldn't really answer them. After that brief interlude. I then went to the UK to do a PhD in chemistry, in Cambridge. And this was really to get myself or make myself a better scientist by training in actually doing real research work. After I had finished my doctorate, I joined a pharma company AstraZeneca as a graduate trainee. I think I went into this with some detail because I think this is the pattern of my career really is trying to move on into a different and new industrial or business area. And at the same time change country, because I really enjoyed the learning and the new culture. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Kerstin Potter: The new cultures I encountered. So, I carried on in that pattern. After working the pharma industry, I moved back to Switzerland as part owner of a startup, and that was specializing in mentalized textiles for high precision printing and also protection cages for electronic equipment. So, a completely different area again. I then spent three years with Nestle in food ingredients, six years as management consultant in Germany. And then I moved back to the UK, setting up European safe effort for high tech consultancy. Again, in Cambridge, I was back made a complete tour. I then moved on to become director of Executive Education at Cass Business School in the city of London, the school specialized in finance. So again, I walked into a new area for me. This is also where I was first asked to act as a coach, particularly for me for women who moved in from outside the UK into the higher levels of management in the city of London, I thoroughly enjoyed coaching. I mean, this was, again, something completely new to me and I felt I needed to become more professional here. So, I trained as an executive coach at HEC Business School in Paris. I wanted to do this in Paris rather than in the UK, because at the time UK coaching was very much influenced by the US. And I also wanted to see how a different culture was working with coaching. And in addition, I also knew that in France at the time a team coaching was very important, and people were very interested in how this could work out. That hadn't really started yet in the US and in the UK. So, this is where I then really started as a coach, as a professional coach. Steve Rush: So, one of the things that just rung a bell with me is, you were talking about that Kirsten, is that the kind of whole notion of cultural backdrop of coaching. Do you notice that there is a kind of a difference between different cultures in the way that we coach and are being coached? Dr. Kerstin Potter: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, we have a different attitude towards power in different regions of the world. We have a different attitude to how we communicate in general and also the sort of careers, because executive coaching is about coaching people in their business careers, the way you look at your careers and what is important is completely different. Steve Rush: So, from the time that you became a professional coach, how did you end up with Visual Metaphors at Work? Dr. Kerstin Potter: Well, I've been part of teams and I've been responsible for teams during my whole career. And I was starting to become really frustrated and worried. By the way that corporate culture and office politics get in the way of change and growth both at the level of the organization and the visual. So, this is where the team thing comes in. When I remembered some pioneering visual metaphor work carried out by Professor Angela Dumas at London Business School. She used images and objects to help teams reveal tacit knowledge and promote deeper conversations and trust within the team. I came across though when I was working with this high-tech consultancy in Cambridge. She'd been mandated by the consultancy to kick off a series of workshops for a client in Finland. This was an engineering company producing giant paper making machines. And they had acquired a smallest Swedish company. Directors and the management teams from both organizations were to meet for the first time to agree on a common strategy for product development and service development. And Angela Dumas had been asked to pick off this whole thing using her images and objects. I was very worried because I don't like putting people into boxes, but I think it's well known that Swedes and Finns are not particularly talkative. And adding to that a group of engineers having to face up to images and try to talk about them. I was worried that it was going to be a complete disaster. I didn't know whether I was actually going to be there and see this big car crash or whether it would be better for me to just keep away from it. But yeah, my curiosity took over and I ended up joining them all. It was in middle of the winter. It was very dark in Finland, very cold. And Angela Dumas took out her bag of tricks, showed all her images, asked her questions, et cetera. And I was absolutely amazed. After 10 minutes, she had these people talking together in a very constructive manner and having fun at the same time. And they ended up with some really strong decisions and ways forward that they actually acted on, which I thought was amazing. So, when I had finished my training as a coach, then as a team coach, I remembered what had happened there. And so, I contacted Angela again to see what had happened with her methodology, her visual metaphors, et cetera, and unfortunately, she had been very ill and had to leave London Business School. So, I ended up sitting by her bedside and then we took walks together, slow walks together in the park as she was in convalescence and listened to her talking about her research in the area, watch she'd done, the experiments she'd done. And I was also going through her paper asking her lots of questions. So, after that Angela and I decided to start a company together, which is now Visual Metaphors at Work. We set it up in Dubai in 2012. And we started working on developing the Lephorus to be a coaching tool for coaches, facilitators, and executives and companies to have some coaching experience to use with teams and we call this Lephorus. Angela then decided to retire in 2014. And I've been carrying on the work since then. Steve Rush: This leads us to this point, right? So now you have your organization, and you are inspiring different coaching conversations using a really neat and different talk. And before we get into that, let's just for our global audience. We have 94 countries that listen to this podcast. So, on that basis, let's start with metaphors. For those that might be less familiar with that English phraseology, metaphor. What does that mean? Dr. Kerstin Potter: We humans have been using metaphors for a very long time, indeed, and young people or young children from the age three or four, understand them without any problem at all and they exist in every culture. So, for example, we say time flies to show that time may have a direction for us and that it can go past very quickly in a flash. We also say time is money. We have hourly monthly wages. So, we paid for the time we spend at work or the time we give to the companies where we are working for our work. And also, if we do something wrong in society, we pay our dues by spending time in prison. We also say time heals. So, these are different ways of framing and reframing the quite complicated concept of time. Using metaphors like this is a way we have developed able to actually get a handle of complex concepts and to talk about them with others. Scientists use metaphors a lot in order to try to explain to each other what's going on in their experiments and so on, for example, I mean, say atoms bumped together, they don't, but it's very helpful to describe it in this way. There are also other metaphors like gestures, and also there are sound metaphors, for example a rooster crowing in the morning could indicate a new start, a new beginning. So that's met metaphors in general, and then there are visual metaphors and visual metaphors are images. We say an image is worth a thousand words, for example. Steve Rush: Another metaphor as well. Dr. Kerstin Potter: Yes, exactly. Steve Rush: So, I remember when you coached me, the thing that made the real difference for me in using metaphors is it helped me unlock my unconscious thinking. And when you coached me, you were using words around a situation. So typically, it would start with, let's talk about this situation and I want you to look at these images. And I remember you saying, look at the image. What do you see? What do you notice that similar to that situation? And on the face value, you look at an image and you think, well, it, can't, here's a bunch of colors and shapes and directions, or here's a chair that can't be possibly similar to the situation I'm in, but actually when you allow yourself to be present and in that moment and think about it, you can start noticing some patterns and some similarities. And that was the one thing that really intrigued me about this whole process. So, for me as a coachee, what's actually happening there? Dr. Kerstin Potter: Well, actually when I talk to people and it's interesting the words you've been using there, what people say is that when you see the images you seem to have an instant reaction to these images. It's a more like a gut feel. You know that bit is important to me, but you don't know why. They then say they try to process them intellectually, so there's an internal conversation. And then they go back to the instant reaction, the gut feel they had in choosing one particular image in that situation. So, it's not really very reasoned. It is a gut reaction, you know, does that make sense in what happened to you? Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely. What's quite ironic is we're talking about visual metaphors on a podcast, which is an audible means of communication. But even as we are describing this, I suspect our listeners can start to think about, if I described that, you know, we had four boxes each within an image, some would have shapes, some would have curve lines, some would have bright colors, some would have less bright colors, and you are naturally drawn to an image that for whatever reason, draws you there and there is no intellectual reason for that either. Dr. Kerstin Potter: Exactly, and then what people say to me is that that picture that you have selected gives you an anchor, it's an anchor point to be confident and specific about articulating the feelings around that situation and the insights you have, so you can do it. It goes very quickly. You start talking about important things very fast, and I think it's also something to do about if you have a white page, you know, how do you start writing? It's always difficult. The same thing, if you are asked to talk about your situation, you know, tell me more about it. Again, it's a blank page. Whereas if you have this image as a sort of anchor, it makes it much easier to are talking about things. Steve Rush: And I suspect then unconsciously, because something been triggered in that conversation. We've triggered the conversation. Then it allows you as a coach to then ask additional relevant questions because you've got something out early. Dr. Kerstin Potter: Absolutely. And what we also do and what's important with Lephorus is that we use several sets of images. So, we keep on asking questions, using different types of images. That's what you saw too Steve, didn't you? Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Kerstin Potter: And also, it's not just any images. These images have been developed. Starting off bound, read your mind, then by us, we now are at the third generation of images because we have learned as we go along, what works in well in certain situation and what works less well. So, it's very important. The type of image, the family you use, the questions you ask and the type of questions, you have to be very careful with how you word your questions. Steve Rush: And I suspect if you are not careful, you end up leading people to anchor into an image that they might not naturally migrate towards, right? Dr. Kerstin Potter: Absolutely. And also saying things that they think they should say, because, you know, it's the way you prompt the way you ask questions about the image to try to get deeper into it. You can't ask leading questions, that's clear. Steve Rush: Yeah, and people learn in lots of different ways. So, if we go back to the core foundations that most of us learn, it's either visual, auditory. So, we see things, we hear things, we like to touch things that's kinesthetic. So, what if I'm not naturally visual, will it still have the same effect for me? Dr. Kerstin Potter: You know, it's an interesting question. First of all, from the experience, there is no problem. Everybody actually gets this very, very quickly. The only people we've had real problems with are those who are actually in the art world or in the design world, because we use images of abstract images. So, they're immediately trying to get back to, you know, who might have painted that. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Kerstin Potter: You mentioned images of chairs. They might say, well, who might be the designer of that chair? So, they get into their professional life before they look at the image, just as an image. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Kerstin Potter: Those are the only people who've had problems with. It's interesting, you're saying this about more visual or more sort of language based. It's actually been shown that, and that was some recent research carried out in 2017 by Elinor Amit at Harvard Medical School who showed that, in fact, we internally use both sort of language reasoning and visual reason, but it depends on the complexity of the issue at hand, which one we turn to. When the issue is quite simple, we use more language thinking. And when the complexity is increased, we start to go more towards the visual. And that happens with everyone. Steve Rush: That's really interesting, isn't it? Yeah, so particularly when we find ourselves in difficult situations or elements of particular conflict, you found that people using visual metaphors can also unlock some learning in themselves far quicker than if they would do through regular coaching. What's the reason that happens? Dr. Kerstin Potter: Because It's yourself, the person itself who is actually finding these insights within themselves, you then move on to actually understanding how you can go forward in a quite different way. You know, if you move towards something, you have to know what would be good and you have to know what would be bad for you. And then you can start building the road. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Kerstin Potter: From where you are today to where you want to get to, again, using images to show you the different paths you can take. And you then very quickly, very easily get into, right. I can try to do this. I can try to do that. If that doesn't work, I can move on to this other pathway and so on. So, you get to something very quickly and something practical. Steve Rush: Yeah, and also from a team and group perspective, this can really also help stimulate conversation in broader teams rather than just individuals as well. And I just wondered what your experience was of that. Dr. Kerstin Potter: Oh yes. Well, I mean, one of the things that people do say also is that this creates, you know, the famous psychological safety. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Kerstin Potter: You know that Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School has been talking about for many, many years. Here, were actually seemed to be creating that. And there are two things. One is the ritual. We ask each person of the team, one after the other in silence, choose an image that represents the situation or the issue at hand or whatever. And then to talk to their teammates about this image. And we find that when they do that, people lean in and want to listen to what their colleague is saying. They're very interested to see which image their colleague chooses. And then to listen to what they're saying about that image. You then very quickly, have other team members more questions about the image. On fact, for example, saying, well, I chose that image too, but for this and this reason, which is different from yours, and you have a conversation happening again very quickly. And because you're talking about the image, you're not talking about the person, it's becomes nonconfrontational and non-aggressive. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Kerstin Potter: So, you have an openness in the team that happens very quickly, and which is very constructive. Steve Rush: And to your point, psychologically safe then, isn't it? Yeah, like it. Dr. Kerstin Potter: They say afterwards, I feel as if, you know, I've been working with these people for years but after this session, I feel as if I'd been to school with them. Steve Rush: How fascinating, yeah. So, if I'm a leader listening to this and I'm thinking, great, I'll just whip myself onto the internet. I'll download of images, and I'll try and run this with my team. What's the danger in doing that? Or is there a danger in doing that? Dr. Kerstin Potter: Well, it depends on what you want to do with it. I mean, there's something called photolanguage that has been used for very many years in teams, when you start a workshop, for example, and photolanguage is the selection of images to use about 50 images, photos. And it has people in it, it has animals in it, it has as cars, you know, anything. And it's very useful. If you say at the beginning of the workshop, say, you know, how are you feeling now? Or what do you want to get out of this workshop? Instead of doing the usual flip chart, you know, what are you wanting to get out of this workshop? You do it with this image, and that's been going on for years and years and that's useful. However, you don't get any deeper than that. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Kerstin Potter: You know, the important thing with the Lephorus is that we have the different types of images for different depths of conversation. We are really digging in, we're starting at the higher level saying, you know, what's your situation? What is the situation as a whole? And then we dig down during a workshop, which usually takes about two hours or two and a half hours. Steve Rush: And your images are scientifically chosen over time through experience and through methodology to make sure that they stimulate the conversation, right? Dr. Kerstin Potter: Yeah, they've been chosen through experience. I don't know about scientifically. But yes, over, you know, over many years, since 2012, we have been working with those images and looking at how they worked in workshops. Steve Rush: So, if I wanted to dig into visual metaphors, what's the easiest way for me to kick that off? Dr. Kerstin Potter: Well, our website is a good way to start because there are videos there explaining what metaphors are and how they work. And they're also courses for coaching and facilitators to learn the techniques. And in a few weeks, there will be an eBook with more background, more theoretical background and so on. So, there's quite a lot of information there. And then I'd always be happy to talk to anybody about my experience, our experiences and also give examples of what we've been doing and the issues that we have been helping organizations face and find solutions too. Steve Rush: Excellent, and at the end of the show, we'll make sure we capture how people can connect with you so that they can dive into some of that. But at this part of the show, typically where we turn the tables a little, we're now going to hack into your leadership mind. So having led a number of different businesses, lots of different international experiences, I'm really keen to dive in and hack into your leadership mind. So, if you had to think about your life's work and distill that down to your top three leadership hacks, what would they be? Dr. Kerstin Potter: Right. Well, I think the first one is that it is not about being a leader of, for me, it's being a leader with, so it's about walking together, walking side by side with a team. And I find that important because there is an intelligence in a team. There's an intelligence in an organization that we often don't take account off. Steve Rush: Okay. Dr. Kerstin Potter: Number two, if you do work in that way, you know, rather than being a leader with, it's very important that wherever you are, the top management, actually agrees with this because if that's not the case, and you do listen to the intelligence of the team and you then are not able to take account of that, then that's worse than not listening in the first place. I've seen that happening. We have been working in organizations where we actually have walked away because we had to say, no, this is counterproductive. If we don't act on the intelligence of the organization that is destructive rather than constructive. Steve Rush: Definitely. Dr. Kerstin Potter: Numbers, three. Unforce humor is important, has an important place. So that's why I really like when we are running these workshops that those early banter, you know, people laugh a bit about the images, about the things that's being said. And then very quickly when they realize that important things are coming out, it becomes serious, but there is banter and laughter and I think that's important. Steve Rush: It also unlocks the chemicals in the brain to allow that deeper thinking and trust also comes about as a result of that, doesn't it? Dr. Kerstin Potter: Yeah, that's right. And I think, you know, if we can have more unforce humor in organizations in general, we'd all be happier. Steve Rush: Definitely, yeah. Next part of the show, we've affectionately called Hack to Attack. This is where something hasn't worked out, it may have been pretty catastrophic, but at the time you took some learning from it and it's now a force of good for you in your work on life. What would be your Hack to Attack? Dr. Kerstin Potter: Well, I told you that I've been moving from one job to another and into and out of different countries. And of course, that can feel very risky and scary. But I must say that at the end, every time it's actually produced something very good, but for me and my family, even in places or in circumstances, when I've been asked to leave an organization, which is never an easy place to be in, with hindsight, that's been a good thing. And I've seen other people in similar situations thinking that their world has had ended. And in fact, this was actually an opening for something new, something different. So yes, it's scary. But I have learned that it's actually, usually very positive in the end. Steve Rush: It's that moment, isn't it? That you make a call that either something is scary or alluring and it's a very fine line, isn't it? Last part of the show, we get to give you some time travel. You get to bump into Kirsten at 21 and give us some advice. What would your words of wisdom be to her then? Dr. Kerstin Potter: Right. Well, I'm naturally quite introverted and I would advise myself at the time to be kind to myself because I tried to be something I wasn't, I tried to be extrovert because I thought that was the way to be. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Kerstin Potter: And I've learned over many years that it's better to accept what you are and then to find ways of doing what you want to do, but in that context. So, for example, I go to networking events, but I allow myself to leave 30 minutes. So, it's those little things to be kind to yourself, not to stop yourself doing things because they are, you know, you're worried about them, whatever, but find ways of working it so that it fits with who you are. I have to say that if I'd said that to myself, age 21, I wouldn't have been listening. Steve Rush: That's the other thing, isn't it? With hindsight. I reflect back on the same question to me. That's been asked many times and at 21, gosh, I was a very different individual and a different framing. If only we could listen to ourselves at 21, our life may have been a bit more seamless. Dr. Kerstin Potter: Perhaps. Steve Rush: But who knows? Then we wouldn't have had those learning experiences either, right? Dr. Kerstin Potter: Exactly. I was going to say you need those bumps. Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely, so. So beyond today, what's the best way we can connect our audience to your firm and to you through the work that you do? Dr. Kerstin Potter: Well, our website is visualmetaphorsatwork.com. It's a bit of a mouthful. But as I said, lots of information there, I'm also active on LinkedIn. So, you can connect with me through that. During the last year, I've discovered that I like doing videos during the pandemic, last two years during the pandemic. I really like doing videos. So, we'll soon have a presence on YouTube as well. Particularly describing case studies from our clients. So, you know, guest contact me via LinkedIn or the website, and I can then give you updates on where things will appear that you might find of interest. Steve Rush: Super, and we'll make sure all of those links are in our show notes. So, folks can literally head over soon as they've listened to this and click in and find you. Dr. Kerstin Potter: Thank you. Steve Rush: So, Kerstin, thank you for coming on our show. I am really delighted that we've been able to showcase your work and my experience have been coached by you. And in hope that others will also find that visual metaphors can really unlock their experiences at work. So, thank you for coming on our podcast and thank you for sharing what you do. Dr. Kerstin Potter: Thank you for having me. Steve Rush: Thanks Kerstin. Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the Leadership Hacker.                                                 

Amy Lynn Durham is the CEO of Create Magic at Work. She's also a Berkeley Certified Executive Coach, and one of the world's leading practitioners on spiritual intelligence. In this intimate conversation we discuss some great learning including: What is Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) How we can use SQ and EQ at work as leaders What to do, to create magic at work How to feel connected with your teams or organization   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com   Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA   Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Amy below: Amy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amylynndurham/ Create Magic at Work Website: https://createmagicatwork.net Amy on Twitter https://twitter.com/durham_amy Amy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/createmagicatwork/   Full Transcript Below     Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach, or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Amy Lynn Durham is a special guest on today's show. Amy is the CEO of Create Magic at Work. She's also a Berkeley Certified Executive Coach, and one of the world's leading practitioners on spiritual intelligence. But before we get a chance to speak with Amy, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: Given today's show is about spiritual intelligence. We're going to start off by diving into emotional intelligence. So what is it? Well at the most basic level, emotional intelligence is the ability to understand your own emotions and other people's feelings. A high level of emotional intelligence will help us as leaders engage with others effectively. Emotional intelligence affects all aspects of our professional and personal life. From our ability to self-regulate our emotions to manage behavior, sell an idea and lead and form healthy relationships. Many companies have determined employees with a high level of emotion, intelligence increase a company's productivity and significantly impacts on the bottom line. So as a leader, if you're looking ways to boost your emotional, here's a few steps to help you on your way. Learn to stay cool. As the saying goes, you attract more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. You're more likely to get what you need by being polite rather than being rude. We say things we regret when we are stressed and angry, while stress is of course a normal part of life, it can so distract us from the rational thinking that we absolutely need. Stress, however, dramatically affects how we deal with problematic situations. You feel yourself getting stressed, take a walk, get some fresh air, sip some water, but take a break. If you want to boost your emotional intelligence, you need to learn how to avoid succumbing easily to the stresses in our personal and professional lives. Next, develop empathy and compassion. Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and manage not only our own emotions, but for those around us as well. Their opinions, judgments, demands, requests of others can also cause us to lose our cool. But by stepping into their shoes, understanding can really set us apart. Be present in the moment and try and examine it from all angles. It could be entirely possible that you are reading into a situation that isn't actually happening right in front of you. Their intent could be altogether different from your understanding of their situation. Be definitive. Are you someone who has things happen to them or are you the person that makes things happen? Learn how to take ownership of the situations in our lives. You're in driver seat after all. With higher emotion intelligence, you'll realize that you are in control of all of your outcomes, even though you might not think so, emotion and intelligence help you respond in an empowering way where circumstances and situations could be even really quite challenging and help you find a way around. Remember you're in the driving seat. Change old habits, change how you engage with others. If you are in a habit of cutting people off, when they speak, practice stopping it. Learn to be fully present when engaging with others. Listen thoroughly to what somebody is saying without thinking how you're going to respond, just be in the moment. And yet it takes practice. And lastly, practice mindfulness. Mindfulness is the practice of observing the present moment without judging what you notice. The more you're able to observe without are judging the less slightly you are actually to react to the environment that's around you. And to sum this up nicely, Victor Frankl, author of Man's Search For Meaning. States that everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms, which is to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances. And developing our emotional intelligence will help us all enjoy this freedom to choose your attitude in any given circumstance. So, in conclusion, researchers have determined that emotional intelligence has more impact on success than IQ, your intelligence. The good news is that your level of emotional intelligence is not fixed, and it can be changed, and we can nurture it and it can grow. If you want some more informational emotional intelligence. One of the godfathers that brought this to our four is Daniel Goleman and he has a book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. Please continue to keep your new stories flowing to us. But for now, let's get into the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Joining me on the show today is Amy Lynn Durham. Amy is a certified executive coach. She's the founder and CEO of her company Create Magic At Work and they offer spiritual intelligence and emotional intelligence tools to energize and transform the workplace. Amy's also written fantastic book named of course Create Magic At Work. Amy, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Amy Lynn Durham: Thank you for having me, Steve. I'm happy to be here. Steve Rush: We always love to kick the show off with an opportunity for you to share a little bit about how you've arrived doing what you're doing. So, tell us a little bit about the backstory? Amy Lynn Durham: How have I arrived? What a question. Yeah, it's a roller coaster ride for sure. Being a solopreneur entrepreneur. My background is in the corporate world as a corporate executive. I've worked for private and publicly traded companies. At my peak, I was working for a large telecommunications company, and I was operating about 40 million dollars a year in operating income and managing a little over 400 employees. And I mainly ran half of California, which is the size of a small country if you will. Steve Rush: It's in fact bigger than many countries, right? Amy Lynn Durham: Yeah. And part of which was the Bay Area in Silicon Valley. So, I have a strong background in achieving sales goals, HR, recruiting, employee engagement, workplace culture, and all of those things that are involved with that. While I was in my position there, I really felt like my creativity was stifled in the workplace. And in my final year in that position, I made a goal within myself that I wanted to show to the C-suite leaders, that human connection improves productivity and profitability versus pitting people against each other in unhealthy competition. And so, I planned for a year to leave my job and I didn't tell anyone because I wanted to go on a journey where I reinjected myself back into the workplace to do these connecting activities. But what I did during the year that I stayed in my job was. I used my employees to test out these field, tested activities that I ended up putting in my book and I wanted to make sure I left on top, again, to show that these things work in the workplace. Steve Rush: Awesome. And in doing that kind of test and learn under the radar, so to speak, what did you fundamentally learn about your existing team that happened as a result of you changing your approach? Amy Lynn Durham: Wow, well, it freed me up as a leader to actually do my job. I'm going to start with the end result and then kind of unthread it from there for you. Once the team members saw the humanity within each other, with these activities, we were doing that really at the end of the day, elevated their spiritual intelligence, their SQ, and their EQ as well, their emotional intelligence. They worked together better. So, you know, one person would call the other if they had a question or needed help, collaboration skyrocketed. I wasn't the only main point of contact anymore. And the other thing that it did, which is a huge result of skill building and spiritual intelligence in the workplace, is it decreased the ego induced drama. Steve Rush: Right. Amy Lynn Durham: That is pretty time consuming in the workplace. And there were a lot more results. As far as like the ripple effect for humanity. I mean, there were some beautiful moments that I feel were healing that people had where they could really show who they are authentically in the workplace. And I know that team remembers each other forever now. Steve Rush: Because they've got a deeper, more meaningful connection, right. Amy Lynn Durham: A hundred percent. Steve Rush: Yeah. So, you pivoted then into the world of helping others on this journey that you'd experienced yourself by really diving into that, what you call spiritual intelligence. Now for focus, listen into this. They may be more familiar with the language of emotion intelligence, but perhaps less so for spiritual intelligence. So maybe you can just give us a little bit of an overview if you like, as to what spiritual intelligence is and how that differs or not as a case maybe from EQ? Amy Lynn Durham: Right? Right. Yeah. So, this is an arguable data point, but I'm going to share it because it's a great way to frame it. You get to SQ by way of EQ. So, if you have been working on self-awareness of your emotions and working on building connections in the workplace, that's sort of skill building in EQ. SQ you is when you start pondering, you know, why am I here? What is my life purpose? What are my values? And am I living in alignment with those values? And it's that point in your life where you start thinking of those different questions for yourself. The adult development theory says it typically happens around your early to mid-thirties, but obviously we're all human and there's exceptions, right? Steve Rush: Right. Amy Lynn Durham: The definition of spiritual intelligence is the ability. And this is from Cindy Wigglesworth who developed the 21 skills of SQ. And her definition is the ability to maintain inner and outer peace, make decisions with wisdom and compassion, regardless of the situation, even under great stress. So, if you take that definition and think, wow, what if all of our leaders were able to do that in the workplace? How amazing would that be? Steve Rush: Be an amazing place. Yeah, definitely. Amy Lynn Durham: Right, yeah. Steve Rush: It's an interesting notion that in order to get to SQ, you've got to go through this emotional intelligence journey, but actually it starts with self, doesn't it? In that kind of foundation block. Amy Lynn Durham: It does. I mean, you don't even have to know what emotional intelligence is. Again, the adult development theory says that that's around your early to mid-twenties where your brain is developed enough to really start experiencing compassion for others. But if you're in that space and you're working on self-awareness of your emotions, building connections, having emotional management strategies, all of those things. Steve Rush: Right. Amy Lynn Durham: The next steppingstone would SQ. Steve Rush: If I was a leader, listening to this thinking around. Okay. So, I thought relatively grounded in my emotion intelligence. What's my next step to start exploring spiritual intelligence? Amy Lynn Durham: Yeah. Okay. I offer an SQ experience that I take you through all of it. I issue an SQ assessment on the 21 skills, and you can see what level you're operating at, at this current timeframe of the 21 skills of SQ. And then you can go from there, you can deep dive into whatever skill resonates with you. You don't have to work on all 21 skills if there's a few that you're like, I don't even care about this. Great. we can work on the ones that resonate with you. And for me, it's a life lifelong journey. So, I have a client just to give you a client story that knew their life purpose for the majority of their adult life. And they really did a great job with their career, and you know, working in that life purpose space. Well, now they're in a different phase of their life. Their life has changed as our lives do, and they're trying to rediscover a new life purpose. And so, this stuff can be cyclical too. It's not like a one and done. Steve Rush: Right. Amy Lynn Durham: Yeah. Steve Rush: Got it. So, what are the core elements of then spiritual intelligence? Amy Lynn Durham: The first Is creating an awareness of your ego versus your higher self. Once you've created that awareness, this is my opinion. This is what I think is really the core element here is moving on to, okay. I'm aware of when my ego gets in the driver's seat, I'm aware of when I'm operating from my higher self, and now I can practice seeking guidance from my higher self. I can practice operating from the space of my higher self-more. And that to me is the core of all of this. How can we become aware of our ego and when it's operating? How can we work to have our ego in service to our higher self? And how can we practice seeking guidance from our higher self? So spiritual intelligence is faith neutral. You can be agnostic, you can be atheist, doesn't matter. As long as you believe there's a place within you that comes from wisdom, compassion, love, that you can access. You can work on the 21 skills SQ. Steve Rush: I guess you have to have gone through that realizing first in order to be open to this, right? Amy Lynn Durham: The realization of separating your ego? Steve Rush: Yeah, and also realizing that there is something else to explore that you haven't yet gone through to find new ways of thinking and behaving. Amy Lynn Durham: Yes. You have to definitely have some sort of awareness and some sort of curiosity to want to do the work that's required. Absolutely. It does take looking in the mirror and some inner work. Steve Rush: Yeah. Amy Lynn Durham: And some leaders don't want to do that. And that's okay. That's the space they're in right now, but I really truly feel, this is what will make you and your company a next level organization is operating from these skillsets. Steve Rush: And from your experiences being a coach using the spiritual intelligence, SQ steps. Maybe just share with us a story or an example of where you've seen somebody really transition and make a significant difference to the way that they lead their business and the team? Amy Lynn Durham: So, there's a really common skill that a lot of clients want to go to and talk about it. And it's in quadrant four at skill 19, and the skill is making wise and compassionate decisions. And let me tell you where the transformation happens. The transformation happens with the individual most often, lately. And I don't have the scientific data behind it, but I can speak to a correlation with the pandemic. These leaders are great leaders. And what ends up happening is when we dig a little bit deeper, we discover they need to make wise and compassionate decisions for themselves. And they're great leaders, obviously, because they want to dive into that skill, right? Oh, I want to dive into making wise and compassionate decisions. I want to operate at a really high skill level for my team and my people in that area. That is a great intention, beautiful, creating that ripple effect as a leader, but oh, by the way, are you making wise and compassionate decisions for yourself? Steve Rush: Right. Amy Lynn Durham: Are you burning yourself out? Are you overworking yourself for your team? Then we get into boundary setting and a little bit of self-care with that. So interestingly enough, the transformation happens with the individual taking care of themselves so they can take care of their people in a better clearer way. Steve Rush: Yeah. Amy Lynn Durham: That's one example. Steve Rush: It's a great example. And I remember when you and I first met. You shared this story with me around how you go about helping people on this journey. And I remember you sharing the approach that you take because you genuinely take coaching to another level when it comes to SQ, where you not only do you get the report to make that spiritual connection yourself. I remember you sharing that, you know, you meditate over the report and the words you actually use, which I was quite inspired by was you actually almost ingest the energy that you get from their reports. And if you remember you and I had this conversation, is that the right word? And I think that felt really quite powerful for me. And I just wondered if you could share how that experience evolves? Amy Lynn Durham: Yeah. So once we start the SQ experience. They start the journey with taking the SQ assessment, and then once the results come through, I spend a lot of time reading those results, meditating on the results. And really, like you said, and I ingest the energy of the results. So, I can really show up for my client and be there for them. And then I create custom coaching questions for them in order to help move them forward on their leadership journey with this. It's a really cool experience. I had one particular client. This is just coming to mind. I just love this story. I love to share it. He scored so high on being able to operate from his higher self. And I was like, oh my gosh, did you know that you have this magic gift already innately that you just operate from your higher self? And when a leader can do that, you know, like I said, before ego induced drama just kind of falls away, or you don't attract drama or people that are angry in your presence, the anger sort of dissipates. And I pointed that out to him because it's nice to name that and to know like, yeah, when I'm in a space with other people, my energy as leader, or as someone in a position of power actually ripples out 10 times over. So how amazing is it that this type of energy, this coming from a place of common healing presence, inner wisdom, compassion, love, is rippling out to the people that I'm interacting with. And he said, oh my gosh, when I was a little boy in school, the teacher would always sit the bad kid next to me. And she always said she did that because he seemed to behave better when he sat next to me. Steve Rush: That's really fascinating, isn't it? Amy Lynn Durham: And I said, yeah. The things that come about with these interactions are really cool and people discover hidden strengths that they know we're there, but they just need a light shined on them. Steve Rush: Yeah. So that's tapping into spirituality the much deeper level, isn't? Than perhaps most people would consciously be aware of. Amy Lynn Durham: It is. Steve Rush: And I wonder as a coach, how do you get people tuned into that depth of understanding? Amy Lynn Durham: Yeah. So, I have two parts to the way that I operate. I have that deep stuff that I was just talking about with you. And then I have the super fun, playful tools that I offer. So that's why I designed Create Magic At Work. I put all the fun leadership activities in my book that leaders can grab. My book is like 64 pages, it's tiny. And I did that on purpose, and I designed it for the leader that can just grab it and go to an activity and do the activity with their team. The activity elevates their EQ and SQ, but it's super fun. Steve Rush: Right Amy Lynn Durham: So, yeah, we do the deep inner work with the one-on-one SQ experience or the workshops or the speaking engagements. But at the same time, you can just do something fun with your team and it can start simple. It doesn't have to be this huge, deep dive into SQL. I have a journaling exercise in my book. It's called journaling with a twist. I designed a journal prompt card deck for the workplace and for your career. So, you can pull a journal card for your team to journal on a theme. Time them for 10 minutes. They rapid write answers to the questions. And then if they're comfortable, they can share it with everyone. That was a huge connecting activity that I did with my team that brought everyone together. Because once everyone hears each other's answers, you start seeing the humanity in each other. And it's simple. Steve Rush: Yeah. And fundamentally, this is about that human connection. About how we become more connected so that we become more empathetic, more productive, more, right? Amy Lynn Durham: Absolutely, yeah. Steve Rush: What would be your experience that generally in corporate life? We don't have as much human connectivity as we both perhaps could have or should have. Amy Lynn Durham: Okay. I'm really glad you asked me this. I saw an article the other day on some neuroscience data and I know that there's all kinds of intelligences coming out right now, but it narrowed it down to the three to IQ, EQ and SQ. And to answer your question in the short form, it's because the workplaces that we're working in are mainly designed to only operate under IQ, that part of your brain that works under the IQ space. Steve Rush: Yeah. Amy Lynn Durham: And then, I'm going to answer your question longer now. I'm just going to give a simple example. Let's say you're working for a company that's like super IQ only, you know, P&L statements, Excel spreadsheets, no team connecting. They don't care about EQ. We're not going to do that woo, woo stuff. We're not going to kumbaya by the fire. Whatever, right? Like boiler rooms. And then you finally get to go home, and you get to kick up your feet and relax a little bit. And then that EQ part of your brain starts being able to kick in. And this neuroscience data was showing that it's actually different parts of your brain that you're accessing when you're utilizing these skills. And so, yeah, you get to use some emotion at home. You get to relax; you get to be who you are. And then finally, what they were saying is the spiritual intelligence part of your brain is another place you can access that takes you into that beautiful feeling where you're aligned with the ebb and flow of life, where you're in that creative, innovative, playful zone. As a couple of examples. And as I read that article, because I know Steve, you and I are on LinkedIn, and we see all of the latest and greatest for workplace topics. And lately, even on my podcast, we talk a lot about how to be your authentic self at work. Can you be your authentic self at work? Why can't you be your authentic at work? All of those things. And I thought, no wonder, no wonder why some people feel like they can't be their full, authentic selves at work. Well, it's because a lot of these systems and these places that we work in. Their environments that allowing for accessing one third to maybe two thirds of our total potential. Steve Rush: Yeah. Amy Lynn Durham: Of our brain. Steve Rush: And typically, and I could be really candid here, right. We just don't teach spiritual intelligence in the same vein as we do with emotion intelligence as we look at leaders, right? Amy Lynn Durham: No. And I think that some leaders might get caught up with the word spiritual and think that it's religion. And then, oh, we don't want to talk religion in the workplace. We don't want to touch that. And for lack of a better word, I think it's just a little bit of un education or ignorance on what exactly it is and the benefits of it. So that's why I'm happy you have me on The Leadership Hacker to talk about it because it's so deep and it's so much more than that, yeah. Steve Rush: It's really more about higher self, right? Amy Lynn Durham: Totally. And when I talk about accessing your inner wisdom and your higher self, if you have a specific religion that you follow, that's beautiful. And if you want to utilize seeking guidance from your higher power, same thing, right. and so whatever works for you in your life. Steve Rush: we're going to ask you at the end of the show, how folk can get a copy of what you're doing around, Create Magic At Work and so and so forth. So, hang fire to the end of the show and you can find out how to access Amy great stuff. Before that, though, we're going to just flip the lens a little bit Amy. We're going to hack into your broad and deep and wide leadership experiences. I'm going to try and get you to get them down to your top three leadership hacks. What would they be? Amy Lynn Durham: Top three leadership hack. Okay. So, if you want to asked corporate Amy, like 10 years ago, they would've been like super corporately answers, like on time management and on productivity. But now that I am the spiritual executive coach, I am going to share my top three leadership hacks that are going to be so different for you. The first one is when mistakes and chaos occur in the workplace, take a moment to look for the innovation and inspiration hiding underneath. That will put you in a quantum leadership space and move you into the space of being a true wise and effective change agent. So that's the first one. The second one is, remember, it's never too late to start and there are never perfect circumstances. And the third is, I'm tying it into our whole theme today, Steve. Take time when making decisions to practice accessing your higher self and your inner wisdom or that higher power if you believe in that. We seek advice from a lot of experts. That's okay, as long as you're not just literally doing what they're saying, and you're taking a moment to sit with advice, you seek from an expert and see if it's actually right for you and practice seeking that guidance from your higher self and putting that ego aside in the process. I Steve Rush: Love that last one. I can honestly say I act on advice that intrinsically feels right and seems right. And off I go into a direction of activity yet had I maybe just spent more time trying to tap into that thinking it might have changed the activity instead, right? Amy Lynn Durham: When we feel unsafe or scared, sometimes we run to experts to tell us what to do. And I just say, take a pause and see if that really sits right with you before you make a decision, whatever it is. You know, I'm just, real broad here. But think about that because giving away responsibility to someone else to make decisions for your life is not where you want to be. I was going to say it's an SQ failure. Steve Rush: I know you mean. Amy Lynn Durham: I don't want to say that. Because it sounds so harsh, but the only reason why I'm sharing that is because I personally went through that journey during 2021. Steve Rush: Right. Amy Lynn Durham: And it was a beautiful learning experience for me and yeah. Steve Rush: And often we will behave differently at work than we would do in our non-work life. We will ask people for advice and decisions and help me make these decisions at work. Whereas at home we probably make them ourselves because we have less people and noise around us. Amy Lynn Durham: Yeah, or, I mean, sometimes people really have their EQ and SQ like really locked in the workplace and then personal relationships forget about it. Steve Rush: Yeah. Amy Lynn Durham: And so, that's our practice. Thank you for the lesson. Sometimes it's our personal relationships. That's really our practice that makes us better at work. Steve Rush: Definitely. Yeah, I can resonate with that one for sure. So, the next part of the show we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where an event, an occurrence, a thing, has happened in your life or your work that hasn't worked out well, but as a result of the experience, you know, use it as a positive force in your life, in your work. And you've clearly articulated a direction, travel using some of those techniques, but was perhaps one event which created that Hack to Attack for you? Amy Lynn Durham: I'm going to be super vulnerable and share something I did with my business that I don't like. At one point I decided that generating a bunch of leads for my SQ experience was a good idea. And I got talked into using the LinkedIn automated thing, you know, I should have sat with it like we talked about and felt whether it was a right fit for me or not. And I utilized it for a couple of months, and it just was not authentic. And it was not for me. I really learned from that because, it's my whole, you know, transforming workplace culture, human connection. How did I miss that within myself? And I had to shut it down. And what I learned from it is the power of, again, as we know, a reminder, the power of just connecting with people. Steve Rush: Yeah. Amy Lynn Durham: And having a real conversation. And I knew that, and I gave up my responsibility to some expert, you know, quote unquote experts and I had to take it back. Steve Rush: That's great. And then trustingly, you know, even when you look at some of the advances in machine learning and data science, there still needs people that are humans that are connected to each other and to the work that they do in order for making the data science advancements in the last 10, 20 years as well. So, without human connection, we still can't even advance through our automated life. Amy Lynn Durham: Yeah, absolutely. Steve Rush: Yeah. Last part of the show, we get to give you a chance to do some time travel. So, you get to bump into Amy at 21 and give her some words of wisdom. I'm fairly sure I know we is going, right? But I want to sense check and get a sense from you as to what would your advice to Amy 21 be? Amy Lynn Durham: Oh my gosh, she was a completely different woman than the woman she is today. And my advice would be to slow down. Everything's going to be okay. Take moments, really, to be with yourself, stop running away from yourself. Steve Rush: Like it. Really wise words. Great stuff. Amy Lynn Durham: Yeah. Steve Rush: So, I'm conscious that in the world of human connection, what we do through our medium of podcasting and writing is about that connection and therefore want to make sure we help you connect with our global audience. So, where's the best place for us to send them now we're done. Amy Lynn Durham: Well, I already mentioned LinkedIn. so, I'm Amy Lyn Durham on LinkedIn. And then also my website createmagicatwork.net has all those fun tools I talked about for the workplace and also the SQ experience that I offer. And you can message me on LinkedIn. You will get me responding now, the full human Amy. Steve Rush: The real you. Amy Lynn Durham: Exactly. And I love to connect and chat and discuss the topics like we discuss today. Steve Rush: So super. Amy Lynn Durham: yeah. Steve Rush: We'll make sure we put those in the show notes, along with your other social media links as well. So, folk can head straight over and connect with you from here. Amy Lynn Durham: Perfect. Awesome. Thanks Steve. Steve Rush: Amy. Thanks for coming on our show. I love chatting with you. I think the whole notion of SQ is going to explode in the future. I'm a big fan and would love to explore personally some more. So that's call to action for me. And thank you ever so much for being vulnerable, being part of our community on The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Amy Lynn Durham: Thank you. Thank you for having me. And I hope we sent some magic to everyone today. Steve Rush: We certainly have. Thanks Amy. Amy Lynn Durham: Thank you.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.

Steve Rush, The Leadership Hacker interviews the top 5 guests by download during the shows 100 mega episodes. Listen in to this special show with special guests, Dr Oleg Konovalov, Michelle Boxx – The Blonde Fixer, David Marquet, Andrea Sampson and Andrew Bryant.   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Leadership Hacker Apple Podcast Leadership Hacker Google Follow us on Twitter Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services ----more---- Start of the show Well, hello and welcome! I'm incredibly excited; this is our 100th show. If you haven't had your opportunity to join us until of late, we started out in March 2020, right at the beginning of the first ever lockdown in the United Kingdom. While all our guests are as global as our audience comes from all corners of the world, we have been a lockdown podcast. And I want to reach out to you personally, while you're listening to this to say, thank you. I really mean that from the bottom of my heart, without you showing up every week, tuning in, downloading, and listening to our podcast, there is no show. There would be no Leadership Hacker Podcast - period. And I think that's an amazing sentiment to everybody that is contributed to the show, both as listeners and more importantly as our wonderful guests. So, to our guests who are listening to this, we have had the most amazing diverse group of CEOs, C-Suite executives, leadership coaches, and experts, and have shared over 300 hacks with us and with our audience. And we're now connected through algorithms, through the internet, through our websites. And I'm incredibly proud and privileged to have been on this journey with you. So, to celebrate our 100th show, we are going to dive into our top five downloaded shows. We're going to revisit some of the stories and we're going to revisit some of their learning that we had from our great guests. Dr. Oleg Konovalov Steve Rush: The first of our five top downloads is Dr. Oleg Konovalov. He's global thought leader, author, business educator, consultant, and C-Suite coach. Oleg is named amongst the top global thought leaders and shortlisted the distinguish award in leadership by Thinkers50. He is a Global Gurus top 30 in leadership and has been recognized as the number one thought leader on culture by Thinkers360. Having been named as da Vinci of visionary leadership by many leading authorities of our time, Oleg is helping companies to create and execute their vision and strong purpose and corporate culture. And in our show, we got into talking about visionary leadership and vision is not gift, but a well-structured algorithm can be taught. We talked about how to create and execute a strong, compelling vision and leadership being a system of growing. And you join the conversation. As we talk about why knowledge is the most important part of every leader's kit-bag. Dr. Oleg Konovalov: Knowledge is the sexiest thing in the world. Knowledge is their most demanded product in the world. Knowledge is what shifts us into the future. Knowledge is always in demand. And it's always respectful and always well paid, but it's most rewarding thing when you see people succeeding because of you helping them. This is far beyond our instant necessities, like food and shelter, because it is impact on the next generation, it is everything. You see when we talk. The digital era being now, we should assume that it is a knowledge era triggered by people who changed the things in management that allowed to change technologies and so allowed to make this digital era coming, so it is knowledge Steve Rush: And I guess knowledge was what led you to put pen to paper and your first best-selling book was The Corporate Superpower. And that was around, you know, taking some theory if you like, but giving it some structure and having read it myself, it's around that whole theory of how do we give structure to culture? Tell us a little bit about that? Dr. Oleg Konovalov: It started from very, very curious point. We love talking about positive culture and how culture is important. Then I looked at, hold on. Why are we not talking about negative culture? Because the majority of companies, these days. They are still have negative culture and what I have found. Right about 450,000 articles, you could find only from academia on positive culture and only about 72 articles on negative culture. Whereas reality is completely opposite, and I said, hold on, what is the algorithm? Because whatever we are reading in the books or listening to the conferences. All discussion is wrapped around how to have a good culture, but how to have a clear, simple and effective algorithm was still remaining as a gap. And so, I decided to cover this gap and created Corporate Superpower as an algorithm, as a response for everyday needs. Where every leader, every manager could open it and see how to create culture. What stance on it? you know, how to create values or defined values? What's the properties of engagement? Everything, so to find the code, therefore I called at the end of the book. I called defined making a checklist because it is like winery; you are taking care of it. You growing, you cultivating it, and then you get a great result. And therefore, it was important to give people really practical solutions instead of general chit chat and that's a good point of being an efficient industry. You must come with a result.   Steve Rush: Right   Dr. Oleg Konovalov: Because you can't sell the fish that you don't have. People need exact instructions, simple, because we don't have much time for philosophical conversations about something being good or not. Steve Rush: You've either caught fish or you haven't caught fish, right? Dr. Oleg Konovalov: Absolutely. I love catching big fish and so big results Steve Rush: But laying behind that, I guess, would still be all of that foundation of disciplined, structure, the people you work with. That does not change, does it?   Dr. Oleg Konovalov: No, because I would call myself lucky, blessed, whatever, because I have worked with incredible professionals. I learn and study from incredible people from academia. You know, I am really grateful because it's a matter of who teaches you and not just a personality, not just a professional, but a whole person from whom you really learn how to be a whole person yourself and that is incredible. For instance, if we look at a simple point, which we often neglect, and outlook is one thing, but how you could connect dots, which seems like very non-relevant is a mastery itself. So, you must know how to make so nice pictures, really vivid pictures that could give you the right answers or most effective answers. Steve Rush: I always enjoyed talking to Oleg. And what we learned from this episode was knowledge impacts on everything and everyone, it informs our next generation. It isn't the digital world that is changing, it's the people's knowledge that is changing the digital world. And I particularly like the way he reframed the whole notion of being taught and people who teach us doesn't have to be in academia it doesn't have to be a college professor, but anybody who teaches us should be teaching us to be the whole person ourselves. Thanks Oleg. Michelle Boxx – The Blonde Fixer Steve Rush: Next up, we're going to introduce you to Michelle Boxx. Michelle is a CEO of Boxx Marketing and started out on her entrepreneurial career when she was just 15 years old, starting out in politics, helping folks fix campaigns and was a real campaign manager for many years. She then had a stint as a successful real estate agent. And after achieving great successes realized that using her public relations knowledge and campaigning, she could turn her hand to marketing. And she's now a small business advocate helping teach small businesses and owners to really thrive. You join us at the part of the show, where I ask Michelle to just describe how her early life in politics and real estate sales has helped her grow her business today and some of the core capabilities. Michelle Boxx: You know, I learned a lot through policy and politics. I learned a lot about communications, of course, but I also learned a lot about leadership. You know, speaking at that one, the video you found. It's so funny that you found it. I have tried to take it down so many times, but I have lost access to the account. Through that, I ended up launching a website a few months later that was really a policy website geared at covering legislation here in the States and I recruited a whole bunch of my fellow high school friends to help me with it, and so we would literally read legislation, we would post content every day. And so, the website got 10000 page views monthly just organically from us posting this information, and so that was really my introduction into marketing, into leading the team and everything that I do now as a CEO. Steve Rush: And it is a super experience because people get often confused with leadership, has something to do with the job title or a career or a salary, but actually what you have demonstrated is leadership is about just behaviors and we can have leadership skills and behaviors at any age, right? Michelle Boxx: It is so true. A lot of it is really just jumping in and saying, okay, you know what? I am going to do my best here and I am going to figure it out. So many of us in life do figure things out as we go along. And so, it's better to not wait for that moment of coronation, if you will, and instead just jump in and say, okay, I'm going to do my best here. This is the result we are looking to achieve and nurture these people in the process. Steve Rush: So here we were talking about leading ship as a behavior, not as a thing, not as a job title. And as often we find ourselves just jumping in, gives us the experience to find ways of working and nurturing people on the way. We've rejoined the conversation when I ask Michelle from her experience of being a young entrepreneur through politics and real estate, what her biggest learning in leadership was? Michelle Boxx: I think the realization that you can't do everything alone, that you really do need support, so you need your mentors, you need your team, you need. If you have a lot of internal drive, it is very natural to think, you know what, I can figure this out on my own. I can do all of this on my own. I am independent. And then just really putting your ego to the side and saying, you know what? I don't have all the answers. Like you said, you know, copy, and paste and really having the network around you to support you along your way up. Steve Rush: Super wise words for Michelle there. No leader can be successful on their own. They need a team who can support them and help them on their way. And many of our guests have echoed that sentiment throughout the series. We thank the blonde fixer Michelle box for being part of our show. David Marquet Steve Rush: Number three, highest downloads of all time was for David Marquet. David's a real superstar. I met David on location in London. We talked about his humble background being pretty much down to earth in math club when he was in Pittsburgh. Then joining the U.S. Naval Academy in 1981, where he ultimately took control of the USS Olympia. A Nuclear-powered submarine as a Captain in the U.S. Navy, it was there that he started evolve his leadership career when he was appointed to lead the US submarine, Santa Fe, which was the worst performing submarine in the fleet. It was these foundations that gave him the story that now forms Turning the Ship Around his global best-selling book, where Stephen R Covey, the infamous author and guru, spent time on the Santa Fe and ended up creating The Eight Habit. In recognition to his global successful leadership, based on David work. Since retiring from the U.S. Navy, he has shared those lessons and is helping Leaders to think about creating more leaders, and giving control to only those who need it the most. You join us in this show where we were talking around how the language of leaders has changed over time and how the labels, we give people have been unhelpful. How by reframing some of that language and changing our perspectives, we can get a greater outcomes from our leadership behaviors ourselves. David Marquet: So, we have work. The industrial age organization design was this. One group of people will make decisions and one group of people will execute the decisions made by the first group of people. And we have labels because they all look like humans, but we need to know which tribe you're in and we call them leaders and followers or thinkers and doers or management and workers, and we pay people by salary or by hourly. White collar, blue collar. We wear different uniforms but there is this whole cultural industry with artefacts and rituals to put us in one of these, two groups, and this is one of the things that is suddenly embedded in our language and in minor organization design, which is totally unhelpful. Steve Rush: Yeah, and you talk about this in your new book. Leadership is Language. David Marquet: Yeah. Steve Rush: And you give the type to behave as color, don't you? Just tell us a little bit more about that. David Marquet: Yeah. As an author, you have to create a new term. No one gets credit, here is a bunch of great ideas. Aristotle said everything let me reiterate them. I call them red work and blue work. So, the doing work is what we call red work. Red being typically the color of focus and action and blue work the color of creativity, and the difference is when red work. I want to narrow my perspective, but in blue work, I want to broaden my perspective, so I am using my brain in two fundamentally different ways and industrial organizations solve the problem by not asking people to change. The thinkers were just do thinking and the doers just did doing. And we didn't need the thinkers to do doing and the doers to do thinking. Now we say let the doers be the deciders. So, what we're going to do is say this group to the organization at the bottom who used to just do what they're told. We are now going to pause and give them the chance to think and actually make decisions, but that requires them to use their brain in different way. That requires us if we are in the leading group, to talk in a different way. Steve Rush: And as leaders, it is our responsibility, isn't it? I guess through our language will influence and either help new ideas and creativity or we will stifle them. David Marquet: You can only control yourself. So, when you say, oh, well, this person does not speak up, it the really frustrating working with them. The unhelpful behaviors is to go give them a lecture. I give you some feedback? i.e., can I permission to be a jerk? You really need to speak up more. Well, how about this? How you look inside yourself and you figure out. You know what, the way we are running the meeting, the way I am asking the questions, if someone comes to me and says, well, I am not sure about this decision, and I said, why would you say that? Again. Subtle, but it sends a signal, you are wrong. Justify yourself, not, oh, tell me about that. I am really interested in that. We really need to know before we go ahead, launch this product. If you think, we are off track. Steve Rush: So, what David's describing here is the outdated leadership model that we've all perhaps learned about at some point in our leadership careers, however old or young you may be, it doesn't seem to work anymore. It's time to shift perspectives, fall out of love with our own voice and to listen to our teams, let the doers be the deciders is how David described this. In order to harness the eyes, the ears, the minds of our people, our teams, the people we lead and work with. We need to foster a climate of collaboration and experimentation that encourages people to speak up. And when they notice problems that are not working well, to identify them and to get on with testing solutions, we salute you David, and thank you for being part of our community on the podcast. Andrea Sampson Steve Rush: Once upon a time in a land not too far away, there is somebody reading a story to somebody else. Wow. The power of story continues to be the most important way of communicating. Well, why is that? Well, it's been the way we've been key communicating for millennia. People have been writing on walls and drawing pictures, around campfires, around dining room tables, as we've evolved, because stories make the emotional connection. I'm going to introduce you to Andrea Sampson. Andrea not only tells great stories but is teaching the world how to tell better stories through her TED Talks, coaching business, Talk Boutique. Andrea was a former strategist and consultant spending over 25 years in a marketing, in advertising space and with a natural flare for compelling stories and persuasive content. It wasn't long before Andrea sort after, assisting teams and executives in developing their presentations and pictures. Having worked on a side hustle with TEDx Toronto, where she volunteered initially as a speaker coach. Worked out that her technique for teaching storytelling could be really powerful. That led her to create Talk Boutique and is now the founder and CEO. Not only is this a second downloaded episode of all time in our series is actually the number one for 2021. So, if you've not yet unlocked, the power of storytelling with Andrea now is the time to download that episode. You join us at that part of the show where Andrea was telling us about what she'd learned from her time, coaching TED Talks and how she developed story by helping unlock great emotional connections with audiences. Andrea Sampson: What I've learned in doing TED Talks and now working with very seasoned professional presenters is that it's really about building a story in five steps. And we developed, so my company Talk Boutique has developed a process that we call the story-spine, which really allows for a speaker to take about, you know, anywhere from 30 seconds to three to four minutes at the beginning of their talk and set up the premise of a story that will hold the idea. Steve Rush: Really interesting. Andrea Sampson: The spine is so important because what it does is it forces us as humans first of all, to think about the things that create good storytelling, because it starts off with what we call the environment. So, if you think of an environment, the environment is your sense of place. Now, most of us, when we're at a cocktail party or meeting up with a friend and we started telling a story, what do we do? We rushed through the environment, first of all, and we rush right into the purpose of the story. But if you take a moment and you step back and you say, okay, let me just set this up for you. So, I was walking in the woods the other day. Now it was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, you know, it was warm, but not hot. You could feel that the day was going to get really hot. But we weren't there yet. And the moisture in the air was activating the pine needles. So, I could smell as I was walking, that musky scent of pine, and it was just a beautiful morning, and it was peaceful. Now you're all on that walk with me, aren't you?  Steve Rush: Totally, I'm right there. Andrea Sampson: Right, now when you do that, what's happening is everybody is leaning in, but what's really happening is their brain has just gone to the place when they were last in the woods or a meaningful moment when they were in the words. That smell, the sounds of the birds, the feeling of this sun dappled through the trees, everybody. Now, if I were to stop the story right there and ask a question around how everybody felt, the likelihood is, I've got everybody at the same place in that moment, which is, in a peaceful place, in a memory that is enjoyable. And from there, it's almost like I'm a mind reader now, because now I'm controlling how they are feeling and what they're thinking. Steve Rush: Its very powerful, isn't it? Andrea Sampson: It's incredibly powerful. That's the power of environment. So, once we have the environment, the next thing that we want to do is say, who's there with you? Who are the characters? Now, you know, characters, aren't just me and my friend. You can do that, but the thing is, you've robbed the audience of getting to know who you are and who your friend is. So, what you want is just a little bit of a backstory. So, there's me, you know, this was about five years ago. So, I was in, you know, maybe an emotional place. This was just at the breakup of my marriage; I'm making this up. And my friend, who was a dear friend, who was supporting me through this very emotional time, her name was Shawna and Shawna was a lovely human. She's still a dear friend of mine, but she's one of those people whose incredibly compassionate and helps people through really difficult times. So here we were on this early morning walk, going through the woods and, you know, we can hear the birds chirping, and I'm at that point in the separation where we are, you know, separating stuff. And so, it's a difficult moment, and Shawna is helping me to see, you know, that I can let go of things that I thought were really important, but the reality is, they weren't. Now, again, I just want to stress here. I'm fully making this up. Steve Rush: Hey, listen, you may be making this up, but I'm still ironically with you because of the compelling use of language. Andrea Sampson: Right, the language I'm using. Every piece of language is using rhetoric, really, right. I'm using a combination of metaphor. I'm using emotional words, words that have meanings that go deeper than just the core idea of that word. I'm also using in some cases repetition. So, I'm using metaphor all the way through it. So, what we've gotten through now is the environment, the characters, and we've gotten to the issue or opportunity. That's the third part of the story spine. And this is where most people jump into a story because this is the real reason, I could've just started it off. Steve Rush: That's true, yeah. Andrea Sampson: I could have started off going, you know, the other day I was walking in the woods and Shawna was helping me figure out what I was going to give to my ex, right? Because that is really the story, except you can see I've built it out, right? And so, then what you want, the fourth part of the story spine is what we call the raising of the stakes. This is the difference between a good story and a great story because the raising of the stakes is that tension moment. It's the end to them, and so, you know, as Shawna and I were talking about the things that I was going to keep and what I was going to let go of, we came to that blanket. You know the one, the blanket that my family had given us, but it was also the blanket where we had our first date. And it was the blanket that had followed us all the way through our relationship. And there was a part of me that really wanted that blanket, but there was a part of me that actually didn't ever want to see that blanket again. And I was distraught in that moment. How could I let go of the blanket? Now I think if you're following me, what you know is that blanket is really a metaphor for the relationship. Steve Rush: Yeah, it is. But it's ironic because it is still also a physical thing. Andrea Sampson: Yeah. Steve Rush: It's a metaphor, but actually we all kind of have something that we relate to in our day jobs and our lives that are similar metaphors of physical things but carry loads of emotion with them. Andrea Sampson: Right, and so, as I'm going through this story, you know, anyone who's listening to this, you know, they may or may not have lived a similar story, but they have lived, everybody, because, you know, here's the thing about stories. Stories are all meta stories, as humans, we all live the same stories. And so everybody has walked in the woods or has watched, you know, a movie or seen an image of walking in the woods. So, there's some experience of it. Everybody has a good friend who helps them through things. Now, you know, you may not have as good a friend or maybe your friend is better, but you have the experience of it. The human condition is that we all go through relationships and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't and heartbreak is common. And then the idea of having something that represents that, you can see, it's a meta story. right? Steve Rush: Yeah. Andrea Sampson: As I'm going through this story, everybody is having the same experience because they're living their own experience and my experience at the same time. And that's what makes it so powerful. So, when you take the time to build it, when you take the time to use emotions through it, what you're doing is, you're building a connection with anyone who's listening to that. Now we've gone through the four elements of the stories. By the fifth element is just the OCA. It's the way in which you tie it together. And so, in this case, it could be that in that walk in the woods, you know, Shawna helped me to understand that the blanket was in fact, a metaphor for my relationship. And as much as it was something that I was having a hard time letting go of, it was time for me to let go of it because I was letting go of that whole part of my life. And that blanket was in a part of my life that was no longer going to be in my life. So, it was time for me to let that go. And by the end of that walk, I had not only let go of the blanket, but I had let go of the relationship, I was ready to move on. So, there's the story spine in action. Steve Rush: It's the most compelling model. And if you are anything to do with telling stories or engaging audiences or helping people understand something that they don't yet understand well enough, let's think about how we could use the story-spine to really bring our stories to life. Andrea, thank you for being part of our show and bringing our stories to life.   Andrew Bryant Steve Rush: When I look back over the 300 plus hacks we've had on the show, the one thing that keeps presenting itself is, “lead yourself first” - Self-leadership. It sounds so obvious when you say it in such simple terms, but before you can lead others, you must first lead yourself. If you lack self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-learning, you'll fail to really, truly reach your full potential. And our top downloaded show of all times so far, is Self-Leadership with Andrew Bryant. Andrew is a motivational speaker and has become the number one authority on self-leadership. He's featured on TEDx and wrote the book, Self-Leadership, of course. You join our conversation as we explore the notion of, what really is self-leadership and why that can help us or hold us back. Andrew Bryant: The concept of self-leadership goes back to the Roman Stoics. It goes back to the Greek philosophers. It goes back to louts. Influencing others is strength, but influencing self is true power. The concept itself is not original. It is human reality around that, we have some sense of personal power if we take ownership and so it is very much the ownership of what can you take ownership of? And you can actually take ownership of your thinking. We all have thoughts, but do the thoughts have our us or do we have the thoughts? We all have emotions. But are we having the emotions or the emotions having us? Now, if you have ever been in a fury about something, you know that the emotions had you. If you have ever been really sad about something, you've been gripped by the emotion, you were not in control, but when we go, I'm angry about this. Why am I angry about this? What is driving that anger? What is that really about? Then, we take that step back into the observer place, and that gives us choice. You know, that is the heart of Stephen Covey work. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was that proactivity between idea and action, that there is a choice point that we have as human beings. Steve Rush: And in my experience as a coach, Andrew, and I am sure you see this a lot with your clients too. Is most of my work is in a bit in the middle, the gap between the idea and the action and the evaluation of how you get people to move forward. How has that been part of what you do right now? Andrew Bryant: Just before I came on this, I was talking to a CEO pharmaceutical company who wanted me to coach one of his executives; I have been interviewed by his head of HR. Before, I spoke to him, she was obviously playing Buffa, I didn't waste his time. Then his opening statement was, tell me about yourself, because I haven't had time to read the briefing material. I kind of wanted to do… groan, because that means I've got to tell my entire life story, which I'm doing again. It is a long-life story and I have to edit it, and I just I want to come across as like, why are you a different coach? How do I go about that? I really took this point that, you know, the classic coach comes from the inner game and the outer game, and you will be familiar with a book called The Inner Game of Tennis. Steve Rush: Sure am, yeah. Andrew Bryant: And that is coaching is about inner landscape. Outer coaching is how you hold tennis racket, how you serve the ball. The inner coaching is how you think about yourself as a tennis player and with leadership coaches, is how do I think about myself as leader? I mean, just this week as coaching the CEO of an organization, it is very successful CEO. I have coached him in other organizations. He has been parachuted into this company, Joint Venture Capital Support, and he his stressing himself out because he built this runway, and he has attached his ego. When I say build the runway, build the runway to profitability in a certain amount of time and a curtain number, and he's attached his ego to that. And if it doesn't work, he's feeling like a failure, and so the way he's created a mental schematic of that is, his inner world is driving his outer communication. The coaching was to help him not spread doubt amongst his troops, because he's having these doubts. But as the leader, there his doubts, they're not their doubts and their only doubts because he's made such a big deal out of this. Now, if the company burned to the ground, he would rise from the ashes and he would lead another organization. He is very successful, very competent, very intelligent individual. But the coaching is around that gap between his inner thinking and his execution, in this case, his speaking was not as aligned and motivational inspirational as it could have been. Steve Rush: So, David's talking here about the inner game, the voice in our head, that inner coach, and we need that coach to serve us well every day. But in order for us to serve us well, we need to be mentally agile and fit. We need to be physically agile and fit, and we need to be focusing on ourselves first. And you listen to the full show. You'll find out why self-leadership is not self-centered or selfish, but essential for us as leaders. We rejoined the conversation as we're talking about ego and why ego can sometimes get the way of us being really successful self-leaders. Andrew Bryant: Somebody drives outside the restaurant of the hotel in the Maserati or a Lamborghini, the Ferrari, gets out, you know, after having revved the engine so that everybody's paid attention to him, and then throws the keys to the valet. Do they have a big ego or a small ego? Most people listening will say big ego. But actually, from a psychological perspective, there ego is fragile. Because they are engaging in egocentric behaviors, right. Look at me, look at me, right. So egomaniacal egocentric behaviors are based on a need to feed an ego. When somebody has a healthy ego, a healthy sense of self. They don't need the attention. They don't need to throw the keys at the valet. They could turn up on a bicycle and they would be fine because they know who they are, right. So actually, when you do the work on yourself, you are a better human being to be in relationship with others, right. Steve Rush: Like that. Andrew Bryant: Carl Jung talked about ego means sense of self. Egocentricity is a fragile ego. Look at me. Look at me. I am not Okay. You know, a relationship should always be a Gestalt, where the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. If two broken people meet each other and trying to make one complete person, they are co-dependent. When two people have got their stuff together, meet. They create a relationship that has things over and above themselves. Self-leadership is not selfish because when we have taken care of ourselves, we have all the energy to focus on other people. We can listen. We can help and the simplest one is a metaphor that precedes me, but I use it as well. And that is, if you are on the airplane and the oxygen mask does fall from the ceiling. You are supposed to put it over your nose and mouth first before assisting others, because if you don't look after yourself, you're useless to anybody else. The biggest compliment you can do for somebody is to turn up and authentically be yourself, right? If you are hiding behind some mask or you're playing some game and then manipulating them into whatever bizarre reality you have, then you're really not doing anybody a favor. Steve Rush: So, it's interesting, isn't it? Ego has been seen as being quite a bad thing, but it's a healthy sense of self. It's egocentricity that is unhelpful. And recognizing that egocentricity will hold us back from engaging and behaving in the true sense of self is essential part of our leadership behaviors. Andrew was on one of our very early shows in March 2020, as we launched the podcast, but continues to get regular hits through our channels and our media. And therefore, goes to show that the message of self-leadership is always going to be relevant. Andrew, I'm incredibly grateful for you being part of our community and helping us all lead ourselves better. Thank you. Closing Steve Rush: So, we're coming to the end of our time together on our 100th show. It's been an incredible journey and thank you to our five guests for reliving some of those moments from our hundred episodes over the last two years. And please remember we have 95 other guests who bring diversity, stories from across the world, different genres of leading and leadership. So please head over, download the show, and never miss a future episode. And this is a shameless plug. If you like what we're doing, please tell others, please share it with your business communities. Please share it with teams at work and let's help spread the word of leadership and leadership development so that we can all grow. We can all learn, and we can all develop because the irony here is there are no hacks to leadership. There are just great tools, great tips and great ideas. But if we shortcut them through our learning and our lessons with you, the quicker we learn, the better our teams perform and the better our teams grow. And before I sign out, I want to make a special mention to Jermaine Pinto. He's my trusted, side-kick and partner in the show. He's been a great support and a great aid as we've developed a hundred episodes together. Thank you, Jermaine. I appreciate you, man. And I'll be super grateful for you to leave us a five-star review and let us know how you think we can continually grow our Leadership Hacker Community. It's the way that we grow, and it's the way that our audiences get to meet our great guests. Thank you for being part of the community. Thank you for being on our journey. That's me signing out, on our 100th show. I'm Steve Rush. And today I have The Leadership Hacker.  

Jeff Chastain is a business transformation coach, he's the founder and CEO of Admentus Inc and the podcast host of Building to Scale. In this show you can learn about: The differences between leadership in a Start-up vs. a growth-oriented business. Leading with a visionary mindset, how is that different from the well versed Growth vs. Fixed. The key components of an effective business vision and how does the business leader make that vision actionable. The reasons some leaders are unable to break through the glass ceiling that could be holding their team or business back. Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com   Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA   Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Jeff below: Jeff on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/omarlharris/ Jeff on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JeffDChastain Jeff on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/admentusinc/ Admentus Website: https://admentus.com Full Transcript Below ----more---- The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: Now we're already a hop skip in a jump into 2022, and there are lots of emerging things that leaders need to consider. So, I'm going to give you my top six predictions based on what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing in the world of leadership and people transformation. Number one, leaders need to give people a reason to stay beyond money and beyond extrinsic motivators. The great resignation is absolute for sure. There are so many people across the globe quitting their jobs because they're focusing on what really means for their life. Therefore, as the problem continues to grow, leaders need to continue to adapt and change and think about their proposition. So, people feel connected to the organization. They have a purpose and most importantly feel that they have something to add value to their lives and their work beyond their compensation. I believe the most productive companies this year will be those that give people a reason to stay beyond money. Spear no expense when it comes to real time gatherings. Whenever the COVID 19 pandemic moves to an endemic and companies move back to a normality in ways of working, whatever that may be in the future. When the hybrid world has cemented itself in our workplace, we will need as leaders to spear no expense in bringing people together, whether it's once a year, twice a year or infrequently, but leverage the opportunity in bringing people into a real time place together, create experiences for those two, spend time together and experiential team building activities, nice dinners, real quality time together just as if they were long lost family and expect people to be spending more money on hiring the best people. There'll be a point where organizations wherever they're from in the world facing into this war of talent and therefore we'll need to compensate people better and compensate search firms in helping them find that talent too. I think accountability will come back to the forth. Since remote workers cemented itself in our future and our culture. We're able to see very clearly people's productivity. And it's evident if team members are doing the job that we expect or not even in a hybrid and remote world. And managers have noticed that making people accountable must be a priority in their leadership approach for this year. And I define accountability is the obligation of an individual or organization to be accountable for its activities and accept responsibility for them. And to be transparent, accountable leaders provide a path of person improvement, team performance and life performance. I can see organizations focusing on their underperforming leaders in a far more rigorous way. In a recent study. Gartner predicted 30% of teams won't have bosses by 2024. And I don't see it this way because leader's teams don't work. However, collaborative, broad, bigger teams may be part of the case, but poor leadership cannot be tolerated. Organizations will invest more time in assessments and surveys and understanding the human experience. Great leaders will notice this and unlock it in their teams. Poor leaders will fall by the wayside. And the final one to wrap it up is probably the most controversial of all. Multiple income streams will be accepted by most organizations in the future. In the hybrid will world. There's no reason why we couldn't do two or three roles, two or three jobs. But if this is really about life and human experiences, suppose if we had the opportunity to negotiate with our employer, that I wanted to work three or four days a week for them, and maybe another day a week for some philanthropic activities and giving back to the community, but also maybe a subtle pivot to how I go about earning my total compensation, who knows. But if we do want to retain our best talent, we might need those leaders to be thoughtful and encourage multiple ways of them making money for their family and their lives, whatever the future holds for us as leaders. It requires flexible thinking, rapid action and elevating others into leadership, thinking and behaviors. The leadership environment we're already in, in 2022 has already changed from 2021 and will continue to rapidly change. And if you don't change with it, you'll be one of those victims too. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. I'm looking forward to more news and more stories that keep coming on a regular basis. So please keep sending them in. Let's get onto the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Our special guest on today's show is Jeff Chastain. He's a business transformation coach and the founder and CEO Admentus Incorporated. He's also the podcast host of Building to Scale. Jeff. Welcome to the show. Jeff Chastain: Hey, thank you. And thank you for having me. Steve Rush: It's my pleasure. So, tell us a little bit about Jeff, where did it all begin for you and how did you end up here? Jeff Chastain: We probably don't want an hour long to show just on that, but I'll give you the quick version. It's been lots of lots of twists and turns over the lifetime, but that's been, I don't know, I've find that's the journey of most entrepreneurs. We jump into the deep end and have it all figured out right off the bat. But now, my background actually started actually in corporate America and in technology so completely different fields there but spent a number of years with corporate America and just honestly was bored as anything. It's like, okay. Just showing up for a job every day just was not my mentality, not my wiring. At that point and couple that together with a reshuffling, reorganization of the company, and one day, all of a sudden it was surprised. Find myself out with the corporate umbrella without the parachute, et cetera there, and trying to figure out, okay, what do we do now? So, like most people in business getting started, I said, hey, I've got a technology background. Let's go form a CTO, kind of consulting firm. And that's really, where Admentus actually got its start, was in the technology world. But over the years in working with different companies, both large and small, from a technology standpoint, I kept having people coming to me, working with people, et cetera, that were looking to technology basically as business solved. I go back to one case I had where the guy, of course, all great decisions are made on the golf was kind of a thing there. The one CEO was talking to his friend on the golf course and saying, hey, our sales numbers, our sales trajectories down this year. And his buddies said, well, we just got this new CRM. We've really been using this new CRM. It's really helped our team. So that was the point of introduction to me was say, hey, can you help us implement this new CRM system in our business and go going through the process effectively. We figured out, hey, you don't have a sales process. You've technically got a sales team in terms of people, but there's no strategy. There's no vision. There's nothing to your sales team here. They're just kind of fly by the sea of their pants and just putting in a shiny new object, a new CRM system here, not really going to fix things by any means. So just ran into that over and over with business leaders. That for most of us in business, we probably identify pretty well. I know I'm that case of the shiny object syndrome, kind of a thing there, hey, let's go try this. Let's go try that. And people, these days tend to turn to two technologies quite often for that. To me, technology is just a magnifier of whatever's underneath. If you've got a great system, a great process, yes, technology can make you more efficient, but it's not going to fix the underlying foundation. So, that was really the transition pivot point to me to say, hey, instead of sitting here trying to sell you a new CRM system or something like that, that honestly, I know is not going to really get at the root of your issue. Let's go in and fix the business foundation. Let's fix the underlying systems, the underlying structures, where it's still kind of my systems, my process nature. But that was really my transition to say, okay, let's move from consulting into the coaching realm and say, let's get the foundation fixed. And then we can go put on technology, or then we can go scale the company, whatever we want to do, but we got to get that foundation structured first. Steve Rush: Yeah. And it's interesting, even if you remove technology period, the behavioral stuff that is still needed to think about strategy, vision, and structure of an organization and a team. That's kind of transferable across every sector, every industry, isn't it? Jeff Chastain: Oh, it really is. And I'll see it, even talking like marketing or sales, hey, we've been doing Google ads now we're going to try Facebook ads. This salesperson's not performing, so we're going to go hire a new salesperson or we're going do an outsource sales or something like that. It's like, we're always trying new things because what we've got may or may not be living up to expectations. It' the grass is always greener kind of mentality. There's always got to be something over there that might work a little bit better without ever really getting to the root of the issue at that point. Steve Rush: Right. So, what's the key focus for the work at Admentus right now? Jeff Chastain: I'm actually narrowed things down recently here within the last year, really focusing on those smaller business, smaller entrepreneurs' kind of thing. A lot of the times, what I found over the years was the coaching industry, especially out there, when you look at big name systems, like an EOS or like a scaling up or anything, they always focused on more the larger size companies. You got at least 20, 30 kinds of employees. You've got a three- or four-person leadership team. And it's like, wait a minute. We're leaving out the smaller guys, the guys that, hey, I want to go out and I've got a dream, I've got a vision. I want to go build my business, but I don't have $30,000 to go invest in a coach, or I don't have a big team yet that's profitable. We're still in the early stages. But at the same time, this individual is typically forward thinking enough to say, hey, I want to lay the foundation right in the first place. Let's figure this out in the first place, rather than creating a huge mess and having to come back and pay to clean it up. So, we're really focusing more on that. I don't want to say entry level, but still that early-stage kind of entrepreneur, that early-stage business owner that says, hey, I'm an expert in my field. I know my field, whether that medical, legal, finance, whatever, kind of an area they're in, but saying, hey, I realize there's a lot more to business. And to building a profitable and scalable business than just being a good lawyer, or just being a good accountant or whatever, the case may be there. Steve Rush: Of course, most big businesses started out with some more businesses and smaller ideas that then just grew, and that's been a force of your work. Isn't it? It's helping businesses scale up. Jeff Chastain: It really is. And even still, I take a lot of this, even from my personal journey that when I first got into I.T. consulting. The company was me, myself, and I kind of a thing there. While yes, I was having fun with the work I was doing, and I had ideas for what I wanted to become. We actually talked about it just briefly before we got on kind of a thing. It's like all of a sudden, I'm looking at, okay, kids got soccer games or an awards ceremony at school or for that matter, even a vacation with my wife, kind of a thing there. And I started putting that into the mentality or I had what came to mind every time started looking at those as well. That's two hours at a soccer game and equating that back to a billable, right? Wait a minute. That's a $300,400 soccer game there. Do I really want to do that? Or the vacation, the worst case, actually the vacation turns into three and four times the cost, because not only am I paying to go rent the hotel or do the travel. Now I'm looking at the effectively lost time, lost wages to go do that. And it's like, okay, this is not a good place mentally to be. But at the same time, it's like, okay, what's the solution when it's just you? Because most people jump in and say, well, I'm going to go create a new business. I'm going to start a new business. But effectively what they've created is a job for themselves where, it's they're the CEO, they're the frontline worker and the janitor all in one. And unless you can figure out how to scale that, how to grow that, then you're effectively locked into that job. And if that's okay with you great. But when it was turning into my direct time was the service to be delivered. It just wasn't scalable at that point. So that's really where it's like, okay, got to figure out a better way to do this. I know other people are doing this, we got to figure this out. So that kind of led journey and now turn around and handing that back to other people that way. Steve Rush: Yeah, great stuff. So, when it comes to leadership of businesses that you've helped scale up from startups to some of the larger organizations, what do you see as being the differences between leadership and a startup versus leadership in a traditional growth orientated, established business? Jeff Chastain: I don't think they are necessarily different leaderships. I think what it is, is a case of many times people having to learn how to lead or learning what it means to lead because you take the lawyer that's used to, okay, this is my law practice at best. I've got a virtual assistant or a paralegal, somebody kind of working with me, but it's a different mentality for them to say, okay, now I want to go manage two or three other lawyers in my firm and actually build out a firm model with a support staff, et cetera, kind of a thing there. So, they really have to make that mental shift to say, okay, this is not just me doing whatever it takes today to move the business forward. And now I've actually got to have a plan, have a strategy in place for everybody. Otherwise, we're effectively kind of that rudderless ship of saying, okay, I'm going to walk into the office today and figure out, okay, which way is the boss leaning today? Because that's the direction we're going today. And that's to me is not leadership. Steve Rush: Right. Jeff Chastain: That's somebody that's still struggling saying, okay. I don't know how to move out of the solo practitioner into an actual leader in a firm leading a team, driving a business forward. Steve Rush: And what is it you think when you think about those folk who scale quicker versus those who may be more laggards in that space? Is there a, maybe some secret sauce that goes on there? Jeff Chastain: There's always a little bit of, I'd say any business, there's always a little bit of luck involved, but to me it's more the planning side. It's the system, it's the strategy because okay. I refer to it kind of as the cornerstone of any significant business or any business there is really what I refer to as a strategic vision and execution plan. Anytime, again, going back to my corporate days, we always talked about strategy planning and stuff like that. And it'd be multiple days of just boring meetings and marketing mumbo jumbo kind of talk. You ended up with all these plans that would go into some drawer or some cabinet that never got seen for another year or two. So, when we look at that from a small business standpoint, we say, I can't do that. I can't afford to put that together and there's no use for it. Why am I investing in that? And while yes, I completely agree with that. I also say, okay, you can't go the other end of the stream and say no plan at all. We've got to have an entrepreneurial focus middle ground that says, I literally document your entire strategy, your entire execution plan on a single page, caveat, asterisk it's double-sided so you could call it two pages, but still it's that small, that tight that you can sit there and identify who we are as an organization, where we're going, how we're planning on getting there, such that even if you are still the solo premier entrepreneur, you've got that plan to say, okay, I know the direction we're going. I know what we're trying to hit. So that when that shiny object does come in, I've got a measuring stick that I can say, okay, is this a good fit? Is this something that's still going to further advance my strategy here or do I ignore it? And then once they start growing into multiple employees, bigger team, it gives that visibility to the rest of the team so that, okay, we know as a team. Again, who we are, where we're going, how we're planning on getting there. So, you've got everybody kind of united the boat, everybody's rowing together the same direction, rather than just flailing about trying to thing, wasting resources that honestly most small businesses don't have. So, it's really having that plan. Having that guide, is what's going to jumpstart that the most right there, just to say, hey, we know what we're doing. We're not out there changing direction every month, kind of a thing. And wasting the time, wasting the limited financial resources that we've got. Steve Rush: A lot of this is also down to mindset, isn't it? Of those individuals and the way that they approach it. And I know that from most people listening to this, they might be well versed with things like growth mindset, fixed mindset, but you have a different take on this around visionary mindset. And I wondered if you could just give us a bit of a sense of what that would mean? Jeff Chastain: In a lot of ways, it kind of encompasses both of them really. I really see most people and it's not a across the board people, but most people that go out and start a new business have that kind of visionary mindset. They've got this big idea of, I want to go bring this problem to solve, or I've got a help kind of attitude. I want to go attack this issue I see out in the market or out in the community, kind of a thing there. They've got that bigger picture, visionary attitude to them to say, okay, this is where I want to go. Where they struggle with the most is saying, okay, I'm not necessary the tactician. I'm not necessarily the execution to say, okay, how do I get from where I am right now to that big picture vision that honestly may take 15 or 20 years something out there. And that's where a lot of times I'll see them struggle because they're still, again, they've got the big idea and great, okay, here's this new other idea. And they end up moving all over the place. It's almost a pairing is what I see the best. Companies in place to say, okay, you've got that visionary person, but you've also got that second in command, that strategist or that technician kind of thing right there to say, okay, feed off of each other. We're work off of each other there, but you've almost got to have both mindsets. And it's rare I find that it's one person has both in place. So, it's either that visionary to say, okay, we need a plan that can kind of reign you in a little bit. Or we work with the technician types to say, okay, it's not just about today. We've got to figure out a bigger plan. We've got to figure out a bigger aim for your business. So, it's almost kind of creating that dual mindset in the case that we don't have a partnership working together to figure out, okay, how do you balance long term, big picture vision with execution today to help you reach that longer term vision? Steve Rush: Yeah. And I don't know who it was. It was for almost quote wasn't there? That said, a vision without a strategy and a plan is merely a dream. I think that's what you're inferring at there, right? Jeff Chastain: It really is. Steve Rush: And without that kind of core foundations and components, then it's just a hypothetical dream. Jeff Chastain: You've got to be able to come back in and execute on it. And the same time, the flip side is that, okay. Execution without out a longer-term vision is just busy work at that point. And, yeah, that quote's been rewritten so many times. I always wonder, like, okay, who's the original purpose on this one thing? Because I've seen it rewritten several different ways and it always means the same thing, but yeah, that's exactly what it is. Steve Rush: It was some guy called “anon”. He's written loads of quotes. Jeff Chastain: Quite a few, yeah. Steve Rush: So, talking about then that kind of execution, that business vision, what are the key components that you'd expect to see happen for every team, every business as they kind of grow? Jeff Chastain: Well, it really starts out with me for that long term picture to say, okay, I put everything in terms of like climbing a mountain or something like that to say, okay, this is our path up the mountain. We're aiming for that peak, that pinnacle on top of the mountain. So, it's clearly identifying what that is in the first place to say, okay, where are we even trying to get to in the next 10 to 15 years? And this is not something that's super detailed. It's kind of the peak, the mountain up there in the clouds. On a given day it may not necessarily be super clear. And the reality in what I like to coach people with is to say, okay, if there's not at least some bit of doubt in your mind that you can even reach that, then it's not big enough kind of a thing. Steve Rush: Right. Jeff Chastain: It actually goes back to like Jim Collins, The Big Hair Audacious Goal kind of attitude, right there is, we've got this big thing out there on the horizon, but then it's really working from the execution standpoint to start backing that down to say, okay, great. That thing is out there at 10, 15, 20 years. Something way out there, that's take some time, some significant effort to get there, but okay, great. What do we need to do now as more of a plateau, a resting spot, a milestone on the mountain to say, okay, our first goal is just to get here? Yeah, we've got that in mind. But our first goal is just to get to this first camping spot here. And that's really in the three to five kind of year range to say, okay, this one's a little bit closer, a little bit more defined, but I don't want to go overboard with this. I don't want to get super detailed roadmap because especially after the last year or two with the COVID pandemic, we all realize now for sure. The world changes pretty quick, kind of a thing. Steve Rush: Doesn't it, yeah. Jeff Chastain: So, we've got to be able to adapt, but still we've got to have those kind of pictures out there. So, it's a three-to-five-year kind of milestone there. And then bring that back down again to say, okay, with that three-to-five-year milestone, what do we have to accomplish this year? The one-year kind of plan, that's what I'm working with through everybody right now to say, okay, what is our plan for 2022 here? What are our specific goals, objectives, things that we need to go accomplish? And then working with that back down into what I refer to as more the 90-day world to say, okay, we're only carrying specific details from a detailed planning standpoint about this quarter. We need everybody on the team this quarter to understand, okay, what's our key number. What's our key metric that we're working towards, what specific goals, tasks, projects, et cetera, need to be done this quarter again, in order to reach our one-year goals, in order to reach our three-to-five-year milestones, kind of a thing like that. So, it's bringing that back down step by step. And each step, it gets closer. It gets more detailed, but that way you've got this longer-term picture, this longer-term strategy laid out that everybody understands. Because that was one of my biggest issues in corporate America was just like, I was just going in every day. Yeah, I kind of knew what my responsibilities was. Maybe I knew what a project was at that point, but I didn't have any bigger picture vision to say, okay, what am I doing right here? How does that really matter? Even in terms of the overall division, much less the company and with a small business, we can't afford to have our limited resources right there effectively kind of get disillusioned. They need to understand and feel part of the overall mission of the organization. Not just be there for a paycheck, because honestly most of the time we're not going to pay them top dollars. So, we need them to really feel like being bought into the organization, bought into the company there for something more than just that paycheck and having this kind of a plan to where they can see, hey, this my role. And this is exactly how I fit into our 90-day numbers or our one-year numbers. And I can see what piece of this I'm carrying is really what gives them that buy-in, that incentive right there to say, hey, I really am a part of this. I'm not just here for a paycheck. Steve Rush: Yeah, it's one of the big things, you know, I notice when I coach other business leaders and other leaders of teams is they're able to articulate the vision really, really well. And it's well versed amongst a team, but if there's any gaps in context, people don't buy in as well as they could do, right? Jeff Chastain: Exactly, yeah. And they people throw around the terms all over the place, but it's almost like, okay, treating the business itself as its own entity to say, okay. We talk about, okay, your personal legacy. What do you want people to remember you by? I almost looking at it in terms of the business, what do you want the business to be known by? If your business was to go away in 20 years or something, what would you want people to remember? That, hey, this business accomplishes this, it's like, we look at a lot of the stuff going on today with like an Elon Musk sitting there putting the new space flight missions up kind of a thing there outside of our NASA program here in the states. And it's like, okay, he's got a bigger picture legacy, a bigger picture vision. And you look at that and say, okay, what's the business legacy? Then bring it down to say, okay, what's our mission? Why are we here beyond just out to make a profit? In my case, out to make entrepreneurs' lives better, give them back the freedom, give them back the enjoyment of their business while still being able to profitably grow and scale. And it's kind of that articulation that you're sitting there. I'm assuming you're referring to, to say, okay, my whole team needs to understand this is really what our end goal is. Yes, we're a for profit business. Most people are kind of a thing there. And even if you're not for profit, you're still got to raise money either way, but got to have a bigger picture mission out there or that people can really understand and buy into. And you've got to be able to articulate that and define that both from an employee attraction standpoint and a hiring perspective from an employee retention standpoint, and even from an outside perspective to say, okay, your customers looking at that, do they identify and believe in that? And most likely that's what attracting them to the company. In addition to the solution that you're solving at that point. Steve Rush: You talked about getting your plan, your strategy down to kind of a quarter in 90 days, but for you, does it ever get more detailed down into the weeks and the days? Jeff Chastain: From a company standpoint, I don't ever break it down further than that. From an individual standpoint, we don't typically look at that or our coach kind of a thing into that. There are all kinds of systems out there for managing your week and stuff like that. But to me, the bigger picture issue is to say, okay, you understand from an individual standpoint it's the, who was it? Steven Covey. The rocks, sand, water kind of model, kind of a thing. Steve Rush: Yeah. Jeff Chastain: You understand what your big rocks are for this quarter to know that, hey, I know I've got to get project X done, or I know I've got to get these five steps towards that project done. So having in your mindset and then what we do is, or at least what I coached, I'm losing his name now. Meeting rhythm, meeting, Lencioni's strategies, kind of a thing there to have an effectively a check in style team meeting on a once-a-week basis, because what they found over time was that this goes back to those that still remember their school days, kind of a thing. Most of us, when you get the paper assigned or the project assigned, we don't start working on it that day. We would effectively wait till the night before and sit there and do the cram kind of style session to get that paper written. And that carried forward into the working environment where you'd see this almost a kind of an exponential curve of effort. Whereas as time got closer, as it got closer and closer to the deadline, all of a sudden, the amount of effort would exponentially increase in order to meet the deadlines. So, by doing more of a weekly style check in, just almost a standup kind of meeting, whatever to say, hey, where are you on your project? What's going on? It starts bringing that back. And you start seeing these little weekly spikes of effort at that point that, hey, I've got a report on this, on Friday's meeting. So therefore, I better get a little bit done this week. So, I can actually have a positive report Friday. Starts getting some of that progress moved in, but in terms of actually doing like a daily planner or anything like that, that's typically smaller scale that we typically work with. Steve Rush: And let's be honest, I guess you are expecting people to be smart enough to work out the roadmap of what week to week is going to get you to achieve your quarterly objectives anyway, aren't you, right? Jeff Chastain: You really are. And to me, that's again. Good leadership is, one being able to hire the right people from a mentality standpoint that yes, they can self-manage. They can be their own person. You're hiring the expertise there, but the other side is really getting out their way, because it's interesting with the business leaders I've interviewed on my podcast and say, okay, what's your biggest struggle? What's been the hardest thing in growing and scaling your own business? Almost always come is back to the idea of delegation that, especially when you start small, you're used to having to do everything there yourself and being able to start handing that off and saying, okay, yes. Now I'm going to go trust you to do the marketing, or I'm going to go trust you to handle the finances side without sitting there, reinserting myself back into that role is some of the hardest things that people have to deal with. And to me, that's the sign of a really good leader, is that okay? I can truly hire the right person. I can give you the systems, the tools, et cetera, you need to be successful, but then I'm getting out of the picture. I'm stepping back and letting you run with this, because honestly, hopefully you do a better job at it than I could do, because finance is not my area expertise or marketing for sure. Kind of a thing there. Steve Rush: So, when you think about the folk that you've interviewed for your podcast, typically, what are the kind of common traits that you see that set those really successful leaders apart? What would they be typically? Jeff Chastain: It actually goes back to kind of what we were talking about earlier with that visionary mindset, the ones that have the big ideas, the ones that really truly know, hey, we've got a mission here. We're out to go solve this mission here. Honestly, the way I started to say, hey, I know I.T, I'm going to go be an its consultant. Those ones typically struggle more because a lot of times they're more the technical kind of technician type personalities there, the ones that really have that bigger picture vision. And then again, what we've talked about can articulate that vision, can bring that vision, turn that it into a plan and bring a team together to drive that mission forwards. Those are the ones that really seem to have more success from the ones that I've talked to. Just, again, having that bigger picture, this is more than just ourselves, more than what I can accomplish. And therefore, I need my team to come alongside me to come out and execute on this. Those are the ones that grow. If you're just sitting there looking at it solely as I'm the only one that can do this, I'm the best one at all these tasks. That's just a self-limiter at that point, more than anything. And that's where a lot of the technician types kind of struggle. Steve Rush: So preneurs versus entrepreneur, right? Jeff Chastain: It really is, yeah. Steve Rush: Yeah. So, we're going to turn the tables a bit now, Jeff. This is where we typically hack into your leadership thinking, your leadership brain. Jeff Chastain: Okay. Steve Rush: So, I'm going to ask you to think about all of the experiences you've had throughout your career and having coached some fantastic leaders yourself too and distill them down to your top three leadership hacks. What would they be? Jeff Chastain: To me the first one more than anything is kind of knowing your identity. Either personally or having an identity for the business, because especially when you're the solo entrepreneur or the early-stage entrepreneur, you and the business are both pretty well tied together. So it's like, okay, how do you define out that identity? Your who and your why kind of a thing of your business at that point to build, get other people on board, and then really the second step or of the second hack there as you were calling it kind of a thing for, okay, we know who we are. Building out a roadmap, building out a strategy. Actually, had it written down. Morris Chan is, one of the quotes that was along those lines, saying. Without strategy, execution is aimless. Without execution, strategy is useless. So, it's that same kind of quote that we've talked about. There are so many different versions of it out there. And then the third option, like, or third piece of it is really being intentional about the delegation. Plan to delegate, even if you're still that solo entrepreneur, or you're still the two- or three-person team, right there. Actually, work with those people to say, okay, we're going to draw out effectively the org chart, draw out the functional kind of chart there of all the different functions in your business. Even though it may have your name on 90% of these boxes, we need to help you understand what that bigger picture plan is for your business. So, we can start identifying, hey, this box over here, I'm not being very good at accomplishing the goals here. Maybe this is the first one we need to go work at delegating or find somebody to hire in for. So really developing that kind of plan for delegation, that kind of plan for hiring, even if you can't financially do it right now, but just start thinking in that bigger picture, because the ones that have that bigger picture, vision, that bigger picture strategy to say, okay, next year, I am going to hire these two new people. At that point, you've got a goal. You've got something to work towards rather than just being solely focused in today. So, to me, that's almost really the three things in my mindset is, the identity, the roadmap, and then just planning to delegate, planning to grow. Steve Rush: I love that last one. And it also relevant for people that work in organizations, where if you theoretically map out an ideal org chart or an ideal team structure, it's how you then go about either recruiting, hiring, or giving away some of that responsibility in hiring in to fill your gaps playing to your strength, right? Jeff Chastain: Exactly, yeah. Steve Rush: Yeah. Jeff Chastain: As an entrepreneur, we tend to try to take on way too much stuff. And I was like, we were talking about it beforehand, kind of a thing. The ones that can truly sit there and say, okay, yes, I'm not the greatest at everything. And the ones that can delegate are the ones that are going to grow and succeed faster. Steve Rush: Next part of the show Jeff, we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something screwed up, hasn't worked out well, it's not been a particularly great experience, but as a result of it, we've learned from it. And it's now serving us well in our life or work. So, what would be your Hack to Attack? Jeff Chastain: Well, I'd say I haven't necessarily completely dealt with this one yet, but to me, it's perfectionism and it's anytime, even previous ventures, everything like that, anytime it was building a product, building a service, anything like it. It had to be completely perfect before it could ever go out the door. And that just leads to paralysis honestly, more than anything. Steve Rush: Yeah, it does. Jeff Chastain: It's really this idea of saying, hey, just get started. It doesn't have to be perfect. It's version 1.0, its version 0.1 kind of a thing here. It doesn't have to be perfect. And your team, your customers, whatever will provide the feedback, honestly, probably to build a better system or a better product than you would've dreamed up in the first place. But that's still to this day something I have to keep in mind that, okay, this doesn't have to be perfect. This doesn't have to have every single bell and whistle right out the door. We just need to get started. We just need to get something out there and move forward and iterate on it. So that's been my biggest challenge since day one and still tends to be. Steve Rush: No thank you for sharing. I think many people listening to this will resonate with that, right. Because we've been taught from an early age that you don't ship a product, you don't buy something, you don't finish your homework, you know, whatever it was at high school, all of those things have to be done completely. And to the end degree. And we have to unlearn that in leading teams and leading businesses, don't we? Jeff Chastain: We really do. To me that even goes back to the strategy level, that okay, if all you've got in mind is that big 20-year goal out there, you end up paralysis at that point saying, okay, I don't even know how to start reaching that. It's the adage of the little quote about how you eat an elephant is, one bite at a time. You got to figure out how to break that down to individual bites and just say, okay, I'm going to take the first step. Even if it's not perfect, I'm going to take the first step, get it done. And then we can move on and start building that momentum at that point in is really the key to it. Steve Rush: Yeah. I think it was Steve Jobs that infamously said that you can't connect the dots forward, but you can connect them back, but just make dots. Jeff Chastain: Yep. Steve Rush: Yeah. Jeff Chastain: Exactly. Steve Rush: Great. Last part of the show we want to give you some opportunity to bump into Jeff at 21. So, you're going to do some time travel now. Jeff Chastain: Yeah. Steve Rush: So, you have an opportunity to now visit yourself in the past and give yourself some words of wisdom. What would your advice to Jeff at 21 be? Jeff Chastain: Oh, and part of it, I would say is just get out there and try things. Again, not worrying so much about okay, what's it going to look like? Is it going to work? Is it not going to work kind of a thing? Because again, I was always the perfectionist, it goes back to that standpoint of saying, and I would really get stuck on things saying, okay, if I can't do this perfectly, the first time out, then I'm not going to do it all. I think, honestly, I missed a lot of opportunities by that kind of mindset. Steve Rush: Yeah. Jeff Chastain: To say that, hey, just try something. If it doesn't work out, it's not the end of the world. People are most likely not going to remember it anyways, but just try something and who knows, something will stick. Something will work here. Steve Rush: That's it, great advice. And I often ask this question every week, as most of our listeners listening to this will know already. And it's interesting, you know, that if we could turn the clock back, how wiser we would've been, you know, a relatively short space of time. Jeff Chastain: It really is, an actually had somebody ask me a slightly different version to say, hey, what do you regret doing? Or what do you regret having made decisions before? And I kind of got to think about, it's like, you know, I wouldn't call it regrets on most anything, because hopefully we've learned from all of it. Steve Rush: Right. Jeff Chastain: So that's kind of the idea of wisdom is that you've got to go through the experience to hopefully learn from it and do it better the second in time. And if you didn't have that experience the first time, then there wouldn't have been any learning at that point. So, to me, that's the story of the journey that, hey, very rarely do you see an overnight success, an overnight business or anything. And if you, do it probably crash just as fast. Steve Rush: That's right. Jeff Chastain: So, most of these, you look at the HP or the Microsoft or anything like that. It's like HP came out a garage somewhere. It didn't pop onto the scenes as this massive corporation. You got to start, you got to build. And it's just one step at a time and plan for it. Just not happening overnight. It's going to take some time; it's going to take some effort. And that's why I always look at it as the mountain climbing journey. We're not going to just parachute into the top of the mountain here. We've got to actually make the climb and it's going to take some effort there to get there. Steve Rush: Yeah, sure. Is. So I've really enjoyed chatting, Jeff, we're coming to the end of the show now, but I want to make sure it's not the end of our listeners connecting with you. Where's place for us to send them? Jeff Chastain: All of our programs right now are wrapped around the idea of Building to Scale. So, it's buildingtoscale.com is our podcast. It's the coaching programs, everything like that for small business entrepreneurs. So, if it's an entrepreneur just simply saying, hey, I know what my dream is. I want to get there, and I don't have a plan or don't have a system, don't have a strategy. Then always just happen to have a conversation at that point, but it's just buildingtoscale.com. Steve Rush: Awesome. And of course, we'll make sure all of your social media links are in our show notes. So, folks can listen and connect with you beyond today as well. Jeff Chastain: I appreciate it. Steve Rush: Jeff, it's been great having you on the show. Good luck with the future of what you're doing and good luck with your or show too. And I appreciate you being part of our community on The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Jeff Chastain: Thank you very much. I've enjoyed the conversation. Steve Rush: Thanks, Jeff.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.  

Dr. Jerry Fu. Jerry is the founder and owner of Adapting Leaders; specializing in helping Asian American professionals. He's an executive coach with expertise in conflict resolution. This great conversation is full of hacks and learning for everyone including: The importance of mindset in Leadership What causes conflict in the first place The reason people will avoid having a difficult conversation The framework for dealing with those hard conversations Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Jerry below: Jerry on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerry-e-fu-pharmd-acc-53710187/ Adapting Leaders Website: https://www.adaptingleaders.com   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach, or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Joining me on today's show is Dr. Jerry Fu. Jerry is the founder and owner of Adapting Leaders. Specializing in helping Asian American professionals who want to get better at their leadership. Specifically, with helping them with conflict resolution, Jerry, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Start of Podcast Dr. Jerry Fu: Hi Steve. Thanks for having me. Steve Rush: I'm delighted to have you on the show. You bring an enormous amount of experience and an enormous amount of leadership perspective that we are really looking forward to get into. But before we do that, we always like to give our audience an opportunity to get to know you a bit better. Tell us a little bit about Jerry? Dr. Jerry Fu: Yeah, I love traveling. I remember when I did a school rotation in Dublin, Ireland, and I that's what gave me the travel bug to see more of the world. And I love salsa dancing that has been a hobby. I never would've expected for myself but has become one that has just consumed my life in such a great way. And I love trying new food. And so, Houston is the most affordable multicultural city anyone could ask for. So, it's fun to try any kind of new restaurant you could think about trying. Steve Rush: Awesome. And tell us a bit about the man behind the business. How did you kick off your professional career and where did it lead you? Dr. Jerry Fu: Yeah, yeah, so I have this healthcare lineage in my family. My grandpa practiced in Taiwan as a doctor for over 50 years. Several of my uncles are involved as physicians and I even grew up with two cousins. Both of whom went to Harvard and then went to med school. So, the bar was set pretty high. Steve Rush: Yeah. Right. Dr. Jerry Fu: I didn't have the bug for myself. It was just more of a cultural default to say, hey, you want to be a doctor too, right, Jerry? And I said, well, yeah, sure, okay. I don't really have any other interest. Nothing had really, you know, struck me early on in life to say, okay, this is definitely one I want to do the rest of my life. In contrast, I have a best friend from high school who wanted to be a pediatrician from a young age. He was great with kids, loved being around them, loved serving them. And, you know, he has a growing clinical practice where he is now. And, you know, that's wonderful to see, but for me, I grew up in a home where my mom protected me from a lot of stress and anxiety because, you know, she's my mom, she loves me. She doesn't want me worrying about things that I have no control over. But the challenge with that is that when I moved away for college, right. I began to face challenges I didn't have the discipline to challenge to face and actually work through. And I say this, because eventually that got me a C in organic chemistry. I had never experienced failure to that level before. In my mind, like my med school dreams were over, right. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Jerry Fu: I was just like, nope, don't know how this is going to work. So let me just remove the possibility of the shame that could happen if I were wait listed or rejected from med school. So, while I still want to do healthcare, what else could I consider doing? And so, I said, well, pharmacy seems pretty good. So let me apply to pharmacy school and convince pharmacy school that I would make a good pharmacist. My grades, just decent enough to give him a chance. And so went to pharmacy school, finished pharmacy school, but that was where my life took another challenge in conflict because by now I'm in my mid-twenties and my mom decided that she needed to step in to make sure my life was on track with what she felt was successful. This involved two main things. Number one, working for the chain pharmacy, she thought would be the safest career choice. And number two, marrying a girl that she had set up for me that she pulled from her network of Asian parents. I had moved back home. let her convince me that moving back home and working for this chain pharmacy, I wasn't excited about working for, was somehow the best option. I realized that was almost like a strategy tactic, because she convinced me to move home, not only could she be a louder voice in my life then she could really push me to marry this girl. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Jerry Fu: And even though my mom had never worked a day in her life in pharmacy, you know, moms know best, so here we go, right. And so, I had this very fixed mindset about leader, about conflict and about just life journeys in general, right. Where I felt like, you know, it was key in my twenties to make sure I worked for the best company or marry the best girl or anything else like that, because if I started off poorly, right, somehow that would just kind of lock me into other things. And so, when I felt like I was locked into working for this company and marrying this girl, you know, I was just really not happy with where my life was, you know? And went through just this. You could say self-pity phase. I was living a home; I was making good money. I was using the money. I would've spent on rent to travel and take some fun trips. And that was a nice side benefit. But I wasn't happy. One stretch, I was happy while I was living at home, working for this chain pharmacy was when I worked for a store that had a really flexible scheduling, all of a sudden, I was able to travel a lot more, do a lot of my own more of my own thing. And I knew how rare that was. So, I was scared to leave it. And so, when it went away anyway, after I had to reshuffle my schedule and do other things, I ended up at another store, which was much busier and I was unhappy again, because I had lost that autonomy over my schedule and it took a really, really ugly customer service incident 11 years ago in January that just said, okay, I can't stay here any longer. I have to find another job. And so, the problem with that is that, you know, I wasn't working on my career at all. I was just content to work for this chain pharmacy, as long as I was doing better than 70% of my workflow and my staff on other pharmacists, you know, my boss was happy with my effort. And so, I didn't work on my career. So, when I wanted to get into teaching pharmacy students, I didn't have much of a resume to stand on for a conventional university job. But one of my friends who works for a pharmacy consulting company here in Houston told me, hey, I got promoted. My previous teaching position is available. Would you like to apply for it? I said, oh absolutely. So, I get the interviews, I convince them I was worth taking a chance on. All of a sudden, I am taking this part-time teaching job over a full-time job with benefits, which of course my mom did not respond too well. And so, I knew though I wanted to do this and head in this direction. So, I'm moving to Houston from Tennessee where I was living at the time. And you know, I had local friends to help me get settled in Houston fairly quickly. So that was nice. But I realized quickly I was in over my head after the initial honeymoon phase was over. There were some big assignments that my boss had trusted me to handle which is mainly writing new test questions. And for whatever reason, either I got writer's block or mismanaged my time, but ultimately, I didn't want to admit that I was in over my head because I didn't manage my time or anything like that. And so I was still in this mindset that somehow if I told my boss, you know, a good enough reason as to why I didn't get the job done, somehow, she would understand. And unfortunately, the day before the first exam where I was supposed to have new test questions, she saw the exam and needed to come in early and just rehash everything because she's like, this is well below, you know, the standard that I had expected from you, and I realized quickly, right? Like your boss, isn't paying you to tell you stories as to why I think get the job done. Your boss wants to get the job done, but that was not a lesson I could embrace until much later. But anyway, I say this to say, this set a bad precedent for me. And she struggled to trust me after that. And so eventually after enough rope, 11 months later I got fired and that was just a tough wake up call I couldn't appreciate at the time. And you know, me still dealing with the failure and the shame and the embarrassment of wasting this opportunity at a company that a lot of my friends covered it, you know, respected. And I just thought, oh my gosh, what am I going to do? And so that's where the rollercoaster for my career took a really bad turn where I ended up at an independent pharmacy job. House of cards, four of my paychecks bounced crooked doctored And after the first check bounce, actually my boss, owned up to him. was like, hey, something happened, sorry about that. We'll we for it. But here's the problem, Steve, is that I didn't have a local bank account. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Jerry Fu: I never bothered setting one up. And so, I was mailing my checks home and when checks two, three and four bounce, right. And my boss eventually I said, hey, we've having some more problems. And I checked with my mom, I said, did I have some mail? Oh yeah, these checks were overturned but I was just too afraid to tell you, and it's just like, no, like this is not how you handle bad news, right. Steve Rush: Exactly, yeah. Dr. Jerry Fu: If a patient has cancer, you don't tell him, well, I can't afford to tell him he has cancer because that would be terrible. It's like, no, he needs to know so he knows how to treat it, right. So anyway, in my own conflict diversion still, right. I felt like was bad at conflict. I was never going to good at it. So anytime someone confronted me or was upset with me, I just needed to take the path of least resistance. And so, what do you do when the boss is clearly ripping you off, right. And so, after nine months of back and forth and trying to chase down as much of the shorted money as I could before finally quitting. My friends got me on with a different, more legitimate company, but money was really tight. And so, they said, hey, we can't pay more than eight hours a week. And I said, uh-oh, so what do you suggest I do? And they said, well, you can cover at our Austin location, which is about two and a half hours away. And you can get more hours that way. And I said, okay. And so, I'm driving out to Austin with no idea what my life is going to look like. And people would tell me, hey, Jerry, you could end up in worst cities. And I said, yeah, technically, but it just didn't feel like home at this point, right? And so, this summer, this is 2012. Now this was the summer that some friends of mine who run a pharmacy leadership, nonprofit contacted me and said, hey, one of our facilitators had to back out for a national meeting. Would you be interested in stepping in? And these were friends I'd made over a couple years. I said, oh, I love them so much. And so, I said, absolutely, I want to step in and help out. And so, teaching leadership kind of unlock some possibilities in my head because before I said, wow, leadership is hard. The few times I've tried it. I wasn't really that great at it. I don't know if I'll ever be good at it. And so now I was asking myself, well, what if I could be a good leader? What would that look like? What kind of work would that involve? How I care myself? And so that fall, I had the opportunity to either stay in Austin part-time, which was a great work team, or take on a full-time management position in Houston that had opened up. And I said, okay. I can't be scared. I can't stay safe. I have to take on this challenge. I'm ready to come back to Houston. So yeah, let me take on this challenge. Steve Rush: It's a great story. And what I'm noticing as you're describing it though, Jerry, right. Is this whole journey of mindset that shifts for you on this exploration, what happened next? Dr. Jerry Fu: Oh, I got written up again. I had technicians who are not pulling their weight and causing a lot of problems and in my conflict diversion, right. So, leadership I was able to, but then the specific area of conflict resolution I was still struggling with. And so, you know, again, trying to be gracious, but the management said, hey, their behavior is a problem and your unwillingness to discipline them or even fire them is also a problem. So, your kind of in the doghouse again we're going to put you on a performance improvement plan and things. And of course, you know, all my friends around me are saying, you got to own up, if you just want pity, that's not going to help you with the situation. So, you got to own up to what you got to do and what you have to work on. So, I managed to get out of the doghouse right around the time the company had their funding pulled. Basically, the owners at that point felt like the pharmacy model was no longer viable, so they just decided to pull out. I was still looking to quit and move on, but that didn't change things. It just made a little more urgent. And so, I managed to land on my feet only because I have leadership experience on my resume now. They tell me, hey, we're interviewing you because you have leadership experience on your resumes. So, I tell people, leadership save my career in that I got more job options. That next job unfortunately didn't last very long. The revenue model was not sustainable for smaller pharmacies that actually offer a higher quality of life. Incidentally, along the way, I had to fire a technician who had gotten pregnant after I'd hired her. And that was tough because when the clinic that I was working with, wasn't happy with her. And then they told my boss and my boss said, hey, look, you got to handle it. And I knew that if I did not fire her, that I would lose my job too. And so that was the main impetus for saying, okay, I got to fall in this grenade, right. So anyway, the next couple of years I managed to land on with another company that I liked a lot, you know, they had good benefits, good hours. And I was hoping that would be the last company I ever had to work for. And again, you realize, these smaller pharmacies that offer high quality of life don't last long in the pharmacy landscape. And so, when that company went under four years ago, I told myself, well, you know, I'm tired of dealing with insurance companies. I'm tired of trying to chase doctors for scripts, but I love teaching these leadership workshops, which I've done consistently since 2012. What would a career in leadership coaching and facilitating look like, you know, what kind of work would that involve? And so, I proceed to ask some friends who are in this space, and I'm still scared of failing rejection. So, I don't actually start anything, not for real. And I tell people, Steve, that it took a pandemic for me to kind of wake up and say, hey, well, you know, how much longer am I going to wait? Right. You know? And last October file the LLC, got the website up, opened the bank account and you still got to hustle, right? Steve Rush: Of course, yeah. Dr. Jerry Fu: The world doesn't owe you success just because you decide to put some skin in the game. Steve Rush: You spot on Jerry, but actually there is no substitute for hard work. And what I do know about you is you are incredibly hard working and focused, right? Dr. Jerry Fu: Exactly. Steve Rush: The first time we met was like 2:00 AM in Houston. Dr. Jerry Fu: Yeah. Steve Rush: That's the kind of guy you are, you're prepared to go above and beyond in order for us to have that conversation because it was important to you. Dr. Jerry Fu: Yes. Steve Rush: And what I do know about you is that while you still might bump into some of that fixed mindset stuff, the growth mindset is massively dominating your future. And I suspect that's what help you get to where you get to now, right? Dr. Jerry Fu: Absolutely. It has to, and the fact that you would need to keep growing is really the opportunity there, because I think there some myth that somehow if you have enough of growth mindsets mindset, that somehow you could just stop and say, okay, now I can hit cruise control. And as David Allen says in his book, Getting Things Done with personal development, he says, the better you get the better you'd better get. And so, it's like, wait, it doesn't end. It's like, oh, it doesn't get easier. It's like, well, in a way it does, but only so you can handle bigger challenges, right? Steve Rush: Right. It's the start of something for you. Having a growth mindset just gives you the permissions to explore, to find things, to learn more. But then you still have to do something with what you learn, what you find, what you've explored, otherwise you bump into that fixed mindset holding you back. So, what was the point that you thought, right. I'm definitely onto something here now. And specifically with the Asian American community that you work with a lot. When was that kind of defining moment that you thought, yeah, I've definitely got something here? Dr. Jerry Fu: Yeah. Great question. I saw something when I landed my, technically, my first paying client. I met my first client through the church that he used to go too. He's a Chinese guy, similar background, his parents came over from a different country and he was recognizing that, hey, a stable nine to five job only goes so far and maybe I need to take on some leadership challenges. So, he actually left Houston to take on a job in a different city that he felt like that would give him a higher quality of life. And not just give him a boring nine to five or a toxic work culture. And he realized quickly he needed to improve. And so, when I was first trying to test out my coaching, I said, hey, try me out six months for free, just because I need to get better at this. And this way you have some level of help. And so, after six months I said, okay, I'm ready to start charging, are you on board with this? And he's like, yeah, are you willing to give me a discount if I commit to a year of coaching? And I said, oh absolutely. That's when I knew I was onto something and then same thing with my second client. She was dealing with her own challenges at work. And so, when I helped her navigate a really difficult conversation with her very temperamental, passive, aggressive boss, after he blew a batter, trying to restore things. I knew that this is a problem that a lot of Asians don't want to admit that they struggle, right. I know how private and prideful I was about my own challenges to deal with things and have this image that I have to maintain that, no, no, no. Like I'm tough enough. I should be able to do it on my own, right. And then you realize, how's that working for you? right. Just to be too proud to ask for help when you need help, right. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Jerry Fu: Still trying to figure out how exactly to help other more Asians realize, hey, it's okay to say you don't have it all together. Like it's okay to say, hey, like you're dealing with some challenges, you're struggling to find your own solution for them. And yeah. Happy to get a solution that's more within your preferred budget if that's what it comes down to. So yeah. I know I'm onto something there because I think a lot of Asians are dealing with that. Whether it's temperamental bosses or parental expectations about how their life should go or even just within themselves to say, hey, what I grew up hearing isn't jiving right now. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Jerry Fu: What do I need to do differently? So that I'm actually charting a course for myself in my own life that I know I would be more satisfied with. Steve Rush: Yeah. And there's no question, of course, that having that experience of being born in a Asian community and living with some of the things that people like, you know, white, Caucasian guys at me just will not get is absolutely going to be a massive strength to those conversations that I just couldn't empathize with the greatest respect as a great coach, I could do my absolute damnest to explore and develop and understand with deep empathy and respect but I still wouldn't be able to get it like you would, right. Dr. Jerry Fu: Fair enough. I mean, on one hand, I think the joke or not joke, but the interesting thing in coaching is either you want someone with completely fresh eyes that has no frame of reference. I think there's some merit there and at the same time, you know, what better person to help you navigate a path when they have the same skin, right. And they have the same eyes and perspective that you have because they've dealt with the same racial taunt or, you know, familial stress and prideful culture that we've held onto for so long. Steve Rush: And I definitely think there's something about having a fresh set of eyes in perspective but as part of an intimate coaching relationship, there'll be things that naturally spark off for you that would never even enter my subconscious, right? Dr. Jerry Fu: Yeah, yeah. I'm just a little further down the path. I skin my knee a couple times and as much as you could learn from skinning your own knee the same, why don't I spare you some of that, right. Steve Rush: Exactly right. Yeah. And in talking of skinning your own knee, what it seems to me, Jerry, is that those experiences you shared earlier around not facing into some of the conflict, not facing into some of the challenges that you had are really core elements of the learning that you've now applied in the work that you do now, right? Dr. Jerry Fu: Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean the biggest catalyst for me, recognizing I need to get better was admitting that the cost of not dealing with the situation is worse than messing up and failing at, you know, engaging the situation. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Jerry Fu: And then also to recognize, hey, you know what, even if I fail, it's better than not doing anything. And then also, you know, the paradox is okay, let me just not settle for, well, at least I tried. It's like, okay, let me really study this and improve this so that I give myself the best chance of success every single time I engage. Steve Rush: So, from your perspective, are there some common traits that cause conflict in the first place? Dr. Jerry Fu: I think the first thing is just mismanaged expectations, right? That's usually the easiest conflict to realize, right. This is just, hey, I was expecting you to show up on time. You showed up 30 minutes late. Okay. We have a conflict done, right. That's the first simple conflict. The second conflict I'll see is, you know, expectations for myself and my own path versus expectations that others have for me, right. That's another one. Cultural expectations, right. When just in like social circle, right. When I remember in high school, like a classmate came over and he didn't take his shoes off because he just didn't know, but I was too afraid to tell him, hey, you need to take your shoes off before coming in and now I have to deal with the conflict, right. He's not even aware of this unless he told him. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Jerry Fu: And then, there's healthy conflict, right? The current version of you versus the future version of you or business conflict, right. What makes us money now may not make us money in five years from now or even within healthy business cultures, right. Morale and results usually are on opposite sides. And then, you know, innovation and systems usually don't pair up well, right. Because innovation says, hey, we got to look for new stuff and systems say, well, you know, this is how we're built to handle money now. Those are the most frequent conflicts that I see. Steve Rush: You mentioned very briefly there around conflict can be positive. Most conflict happens in that part of the limbic system that we try to deal with that whole fight flight freeze in the peace situation. And that's typically get an emotional response. So how can conflict be positive in that sense? Dr. Jerry Fu: I mean, conflict tells you that something has to change, right. I'll give a specific example from my work, leadership lab in a way. So, my lead technician will call her, Denise. For the longest time she would just show up late, chronically late. And one of my other technicians who is consistently punctual is very upset at this, but Emily, this punctual technician, right. Emily doesn't handle conflict well. And because she's a harmonizer, she wants to get along with people. She doesn't like it when people dislike her for things. And so, she's just quietly frustrated with Denise tardiness and one day on our group text, right. Emily says, oh, basically Denise was late again. And so, Emily is just texting all these really passive, aggressive texts on our thread. And it's like, okay, this is a problem, right. Because when it starts to spill over into these kinds of messages, it's like, okay, now we have a conflict, right. And so, the conflict really revealed a lot of good things that we needed to work on, right. That was the good of conflict because Denise realizes, okay, my tardiness is affecting my team's ability to focus and get things done. And, Emily is recognizing, oh, like holding this in is not healthy, right. She's not going to change until I say something to her. At least I don't have a chance of seeing how she'll respond unless I say something to her. Even though this is an unhealthy conflict, because it reveals a lack of empathy for the other person and just an unaware of the consequences of my own selfishness in this case for either woman. This was the catalyst for both of them to realize it's like, okay, Denise, like, if you don't want her to start passively, aggressively communicating with you, you need to step up your game, show up on time. And Emily, you know, if you're upset, go ahead and say, like we don't want you holding that in. Steve Rush: What are the kind of main reasons that people don't just air it when it's fresh for them, you know, first time out an incident occurs. What is that kind of fundamental reason we just don't let it out so early? Dr. Jerry Fu: Well, I mean, I know for me, it's this fear of antagonizing other person. Like I'm just going to throw them on defensive if I confront them about something that I think is problematic. Part of it is just the way people have dealt with conflict with me, when they just, send this really polite email heading like, hey, right. And then you open the email and then they just blast you with everything you did real wrong, right. And so, yeah, number one is just the desire to be liked. I think if I bring this thing up, they won't like me anymore. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Jerry Fu: And then even worse is that you bring it up in a way that shows, you're scared to bring this up with them, which is, you know, almost just as insulting as just not wanting to talk about it with them, right. Steve Rush: I can say that actually. Dr. Jerry Fu: Yeah. Steve Rush: And it's ironic. I never really thought of it in that way that you can physically see the non-verbal communication happening way before, can't you? Somebody been stewing on this situation or the event and now they're going to have a conversation, but they're dreading it. You can see it all over their face often, can't you? Dr. Jerry Fu: Oh yeah. You die thousand deaths before you ever get stabbed, right. Steve Rush: And one of the things that comes back to your earlier observations was all of this is mindset. The fear of I'm not going to do that is a mindset, isn't it? The assumptions that we make about how people respond to us is a mindset. And actually, often when you get it out there, it's nothing like it. Dr. Jerry Fu: Yeah. Steve Rush: Yeah. Excellent. So, talk us through a little bit about the work you've been doing recently. So, I know you have your downloadable version of the framework that you've got. I think we really need just to spin through how that might help our leaders listening to this. Dr. Jerry Fu: Oh, of course. Yeah. So, in trying to expand the help that I can offer potential clients or anyone really, who's curious about my business. Have this great guide that details a framework on how to handle hard conversations, because basically I took some, you know, material from references and books that, you know, friends introduced to me. And then I kind of put my own spin on it, my own spices in the common recipe if you want to use one analogy. So yeah, the five steps for handling hard conversations, according to me. Number one, you have to imagine what a successful conversation would sound like. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Jerry Fu: Too often, right. I know what I do in conflict to say, well, I don't know how this is going to go, but I'm just going to go in there. And I guess, you know, even if it goes poorly, well, you don't have to settle for that, right. Maybe the conversation can go easy, right. You could just say, hey, can you stop leaving your dirty dishes in the sink? And they say, oh yeah, sorry about that. Maybe it could be that easy, right. But you don't know. And kind of like, to my point about being a good leader, you give yourself permission to succeed at something, right. Hey, maybe I could actually be good at this. Number two is to find 10 seconds of courage to set things in motion, whether it's sending that email or sending that text or picking up the phone, right. People think, oh, I need to be more courageous. I need to feel like Superman or Wonder Women. And it's like, if you wait until you feel like you have enough courage, like you'll never do it or even worse, you wait three months, six months. And you know, now all this damage is continuing to go. Like this fire is still, you know, eating up all this property. And it's like, well, I'm not ready to deal with that yet. But it's still causing problems, right. So, you need to stretch yourself for 10 seconds to kind of set things in motion and lock the gate behind you, so you can't back out, right. And that's kind of helped you force yourself forward. Number three is to script your critical moves, right. So don't just think about what you need to include, go ahead, and write it down, right. Because if things are rattling around in your head, you're not going to remember everything in the moment. So go ahead and write things down you know, organize into a logical flow and make sure this way you can address things impartially. Number four though, is to rehearse those critical moves, right. Rehearse in front of a mirror, record yourself on your phone, get your friends to role play with you, make sure that you train in the dojo before fighting on the street, right. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Jerry Fu: Make sure you practice that courage and then step five, do it. You've done the homework, you set things in motion, you've practiced. And the cost of backing out now is too high. So just follow through and learn from it. Make sure you say, hey, how could I do that better? But those are the five steps Steve Rush: Also of course, by just mapping out those steps and stages, as you've just described, will help unlock that growth mindset that we need to be effective in that moment. Dr. Jerry Fu: Yeah. Steve Rush: So, we're going to flip the coin and turn the tables a little bit now Jerry. We're going to dive your leadership experience of which you've had, not only the ability of leading teams, but have had the opportunity to coach great leaders too. So, I want you to dive in, if you can, and just try and get to our top three leadership hacks from you, what would they be? Dr. Jerry Fu: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, great, great question. So top three leadership hacks. Number one. Kind of like what we were referred to earlier saying, hey, what's the cost of not doing anything, right. So, to do that, just to say, hey, 10 seconds of courage, you don't have to wait until you're ready. Just start doing things, right. Try something, learn, adjust, and then repeat the cycle, right. And yeah, what's the smallest amount of change I could do right now that I would feel okay with doing, right. Just shrink something down into a manageable step, much like Atomic Habits said, or David Allen said, you know, what's the next action? So yeah, the first leadership hack, what's the minimum viable action you can do, right. number two, leadership hacks. I mean, learning is big. And so, for me, I download audiobooks through an app called Libby. Let's you rent audiobooks and eBooks for free through whatever library you have access to and then listen to them a on 1.2, five speed and learning right is the second leadership hack and then finding ways to make learning fun. And to be opportunistic with that, right. Because I haven't had as much time to read physical books as I used to, but the next best thing is to listen to books while in the car or I have other moments of dead time. So that would be the second leadership hack I would say. And then third leadership hack. Ask meaningful questions. Because questions are what helped me shine the flashlight on important things, I want other people to address, and it feels much less pushy when you're trying to motivate someone to think a little differently. And if you help people realize things for themselves, then it's a lot easier than me just telling them what I think they should do. Steve Rush: A part of every great coach of course. Dr. Jerry Fu: Yeah, absolutely. Steve Rush: So, the next part of the show, we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is where something hasn't worked out well. Maybe it's been pretty catastrophic, but the event itself is now cause some learning and that learning serves you well, what would be your Hack to Attack? Dr. Jerry Fu: I'll give a situation from my current job. When I first started, I brought on a technician from my previous company who was one of a lead technician, but it turns out was just because you have the title mean people respected her. And when I brought her on, we realized too late that she wasn't a good fit for the company basically. She was willing to undercut her teammates anytime she made a mistake because she was too afraid of looking incompetent and she didn't want to lose her job. And so even though she wasn't lead technician now, she was still acting like she was and just causing a lot of problems that she just didn't want to admit to. And so, you know, my attempts to write her up and discipline her didn't go well. And this went on for like a year and a half before we finally said, okay, we can't do this anymore. Like, and so yeah, I mean, those failings, that was probably like, I don't want to admit how much we set our company back because I was just too afraid to engage. Because she knew how to deflect. She knew how to bite back and then we just realized, hey, you know, even if this is true, like we're still in charge. And if we're not happy with her performance, it's still up to us to push her out the door. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Jerry Fu: And so, this set a tough precedent because we didn't entirely build up a bulletproof case, even though we had more enough evidence, we just didn't line it up properly. And so, when she filed for unemployment. The workforce commission ruled in her favor because we didn't line up all our ducks in a row. And so, I say this because was a good lesson because when it happened again with another employee, we just realized, okay, it doesn't matter how much this employee refute our story. It's still up to us to write her up. And so sure enough, after we, you know, hit the last straw with her, you know, we made sure that we had a strong case. And so, when she tried to file for unemployment, she was denied. And to say this, not out of like satisfaction, I'm just happy that we protected the company from people that were draining its resources. Steve Rush: And the lesson learned, of course, otherwise you'd repeated the same mistakes. Dr. Jerry Fu: Oh, absolutely. That was more satisfying, even though it was exhausting both times. Steve Rush: I can imagine. It's never an easy thing to do, but it's a byproduct of managing performance and people, right. Dr. Jerry Fu: Yeah. Steve Rush: So, the last bit of the show today is we get a chance to give you a of time travel. You get to bump into Jerry at 21 and give them some advice. So, what would your words or wisdom be to Jerry at 21? Dr. Jerry Fu: Yeah, I would tell him three things. I think number one, it's okay for people to disagree with you. If you like something and they start to badmouth that you don't have to be the hero and prove them wrong. Like, if you like, what you like and you know, why you like it, it's okay if other people don't like it. So just be more secure in that regard. Number two would be, it's okay to say no, you know, don't people please. Like if you are honestly not excited about doing something, don't do it and it's a lesson to remind myself today, actually just say, hey, it's okay to say no to things. And then number three, I would say explore more. I'll tell you this, Steve, this was a funny moment. I basically got funneled into a German language learning program when I was in middle school. And so, because I'd already learned German in middle school, I just continued it through high school. I remember after going through a tough lesson, getting a bad grade on a test, I just said, oh my gosh, you know, when am I ever going to use this? Steve, I've met so many great German people like everywhere I've traveled. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Jerry Fu: And the number of cute German girls I'll meet. And even if I have no shot of dating them, I could just see God just like, you know, talking to me and looking at me, going, I tried, like to expand your perspective and it took a while for me to really appreciate. Oh wow, global perspective is amazing. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Jerry Fu: And there's a big, great world out there to explore and learn from and really embrace. I would tell myself, hey, as much as you like video games, you know, maybe there's something better out there for you. Steve Rush: And in the big diverse global world we have, we are so lucky that we have 94 countries that listen to our show and therefore we want to make sure we can connect you with those and that audience too, Jerry. So, when we are finished today, where's the best place we can send them. Dr. Jerry Fu: Yeah. You can connect with me on LinkedIn but the best place to go to connect and where all the free goodies are, is my website, which is www.adaptingleaders.com. In addition to the free guide that you can download, you can schedule a complimentary 30-minute call. You can also check out the blog where I summarize useful and interesting leadership books and offer other life hacks that maybe useful to you Steve Rush: And let the leadership hacking continue, and we'll make sure that we connect our audience with you. And all of those links, Jerry will be in our show notes. Dr. Jerry Fu: Great. Thanks so much, Steve. Steve Rush: It's been awesome talking. I'm absolutely convinced that the whole approach to conflict resolution is something that we are going to look back in 10 years and you are going to be one of those global experts because you bring a really neat and simple perspective on something that is really quite uncomfortable and challenging. So, I just wanted to say thank you for being on our podcast. Thanks, Being part of our community Jerry. Dr. Jerry Fu: Ah, thanks, Steve. I'm so happy I stayed up till 2:00 AM to finally meet with you because I could have just said, you know what? Nope. I'm not willing to do that. And to have this meaningful conversation with you and to know that we're giving so much benefit and useful information to your audiences is humbling and exciting. Steve Rush: Thank you, Jerry. Appreciate it. Dr. Jerry Fu: All right. Closing Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers. Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.

Welcome to our first show of 2022. I'm delighted to kick start this year off with Omar L Harris. Omar is a former Executive Leader of GSK and Allergan with more than 20 years' experience in the pharmaceutical industry. He's the founder managing partner of Intent Consulting and author of The Servant Leaders Manifesto and Be a J.E.D.I. Leader, Not a Boss. This warm and insightful conversation is packed full of learning including: The greatest gift that diversity has presented to Omar. The difference between equality and equity. How inequality can so easily disrupt your team and organization. How to be a J.E.D.I Leaders and not a boss. Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Omar below: Omar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/omarlharris/ Omar on Twitter: https://twitter.com/strengthsleader Omar on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/omarl.harris/ Omar's Website: https://www.omarlharris.com Be a J.E.D.I Leader not a Boss (BOOK)   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach, or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Joining me today is Omar Harris. He's a former executive of GSK and Allergan, more than 20 years' experience in the pharmaceutical industry. He's the founder managing partner of Intent Consulting and author of The Servant Leaders Manifesto and Be a J.E.D.I. Leader, Not a Boss, but before we get a chance to speak with Omar, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: Although we can't predict the future. What we can say is 2022 will not be returning to business as usual. The pandemic, social unrest, cultural divisions, and new remote working, all but guarantee that leading teams and business in the coming year will be anything but business as usual. Leading in the hybrid world, digitalization, automation, all of which workers need to learn skills outside of our routines and our normal roles. Combined of course, we're getting used to that hybrid world. So how do we prepare for challenges as leaders in 2022 and beyond? So, I'm calling the six themes as leaders we need to be focused on. Starting with using technology in human ways for human reasons. When it comes to embracing the hybrid workforce, embracing technology is a priority. Professor Roshni Raveendhran and completed some research and explored the integration of novel technologies into the workplace and where those technologies intersect with the psychology of human behavior. With studies, including the examination of monitoring technology in the use of virtual and augmented reality, Raveendhran focused on use of new systems to augment human life and how new technologies can be used responsibly. For example, the use of avatars may relieve that sense of social threat through psychological distance or how an organization's behavior tracking application may be used as a better means of collaboration rather than for people to be feeling that they're constantly monitored. As companies start to rethink about how remote working impacts on the workforce. Raveendhran also said, “One key challenge pertains to the missing social connection, that feeling of being part of the same group. So, the use of things like virtual reality and other augmented reality is going to be a key critical part that drives the psychology for people to adapt some of those technologies too.” One thing in 2022, all companies will need to focus on and that's improving company culture. Darden Professor Laura Morgan Roberts is an expert human potential, diversity and leadership. And she notes that compassionate, responsive leadership is what every organization needs, whether face to face or screen to screen. She also sites learning as being a key element of that culture change as well as peer to peer support. A crisis is messy, and so too is innovation. Roberts goes on to say, “As organizations compete and grow, the successful ones were emphasized on a culture that is inclusive, authentic, and has development at the heart to retain talent.” Successfully leaders in 2022 will forge beyond diversity efforts and developing that minority talent, pushing that organizations to really embrace the importance of equity and intelligent inclusion. Ultimately the impact of diversity equity and inclusion efforts. However well meaning, will depend on how well they're executed by its leadership. Decades of research in social psychology and organizational behaviors show that when individuals question the value of group identity, that social identity threats increase, they register, and they're massively damaging, not just to the individual, but to the organizational relationships. Professor Martin Davidson is Darden University global chief diversity officer goes on to explore how those organizations can design and Institute programs and policies that worked at eliminate inequality. He calls out in his studies that the biggest focus should be reducing the psychological reactivity that arises in response to any racial friction. And let's remember in 2022, we're all in the same boat. Friction can sink the boat, keeping team members out of sync. When in fact they should be pursuing the same meaningful goals that are aligned through all the organization. Professor Lynn Isabella is an authority on managing teams and she likens a business unit to accrue rowing on the water. What it takes to row together with seven or eight people is true of the manifestation of teamwork in action, winning crews share common characteristics. Not only must every team member have the master with technique at a similar level but have different strengths that each can learn to row with the rest of the crew. Professor Isabella goes on to say in their recent studies. “As a member of the team, each row must learn to follow and lead simultaneously. Individual stars will only slow the boat down.” So, what about leadership capability? or to take their teams to the next levels of achievement. Successful leaders of organizations and teams will need a cohesive understanding of what leadership really is and what it's not. Having interviewed hundreds of great leaders and coaches from around the world. What I know is true, is: Leadership is about influence and not power, it's more about inspiration than control. Power is based on the development and dependence of others and the authority based on the formalization of a simple hierarchy that we've become used to. Command and control approaches lead to burnout and disengagement. The thing is, working through influence takes more effort, but over the long haul. Leads to more engaged, purpose driven and productive teams. Until you create more leaders who are willing to provide their efforts in your direction, you're not really leading. And my final message to kickstart 2022 is business is human. While COVID 19 and the pandemic has accelerated the mass adoption of new technologies. The things we can rely on are human related. Leadership is profoundly human. We can't rely on AI and technology to replace the human traits of judgment, compassion, empathy, and ethics. And in 2022 leadership will require a human touch now more than ever. So whatever new bold technologies you adopt and the innovative solutions you seek, let's just remember human centered leadership is what's going to make 2022 a real success for you and the teams that you lead. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. Let's get into the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Our special guest on today's show is Omar L. Harris. He's the founder of Intent Consulting. He's an expert on business and servant leadership. He's a thought leader, speaker an award-winning bestselling author of five books, including The Servant Leaders Manifesto and be a J.E.D.I. Leader, Not a Boss: This is about leading in the Era of Corporate Social Justice, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion. Omar, welcome to of The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Omar Harris: Happy to be here, Steve. Nice to be speaking with you. Steve Rush: So, tell us a little bit about you and how Omar arrived to do what you're doing and how you're making such a great impact on the world. Where did it all start? Omar Harris: I mean, it started early on, I think my parents, especially my mother really invested in my town talents early on in my life and kind of, you know, gave me something to aspire to in terms of telling me that she wanted me to do something great in the world with my life. I was enlisted into the gifted program in the third grade. It was kind of a funny story about that. I thought I was being studied for like mental disorder or something like that. And it turns out that it was actually an assessment for the gifted program. And you know from that moment on really kind of having extra time to invest in my intellectual acumen, having the best teachers, having the privilege of being able to expand my mind and learn in different ways. And I think that when I reflect back on it, I always thought I was a bit unfair that I was going to classes, getting access to, you know, information and, you know, different types teaching that other students were getting. Steve Rush: Yeah. Omar Harris: And I thought it was fundamentally inequitable. And I think that, you know, this is what starts in Western Society. Specifically, around the fact that there are people that we see as elite or having certain pedigree or whatever it is. And you get that, you know, these privileges begin to happen at an early age. And then you have those who never receive any types of privileges who have to overcome constantly for the entirety of their life. And what I fundamentally believe is that everybody is uniquely special and talented, and that everyone needs the same kind of investment in order for them to unlock their true potential, which is what I do now is try to help every single person that I encounter, unlock their unique, potential, their unique purpose and help them connect that to their goals and their progress. But I mean, I think that I evolved there over the course of a 20 plus year pharmaceutical career, living all over the world, you know, U.S., Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. And I've lived a life when I've been able to kind of do what I'm good at all the time. And I just want everyone to have the benefit of that. Steve Rush: And I love the fact that you've raised inequity in this whole process, because it's the one thing that gets often lost between diversity and inclusion, because it is not about race. It's not about color. It's not about creed. Omar Harris: No. Steve Rush: It cuts across all of those lines, doesn't it? Omar Harris: It does. It's a big intersectionality about inequity and people confuse equity and equality all the time, but they're not the same thing. Steve Rush: Yeah. Omar Harris: And that's why it's very important to explain what equity is for people. So, they understand really. There's a famous cartoon that shows three children at a fence looking at a baseball game. Let's say it's on the soccer pitch for your global audience or the football pitch. And imagine looking over, trying to look at the watch match, and you have one tall child looking over the fence easily, and you have one kid who's basically can't even see over the fence, kind of get a glimpse of some things. And you have a little short kid who can't see anything, right? And so, this is fundamentally inequity that has nothing to do with anything. It's happened to be three different heights, right. Steve Rush: And the treatment strategy for those three people in that case is different. Omar Harris: Exactly. And the tallest person's also standing on a milk crate. Steve Rush: Right, yeah. Omar Harris: So, it has a little bit of a boost. So, you take the milk crate away from the tallest one, you give the shortest and the next shortest person, the milk create they need to be able to see over the fence, and then everybody can participate in viewing the match. Steve Rush: It's a really interesting approach. And I'm glad you've highlighted, as I'm a visual, I can actually see these three characters actually stuck about the fence. Omar Harris: Right, right. Steve Rush: Now you had a wonderful, diverse career across full continents and had the experience to really firsthand learn and experience around the whole kind of diversity equity and inclusion genre. But from your perspective, is there may be a time or a moment or experience where there's been this kind of this moment for you where you went, ah, this is it? Omar Harris: I don't think it was certainly a single moment for me. I think it's just being observant to your experience and the experience of others. I think that for me, one of the things that really affected me early in my career was the fact that I was one of the only African Americans in marketing, in my entire 30,000-person company. And asking myself the question, why are there not more of us in pharmaceutical marketing? At the time I was working in cardiovascular disease and cholesterol, and this is a disease that disproportionately affects you know, black and African American people. Steve Rush: Right. Omar Harris: Not only, you know, bring the solutions to market more effectively, but also have more effective consumer messaging and messaging to doctors around the disease modality, you should at least be representing the demographics of your primary patient populations. Steve Rush: Absolutely. Omar Harris: High blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, you should have a higher propensity of people, of African descents in those teams. I think just because they're going to have a personal connection to that story. I mean, both my parents have high blood pressure, everybody you know, every person that I have, that's a friend of mine, or over 40 has high blood pressure in our community. So, we have a connection to it, an emotional and intellectual connection to this that others may not have that would give us an advantage in terms of messaging and marketing and all the things we're trying to do. But at the time I was the only person of color on that team in the world. Steve Rush: That's a remarkable stat in itself, isn't it? Did you find out what the reason was for that? Omar Harris: I think it comes back to the fact of where they're sourcing talent. I think, you know, once again, there's this whole misnomer or myth that there's not enough of a certain type of group for certain position. We don't will have enough, you know, African American talent for marketing. We don't have enough women in tech. We don't have enough, blah, blah, blah, whenever you see scarcity, it's because you're not looking in the right place. Steve Rush: Yeah. Omar Harris: Or you're not actually investing in planting seeds to create the crops that you need for your future success. So basically, intelligent organizations, it's sort of like going back to our football example, there's a reason why there are junior clubs, right? Right. So basically, the top, you know, Manchester United, scouring the world for the next stars, 15, 20 years before they ever become adults. Steve Rush: Of course. Omar Harris: You know, they're looking at seven-year-olds, ten-year-old, and they don't care where you're from. You could be from the middle of Sub-Saharan Africa, or you could be from Latin America, you could be from Timbuktu. It doesn't matter because they understand that they need a constant supply of stars, and that star base is not going to come from a single demography. And this is something that corporations, we don't understand yet, we're not actually building a pipeline early enough. Pre-College, right? You know what I'm saying? Steve Rush: Yeah. Omar Harris: Like looking at where the talents are. There are talents all over the place if you create a wide enough net early enough to find these individuals and groom them, which is why all the work in stem is so important and trying to encourage, you know, African Americans and women and immigrants to get into that space. Because now we're trying to build a pipeline of future engineers, entrepreneurs, or whatnot. That same philosophy needs to be applied to regular. Business, finance, HR, you know, marketing, sales leadership, all these different functions. You do the exact same thing. There's no difference in those approaches. In my case, I think that I was only there because my particular organization happened to be sourcing at least one or two African Americans from my school, which was a historically black college and university every year. But most corporations were not using HBCUs as a talent pipeline source. And that's why the demography were so bad. And even with them actually having a pipeline, you know, you're one of ten every year, I was one person brought in and given a chance every year. Steve Rush: And that in itself just feels wrong in today's society that you were brought in to be given a chance. I mean, how disrespectful to your education and your future talent is that just that notion almost right? Omar Harris: Yeah. So, you know, you understand that you recognize that you know it's not right. But then you have to basically try to change things from the inside while you're in there. Steve Rush: Right. Omar Harris: So now my job is to, first of all, perform and demonstrate that, you know, they didn't make a mistake with the hire. And then second of all, which creates an immense pressure actually, by the way, that you know, other people don't understand the pressure that, you know, you're female or your different demographic talents are putting themselves under because they realize that there's not a lot of them and that if they don't succeed, they carry the bag for everybody else. Which is different than some other racial groups don't have that same baggage. Steve Rush: That's very true. Omar Harris: Coming in. Like, basically we're carrying the bag for everybody else of our type. Steve Rush: Yeah. Omar Harris: You know, they didn't speak concerned about themselves. I'm worried about me, I'm not worried about everybody else who looks like me or from the same ethnic group or racial group as I am. But I know that at least in the U.S., and I know this exists in a lot of people from African nations is that when we get these chances, we're thinking of them not only for ourselves, but we're thinking about everybody else who could potentially be coming in behind us. And so, we take it very seriously. And we put ourselves into, an enviable position of having to be perfect to succeed. Steve Rush: Yeah, and I was very fortunate. I was brought up in the outskirts of West London, a very diverse community. But I get white privilege. Most people have to actually really give themselves a nudge to consider that it is actually a privilege being a white, Caucasian male, in most cases in the workplace until recently where things have really started to change. Omar Harris: Right. Steve Rush: And we've got higher profile, that's making people think very carefully about that. I've always been acutely aware of that from a young age. That's not as frequent as you bump into you, right? Omar Harris: Well, no, I think it's an interesting point you bring up. I think that we all talk about capitalism, and we believe in capitalism, we believe in these society. The capitalism, the free-market economy is based on competition, right. The more competition there is, it basically brings the best out of everyone, right. But when there's advantages in the system that prevent competition from happening, then we all stagnate. So, what we're seeing today is finally, we're seeing the ideal competitive landscape where basically, you know, for a given job, you have women, you know, immigrants, different ethnicities, different genders, different gender identities, all competing for the same positions that only makes everybody better at the end of the day. Steve Rush: Of course. Omar Harris: The issue however, Steve is that leaders have no idea how to lead these diverse teams now. That creates a whole different problem, which is, you can bring in the talent, but can you manage them? Steve Rush: Well, that's a really interesting notion. So, I run a coaching group, a volunteer coaching group. And, you know, for the first time we put this whole white fragility on the table. As coaches have been, do we talk about it? And how does it hold us back if we don't? And it's really interesting that still in today's community, there is this sensitivity that still sits around race and sexuality and diversity, but people are still or still a bit nervous of bumping into, in fear of doing the wrong thing. Omar Harris: It's prickly. I think people would rather avoid the conversation and assume that everybody thinks the same way. And that's where the issue comes out to. Steve Rush: Right. Omar Harris: You can't assume. Assuming, you know, gets us all in trouble. And I think that having structured dialogue is important. But for me, more important than the dialogue and I guess some of the recognition of biases and beliefs is the point, why are we doing this? Are we doing this, trying to be become better people? Are we doing it for moral imperative? Okay. Those are really good reasons to make change happen. But for me, fundamentally, this is about business risk. And this is about, you know, what higher executive level executives are paid to do, which is to mitigate future business risk. And the best way to mitigate future business risk today is to have an environment where injustices are consistently eradicated, and inequities are consistently eliminated. Diversity is consistently expanded, and inclusion is consistency enhanced. And so, I believe that when you approach it from the position of business risk and the need to create an environment that fosters a culture where your diverse talents, whatever you have, whatever your demographic mix is, can actually provide the innovation that all the statistics state are available. The teams that are more diverse than those are homogenous. This is when you begin to see the real benefits for business. And when you can begin to finally add value to not just shareholders, but, you know, customers, the community, the environment, and your employees Steve Rush: Yeah, hallelujah to that, love that. So, you've created some great products working with your team Intent Consulting. You have TYMPO, which is an innovative solution for enhancing employee inclusion. And you also have Equity Pulse. Wonder if you could maybe just tell us a little bit about how you use them and how, as a leader listening to this, I might think about using some of that methodology? Omar Harris: So, I'll start with TYMPO because basically when I was writing my most recent book, Be A J.E.D.I. Leader, Not A Boss Leadership in the Era of Corporate Social Justice, Equity, and Diversity and Inclusion. I was thinking about what solutions exist to highlight in the book, basically, what can you go to as a leader who's trying to do this important work within your organization. There's a system them I roll out around in justice in the book. And then the diversity, there's a lot of work and great solutions around hiring diverse talent and, you know, making sure you capitalize diverse talent, but I realize that the equity and the inclusion pieces where areas where it's more difficult to quantify for business leaders, the impact of these two areas, right. Steve Rush: Right. Omar Harris: So, what do we get when we invest in these areas and what is the outcome for our business? And so, I began challenging myself to think about, how I can come up with solutions. And I think about technology a lot in turn, how can we leverage technology to make things more transparent, make things more equal and make things more visible to everyone. And so, the idea for TYMPO was basically thinking about the corporate all hands meeting, the town hall, where you have your senior leadership coming together to talk about, in all the companies, you know, employees coming to together to talk about performance, initiatives, benefits, whatever the topic dejour may in that quarter. And what happens is you have the CEO and their leadership team talking at the employee base. There may be some Q&A that happens with employees, but it's not really an inclusive event. It's really a one-way conversation, right. Steve Rush: Right. Omar Harris: This is what I want to tell you. And so, I thought about how I could transform that into not only a two-way conversation, but in a fully inclusive conversation where we can lean into the difference that we have in our organization. And so, TYMPO takes the idea of audience response systems, where you have a polling function, and you're allowed to basically poll the audience at different moments. And specifically turns that into an opportunity to allow your employee base, to include themselves in the three most important questions leaders should be asking. First of all, when I communicate, what do people understand? Of what they understand, understood, what do they agree with? And of what they agree with, what do they align to do? So, these three questions, Steve drive business. Understanding agreement and alignment. And so, in TYMPO, the type of polling you ask is related to those three questions, understanding agreement, and alignment. What we can visualize, basically the percentage of our population that agrees, understands it is aligned with whatever we're talking about, right. We can also drill down by demographics for the first time in real time. So, we can see, you know, but let's say Boomers versus Zoomers on a given issue of agreement or understanding or alignment. And then we can allow people to ask questions directly linked to understanding agreement and alignment. My job as a senior leader is to present strategy, but also to make sure you have high understanding, high agreement, and high alignment. Makes me work harder as a senior leader, which puts me in the position of a servant leader. I have to serve and support you in order to get your understanding, your agreement and your alignment. And I have to include you in the conversation in order to move the organization forward. And that's what to take me designed. Steve Rush: Love it. Omar Harris: Yeah. So that's TYMPO. In the U.S. in 2019, this organization called the business round table, which is comprised of the top 200 U.S. corporations across various industries changed the definition of a corporation away from shareholder capitalism, which is the profit motive for shareholders to what they call stakeholder capitalism, which is a more benefits for more stakeholders like employees, customers, communities, and the environment in addition to shareholders, and basically they committed to transform capitalism in this direction. The question I asked myself was, is who was holding them accountable? So, I created Equity Pulse as a service, similar like glassdoor.com where employees can actually rate their employers on their progress related to J.E.D.I. issues. And it's fully anonymous, and employees can come from any company, go to equity polls, fill out our brief survey. And what will happen is, we're going to create company profiles based on their J.E.D.I progress through the lens of the employees of the organization. So, the most powerful feedback you can possibly have is, your employees telling you how they think you are doing based on this survey that we've put together, Steve Rush: It's a really neat approach to getting people to focus on what really matters, which is subtly different to most employee surveys. It kind of focuses on that inequity, doesn't it? Omar Harris: Exactly, exactly. And so, it's kind of a third party, external accountability tracker that hopefully will get into the zeitgeist. So, people will begin to reference it and say, okay, before I make a, you know, before I decide what company I want to go work for, let me check out the equity pulse on that company. Let me check out the, you know, let me see if their walking the talk, and that's what I was trying to do. That's the intention of Equity Pulse. Steve Rush: So, when you came up with the notion of Be A Jedi Leader, Not A Boss, how much star wars influence was there actually involved there? Omar Harris: Zero. Well, I won't say zero. I won't say zero. So, in The Servant Leaders Manifesto. I had a throwaway line where I said that servant leaders wield influenced like Jedi wield the force. Steve Rush: Ah-huh. Omar Harris: And so that was a throwaway line, which is very much linked to Star Wars, if you think about that line. Steve Rush: Yeah. Omar Harris: But as I thought about, you know, Jedi, the acronym, because when I wrote that line, I didn't know there was an acronym for Jedi that was just as equity, diversity and include, I didn't know, this was a thing, a real thing in this zeitgeist. The Jedi acronym was actually created by a man named Marcella Bonta who works in the environmental advocacy space, right. And so when I learned that there was an actually an acronym for Jedi, I took the same idea and flipped it on his head and said, this is a compelling, it makes a great title, but also like, there are some parallels between if you think about the Jedi and you think about, you know, the Knight at a round table, and you think about the people who are forces for good in the universe. And so, although I don't really make explicit Star Wars parallels in the book, you cannot with, you know, they're very litigious. Steve Rush: I can imagine. Omar Harris: The idea pervades subconsciously, which is, being a force for good in your team, department, division, function, organization, community, what does a force for good look like today? And a force for good means, we can't allow the stuff to persist. We can't allow bad actors in our systems to just go walk around willy-nilly. Not being, you know, with no retribution or no justice for them. We can't allow these pay gaps; gender pay gaps to persist. We can't keep trying to make, you know, everyone conforms to a particular style of working in today's day and age. And we can't exclude people if we want to be successful. I wanted to give a language, but also a methodology to what it means to be a force for good in the corporate setting. Steve Rush: And as part of that force for good, you manage to call out those business sins of employee equity so that we can get rid of some of that toxic boss behavior, and then you've overlayed some principles as well. Maybe we could just spin through those? Omar Harris: Yeah. So, there's five business sense of employee inequity. And I think these are relevant to your global audience, Steve. The first one is privileged hiring. So, the problem begins right from the start, which what we just talked about, which is, you are only looking at a certain area for your new hire. So, you're basically looking at, you know, pedigree or what university person went to or where they previously worked, or how many years of experience they have. None of these things are proxies for success. None of them guarantee success. Steve Rush: Right? Omar Harris: The reason why we have these filters, and these criteria is because managers are lazy, and they don't want to onboard and train people. So basically, the justification is, the pace of work is too fast to have to onboard and, you know, help people come up the learning curve. But anytime you do it in an organization, regardless of how much pedigree you have and how much experience, you're going to have to go through a learning curve regardless. And people fail all the time, they come from the best institutions, with the best education and the best background. It's not a guarantee for success. So why not cast a wider net. So basically, the solution to privilege hiring is hiring for behaviors and not pedigree. So basically, the behaviors I recommend are. I call up the whom, work ethic, heart, optimism, and maturity. When you put a team together, people who work hard, have shared passion are solution oriented and mature enough to overcome inevitable conflict. That group of people will trump, you know, your high IQ, elite, intellectual talent, every time. That's the first that equity, the second employee equity is sink or swim onboarding. So, as I mentioned before. You come in the door and your first day you're working, and no one is giving you the keys to the kingdom, telling you how to navigate this new system, who you should be talking to, answer your questions about the who's, what, when, where, why, how's everything works in the organization. You basically are given 90 days to sink or swim. And if you don't make it, we're going to kick you out the door, which makes no sense if you think about how much money companies invest in recruiting, right. Steve Rush: And people don't perform well when they're into that kind of pressure either do they? Omar Harris: Exactly. So why would you not just do what I say in terms of going overboard on onboarding? So basically, onboarding is not HR job. Onboarding is the hiring manager's job. And when I onboarded people from my organizations, I spent a minimum of three hours with each new employees, making sure we aligned on expectations, on trust builders and trust breakers, on communication styles, on our collective strengths and how we're going to work together and what our mission was together. And so, at the end of that section and making sure I make myself fully available to them to answer all their questions in their first 90-day period and building a robust 90-day plan for them. That transformed not the trust that we had together, but it transformed the success rate and the hit rate for people that were bringing into the organization, right? So, get rid of sink or swim onboarding, and go overboard on onboarding will be the second thing. The third thing is, okay, so we bring you in, we onboard you, but then we basically want you to be like everybody else. We whitewash your talent. We just basically say, forget what you're good at. You get to go through this process. And how many people who are young coming into an organization are told, like, put your head down, just do this thing for five years. When you become a director, then you can change stuff. We're not going to listen to you or give you any airtime or let you speak to us until you have been here long to be worthy of speaking. It's ridiculous because young people coming in today know a lot more than young people, maybe 20, 30, 40 years, did, coming into business. Steve Rush: Totally. Omar Harris: So, you are doing your business, a disservice by not giving these people some room to run when they come in the door, because they're going to do things in a different way. That's going to transform how your business connects with what's current. What's happening now in terms of business. So rather than whitewash your talent, you should look at every individual and try to extract the maximum talent they have for the benefit of your business. What I call, turn talent industry, and build everybody up who comes in the door to be their most productive and engaged self. The fourth inequity is corrupted compensation. So basically, nobody can understand in organizations how they're being paid, like ask group people, you know, explain to your compensation system to me. Explain why certain people get certain bonuses, explain why certain people get certain options, explain the variable compensation element of your pay. Explain this to me. You talk to 10 people in a company, 10 people will give you 10 different answers. Because companies don't compensate consistently. There's all this bias and subjectiveness in compensation. I'll give you an example, you know, I've been in talent conversations where the most passionate manager in a room is able to justify someone getting a 15% pay raise to keep them in the organization, just because of their skill of arguing for that person's compensation, right. Whereas someone who's not as good at arguing, their employee basis stays 15% lower. Just based on the ability to argue. Steve Rush: Yeah. Omar Harris: And debate, not based on objective matters of performance. Steve Rush: There lies a problem as well, right? The measures of performance are also inequitable, often. Omar Harris: They're inequitable and they're more subjective than we would like to admit. Steve Rush: Right? Omar Harris: If there's anything that needs to be objective, it needs to be compensation. And you make your conversation more objective. HR does these market surveys with Mercer and companies like that, where they come up with their benchmarks and their goal is to basically have the majority of their employees at the median or a little bit above the median number, right. For that particular function. However, they don't do internal equity audits to understand the variability of compensation within their own organization. So, I'll give you an example. I was the youngest, senior marketing director in the history of my company at the age of 31. And there were senior marketing who were making $200,000 more than me and the inequity there was ageism. Steve Rush: Yeah. Omar Harris: Because I was young. They could get away with paying me less. And because other person had basically had the benefit of, you know, pay raises, annual raises, whatever it is, or they came in at a higher level. So, you have this gigantic range of pay between me on the low scale and someone else from the high scale, right. But I'm aware of this. You think this is not going to affect my performance in terms of how much I give you, because you're not giving me what you could give me. Steve Rush: Right. Omar Harris: Right. So clearly you can pay that amount of money for this role. You're just choosing not to and justifying and saying, because I'm young. Well then don't gimme the job. If I was too young to get the job, then don't gimme the job. Steve Rush: Yeah. Omar Harris: You gave me the job, which means you believe that I can do the job. And by the way, I was leading the company's flagship division. So basically, you had senior directors who were managing, let's say 700 million to dollars. I was managing 5 billion, getting paid $300,000 less than the next person. Steve Rush: Doesn't seem at all fair in this. Omar Harris: Like, is that fair? I don't know. I don't think it's fair. But you know, that's either here or there, I'm over it. So, last one we go to is, targeted termination. I literally comment on this, my local area now because there's a company called Better.com who just yesterday fired 900 employees over a Zoom call. Steve Rush: Wow. Omar Harris: They invited 900 employees. And if you were on this call, you're being terminated, being fired over Zoom by the CEO. Oh, that is horrible for a number a reason, and even worse. They eliminated their entire diversity equity and inclusion recruiting department. Steve Rush: It sounds to me like a recipe for disaster. Omar Harris: First of all, from an investment perspective, why would you invest in this company? Second of all, the managers who made the bad decisions that put the company in the position to have to downsize are never terminated. They made the calls, the bad investment, the bad forecast, the bad whatever that led to this moment. And they're the ones who get protected time and time again. And it makes no sense. It's fundamentally unfair and inequitable. And so, for me, I say, you know, employee termination, like the broad base employee, base your frontline employees should be the last resort. We should terminate everybody before we get rid of the frontline employees, because that's your connection to the customer, that's your connection to the market. That's your connection to the actual productivity center of your organization. Your CEO is very far away from productivity of your organization. Get rid of the CEO, get rid of the leadership team. Once again, they're the one who steered the ship into the iceberg. Why don't they get terminated when things go bad? Steve Rush: It's often because they control, unfortunately rests with those people protecting their own positions, right? Omar Harris: It's fundamentally equitable, right? So, you're getting paid more and you get to protect yourself. I'll give you an example. Let's say, when I was a general manager in Indonesia. I was making, let's say 300 times more than a frontline sales rep in the marketplace, right. So, my salary could pay for a hundred reps, right. You should get rid of me if I do something wrong. Steve Rush: Yeah. Omar Harris: You know, versus getting rid of these individuals who are at the frontline and, also not being compensated enough as it is for what they do. Steve Rush: Really interesting spin on things. I'm glad we went there with that conversation. Thanks So much. Omar Harris: No problem. Steve Rush: So how is the future of work? The hybrid work that we find ourselves in now, following the pandemic, and as we come out of it, how do you think that's helped or held back quality? Omar Harris: I think companies that embrace it are actually going to create much more equality and equity. As long as you have managers who are equipped to properly manage this, right. So, you know, one of the biggest issues is that when you become a manager, there's no training to become a manager. There is no guidebooks to becoming managers. You have, you know, some type of training programs that come into play, but largely it's kind of like learn on the go, learn on the fly, right. And that's just regular management when you're going into an office together, think about the managerial skills and communication skills and abilities you have to have when half your team is working virtually. Some people work it hybrid. The skill set, the ability to manage and lead has to go up several notches. And so, for me, this is only going to work to the degree that we have. We're improving the quality of management and leadership, which is why I have a lot of work today. Because a lot of people are calling me saying, how do we do this? You know, how do we elevate the skill of our managers? People are recognizing that if the managers don't improve, then this great resignation trend that we're having, and all these types of things are going to continue and they're going to continue losing talents. Everyone's going to be saying, we have the same ability to let you work from anywhere, if I can work from anywhere, imagine now I can work for a Chinese company from North Carolina or I can work for anybody. So, the hiring pool is in the competition is greater than ever before. You've got to really have your standards up to par, to not only bring in, but to keep your talent and develop them and keep them happy. So, it's going to be quite challenging. Steve Rush: Yeah, it is. So, this part of the show, we typically turn the tables a little bit and I get to hack into your leadership brain. Omar Harris: Sounds good. Steve Rush: And having had the vast diverse experience you have; I'm really looking to get into your top three leadership hacks. What would they be, you think Omar? Omar Harris: So, I mean, top three leadership hacks. I think that the first leadership hack is one that I call MHT, and this is for mindset habits and tracking. And the reason why MHT is important is because in order for you to evolve from a toxic boss to a servant leader to a modern leader, is you have to minimize your ego. And the way you minimize your ego is by making sure you're taking care of yourself in other areas. So that basically you don't require the ego boost that come from having power over other people. So, when you have that product mindset, meaning that you are focused on what you can control and influence and not focused on managing things like corporate politics, or who's going to get promoted when that you have no power over, you have the habits, high performance habits. So, you are taking care of your mind, your spirit, your personal development, you're learning, and your exercise, your fitness. That allows you to be able to power through and hold yourself accountable, but also hold other people accountable based on the way that you hold yourself accountable, right? So, I think that's the tracking the T of the MHT. So, that's three-leadership hack, the mindset, the habits, and the tracking are things that I advocate for every manager to upskill on today, in order for them to reduce their ego and show up as the brilliant leader that they actually can be. Steve Rush: It follows a regular thing we see on the show actually, where the great leaders, the great entrepreneurs put themselves first, and there is this strange notion of some leaders don't feel that's a value investment, but actually if you don't put yourself first and get you fit to lead, you can't then be in service and be servant leader to others, can you? Omar Harris: No, because you need their service to you for you to feel good about yourself.   Steve Rush: Yeah. Omar Harris: And then nobody gets anything done, because everyone's worried about trying to meet, you know, take care of your ego needs and your ego needs have nothing to do what the customer wants. Steve Rush: Next part of show, we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something hasn't worked out in your past and your work, maybe you've been quite catastrophic in its outcome, but as a result, the experience you've learned from it and, you know, use it as a positive, what would be your Hack to Attack? Omar Harris: So, I think that in this instance, it's basically going back to what I said earlier, so basically coming up as the only whatever, only African American in my team in marketing, then becoming the only, you know, African American business director, general manager, and several different organizations, you know, this idea that I had to be perfect led me to have, you know, horrible panic attacks, be taken to the hospital, have nervous breakdowns, all these horrible things. And the key learning from it was just be yourself. Like, don't put that pressure on yourself. You're not responsible for everybody else who looks like you, even though you may think you are, do your best, be the best version of yourself and that'll take care of itself and have healthy habits. I was working, you know, 20 hours a week. I was not sleeping well, I was drinking too much, you know, I had all these horrible things that were happening because I was trying to show up as perfect for my organization. And I learned later on that I could be just as effective, more effective working half the time by being a lot more focused and taking the pressure off myself. The thing about it is that the perfection doesn't exist, right. Steve Rush: Right. Omar Harris: And the thing that I've learned is that we get paid in organizations to increase our success rate when it comes to good decision making, right. And not right decision making, good decision making. And there's a difference, right and wrong decision making is a function of time. You never know when you make a decision, whether it's right or the wrong. Only time will tell you that, but you can definitely leverage process to make more good than bad decisions. Steve Rush: Yeah, I agree. Omar Harris: And so, I think that for me, it was, you know, focusing on making quality decisions for myself and for how I was going to work versus trying to control the right outcome, which I don't have any control over ultimately. Steve Rush: Yeah. Some very wise words. So, Omar, the last thing we want to do with you is do a bit of time travel. You can get to bump into yourself now at 21 and give yourself some advice. What would it be? Omar Harris: I wrote an article about this actually a couple years ago about 42-year-old, me talking to 22-year-old me. Steve Rush: Right. Omar Harris: I think the advice would be the same. I think I would tell him, run your own race. Don't worry about perfection. It's going to be okay. As long as you run your own race and don't compare yourself to other people, don't worry about what people have that you don't have. Don't worry about these types of things. Those things fundamentally fade away over time and all that matters is becoming the best version of yourself. And I think that's the advice that I would give myself at that age versus trying to achieve some unattainable standard. Just be the best version of yourself. Steve Rush: Yeah. That's great advice too. So, Omar, we are running to the end of our show now, but I don't want this to be the end of our audience listening and working with you. So how can we best connect them when where done? Omar Harris: So best place to reach me is my website, www.omarlharris.com. If you're on LinkedIn, you can follow me, Omar L Harris. We can connect there. And that's probably the two best places for you to reach me. Steve Rush: And of course, they can get a copy of Be A J.E.D.I. Leader, Not A Boss, pretty much anywhere. And all your other books are available on Amazon. We'll be make sure all of those are in our show notes as well. Omar Harris: Wonderful. Thank you, Steve. It's been a great conversation. Steve Rush: I've loved the conversation. I love the fact that you bring such a lot of experience and diverse thought leadership on the subject, and you are making an amazing difference to the planet. So, I just want to say thank you for the work you do, but also thank you for being part of our community now, Omar, as well. Omar Harris: I love it, Steve. Hopefully we can talk again soon. Steve Rush: Yeah, thanks Omar.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler their @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.  

Eddy Badrina is the CEO of Eden Green Technology,  he was previously the President and founder of BuzzShift. Eddy shares some amazing entrepreneurial insights and leadership hacks including: How to adapt in a changing world, during and post pandemic? What does sustainability means for leaders? How he keeps innovating in a world that's already innovating at light speed. Why we should treat our teams generously to evolve a great culture. Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com   Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA   Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Eddy below: Eddy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eddybadrina/ Eddy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/eddybadrina Eden Green Website: https://www.edengreen.com Eddy Personal Site: https://www.badrina.com   Full Transcript Below   Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach, or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Joining me on today's show is Eddy Badrina. He's a CEO of Eden Green Technology and AgTech company, which is changing the way people grow food and people. He was previously the president and founder of BuzzShift, digital strategy agency. But before we get a chance to speak with Eddy, you got it. It's The Leadership Hacker News The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: With the great resignation, still looming. Employee engagement is key for any successful organization. So, employee engagement is based on trust, integrity, two-way communication, commitment between the organization and its team members. And you will know, as I. Great engagement leads to increase productivity, performance, wellbeing, and can be measured in a number of different ways. And organizations have taken to a number of different methodologies to measure employee engagement. As a leader, and as an employee, what does employee engagement really mean? For me, it's about getting up in the morning, thinking, great, I'm going to work. I'm going to make a difference. And I'm going to make a change. Employee engagement is about understanding individually what that means for each person that works with you and be really clear and sight and energized where that fits into the whole organization and aligning it to its purpose and objectives. And alignment to that core purpose. and objectives is really important in fulfilling the organization's longer-term goals and purpose and objectives too. It's about being inclusive, fully inclusive and included as a team member with clear goals, trusted and empowered, receiving regular and constructive feedback and feed forward support in your development and innovation and opportunity. So as leaders, how aware and how engaged are you in unlocking your employee engagement? Are you regularly and restlessly, always looking to draw out deeper commitment from your team, finding new ways of working, drawing on their experiences and their backgrounds for innovative ideas, are you helping them make parallels to the organization's purpose by connecting the dots to their own purpose and experiences? And it's sometimes helpful to think of employee engagement about what it's not. Employee engagement cannot be achieved by a mechanistic approach, which tries to extract discretionary an effort by manipulating employees and commitments and their emotions. It's not about the number you get once a quarter, once every six months on a scorecard around a load of measures. And it's not something that you tactically do. Our employees are hardwired to spot that kind of behavior and when they do spot it such attempts will fall quickly and become vain and create cynical and disillusion behavior across your workforce. So, the leadership hack here. Allow employee engagement to be a behavior, not something that you do. Provide the opportunity for development, inclusion, and innovation, aligned with super leadership years. Your teams will be engaged. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. Please get in touch with us if you want us to feature anything on our show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Our special guest on today's show is Eddy Badrina. He's a successful entrepreneur. And now at the CEO of Eden Green Technology, a leading vertical farming business and AgTech company, Eddy, welcome to The Leadership Hacker podcast. Eddy Badrina: Hey, thanks so much. I'm happy to be here. Steve Rush: We delighted your here and I'm really intrigued to get underneath how the business is growing and, in more ways, than one, excuse the pun, but also, we'd love to find out a little bit about the background of our guests before we get into that. So perhaps you can tell us where it all started for you? Eddy Badrina: So, I was born here in the states to Philipino immigrants. And so, I think that's important to note, because I think it really developed my work ethic. My parents started from scratch here in the United States. So, I had a very, very high work ethic, resourcefulness and just this sense that there was no safety net, if you will that others had to rely on. And I tell that to entrepreneurs and folks that, you know, just ask me, like where does the drive come from? And I tell them that, you know, the risk to jumping out on your own or the risk to do something big here in the United States is actually not that risky at all. If you think about, you know, what's the worst that can happen? And I'll ask folks who are jumping out on their own or starting up businesses, what the worst that can happen? And they say, well, you know, I'd lose my house. I would have to go back; I'd probably have to move in with my parents, right? You think about that, like, oh, man, that sounds devastating. I said, well, stop there because most of the world already does that. That's just their normality, right? Steve Rush: Right. Eddy Badrina: And so, when you can put it in that context, and I have family in the Philippines that four generations under one roof. And when you look at it like that, then you understand the the risk that we have and the safety net that we have is actually normal in everyday life for everyone else in the world. So, it puts the element of risk into context. And so, it just gives me confidence, like, hey, what's the worst that can happen? Right. So, that's important to note. Just my background of how I grew up. And then, you know, spent a couple of years in DC. I got my undergrad and masters, and then went up to Washington DC. I was an analyst at the State Department for about four years, both pre and post 9/11. So really got to experience what it was like to work. I didn't know it, but I was right in the middle of history. Steve Rush: Yeah. Eddy Badrina: And work under extreme pressure on some really high-profile subjects when I was, you know, at the old age of 24. So that really helped me cut my teeth on what it means to work under pressure. I think a lot of folks think they're pressure, but contextually, it's not that much pressure compared to what other folks around the world are doing in industries and in topics that, you know, one, I think all consuming from a world point of view, but also two, the stakes are just so much higher. Steve Rush: Very similar to the whole principle, isn't it? That you talked around with regards to risk. Eddy Badrina: Yes. Steve Rush: People's context and perspectives are sometimes skewed by comfort, right? Eddy Badrina: Yes, absolutely. Steve Rush: Yeah. Eddy Badrina: I think it's also important thing to do from a leadership perspective is to always gain more context about the world that we're living in. And look at other people doing other remarkable, you know, things in high pressure situations, because it does give you context for the work that you're doing. And in a lot of senses, it gives you a little bit of relief, like, okay, this isn't world crushing what I'm doing here. I can work a full day and go home at night and sleep well knowing that I gave it my all for the day and then wake up tomorrow and start all over again. And nothing's going to fall apart if I don't get that last email done. Steve Rush: Right. Eddy Badrina: Right. So, there's a lot of benefits to having that context. So, you know, worked again, four years in the State Department then actually got to work at the White House. I was President Bush Asian American spokesman for about two years. And that was a really, really wonderful time in my career. I couldn't have imagined doing that. And I was 28 at the time. So, I couldn't have imagined that in my wildest dreams coming out of college. Those six years in DC from a leadership perspective really showed me instances of great leadership and instances of bad leadership. And because of all the pressure that was in there working at the highest levels of government. Your strengths and your weaknesses are very amplified in that setting. So, I got to see some leaders that because of the pressure just came out to me, at least in my eyes, came out golden. And really my respect raised for folks like Colin Powell, who I was able to work under for a bit, Condoleezza Rice, and then both Presidents Bush, senior and W. The things that I learned just the viewing them from a very near point of view, I think have shaped my leadership acumen up until this point, for sure. Steve Rush: And it's interesting, because most people can only ever really see the exterior perspective of how they operate. And those of you have the opportunity to work very closely, get to see a different dynamic I suspect. Eddy Badrina: We do. I think for the good leaders it's very cliche and again, you can usually only read this in books or hear it on interviews, but the great leaders are separated from the good leaders in that. They always remember the personal side of things. They look at the people around them, the team around them, and they remember that they're humans. And that they have lives, they've got families, they've got their own things that they're going through on a very personal level. And they take that into context when they're making decisions. Those great leaders are ones that ask about how your family's doing, and they want to know how your family's doing because it helps them as they interact with you, and it helps them coach you and mentor you. And that's what great leaders do, right? So, I think that was probably the key takeaway from my time there, noticing what made great leaders different from just good leaders. It was that personal attention to the humanity of the folks working around them. Steve Rush: And I remember from the last time that you and I met, that's still really cool for your leadership style today, isn't it? That's something you carried forward and there's still a real core tenant of how you do things. Eddy Badrina: Yeah, I do. I really try to do that and not just do that on a personal level. I try to do that honestly, on a company level and it's a part of how I've built my companies. As much as I can advocating for the person. I follow this creed of redemptive framework for building companies. Leaders are sacrificial. It's where employees are not just treated fairly, they're treated generously and it's where culture and society around the company are not just advanced, but they're actually redeemed and restored. And I had a, you know, an audience member asked just, hey, how, how practically do you apply some of that redemptive framework? And I said, well, when it comes to employees, treating them fairly is giving them, you know, and this is a real practical application. Treating them fairly is looking around at the market and saying, okay, what does maternity leave look like? You know, maybe it's eight weeks, maybe it's, you know, even 12 weeks. Okay, so how do you treat that generously? Right. How do you think about that generously? Not just treat them fairly in relation to the rest of the marketplace. Well, generously would be saying, okay. I know personally that I've got three kids and that my wife was able to bond with them. Three months was really the minimum time. And she could have gone back to work, but man, if she had only just had that extra two weeks it really made a difference. And I don't know what that three-month mark is, but it just is. And so, to treat employees generously, then my response is, well, gosh, what would it cost the company to give four months of maternity leave, right. Is it really all that much? Is it a difference between 12 and 16 weeks really all that much? And the answer is it is, but it isn't, right? Can we do that and can that scale? Steve Rush: And it's also investment, isn't it? Eddy Badrina: It absolutely is an investment. Steve Rush: It's an investment in people. Eddy Badrina: That's what we do. We give people 16 weeks of maternity leave and then we think broader, like, okay, I value adoption and I value my friends that do foster care, okay. So can we provide adoption, same as pregnancy, right. Can we give 16 weeks for leave for adoption? Can we give an amount of time for foster care? Can we give paternity leave? That's more generous? Right. There are just practical things that I don't think a lot of folks, you know, care to think about and expand just a little bit that make a world of difference to the employee, a world of difference to my teammates. And so that practically is how I take the personal care of my employees to a corporate level. And does it, you know, affect margins in operating margins? Yeah, it does. But is it totally defensible to, you know, the world outside, whether it be investors or capital partners? Absolutely. Steve Rush: And also, I remember in the conversation, you and I had last, that was a real key pivotal moment for you when you once sold BuzzShift, the successful marketing agency that you created and founded, but then bought it back for the same reasons. Eddy Badrina: Yes, and that's a, you know, that's a really remarkable chapter in my life of taking a company from scratch, bootstrapping it with my business partner and then getting it up to the size that we were able to sell it. It's about six years later. So, we started it in 2010 and then sold it in 2016. And when we sold it, I think everyone was on the same page, the acquiring company and us about vision and mission. But I think really quickly as with a lot of M&As, actually the vast majority of M&As, I think the visions just get sidelined by practical realities. And so, we had one party I would say that was focused on using the agency as Bizdev and the other party, including us, were focused on seeing it as a business unit, a profitable business unit. And so, when those two diverged at a point in time, I think everyone looked around and said, man, this is not working the way we intended it to, and maybe it would be better if you guys just bought the company back. And so, we did and, you know, I'll just say we sold high and bought low, so that was really good. But the main reason that we bought it back was because we saw our team just kind of falling apart and really going through some painful just merger type scenarios. And I think on both ends, we were just like, this is not the best for the teammates that are in here. And would it be better to go our separate ways and to rebuild these business units. And so that's what we did and, you know, that was the driving force for me, was the relationships and those people in there that I just didn't want to leave high and dry. And then two years later, we were able to sell it again actually for a second time. And I told my team on the last day, the CEO who's, my business partner stayed on, and I left. Actually, I had been gone. I had taken a step back to run Eden Green, but on the last day, just as an owner I was able to talk to the staff and I just said, hey, here's the reason that I feel confident about the sale the second time is that the whole time that I've been running BuzzShift for the last, you know, call it 10 years or been an owner for 10 years, the point of it was to be a good steward of that, which God had given to me, it wasn't really my company to begin with. I was just tasked to be a good steward of it. And when I could find someone who could steward it as well or better than I could, then it made sense for me to let that go. And so, I just told them, I think, you know, this acquiring company who is fantastic by the way that they can be a better steward than I can. And so that why I'm selling my portion of the company and, you know, I think it was well received because one, it was authentic. It was actually true. And two, because they knew my stance was consistent with what I was saying at the very end. I think everyone knew from the very beginning that man, I just wanted to grow a company, but do it in such a way that my identity is not tied up in it and more importantly do it in such a way that they can thrive those employees and those teammates can thrive because it's growing. Steve Rush: And therefore, it becomes a sustainable business that you can confidently leave behind in good order knowing that that's going to continue in that spirit too. Eddy Badrina: Yeah, absolutely. Steve Rush: Yeah. Eddy Badrina: Yeah, absolutely. And they've done a fantastic job of stewarding it and helping it grow. Steve Rush: And you're now on a new journey with Eden Green and Eden Green technology for those that aren't familiar are leading the way really of this whole kind of farming ecosystem that you've managed to create. Tell us a bit about the journey so far. Eddy Badrina: Absolutely. So, to two years ago I became CEO of Eden Green, and we'll call it greenhouse's infrastructure, but it's a vertical farming inside of a greenhouse, which is remarkable in and of itself and it's a platform that allows us to grow really efficient efficiently and really profitably a large quantity of greens that is safe. It's season agnostic and it's really quite accessible to the consumer. And we're able to do that because of my COO who invented the technology back in 2011. And they have a remarkable personal story as well. That was really the Genesis of Eden Green. They were engineers and they were handing out food and actually candy in South Africa where they were born and raised. And a kid came up and stuffed his pockets. Five-year-old boy came up and stuffed his pockets and they asked like, hey, why is he stuffing his pockets? Like there's enough food to go around. And the response was that, well, it's actually for his three-year-old sister at home. It's not his day to eat, it's hers. And so, he's bringing the candy back to her and for them that really struck a chord. And both of them said, man, this is not right. Like, we've got to find a way to fix this problem and, you know, kudos to them. They were engineers, construction engineers, and they just turned their minds. Both of them turned their minds to figuring out a way to grow greens really efficiently in an economic and an environmental scenario that is South Africa. And so, it was very resourceful. They invented it out of their garage actually, and it was very resourceful. And after about six or seven years, they took it to the United States for expansion of capital and commercialization. So probably, you know, a couple years after they took it over, took it here to the states is when I came on board as CEO. And I was just tasked with providing vision. The mission remained the same, which was to change the way that we're farming food and change the way that we're feeding people, but the vision of what it could become and then taking it to market and providing product market fit and taking it to market was something I was tasked with. So, I came on four months before the pandemic hit. Steve Rush: Exactly, yeah. Timing's everything, isn't it? Eddy Badrina: Yeah, timings everything, right. And so, a lot of teams and organizations have suffered because of the pandemic. And I think because of the flexibility and the adaptability and the grit of our team. We were able to not just survive it, but really thrive in it. The pandemic hit and we realized, man while capital drying up for now, we can really focus on what we do best, which is the technology. Can we use this time? And obviously with patient investors, can we use this time to up our yields per plant spot, which is kind of the going metric in our industry. It's how much produce can you yield in a year from a square foot? So can we use that time to work on our tech? Work on our operations to get that yield per square foot, to a point where it was not just competitive with organic, but it was actually competitive with conventional produce. And we're just about there. And so that's really exciting for us. Someone once asked me like, hey, what's the best piece of business advice you learned? And really, the biggest competition that you have is who you were yesterday. And so I tasked my team to say, hey, every day, I just want us to get better than we were yesterday, whether that's the yield going up 0.1, you know, 0.1 pounds or operational efficiency going from a 96% cleanliness rate, is rated by you know, third parties to a 97% or from sales and marketing, let's go from 24 leads a month to 25 leads a month, right, whatever that is, if we can just be better than we were yesterday it really sets the tone for a company, even in the pandemic where we looking for positive improvement day to day. And I think as we added that up over, you know, the past two years, I think what that's resulted in is the team is very confident about our product. We're very confident about the numbers and the quantitative data that we're putting out to back up what we're saying. And more importantly, we're very confident about the team itself because we're all on the same page and we're all working towards incremental improvement. Steve Rush: Yeah Eddy Badrina: So, that's what the pandemic did for us. And, you know, again, I would be nothing without my team. I just had a good team that responded to the call of self-competition every day. And I think it's proven to be just a winning recipe for Eden Green. Steve Rush: One of the other things I loved about the mission of Eden Green is, it's not just around sustainability from a produce perspective as well as its great eco centricity that comes with it, but also the sustainability about the communities that you're in. So, I know one of the core tenants you have is making sure that if you're going to build a business or a location you do so by employing the neighbors, tell us a little bit about that, how that's disrupting the marketplace you're in? Eddy Badrina: Yeah, you know, from a broad point of view, the parameters that you set on a business are really the values that you instill in the business. And so, if you say, hey we're going to try to make this as profitable as possible. That takes a business to its logical end. And that logical end is just, eking out every bit of margin that you can out of the business. I'm not going to say whether that's a good or bad thing or healthy or unhealthy, but I'm saying that's not where we're at. One of the parameters that we put in is we want to employ as many people as we can while maintaining a good margin, positive economic margin, because if a business is not profitable, it's not a business, it's a hobby, right? So that's one of the parameters that we put in and it is really a core value of saying, hey, how can we care for the community around us? Well in practical terms, what that means is, hey, we've got to make the rest of our operations so efficient. The rest of our greenhouse is so efficient that we don't have to rely on robotics. We definitely use AI to assist our growing methods, our nutrient mixes all the way that we handle air and water and the environments inside the greenhouse. But when it comes to planting and monitoring and harvesting. We love the fact that human hands are touching that and are monitoring it and are looking at it. We never want to take the humanity out of the feeding other people. Steve Rush: Right. Eddy Badrina: So, because we have that core value and I'll even call it a parameter in place then we had to work. If that's just a part of our margin is up to 30 full-time people in one of our greenhouses, then what do we have to do on a technological and operational end to make sure that fits in healthy business margins. And so that's what we did. Steve Rush: Yeah. Eddy Badrina: We're proud to say, hey, we actually want to be in the urban areas. We want to be in and around the communities that we're feeding. One, because it's just smart business. The geography of underdeveloped and under-resourced economic areas are the best and the cheapest places to put these greenhouses. But then also once you put them in there, we have the ability to hire our neighbors. And so, our neighbors can work in these greenhouses. They're no longer migrant workers. It's full time with benefits living days' wage for these workers in these greenhouses. So, they're able to provide for their families consistently. They're able to partake of the harvests that are coming out of them. So, they're really changing their dietary and health lifestyle, not just for them, but they're or families. And then finally, they're in an industry that's on the cutting, it's one of the top 10 industries of, you know, technological growth for the next, you know, 10 to 20 years. And these folks are right at the base of it. And it's not a dead-end job for them. Steve Rush: Yeah. Eddy Badrina: It's actually a career platform. So, because of that core value, all of those benefits can result, but it's only when you have that core value and you stick to it that you have to find ways to make, you know, the company profitable while sticking to that core value. And that's super, super important to me. Steve Rush: Yeah, and sustainability is just that one keeps echoing in my minds. I'm listening to you speak Eddie around. It's not just about the sustainability of the produce, but the whole ecosystem of that organization and how it fuels itself by getting that core value, right? Eddy Badrina: Yes. Steve Rush: Yeah. Eddy Badrina: You know, when we talk about sustainability, we talk about economic and environmental sustainability because if it's not economically sustainable, then there's no scalability and there's no longevity to the business. So, we're very practical about it. About finding ways to be economically sustainable, but while also adhering to the environmental values that we've set. Steve Rush: And sustainability's got a lot of press of late with COP26 happening, not so long ago with lots of focus on the environment that we're in and what's happening with global warming or not as a case may around the world. And sustainability is quite cliche at the moment, you hear lots of leaders diving into and using the word sustainability in some senses and having now clear ESG measures in their business, et cetera. What does sustainability mean to you personally when you hear that as a, business leader? Eddy Badrina: That's a great question. I think for me, sustainability is, you know, if you break down, I took Latin as a kid. So, if you break down the word sustain, it really means to maintain a consistent level of wherever you're at to sustain energy for a period of time or to sustain success for a period of time, you know, really means to provide for long term presence. And so, when I think about sustainability for Eden Green, sustainability for the environment is how can we endure? How can we thrive for a long term without draining and exploiting the resources around us, right? Steve Rush: Yeah. Eddy Badrina: And so, on an environmental level, how do we run a company? So that the operationally, we're not exploiting the environment around us, but we're actually adding to it, we're additive to it. And then from a company level, how do we continue to exist? How do we grow without exploiting the community and society around us? I think in very basic terms, that's what sustainability means to me. Steve Rush: Good answer. I love it. So, one of the things that I'm keen to explore with you is this whole notion of how you keep innovating? In a world that's already innovating at light speed. Where do you go for that inspiration? Or how does that come about? Eddy Badrina: I think it just comes about from that thing that I mentioned at the very beginning, which is, how do I get better every day? Right. And innovation I think for me, comes from when I start to sort of level out or the incremental gains in my own personal life are starting to become smaller and smaller. I just take a step back and I've afforded myself to take a step back and say, okay, how do I do things differently? If I had to scrap all this. I'm not saying I would, but if I had to scrap all of this, all the structure and the parameters in my life, how would I do things differently? In order to, you know, achieve a better life. And I really think, that's where my personally, my innovation comes from, but then it just goes to goals, right? Before I can say, you know, get a better life. Well define better, right? So, I think from a corporate, but then also from a personal level. Steve Rush: Yeah. Eddy Badrina: You really have to know what you want. And I tell on entrepreneurs that all the time and folks who want to be entrepreneurs, but also just leaders in general, in order to be a great leader, you have to know what you want. And it's actually a part of my personal story moving from BuzzShift to Eden Green. BuzzShift was going really well. It was running quite well, so much so that, you know, I had a bit of time on my hands, but I'm not a maintainer. I'm a builder, I'm a creator. And I knew that as much about myself that I just became really impatient. I became, you know, honestly a little bit unhappy because I was just maintaining and incrementally growing this business, which was great. I think from the outside looking in, I had it all, but from the inside I just wasn't happy. And so, the first thing I had to do was, I had to define, and this required a lot of what I call heart work. Not hard work. It is hard work, but it's heart work. And in this heart work, I really had to define what I wanted. That took a lot longer than I thought it would. Steve Rush: What was the reason it took so long? Eddy Badrina: I think it as a type A in engram, I don't know if you're familiar with any engram. I'm a type three which is an achiever. And most of the folks who are really high up in business are achievers, engram achiever status or they maybe, what's called a challenger. We see a goal and we get it, we see a task, we hit it and we just go on to the next one and the next one and the next one, and we get caught up in sort of this task and performance. And at least for me personally, because when I just do that and I feel I have this temporary, like feeling or dopamine hit of success, I sort of lose sight. I can lose sight if I'm not careful of what I'm really about and what I want. And from a day to day to the level, I want to hit those goals, but from a year to year or a legacy type level, that just takes more thought work. Steve Rush: Right. Eddy Badrina: And you have to get off that cycle of success after success, after success, and really take a step back and say, okay, what is this success about? I'm climbing this ladder, but is it leaned up against the wrong wall? Right. I think that's why it took so long is because I was just used to getting the daily and weekly successes. And I lost a little bit of vision, my own personal vision because of that. Back to the defining what I want. After about nine months maybe even closer to a year. Three things emerged, you know, out of that time. One is, I had to define very clearly and succinctly and articulate what I wanted to others, but more importantly to myself, right? And those three things were, I wanted to run a hardware/software business. I had been there and done that gotten the M&A t-shirt for professional services. Steve Rush: Yeah. Eddy Badrina: Two, I wanted to have an exponential impact on my level of effort. So, for every one unit of effort that I put out, I wanted to see it a 10 to 20 X return in community and culture around me. And then three is I wanted to run a redemptive type of organization. So, the fact that I'm able to articulate to you, those three things so clearly took a lot of work, but I was able to do that. Once I was able to articulate those three things. Then the second thing I did was I passed it before friends and colleagues and family. And she said, hey, tell me if this is coming from a healthy place, or tell me if this is coming from what the Bible calls a selfish ambition and vain conceit. Steve Rush: Often also known as ego. Eddy Badrina: It's ego, right. Great book by a guy named Ryan Holiday and he studies the Stoics, but he talks about the ego is the enemy, but two, I had to, you know, run it through a filter of friends and family who were going to be brutally honest with me. And that's another thing that most entrepreneurs don't have besides that they can't articulate clearly what they want. And then two, they don't have the courage or the wherewithal, or even the friends around them to say, hey, is this a healthy thing for me? And then for friends, to be honest enough with them and say, yeah, it's healthy, or no, you are being very, very arrogant, and egotistical. You should not pursue that. I articulated it, passed it to friends and family. And then the third piece that did. I let it go, and I knew that if that was supposed to happen and my friends and family approved of it. I just had to let go of striving so hard for it. And I worked towards it, but I also wanted to be diligent and excellent in my work at BuzzShift and to the team there. And so, I just had to release that and be mindful and hopeful that it would come back to me if that what's supposed to happen. And indeed, it did. Steve Rush: And it's often the case, isn't it? When you strive so hard for something you don't necessarily see it or experience it, but when you do let go, you are open to natural occurring, coincidences, opportunity, higher spirit, call it what you will. Eddy Badrina: Yeah. Steve Rush: But that then find you in another way, right? Eddy Badrina: Some people call it serendipity. I call it providence, right? Steve Rush: Yeah. Eddy Badrina: That was probably the biggest thing of it all. I was just talking to my wife the other day about what I've been learning over the past couple of years. And I think the loss of control has been the biggest learning for me, you know, the pandemic obviously heightened it. But really the core issue is one that everyone goes through at some point in their life of you realize even over your own body, you don't have that much control. Steve Rush: That's very true, Eddy Badrina: Right. Steve Rush: Yeah. Eddy Badrina: Pandemic prime example, right. You can mask up or you can take the vaccine as much as you can, but the reality is you might still get sick and that's totally out of your control. And it's so frustrating for people. We see it right now. It's so frustrating for people who don't accept that they can't control everything. Steve Rush: Yeah. Eddy Badrina: And that comes out in terms of the way it manifests. Mostly it manifests itself in terms of fear, and sort of a protective nature. But when you can understand and except for me, especially when I can stand and accept that I don't have control, it really frees me up. I don't even have control over, like I said, over that, which I articulated and was able to, you know, confirm with my friends and family. Like, this is a really good thing that's on your heart and you need to go after it. Even as I go after it, I realize I don't have a lot of control over the external factors. Steve Rush: Very true. Wise words. I'm going to turn the table to a little bit now, Eddie. Eddy Badrina: Yeah. Steve Rush: And we are going to flip the conversation a little bit to focus on taking all of your learnings, which are in abundance. And we've had bucketloads of hacks already, but I'm going to try and distill them down as best we can to your top three leadership hacks. What would they be? Eddy Badrina: Man, I think you would go back to top leadership hack one, know what you want, know yourself, right? That takes a lot of work. It's not a hack in the sense that you can get to it quickly but knowing yourself self and being brutally honest with yourself about your strength and your weaknesses is number one. Because when you know that you'll immediately hire for your weaknesses, right? Steve Rush: Definitely. Eddy Badrina: And that's a good goal to have, you know, the biggest jump for a lot of leaders and entrepreneurs is hiring that next person. Hiring the first person in your company, because that's a very real equation of I'm going to take profits out of my own pocket as a one-man band, and I'm going to give some of it to someone to short up my weaknesses. That's a crazy equation, but the equation actually works out in your favor if you're willing to do it. I would say the second big hack is have a circle of advisors who can be honest with you. A lot of leaders have yes, men around them and they'll just say yes to whatever. Is this a good idea? Oh yeah, sure it is, go. Find that person that you can say, hey, is this a good idea? And they will say, no, that is a horrible idea. You are off your rocker, right? Or that is not healthy for you. For leaders and just for people in general, I try to get people away from saying right and wrong, and I get people more into the mindset of healthy versus unhealthy. And that changes your posture towards letting other people in, because if you can let other people in and say, hey, is this right or wrong? It's sort of, it can be offensive to you, but if you can say, hey, is this healthy for me? Or is this unhealthy for me? One that connotes that they know a level of health about yourself and two that they're able to say in such a way that is for your benefit. Yeah, that's not really healthy for you. I'd probably go in a different direction. Steve Rush: I love that. Eddy Badrina: And then yeah, I'd say those are the top two and then read a lot, read a ton. Steve Rush: What would be your hack number three? Eddy Badrina: Read, read all the time. Steve Rush: Yeah. Eddy Badrina: And allow yourself the time and the space to read. So, I actually have a blog post on my own personal blog. I don't have many blog posts on there, but I have a blog post on there just on books and on how I read, when I read, what I read. And that for a number of folks have gotten back to me and said, man, that was a really, really, really useful framework to go by in terms of reading. Steve Rush: Next part of the show we call Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something hasn't worked out as planned, and yet you've managed to use it as a force of good. What will be your Hack to Attack? Eddy Badrina: I think the Hack to Attack has actually been the reading piece. I used read a lot of social and then thought I was reading the right types of social media or the right types of blog posts. And I was just doing it really inefficiently. And I think over the course of a number of years, I've really been able to dial in for me at least what has been a good intake of info information, why I take the information in, and then and then really, you know, the modes of intake, and it's helped me to focus more. And it's helped me to be more mindful and thoughtful about how I lead. Steve Rush: Awesome. And it's an interesting notion actually, because many top execs that I liaise with, worth work, coach, one of the core foundations is often just consume knowledge as much knowledge as you can, because knowledge is power. Eddy Badrina: Yeah, but it's also the type of knowledge, right? Steve Rush: Right. Eddy Badrina: Long form books are the result of long form thinking. Steve Rush: Yeah. Eddy Badrina: And as a leader, that's what you're tasked to do. You are tasked to think critically. People don't get paid the big bucks or the mediocre bucks in my case to just fire off emails, because anyone can do that. The good leaders, the great leaders are ones who have to think through five emails in a day, right? And think really, really critically before they hit send. And that type of deep thinking is critical to good leadership. And you can't do that unless you're intaking deep knowledge and deep knowledge comes from books. Steve Rush: Wise words. The last thing we wanted on the show, Eddie is to give you a chance of time travel now. So, you're going to be at a bump into you at 21 and give yourself some advice. What do you think it might be? Eddy Badrina: Oh man. I would tell my 21-year-old self, keep your eye on the prize and the prize is relationships. Steve Rush: Yeah. Eddy Badrina: I try to think with the end in mind as do most good leaders. And when you think about the end in mind, the end-end for me is when I die and when I die and they're reading my obituary, they're reading the homily, you know, in the church, they're reading my tomb, my tombstone. I think it would be a total failure if they ever mentioned the words, Eden Green or BuzzShift. That would be a failure in my life if the companies actually came up in my obituary. What a waste if your corporate success is the thing that people remember about you, what I want them to remember is, he loved people, he loved his wife well, he loved his kids well, he loved his friends well, he was a good friend and honest and a faithful friend. He loved others, even folks that he didn't know, he was generous. He was winsome. He spoke truth in love. He was bold, right? He was adventurous. That's the stuff I want people to remember me by and more importantly, that's the legacy that I want to leave with my kids and the folk around me. And so, as you think about generational legacy, you think about legacy at the end of your life. None of that involves the names of my businesses necessarily. Those are just means to an end. Steve Rush: Yeah. Eddy Badrina: It all involves the relationships that I pursue all along the way. So, beginning the end in mind, I would tell my 21-year-old self to focus on the relationships. Steve Rush: Great advice too. So, Eddie, how can we make sure our listeners from all over the world are able to tap into your blog and the work you do, and to find that a little bit more about Eden Green Technology? Eddy Badrina: Sure. So edengreen.com is the best way to find out. We've got a treasure trove of information just about hydroponics and about what we do, about the industry, edengreen.com and then on the socials, it's all Eden Green Tech. In terms of my personal it's badrina.com, it's my last name, badrina.com. And either one of those have ways to get ahold of me if they really want to ask me questions. Steve Rush: And we'll also make sure those links are in our show notes. So, folk can head straight over once they finish listening to this. Eddy Badrina: Absolutely. Steve Rush: Eddie, thank you, my friend, it's been a great opportunity to talk to you and have you on the show. And I'm really excited to see the trajectory that Eden Green on and in future. So, congratulations and thank you for being on our community here at The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Eddy Badrina: It's been my pleasure, my pleasure. Such a great way to have a part of my day to talk to you and to be able to share some of this. Eddy Badrina: Thanks, Eddie. Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.    

Punit Dhillon is the chairman and CEO of Sky Bioscience. He's an entrepreneur, keen athlete, an author of the book, Catapult: How to Think Like a Corporate Athlete to Strengthen Your Resilience. Learn about how Punit's athletic approach to live has helped catapult his business including: Growing up as an athlete he noticed the parallels in corporate life, The components of a corporate athlete. What mindset has to do with growth as a leader? How to live by true accountability and be purpose driven. Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Punit below: Punit on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/punit-dhillon/ Punit on Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/PunitDhillon Punit on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/punitdhillon/ Sky Bioscience: https://skyebioscience.com Catapult (Book) https://punitdhillon.com/book/   Full Transcript Below ----more----   Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Our special guest on today's show is Punit Dhillon. He's chairman and CEO of Sky Bioscience, and also author of Catapult. But before we get a chance to speak with Punit, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: It's easy to get caught up in the great resignation craze of quitting. Its human nature that makes us see where millions of people are doing something we follow along with that herd mentality that is millions of years old, and it's quite understandable after almost two years of enduring a pandemic and seeing loved ones, get sick and pass away. It changes our outlook on life. And that realization that life is actually quite short. We're all going to go through a collective thinking what we should do with the rest of our lives, finding a new job with purpose. Meaning more money is alluring, especially when you're stuck in a going nowhere role with a boss who micromanages your every move. Here's the leadership hack. Before you follow the crowd and make the big leap of going after a new shiny job, take the time to think deeply about why you're doing this in the first place. There's an overwhelming narrative when it comes to searching for a new job and its deep within you, the default is it's usually your boss and often is by the way. And you often will be giving yourself some internal dialogue that it sounds like it's their fault. You've got to move on. You've got to get away. Sometimes this is the case, but actually it could be you. It's really convenient to blame everyone else, but there may be other issues involved as well. So consider this. If you're just running away from a problem, when you secure a new role, will a problem repeat itself? Will you be happy? Will you still feel dissatisfied? Most of us are too self-critical. We dwell with that short come are, our inner coach gives us negative thoughts that play around in our heads. And while we're all grown up adults, we still carry around the burden of past trauma, failures, insecurities. And if we're fortunate enough for learnings, there is the desperate hope that by quitting we'll magically become a new and different person. And with a new job, everything will fall neatly into place. The new environment will be our cure and make us happy. So while it may be an answer, it may not be. Switching jobs may not make the difference at all. You might end up just as miserable and thinking and behaving the same way. It's similar to when you travel or you move. That initial feeling of euphoria being in a new world or a new house can be really alluring and great, as time goes by it becomes normal. And why? We are the same person. As time goes by you realize the same person with the same challenges is now just in a different location. So my hat to you is think before you make that great resignation greater, because your opportunity could be just under your nose if you looked hard enough for it. We love sharing stories that you bring to our attention, so please keep doing so. That's been The Leadership Hacker News, let's get into the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Joining me today is Punit Dhillon. He's the chairman and CEO of Sky Bioscience. He's an entrepreneur, keen athlete, an author of the book, Catapult: How to Think Like a Corporate Athlete to Strengthen Your Resilience. Punit, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Punit Dhillon: Thank you so much for having me, Steve, it's a pleasure Steve Rush: Looking forward to getting into your story and was particularly inspired about the stories that you shared when we first met. So perhaps for those that have not been familiar with your work or your company, just give us a little bit of your back story? Punit Dhillon: Yeah, basically been an athlete growing up, but then as of the last 20 years been focused on the life science space. So happy and very lucky to be regarded as an entrepreneur in that area in terms of what the different work that we've done. I've been developing a couple different technologies in my last 20 years. My most recent company that I was involved with was working on a cancer immunotherapy drug and presently we're working on a novel class of molecules for an ophthalmology application or various ophthalmology applications. So I think by working in the life science industry, it's been very rewarding and I've had a wonderful set of teams that have been a part of and lucky to be continuing to work with some of them over the last two decades. So it's been quite a pleasure. Steve Rush: Yeah, so if we peel that back a little bit. There are a couple of things in your early life that set you on your journey, if you like into becoming an athlete and indeed how that then transferred into your ways of working at business. Tell us a little bit about that? Punit Dhillon: Yeah, so the discipline of growing up as an athlete really has stuck with me and it care into my professional career. And that's what I kind of have written about, but I started as a competitive swimmer and then moved into rowing at university. And then after that, I had basically an opportunity to move to the U.S. where I started in life science industry. Actually didn't do anything competitive at that point. I was still working out regularly, but then I became pretty comfortable as a runner and sort of participating in different like half marathons and marathons. And in my early thirties, or like, as I was turning 30, I kind of had a bucket list thing that I wanted to accomplish. And there was doing an Ironman. And I basically got hooked on triathlon. So I've been competing in triathlons over the last 10 years on and off. And I still enjoy endurance sports. So essentially that has been a very interesting parallel for me. That relates really well to the professional work. We were talking about this earlier, leaning into what it takes to complete an ironman or any triathlon for that matter, or even just endurance training itself. There has a real connection in terms of the component of drive. There is mental aptitude involved. I think it's really helped me in terms of being able to process a lot and it's really shaped my approach to life and the approach I take into work and in a border sense. Steve Rush: And we're going to dive into this and we're going to have a look at some of those parallels in a little while, but for again, those who have not bumped into Sky Bioscience. Tell us a little bit about the current areas of work and how that's evolving for you? Punit Dhillon: Yeah, it's very exciting. I had the opportunity of seeing what evolved in the cancer immunotherapy space. I started my last company in 2010. Well actually it was formed in 2011, but kind the business plan was being written in 2010. And when I began that company there was only one kind of new drug launched in the current era of cancer immunotherapy. So over the last decade really saw what has transpired in terms of anyone that is diagnosed with cancer. They have a lot more options. There is a lot of success in terms of these immunotherapies being highly personalized to have that response that patients are looking for. In the current company I'm working in. It earlier stage, but it's similarly tackling a very interesting opportunity where the endocannabinoid system, which is a network of receptors is linked to a whole range of different diseases from kind of neurological disorders to central nervous system disorders. And then there's also, you know, this link to the ophthalmology applications. So we've tried to kind of narrow in the field here, see if we can change the biology in the eye by utilizing this unique mechanism that's at play with these different receptors. And we're developing our initial drug for glaucoma. And what we've been able to demonstrate to date is that it's showing a really good activity biologically. And were about to start our first clinical trial. So this now is about recapitulating the data that we've seen to date in animals, in humans. And we were quite excited about that. That I think for the entire industry in terms of the area that we're in, really lays the bedrock for a lot more opportunity in terms of utilizing this side of human biology. Steve Rush: It's such a fascinating subject, as you're talking it through, I can see that actually what you're doing is really groundbreaking. It's fundamentally shifting the outcomes that people can expect to receive, right? Punit Dhillon: Absolutely, and that's the fascinating thing about life sciences. I mean, there's one frustrating side of it that it takes a long time to develop drugs, and there's quite a process. It's not like you, you know, you come up with an application and all of a sudden you utilize. Technology companies are notorious for being able to demonstrate kind of proof of concept to something you're holding in your hand relatively quickly. In life sciences there's definitely a longer lead time. However, there's certain science, you know, that's underway today that is truly groundbreaking and necessary. You know, unfortunately what's happening in ophthalmology applications, patients develop tolerance to some of the existing drugs, they become ineffective. So there is a need for having disease management or you know, change to be available for these patients or options to be available for these patients. So this is what I think we accomplish with the technology that we're developing right now. And then on the business side of the equation, it's also exciting because Big Pharma who will ultimately be where, you know, we will try to exit the last company I was involved with. We had an opportunity to partner with Merck, similarly Big Pharma has the need to have new intellectual property and new drugs. Steve Rush: As a serial entrepreneur in such a really niche area of business, how do you just keep innovating? Where did these ideas come from? Punit Dhillon: So there's a huge amount of patience from the teams that we're working with. I think the ideas are always there. There's so much inspiration around us, right. In my particular case, I feel like I have this very good creative bug about me, but then it's also balancing that with the reality check, you know, you have the important people around you that can make it pragmatic in terms of the way that things can be developed. So in life sciences, there's no sort shortage. I think of similar types of creativity and opportunity that we can explore. It's just trying to be pragmatic about the resources in order to deploy it. I've been in the industry now for 20 years, I actually started on the healthcare fund side. I worked on a venture capital fund and then moved into the operational side and been in operational roles for the last 20 years. But the great thing we're seeing today, I mean, compared to 10 years ago, is the intersection of these different industries now. And I even touch on this in Catapult. My last chapter is called like Mavericks and, and it's really a call to action, there's very important themes that are still underway today, macro level. You can take that and apply that in any industry. I see intersections between AI and life science happening right in front of us in terms of opportunities we're looking at. We see opportunities of deep learning, you know, being applied on being able to rapidly scale up drugs. You look at what happened with the COVID 19 vaccines, you know, they were able to see sequence the virus and then come up with several solutions and rapidly move them through development. And you saw entire industries kind of come together in order to make it happen from the manufacturing that's necessary to the science, to the scale up, to the distribution. You know, everyone was talking about, you know, taking five years before you can get a vaccine and we saw it unfold in front of us within a year. That's quite impressive. Steve Rush: I would imagine that also gives you the permission as an organization to think that you can scale quicker than you may have done in the past. So having had that experience around you, it unlocks different thinking as well, doesn't it? Punit Dhillon: Absolutely, yeah. I benefited from coming from the corporate finance side and it's a very regulated industry, life sciences, but understanding operations, understanding kind of the governance side, and then these international components, business building, licensing, there's so many moving parts. So I've really enjoyed as much as there's a component of life sciences that sometimes sounds like it's like, oh, it moves like molasses, you're actually running super-fast. It may not always seem fast on the outside looking in but inside it's been amazing to see that growth. And there's always an inflection in required in early stage companies, early stage industries. And we're in that right now. I mean, I'm working in an area that is truly kind of a novel area. There's not many companies in this space. There's a limited amount of data, but there's an impressive set of data as well. And there's been a few companies that have already proven, you know, how this is an effective development space. So, I expect there to be like any industry, like there's going to be literally a hockey stick style growth that happens eventually once you prove that efficacy. Steve Rush: Yeah, fascinating stuff I will watch with absolute closeness. Punit Dhillon: Thank you. Steve Rush: You wrote the book Catapult, which really you talk around is that parallels earlier from your training in resilience as an athlete and the application at work, what was the moment that you thought, right. I've got something here that I could share with others. I'm going to write it down? Punit Dhillon: Well, didn't happen until after I wrote, like what a hundred thousand words Steve Rush: For the case, right? Punit Dhillon: I didn't originally plan to share this outside. This was a function of what happened. What we all went through in 2020, right? The pandemic, you know, forced us to be in indoors and slow down and take stock of kind of our lives, right? So there was a definitely a component of me having that opportunity. And then the other side of it, I was also hitting a personal milestone. I've always wanted to kind of sit down and write down what I believe in, in terms of my own principles of what have I learned over the last 20 years and what would I have told myself if I had the opportunity, tell myself 20 years earlier, what, you know, what would be the way to do it? I talk about this sometimes with my wife and in the last 10 years, I've been living in San Diego. I've only appreciated the lifestyle in San Diego brings, really in the last 5 to 10 years. And maybe it's partially because as the kids are older and so forth, but the other aspect of it, reality has been that, you know, I didn't take advantage of that beautiful lifestyle that Southern California brings in the early part of my career. I was very focused on working hard, you know, working those long hours and putting in that time. And as you get to a certain, you know, stage in your life, you're able to kind of look past a lot of those type of things and be a bit more reflective of how to be not only efficient, but at the same time more purpose driven in terms of how these other aspects impact our lives. So Catapult was an opportunity to do that. In one respect, I feel very blessed with the opportunities of working with several different people. Having the chance of building these different companies and the technologies, and truly it's been rewarding because you're seeing, you know, you're seeing that these drugs actually save people's lives. I have to pinch myself in terms of the opportunities that we had. So that was an opportunity in a period where I was just really focused on saying, well, I don't know if I'm going to be able to have that same definition of success in the next phase of my life. You know, there's a certain trajectory that comes with going into your forties. Steve Rush: Right. Punit Dhillon: A different trajectory afterwards and it's nothing to do with age. There's an author, David Brooks, he kind of talks about it in two mountains. In terms of the first mountain of your life. It's basically a checklist, right? You have to finish your school and you maybe do higher degree. And then you established your career and then you want to start a family and stabilize your life with the things that are necessary, the food, shelter type of equation. Like the basic needs, Maslow's hierarchy. Steve Rush: Right. Punit Dhillon: And then once those things are in place, then you're really moving on to your second mountain and your second mountain ends up being a lot more about self-fulfillment. And that's the thing I think that I was wrestling with as an individual. I believe I've had a wonderful opportunity in this first segment of my life, but how do I define that same success going forward for myself and you know, whatever quote unquote, what does that trajectory look like? It may not mean that it's like, you know, it's not the same definitions that were very prescriptive, I guess, in the first 20 years. Steve Rush: Yeah, I like it. And also, I guess, whilst it's not about age. Punit Dhillon: Yeah. Steve Rush: It is definitely about experience though, isn't it? So, you know, some people get over that first mountain really quick. Punit Dhillon: Yeah. Steve Rush: Some take much longer to get over it, but I think all of us can recognize that at some point we go, okay, where is this all heading? And in order for us to really tap into that, that's where that corporate athlete can really help us. So you talk about this corporate athlete with having some core foundations, some themes behaviors that are associated with them. I wonder if you to share those with us? Punit Dhillon: So as a corporate athlete, it's really this aspect that strengthening resilience can help you attain the success that you want to achieve. So I believe there's so many similarities in behavior and training in approach that both the athlete and call it a corporate athlete face to really realize their dream and then lead to whatever breakthrough or, you know, sometimes it's an innovative breakthrough, sometimes it's just a personal breakthrough and that's really the underlying premise of the book. And I feel I use this word blessed a lot, but I have to kind of state it because I wouldn't take kind of re redefine anything or redesign any component of what my experience has been. I was raised in India. I grew up in, in East Vancouver in Canada, and then had an opportunity to move to the U.S., to work in a career and had the opportunity to also work with companies that not only were incredibly successful, but they also had their own challenges along the way. Probably been at the brink of like insolvency. Working in startups half a dozen times in my career, which is interesting in itself. So all of those aspects I think have a definition of resilience. I believe that I'm kind of wired to go through the hard stuff in order to experience the positives and the benefit out of it. I don't know how often your wife's making you train for the iron man, but, you know, when you go about training, you know, like a bike a bike session. You usually want to work that hill and do what's required to get up a steep mountain climb or whatever. And then the reward is usually coming down fast or it's the fun part of the session. So I enjoy that climb because I like enjoying the satisfaction of the feeling on the other side of it. Steve Rush: That's interesting. Punit Dhillon: And a lot of people just don't take enough stock or notice of that important part of that climb. Steve Rush: Yeah. Punit Dhillon: In anything. Steve Rush: She absolutely loves climbing hills but I absolutely hate it and we have different perspectives of it. So, you know, she gets this real rush. Punit Dhillon: Yeah, and we all hate it. Steve Rush: Yeah, she gets this rush of energy. It gets her up there. I do the opposite. I have the rush of energy of, I got to hold it in and get to the top of the climb. And then boy, I can fly down the hill, the other side. Punit Dhillon: Yeah. Steve Rush: And therefore mindset has got a massive part to play in this too, isn't it? Punit Dhillon: A hundred percent. Steve Rush: Because people will come from it from different perspectives. Punit Dylan: That's the thing. Whenever anybody gives me a challenge, I'm in the happy place. Like that is something that I've lucked out in terms of being able to really take advantage of seeing these difficult situations and having a half glass, half empty type of attitude about anything. So it's not always pretty, but I do really well in that situation. And partially what I do well in is visualizing what that outcome looks like on the other end. Steve Rush: Right. Punit Dhillon: I already am picturing what the success looks like at the other end of that. And I try to kind of recapitulate that to the best of my ability on the completion. So yeah, this book was about encapsulating, a lot of that. And I believe as an athletes, they go through a lot of that. They go through visualization techniques, they go through a lot of rigorous training. They go through a lot of pain in order to reap the rewards and have the discipline then to compete at the world stage. So I haven't had the same, you know, same level of success being able to compete at the world stage, but I've also benefited from training at a pretty elite level throughout my career. So I've tried to apply those things into day to day in terms of even working with my team. Steve Rush: So if you think of the component parts of being a corporate athlete, you've got things like mental aptitude, holding yourself accountable to the things you commit to, making sure that you've got a real strong regime of training that is not just regular training, but its endurance, which means it gets stronger and deeper. And then of course you have this focus drive element that you call out in your book. Of those kind of four things, is there one that's more important than the other, or do you think they're all interrelated? Punit Dhillon: I believe they're all interrelated and each one of them stands, you know, capable of being on its own. You just have to recognize that there are a big part of it. I mean, I've looked at this trapezium situation many ways, and I purposely designed it in a way that it has an openness to it. So there's no closure to it. So a big part of it is the fact that, by defining your purpose or defining you're, like kind of understanding of what's that engine in that's in inside of you, and what's leading you that is a big part of the source of motivation and the source of determination. So if we were to prioritize, that is a very important part of it. The other components like accountability, the physical capacity, the emotional intelligence and the mental capacity, those are all helping really support that and really achieve that impact that you're looking for. Now that this book has had a bit of time to breathe, even kind of reflecting on it further is like, is my message coming across too harsh in terms of, does everyone have to make some sort of significant impact or dent on the planet? I don't think that has to be the case. It has to be kind of your own personal definition of what that dent is. So sometimes people get lost and trying to make a connection with whatever their purpose has to be something that's, you know, too lofty or not communicating enough to themselves in terms of what is maybe right in front of them. I really am challenging people to go and spend the time to understand your purpose and define what that means for yourself. And don't try to compare yourself to, you know, Oprah Winfrey's purpose or whoever else, you know, everyone has a different definition of that. And in order to help you achieve second mountain, it's the underlying, you know, these underlying components. Punit Dhillon: I wonder how many people who don't end up feeling like they've had this impact on life, get stuck because they perceive the journey to be too big. The second mountain is too big. Rather than actually looking at themselves internally versus looking at external events happening around them. Steve Rush: Yeah, absolutely. That's why I think it's a really important question you asked about what are these things or most important because everyone has to take a very holistic approach and that why this joy component that's emphasized in this book is another important lens to that equation. This proverbial balance in life doesn't exist for anyone. Most often we're working towards our professional goals and we're working towards our personal goals and we're working towards our individual goals. So finding joy in work, in yourself and in life is part of the necessary thing that helps you continue to have that nuclear engine inside of you as well, that keeps spinning so that you have that source of motivation. Joy is a hundred percent linked, I believe, to giving somebody that intrinsic motivation to actually do what they ultimately want to do. Steve Rush: I like that. There's so many people you bump into who hate getting up in the morning, going to work. Punit Dhillon: Yeah. Steve Rush: They go around in these routines, they get stuck almost. And it's because they can't find joy, because joy is emotionally and locks, everything else, right? Punit Dhillon: Yeah, and I hate like when people get stuck, trying to define what other people's routines and other people's definitions for themselves. I guess the health industry does this really well. Everyone's always hawking the next plan and whatever the next diet regime or, you know, or workout regime or whatever. So people try to implement their model onto someone else. And I tried to avoid this in this book because I was trying to be very clear that these are my principles that I believe that help. And what it is? It's giving you a framework, but please spend the time to identify your own set of principles that work for you. And that this takes time and effort, you know, how often are people sitting down and writing down what their principles are. But the point that you raise is really important. We don't have to follow, you know, anyone else's routine, if it brings you joy to wake up at nine o'clock and start your day with, you know, a quant rather than starting your day with a, you know, 30 minute run, then I don't see anything wrong with that. You got to really navigate for yourself what it may means to get to wherever you're going in terms of your motivation, of course, underlying that there are still things like you have to take good care of your health, and you have to take good care of your mental health and being continuing to be accountable to yourself to be a high performer. But the definition of high performance is different for everyone. And it doesn't need to be like what first images that come to mind when we say the words high performing. I think that's what's unfortunately, you know, gets very frustrating for people and then people lose that joy and that energy that is pretty intrinsic in everyone. Steve Rush: Yeah, it's a hundred percent. And for anybody listening to this now who are thinking, I can never run an ironman, or I never perform in an ironman or run a marathon or take up a new sport. That is absolutely just a mindset. Now, respectfully, there are also some physical things that might be going on around them, but it doesn't have to equally be an ironman. It could just be a personal best in something. It could be starting something new, it could be leading a different team, getting different results. So it's absolutely about personalizing some of those principles and behaviors. Isn't it? Punit Dylan: Absolutely, 100%. I think that philosophy of that mindset is where we all need to continue to focus on. I'm very happy that, you know, like my nine year old, you talk to her any day and she'll always quote somewhere along the line about having a growth mindset. And I don't know where she picked it up, obviously she's got some strong influences around her, but it reminds me to always also have that growth mindset. Steve Rush: It does, yeah. Punit Dhillon: We sometimes get caught up with all of the other noise in our lives and we forget the simple things like that. And sometimes just starting something different, maybe try your routine different or work with your team differently. Steve Rush: So our folks listen to this will be familiar that this is where we start to hack into your leadership brain, start to get all of those experiences and shortlist them into your top three leadership hacks. What would they be? Punit Dhillon: My top three leadership hacks? Okay. Well, I definitely use the lists. I talk about that. So that is a big part of my daily routine is checklist. So I'm a big list person. I use a top three, I use a longer list of 10 things, but every day there's three things that have to get done and it's regarded as a top three, otherwise, you know, I do use lists often. Number two has been really being myself. I find that that's a constant reminder in terms of everyone that you're around is just to be yourself. And that's big part of the first part of this book is called true accountability and kind of try to define a formula around that. And the third has been try to enjoy Friday nights. As long as I can think, you know, I try to have a lime margarita or something like that, or, you know, just remind myself that there's you know, a lot to be thankful for, you have to find joy and sometimes really make room for it. In the book, I talk about different routines so people can, kind of dive into that, but sometimes it's a Sunday on Sunday nights and other times margarita on Friday nights. Steve Rush: Yeah, and some reward too. Punit Dhillon: Oh, yeah, right. Steve Rush: For all of the disciplines and that you apply in your life and work, we all still need that reward don't we? Punit Dhillon: Yeah, and by the way, there's the obvious ones that I have to wake up in the morning and start my day with working out. So I guess one of the biggest leadership hacks that I can emphasize is that I really take pride in owning the morning. So if you get the morning, right, it really helps you set yourself up for success the rest of the day. So by really taking the time to own that morning and on a organize yourself, and that means, you know, starting the time that allows you to do that, it really helps you be successful throughout the day without being feeling flustered the rest of the time. Steve Rush: Great advice. Next part of the show, we call it Hack to Attack. So this is typically where something hasn't worked out well, but as a result, we've learned from it, and it's now a force of good in what we do. So what would be your Hack to Attack? Punit Dhillon: Lack of planning. There's definitely been a couple situations in my career where not having a plan has basically been, like a plan to fail. When we're developing different drugs. And there's quite an extent a process involved and most often clinical trials is kind of your measurement point along the way. So there's different stage gate decisions that lead to a clinical trial, but once a clinical trial is underway. I think many people get kind of caught up, for different companies have get caught up with just getting to the on inflection point and not properly planning for the success of ensuring that the trial can go smoothly. Sometimes that's linked to enrollment and sometimes it's linked to the appropriate resources. And I've been through a situation where both of those were not properly sought after, in terms of the resources and the bandwidth that was required in order for us to really succeed in the time that was given. So what it ended up leading to was over budget, not being able to complete the trial and the amount of time that we've had had allocated. And we didn't get to our end goal in time, a very basic example, but it's a, very important one in our industry. Steve Rush: Yeah. Punit Dhillon: Because I think sometimes entrepreneurs or just teams can get caught up with just feeling like, okay, we just got to get there. And once we start that it'll happen, but it's not anything like that. You're always having to think way past that. Talk about this, about thinking past the finish line. This is a very important takeaway for this, is that in, in anything that you're doing, sometimes your mind is only set on achieving that goal that you had set and it could be lofty or important or whatever it is, but it's most often getting to that is usually not the problem it's actually following through and finishing whatever, you know, is required after that. And so thinking past the finish line is a critical one. And in my case in that clinical trial, we ended up getting to the end result, but it wasn't pretty in terms of getting there. We almost ran out money as a company. It took too long. The number of patients that we had to enroll in the study had to get larger. And then we had to go to more sites around the world. And a lot of those things could have been avoided earlier on. Steve Rush: It's an old cliché, but the whole failed to plan, plan to fail philosophy, isn't it? Exactly right. Punit Dhillon: Yeah. Steve Rush: So last part of the show we get to give you a chance to do try and travel, bump back into yourself at 21 and give yourself some advice. What would it be? Punit Dhillon:  I think my advice to myself, would've been to take more time soaking it in. In terms of the different experiences. Oftentimes we work with some really wonderful people and we fail to kind of recognize that in the moment. And I think each one of the interactions that we have in our careers is super critical in terms of building those experiences. So just enjoying those moments and treating every single interaction. Sometimes it's with your boss, sometimes it's with your team as great opportunities for learning. That would be my big takeaway and part of that, I wish I spent a bit more time writing about those experiences sometimes like you're so in the midst of doing these transactions, like I pulled All-nighters and I've done these complex deals, raising capital for companies and licensing deals and we're talking like mega million deals. And I wish that I had taken the time to kind of journal around some of those experiences because. Steve Rush: Yeah, it would be another couple of books written. Punit Dhillon: It's not even about that, but just in terms of appreciating, like what you get out of those things. Steve Rush: Exactly. Punit Dhillon: You're dealing with all of these complex, you know, legal terms and all of these things that are great learning experiences, but it's all in our head now. Like, you know, I can recall it vividly in terms of the pain points that we've experienced in those things. But I just wish that I had taken more time to really appreciate those moments because they went very rapidly. Steve Rush: And that is thinking past the finish line, right? Punit Dhillon: Yeah. What I've learned from my boss is a responsibility that I expect, like my team to be able to share with their teams and so forth. So I think it's like a cycle that continues to evolve, but it's an important one because that's how innovation happens. Steve Rush: It certainly does. It certainly does. So for folks, listen to this, who'd like to get a copy of Catapult. Would love to learn more about you, the work that Sky Bioscience are doing, where's the best place for us to send them? Punit Dhillon: Yeah, you can send them to my website and its punitdhillon.com and there are several tabs on the website that can lead you to the book as well as contacting me if you have any questions. I would be happy to respond. Steve Rush: Brilliant. And we'll make sure they're in the show notes as well. Punit Dhillon: Thank you so much, Steve. Steve Rush: So thanks for ever so much for being on the show, Punit, and thank you for sharing some stories and we very much look forward to having you a part of our network. Punit Dhillon: Thank you so much, Steve.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.  

Colin Hunter is the author of Be More Wrong,  he's a mentor, entrepreneur and coach and the CEO of Potential Squared. Colin shares an intimate journey of how his career developed and led to the work he does now. We can learn some great lessons in this weeks' show including: Why being more wrong helps us unlock great learning. How creating “virtual playgrounds” can provide the perfect environment for development. Colin's three enablers of leadership: Purpose/Identity & Presence. A new take on leaderships styles. Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA   Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Colin below: Colin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinhunter Colin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bemorewrong Potential Squared Website: https://www.potential2.com Be More Wrong (Book) https://info.potential2.com/en-us/bemorewrong   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Colin Hunter is a special guest on today's show. He's an author of Be More Wrong, a mentor, entrepreneur and coach. He's also the CEO of Potential Squared, but before we get a chance to speak with Colin, it's The Leadership Hacker. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: In news today, we explored the world's top female friendly companies of 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic is taken an especially heavy toll on women around the world. It's estimated more than 64 million women around the world, lost their jobs with at least 800 billion in earnings lost last year in U.S. dollars alone. And that's a result, the time it will take to close the global gender pay gap has increased from 99 years to 135 years, according to the world economic forum. And these issues are achingly familiar, inadequate childcare, managing work, home stress, lack of opportunities. And in many cases, COVID may amplified the burden to the point where many women just left their jobs. Forbes Magazine recently teamed up with market research company Statista to help identify companies leading the way when it comes to try and support women inside and outside their workforces with an all-girl ranking of the world's top female friendly companies. So which company clinched the number one spot? Well CEO Michelle Buck became the first woman to lead the chocolatier in its 127 year history, you've got it? Hershey. Today women make up 42% of the Pennsylvania based businesses board. By 2025, aims to increase the percentage of women working in its workforce to 50%. And then this leadership population to 42%, that's up from currently 48 and 37% respectively. To reach its goals, Hershey launched a five-year plan called Project Pathways and it's to help its workplace and communities become more inclusive. And the project is run by collaboration of human resources and The Women's Business Resource Group and provides their teams with resources, such as, childcare, transportation, tutoring, and eldercare resources. Another firm to meet the top 10, Zoom. Video Communications Team, Chief People Officer, Lynne Oldham said that the Silicon Valley tech company had redesigned this recruiting and hiring strategies, diversifying its pipelines, revising job descriptions that they feature inclusive language and introduce uniformity across its interviewing process in an effort to reduce bias and increase the number of female hires. Zoom has also sought to support women through partnerships with charities, such as, If Chloe Can, a UK Organization that hosts workshops and connects teams with mentors to prepare them for the workforce. When admitted stay at home orders were unable to continue with its usual impersonal operations. Zoom stepped in, offering to facilitate their programming through services free of charge. And there are many other organizations who are demonstrating great diversity equity inclusion principles when it comes to hiring female employees in their workforce. If you want to get a full list, go to Forbes and look for the world's top female friendly companies and Statista surveyed over 85,000 women in 40 countries to curate this great report. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. Please let us know what you'd like us to feature in the news on our Leadership Hacker Podcast. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Colin Hunter is a special guest on today's show. He's an author of Be More Wrong. He's a mental, entrepreneur, coach and the CEO of Potential Squared International. Colin, welcome to the show. Colin Hunter: Thanks Steve, it's a pleasure. Real pleasure. Steve Rush: So how have you been? Colin Hunter: Yeah, well, good. Life is, and I hate to say this sometimes nowadays, but life is good. It's busy, but the new startup business which we're working on at the moment and yeah, we've got a lot of things, but I'm struggling to deal with sometimes with this new hybrid world. I'm sure everybody out there is. But starting to work with the new norm. Steve Rush: It's kind of ironic. We've tried to have lunch for six months and we're like ships that pass in the night when it comes to London these days, because we're in that hybrid world, right? Colin Hunter: And I'm sure it's nothing personal. It's nothing personal from my side. Steve Rush: Sure, likewise. Yeah. So Colin for the listeners that haven't had the opportunity to meet with you, just to give us a little bit about the backstory and how Potential Squared came about? Colin Hunter: Yeah, so if I go back, so I've been in leadership since 1996, but before that, if I go back, I was brought up in Newcastle, Northeast of England. Father was a pediatric cardiologist. And part of me telling you this, because there's a story that I grew up with him working on looking at ultrasound for baby's hearts and was an amazing doctor, saved many people's lives. And I had a grandfather was professor of Theology. So my early part of my life was wondering how the hell do I actually compete and match up to my father and my grandfather. So I spent most of that time working, trying to be somebody I'm not. And then around about 30, 31. I had a moment which I'm sure we'll talk about, which redefined my career. And since then I've been working in the form of leadership consultants, working on leadership, looking at leaders and how they work. And more luckily I've started to recraft my career and our business around creating playgrounds to disrupt the way people are led. I started to realize I wanted to have some fun, Steve. I wanted to, to play with our work and I started one to experiment. And since 2007, I have set it out, whether it's about the use of actors or VR, virtual reality. I've started to look at how we do immersive, but real experiential workshops and training for leaders to shift the way and disrupt the way they think about leadership. And that is where I am now. And I'm still experimenting, still learning, but there's still suffering a bit from what I went through up to the age of 30 and how that's impacted my career, yeah, Steve Rush: Yeah, you comfortable? Let's go in there, if we talk about that time. Because I think it's a really important lesson for many people listening to this story because it really defined who you were at that time, but also how you ended up where you are now. Tell us about what happened that defining moment that you called it? Colin Hunter: Yeah, So I spent my childhood exploring experiments, having loads of groups of friends and I loved my life. I was out, my mother and father used to say this, you know, many forms of communication, but one was, “go tell Colin” and he would go tell somebody else and then I'd have conversations, a startup conversations. So I spent up to a probably the ages, 17 of loving my friends, my life, and even despite school, enjoying the rest of what I was trying to do. But in the background, my father being what he was and my grandfather being a professor of Theology and, you know, I was known as AM Hunter grandson. Pardon he was an author a writer in the New Testament. And therefore I spent my life what I would do to reach the levels that they'd got to? Steve Rush: Did that happened at quite an early age for you as well, that awareness of who you were and the indeed unconscious pressure that you felt from that. Happened at quite an early age, right? Colin Hunter: Yeah, it did. I mean, if I go back to when I was 11, my grandfather sat me down and said, for those who know, Robert Burns. He said, Tama Shanta, I want you to be able to learn this and re-slate Tama Shanta. And I want you to do this over Christmas and I want you to learn. And so therefore I started learning. I realized I couldn't, firstly I couldn't learn it by road,  Secondly, I didn't know why I was doing it. And thirdly, they seem to be some sort of tests that I was going through and I don't criticize my grandfather for it. He was an academic, he was looking for me to show that I could be logical. And that I could work in a principle in a way that could have constructed arguments in the right way. All I cared about was relationships and emotions. I was in that space going, you know, I sat at his feet and I looked up at him. I thought, wow, this is great, but in no way could live and breathe what he was doing. He was just brilliant at constructing an argument. And I felt that in my depth. So that was at the age of 11 and 12. And then my father was in that space and he was working on ultrasound. Looking at how they diagnose and the baby's hearts. So I used to go in and see him in the hospital's saving baby's lives and that tiny, small babies and how we had this care, but this ability to teach others. And I thought this, I can't do this either. So, therefore I thought, should I be a doctor? Should I be an academic? Should I stretch myself? And therefore, I always looked at others from an early stage with a degree of imposter syndrome and said, I'm not worthy. And I wouldn't call it in those days, but what it meant was, I searched out areas that I could play in, but they tended to be away from my family. They tended to be away from those areas of logic and academia. And therefore I fought school, fought and in some ways, literally out a major argument with one of my teachers who suggested the age of 17. I leave school and go and get just a job in retail because that's all I want to achieve in my life. So, therefore when it comes to how I started off my career, I took everybody's advice. I joined and became a tax consultant. And I spent my life sat in a cubicle doing hand written computations attacks and wondered why I wasn't happy. And then, so I went to Procter & Gamble and had a great career there, but I was doing a job where I hated it. I mean, I was successful, but the cost of my energy in that role was huge. So I ended up having a breakdown basically at the age of 30 where I went back up to my parents' house in Newcastle in the Northeast of England from Nottingham. And I spent two weeks in tears. And I'm happy to talk about it now. And for many years I wasn't, but it was this clash where I was walking in a house where my father only cried once that I can remember when our dog died and therefore I walked into the house and I was crying. And it was almost like, they knew how to deal with it, but they didn't know how to do with it. Steve Rush: So how were you received by them at that time? Because I suspect having that strong veneer of professional academia around success doesn't come with showing much vulnerability. So how did that play out? Colin Hunter: I was lucky that he was adopted and, you know, bless him. He passed away earlier this year and I've done a lot of soul searching and he dealt with it in the way he knew, which is he suggested that I go see the doctor, a local GP, a general practitioner. And so therefore it wasn't a case of they weren't unsympathetic, but they were looking for a cure for it. And my mother has laterally suffered from mental health issues herself. And therefore there's more understanding in that space from that side, but I was lucky. They sent me to Gusto Silver, a GP and he canceled the appointments ahead of me and after me and he sat down and he did this brilliant thing, Steve. He told me the story of when he was in a car accident and how this card flipped over. And he remembered in slow motion, the car sliding along on its roof. And he remembered the music going slowly on the radio, but he saw his life flash in front of him. And he said something which has always stayed with me. He said, I have a gift then to learn about my life and what I needed to change. And he said, you've been given a gift, might not seem at the moment, but you given a gift that life is about energy systems and your energy is at zero basically. And your mind is telling you, you can't cope with it. And now is the time to think about your energy systems that feed your life and how you use them and be much more intentional about how you feed them and how you spend them in your life. And that was the most powerful thing somebody ever said to me in my life. And it's changed the way I work now. Steve Rush: When you look back on that time, do you see that as a gift now? Colin Hunter: Oh yeah. I mean, it's interesting when I was writing the book and I was thinking about it. I suddenly realized I had never gone back to see Gusto Silver. I'm not even sure if he's alive now and I feel guilty about that. Because that was a transformational piece for me, but I also think it's taught me, if I look now and how I'm bringing up my daughters who are 17 at 16, it's taught me to realize that real connection with them is so, so important. But as a leader, it's taught me so much more. Steve Rush: Yeah, indeed. And one of the things that astound me about you, Colin is, you are incredibly successful, incredibly well presented, strong courageous leader, as I see you today, but you still suffer with this nagging imposter syndrome from time to time. And I knew that of you, but how do you deal with that? Colin Hunter: I think the first thing is sharing it. Steve Rush: Yeah. Colin Hunter: So I was doing a keynote last night to an American audience, and these are all my competitors, the learning and development professionals globally, we meet each year at this conference. And I was sharing in this webinar with them, this story, and said about the imposter syndrome. And what was amazing for me is that however many people suddenly started to share that they had the same thing. So I used to walk into this place, center for creative leadership, vital, smartest, crucial conversations, and just feel I wasn't worthy, but so many people in that same space have the same feelings. And so therefore by telling that story, and I think this is where the humility and the humble nature of leaders. If you tell your story of where you have struggled, it's amazing how many people suddenly go. Yeah, I'm the same way. Steve Rush: Yeah. Colin Hunter: And that's what's happening now, but there's other things I've been possibly to work on, but sharing the story has been one of the biggest, first steps. Steve Rush: And I don't know about you, but I think just having the label imposter syndrome, which, you know, wasn't there sort of 10 years ago, it helps us to actually recognize that it's a thing and that we can actually deal with it. Whereas before we might have dealt with it as something else. Colin Hunter: I think the senior leaders, you know, work in this space, we work with senior leaders. I'm amazed how many of them senior leaders have imposter syndrome, one version, or the other, you know, wondering how the hell they got to the top of the organization. Secondly, wondering how the hell they're going to lead this organization, because whether it's intellect. I was chatting to a client friend the other day, and he's been dyslexic diagnosed probably later in his life, but he's been very, very successful in this career, but he's always worried that somebody's going to find them out. However, he's used that positively because he leads with a humble nature because of that, it's been a powerful piece. And I think that's what a lot of people need to hear about the imposter syndrome is it starts you from a humility in a humble space, which is a powerful places that you needed to start rather than an arrogance and a belief in your own power and ability, that can be worked on. But listening to that voice in your head, not removing it, sometimes I described this as it's the loudest voice at a dinner party. And all you've got to do is dial it down and dial up the other voices in your head and the other neural pathways that allow you to be successful. Steve Rush: Yeah, great words. I often use the same analogy, but help people to think about, it's the one voice you wake up with in the morning. It's the one that you go to bed with and it'd be the last voice you hear before you die. So it needs to serve you well. Colin Hunter: Also, my meditation headspace in the morning and my exercise in the morning is a powerful piece of me. As Jamie Smarter wrote a book, clarity said, when you fall out to your thinking, it allows you to come up with inspired action. And I find that really heavy in the morning and within my head space and something pops into my head and it's just, oh, yep. That's the answer. That's the answer. But how often do you do that? Steve Rush: Thanks for sharing that story. And I think it's really important to help people understand you actually as a character, because you are incredibly successful now, and you're running a successful business with Potential Squared. And I think it just gives people some insights that we all come from different perspectives to arrive at where we've arrived at. And that journey is really important, isn't it? Colin Hunter: Yeah, it's massive. Hero's journey as they say. Steve Rush: Yeah, so tell us a little bit about the work that you and the team are doing at Potential Squared at the moment? Colin Hunter: We're having fun, and I think that's a key sense. Because we're in a startup on one area of business and anybody who's been involved in a starter, we'll say it's fun, but at the time it doesn't feel like it's fun quite a bit at the time. We're doing a couple of things. One is, we are restlessly dissatisfied about our work. So we've got our P2 leadership side of the business, which is leadership development and working. We've got VR, we've got virtual reality in there. We've got the use of The Actors, which is a powerful piece. And the always gets most positive feedback about the work we do, bringing in actors to explore conversations, getting people to have a, almost a who's line is it any way, if you remember the comedy program interaction and we find that that immersive experience of getting the conversations in leadership is the same as now, as the VR is allowing us to do where people are in the headsets, they are in this virtual reality. And they suddenly find that they're being themselves, you know, their true behaviors are coming out. So we're doing a lot of good work in there, but there's always been something missing from that work. And so therefore our new project is something called the 500 where we're looking at saying so biggest challenges in this world at the moment is equity. Increasing equity for people when they're young in terms of moving up in their careers. And if you look at where organizations are facing challenges at the moment is finding new talent, they're all fighting for talent in the same pools, is costing them more. Most of them can't afford that extra cost. And then we've suddenly realized that we're probably only tapping into 25% of the talent pool. And the other 75% is set in places, either places where they've had a very difficult backgrounds. So they've had a life story that's, you know, I wouldn't recognize even despite my stories, I'm telling you. Mine is trivial in some ways, compared to what others are experiencing. And therefore they've got newer diversity side to that where they're challenged by that. So we're, doing some work to say, so how do we train leaders and develop leaders to think with a wider view of life? To explore into different areas of the community? Exploring different areas of society and have a wider vision for that? Which benefits a couple of things Steve, which I'd never really thought about before. One is design thinking. You look at Procter & Gamble. You look at all the different types of organizations I used to work for. And you look at how they are trying to design for the different needs of different people and whether its disability or whether it's [Inaudible 00:20:01] or whether it's age or gender, all of these things need to come into play. But then you've got this talent pool where suddenly people are realizing that in that near diversity pool, you've got some brilliant thinkers and brilliant ideas, so how do we tap into that? But you've also got these people, they come from those places that you're trying to sell your products into. So why wouldn't you tap into that? But the third thing, I think the most important thing for me is that if you look at where most leaders are now, and particularly with the pandemic, that said, most people thinking, how do I give something back? How do I tap back into society? How do I do some good for the wider population? And I see so many who are willing to spend their own money to go and do something for others. And this new project works along those lines. So that's what we're working on at the moment to get people into a wider space. Steve Rush: Sound fun. Colin Hunter: Wider vision, it is. Steve Rush: And when it comes to your work, one of the things that I particularly like about what you do is, you called it at the beginning of the show actually. You have these equal playgrounds that you create to really tap into helping people unlock different behaviors. From your experience, by just having the notion of creating playgrounds, what behavior does that then unlock? Colin Hunter: There's two things, you can't tell people to have fun. The old saying, well go have fun. Steve Rush: That's right. Colin Hunter: It doesn't help. But if you think about some of the best times you've had, it's that stepping out of where you are now. Stepping out of the front door. And for some people, playgrounds is going off into the wilds and just taking some time by itself. Scotland for me has been through the pandemic because looking after my father at the time as allowed me to go on these coastal walks and experience nature, and that's a playground for me, I gets inspired and some great thoughts. I have had an old collogue who used to work when they were doing the Marks & Spencer turnaround, his idea was working 14, 15-hour days doing the night shift in the marble arch store of Marks & Spencer. And his playground was discovering new ways of working. But the idea in my head was, how do we create a place where it makes people think they're going to have fun? They're stretching themselves, but it's almost like they've got a safe place with a soft landing if they fail to try something different, rather than sailing their ship around the Harbor, as we describe it and doing the same thing safely all the time, why not seek rougher seas? Why not get barnacles on your butters as I described it and go and stretch yourself. But if it's in a playground where the highest risk is that you might get it wrong and somebody who's going to give you feedback, you going to learn. And why don't we do that? And just take a simple thing, like having a conversation now about race, skin, color diversity, wouldn't it be great to have a safe place, to allow people to have conversations, to learn and grow, but as soon as you say something wrong, you're hammered for it. So that's what we're talking about. Playgrounds, safe places to land, where people can explore. Steve Rush: Yeah, it's a great metaphor and the reality as well, I guess, if you were allowing yourself to think that way. Colin Hunter: Yeah. Steve Rush: Yeah, and did that help you then start to think about using that notion to write your book, Be More Wrong? Was that kind of a trigger that led you that way? Colin Hunter: Yeah, it's ironic that the title is be more wrong and it took four years for me to be comfortable to publish it. Steve Rush: So, let's talk about that because actually I recall when we had a conversation about this before the whole notion of calling a book Be More Wrong is an oxymoron for most people, isn't it? Colin Hunter: Yes, the title was probably the first thing I put down because I was starting a thing. So I've had so many screw ups in my life, but I'm still here and being successful. So surely there's something rich in this. But I think the biggest thing that helped me was in writing the book was I was introduced to IDEO through a Canadian company experience point where the whole principle of failing early, failing fast and learning first was introduced to me. And I started the think that all the work we do is around that. So to write the book, I suddenly realized we need to find using the hero's journey, metaphor, stepping out of your house, going on a journey, gathering your team together, carrying your followers together, having an inspiring story, a quest, a purpose, going and failing, facing good evil and failing and succeeding in equal measure, but learning and having a guide to do that was what we'd be doing for years. And actually the only bit that was missing was this design thinking piece, which is getting out there and experiencing and having a go at something, observing people in the real world. So therefore, the be more wrong philosophy is embedded in that fail fast, learn fast philosophy and give it the juice for the book, yeah. Steve Rush: And of course, if you reframe being wrong and failing to actually that's a learning experience, it helps you to grow from it. Doesn't it? Colin Hunter: It does. I mean, it is fascinating in our culture, that one failure and make somebody a bad person. Whereas actually, if you look in many different aspects of our life, these failures are learning and they are spaces where people can start to work on different ways of living. I still a big fan of Mandela and the sessions he had, the conversations he had after apartheid and he didn't let it go. He brought those people who had diminished the rights of people to understand and work on. So you could learn. And there's a classic example of a mistake of failure in many people's eyes that had to be learned from rather than just finishing it and getting on. We had to learn from the lesson. And some cases, some days, I actually feel that we haven't learned from those times or those mistakes and therefore, how do we create that environment to do it more again? Steve Rush: And do you think there's a lot to do with mindset and how people have perceived the event? So if you take Mandela as a perfect example, right? This is a guy who was imprisoned in Robben Island for decades, who could have been really bitter, twisted, and angry, and the people that imprison him. He then subsequently taught, educated and encouraged to think differently. And that's got to be down to mindset and other behaviors. What's your experience with that? Colin Hunter: I think it is. I think it is mindset. But I think it's a gift of mindset because I think if he hadn't that experience, a tough experience and he hadn't had the time to reflect and be really, really clear. And he was very intentional about his learning from that. And he was very intentional, but how he treated people around him, even his wife in terms of how he works in there. And I think there's leaders who, you know, they almost celebrate failures in the workplace as learning pieces, as long as there's learning and there's movement forward. Steve Rush: Yeah. Colin Hunter: What is a mindset? Steve Rush: One thing you said that specifically kind of, I think, was also being intentional. Colin Hunter: Yes. Steve Rush: Yeah. Colin Hunter: I think purposeful practice is a classic piece. You know, I'm not a sportsman, but I love my sport. And when you look at all the workers in here, having a purpose towards something whether it's being a top tennis player or competing at a particular level. And then there's purposeful practice, intentional practice of small, small things that can be. So, what we call practices. So how do I make a practice to become a habit habitual that feeds the system that makes me successful? And Brailsford with the Sky Cycling now, and he did it with British Cycling. Now critics always have these things, but if you look now in all sports, soccer, you look at American football, the small incremental gains that people are making intentional failure towards something, stress testing, working with exactly what this is about Steve Rush: Exactly right, yeah. And ironically purpose is one of your three enablers of leadership. So you have purpose, identity and presence. And I thought it'd be useful just to kick that about. Colin Hunter: Yeah, again, it's funny when you put something out there and Simon the snake put his work on purpose out there, you know, his Ted talk, which has been watched by many people and I loved it. And then you look at other people like Tom Peters, who said, well, purpose, it's great to say, you can just find it. But a lot of us don't find our purpose immediately. We stumble across it. But there is an intentionality about what motivates me. What is my passion? What do I want to do? And even when somebody says, well, my purpose is to be a good father, a good mother. There's that question afterwards, what type of a father or mother do you want to be? And so, for example, if I take the person identity for me, my purpose is to create playgrounds, to disrupt the way people are led. That's the mantra that I worked on to do that. But my identity I also have, and I hold as a father of daughters. So, my whole being and the identity of father of daughters is to start to think about how I disrupt the way that people lead and recruits and give opportunities so that women and my daughters have equal opportunities in the future. And therefore, my personal identity, then every day when I'm looking at things, not only for gender, but for race, and I'm starting to say, so how do I get more equity in society from that? So that purpose and identity. Now for most people, it's a tough one to establish a purpose. And that's why we do a lot of work on stories, getting people to tell their stories and working out their stories. When she listened to your stories and you realize, how have you crafted your life, what you've hated and what you've loved, you normally can find an underlying purpose that you can work on, but it's an experiment. In my work, it might be rejected. And then you move on to the next one. So, purpose and identity and the identity piece, I love this, which is, do I cycle or am I a cyclist? That's the classic piece. And if I'm a cyclist, I suddenly take it professionally. And I take it with great importance. So if I'm a father of daughters, I've suddenly put an identity. I need to work at it to be proud of. So those are two elements we've got. But I think the bit that I love the most is the presence piece that we have. In which if you think about it, we have to learn to dance to the music as a leader. We need to be agile. We need to go on a crazy train through the pandemic, and we're on an even crazier train next year. So how do I dance to that music? But the piece I love is, why not dance to other people's music and learning to do that? So rather than bringing the music I would have as a leader, how do I learn to be agile in the moment with other people's music? We'll be able to adapt and move to that music. And therefore we do a lot of work around gravitas, prominence, executive presence, and teaching people from an early age, how to have more impact in the vocal, physical, and also mental in terms of how they come across. So those are the three things. Purpose, why we do stuff, how we do it, and then the presence is how we show up. Steve Rush: I love it, yeah. Really simple. But actually, they're all aligned, aren't they? Colin Hunter: Yeah, if you get one of them wrong, it has a knock-on effect, like all systems on the other ones. Steve Rush: Coming back to your identity piece, that kind of sits in the middle because it gives permission, I suppose, to delve into purpose and also permission to how you show up. And we can change that identity by the shifting label that we wear, right? Colin Hunter: Yeah, I'd love that. I mean, it's a bit of,  “Tonight Matthew”, Matthew, for those, you know, there's a program in the UK where people go on and say, tonight, Matthew, I am going to be, but actually with the use of the Actors is given me a lot of work to say, how do I adopt an identity and how do I live and breathe it? And how do I learn to be authentic in that new version? And I think that's one of my other biggest challenges is authenticity is normally given as an excuse by somebody who say, well, this is how I am. I'm not going to change, but authenticity, Herminia Ibarra, London Business School says, authenticity is something that adapts and dresses, different circumstances you face. And therefore tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be this to try and develop something. That's going to be my future identity and my authenticity. Steve Rush: Yeah, very much so. So, one of the things I've seen about the work that you've had is that you're not afraid to challenge some of the traditional status quo of how we perceive leadership and leadership styles has been written about and quoted about for many years in different guises. You've reframed some of those, and you have your own full leadership styles now. And I wonder if you could share those with our listeners? Colin Hunter: Yeah, and I love this because it fits into the hero's journey. So, whether you're a Lord of The Rings fan or everything else that goes into Harry Potter, whatever your choices is. We talk about leaders, need followers, followers need leaders. So, the first system is, we describe it as how do I get engaged connections? How do I get followers to follow me? And how do I be impactful in that? And we call this the host. So, if you imagine a host at a dinner party or a host in terms of relationships, most of us only worry about our relationships on networks, our teams, either we've lost a job or we need to recruit, we need to hire and we don't pay attention to them. So, the first one is, about how I creates psychological safety? And how I create real difference diversity, inclusion, in my network? So that I'm not sitting in an echo chamber listening to my own thoughts. So that's the first one, the host. So, if you think about Frodo and Sam, a dwarf and an elf and Aragon, there was real diversity and different thinking and different views that came to that. And once you've your followership and you've got your hosts and you've got your team together, then the second system is the Energizer or what I call inspired energy in there, which is, how clear is your story? How clear are your inspiring stories that allow other people to see a part of your story as the leader? And therefore, we talk a lot around storytelling. We talk a lot about points of view around how we work and crafting that story and crafting the future story you've got is important in that, but the other part of energy is personal drive. So how resilient are you? How anti fragile, and a lot of my work at the moment, particularly in the pandemic is about poaching people to be more resilient, to put systems, whether it's meditation, fitness, diet, breath, other works in there, to have the energy by osmosis, give it to your team, but also spend it on the right thing. So that's the Energizer. And then the third area is disruptor. And this was given to me by IDEO, but how do I get fresh ideas through experimentation, but also how do I get ruthless and narrowing choices in there? So, we always believe that 80% of your experiments will fail, 20% be successful. Every day, I'm thinking, what are the two to three experiments I'm going to start running that could succeed, could fail. But as long as feeding, the system of fresh ideas, we're going to run in the team. And then when you think about Gandalf, you think about Dumbledore, there's always a guide. So as a leader, how strong is your mentoring and coaching and growth of capabilities? So the final style we talk about is catalyst. So as a mentor, having points of view and almost lighting fires under backsides for people to get them in the right direction, giving them points of view and direction, and then the coaching, which is lighting fires in their bellies by coaching and spending time. So, host, Energizer, disruptor, and then the catalyst of the four styles that have been use. Steve Rush: Great. I love the descriptive nature of them as well and brings it to life for folks listening to this, hopefully too. Colin Hunter: It's good. I love it. Steve Rush: Next part of our show Colin, we get into turn our leadership focus and hack into your leadership mind, which has enormous experience, not only leading the businesses you've led, but also having worked with some of the best leaders around the world. So first place I'd like us to go tap into your top three leadership hacks. Colin Hunter: So, the first one is pay it forward. So I was given a gift by a gentleman called Mike Taylor. And this is about network. For the last probably seven, eight years. I've practiced the principle on that for a leader, which is, I work my network, not wondering what I can get out of them, but by thinking about what are the three things I can do for people that I have connections with? So, I very rarely say no to a connection, very rarely. I'm going to a great club. That's celebrates massive mistakes in lives. And it's called the Cock-up club in London. I've never been to it, but I got an invite. And it's about leaders who go in and celebrate that. But I'm already going into that meeting by saying, so what are the three things that I can give to people I'm meeting there that night? What are the three things that I take? So that's my first leadership hack. The second thing is a very simple one. I don't know if you've ever heard of Churchill's prayers, but during the war, Churchill did something very simple with all his leaders every day. He got them together for a very short space of time. We now call a pulse, a daily pulse. And in that daily pulse, we talk about what did I do yesterday? What am I doing today? What am I doing tomorrow? And we started to do that in our business. And it gives a really clear idea about what people are working on, what gaps we have, but it's amazing how we identify resource issues and work in there. So, it's a very simple hack to give people, 9:50 in the morning, till 9:45 each day, we meet as a team for half an hour and we do that. And it's a breath of fresh air in terms of communication. Final hack. I was going to put something down here, but I'm going to change it. It was one given to me by an ex special forces gentleman. And he talked about brief back, check back and brief back, check back is the most simple thing in some ways, but we avoid it. So once I've given a brief to somebody and I've said, this is what I'm expecting, this is the project. We very rarely asked the question, which is what we tend to ask the question is like clear. And everybody goes, yeah, yeah, that's fine. Go away. But what we tend to not do is ask the question. So repeat back to me, please, if you could, exactly what you've heard. And in that brief back, it's amazing how often the articulation of the idea is different from the receiver than it was from the giver. So that's the first bit, what that allows you to do is correct any miscommunication or misguidance of the expectations you've given, but it also allows you with confidence for them to go off and just allow yourself to check back in. So it's a core part of empowering people and giving people accountability in there. So that's the final one Steve Rush: Love that last one. And we've had a couple of major generals on actually. This has come up in the conversations we've had with them too, because it's rooted in when you're about to send somebody off to war. Colin Hunter: Yeah. Steve Rush: Asking somebody, if it's clear, it's just not enough. Asking somebody if they really get it and understand it is absolutely essential, great hack. Next part of the show we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is where your be more wrong principle starts to play in really well. So, this is definitely where something in your life and your work has it worked out at all well, but there is an overall learning experience form them. You shared one that was a pivotal moment for you, but what would another Hack to Attack? Colin Hunter: So that the act for me is the need for a business partner. I've spent most of my life and it's probably related to the imposter syndrome, worried that if I didn't have a business partner, my business would not be successful because my level of capability and intellect and decision-making was not enough to drive it. So, you know, I had probably more business partners than I would care to admit, but when I look back, it gave me an insight that what I needed was less of a business partner and more of an advisory board. And so, I took on an advisory board in the last two to three years, three people, different skills, one in innovation and design, the other person more on the sales side. And the third one tended to be around more of the strategic direction and what are summarized by getting their noses into our business. But in most cases, fingers out, you know, as an advisory board, I had all the benefits of a business partner without needing to end a relationship that certain points, they could do that. And that's been my amazing Hack to Attack that I've deployed. And now we're seeing it as a proving ground, a playground for some of our advisors have never done advisory board roles before, never been non-execs. So they get to play and practice with us before they go on to bigger and better things afterwards. So that's, my Hack to Attack. Steve Rush: That's a great attack because what I'm hearing is exactly that and non-executive director role, who provides you with the counsel and direction. And then there's not that awkward. You know, this isn't working out for us when we have the tie, you know, equity, stakes and all the mess that comes with partnerships. Colin Hunter: Exactly. Steve Rush: Yeah, great. Colin Hunter: We pay them. Steve Rush: Yeah, of course. And the advantage, I guess, in doing so still is that when that time has served and the mutual value has got to its natural kind of capacity, you can switch them in and switch them out as the business starts to pivot and change directions as well. Colin Hunter: Yeah, and it's interesting on the latest business venture for the 500, we started to think that the advisory board we're going to have for that is I've got a contact who runs a business mentoring ex-convicts coming out of prison. And I'm starting to think, so that would be a great person to have it as an advisory board member and maybe somebody of your diversity area. So you can play with this in a good way to get different voices in your head and different points of view. So, it's a great process. Steve Rush: Definitely, yeah. So, the last part, the show Colin, you get an opportunity to go back and bump into Colin at 21 face-to-face toe-to-toe and give him some advice. What would your advice to Colin be at 21? Colin Hunter: It's interesting because I struggled with this at 21 because I look back to 21 and I struggled to work out what it is. And I had one thing that goes through my mind, but just mentioned before, but I would say to him, go find your own music to dance too. Find out what the music is that you want to dance too and then go dance with it, but also find other people whose music interests you to go dance with. And the key thing here, and I think Amazon web services have, this is one of the core values, which is natural curiosity, be curious enough to explore other people's music as well and find out what you like and go with it. Steve Rush: Super stuff. So, Colin for folk, listening to this, wanting to get a copy of, Be More Wrong, or learn a bit more about the business that you lead and the work that you do, where's the best place for us to send them? Colin Hunter: So, Be More Wrong, @bemorewrong on Instagram, be more wrong on Twitter. Website is bemorewrong.com, go explore that. For the business itself, potential2.com and go find out more about that. I'd love to connect with any of the listeners and explore more with you, but they can find out more information and connect with us there. Steve Rush: And they have to jump into the show notes and find all of that information in there as well. Colin Hunter: Lovely. Steve Rush: Colin, I've loved chatting and always do and wanted to say, thank you ever so much for being vulnerable, sharing your stories and being part of our community on The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Colin Hunter: It's been a pleasure, Steve, looking forward to that lunch when we can finally get it right. Steve Rush: Indeed, yeah, exactly. Thanks Colin. Colin Hunter: Cheers. Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.      

Dr. Benjamin Ritter is a globally renowned leadership and career coach. He's a speaker, podcast host, author and founder of Live for Yourself [LFY] Consulting. In this great show find out about: Ben's eureka moment that sent him on a path from Healthcare into research and to follow his life's passion. Why leaders struggle with leading themselves. The Three “C” of self-leadership. If we are stuck how we can break free.   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com   Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Ben below: Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ritterbenj/ Ben on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ritterbenj Ben on Twitter: https://www.instagram.com/ritterbenj/ Ben's Website: https://benjamin-ritter.com Full Transcript Below ----more----   Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Joining me on the podcast today is Dr. Benjamin Ritter. He's a leadership and career coach and founder of Live for Yourself Consulting. But before we get a chance to speak to Ben, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: In the news today, we explore careers that are taking off in the post pandemic world. We've been contacted by a number of our listeners asking us to explore, what are the next best places to work? And what are the sectors that are rising stars in amongst the post pandemic era? When it comes to the future, uncertainty is the only certainty. Think about remote work way back in 2019, it was slowly gaining acceptance that most managers would allow people to maybe work from home on a Friday or a Monday. 2020 companies and their employees were forced to adapt. And today many workers have traded that long commute for a casual stroll to their home office or to their lounge or kitchen or wherever they work from. So when it comes to predicting which careers will flourish in a post COVID world, that's not easy, but there are some definite trends. Of course, if you're already loving your career, I'm not suggesting any radical change or course of action here. However, if you are considering a change, here are the top five growing fields that perhaps could lead the way to a new future, maybe unsurprisingly, but healthcare leads their way. Those working in healthcare have really promoted, demonstrated the abilities that they have and the impact that they have across our communities. Perhaps weren't visible before the pandemic and careers, such as nursing are getting huge amounts of interest. And of course now you'll have to earn a bachelor's degree or a science or associate degree in nursing. Then you'll need to be like licensed in some countries. It's truly proved that nursing is a professional and respected career. And many people are attracted to that level of rigor and indeed impact on society. And with many responses being passed to the nursing community, introducing roles, such as nursing practitioners who are responsible to do as many things as many GPs do has elevated their reward and recognition that comes along with it. But despite this, many people still see this as a purpose driven role. One that people can make it impact on communities and society. Second on list is information technology. And of course IT has been a growth feel years. What's different, of course, is the increased focus on remote work and smart technology has increased the demand for things like software development and app development. Organizations are pivoting their recruitment strategies to hire people who can code online and who can work remotely that tap into infrastructure. That office for national statistics in the UK seen this increased by 18%. And the bureau of labor statistics in the U.S. has seen this grow by 22% this year. And with the average income over six figures, it's definitely pulling people into this space. Supply chain management comes in at third, and you probably aren't surprised to find that this is a growth field. The panic buying that began before last year's lockdowns shifted the focus away from that just in time delivery methodology that many retail long relied on. Jobs in this field include things like purchase agents, logistic analysts, distribution managers, procurement, and although many start out with having to have a degree. Many top earners in this field are often coming from an engineering or a practical background where they understand the supply chain. So if you're skilled with math's and statistics and have good sound engineering principles, then supply chain management might be a career route for you. Financial management is next. Careers in this field are expected to grow by over 15% in the next 10 years, financial advisors, financial managers are hired to examine a company's spending and income, looking for ways to maximize profitability. Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 companies often seek candidates with an MBA. Although smaller organizations now are hiring managers with a simple degree or bachelor's degree, or even offering modern day apprenticeships in the world of finance and accounting. This means there's a really great pipeline with young talent growing world of the financial accounting space and the financial advising space. And remember apprenticeships in the UK are not about age. Many organizations are hiring senior people in their second or third career who are looking to apply their life skills with a new approach to work. And the last one that's on the list is Actuaries and Statisticians. Now Actuaries enjoy enormous income relative to their peer groups in accounting. And it's also expected that this is going to grow by another 20% in the next 10 years. And with the average income of way over six figures, what we're seeing is quite an often stuffy and introverted role and job is now attracting great new talent. If you enjoy data and statistics, it could be the perfect high growth field for you. And of course, we've looked at some high paying and growing and trending careers. And the best job for you might not be about being highly paid nor the fastest growth. The key thing is it leveraging your skills, achieving the best possible outcome and finding your purpose within it. And besides how many of us would've guessed that the number one fastest occupation, according to the Office of National Statistics is Cinema Projectionist and in America, Motion Picture Projectionist. So it turns out, we are returning back to normal. We are getting out there and we are consuming more movies than ever before. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. If you have any stories or you want us to talk about a certain topic on the show, please get in touch. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Dr. Benjamin Ritter is our guest on today's show. He's a globally renowned leadership and career coach. He's the founder of Live for Yourself [LFY] Consulting. He's a speaker, podcast and author. Ben, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: I am ready to get hacking. Let's do it. Steve Rush: Good stuff, and me too. So first hack then Ben, let's get to explore what you do now, because I know there were lots of twists and turns on your path. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about it? Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Yeah, there are a lot of twists and turns. I think most importantly, I was working as a healthcare executive and I was promoted into that role from a position that I really enjoyed, which tends to happen to high achievers. I felt my work was meaningful when I was initially working in healthcare as group systems analyst and my official title, but basically I was in process improvement. I was improving clinical outcomes for patients. I did such a good job. They made me manager of business operations, which basically was kind of the right hand of all the executives. I was on the executive team, but I was a doer and things done. And so I worked as a financial manager. I worked in business development. I mean, you name it. I did something for it. I worked with everyone on the team, but I didn't do any of the stuff that I used to like before that. And so over time I started to resent my position and resent my organization because I didn't feel it was giving me meaning anymore. I blamed it for not giving me direction. I mean, like there's a certain positive aspect of having autonomy. But it becomes a negative when you don't have clarity. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: In terms of what you are actually supposed to achieve, what you're supposed to do and why that matters to you. What's meaningful about it? And so I got into this place in my life where I was bringing negativity home with me. And when I went into work, I wasn't really trying to work. I was really trying to avoid doing anything because I didn't see the point in it. I was like, why am I here? This is pointless. All these people, like, why should I invest in them? I was like digging my own grave, to be honest. And they still thought that I was a high achiever because I would do the work that they wanted me to do while I was just getting more spiteful and resentful as every day went on. Steve Rush: And did you notice the parallel before? So you mentioned the fact that it didn't give you that sense of purpose and it did from the work you did before. What was the kind of the moment when you recognized that was the case? Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Well, luckily that came to me one day when I was walking to work, when I was kind of seething that I had to go back into work again, and I kind of had two feet out the front door and it wasn't really that I knew what it was that brought me meaning. I didn't have the sit down and reflective moment up to that point. I just knew that I didn't feel the same way. And so luckily though I had this little epiphany moment when I was going into work and kind of looking around me and I sensed that everybody was feeling the exact same way that I was walking by. Like these zombies walking into a work that they hated and that was so dreadful to them. And I remember thinking, you know, I'm doing this, it's not my employer. I'm creating this for myself. I am the curator of my own environment, my own mindset. And that's when I actually woke up. And I started asking myself the tough questions. Like, why do I feel this way? Why did I feel that my work was meaningful before? What is it that I really want to accomplish right now at this job? What skills do I want to learn? Who do I really enjoy working with? How do I invest more time in them? And that led to me finally, pivoting from what I was doing to having a little bit more direction. And I get it, we tend to be very reactive in our careers. And up to that point, I was very reactive, you know, I didn't mean to work in healthcare. I fell into it because I was networking my butt off because it was the middle of a recession. I couldn't get a full-time job or two and a half years. I'm out of grad school and I had two graduate degrees and experience in public health. And every job offer that I got during that time was actually canceled after I signed on a dotted line, this happened four times. And so I was just looking for something, anything, and you know, how you got to the job you were in today is very much reflective how you think about it and how you think about your career and how you think about work. And so as a leader, you know, if you're working with employees, they all have their own backstory. And at that point in my time, my backstory was, you know, you didn't do what you wanted to do. You took what you could get and the organization was the one responsible for creating your job. Steve Rush: Right, so what you're really talking about is, you were asking yourself a series of questions. And for me, that sounds a bit like coaching? Did you recognize that, that's actually, perhaps what you were doing at the time, was coaching yourself? Dr. Benjamin Ritter: That's why I pivoted towards this industry. So at the time I was side hustling as a coach in a different area, more like life, dating and relationships. I was an avid passionate kind of personal, you know, thought leader in terms of personal development and professional development. I lost who I was when I was younger and we can touch on this, but I became interested in the field of personal professional development because of it. And so at the time I'd spent a lot of my free time on reading, studying, and learning. Now I'm doing it as a side hustle, but then I also was selected for 16 months of leadership training. So I had my own coach per se in the organization. Director of people, we met like once a month, maybe less, but it was something, it helped me become aware of the fact that this existed. And so very much though when I was going through this transition, I think mentally, you know, when I was waking up, I knew that I had to coach myself and I coached myself in every other area of my life. From confidence, to interpersonal dynamics, to dating. I mean, I studied business, how to be persuasive and what worked in terms of marketing and sales in just how to walk into a room and create friendships. But I kind of forgot that we needed to do the same for our career. And I think we're taught that, you know, throughout our lives, we're taught that you don't choose what you do or how you do it. You find some place to do it and you do it there. I kind of had to wake up and change my mindset and relationship to work. Steve Rush: I had a really interesting conversation just this week, actually with a guy I was coaching who was a senior executive for a firm. And what he was describing to me is, his challenge of that work and life balance. And for me, that's where the problem was. Because he was trying to segregate activities and behaviors at work and at home, and actually they're interconnected, that's just life. But he was giving himself these completely different set of rules to how to behave at home and how to behave at work. And then he was neither genuine in either position. What's your take on that? Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Well, it sounds like such a separation. I was two faced for the majority of my career. You know, when I was working in public health, I was going to school full time and I was bartending full time and working odd jobs and like promotions, like as a brand ambassador to pay for it all, even though I was still working for the school as well. And then when I was working in healthcare, I was side hustling as a, you know, as a coach trying to get a business off the ground and also of having other income streams, still working in hospitality and bartending. And I never brought my full self to work. And, you know, I had experiences that I think created. When I first interviewed for the job in healthcare, I got to the final round. I got the interview by networking as a bartender. Like I met someone across the bar and he got one of my friends, a job as an RN, and then ended up getting me an interview. I found out that the CEO didn't select, well not the CEO, the VP at the time didn't select me because he found out that I was a bartender. And, you know, they brought me back a year later. Exactly a year later when that person transitioned to a different site, a different hospital to get trained, to be the CEO, by the way, for the current hospital. They brought me back and hired me and, you know, there are certain experiences that I've had that kind of taught me not to bring my full self to work, which I think is very detrimental to our own health. Because I tell you today I am who I am. I am my full self and it is so freeing and I don't want to work for an organization that doesn't allow me to bring my full self to work. Steve Rush: So, really interesting perspective. And I just want to explore it a little more for you. So in bringing your full self to work, how do you know that you're not hanging onto some of that baggage of the past? Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Well, we're in a day and age and I think directly answer your question indirectly. We're working in a day and age where a lot of us are remote and virtual. And so now there are cameras into our homes and into our lives. And we're also forcing connection because without having connection within the workplace, we need to create the opportunities to connect. So we're doing icebreakers hopefully, and we're doing happy hours. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: We're basically prompting questions that we normally might not have even have answered in the normal in person environment. And there's this desire and need or movement towards bringing your whole self to work. And there are a lot of individuals that are afraid of this, especially new leaders on, am I really acting like a leader. If I share a certain issue that's happening in my life or I share how I feel about something in my life. And I think there's a fine balance between people who know who you are and what you care about and what you enjoy and what you're dealing with and what your story is to I'm really emotionally respond to this situation that I'm going to feel different about tomorrow. And I think there's a strong distinction there between, you know, who I am. So we build a relationship to, you know how I feel when I want to complain. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Which I think is some people don't fully understand that separation. Steve Rush: Yeah, one of the things I think is prevalent amongst most entrepreneurs and most successful leaders that I've spoken to on the podcast and indeed coached and worked with is this real focus around making sure that they are steadfast. They are well physically and mentally before they start thinking about what else is on their journey. And lots of great leaders attribute self-leadership as a real key tenant of their behaviors, as well as their approach to how they lead their businesses. And you developed something similar to that along the lines of self-leadership and you call it your three Cs. I wonder if you could tell us the story about how that came about and maybe spin us through the three Cs themselves. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Yeah, and just to, because I don't want to overlook your last question. I think they're interrelated. If there's something that you want to accomplish or feel like you want to say or do in your place of employment and you are not doing it, then it's probably due to a story or expectation or previous experience that you've had related to work. And so if you ask yourself, what do I want to accomplish? What do I really want? What am I of goals? Which people tend not to actually define, which is the first C of self-leadership. And you find that you're not taking action there. And there usually is something that you need to identify from your beliefs about work, about leadership, about organizations that you need to then challenge. And so the, the three Cs of self-leadership came about because I was working with clients initially with the live system, the live framework, and this was goals, intentions, values, and expectations. It was like a decision making process that I would take clients through for them to be able to feel more comfortable and more fulfilled about what they were trying to achieve. And I realized that some clients had a much easier way of doing it than others. And this is when I was also completing my dissertation. I was researching a bunch about leadership and about job satisfaction about motivation. And I started just really trying to analyze what was it about these specific clients? What traits did they have that led to greater success? And I discovered that there were three main pillars and components that led them to be able to take action. That led them to be able to lead themselves. And I coined this, the three Cs of self-leadership and there's a lot of three Cs out there. I luckily I don't think I've seen these Cs together, but a lot of models you'll tend to see. And I think this is a Testament to the fact that it works. A lot of similarities between different models out there. After I created them, I was like, I really hope nobody has these because I'm going to copyright I, so luckily nobody did. The first C is clarity and this is clarity of, you know, what you care about? But really mainly why you care about it. So what is the motivation, the attachment? I think we've all heard the why is more important than anything, but then that why tends to also create, so you have your values, your motivations. You have, you know, the heart of what you're trying to achieve, but then you have the what, so what am I actually trying to achieve long term and short term? And can I break that down to daily tasks? So I know what my priorities are on a daily basis. The, the second C is confidence. So when you have clarity in something, that is the foundation of confidence, if you know why you're trying to achieve something and what you stand for and what you're trying to work on, that tends to create a personal sense of belief in your, and what you're showing up as, so that you tend to actually have like, your inner critic has less of a voice because you're so adamant. And so sure of what you're trying to achieve in yourself. It doesn't change the fact that you need to go study and learn and get educated. So there's confidence is self-efficacy and self-esteem, so it's not just the belief and what you're trying to achieve in yourself will the belief in the skills that you have. So that requires you to listen to this, you know, listen to this podcast, go sign up for journal articles. You go talk to people that are in the field that have already achieved what you want to achieve. And then, so when you have clarity and now you're confident in what you're doing and you have the skills for it, you more likely to take action, and so that's control. This is I am intentionally acting in a way that is in alignment with the why and what I'm actually looking to achieve in my life. And that control stays constant despite any sort of emotions or situations that you're going in through life. And also allows you to build a community around yourself that supports what you're interested in, the other two Cs. Steve Rush: And it seems to me that they're absolutely interrelated as well, aren't they? Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Very much so. So for example, let's say you know what you need to do, but you don't know why you're doing it. And don't feel confident in it. A lot of people tend to be in jobs where they don't know why they're doing something and they don't feel like they act actually can accomplish it. That is so distressful. That is a situation for burnout that is going to cause people and to leave your organization. Now, let's say you're very confident in something, but you don't actually take any action towards it. So again, you know, like these all need each other to be able to work. You need to have all three. Steve Rush: What do you think the reason is that we struggle with the whole notion of self-leadership as a population? and I'm clearly generalizing, but most of the execs, I speak to do a great job of the leading teams and organizations, but often put themselves further down that pack in order. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Oh, there are so many reasons, but I'd say the main one is that no one's ever given us permission. No one's ever told us that we are more important than anyone else. Our health and our desires and our goals can only be define by ourselves. And if we don't take care of ourselves, then other people aren't going to be taken care of. Steve Rush: Yeah, there's almost this perspective, isn't there? That if you do put yourself first, then that's somewhat selfish or even extreme narcissistic, but actually it's critical for the benefit of the people that work with you, isn't it? Dr. Benjamin Ritter: I love when people hear live for yourself and they go, that sounds selfish. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Because it is a magnifying glass into how they define self-care, how they define really trying to understand what they want to achieve. Because if you don't feel that you're important, you're never going to spend time figuring out what you want to do. And so if you don't figure out, you want to do, then can you imagine all of your actions are going to be based on other people's desires, where does that then leave you? Steve Rush: So how do you get permission? How do you end up giving yourself permission and feel secure and safe in the knowledge it's okay to focus on you? Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Well, I go out on a limb here and say that we both give all the listeners permission. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: To pause and figure out what is it that they really care about. And what's at the core of their attitudes and beliefs and how that translates to goals. It's the great resignation, everyone's leaving their jobs because they feel the solution isn't in the organization that they're at. When I first started in this field, my message was fix where you're at, craft the job you have to become a job you love because most of the time the solution is not somewhere else, the solution's inside. And then as being able to feel empowered and to have the permission to alter where you're currently at to be best fit for you. You see this a lot with leaders. Steve Rush: That's where the adage, the grass isn't always greener comes from, isn't it? Because people have this perception that, oh, going to work for another organization, but actually the root cause often is ourselves. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: You go somewhere, you work for six months and you don't really have the opportunity to sit and think because it's a new job and everything's new and novel and you're learning. And so after six months you start noticing the issues. This isn't really what I wanted. This isn't the work that I thought I signed up for. These aren't the people that I really wanted to be around. I don't really understand why we're doing this, the impact. And so then you wait, you kind of coast around for another six months, you see maybe it will change. And then you spend the next year looking for another job and then you leave. Steve Rush: It's so ironic, isn't it? And it repeats itself. I suspect. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: I'd love to see a career ladder within organizations. And I think there's a lot of people that are discussing it now, how do you career map, right? How do you retain your talent by giving them opportunities in the organization itself? Well, you can't do that unless the people in your organization actually feel like they have permission to do that. And you can't make that happen if the leaders aren't aware that they need to start looking for opportunities to develop and grow their talent, instead of just have them meet their expectations at their job. Steve Rush: So you talked a little earlier around this kind of, almost epiphany that you had, which led you on this path now. Tell us a little bit about the work that you are doing with Live For Yourself and maybe some of the key areas of focus that you are helping others with now. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: It's kind of split into two main areas. I'll work with organizations, I'll host, you know, ad-hoc corporate workshop, I'll create performance development programs, new manager training, go in and redo communication structures and Desi organizations, to coach one on one with leaders, group coaching and individual. But then it's also working just one on one with senior leaders, the senior managers up to the executive level on how to develop them else, right. How to feel confident in their role, how to show up, how to define their executive presence, how to lead manage teams in a way that leads to the specific outcomes that they want, but also how to find another job if it's not right for you. Like if, where you're at really isn't right for you, how to find the place to that, it can be right, because there is so much, you can do it in an organization. Steve Rush: Right? Dr. Benjamin Ritter: And if one day you wake up and realize that what you want to do, isn't where you're at. Or you find meaning from different things and where you're at. Because you haven't thought about it before. It's okay to leave. It's okay to make that pivot. Steve Rush: And how much of the great resignation that you spoke about that's happening and it's not just in north America and Europe, it's happening in pockets all over the world. How much of that do you put down to the global pandemic versus it's just the opportunity to cause people to spend more time being intro focused? Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Yeah, think about the times that you've had major have change in your life like graduation from uni, moving, maybe to a new area, the end of a relationship, the start of a new relationship, the end of someone close to you, the end of hearing a certain story, right? That also highlighted the fact that life is short potentially, an injury you know, an injury potentially to yourself as well. Anytime that we remember right. Have reasons to that what we were doing was comfortable and that there are other options. Anytime there's disruption leads to growth and the world has been heavily disrupted heavily. Steve Rush: Yes. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: And so, no matter what that's going to cause you to start reflecting on what you've been doing, why you've been doing it and what you want to do next. And at the same time, I think we've shown that there are more opportunities and options in the world than maybe we previously thought. Steve Rush: Right, yeah. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Put those things together, and all of a sudden, now you have what we call the great resignation. What I would be careful of is, if we don't spread this message. And I think of what we're talking about today, that it's not where you are that matters more so than how you show up where you are, then this is going to keep happen. Steve Rush: Yeah, and for many people, then not in the position to leave a role, leave a job, leave an organization, and go find another. And many of our listeners who are listening to this podcast from different jurisdictions and countries around the world, haven't got the luxuries of being able to just walk and find another gig. So re-engineering themselves is a fantastic way of creating a new job in the same organization almost isn't it? Dr. Benjamin Ritter: And you can't do that without self-leadership. I tell people often when I work with them as clients and not as clients. Where you are, is not as bad as you think, and it might be. It might, it might eventually be, but have you done the work to figure that out and have you actually put the effort in to change where you're at, to be more suited to you. Now, sometimes you don't have a leader that actually allows that to happen. They block you, but have you tried, have you tried to have the conversation with them? And often, especially when I first start working with the clients, those conversations haven't happened, I don't know about you, someone comes on as a client and they go, I really want this to happen in my organization. I really want to do this type of work and great, what have you done so far for it? Steve Rush: Exactly, it's the first question, isn't it? And you often find the responses. I've thought about it. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Yeah, and maybe, they've mentioned it once. Steve Rush: And that knowing, doing gap, isn't it? Dr. Benjamin Ritter: The biggest thing that I've been seeing lately is that people get the courage, like leaders that I've spoken with, employees of all levels. If get the courage to say what they want one time. And the leader says, okay, but it's not the leader's responsibility to follow up. So reliability is a huge part of executive presence. If I was to list off those four keys to executive presence and reliability is one. A real executive would follow up, but that doesn't always happen. So we need to take responsibility for what we want. And so how are you following up on the things that you mentioned? You have to be that tripping faucet. That's what self-leadership is. It's I'm going to keep going until I get what I want. Steve Rush: Yeah, I love it. So next part of our show. So this is where I get to hack into your leadership thinking, your leadership brain and keen to try and take all of that knowledge and get it down to your top three leadership hacks. What would they be Ben? Dr. Benjamin Ritter: So leadership hack number one would be communication. Maybe not so secretive to a lot of people, but weekly one-on-ones conversations with individuals. And so I'd say one-on-one communication. I can't tell you how many leaders I've worked with that say, I talk to my employees all the time. We have group meetings once a week, we talk about projects. Okay, you need to make space. You need to create a safe space to build trust, and get to know your employees, to be able to ask questions such as, how's work going? What are your priorities? How can I help with that? Where do you want to go in the organization? You need that information to be able to retain and develop talent. So I'd say that would be number one. The second piece is that nothing is concrete when it comes to a job role. So let's drop this idea that the job description is everything. If you want to retain talent or also want to be happier at work for yourself, understand that there is flexibility in what you do each and every single day. And if it's not in the actual work where that flexibility is, the flexibility is in how you do it. So for example, if there's something that you really don't like doing, then can you buffer that with something that you really like doing? Or can you do it while you are at home if you are in the office or can you do it while you're listening to your favorite podcast, such as this, or in your favorite, you know, cafe. So even not even just not changing the work, but flexibility in how you do the work. So look into job wrapped. Steve Rush: That comes back down to the control C as well that you talked about earlier because there is this fake notion of if you high levels of control, you haven't got space, but actually it's the control that gives you the space and flexibility, isn't it? Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Very true. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: The third piece would be engage, engage, and engage. Can't tell you how often I work with individuals that want to move up and get promoted in the organization. And they think if they do their work, that is enough. People will know that they're doing good work. And I'd say that, you know, it doesn't matter how good you are at your work, if nobody knows about it. And if no one knows who you are, for any level of leader. And if you're a leader that has employees that have intentions for growth, then you should also be ping them in meetings and having them start speaking up. People need to know who you are. You need to develop a professional brand and the day where you will just automatically get promoted and move up in an organization without any knowledge or awareness of you, your work, you know, just even your personality. Those are gone. Steve Rush: That last one particularly is so important for folk, but actually it comes back down to how I give myself permission. And am I feeling confident in order to be able to do that and put myself out there and be vulnerable? Dr. Benjamin Ritter: It's so scary for some people, and I understand that. One of the top three things that I've worked with clients on are fear with presenting and fear with speaking up in meetings, fear with even just asking for a skip level meeting for someone, you know, above your boss, someone outside of the organization, this is required. There's some pretty staggering statistics on people aren't promoted if they're not in office, right? If you're a virtual, if you're a hybrid workforce and that's because the FaceTime is missing. So this is even more important now than ever before. If you are working an organization, have plans to move up or want even opportunities to move up, you need to be dedicating a portion of your week to connecting, to engaging. I mean, I even say one more thing, make yourself a rule. And I do this with clients. Every meeting, you have to ask a question and make a comment period, no matter what. Steve Rush: So tell us how that might go. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: You're in a meeting and any topic whatsoever. You have to ask a question to a leader or to a coworker. So you're obviously paying attention and you're engaged. And then you also have to make a comment on something that is being said throughout the meeting, no matter what. It's a pretty simple rule, I'd say. If you're only doing that, you probably will, at least, people will be aware of you. From now on, take a look at your meetings and see if you attend the meetings or you don't say anything. If you're attending a meeting where you never say anything, you shouldn't be in that meeting. So make it a point to be engaged in those meetings or don't attend them. Steve Rush: It's a great hack because it simply just forces dialogue. It forces not only does it force you to listen and pay attention, because you're going to have to ask a question, but it forces that sense of connectivity across a team, really simple, but very effective, I would imagine. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Yeah, and those are the little things that matter. Steve Rush: Yeah, totally. Definitely, so. So, next part of the show we call it hack to attack. This is where something in your work or your life hasn't worked as you planned, but as a result of the experience, it's now serving you well. So what would be your Hack to Attack Ben? Dr. Benjamin Ritter: I have so many twists and turns in my career. I just have to focus for a second. I wanted to be a professional soccer player growing up. I dedicated my life to it, I played D1 Athletics. I went overseas, actually played in the UK for a little bit, but not professionally, kind of like a feeder team. And when I gave that up, I lost who I was. I had no idea who Ben was, because I didn't do anything else. I didn't watch really anything on TV. I didn't have friends that were outside soccer and it was a very low moment in my life, but it brought me the realm of personal professional development. I took all of my energy that I dedicated to the sport and I said, let's go define who I am. Let's go build confidence. Let's go study, you know, social psychology, behavioral psychology. And without those moments, without that moment, I wouldn't have had all the others serendipitous like moments that came after that, but led me to today. Steve Rush: Still play soccer? I do. I actually ended up hurting my knee about two months ago. So it's healing right now, but I'll be back at it. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Awesome, good for you. Steve Rush: So the very last thing we're going to take you on is a little bit of time travel. Now we get you to have the opportunity to give yourself some advice when you are 21. And if you were now toe to toe, face to face with Ben at 21, what advice would you give him? Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Nobody's opinion matters. Steve Rush: Nice. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: My mind was my worst enemy as a kid, my lack of confidence in my myself, the fact that I'd hit the hit the field in doubt, every single touch I'd have on a ball. The fact that I would not give myself confidence to have a conversation with a stranger. The fact that I would wonder if people were laughing at me when I was walking down the sidewalk, like my mind held me back from so much in my life that when I finally grabbed, when I got hold of it, I was able to be the confident person that I am today. To be so sure of myself, to have the clarity that led the confidence and then be able to take actions that were matter. It was life changing. So if anyone doubts themselves today and you know that you doubt yourself when you go into a room and you say something and you look for people's reactions to see what they think about what you said, spend some time really figuring out what you care about. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Because then you'll be a little bit more confident in yourself. Steve Rush: Awesome advice. Particularly if anybody's listening to this now who is experiencing that, that's going to be a real game changer for them. Question, bit of a side hack I guess. How do you keep on track? How do you keep focus? How do you keep that mind serving you in the way that you do today? Dr. Benjamin Ritter: You show up as the person that you know that you want to be. I know what my top values are and I show up each and every day in alignment with those values. When I don't, that's when I get off track. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: So what are the things that you truly care about and how are you doing them on a daily basis? So health is a big one for me, from nutrition to fitness. And then, you know, I care about talent development and personal, leadership development, career development. So if I get to show up each and every day, I'm blessed to the point that I've crafted a life where I can do the things that I truly care about. And that allows me to stay on track. Because that's what motivates me. Steve Rush: Great advice. So Ben, if folk listening to this, want to fight a little bit more about the work you do with Live For Yourself and indeed tap into some of your broadcasts, some of your writing and maybe listen to you speak. Where's the best place for us to send them? Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Go check out, liveforyourselfconsulting.com, just liveforyourselfconsulting.com. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn, So if you reach out to me on LinkedIn, tell me that you heard this conversation and say, what's on your mind. I'm happy to connect and continue the conversation. Steve Rush: Great stuff. We'll also put those links in our show notes as well. It's important for us to keep that conversation going. And I just want to say, thank you, Ben. It was amazing talking to you. It's absolutely because of your work that you do today and your focus and dedication, and you can just hear the passion and energy you have for that self-centered approach to leading yourself. So I want to say thank you for being on that show, being part of our community. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Thank you so much for having me. And it's just so important and critical to how I live my life. The most important leader that you're ever going to meet in your life is the one that lives inside you. No one else is responsible or accountable for your own wellbeing and let's go live that way. Steve Rush: Powerful words. Thanks for being here, Ben. Dr. Benjamin Ritter: Thanks for having me. Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.  

Major General Robert Mixon retired from the army after over three decades of extraordinary leadership success. He's the founder of Level Five Associates, the co-author of Cows in The Living Room and author of the Amazon bestseller, “We're All In”. So many hacks in this show it's hard to highlight them, here's a few: The Big 6 Leadership Principles to building culture How as leaders we can be “All in” Learn about the leadership azimuth and how we work it How to drive successful strategies and sustain them Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Robert below: Robert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertmixon/ Level Five Associates on Twitter: https://twitter.com/levelfiveassoc Level Five Associates Website: https://www.levelfiveassociates.com Full Transcript Below ----more---- Introduction Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Today's guest on the show is Major General Robert Mixon. He's a retired officer of the U.S. Army. He's a public speaker, author of a few books, and he's the co-founder of Level Five Associates. But before we get a chance to meet with Robert, it's The Leadership Hacker New. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: In the news today, we explore how many of our leadership characteristics and behaviors have changed since the global pandemic. And it turns out that empathy is the go-to leadership skill of the moment. Yes, it can be learned even if we didn't think that was the case. As a brand new fortune 500 CEO, Kirsten Peck of Zoetis, didn't have all the answers as to how a fast growing pet health company was going to survive the pandemic. She'd only ascended to the corner office in January of 2020. So when COVID 19 hit and revved up in the March of 2020, she was feeling quite nervous and anxious and frankly, little overstretched as to whether nearly 12,000 workers, I would imagine. So in one of her COVID era blogs on the company's intranet, Kristin Peck talked not about typical subjects you'd expect new CEOs to be talking around like earnings or sales projections, but something else entirely. The importance of listening. The first step begins with slowing down and spending a lot of time, listening to the challenges people are facing personally and professionally she wrote. Later in a LinkedIn post, she shared her own personal story of raising a child with special medical needs to show it was okay for employees to talk about the reality of what life can be like outside of a tinted glass work window and ask for help if they needed it. She goes on to say what the pandemic did was make everybody realize that we were all the same and we were all in the same storm, but our boats were quite different. We had to become very clear about the importance of listening to people and understanding their needs and being flexible, practically that meant shifting her entire workforce to a different way of working. Largely working from a home model about 70% of Zoetis global workforce actually started working from home and it meant providing beefed up benefits like health care concierge services for caregivers, a student loan repayment program and improved mental health support food services, like an employee assistance program, and Peck efforts seem to have hit the mark. The company employee engagement metrics are higher than they've ever been. Now at 88% and eclipsing the pre-pandemic levels. And who says being empathic is a soft measure? The hard numbers look like the stock price has done very well indeed; from the pandemic to November 8th, Zoetis stock price grew by 38% and it's currently bumping around at all-time highs. She's been recently quoted the saying, if anyone pretended they had all the answers, no one had believed it any way. Despite the crisis and the upheaval, Zoetis is an example of empathy being a core strong foundation and a real metric. And the leadership hack here is dead simple; it starts with just listening. Listen, to understand, not to que your next question. That's been The Leadership Hacker News, if you'd like to hear any interesting stories, we've got some things to share, as you've always done, please keep in touch with us. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Major General Robert Mixon is our guest on today's show. After being retired from the army, he achieved over three decades of extraordinary leadership success. Not only including the U.S. Army, where he commanded the seventh infantry division and Fort Carson Colorado, and then subsequently he served in an executive leadership position in a number of non-for-profits and for-profit organizations before starting his own organization, Level Five Associates. He's the co-author of Cows in The Living Room: Developing an Effective Strategic Plan and Sustaining it and also of the Amazon bestseller. We're All In: The Journey to World-Class Culture. Rob, welcome to the show. Major General Robert Mixon: Thanks, Steve. It's wonderful to be here with you and your listeners today. Steve Rush: I'm incredibly excited to delve into your very diverse and extensive leadership career. And I thought it would be useful really just to start off where it all began for you? Major General Robert Mixon: Well, it began for me, as growing up the oldest of six children in Georgia and North Carolina, and dreaming about being able to go to college. And as a result of a mediocre level of athletic ability, I was actually recruited to a couple of schools and one of those schools was the army football program at West Point. And I didn't know much about West Point and certainly didn't have any big dreams of being in the army, but I did have dreams of being a college football player. So I know football has different connotations in different audiences here, but I'm talking about the American tackle football. Steve Rush: Sure. Major General Robert Mixon: And I had good enough grades and things worked out where I got a chance to go to West Point and play football for a little while, until I got hurt to the level I couldn't play anymore, but I would entered a world that I'd never dreamed I would enter when I stood out there in the parade field at West Point in the summer of 1970 with about 1400 other young men. And, you know, in about 24 hours, we learned that our lives are going change. If we stayed with this adventure, it would change forever. And so from that experience, four year journey, about 40% of the group, didn't make it through. The 800 plus of us who did graduate in June of 1974, came into a military that was very conflicted. At the end of the Vietnam War, many Americans felt like, you know, the military was to blame for some of the policy decisions that had cause the Vietnam War to end badly. And as a result of the resources behind the military, the draft system went away and we went to a volunteer force, but we were under-resourced. And we struggle for a number of years until we came out of it in the mid-1980s and became truly a world-class military in every respect again, and because we had been before. Steve Rush: Right. Major General Robert Mixon: But I stayed with that journey because I met some men and women who really changed my life because of the leadership role models they represent it, despite the hardships. In fact, I think the hardships bring out the strongest leaders, you know, when things are tough. Steve Rush: Yeah, develops that level of resilience as well, doesn't it? Major General Robert Mixon: Yeah, you know, people who could learn from mistakes, who could underwrite others, who could develop trust and bring it to life. And so I found myself, you know, as a career officer, even though I'd never planned to be, and I was privileged to spend 33 years in uniform and command soldiers, you know, up to a division installation level, which was a wonderful privilege. And then as I realized, you know, it was time for me to open the next chapter. I went into the corporate career in the middle of the depression of 2008/2009, which was another tough learning experience. But again, you know, I was able to learn from others and grow and come out of that and then realized my dream, which was to have my own company, Level Five Associates and help other companies and organizations and leaders. Perhaps not make the same mistakes that I had made. And so that's been my calling now for the last seven years. Steve Rush: Awesome. During your time in the military, you mentioned that there was this time where from the seventies to the mid-eighties, then there was a real shift. What role did the incumbent leadership, if you like in the military play in making that shift happen or was that more of a bottom up change? Major General Robert Mixon: I think it was a two-edged sword Steve, and I say that because there were senior leaders who had to underwrite some of the fundamental changes in our culture. And I think basically in the military, you know, we had a very deeply entrenched culture of compliance, you know, in that mid-seventies timeframe, you know, do what you're told. We're not going to talk about why, you know, we want you to comply. Then with the senior leadership, and I think the junior leadership sort of coming together in a common view of what we should be, we began to develop a culture of commitment where people did what was right, because they wanted to do what was right. And they believed in the leaders that they were with and who they were working for. And that takes years to do, this is not something that happens in a month or, you know, six months, it takes years to do it. But with the senior support and the junior commitment, a level of energy, we were able to move our culture from compliance to commitment. And that was a very significant change in our army. Steve Rush: And how would that manifest itself in today's military? Having evolved from compliance to commitment? Major General Robert Mixon: I think in today's military, as a father of two, in fact, three soldiers. Now one who's on the career path, I have seen that the military culture of commitment is very strong and it's in fact more dependent now on the junior leader level of commitment because the senior leaders now were the ones who were in the transformative junior ranks in the eighties and nineties. And now they're the senior leader. So it's an even stronger movement, I think now towards the importance of why, the importance of commitment, you know, the importance of being an all-in, shameless book promotion. Steve Rush: Yeah, we're going to get into that in the moment actually, because I love the whole philosophy of we're all in, but there is definitely something there isn't there about, if you fundamentally want to shift a culture, you do have to throw your entire self into this, don't you? Major General Robert Mixon: We do, and it has to be from the top down, I think, and the bottom up, it's got to be a two way street where we are all in, because we believe in who we are and what we represent. And we're going to walk the talk and if we're willing to do that, then you can have a level five culture as I call it, where people believe in who we are and what we represent and they bring it every day. They're going to give all they can give to the mission to each other. And there's an element of selflessness here that I think in the military, I learned early on. The mission first, but I think in other organizations, it's not so evident unless the leadership really embodies it and nurtures it among the other leaders in the organization so that it has an enduring quality, you know, culture is never static. It either gets better, it gets worse. And so the culture of commitment is one where you live it every day and then tomorrow we're going to live it again and we're going to keep living it because we know what right looks like. And it's going to be our legacy that we grow leaders who are better leaders than we were at their stage of life. And I think that's a real a real opportunity for us as leaders to do that. Steve Rush: Yeah, it's also a gift, isn't it? Major General Robert Mixon: It's a gift. Steve Rush: In so much as that when you're sharing and partying, encouraging other leaders to be greater leaders, then you're not only sharing your experiences, but you're also guarding their future. Major General Robert Mixon: Yeah, I think so. It's really what I've seen in the companies I've been able to work with in my level five part of the journey now is that many companies and organizations don't have the persistence at the senior leadership to sustain a world-class culture. And it's important that we reinforce each other because this is hard work. Its adult work, one of my leaders used to say. The concept of creating an ecosystem where people want to belong too, takes a lot of effort. And there are sometimes, you know, you get tired. You say, well, shoot, this is too hard. Let me default back to being directive and we'll be compliant. And we'll just, you know, to quote the sort of famous guy, Larry, the cable guy, you know, we'll just get her done, right? And that defaulting back to the directive leadership framework, it causes the culture to erode and the culture can erode very quickly when that happens. Steve Rush: Definitely, so. Now from your corporate career, having left the military and had some senior leadership roles, what was the pivotal moment for you when you thought, right? This is more about me coaching, sharing, and teaching others to come on this journey. What was the moment that made you look to grow your own organization? Major General Robert Mixon: I know it's been so many years of my life working for someone that I had a lot of opportunity to learn from many wonderful people, you know, including General Colin Powell, who's one of the finest leaders I've ever known. And, we all, I think, are deeply saddened by his loss here recently. Steve Rush: That's right, yeah. Major General Robert Mixon: But, you know, I had had the privilege of working with extraordinary men and women who helped shape me as a person and a leader. And I wanted to give back, you know, as I look towards the next chapter in my life, I said, well, where could I make a difference? Where can I give back? And I think the defining moment for me was, you know, once you've had privilege of leading executive level, a number of different organizations, you can take one to two routes in my thinking here. One is, you can sort of, you know, quietly fade away and, you know, turn the mantle over to others and wish them well. And I know a lot of people who do that, and it's a very graceful transition to do that, but I'm wrapped too tightly. And as a result, I couldn't do that easily. I wanted to still be engaged and involved in growing people in organizations. And that's why I went to the level five route, and why I come to work every day looking forward to the opportunity to help other senior leaders grow leaders. Steve Rush: Excellent, I love it. And the fact that you're still doing that today, and this is part of that education and evolution, isn't it? Being on the show, I guess. Major General Robert Mixon: Yeah, that's great. Thanks Steve. Steve Rush: And one of the things that I love about your work is that your writing is really quite innovative. And I love the first book that you co-authored, Cows in The Living Room, and I'm quite a visual. So I have this picture of this huge cow sat in my living room right now. And this is about developing effective strategic plans and sustaining them, tell us a little bit about the concept of where's the Cow in The Living Room Come from? Major General Robert Mixon: Well, you know Steve, we had it, when we wrote the book, we were going to title it, developing effective strategies, sustaining them. And then we shared that idea with our families, you know, spouses, and we got some immediate feedback and the feedback wasn't very good. The feedback was, you got to be kidding me. You know, who's going to read that book, even mom's not going to read that book. And I said, okay, well, what else could we do? And as a result, they gave us great insight about a story about cows in living room. And essentially the story is that there was once a young farmer who wanted to find a wife. So he went to a nearby village and successfully courted a woman, married her and brought her to living home on the farm. As they began their new life together, raising dairy cows and winter began. One day, the wife came in and found that all the cows were the living room. Astonished, she asked why? Her husband replied, well its winter and the barn has no heat. Since we depend on these cows for our living, they need to be inside. Slowly, very slowly, she became more and more accustomed to having the cows indoors. Then after a few months, a neighbor from her village came over to see how she was doing. When she came in the living room, she was shocked to find the dairy cows there calming standing around. What are you doing with council living room she blurted out? To which the wife replied, which cows? And the story here is that most of us have cows in our living room as leaders of organizations, companies, and organizations of all types. And we become used to the cows and we don't see them anymore. So if you don't effectively address your strategic planning process, then basically you're just tolerating the cow's living room. You're not doing anything to heat the bar. And that's really where we got the idea for the title. It wasn't an original thought. In fact, I don't think I've ever had original thought, but in any case, you know, it was catchy and a lot of people have asked about it, and hopefully they liked the book too. Steve Rush: It's a great metaphor, isn't it? Because particularly whether you're visual or auditory, actually in telling the story, it gets people to recognize that we're all creatures of habit actually, and it's dead easy to get used to our environment. And that's when we get comfortable. And when we get too much in control, that's probably when we don't focus on what we need to focus on. Major General Robert Mixon: Well, you know, Steve, 50%, I think of the fortune 500 companies of 30 or 40 years ago no longer exist. And that's because many of them were absorbed in other companies, but also they became complacent and their business model faded and their competition, you know, ate them for breakfast, if you will, because they were more innovative and more driven not to allow their cows in the living room to stay there. Steve Rush: And then your second book, which is not a shameless plug in any way, it's a real, it's an honor to plug it in your behalf. Major General Robert Mixon: Thank you. Steve Rush: We're All In is very much around that connect cultural habits and sustaining in the future. And I just wondered from your perspective, have you ever been party to, or observed an organization successfully lead a culture where they're not all in? Major General Robert Mixon: I have not. I say that because I don't think organizations are truly successful unless they have a world-class culture. They can be successful in a temporal way. They can make a profit for a period of time by just directing the activities or micromanaging the processes, but there's a tipping point. The most successful companies don't allow that directive culture to dominate their way of life. They insist on engaging in involving all the members of the team in the future of the organization. And so I don't know if I addressed the question directly, Steve, but I do believe it takes both heart and mind to create a world-class company, a world-class organization. Steve Rush: Totally buy it. Major General Robert Mixon: And those that I have seen and been part of have had both. Now there are ebbs and flows, but I think that the development of your ecosystem, your culture to a level of where people feel as though they're engaged and they're part of it, they belong. That's where a greatness, the opportunity for greatness resides. Steve Rush: Absolutely, and as part of that developing culture, you pull together what you call your big six leadership principles to develop that culture. And I just thought it'd be great for our listeners to maybe spin through them with you. Major General Robert Mixon: Oh, great. Yeah the six principles again, I learned from basically screwed them up, you know, I have scar tissue from not following these principles. So, now I really believe that we can do better, you know, if we're willing to pay attention and commit to the journey and follow the principles. The first one is set the esbit. A lot of people don't know what an azimuth is. I took it from my military career, but basically the azimuth is the Cardinal direction of your organization. What's your mission? You know, who are we? What do we do? Why do we do it? What's our intent? And then I like intent more than vision because I think vision's kind of fuzzy. Intent is, based on that mission. What's our end state in three to five years? What does success look like?  Then what are the key tasks we have to perform to reach that end state? And then what's our purpose? What's the why? And why are we doing all this? So you have mission and the intent, then you have your values. What do we believe in? And I think you have to define those values as a team because everybody doesn't understand what they are. And then fourth, what is our culture? What are the behaviors that we are going to demonstrate and expect from all of us to bring these values to life? So, setting the esbit is the first of the big six. The second one is listen. And as my mom said, God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason. Steve Rush: Yeah. Major General Robert Mixon: But I rarely followed that teaching from my mother. My mom's awesome, but I wasn't a good listener and we don't teach leaders to listen very well, you know, Stephen Covey talks about, are you listening with the intent to understand? Or are you listening with the intent to reply? I would say 90% of the leaders that I've met are in the latter category. We don't really listen with the intent to understand because we don't know how, and as a result we don't demonstrate to others the kind of behavior that really represents listing leadership. And so in the workshops that I do, we we've focus a lot on practical tools for your toolbox to bring these principles to life. The third is trusted in power, you know, empowerment is the manifestation of trust, but trust I think is one of the critical factors in creating this culture where we're all in and you've got to commit to it, and you've got to be willing to do things like underwrites of mistakes or empower others. When the tendency, the powerful tendency is to go do it yourself. That's a learned skill, and I think the best leaders are those who can trust and empower very effectively. The fourth principle is do the right thing when no one's looking. And as we said, depending on this brief swell, but it is not easy. It's not simple and it's not easy. It takes a real commitment on the part of the leadership top to bottom that we're going to do the right thing. And whether someone's looking or not. Unfortunately, there are a lot of circumstances in instances over the past several decades, people, and most recent times when leaders in companies have not done the right thing and there've been disastrous results. The fifth principle is when in charge take charge. And that doesn't mean you have to be loud, profane, abusive. That's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about here is when you're in charge of being the calm in the chaos of having the tactical patients to understand that the first report is usually wrong. To develop others as part of that, being in charge, have that presence. And then the six principles balance the personal and professional, which is not about time. Most people think that balance is about time, a time at work, time home, not really, that's not the case. And I think balance is a battery of energy. Balancing the four battery levels we have all of inside us. The physical, the mental, the spiritual, the emotional, and there are tools. There are ways you can do that in yourself and in others to create that sense of balance, which it's a way of being healthy in a framework here, healthy personally and professionally, and really creates the opportunity for people to, as we used to say in the army, be all, they can be. Steve Rush: I love the six principles. They naturally feed each other as well. But the final one ironically feeds through them all and is always consistent, is that balance because without it, you end up either being overworked or stressed or not having the right levels of energy to perform sustainably for the future. And that for me is the one that kind of has the big core all the way through them. So I love the princess. Major General Robert Mixon: Well, thanks Steve. They all are interconnected. In fact when I conduct presentations workshops, I use a gears as the six principles that they're all interconnected, you know, and the whole mechanism of the culture turns as those gears work together with the centerpiece having the right values Steve Rush: And what you've described for most people listening to this would perhaps make loads of sense and be quite academically sensible, but it takes work, doesn't it? It takes real practice and lots of habit forming to make sure that this is part of everybody's routine. How might I start that journey? Major General Robert Mixon: Usually I will go in with the senior leadership and we'll talk about you know, whether they have specific goals in line for a certain, you know, a certain element of the team or whether they want to take the whole organization and move the needle. And most of them want to do the senior leaders upfront, then cascade the big six throughout the organization, as the mechanism to grow their culture to that level five, and I'll be upfront here. I think it takes a couple of years to do this. You know, you can't have it in 30 days. Most of us want everything in 30 days, but you can't have it. You're going to have to develop your culture in a deliberate way. And I use a series of workshops, a small group interaction, and one-on-one executive coaching with senior executives and high potential leaders to help get all these gears in place and move them forward. And specifically we use a strategic planning process to set that three to five-year goal that we want to move the organization toward. So there's an interrelated set of tools that we bring to a team or organization to help them succeed in this journey. Steve Rush: And I suspect the reason it takes some time is that of all of those six cogs moving at different times, we've all probably got some of them moving at different speeds and cadences than the others, right? Major General Robert Mixon: Yes, we do. Steve Rush: Yeah. Major General Robert Mixon: And typically, Steve, but saying yes upfront on, some people will push back a little bit say, well, I don't have time to the esbit. Well, I don't think you have time not to set the azimuth. So we've got to get through that part and, you know, establish our mission and values culture. Then I think the next hard part of the process here is developing listening leaders who really do listen to the intent to understand. Steve Rush: Yeah. Major General Robert Mixon: And we bring some practical tools for them to help do this. One of my favorites that I'll share with you, Steve is the back brief. Steve Rush: Tell us how that works? Yeah. Major General Robert Mixon: There's and old saying about, I don't know what I told you, until you tell me what you heard. Quite oftentimes, I have made this mistake. I get a group of soldiers together, or team members in my corporate life together and say, all right, here's what we've got to get done. But you know, everybody should know what you have to do to make that happen. All right, everybody got it? And they all say, oh yeah, we got it. And they head out and do something completely different. Well, usually you find out that they did something completely different because they didn't hear what you thought you said. And the back brief is a way where they back brief you on what they think they heard before you go out and try and accomplish great things. I think that's a way of confirming that what was said was heard and that's where communication lives, sharing information, email, texts, that's not communication, that's just sharing information. You don't get confirmation what they read was what they thought you wrote. Same with what you said and heard. So I really liked the back brief or confirmation brief as a tool for your toolbox that gives people more clarity across the team as to what are we doing and why are we doing it. Steve Rush: And saves huge amounts of time, retrospectively having to undo stuff that people have set off in the wrong trajectory. Major General Robert Mixon: Yeah. You know, manufacturing companies, I hear that saying over and over, we didn't have time to do it right the first time, but we always have time to go back and do it again. Steve Rush: That's true, very true indeed, yeah. So, given your experience of diverse leadership and teams, what can we really learn from the last couple of years, having gone through quite a lot of crisis, and that would be varied for different people in different organizations that will really help us be more all in. Major General Robert Mixon: I think what the change in our world over the last couple of years has taught us is that we need to have strong fundamentals in order to endure and succeed in crisis. You know, many leaders that I've worked with have come back to me and said, Robert, we went back to the big six when things really got off the rails. We said, okay, wait a minute, let's have a tactical balls here. Let's go back to the big six and let's check our esbit as our esbit intact. Do we have people in the right seat, in the right bus, as Jim Collins said, good, good to great, you know, let's revert back to those big six principles and reaffirm them across our team and organization. And those that did said they were absolutely game-changing and enabling them to keep their team intact, to work through the anxieties and the stress to build bore inclusivity in their teams, despite the fact that they were in many cases in a hybrid world that was all virtual than it went to somewhat virtual. And now, some people are back to being in person, but I don't think we'll ever go back to the way it was in terms of the overall environment. We're going to have to lead through change. We cannot prevent the changes from occurring. You know, our world has changed and it is what it is. It's up to us to effectively adapt to it. And I wrote an eBook here about a year or so ago called Who Saw This Coming? Now, What Do We Do? And you can get it on, on my website, but there I talked about what the crisis was doing to us and how the big six could be our bedrock, our touchstone to get us through it and grow and learn beyond it. Steve Rush: And I guess the esbit for every organization will be different now than it was two years ago, because lots of things that are impacting on all of that purpose behaviors, culture, values. Major General Robert Mixon: You have to check you're esbit on a regular basis and you have to be willing to adapt it. You know, it's I was guilty as a young officer. You know, if I wrote a plan, then we were going to execute the plan. And if the truth changed, so, you know, I'm still not changing the plan. That kind of stubbornness was not healthy. My organizations did perform well when I stuck to the plan and I didn't adapt the plan to the reality that the enemy was out there and had a vote and the environment was changing and had a vote. And the characteristics of my team were changing and had a vote. And I had to be able to adapt to that framework. I was kind of stubborn, I was good at that. Steve Rush: Great lessons. So I get the honor now to hack into your leadership mind, having had all of these leadership experiences and many, many different environments that you've gathered insights and experience from, I'm going to try and get you to get them down to your top three. So what would be your top three leadership hacks? Robert. Major General Robert Mixon: I would say the first would be willing to listen to the ideas of others, try and dispense with your preconceived notions and do a lot more listening than talking. That would be my first one. And it's very difficult to do when you grow up in a world where the leader is expected to be transmitting all the time and not receiving. And I think the opposite is actually true. My second one is develop a perspective where you can have others take more ownership of the decision making. The idea here, trust and. I really had to learn to delegate, but I saw a huge return on investment when I delegated to others. One of the tools I use is called a decision tree. I write out the decisions that I must make in my position, and I tell my leadership team, then you've got the rest of them. So don't come in here and ask me to make decisions that are yours to make. I may challenge you on some of the decisions you make, but you made them. And my job is to help educate you and support you so that you have the tools at your toolbox to make good decisions. So delegation would be my second hack and the first two I've talked about were not easy for me. So I'm not saying this is something you get, you know, in a week or two. I've learned over my journey about them. And the third one I'd say is that, you know, caring leadership has huge second and third order effects in our organization. There's an old saying about, I don't care how much you know, until I know how much you care and that, you know, empathetic leadership is not necessarily sympathetic. There's a big difference between empathy and sympathy. Steve Rush: Huge, yeah. Major General Robert Mixon: And I talk about that in the work I do with teams on emotional intelligence, it really was important for me to develop an appreciation for the value of caring leadership. So those would be my top three leadership hacks Steve. Steve Rush: Great lessons. Thank you for sharing them. Next part of the show we call Hack to Attack. So this is where something in your life or work hasn't worked out as you'd planned, but as a result of the experience, you've now learned from it, and it's now force of good for you. So what would be your Hack to Attack? Major General Robert Mixon: I would say that my Hack to Attack is that I really was not a patient leader for many parts of my life. And I made a lot of mistakes because I acted too much on impulse and instinct, and I didn't do enough of making an assessment of what decision would be the best for the organization at this point in time. Or in my lack of patience I think I sometimes failed to be as vulnerable as I should have been. You know, people need to know when you make a mistake and you need to step up and say that, admit it. It's not weakness. You know, vulnerability is not weakness. Vulnerability is being authentic. And that's what's the essence of Level Five Leadership is. It's being authentic. Steve Rush: Very powerful stuff. So the last thing we do today is give you a chance to do some time travel. So you get to go and bump into Robert at 21 and you get to toe to toe, give him some advice. What do you reckon it might be? Major General Robert Mixon: Ooh, oh boy. Talk about a challenge Steve. This is really awesome here. Robert at 21 was a very driven young man. I don't know where necessarily I got it from, but you know, I was wrapped pretty tightly and I think what advice I would give myself at age 21 is think before you act. Use that, you know, two second pause or ten second pause to say, hey, before I jump off of my tank and go running off into the woods here. Do I really need to get off the tank right now? Or do we all need to, you know, as everybody needs to just be moving, is all forward movement progress, no it's not. All forward moves is not progress. And I'd say, Robert, you got to, you know, mentally slow down sometimes and take a step back and say, okay, what are we doing? What's our esbit here? You know, what's our mission, what's our intent? Don't just, you know, everything has to be in motion all the time, and it's hard. It'd be hard for Robert at 21 to take that because he was a guy in motion and he felt like leadership was, you know, motion, direction, guidance. You know, I was in that seventies culture of being directive. And I thought that's what right looked like because that's what many of my leaders demonstrate it. Steve Rush: Yeah. Major General Robert Mixon: So that's the advice I would give me, hopefully I would listen. Steve Rush: Yeah, it's a really interesting one, isn't it? Because time and culture play out so differently based on historic events and you look at how the military has evolved. It has probably been the biggest evolution in the last 25 years that the military have ever had up until that point. It was pretty much kind of command and control, wasn't it? Major General Robert Mixon: Well, yeah, the command and control discussion is interesting. Steve, because control is the allocation of resources and time and space. And many of us believe that that's what leadership is. It's really not. That's sort of bandaging in my view. Command is presence. It's establishing an environment where people can be effective because they trust you and they believe in each other. Sometimes you have to have some control. I'm not downplaying that, but you've got to figure out where the balance is to go back to the big six of command and control. And I would say the more command and less control the better, but sometimes you've got to work very hard to get to that level of commanding and control. Steve Rush: Yeah, I have this mantra, which is, only control, only the things that you can control and everybody else has got their own. Major General Robert Mixon: That's good advice. That's very good advice Steve. Steve Rush: So Robert, how can we make sure our listeners can hook into the work that you do, maybe get a copy of the books, find out a little bit more about Level five associates. Steve Rush: Yeah, great. Our website is you know, HTTPS www.levelfiveassociatess spell out the five levelfiveassociates.com. I certainly invite any of our listeners to you know, come to the site and you'll learn more about me and the work that we do. And you can contact me by, through website or my email address is robert@levelfiveassociates.com. And you know, we'll circle back with you. If I don't circle back with you, you know, something seriously wrong with me, Steve Rush: We'll make sure that we put some of those links in our show notes as well, Robert. Major General Robert Mixon: Oh, thanks, Steve. It was wonderful speaking with you. Steve Rush: And it's been a real honor having you on the show Robert. I love that the six principles, I think there are really great philosophy for leading teams and culture. So we'll do our best to help share this message with our global audience. Major General Robert Mixon: Well, thanks, Steven. I wish you continued success with The Leadership Hacker program and the good work you've been doing. Steve Rush: Thanks very much Robert. Major General Robert Mixon: All right, take care. Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker, Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.  

Raj De Datta is a serial entrepreneur, he's the co-founder and CEO of the global software platform, Bloomreach. He's also the author of the book, The Digital Seeker. This show is pumped full of hacks and insights including: What is the seeker and why we need to focus on them? Why we would want to swap customers for seekers. How to harness Raj's “Three A's” to unlock creativity. What the long-term effects will be via digital experiences in the future.   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com   Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA   Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Raj below: Raj on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rdedatta/ Raj on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rdedatta Bloomreach Website: https://www.bloomreach.com/   Full Transcript Below: ----more----  Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Raj De Datta is a special guest on today's show. He's a serial entrepreneur, he's the co-founder and CEO of Bloomreach, which is a leading software platform. He's now an author of the book, The Digital Seeker, which is a guide for digital teams to build winning experiences. But before we get a chance to speak to Raj, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: Have you ever tried to change anyone's behavior at work? It can be extremely frustrating. So often with great intention, it provides the opposite results ending in poor relationships, poor performance, and often causes the person to dig their heels in. Still some approaches clearly work better than others. In a study completed by the Harvard Business Review, a data sample of almost 3000 direct reports of almost 600 leaders focused on manager's 49 sets of behaviors and assessed the leaders under, effectiveness at leading change specifically the manager's ability to influence others and move in the direction the organization wanted to go to. They then analyzed those at the highest and the lowest ratings on their ability to lead change. Then compared with the other sets of behaviors, they found that some behaviors were less helpful in changing others. And also that two had little or no impact, therefore providing useful guidance on what not to do. Being nice: I'm sorry, but being nice suggests that you may finish last in the game of change. It might be nice and easy, if all it took to bring about change was to have a nice, warm, positive relationship with others. Unfortunately, this research suggests that that's just not the case, and by giving others incessant requests, suggestions, and advice. I refer to this as “nagging” to be quite honest. Now, for most recipients, this is highly annoying and only serves to irritate them rather than change them, but is also often the change that most project managers adopt in the first instance and continue to do so despite their lack of success. But there were some indicators and some behaviors that did correlate with exceptional ability to drive change, and here are the top four. Unsurprisingly at the top of the list: Inspiring others, and there are two common approaches that most of us default to when we try and motivate to change others' behavior. Broadly, we could label them as push and pull. Some people intuitively push others, forcefully telling them what they need to change. Providing frequent reminders that sometimes following steps and stages with a warning about consequences, if they don't. But we noted earlier that push doesn't often work, if it's certainly not executed well, the alternative approach of course is pull and we can employ variety of ways, and these include working with the individual to set aspirational goals, exploring alternative avenues, to reach an objective, seeking out ideas, methods, design thinking, creativity. And of course this approach works best when you begin to identify with the other person and what they want to achieve and making the link between the goals and the change that they need to see happen. Providing that clear goal sits at the top of the list too. If I was a farmer attempting to plow a straight furrow, I need to select a point in the distance and then constantly aim in that direction. Change initiatives work best when everyone's site is fixed on the same goal, therefore the most productive discussions around any change being proposed, start with that end in mind. And it serves that strategy well. Challenging standard approaches, successful change often requires leaders to challenges, status quo or the standard approaches and find alternative ways of working. Leaders who excel at driving change will challenge even the rules that seem to be carved in some. And what seems academic simple to say, courage is next on the list. And it is academically simple to say, but behaviorally it takes a lot of practice. Aristotle said you'll never do anything in this world without courage. It's the greatest quality of the mind next to honor. Indeed, every initiative that you begin as a leader stats with that first courageous act, be that a new hire, a change in process, a new product that you decide to pursue, any changes to your team or your organization. Every speech, all of these require courage. The need for courage covers many realms. We sometimes hear people say, oh, not comfortable doing that. Well, my observation is this, great leaders get comfortable being uncomfortable, especially when they change efforts, demand the willingness to live in discomfort for longer than usual. So for those of you that are regular listeners to this podcast, you'll know that I'm a many models kind of guy. I don't believe in following one set of principles or one set of rules. But what I do know is whichever model, whichever book you read, you'll find these traits of behaviors around leading change and leadership in pretty much most of them. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. Please get in touch with us, if you have anything you want to promote through the stories that we share on the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Special guest on today's show is Raj De Datta. He's the co-founder and CEO of Bloomreach. Bloomreach is a leading software platform that powers over $200 billion of digital commerce experiences. And that represents over 25% of retail ecommerce in the U.S. and the UK. Raj is a multiple time entrepreneur and now written in a book The Digital Seeker. A guide for digital teams to build winning experiences. Raj, welcome to the show. Raj De Datta: It's great to be with you here, Steve. Steve Rush: So tell us a little bit about your story and how you ended up with Bloomreach. Raj De Datta: Yeah, for sure. You know, I grew up actually in the Philippines and back and forth between the Philippines and India for most of my life and came to the U.S. when I was 17 and went to college and then, you know, spent a number of years in Europe building my first entrepreneurial venture starting at the age of 21. Came back to the U.S. for business school, and then moved out west in 2003 to California and had been doing kind of startups and growth stage ventures really ever since. And somewhere around 2009 was when kind of the initial idea for Bloomreach came about and we were off and running. Steve Rush: Awesome. So at 21, you set up your first business. Tell us a little bit about that experience? Raj De Datta: You know, it was a crazy story. I had finished university. I had gone and worked on Wall Street for about a year and a half or so. And I was intending to go back to business school, had accepted admission to do so. And then my boss's, boss said, hey, you know, you've got a summer in between, you know, finishing up with us and going back to school, do you want to help us sort of with a business that we're getting off the ground, that it involves building high speed internet in Europe. And I said, great. That sounds like a fun way of spending a summer, I'll do them. And as I got into it, I got so passionate about working with him. And another colleague that the three of us just decided to start that business together. You know, they had families in New York. So I picked up, I had never been to Europe before, but I picked up, got on the flight and first went to Paris and then London and decided, you know, I didn't really want to go back to school at that point. I was just too passionate about the business we were looking to start and was off and running. And so it was definitely an adventure, learned a ton in that first entrepreneurial venture, but very much career shaping. Steve Rush: And did you notice that it was an entrepreneurial adventure that you were on at that time? Or was it just one of those things that you look back on and think, oh yeah. Raj De Datta: You know, I think at the time I just thought it was a ton of fun. You know, the adrenaline was definitely pumping, you know, it was it was just a crazy period of time as well, you know, perhaps dating myself, but it was, you know, in the late nine, 1990s and there was a bit of an internet bubble and telecom bubble going on. And so it was just a crazy time and I didn't really know any better either. I just found, you know, I was doing every job. I was a product manager, I was a developer, I was negotiating financing, I was raising money, I was dealing with regulatory stuff. It was just a ton of fun and much more fun than, you know, kind of the previous work experience I had both on Wall Street. And I had also been an electrical engineer. I felt like it was a very fulsome experience. That was challenging day and night. I worked 24/7, but I just loved it. Steve Rush: Yeah, and it's often those early career opportunities, where you have to put on all of the various hats that you sometimes later rely on in a more mature entrepreneurial life, right? Raj De Datta: I think so. I mean, you know, I have a blog post out on LinkedIn that talks about why I believe early career people should either start or join, you know, relatively small startups and the logic is that provided you can afford it. The learning curve, you know, for every year that you spend at one of those places is equal to seven years that you might spend at, you know, a big company. And therefore you learn very quickly whether you love it or whether you don't. And, I had a lot of friends and colleagues that I worked with in that adventure who later on went back to more traditional jobs because they just found it wasn't for them. Steve Rush: Right, yeah. Raj De Datta: And, you know, and I took the opposite course, but either way, we both found out very quickly, much earlier in life than most. Steve Rush: Now Bloomreach has been a massive success and it continues to grow. And when you start to think of the fact that you power a quarter of retail ecommerce across the U.S. and the UK, that is an enormous scale, where are you going next? Raj De Datta: Well, you know, I think there's a long run way, you know, if we look at the eCommerce market as a whole, you know, it's about a $5 trillion market and it's been growing consistently at 15% year over year. We're still in a world, believe it or not, where about 18% of retail sales happen on digital channels. So it's still really early in that adventure. So first and foremost, we're going to just ride the wave and ride the growth of e-commerce to make that happen. But it's really our belief that, you know, kind of the first 20 years of e-commerce. E-commerce is about a 20 year old industry at this point. And the first 20 years of really been about what I call standing up the store, simply being able to transact online in the same way as you could transact at a physical store, but really the next 20 years are about standing out from the crowd because now digital has become a very competitive place. Amazon is one click away, and so the question is what are you as a brand going to do to distinguish yourself so that your shoppers and your customers stay with you and come to you and prefer you? And that's what Bloomreach is focused on doing, is all the many ways we can enable those brands to compete online for scarce attention. Steve Rush: Time passes really quick, but when you reflect back 20 years for a whole industry to be creative, it's no time at all really, is it? Raj De Datta: Indeed, you know, I mean, if we think about how old retail is as an industry, well, it's actually dates back to the beginning of civilization, right? People were trading something probably, you know, the first people on earth were trading something with each other. So relative to that, e-commerce is a very young industry in many ways. And indeed, you know, like most technology trends, the level of acceleration of adoption gets faster and faster just as, you know, iPhones were adopted faster than televisions. And you know certain social media platforms were adopted faster than iPhones. So everything just gets faster and quicker. Steve Rush: Yeah, is it fair to say that we're all digital teams these days? Raj De Datta: It is fair to say that, and if we're not, then we're definitely on the losing end of the digital battlefield. We're all digital teams. Digital is at the heart of really every enterprise that's out there, every business that's out there. And in fact, you know, I think one of the key differences I'm sure we'll talk about the book that I wrote, The Digital Seeker, and one of the key sort of research outcomes of that is that, you know, in the first age of digital adoption, people thought out of digital as their marketing channel, you sort of had a business and you said, oh, you know, I sell shoes. And now I create a website to sell those shoes the same way I sell the shoes in my store. So digital was a marketing vehicle for my business. And what's true in 2021 is that view of digital is it tends to be very narrow. Indeed, digital is at the heart of everything we do. And therefore at the heart of our teams. Steve Rush: Do you think there's still room for businesses that don't have a digital or an e-commerce representation these days? Raj De Datta: I think it is extraordinarily challenging, you know, I will never say never. There's always going to be, you know, the incredible restaurant that everybody knows with word of mouth that has the amazing chef that somebody's going to, you know, that people are going to line up outside to get a reservation at that perhaps doesn't need a digital presence because that's how well known they are. But we have to say at this point, that that's very much the exception rather than the rule. And certainly wouldn't be the way forward when we're building a business. Steve Rush: Right, Yeah. So you have the book, The Digital Seeker. So what is The Digital Seeker? Raj De Datta: Well, I think it starts with really trying to ask the question, why do the winners win and why do the losers lose? And it turns out that if you look across digital winners in category, after category, we're seeing a tremendous evolution in the nature of digital experiences. And I describe that evolution as the movement from the customer to the seeker. And so, you know, to make it very real, if we think about what's happened in our own lives digitally, you know, the internet was supposed to make our life easier. And indeed it has, there's a lot of things available online that we would otherwise have difficulty procuring, but really, you know, places like Amazon have trained us to do a lot more work as consumers. So, you know, we figure out what we're interested in buying. We ask our friends, we do the research and then we just show up on Amazon and buy it. That isn't the way it used to work. We used to, you know, go down to the trusted store and ask them and get some consultative advice and they would do a lot of the work. So Amazon has democratized commerce, but that doesn't mean it's made it easier for consumers. And in many ways, the to-do list of all of us digitally is very, very long. We sit in front of our mobile devices or computers and have a long list of things to do. So, you know, it's our view that the winners actually, aren't just going to make customers lives easier. They're going to go to the root of why somebody's buying the product in the first place and build the experience for that. And that's what I mean by saying, build for the seeker, not the customer, figure out what they're really seeking behind the purchase. If they're buying some plywood, they're clearly not seeking plywood. Maybe they're seeking the idea of building out a deck to entertain their friends. So maybe build the website, building the app for building out the deck. Steve Rush: Yeah. Raj De Datta: Not selling plywood. And that really is the thrust of The Digital Seeker is that all of us have something deeper we're looking for. Steve Rush: Yeah. Raj De Datta: Build for that. Steve Rush: It feels to me almost like you flipped content marketing on its head somewhat, because, you know, you are looking for a transaction and event knowing that actually that's part of a much bigger picture that you can then fulfill through that experience, right? Raj De Datta: That's right, exactly. And indeed content is a huge part of it, right? If I was building an eCommerce experience for building a deck, I would need to have videos and links to contractors and you know, maybe virtual reality or augmented reality to place the wood in my own surroundings. There's a lot of things I would build that would go beyond, here's some plywood, check out, here's the price, you know, transact. Steve Rush: Yeah. Raj De Datta: And indeed it turns out that is a much richer experience. It's what consumers want, and it's also the source of competitive advantage if you're an entrepreneur, because if you just put some plywood, then the consumer just says, well, where's the cheapest plywood? I'm just going to buy there. But if you build this distinguished experience, there's a good chance that you'll drive a level of loyalty that you want otherwise. Steve Rush: So in your book, you call this out. I think you call it by saying, putting the seeker at the center and that's real philosophy of let's forget the transaction that's just occurred. What about the seeker? And what's happening in other parts of their life and work. Raj De Datta: That's right, you know, and very often we've heard for 20 years or more the idea of customer centricity and often what that means is, that's code for reduce the friction for people to buy from us. And that's fine, I mean, indeed I like it too. If I have to go through two clicks rather than five clicks in order to buy something online, but that misses the boat a little bit on all the other work I did before I made those clicks in the first click. Steve Rush: Yeah. Raj De Datta: And that's very much what putting the secret at the center means. It turns out to be, you know, everything from what products I build, how I build those product, how I construct my teams, what work they do, how I do research about their intentions. And then certainly how I scope out and build out the experiences that they have with me as a brand. Steve Rush: So if I was an entrepreneur or a small business owner or a leader of an organization listening to this conversation, and I start thinking about the notion of switching out my focus from my customers to my seekers, how do I start that off? Raj De Datta: Well, you know, I believe it starts with a lot of whys. So, you know, what you're trying to do is, you're trying to discover your seeker first. So to use, you know, some examples from the book. There's an example of a business called Hotel Tonight and Hotel Tonight, you know, today owned by Airbnb, but was originally a business that was started because the idea was that, you know, you could go to Priceline and you could go to Expedia and you could book travel really easily. But so often there's a certain percentage of travel that are looking for serendipitous travel. They're literally looking for a hotel tonight, not rather than planning a vacation. So what the entrepreneur discovered was, yeah, you could go do that on Expedia or Priceline or any other one of these travel destinations, but it's not a great experience if that's my goal, because it doesn't give me all the experiences that I would look for in terms of serendipitous travel at that moment. And so what the entrepreneur did is ask a bunch of why questions, why is this person looking to travel? Oh, it turns out there's a certain percentage of travelers that are looking to plan vacations and others that are looking to just book them immediately. And then by asking the why question behind the, okay, why do they want to travel serendipitously? Much of that might be dating, much of that might be last minute business travel, whatever it might be. And then why are they looking to look for a hotel? Oh, well, they're looking for a hotel that has certain character. So by asking deeper and deeper questions, you can really get to the heart of the seeker's intention and build these unique experiences. And then when you end up scoping out Hotel tonight, you find, wow, it looks pretty different than Expedia and Priceline. And now it becomes a lot harder for Expedia and Priceline to compete with the Hotel Tonight experience. Steve Rush: Yeah. Raj De Datta: Because it's built for something deeper. So it's all about asking the deeper and deeper questions behind why a customer is buying. Steve Rush: Completely different experiences, aren't they? Same proposition, same product, but different proposition, different experiences. Raj De Datta: Exactly. Steve Rush: Yeah. Raj De Datta: And we can find leader after leader in industry, after industry who is asked these deeper question and built profoundly different experiences, which then enable them to compete long term much better than simply I've got the same thing for a lower price and a little bit more convenience. Steve Rush: So I'm intrigued to learn that when you have conversations with your clients and they already have a well-established set of products and solutions and services, how do you then start journey from, I know you want to sell this stuff, but let's take a step back and look at how do we evolve that seeker intention? Raj De Datta: Well, it's a great question. And you know, so many brands and our customers and others are a bit in a rat race, you know, they can be chasing next quarter's earnings or market share, you know, for e-commerce. What we find is that, you know, the wake up calls typically come from their competitors because, you know, if they are not acting in this way, there is some entrepreneur in a garage somewhere, maybe a well-funded garage these days looking to build a digital proposition in exactly this way. So very often the wake up calls tend to come from external forces like that. And then you start to ask the question, well, look, if we don't alter our own thinking, then that doesn't change the market. The market is still going to adopt. Steve Rush: Yeah. Raj De Datta: The better experience. And that tends to be the bit of the kick in the butt, you know, to rethink this. Steve Rush: So in your book, you have a model that you use around helping some of this creativity flow and you call it The Three A's Model. And I just wondered if you could spin through let's know how we might harness them. Raj De Datta: I think the observation is that, you know, this isn't just about sort of business thinking. This has a lot to do with technology. And indeed if you're a business that has aspirations to serve thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of customers, then you can't possibly construct a proposition manually for each of them that speaks to them, because you want that experience to be deeply personalized. And so that's where technology really comes in. And, you know, the three A's are really about the three technology forces that are changing how we understand our seekers and ultimately build experiences to win them over. And those three A's are, you know, first a collection of ambient devices. These days there's more sensors on a piece of clothing than there might be, you know, in an industrial plant. And so, you know, there's just a lot of ways our customers are speaking to us through mobile devices and sensory devices and ambient devices. And that's the first stage is listening to the ambience. The second this AI, which these days have been, you know, very much democratized and AI is there to make sense of all this data so that it can figure out well, you're the person who's interested in, you know, this type of apparel and somebody else might be interested in a different kind of apparel. And if I'm an apparel retailer, I should construct differentiated experience on that basis. The AI can help you figure that out. And then the third A is what we call APIs, which is a bit tech speak for all right. If I want to go build a hotel tonight experience or an Uber-like experience, I can't possibly build everything required to do so, but it turns out there are services across the internet powered by APIs that I can harness to build these unique experiences. So real the three A's are a bit of the technology trends that we can harness to make our life easier to build secret centric experiences. Steve Rush: And API's (application program interfaces) are absolutely everywhere across the digital landscape these days, which does allow more collaboration and more effective use of technology. How's that played out for your organization? Raj De Datta: Well, everything Bloomreach offers is a collection of API's. So if we think about what Bloomreach offers, we're in the business of offering what we call a commerce experience cloud. And that means, you know, if you're an e-commerce business, what do you need to build your experiences? You need smart marketing, you need content storage, you need a great search engine. You need to personalize that experience. Well, every one of those is an API from Bloomreach. So you could just plug into it and get that service and power your experience and not have to build it all yourself. And that paradigm is very much true in every aspect of so much of digital building block building. Indeed, as you say, APIs are all across the web and they're really the Lego blocks that we can harness to build the skyscrapers we're envisioning for our businesses. Steve Rush: Yeah, love it. So how have you seen COVID 19 pandemic impact our digital lives, as seekers? Raj De Datta: You know, I think the pandemic, you know in the book, we talk about how it's accelerated the notion of digital and we know are not as the rate at which COVID 19 has spread, you know, through the world and it's been really fast. But the other acceleration has been the rate of digital adoption. In one year in 2020, a five year acceleration of e-commerce and digitally adoption all happen in the same year. So it's profoundly accelerated everything about digital, whether that be an urgency. We're seeing new shoppers come online that never were before, we're seeing people spend more money digitally than they never were before. We're seeing new categories like grocery and autos, you know, arrive online. So it's just been a tremendous accelerator for digital and it's really caused organizations of all sizes to put digital at the center and then ask how they win, which then raises the question of the seeker. Steve Rush: And how do you see organizations taking advantage of digital in terms of, not just their e-commerce experience, but their internal experiences? Raj De Datta: Yeah, I think internally we're seeing a profound, you know, kind of revolution in how people work to begin with, right? So we at Bloomreach have moved to a completely work from anywhere culture where, you know, we believe that for a technology business, the scarce asset is great talent and talent is found everywhere in the world. And so why should we be limited by where we have offices? And so that mindset, you know, I think has itself been a pretty profound shift in how we work and changes everything about the resources and the planning and the hiring and the collaboration and, you know, the culture and all the questions that we previously built around physical spaces now have to be built around digital spaces. So it's changed everything about the interaction between people. Actually I think it's going to create a tremendous productivity, boom, economically, you know, for the globe. Steve Rush: Hmm, yeah. I agree. I often see organizations who maybe 18 months ago might have been digitally aware are now really digitally enabled. And as a result of it, it's unlocking new ways of working and new learning along the way. Raj De Datta: Indeed, It's really been a shift pretty dramatically in how businesses work. Now, I think to be fair, we have to be careful about leaving behind the billions of people that do work, that isn't digital. And we've seen that through the pandemic as well. All the people that kept us alive, the teachers, the healthcare workers, the food delivery people, you know, and on and on who may not have been in digital work and we've found we need them more than ever. So it raises as many questions as it answers. Steve Rush: Coming back to mindset. I suspect a lot of that is mindset of, I'm not in a digital world, whereas many of those careers and manufacturers are in a digital world, but may not have experienced it or felt that they were part of a digital community at that time. Raj De Datta: That's right, yeah. That's certainly the case. And I think we can do a lot. We have the technology and the desire I think to make lives, you know, just as effective through digital for that group of workers in our economy, as we do for many white collar jobs. Steve Rush: You've been in the digital e-commerce community for a number of years. And I'm just curious to find out from an innovation perspective, how on earth can you keep tabs of future emerging trends when it's moving so fast? Raj De Datta: You know, it's incredibly challenging to do so. But I think the benefit of the place we sit is that because we work with 1100 of the world's largest brands in the world, the data flowing in is very rich. So I try to invest in my own education. I try to invest in conversations with people that might be outside the ring of where of interaction and just keep challenging myself. And I'm constantly amazed. And so it is a rich learning experience, but that's what keeps it fun. Steve Rush: It's also what unlocks your next journey because it's the unknown, unknowns where the future is, of course. Raj De Datta: Indeed. Yeah, it's certainly true. Steve Rush: So we're going to turn the tables a little now, hack into your leadership thinking and experiences, having led a number of different businesses over your career arch, and I'm keen to try and get them down to your top three leadership hacks tips or ideas, what would they be? Raj De Datta: Yeah, you know, I think the first one is, you know, if I were sort of advising a first time entrepreneur, it would start with believe in yourself or don't start the business in the first place. Because all you have really, as an entrepreneur is your own judgment and your own wit and your own work ethic. And so very often, you know, we have these dark moments as entrepreneurs and we struggle with how to deal with situations. And ultimately, you know, the answer is in our gut, and we may as well trust it because it's ultimately what's going to either make us succeed or fail. So, I believe in belief. Steve Rush: Right. Raj De Datta: Let's start there. You know, the second is to be deeply authentic in the business you start and the people you work with. You know, of course the leadership books about how and should do things, but the most important thing is to be true to yourself and express that in every other way, because authenticity is what we all value, whether it's a customer or whether it's an employee or anywhere else. And then the third is to constantly pay attention to culture and values and how rebuild the business as much as whether the business succeeds and lots to talk about in terms of how to achieve that. But those are the three things that come to mind for me. Steve Rush: Yeah, I love those three. They're great hacks and culture sits at the heart of everything, doesn't it? And will shift. Raj De Datta: It certainly will. And, you know, I think that the fundamental mistake that most organizations make is that they think that culture is a static thing. And they think that it's really about what the culture is. And you know, lots of people spend lots of time in meeting rooms, defining the culture and to tell the story of Bloomreach, you know, I wrote the document around what our culture and values should represent before I started the business, you know, before I even knew what the proposition was. Steve Rush: Yeah. Raj De Datta: But actually I think the most important thing we did is to make it real in the everyday lives of every team member. And that means treating it as an operational priority, the same way I would treat sales as an operational priority or product development or anything else. I would say, all right, I've got this culture now, what am I practically going to do every day, every week, every quarter to advance my goals of meeting the aspiration of that culture, because it almost it's never done. And it always is a work in progress. Steve Rush: And I love the way you operationalize it as well. Because many people that I coach and leaders I coach, we often have the conversation around culture being this non fiscal return, but actually there's a direct return on investment on culture, isn't there? Raj De Datta: There totally is, and a world in which so many businesses are reliant on high quality people, you know, a culture, you know, hiring the right people and putting them in the right culture is 80% of the game. Steve Rush: Absolutely. Next part of the show, Raj, we call it Hack to Attack. So typically this is where something in your work or your life hasn't worked out well at all. In fact it could have been quite catastrophic, but you've learned from it. And that learning experience now serves you well in your life or work. What would be your Hack to Attack? Raj De Datta: The story of Bloomreach, my own business has had lots of twists and turns in the road. And I would say several near death experiences. And, you know, if I think back to where the business was, I had started it in 2009. We were somewhere around 2015, 2016. The business had been successful early on, but was definitely falling apart. And therefore, you know, by 2015, 2016, 7 years in, it was on the verge of complete failure. The initial product was no longer working as effectively as it once did. And the newer efforts were very nascent. And in the meantime, we had hundreds of people in the business. So, you know, it required a fundamental shift in mindset, in thinking and just a dogged stubbornness to continue and press forward. And I remember the meeting I had with the team members in 2016, where I said, look, we're going to have to let go of some people and that's going to be really painful. And let's face facts. It's not working. And I'm here because I want to be a fixed point in the ground. And I believe we're going to build this into the business we all aspire it to be, but we have a lot of open questions and I'm not exactly sure how and that authenticity and the culture we had built kept the team together. And seven years later, it turned out to be a much larger business than the original one that we built. Steve Rush: It's fantastic, takes a lot of nerve, but most importantly takes a lot of commitment to pivot away from something when it isn't working too. Raj De Datta: It does, you know, and that's the quality about entrepreneurship that I think is perhaps less talked about is, it's this really narrow Venn diagram between dreaminess and reality, you know, ability to see reality and truth, because without the dreams, there's no aspirations, there's no long term goals. And you know, you don't aim for the stars, but without the reality, you never get it on, you know, you never start to build a rocket. Steve Rush: Yeah, in fact, most entrepreneurs who fail aren't grounded in reality at the same time. Raj De Datta: That's right. Steve Rush: Yeah. Raj De Datta: Exactly. Steve Rush: Awesome. Last part of the show, we get to give you a chance to do some time travel. Bump into Raj at 21, and you get to give them some advice. What would those words of wisdom be? Raj De Datta: Yeah, 21, you know, I think I would say I had, you know, all the optimism, all the drive to go do something big. And I think I would tell myself, you know, go after it. Fortunately I feel like I did go after it in many ways, but I might have said, you know, go after it even bigger, go after it, even earlier, go after it with even less regard to whether it will work out or not. The world is an incredible place and our time is scarce. And so I would just say, you know, get after it. Steve Rush: Love it. What sets you apart Raj, is the fact that even though you've been Uber successful and created some superb and successful businesses, you still have this ability to be restless and not satisfied that there is something else out there that keeps you going, where does that come from do you think? Raj De Datta: You know, I think it probably comes from my parents more than anything else. My father is a really world renown agricultural scientist and he was unrelenting in his pursuit of, you know, what he described as feeding the world. My mother was a very well regarded, you know, actress and dancer and a consistent learner. And after never having, you know, completed high school at the time when I was born, now has a PhD and did most of that later in life. We studied together in many ways. And so, you know, both my parents have that restlessness and I think it's a good word. Steve Rush: That's a great story. Thank you for sharing it. So how can we connect our listeners to you? Maybe help them get a copy of The Digital Seeker and understand a bit more about Bloomreach. Raj De Datta: Yeah, well Bloomreach. We can go, you know, you can go to bloomreach.com B-L-O-O-M-R-E-A-C-H and you'll learn all about how we really drive business growth for e-commerce. And on The Digital Seeker, you can find it in any bookstore. You can go to Amazon and search for The Digital Seeker. You can go to Barnes & Noble or any other bookstore and it's available online. Steve Rush: Brilliant, we'll put some links in your show notes as well, Raj so that people can finish listening and head on over. Raj De Datta: Thank you very much, Steve. Steve Rush: Raj, it's been great chatting. I'm delighting you to see Bloomreach, grow, and continue to grow. And I'm also delighted you shared your lessons through The Digital Seeker, and thanks for being part of our community here on The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Raj De Datta: Absolutely, Steve, it's been a pleasure. Steve Rush: Thanks Raj.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.  

Celine Williams is the Founder and Chief Strategist at reVisionary. She is an entrepreneur, coach and keynote speaker on the subjects of innovation culture and change management. Celine also hosts two podcasts: @canadaspodcast and the Leading Through Crisis Podcast. In the great show you will learn about: What a culture engineer does and why its central to success in any organization. The things that could hold us back from developing a great culture. What a culture of innovation is, and how to I create it. How culture has changed though the pandemic. Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com   Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA   Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Celine below: Celine on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/celinewilliams/ Celine on Twitter: https://twitter.com/reVisionary_ca Celine's Website: http://revisionary.ca Celine on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/revisionary.ca   Full Transcript Below: ----more----  Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Celine Williams is a special guest on today's show. She's the founder of Revisionary. She's an executive coach, culture strategist and expert in leadership development, as well as being a public speaker. But before we get a chance to speak with Celine, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: While mulling over my weekend coffee, it came to me and I wondered if we could do some research to find out which of the organizations across the globe had the most loyal and dedicated staff, and which of those that didn't. Good employees are a valuable commodity for any business. Hiring training and cultivating top-notch workers takes an investment of time and money. So a loyal workforce is a big plus for employers. So how to companies with similar lines of businesses compare when it comes to typical employee tenure? Why do employees stick around at certain companies and then jumped ship at another, is it all about pay or is it about working conditions? Well, let's dig into a few. In the world of finance. We're going to compare two companies, AIG and Visa. We've all seen the movie Wall Street and finance is cutthroat and fast-paced industry to work in, but even though they've had their share of bad press over the years, AIG boasts superb employee tenure, almost three times, as long as visa. The average employee tenure at AIG is five years where it's 1.8 at Visa. And even though Visa employees report higher satisfaction rates and earn significantly more than their peers at AIG. Folk at AIG have less stress and are more satisfied. So let's have a look at the healthcare sector. Tenet Healthcare Corporation, and Universal Health Services are two of biggest healthcare companies in the U.S. Each employee is around 60,000 employees, but those that work at Tenet genuinely spend 4.6 years with the company while the typical UHS employee only clocks in at around 1.8 years, stress levels at each company appear similar, but Tenet employees can earn more and report higher job satisfaction. When we get to technology, the global powerhouses of Microsoft and Google battle out. The software developers and engineers at tech companies rely on are really in demand and always well compensated for their skills. And many of the jobs that are around in these organizations didn't exist a handful of years ago. So it's no surprise that the techies report short 10 years across both organizations. The average Microsoft employee sticks around for four years. A lifetime when you compare that to its archrival at Google, where the typical employee stays with the company for just 1.1 years, of course, Microsoft has been around since 1975, more than twice as long as Google. So they've had time to develop more long-term employees and develop a more refined attraction strategy. And when you look at the manufacturing sector, some really interesting stats come out, Eastman Kodak, boasts the most loyal employees on our list. The typical worker spending 20 years on a job, given the bad press that came with Kodak's massive drop in profits and revenue, those that stuck around continue to stick around, compare that to the folks that build trucks at PACCAR Corporation, where the median employee tender is only one year, even though employees seem to earn significantly more money and report lower stress levels. And so the leadership hack here is, it's not about salary, it's not about stress, it's about your whole environment. And therefore the better the environment is, the more likely your employees will stick around and contribute to significant and better outcomes for you and your organization. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. We'd love to hear whatever it is that's on your mind. So please get in touch with us in your usual ways, by our social media channels. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Joining me on the show today is Celine Williams. She's a founder and chief strategist at reVisionary. She is an entrepreneur, coach and keynote speaker on the subjects of innovation culture and change management. And she also helps two podcasts, Canada's podcast and the Leading Through Crisis Podcast. Welcome to the other side of the mic Celine. Celine Williams: Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here Steve. Steve Rush: I'm super excited to have you on the show. I particularly love having other podcasters come and share their stories because you'll know as I, we have the beautiful gift of speaking to so many people, it just gives us more context and more stories to share. So I'm looking forward to getting into it. Celine Williams: Absolutely. Steve Rush: Tell us a little bit about you and how you ended up doing what you're doing? Celine Williams: So, I always say it was a long and winding road to get to what I'm doing now. I did not follow any sort of linear path, and I think it's important to acknowledge that because there are people who have a very linear path and there are those of us who don't and both are equally as valid and important and interesting as far as I'm concerned. So both of my parents were immigrants and entrepreneurs. And so I grew up with parents who ran their own businesses, very different businesses but neither of them ever worked for someone else. And so when I was very young, that was kind of part and parcel. I didn't necessarily think I had to work for someone else or be an entrepreneur. I had that kind of a lens on how life could be. And so my first job, if you like to call it outside of like teenage jobs was I actually ran my own tutoring company for a number of years. And which was fun and helped me build a business pre-internet days for those of us that remember that. Steve Rush: Yeah, just about. Celine Williams: Before all of the like internet marketing. It was such a different beast when I went back into the world of entrepreneurship. Because I did that for a few years, sold the IP that I'd created for that company. Because I created some programs and actually then went and worked in the corporate world for 11 years and stepped completely out of entrepreneurship into an organization in a very niche kind of area of focus and had a number of roles in my time there, I worked in five very different areas. So I worked in HR, I worked as a project manager, I always joke I was the world's worst project manager, but legitimately I was the world's worst project manager. I'm not detail oriented enough to be good at it. I was just good at the people side of it, like getting people to help me out. Steve Rush: There should be almost a role for that! Celine Williams: I know. Steve Rush: Project manager/people sidekick role. Celine Williams: Yup, that would have been my role because actual project management, I was not good at. And then I did change management, which I was better at because it was more people oriented. And then stakeholder engagement and communications roles. I kind of did a number of those things over the 11 years that I was in corporate. And at that time I was, you know, I was running teams and had people reporting into me and I started coach training and I was like, I like this. And I like working with people in this way and I'm fascinated by human brains and what people are up to. And I absolutely hated working in the company that I was in and the corporate environment I was in because of the culture, things that you learn in retrospect is understanding that I stayed as long as I did because I liked the managers, the leaders I had. And I liked the people I worked with day to day, but the overall organizational culture was really toxic. And so I left and stepped into coaching and starting my own business and figuring out being an entrepreneur when the internet was a thing and everyone was throwing all of the different ways to be an entrepreneur at you and made one thousand mistakes and also managed to have some successes along the way. And now I get to have more fun than I've ever had in my life doing the work that I do. And I work with incredible organizations and leaders and we do culture design. And so we, you know, work with organizations around being very intentional and specific with their culture and how to put it into action and make it something that is tangible and real for the people in the organizations. And I work with, very people focused organizations. And I work with leaders who are very committed to being the best leaders that they can be in a meaningful way for the people around them. And yeah, and that is the journey to why I do what I do now and how I was one of those people who was an entrepreneur before I ever thought about working in corporate, just out of the way that I was raised and what I saw around me. Steve Rush: Yeah, and did you realize that in your early days, that entrepreneurship was a thing or you just going with the flow of what felt right intuitively for you. Celine Williams: I don't think I really realized it. And parts of that is, that my parents would never have called themselves entrepreneurs. That's not language that they used. It wasn't popular language and the way we use it now in the seventies and eighties. So my parents weren't saying, you know, I'm an entrepreneur. My dad owned a business and my mom owned business. And because they both did it, I didn't really have the connection of parents who go out to an office to work every day, in that way. They both had, you know, businesses that were based in the house and went out to different. Like my dad had a very specific role in construction. And so he would go out to job sites and he would go out to other places, but his office was in the house. I didn't really have an awareness of it. And it wasn't the language that was being used. So when I started, you know, tutoring business, I'd worked for a tutoring company in University, because quite frankly, the money was better than anywhere else. So I was like, oh, I could make under $7 an hour working at any other place, or I can make 25 to $30 an hour working at a tutoring company. Steve Rush: Yeah, not a tough call really. Celine Williams: No, and then I realized that they were charging each child $50 an hour. And I was working with four kids at once and I was like, what am I doing? And that's why I started my own business. To me, it was like, well, this makes more sense. And I just knew it was an option. Because my parents, without the language were running their own thing as well. Steve Rush: And you share in that continued tutoring via the medium of podcasts, teaching and sharing goodwill and insights around the world, but you've run Canada's Podcasts. But also if ever there was a time for one in the last two years, Leading Through Crisis Podcast. Celine Williams: Yeah. Steve Rush: Pretty timely, right? Celine Williams: Yes, so Canada's podcast, there's a group of us who host for different parts of Canada because we have enough different parts of Canada that one person couldn't do it all. It's a network and I host for Ontario cause I'm based in Toronto which is a lot of fun and it's a great, you know, it's great to get to share the stories of Canadian entrepreneurs, but leading through crisis is really my baby in the sense that it started sort of at the beginning of the pandemic, unfortunately and fortunately I had another podcast idea and I kept getting requests from people I worked with or had worked with around where can we listen to conversations that, you know, are timely and about how we lead in these challenging times and what that looks like. And not just there's one way of doing it, but how people have done it and their experiences. And I thought, well, I know some awesome people. I'll do this, like, you know, short-lived kind of timely podcasts and have some conversations and put it out there. And it just seemed to work and it connected with, you know, an audience and I've continued to do it. And it's incredibly fun and interesting to get, to talk to people in different environments, in different ways, with different backgrounds who are sharing their stories of either how they have led through challenging moments and moments of crisis or how they have worked with people. Who've done it in different ways, and it's fascinating and its lots of overlap and lots of different perspectives. Steve Rush: And of course, crisis notionally is actually quite subjective, isn't it? Celine Williams: Yeah. Steve Rush: So for some people, crisis can be “every day” just dealing with simple small tasks, whereas it doesn't have to be a global pandemic. Celine Williams: No, and I love that you said that Steve, cause it's one of the things that I say is, that the tagline is leading, you know, leadership in challenging times because it doesn't have to be my definition of crisis. My definition of crisis is, basically change because I think that when people think about, and by the way, I'm not opposed to change. I'm actually someone who has probably more capacity for change than the average person, and I think it's great. And even with, for myself, I know that my initial reaction to change is often like, oh, what are we going to do about this? And that is that crisis moment. And I think it's important that I allow people to define it for themselves and what it means to them. And we start from there, it's not me saying it has to be one way because everyone is different and that is part and parcel of the conversation. Steve Rush: It is, yeah, definitely so, so I remember when you and I first met, you described yourself to me as a culture engineer, which I love the concept of engineering culture, by the way. So a lot of our work that we have to do with is going to be centered to whether a culture is going to be enabling or holding back performance on people. So how would you go about firstly, just defining culture? Celine Williams: So, you know, I think the briefest and most basic explanation and, you know, many people have heard this, as it's the how we do things around here. And it really is the values and norms and expectations that are in practice. And I say that in practice is really important because a lot of organizations have culture, I'm air quoting, you can't see me, air quote culture that are, you know, they're words on a wall, right? They are, here's what our values are. Here's how we do things. Here's what we think of, you know, showing up with each other, how we treat each other and that's not actually in practice. And I see that, I wish I could say, I saw that less than I do, but I see that all the time, that the minute you start to talk to people in the organization, they're like, that's not how this works. We don't even see the leaders doing that. And so for me, the culture is yes, those things, the values, the norms, the expectations, and the behaviors. And most importantly, the behaviors, right? How this shows up in action, because the worst behavior that an organization is willing to accept, that's the bar of their culture. If you accepted behavior, if you let it continue in one person, that's the bar you've set for your culture. And if that's not, what the words on your walls reflect, then you don't have the culture you think you have. Steve Rush: I love the way you call out the words on the wall, because most of us can associate when we see organizational culture in often things like Z cards or posters, things that are around us to demonstrate what the culture is. But actually there is often a lost translation between those imagery in the marketing collateral. Then the behaviors that go on inside an organization, and the wonder what you think the reason could be behind that? Celine Williams: Well, I think there's a few things. One, I think culture, it's a buzzword in a lot of ways. And so organizations, you know, we'll hire someone or do something themselves where it is designed to make them more appealing to potential employees, you know, in the world to competitors, whatever the case may be. And it becomes aspirational. So because it's a buzzword, there's an aspirational side to culture. And that's the words on the wall is, we're just going to put something together, that sounds good. And it's like maybe loosely based on what we hope it will be, so aspirational as well. In my opinion is a big piece of it. One of the other things is that if leadership is involved in designing the culture or putting together that language. They are often, especially executive leadership, really disconnected from the actual lived organization and the actual lived culture. So, they genuinely think that their experience with the eight people that they interact with on a regular basis is everyone's experience, and that's just not the case. And we often find that you get to, you know, middle management, whatever it is, and that's where the experience of culture shifts dramatically. So if leaders and organizations are not speaking to the people who are below, at and below that middle management level, then they don't actually know what the lived experience of the culture is. And so, it's well-meaning, it's just not accurate. Steve Rush: Yeah, I see that too, and the other aspect of that as well, I guess, is that if it's not created bottom up, as well as meeting the top down aspirations, that's also, I guess, where it gets a little bit lost in translation. Celine Williams: Absolutely. It has to be, you know, when we go in and we do culture engineer, you know, engineer culture, we design a culture with a company. One of the things that I insist on, I've learned to insist on at this point is that yes, we will 100% talk to the senior leaders and get their perspective and hear what they want the culture to be, hearing what they think it is. And if there's not an appetite for us to also survey and have conversations, not just a generic survey with people in the organization, different parts of the organization at different levels of leadership, individual contributors, if they're distributed from different, you know, in office, out of office, whatever, if we are not getting an actual breadth of input, then we will not do the work because then it is words on walls. And I'm not interested in that. Steve Rush: Yeah, and equally nor would be ironically yeah. Vast majority of the employees in the organization. Celine Williams: Right. Steve Rush: Yeah. Celine Williams: Right, and that's just it, if it's not serving them, then what is the purpose of it? Steve Rush: Yeah. Celine Williams: Because then it's not really about, you don't really care about culture and that's okay, but then let's just admit it. Steve Rush: So what are the things, the traps if you like? That hold back organizations from truly developing a great culture that they seek? Celine Williams: Well, I would say, I think one of the biggest ones, there's two, I'm laughing because there's two that immediately came to mind. One of the biggest ones is looking at a different organization and saying, we're just going to copy their culture. You can't copy another organization's culture. And so that holds us back from actually designing a culture and creating a culture that works for our organization, our people, our team. Every organization's culture is different because there are different people in every organization. So to look at, you know, in North America, it's often Zappos or Google or Facebook, or, you know, one of many other big names that are known for their culture and companies say, I want to do that. And they try and copy it. You can't copy it. And that really is a big detriment. And it holds the leaders, the organization and the people back from stepping into what their culture could be because they get stuck in someone else's idea of culture. And then it never is that, and they, you know, kind of spin out on the fact that they're not getting what they want to get, or it's not looking the way they think it should look because it looked that way for Google. The second thing I would say that's really big is that people think that culture is events or a ping pong table or lunches or whatever. And they get stuck in the, these are the fun things we do that mean we have a great culture and miss entirely the day to day importance of how culture shows up. And that happens again, way more consistently than I wish I saw happening. But it's real, right? People think it's the fun stuff. It's the event. It's those moments that make the culture and it's like, well, your culture is actually your day to day. And shows up when things go wrong. If when things go wrong, people aren't behaving the way you want them to behave, things aren't going the way you want, you know, you think you want them to go, then that ping pong table doesn't make a difference. Steve Rush: And I've been party to a number of different change programs where ping pong tables and other fun stuff were introduced, but it isn't the materials or the processes that change culture, it's behaviors, isn't it? Celine Williams: A hundred percent, but it's a lot easier and a lot faster to buy a ping pong table or to have Friday lunches or, you know, whatever the case may be than it is to do the work on the behaviors. Steve Rush: Particularly, if you buy a ping pong table and then shout at the people playing ping pong, because they're making too much noise, that kind of stuff doesn't work, does it? Celine Williams: No, and it's real. It's definitely real. Steve Rush: It's happened in my space. Let's put it that way. Celine Williams: Yeah. Steve Rush: So having some of those quirky themes and designing new ways of working are all part of innovation. And that's definitely something that we need to tap into. Because actually that can sometimes change behaviors. But when it comes to innovation culture, how would you go about creating the space so that people can be innovative, that then can then inform the culture? Celine Williams: So I think the two most important things are vulnerability and failure. You have to create space for people to be vulnerable and to be okay with them. And this is like, I'm going to use Brene Brown's language for this, but that messy middle where it's not going to be perfect. People are going to say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing sometimes, step into awkward conversations, not know the results. That level of vulnerability has to be encouraged because without that, we can't be comfortable failing. And the way that we step into cultures of innovation is being vulnerable with each other so that we are okay with failing and that we embrace those failures and failures, bigger or small, mistakes, missteps, all of that. That's what I'm putting in the language of failure, but we have to talk about it. And we have to be very open about it, many, many individuals, but also organizations have a lot of shame around making mistakes and we try and cover them up and we try and hide them away. And we try and, you know, blame other people, you know, we get defensive about them, whatever the case may be. Individually teams, cultures that is built into many, many, many organizations and without the encouragement of vulnerability and the ability to step into that meaningfully, that doesn't change. And it's not one or the other, because we can sit at a table and say, failure's great. Let's share failures and let's be as open as possible. But if we haven't created a safe space for people to be vulnerable and to really open up about it, it doesn't happen. Or they bring things that aren't the real failures and the real mistakes that matter. And, or they struggle to learn from it. And they struggle to reframe it into what the lesson is and what the possibility is. And they get stuck in the actual mistake or thing that hasn't worked out the way they want it to work out. And so I think those are the two most important things that organizations need to work on when it comes to creating cultures of innovation and in some parts of the world, as an example, in some parts of the world, some pieces of those are easier and some of them are harder and that's real. And so it's starting from where you are, where your organization is, where your leaders are and moving and taking the steps forward. You don't have to go from an organization where no one's connected to each other and no one's open, and it's very formal to, you know, everyone is weeping on each other's shoulder and knows everything about each other overnight because now we've embraced vulnerability. There are steps to take along the way, and those steps move all of the innovation forward and they move everything forward and in a meaningful way, when we're on that journey Steve Rush: Can we go there, and how about explore around some of those steps? Because as you were talking, what I was thinking to myself was, “vulnerability is an integral part of shifting the culture”, but if the culture isn't right, that doesn't allow me to be vulnerable. How do I break that cycle? Celine Williams: Well, I'm going to become…. Steve Rush: A bit of a deep question, right? Celine Williams: No, it's great. I'm going to be a bit of a Brene Brown pusher right now. Because I think this a lot of what she talks about is exactly in this space and that is, you know, it takes courage. It takes courage to be vulnerable. And I think the challenge or the struggle can be that courage, that vulnerability in a larger setting in bigger groups is what holds people back from doing it at all. And I think that the more we can create spaces of safety, spaces of vulnerability, even if it's with one other person at a time, the more we can start to step into the vulnerability and the courage that it takes to be vulnerable. And it is a lot easier for senior leaders for executives to lead that charge and model it. I recognize that than it is for other people. So for any senior leaders and executives who are in organizations or in cultures, that don't really feel that safe or don't have that level of vulnerability, you know, this is a call to arms to be courageous and open it up and make that space for your people because it is a lot scarier for individual contributors or middle management to start and lead that charge. Steve Rush: Yeah, you also need fast followers behind you, don't you? So behind you is probably the wrong word, “with you” is probably the right word. So you demonstrate vulnerability. You want other people to do it super quick. So you create a movement of people that are helping others. Celine Williams: Yeah. Steve Rush: Feels safe. Celine Williams: And I think that when we lead by example, we find that faster than we think we are going to. And the scary part is the stepping into leading by example when no one else is doing it. Steve Rush: Right, yeah. So how do you think culture might have changed generally? And this is a big generalization through the pandemic and over there the kind of last 18 months, two years? Celine Williams: Well, I think there's a lot more awareness of the fact that the things that we thought were culture, a lot of things that a lot of people thought were culture like the ping pong tables don't matter nearly as much as they thought they did. Steve Rush: Or at all. Celine Williams: Or, at all, exactly. And I think a lot of people and organizations and leaders realize that the realities. I'm going to put it this way. What they thought was their culture was not actually their culture because the minute that people were not in the same space, day to day, everything went awry to put it that way. And so I think that there is a, I think people are more interested in the realities of culture now, and they're thinking about it in meaningful ways. I think that people realize that even the non-event parts of their culture was really dependent on being in person. And the hybrid way of working where, you know, distributed, some people are remote. Some people are in office. So, you know, whatever the specific cases may be is here to stay. And I think that the idea of culture has changed dramatically because of that, because what you would do in person doesn't necessarily work with people who are at home. So how do we help people feel connected and safe and like they belong when we're all in different places. I think that the idea of belonging has become, you know, a much bigger topic of conversation in the past 18 months inside of the culture conversation, belonging and safety, because especially in North America, there has been, you know, if you remember to a year, last summer. Not the summer that just passed, but the previous summer, there was a lot that happened culturally. And you know, in various parts of the United States and Canada, and that changed the conversation dramatically because it affected people at work. And so I think that the realities of mental health have become a bigger part of the conversation around culture. And I think that what people are willing to accept in the ways they work and in the cultures they're looking for has changed. And it's why, you know, people are talking about the great resignation, the language all over, you know, HBR and whatever you're reading right now. Steve Rush: Right. Celine Williams: Because people want to work for organizations that care, people want to feel like they matter, people want flexibility. And that is part of culture, your culture can enable that, or disable that. Steve Rush: And I suspect if we did a survey in a year or two's time, and look back on the organizations who did not suffer as a result of the great resignation, they would have strong foundations of belonging as part of their culture. Celine Williams: Absolutely, I would completely agree with that, and it's belonging and flexibility where there meeting people, where they're at and people know that they matter. And that they're cared for. That is huge right now. Steve Rush: Yeah, it certainly is. So I'm going to change tact a little bit now. Celine Williams: Yeah. Steve Rush: Going to hack into your leadership brain. So having led startups and other organizations, as well as the firm that you run now and having opportunities to hack into other's minds, I'm going to try and distill your top three leadership tips now. So what would be your top three leadership hacks Celine? Celine Williams: So I already said this one, I'm going to repeat it because it bears repeating. Lead by example, so it sounds so, so basic. And it's so challenging when things are hard to actually lead by example. But I think a lot of people, and a lot of us do this, we read books, we consume information, we listen to podcasts. We think about the ways things should be, but we don't actually put them into action and we don't try them. So leading by example to me is probably the number one leadership hack. And that means you're embracing failure. I joke all the time that I am the master of trying things out and they don't work and being like, well, I did a thing. It didn't work. Here's what I learned from it. Let's move on. And I share it because I think it's really important to put things into action and to try and to lead by example, you can't expect the people around you to do it if you're not doing it. So that would be my number one thing. The second thing I would say is to be positive, but not be toxic, not be toxically. I'm making a word up for you, positive, so avoid toxic positivity. Seeing the potential in things, seeing the lesson and things stepping into that space is really important. And we know that it matters for cultures, that there is a real lens of positivity in the leadership and in the culture itself. And let's not overcompensate and not be real and vulnerable by being toxic about the positivity. Everything is not fine all the time. It's not going to be fine all the time. It doesn't have to be perfect. It is okay to acknowledge the reality of things while still holding in your mind, the potential that this could work out in all of these ways. And here's the lessons inside of it. So, you know, being positive, but not toxic about it would be my second thing. And the third thing, and this is the thing that has probably made the biggest difference to me over my life and is probably the thing that the leaders that, you know, the executives I coach now, they come to me for more than anything. And that is get perspectives that are not the same as yours and work those perspectives into your decisions and how you show up. It doesn't mean you have to agree with them when you get other people's perspectives. Understanding another person's perspective does not mean you agree with it. The more we can get different perspectives. The more we can think about how other people are thinking, how things are going to land differently, the better and more effective we are as leaders. And unfortunately, many of us who are leaders are surrounded by people who think the same way we do, and we create a confirmation bias and we create a cycle that is not actually balanced and is one perspective over and over again. Steve Rush: I love that last hack. Confirmation bias plays out so much,  I've heard it called confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, we're actually unconsciously just looking for endorsing our own mindset rather than flipping it and taking it other's perspectives. Because that's what we really learn and grow, isn't it? Celine Williams: Absolutely. And, that's, you know, it's really easy to work with people who think the same as us. To be surrounded by people who think the same of us, same as us to not be challenged about the things that we're saying. So we look for it and healthy discomfort, healthy tension is where we often learn and where all the growth is. Steve Rush: Right. Next part of the show, we call it Hack to Attack. This is typically where someone hasn't worked out at all, maybe have gone wrong, but there is some learning there. And it's now a positive in your life and work. If you had to call out one event, what would be your Hack to Attack? Celine Williams: I have so many of these. I have so many of these, but here's the one that I would say. And this is kind of an entrepreneurship and you know, questioning assumptions one. When I stepped back into the world of entrepreneurship and I left corporate and I started coaching, I was very focused. So I worked in healthcare slightly more technical than that, but I worked in version of health technology for 11 years. So when I left that world and I started coaching, I was like, well, I'm going to coach people who work in health care or health technology, because that's where all my experiences is, and I know that world and that's going to make sense. That did not go as planned. I hated every minute of it. I struggled to get clients to keep clients. I was absolutely miserable and it wasn't until I really, first of all, burned through all my savings. When I tell you, I have made every mistake in the book, I promise you I've made every mistake in the book. It wasn't until I had burned through all my savings. And you know, was like, I just hate every minute of this, that I took a step back and was like, oh, I assumed that I needed to be doing it in this way. Cause I had all this experience. I assumed these are the only people who would actually work with me. I assumed all of these things. And when I reframed that and started differently and approach things differently and, you know, got rid of what I thought it should be and how it should look. And these were the steps I should take and did it differently. That's where I found success. And that's what I've learned from is that, leaving the shoulds behind, leaving what I assumed things were or what I think they should be. That holds me back, and there's no lesson in that when I discard that, that's where the opportunities have come from. And I continue to remind myself of that constantly. Steve Rush: Brilliant. “Should”, really toxic word, isn't it? Celine Williams: Yep. Very, much so. Steve Rush: Yeah, last part of the show is we get you to do a bit of time travel and you able to bump into Celine at 21 and give her some words of wisdom. What would your advice be do? Celine Williams: Stop caring so much about what other people think. Steve Rush: Nice. Celine Williams: First and foremost cause that was definitely it. I'm going to go back to the shoulds, that things don't have to look the way you think they should look in order to get you where you want to be and embracing the differences and embracing the unknown as early as possible is going to serve you well, because that was a challenge for me. Now, it feels easy because I have many years on that 21 year old. But at that point, you know, caring what people think and the shoulds has really held me back. Steve Rush: Yeah, great advice. So Celine, if folk wanted to get hold of information and insights about the work you're doing, maybe tap into your podcast, what's the best for us to send them? Celine Williams: Absolutely, reVisionary.ca is my website. It will be updated at some point soon. It's a little out of date, but it's a great place to connect with me or leadingthroughcrisis.ca you can message me there and that's where my podcast is hosted. Steve Rush: You do quite a lot of promotion via LinkedIn as well. So we'll make sure that those links as well as your podcast links are all in our show notes. Celine Williams: Thank you. That would be perfect. Steve Rush: I always enjoy chatting with you and you know, we share a lot of common interests around the whole concept of change in culture. And thank you for sharing some of your stories and some of your wisdom as part of The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Celine Williams: Thank you for having me, Steve. It was great chatting with you. Steve Rush: Thanks Celine. Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.      

Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze is an internationally recognized coach, leadership development expert, and author of The Unexpected Gift. In this really authentic and wonderful conversation, you can learn: What is the unexpected gift? The 7 steps to the gift. Why when Barbara starts coaching, people have been known to do crazy things. How to find inner focus and inner leadership.   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com   Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA   Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Barbara below: Barbara on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbara-dalle-pezze/ Barbara on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DPBarbaraHK Barbara's Website: https://www.barbaradallepezze.com Barbara on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barbara.dallepezze/   Full Transcript Below: ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze is a special guest on today's show. She's an internationally recognized coach leadership development expert, an author of The Unexpected Gift. Before we get a chance to speak with Barbara, it's The Leadership Hacker News.   Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: In the news today, we explore the notion of productivity and how you can knock out those two minute tasks super quick. In a super busy world, we all have to pay attention to getting the right things done at the right times. Blocking out time in our calendar is great for deep dives and specific tasks, but you might be thinking what about the many tasks that are on our plates each day? The ones that require a few minutes, the ones you can get the quickly done and put to bed. How do we focus on making sure that we prioritize him the right way? Author and productivity consultant David Allen is famous for his Two Minute Rule. And the rule is, if it takes less than two minutes, then do it now. And the reason for this is dead simple, many of these tasks like replying to an email or calling someone back. The effort needed to keep remembering them is even harder and takes up more time. Just think about it for a minute. How many times have you thought about that quick to do, but I'll get round to it moment and then you get distracted or carried away only to find by the end of the day, it's turning to a number of tasks that might take a lot of time. And there are other benefits of knocking out this two minute task rule. One reason is it helps you build momentum while you've enhancing your mood. And studies have shown that crossing off even small tasks from your to-do list or to don't list gives you a boost of momentum and boosts your mood. So by simply recognizing it is a two minute task that we can get done quickly, we stop planning. We engage in the activity and it's gone and we're training our brains to think less and do more, but in a responsible and focused way. The two minute rule is also helpful to declutter your mind as well as your workspace. So instead of holding onto those potential tasks that you might need to do at some point, you clear them out the way so you can focus on what really matters, which is helpful to stop procrastination and improve productivity. Sounds simple enough, but there's one obvious problem. What if the two minute task is completely unrelated to what I need to be doing right now? Worse if something interrupts you or you simply choose to attack it and it takes longer than two minutes. So for Allen two minute rules to work, we need to set some limits. Number one, only work on two minute tasks if they relate to a larger assignment, you are working on, not distracting you. Number two, set aside larger time blocks in your calendar for your two minute tasks, which might be a half an hour section in a day where you can bundle your or two minute tasks together. Number three, immediately decide on your next steps. This might include designing a time in your calendar to do those tasks, or is it something you do now? And my leadership hack on this is dead simple. We all know every day, there are things that we don't know are going to happen, but do. So plan for it, plan for the unexpected and plan for your two minute tasks. So the response is, do it now or do it in my two minute task window. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. We'd love to hear any quirky stories, insights, or news you have from around the world, so please get in touch. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Joining me on the show today is Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze. She's an international recognized coach, leadership development expert and author of her book, The Unexpected Gift, Barbara, welcome to The Leadership Podcast. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Thank you, Steve. It is an honor to be here with you today. Steve Rush: It's my pleasure, and hey, how was my Italian pronunciation of your name? Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: That was awesome. You could be Italian. Steve Rush: Right? Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Yes Steve Rush: Good. So how's Verona today? Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: It's beautiful, it's sunny, we have autumn coming in and the colors are amazing. So I would say perfect day to day. Steve Rush: Great. And as our audience listening from around the world, I can imagine that there is a bit of envy to want to be in Italy with you today. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: It is indeed beautiful these days, so I have to admit. Steve Rush: So we'd love to get into a little bit about your back story, because you came from a very academic perspective and then turned that on its head to do what you do now, but just tell us a little bit about the story. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Yes, so I am Italian and as you say, I do have a background in academia and I have it also in business and actually the two path kind of went together because I started by loving doing research and it was research into understanding more the dynamics that are between human beings and behaviors and understanding more what the human being is about. And while I was doing these, I was researching, I was studying at the same time. I was passionate about crossing over to the corporate world and do training and coaching in corporations because it seemed to me that what I was researching and discovering within my university and academic world could have benefited so much. The business world, and at the time I was in Hong Kong, so a melting pot in a very eclectic place. And it was the perfect situation where I could tap into both worlds. And so, and so I did. And so I did, and it seems strange, but my research was in in philosophy and was also in what is called medical humanities researching on pain and suffering and what I was discovering actually it seems very appropriate to bridge into the corporate world where there were a lot of frustration, difficulties, in managing relationship and managing themselves and sometimes very demanding and painful situation. So I love mix and match. And so I tried to bring everything together and it worked. Steve Rush: Yeah, awesome. And I love the fact that what you studied from an academic perspective is actually the kind of foundations for what you do now in the work that you do now. But I also know from having met with you before that the learning that you were experiencing, the research you were gathering and the work that you were doing was all also going to have to be a really foundational crutch in your personal life, which kind of created that bit of a pivot for you. Just tell us a little bit about that journey. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Yes, you're absolutely right because when all of the above what was happening, I actually moved from my country to Asian, particularly to Hong Kong and at the same time it just happened that my marriage collapsed. And so I found myself in a position where I had to rebuild basically everything, my sense of identity and my future. And I had to do it by being in the midst of a different culture in a different country with different culture. And really what I needed to find out is how can I rebuild myself? How do I find myself again? And how do I imagine my future again? And that was a call to be leader of myself and leading myself into a new territory that was unknown. And I untapped into, I didn't know what I was going towards. And so I decided that I needed tools that at the time I knew I did not have. And so I started studying counseling. I dug deep into psychology and the branch of philosophy that actually helps you to clarify concept, like, what does it mean to be? What does it mean to become? What are the structures of the human being? And by I doing that, that helped me actually to find a way for me to reinvent myself and my life, a new beyond. What I have always believed in and what the culture I was brought in, the frame of references I had, everything was new and I needed to find a way to navigate that newness with new tools. And so that's why I decided, you know what, let's me get some tools and learn. Steve Rush: Do you know what? I particularly like though, is that you actually used yourself as the research method at the time. So you were using your own experiences to kind of heal and to rebuild, and now all of those experiences, you reframe it as an unexpected gift. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Absolutely. Absolutely. Steve Rush: So, as people are listening to this, I suspect they might be thinking. Here's a strong, independent woman who's great in her career. And then she goes to all of this personal tragedy and learning, how do you end up calling it a gift? Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Well, you know, at the beginning it was not at all a gift. At the beginning actually, as you probably imagine, they tell you, well, you will see that this is for your own good. And you are better off like this. I used to get very angry because at the time I did not want at all, [laugh] the divorce to happen. I wanted my marriage to work and I still wanted to be in that marriage. So didn't feel like a gift at all. And however, because my decision was to face what was happening to me and to my life. And as I just said before, trying to find a way to move forward, I allowed for new perspectives, new way feelings, new people coming into my life, new opportunities. And actually in time, I discovered that actually, and that's why I called my book The Unexpected Gift. The Unexpected Gift actually was not the divorce, [Laugh] the unexpected gift was the journey that single event took me on. And the path I walked that was actually paved with what at the time I did not recognize as gifts, but as my emotional state got better, as I quieted down from the inside, as I got back a little bit of peace and harmony, and I was able to kind of turn and look back a little bit on this new path, I could see that actually so many gifts were there and they were in the form of people that I barely knew offering me opportunities. Situation that were created and that were independent. From me, it was not my doing and yet they were there and they gave me opportunities. It was in the form of being in a country like it was at the time Hong Kong that presented lots of opportunities and many, many unexpected situations. People circumstances that in time showed up and became actual gifts and opportunities. Let me give you a very simple example. When this happened, I just finished my PhD and literally it happened the same day I was awarded my PhD that my husband delivered the news, and so that was a shock. And I was in no position to find a job or cultivate my career at the University because I was heartbroken. And what happened is that a person that I just met and then knew about my situation and what happened, introduced to me what I call three angels, because they were three ladies from the British Aristocracy that in order to help me, and look, I did not know these ladies, but wanted to help me. And so they kind of invented that they wanted to learn and speak about Italian culture and philosophy and doing it in Italian. And so they offered to pay me to entertain conversations them about art, politics, culture, all these kind of things in Italian. And so they were like angels because I was like, is it even real that you have people that wants to pay and offer you a job for speaking about these things? And it did happen to me. And so they were my first three angel that helped me to get back on my feet. I had people that I barely know that offered me to stay in their apartment in the center of Hong Kong. And just because they could do that and they had that apartment available. So I didn't have to make an immediate decision on where to move in or where to stay when at a time that I had no clue. So tiny little things like this, they just kept happening. And so if in time I could see how many of these expression I now say of love, and they are those invisible gifts that happen. And you don't recognize them that they are gift when they happen, but then if you pay attention, they are really there. And they are always going on. They are constantly happening. And so that's, why there was a gift, that there was a long answer. Steve Rush: That's a great answer. The thing that's really quite nice is that the whole human spirit can always kick in, in adversity, can't it? And there's always great stories of that. And I wonder how much of that experience early experience for you kind of set you again on that path discovery? Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: If you mean the attitude and the disposition I learned to have towards what was happening. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Definitely it has been the greatest discovery and the greatest gift because it really created disposition so that you are open to receiving. And you really never know what is coming your way. And it is my experience that often what we expect is so much smaller than what actually happens and comes your way. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: And so I think it was for me a great lesson to always be open to what's seemingly impossible because that actually can happen in both ways, right? Steve Rush: Sure. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: In a positive sense and in a negative sense, but yeah. Steve Rush: Yeah, and as a result of that, do you think that, and I'm generalizing here across the global population, as a species, how much of that lack of awareness or lack of opportunity is because we've just got comfortable and in control? Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: I think that a large of it comes down to what you just said. We tend to choose to be comfortable, and we forget that, yes, that comfort is the one that we have managed to achieve to the point where we are comfortable, but there is so much more than what we have experienced already. There is so much more about us, about our life, about possibilities and opportunities. And it is really, I think it really depends on what you eventually want and how ready. And I would say open you are to actually explore and expand yours sense of who you are, and therefore the reality you can create and can be open to. Steve Rush: Whole notion, isn't it? Of the more open you are to opportunities and coincidences, the more coincidences happen. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Yes, and let's say the most difficult part is probably to learn, how do I open up to possibilities? What do I need to transform about myself? What do I need to change in order to allow for opportunities to actually show up? And I say show up, but in fact, they are already there and they are already shining in front of us. It's us that hope, and often we are not refined enough in our ability to be aware of those opportunities, because as we just said, we tend to protect yourself and look for safety instead of actually look closely and be more attentive to what is already there. Steve Rush: And you chronicled all of your experiences into your book, The Unexpected Gift, and you actually created seven steps to the gift to help people on that journey. And I thought it would be really great for us to just spin through those seven steps and maybe get into a few of them. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Absolutely, absolutely. These seven steps are those that actually allowed me to overcome and transform my situation. And very briefly, the first step is of course, to awaken to your own story and actually owning your story. Because as you just said, I was very comfortable [laugh], it was out of a blue that this situation happened. I thought that I was on top of my game. And so it was a shock and clearly I was not really conscious of what was going on in my life and in my then husband's life. So be really conscious in making an effort to be honest, as much as possible as to what is going on in your life and what your reality is about, because then you can expand as we just said before, right. And you can notice what's at the edge and that maybe is not just in front of you, but nonetheless it's there and needs to be taken into account. I am a philosopher and I was a philosopher. And so, my inclination is to be curious and ask questions, somehow that was not enough because clearly there was something that I was not. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Paying enough attention too, right. Those things at the edge. So first step, be conscious and own your own story. So the second step is building radical relationships. And that was for me, was a key element in the experience and in the traumatic experience I went through. And first of all, radical relationships, when I say radical, I mean, those relationships that actually are solid and grounded, and they are unshakable, they can be relationship that you have built in time. I was blessed with very long time relationship of more than 30, 40 years, even which dates me a little bit [laugh], but could be also relationship that you have built in the past year, just one year old relationship. But those people with whom you'd really connect, you are aligned and they actually care and build radical relationship are those is key because when these events traumatic difficult happens and they always happen sometimes. And at the certain point in our life, for me, the key of this radical relationship was that they were able to remind me of who I was and what I was about when I was in no position to remind for myself. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: And that for me was key. And it was key in this very difficult moment. And it was also key when I succeeded and I needed somebody to celebrate with it that I actually was going to be happy for me. So spending time, energy resources to look for relationship that can be transforming to radical relationships and actually build those relationships. It's like really putting a treasure into a bank. And then when the time comes, you can go and get your resources out as radical relationship. Steve Rush: Love it. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: The third step that was for me, very important was finding clarity of mind because when situations like the one I experienced happened to me, there was a lot of confusion in me because what I felt, the way I have thought till that moment, my thoughts. They did not make sense and did not match reality at all in that very moment. And so for me, it was very important to clarify what is actually is going on here, where do I stand? And what can I believe? What can I trust? Because all of these became confused and reality did not make sense for me. I did take a lot of time to find a new level of clarity. That was actually just up to me because in my particular story, unfortunately, then my still husband was not offering me any perspective or any clarity, any reasons for what was happening. And so I had to find somehow clarity within myself. And so I discovered that there is a level of depth at which we can have clarity, no matter what's going on around us. And I have learned to live my life at that level of depth, where clarity was up to me and when it came to others that would bring their elements if they were not willing to do that, that I needed to be okay with that. And so, the third step is finding clarity and distinctions about what was going on that worked for me at the time. And that gave me the minimum level of peace of mind really. The fourth step is what I call enlisting the body. Steve Rush: That sounds nice and deep. Enlist the body. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Yes, it is. And that was an amazing discovery, Steve, because my mind was racing to find a truth that was nowhere to be found. And so the clarity was just talking about, and my body became kind of a night for me because I realized that I needed energy. I needed positive energy, and my mind was not able to provide that. And so in the very difficult situation where I was in this traumatic experience, I did not have a full-time job, that was difficult, but it was also a blessing because I had lots of time to take care of my health and mental health and also physical health. So my body, I actually decided to literally leverage my body and the energy could produce. So I would spend hours hiking because I realized that the more I was hiking, the more I was sweating, the more the pain was residing a little bit and the endorphins were produced. And so a sense of normalcy started to appear again within me. And it was amazing because, as an author would say, traditionally built. So I'm not a petite woman. And so I do have a lot of energy and using the energy of my body and my muscles to actually work for me in this case. It was amazing, and just to give you an example. I would really walk for four to five hours a day. That was how much I needed to walk in order to get a sense of a relief a little bit. And I had found a job after the three angels experience ended, in the evening, teaching in the evening. And so during day I would walk, in the evening, I would go and teach for three or four hours. And by the time I would go home, that was the most painful time when you are alone and you go back into an empty apartment and you realize the life you had is no more there. And every night was a reminder of it. The fact that I used my body so much, I worked out so much and it kept me awake all day. At night, basically the body will drag all of us to sleep. My mind wanted to still ask the questions. No, the body's too tired. Let's go to sleep. My heart was in pain, no way, the body would drag us to sleep. And so it was an amazing blessing to discover this body of mine. And still to today, I keep going with this routine, not five hours a day, but keep the body in the picture is very important. Steve Rush: It fuels so much other things as well, like sleep. So you just said that, you know, rather than having those things stew over, your body goes now is time to sleep and therefore you get double recovery don't you from that? Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Absolutely. Absolutely. And there was no way that my mind could contradict the body. No, we are going to sleep. The body would say. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: [laugh] and I would just collapse because I was too tired. So that was a blessing in itself. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: [Laugh], so at the last three steps, I will be quick. So the number five is partnering with mentors. Mentors to me, they were unexpected mentors and they are what I called the giant of the soul. And I found mentors in books and the books that tell the story of survivors and particularly survivors of the Second World War in concentration camps. And the reason I found in them, my mentors is, because people around me, my friends, my families, my colleagues, although they wanted to be close to me and help me, they did not go through such a profound painful situation. And so somehow they could not reach me and help me and be close to me at that level of depth. And I needed to feel like I belonged to a group of people that actually understood really what I was going through because I felt I was at war when all of these happened. And so I discovered that reading about the story of people at survive, the atrocity of war or genocides in Africa, for example, those were the people that were actually helping me a lot. And so I started reading all those kinds of books and I started learning from them. How they were they thinking during their experiences were? What did they do? What did they rely upon? And I learned from them and I felt that I belong to that community. Not that I am comparing my painful situation with theirs, not at all, but exactly because theirs was so much more painful and more tragic and more difficult if they made it, if they succeeded, they were the voice from the future I wanted to listen to and I wanted to learn from, and so I did. In fact, after going through their stories and reading and learning from them, that's when then eventually the shift happened in me because I was looking at their stories as voices from the future. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: And I was learning and they taught me how to look differently at my life and myself and the future. And that was an authoritative voice, [laugh]. It was great, I was so grateful that I was able to learn from that in that manner. Giant, giant of the soul. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: That's what they were. Number six is forward in the future because at that point I was free to look at a future that I did not want at first, I did not know what it was. It was completely different from what I've always imagined and until that point, it was very scary for me to look at my future and imagine what it could have been like, because I had no clue what it could look like. I've always thought I will be married, I will have kids, I will have my career, and that would be it. And now, here I am, not married, I don't have kids. And my career is in the making. And so I needed to learn how to be in a new world as a new person. But by then, I was able to make the step into that new future. And I started to imagine in a new way. And therefore I started to forward the future and started to make it happen and bring it to life because then I was ready and step seven, which is a crown to all of these is what I call paying it forward to complete a healing process. To complete this path of renewal and transformation essential is that I could pay it forward. So all people that have helped me throughout this journey, and they have done it just out of share love and willingness to make me feel better or contribute. I needed to pay it back. And so part of what I do now, and my life is always having this very clear in front of me that I need to pay it forward. And so when the opportunity comes, I want to do it. So, what these people have done for me, I am going to do it to somebody else that it might be in need, and there is something I can do to help. And that is actually the crown, as I said, of these path and all of this become a gift. Steve Rush: And you're paying it forward that gift, by the way, you're paying forward by just sharing that story with us today. So it's just amazing. And I love the way that you've kind of been able to create that almost flow of activity to get you to the state and space you're in now. So well then you Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I could not, not do it, [Laugh]. Steve Rush: Yeah, and that paying forward is also now a huge part of the work that you do through coaching and supporting other people. And ironically, I remember when we spoke last, you were telling me that you often come with a bit of a health warning when people get to coach with you, because, you know, I remember you telling me that one person said to you at one stage. When Barbara starts coaching, people start resigning, be careful. Is that part of that kind of unlocking people? And is that part of that process? Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Actually, I think it is because after going through my story actually, [laugh], and my story made me who I am. For me, it is essential that the people I work with, in order for them to fulfill and to feel that they are living their purpose, they do need to be aligning. They need to own their stories. They need to be connected to who they are at that moment in time when I meet them and be authentically who they are and align with their core values. And often if this is not the case, and for example, in the situation they are in, and the job they are in, they are not aligned. Then they are not in alignment with who they are really. And that's also what caused them to be frustrated or not being fulfilled or being actually in pain, because it often happens. If you want to regain efficiency, a level of wellbeing that you do need to function and to be creative and generative in your work and the people you lead, you do need to be connected with who you are at a very deep level. And when these happens, situation shifts and change. I don't know if I mentioned to you, but I mention it now because it is a beautiful story. I was working in China with a top executive. She was heading the sales of a big chain company in China. And she has been doing that for many years. She was financially free by then and still very young, but she was not happy, she was a woman. And we started working together and we worked together for one year, bit less than one year. And eventually what ended up being for her is that I don't to work in this position in this company anymore. What I actually I want to do, that I've always postponed it. And that is something that I really care about. And now I am in a position of doing, but she didn't have the courage to do. She wanted to go and spend time with penguin and research on penguin in Antarctica. And so, that's what she decided to, that it was time to do. And so she decided to quit her job and to transform completely her life following what she did not have the courage to follow with before. And that was the result of just helping her reconnect with what she really wanted to do and who she really wanted to be. Steve Rush: Awesome. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: And that she did not have the opportunity, the courage, and it was perhaps not the right moment before, but it became the right moment. So this is kind of an extreme situation. Not saying that it's always happening Steve Rush: Just for anybody who's considering hiring Barbara as a coach, your team are safe. Nobody's going to be, you know, leaving in droves. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Thank you, Steve. Steve Rush: You're welcome. I just thought it was worthwhile putting a little bit of a public warning message out there just in case everybody's thinking, blimey, I'm not hiring Barbara. On the contrary, what you are talking about with Barbara is purpose, right. Finding people's purpose, and we all need that in our lives and our work. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Yes. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Absolutely, that is what motivates us, right? Steve Rush: Absolutely. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: And even if we are not connected with our purpose, we can push our self. We can strive to obtain results and we do, but the cost and the energy and actual, the actual results are not as well rounded and as great as they could be if we were connected to our purpose. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: So, yeah. Steve Rush: So you've been doing some traveling, taking some time out, but what's next for you and your work? Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Well more and more, well, hopefully I will resume the traveling as soon as the situation settles a little bit more. And that continues to be important because for me is a source of creativity and learning from diversity for me, it's key. So I always am in a curious and in a learning. I want to help the other, you wanted to keep learning from others, right? So traveling is there for me and more and more working to help people and my client overcome and transform relationship conflict. And when I say relationship conflict is also because what I mean, and I tell you in a minute. Due to the fact that the situation we have been living has put a lot of pressure into relationships, all kinds of relationship. Relationship that we have at work, relationship that we have at home and in family and all relationship become core in the way we live our life and we can achieve results. So more and more, even because of my experience, I want to help people overcome and transform relationship conflicts into opportunities, opportunities for change, to reconnect with a purpose that people might be scared to look at. And from there actually working towards developing the leadership, I don't know even makes sense all of this, but starting from a relationship. Steve Rush: Everything is a relationship, isn't it? Whether you're at work or at home. And they're so connected that if your relationships at home are not great, then you are not going to perform at work. If your relationships are home are great, but they're not at work. You're going to take that back. And then one in impacts the other, doesn't it? Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Yes, and particularly now that, the hybrid kind of working, right, we might be working remotely more than before. We don't go to the office as we used to before. Become expert and capable of mastering, actually relationship at a distance. It is an art and we need to learn it more and more because it is too important. As you say, everything is relationship, and the means to which we relate to each other and connect, and the way we interact has changed. And we need to learn the art of relating to ourselves and others, I believe. Steve Rush: Yeah, I concur. So, you know, Barbara, at this stage, the cadences of the show is, we get to turn the lens a little bit, and I'm going to tap into your leadership mind and try and get all of the life's lessons and work lessons into your top three leadership hacks. What would they be? Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Wow, condensing it into three. Steve Rush: Yeah, it's a tough gig. I know that. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: So I would say, first, do the inner work, do really the inner work and discover all that influences who you are and how you behave and how you feel. I call it the inner work of leadership. The second is collaboration, collaboration beyond differences. So cultural differences, gender differences, age differences, learn to collaborate in all kinds of possible directions, because I believe that's the future as well. Given that differences are many and are there, and at the same time it is as if they're are, the differences are, don't play a role because we need to connect and relate beyond differences and collaborate beyond differences. And the third, I would say humility, we need to relearn to be humble. And by saying humble, I don't mean that we need to be hesitant in doing things or don't need to be aggressive or this kind of thing. When I say humility and learn to be humble, it means to recognize that in order to move forward, in order to make situations better, we do need the help of others and from many different others. And so we cannot be arrogant anymore and pretend that's all up to me, but become aware and conscious that actually everything I do is supported and is made possible, but the contribution of others even if I'm not aware of it. So I think that these three, inner work, collaboration beyond differences and humility would be the three top tips ideas. Steve Rush: So next part share, we call it Hack to Attack. Now you've already had the head start on this one because your unexpected gift is undoubtedly a Hack to Attack, but we kind of frame this in where something in our life and work hasn't worked out well, but that event has now created a positive in our life and our work. So outside of your unexpected gift, there any other gifts that have become Hack to Attack for you? Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: I don't know if this is a gift, but I think it's a funny story, [Laugh] that I like to say. When I was deciding what I would become, right. And starting at the university and what would I be? Architect was a possibility because my family business, my father is an architect and he has always had a very, successful practice. And so I was supposed to become an architect. And at a certain point, I started for a couple of years, architecture. And then I decided, you know what? I cannot build houses and studying the materials, the mathematics of building houses or buildings, if I don't know how a human being is built. So the people that will inhabits the house [laugh]. And so, I just decided to leave the studies I was doing at the university. So I stopped studying architecture and I moved to philosophy. And when that happened, it was kind of a tragedy because [laugh], what would Barbara do given that the business here was already set up and successful and the rest was to be built and fast forward. Now everybody is saying, we are so lucky that Barbara didn't study architecture [laugh] because the houses that would come up will be very strange because my sense of the measurement are really funny. And so now it is a joke around here that luckily Barbara stand up for what she believed in, [laugh]. Steve Rush: Managed to preserve the architecture of her own. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: [Laugh] exactly. It would've been at risk, so [laugh]. Steve Rush: Awesome. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: And I say this, which means that I learned that really what you need to stand up for, what you believe in, and trust your intuition, even if people around you are against you and don't understand it because eventually time [laugh] showed me that was the right thing to do. Steve Rush: And that's the hack right there, isn't it? Listen to that intuition. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Exactly. Steve Rush: Yeah, and the last part of the show, we get to give you an opportunity to do some time travel and you can bump in to Barbara at 21 and give her any advice in the world. What would it be? Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Wow, I think that it goes back to what I said at the beginning of this conversation. I would tell Barbara at 21 to be open to the seemingly impossible because it does happen. It can happen and you better be open to it both in the positive sense as well as in the negative, but be open to what is seemingly impossible and don't limit yourself to what you can imagine, but really learn to go beyond your imagination. I think that I would say that to Barbara at 21. Steve Rush: And I think she would think that would be great advice as well. So how can we connect our audience with the work you are doing? And maybe let them get a copy of The Unexpected Gift. Where's the best place to send them? Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: They can connect with me on LinkedIn. I am quite active there and they can write to me and I will be happy to send them my book or if they prefer the Kindle version it is available on Amazon, the Kindle version, or they can connect with me through my website, my name, barbaradallepezze.com Steve Rush: You sound so much better than when I pronounced it earlier. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Oh, no, you pronounce it very well actually, Steve. Steve Rush: And we'll make sure that we put those links in our show notes as well for you. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Thank you very much Steve Rush: Barbara, it's been wonderful talking to you. I love the fact that you've taken your life's lessons and it is now created a great and successful future for you. And I just wanted to say grazie for being on our show. Dr. Barbara Dalle Pezze: Oh, that's amazing, prego. It was really an honor and a pleasure, Steve. Thank you for having me and really you have a great show here. Steve Rush: Thanks Barbara. Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.    

Kevin McCarney is a successful entrepreneur, owner of the restaurant chain, Poquito Mas, public speaker, and mentor. He's also the author of Big Brain Little Brain. Kevin has managed to flip neuroscience into easy to digest language. You can learn about: Neurological responses in our big brain and little brain. What the Little Brain Activators and Big Brain Boosters are and how we could use them. How to “find neutral” and execute awesome communication. How to avoid little brain baggage words and make sure every day is a big brain day. Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Find out more about Kevin below: Kevin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-mccarney-5989a92b/ Kevin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigbrainlegacy Big Brain Little Brain Website: https://bigbrainlittlebrain.com Kevin on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigbrainlittlebrain/ Keving on FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/BigBrainLegacy   Full Transcript Below ----more----  Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Today's special guest is Kevin McCarney. He's a successful entrepreneur, restaurant chain owner, speaker, and mentor. He's also the author of Big Brain Little Brain, but before we get a chance to speak with Kevin, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: There's a communications theme in today's show. So having spoken to hundreds and hundreds of leaders around the world, we've distilled the top five communication hacks to get us going. For many of us and for many companies and industries around the world, communication has changed drastically. And for many of us, our tried and tested communications methods may no longer work as they used to. Now, this might not seem like a big deal, right? But considering how many online collaboration tools there are available, even the choice of your online tool can make a difference to how you are communicating based on quality and experience. And when we change our communications channels, we fundamentally change how we also communicate whether that's conscious or unconscious. So, in the transit to remote working, we all knew video would be an important thing. And a lot of us still try to avoid using video. If we've had a bad hair day or feeling lousy, or we just want to put some really casual clothes on, but think of how many video conference calls you've had, where most of the participants have kept the camera off, what's happening for you unconsciously? Well, Tracy Brower, author of The Secrets to Happiness at work says it's a mistake to avoid using video. And she outlines those reasons as. Video demonstrates responsibility, communicates confidence, will help build trust and rapport, will help you engage, and video can make you memorable to other people. And Tracy goes on to explain, of course, video may not be appropriate all of the time, but situations where it's preferable, take the advantage of making yourself known. When we start skipping into writing, many of our in-person conversations have turned into emails, Ms Teams messages, texts, notes, and project management apps, and intuitively we tend to send simple texts or messages. But the problem is, that you lose a lot of contexts when you turn your verbal words into text. Business Communications Expert, James Chapman explains what this means. And he says, we can't see smiles or friend expressions. We can't hear a person's voice when we read an email, we're missing the details that help us perceive the mood of the moment. All we see are blunt words, black and white. Lacking is an important visual and audrey cues, makes us fill in the gaps. So, hacks when writing? Ask don't tell, direct instructions can often seem as demands, try and avoid using exclamation points or overusing them. But if you do want to make a sentence sound upbeat or happy, then that's the right time to make a statement appear less flat, start your message with a disclaimer. If you're given feedback or addressing a difficult topic, start with a sentence that says you are writing with kindness and a smile, positivity helps. When you're communicating, explain your intent. And it might seem obvious, but there is a real short of digital body language when you were online and on our Teams or Zoom or Slack meetings. And because there are less physical cues to clarify our intent, people assign meaning to all sorts of non-verbal things that we are trying to say, but do so unconsciously. So, the hack here is by stating intent early, people understand where this comes from, where the message comes from, and it removes the ability for them to start deciphering their own meaning of what you're trying to say. Use storytelling to make your message more engaging, think of how many dull meetings you been into it where just didn't really get to understand what the desired outcome would be. The hack here is to zoom out, to think bigger before we go deeper. And sometimes we get so enamored in the deliverable. We lose sight of the larger story or the larger strategy, and we focus too much on the detail and sure detail is incredibly important, but if people understand how it connects to a bigger story, they're more likely to pay attention and more likely to take action. And finally focus on your communications by creating an experience. Jennifer McClure, CEO of UN Bridal Talent and disrupt HR said, that the adoption of a new communication tech wasn't always a strategic, it could have been. Jennifer says that a major failure of adding in new communication technologies is they're often implemented without a clear goal, which leaves holes in our internal communications and other communications tools get added to patch these up and in turn, it makes a mess of the whole communication system, but as communicators, we own it. It's up to us to create an experience that unifies the people that are paying attention. So, use one platform, but use other tools if they add value, if they don't, ditched them. That's been The Leadership Hacker news today. We always love hearing your stories. So please continue to get in touch. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Kevin McCarney is our special guest on today's show. He's a successful entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Poquito Mas chain of restaurants. He's a speaker, mentor and author, and his latest book is called Big Brain Little Brain. Kevin, we'd delighted to have you on the show. Kevin McCarney: Pleasure to be here Steve. Thank you so much for your time. Steve Rush: So, you have a really great story to tell, and I'd love to kind of get to a little bit about how you arrived and what you're doing today, because it's not a traditional route that you took and actually involved a little bit of an epiphany along the way. So maybe tell us a little bit about the backstory? Kevin McCarney: Yeah, thank you very much. Well, I grew up with a very, very big family where winning the argument was the right of passage. I had four older brothers, two younger sisters and my parents and we we're constantly arguing about different things. And I learned how to win the argument. I learned how to deal with lots of different situations because we moved so much. I think we moved eight times before it was eleven. And so, I got used to reading people before I could even read a book. And I went to work early and I got a job at Universal Studios when I was about 19 and I became a tour guide there and I thought, oh, this is really cool. All I have to do is say the same thing every day, and I'm good, right? And I don't really have to pivot very much. I don't have to think really. And so, it's like, it was fun for me, but then, it was one particular day, you know, I'm this 19-year-old snarky kid. And there was a really hot day. The trams were breaking down because it was over 110 degrees. And all of a sudden, I got a call over the speaker, Kevin, tram on the right. They're all yours. It's a group from Europe, they are not happy, good luck. So, with that, I walk down the tram and I try to make smiles and say hello to people. And they are arms crossed, brow furrow, they were just not going to look at me at all. I get to the front and the leader of the group grabs my arm. He said, take us back to the bus. We don't want to do this anymore. You can't do this to us, and I looked at him. I said, sir, that's way above my pay grade, but you're going to have to sit down because we're moving. And the driver heard me, immediately started moving the van, and this is a three-car tram. So, I have 128 people on this thing. And they're all looking at me like they're angry at me. Like I'm the one who's responsible. And so, my immediate snarky, 19-year-old self-asked the gentleman to sit down, he did, but he looked at me. He says, well fine, but we are not going to have a good time. You cannot make us laugh. We will not enjoy this. And so, I looked at this and I said, okay, in my mind, my snarky 19-year-old says, oh, this is just another argument to win. Right? I'm going to win this argument. I'm just not going to give them a good tour. I'm not going to point things out. I'm not going to show them different things that they've paid to see. I'm not going to do that. And then in the front row of the second car was a family from the Midwest who was completely sunburn like everybody else because of the time in the sun. And they had big smiles on their face and they had t-shirts from the football team that they liked. So, I could see where they were from, but they were smiling at me. And I looked at them and I didn't realize that in a split second, I just made a decision like, wow. Instead of giving a really snarky tour, I'm going to give this family the best tour I can because they're there to have a good time. And so that's what I did. And I began to give that tour to them slowly but surely the people around them came along on the tour and they all started laughing by the end of the tour. Everybody was having a good time and laughing except for the grumpy leader. But it was amazing to me that I didn't even know I had that in me. I didn't know that in a pressure situation, I pivoted from being this kid who wanted to get back at this group to somebody who wanted to make these four people happy because they were smiling. And so, the group said goodbye to me. They were very friendly. But the family waited to speak to me. The father looked at me, said, son, you really turned that group around. Because they were not happy. And I looked at the family and I said, no, you turned them around you. Your smiles gave me permission to switch completely, to a different attitude. And I said, I was going to give completely different tour. It was not going to be friendly. It was not going to be nice. But instead, I gave that tour and the mother of, I can feel her hand to this day, puts her hand on my shoulder. She said, well, I want to thank you for choosing to give us that tour because, we can never were afforded to be in California again. This is the only time and this just made our vacation. Wow, so, I had no idea the power that I had, even as a tour guide, doing my job on these people's life. Steve Rush: It's an amazing story, Kevin, isn't it? You think about the whole principle behind what makes people tick? You could have changed and made a bad day for dozens of people, right? Kevin McCarney: Oh, so many and myself included because what I didn't see until the end, there was one of my supervisors getting off the back row of the tram, because he was auditing me to see how well I was doing. So, you can imagine where my career would've gone and it's a good idea for everything in life, you know, you don't know who's listening sometimes, but in this case, it was a lesson to me. She said chose, that stuck with me for a long time. I'm trying to understand what's happening in pressure situations where you can pivot from one attitude to another one in a split second under pressure. And what I realized and I started doing so much more research on this, which was one of the Genesis of the book, I started making notes on throughout my entire career is how people handle different situations. Steve Rush: What I particularly love about the story, because you tell it in the book is, you've described throughout the book, actually this whole kind of neurological response to how people deal with communication, except you've done it from a non-medical, non textbook perspective and used your own life choices and experiences in playing it back for people to understand in simple terms, right? Kevin McCarney: Yes, absolutely. I started my own restaurant company after that, did a bunch of stuff, then started my company and I realized, okay, I'm learning this stuff myself, how I can manage any particular situation, I can handle pressure. Now, how do I teach my team how to do that? How do I teach other people how to handle these situations? And use a really important segment there, a non-medical, a non-academic language. So, it was easy for people to grasp and they could see it, rather than sounding like, oh, I'm going to use these fancy words. I want to use everyday language so that it made sense in everyday situation. Steve Rush: And I guess that's where the whole notion of Big Brain Little Brain comes from, right? Kevin McCarney: Exactly, and I did enough research to where I started asking everybody and friends of mine, physicians and stuff like that, and you know, it really comes down too, you know, when people drink, their big brain gets cut off from their little brain. The little brain is that reptilian fight or flight brain. And the big brain is that neocortex, all the smart stuff that we know, we know what the right thing is. And what you realize is do different influences, whether they're chemical or environmental have an impact on the way we communicate. Our communication is in constant state of evolution. We're learning from the people around us, but one of the things I noticed and I started really understanding is that the big brain is that brain that's in control. It's genuine, it's thoughtful, its kind, it's a good listener, and it builds trust when you communicate with the big brain. The little brain is that impulsive, sarcastic, snarky, selfish. The brain that snaps back, just a slightest provocation and a really poor listener, and it creates mistrust. And the difference between these two worlds is you're going to have a peaceful life or you're going to have a life that's going to have a lot of bumps of chaos in it. And little brain will create chaos, where big brain will try to come in and clean it up. But if you use your big brain to begin with, you have a much smoother path ahead. Steve Rush: One of the things you said at the top of the show really interested me actually, and it plays on that whole notion of how you read people before you read books. And that's kind of ironic because it turns out that you are dyslexic, and therefore actually you had to rely more on your unconscious behaviors playing out and reading people than you would've done, perhaps working around text and stuff. How much of that did you notice was developing into something over time? Kevin McCarney: You know, so much in growing up. That's exactly what I did. And one of the things that I got really good at reading and again, I didn't read my first book until I was 21. And I was convincing from a friend of mine because I was just so frustrated with the words and everything. But what I got really good was reading tone and I realized how important tone was to every communication. And tone's very difficult in a digital age because I don't think emojis quite give you the tone that they're intended. And so, what I really got to learn was, how much the tone is the message of what you're saying, because you can say the same words in a different tone and they mean something completely different. Steve Rush: Right. Kevin McCarney: I walked into my house one time, 19-hour day. I just want to get in there, sit down and grab some water and relax. And there's 25 choir kids jumping up and down and singing at the top of their lungs. I hadn't known about this meeting, but I opened the door and it's like, okay, what have we got going here? Right. That's what I said, because I had trained myself in situations. But can you imagine if I walked in and went, okay, what do we have going here? Same exact words, but the message to the audience is completely different. And I can tell you, my daughters appreciated the first tone because that's the one I used. And what you really understand, especially as a parent, but also with employees. The tone is the message. And if you can control your tone, you can control the conversation. You can maneuver any conversation. And the most important part of that is that tone is usually the first thing that begins to escalate in a conversation that turns it into a confrontation. Steve Rush: Yeah. Kevin McCarney: I had four, older brothers, I had to get good at this, right. So, I got really good at managing my tone and pulling other people into my tone instead of following them into their little brain tone. Steve Rush: And you call out in the book actually, little brain activators and big brain boosters, right? Kevin McCarney: Yes, that's correct, yeah. Steve Rush: Got it. So, what are they and how would we use them? Kevin McCarney: Little brain and in the book, we have the little brain words in that, but it really comes down too, what people think about you is the last impression that you made on them. So, if you're thinking about, oh, I want to use this company for doing some editing or something and you're thinking, oh, you know what, let me think about which company, and you go to that company and your first thought is going to be the last impression that person made on you, not the first impression, but the last impression. So, if the last impression was that person's rude or disrespectful or abrasive, you're going to be switching to, you know what, let me look at somebody else because what happens is, when we get activated and it could be something as minor as somebody disrespecting our favorite football team and all of a sudden, we think, well, I have to fight for my football team and I have to say something back or it could be cutting off in traffic. Somebody cuts you off and I have to go after them or just somebody being loud in a movie theater. And I think that these are all little everyday situations that if we allow them to annoy us, it gives little brain a lot of power over what we're going to say. So, the idea is, yes, there's going to be things that annoy you and bother you every day. And it could be all these little things. It could be anything at work. It could be things that have been piling up. But if you allow any of these everyday situations to turn that annoyance into a confrontation, then it's because you haven't taken control of that moment. And that's the whole idea buying Big Brain, Little Brain is keep Big Brain in control. Keep Little Brain out of the conversation. Steve Rush: I remember when we first met Kevin, we talked about this whole notion. One of the things that I found really inspirational is your ability to what you call finding neutral. And often that's the bit between where people are activated, triggered, other language in other walks of life. And that emotional response kicks in, is often then too late to tap into your big brain. But you find this bit in the middle called neutral. And I think that's a really essential part, then isn't it, how we then learn how to respond, right? Kevin McCarney: Exactly. And as we mature, we get better at it. And the more we use neutral, the more natural it becomes for us in these situations like where, you know, I walked in and I got surprised, or you get surprised at work with somebody ambushed you with a report. They want you to do anything. But if you can get to neutral and you know, Victor Frankl who survive four different concentration camp, wrote 29 books on human behavior. He had the best line on that. She said between stimulus and response, there's a space. And in that space is our power to choose our response. Steve Rush: Right, yeah. Kevin McCarney: Very much like I chose to give a better tour. And I didn't even know about Victor Frankl at the time. We have a choice, no matter what pressure we're under, whatever somebody has done, somebody's poking us or prorogating us. We still have a choice. And we talk about the fight or flight brain all the time and media and stuff like that. Oh, it's fight or flight, but it's much deeper than that. There's another part of that whole idea is neutral between fight and flight, there is neutral and between and neutral is where you get to pivot and decide where you're going to go. And flight doesn't always mean running away. Sometimes it means stepping out of the way of a problem and fighting doesn't mean you're always going to be confrontational as much as you're going to stand up for yourself if you need to. But the idea behind getting to neutral and having a neutral word and my neutral word as you heard is okay, right. I practice saying, okay, in a very positive tone of voice, because even if, no matter when I'm surprised, I'm going to use my neutral word or my neutral phrase, and we give a whole example in the book. People keep sending me their neutral words. One of them is already or oh really, or interesting, or gosh. Any of these phrases or whatever one people have. And I believe everybody has their own neutral word already. They just don't see it as a tool, and it's a wonderful tool because if you can get to neutral under pressure, it's an immediate awareness that, oh, I had better not let my little brain finish this conversation because it's going to create a problem for me that I got to clean up. That's I got to bring my big brain into here to finish this off. That's what neutral is. And more you use neutral. The more you use that neutral word, the better you're going to be, because it's going to make you stronger and stronger. Steve Rush: So, the Importance of having a neutral word is really essential, isn't it? Cause without it, I guess you would then trigger more little brain activators. Kevin McCarney: Yes, exactly. And I think that what will happen is, you fall into a little brain cycle of, oh, what's the next little brain thing I can use or say, if you don't realize, because the neutral gives you the awareness that you need in that moment. You use your little brain, somebody else is going to respond with their little brain and you just get into a little brain cliche war of talking back and forth and you're get completely off top and you get away from even the conversation you were in, you get more into a reactionary comment. Steve Rush: And without that, can you still get into neutral or does access to big brain become really difficult? Kevin McCarney: No, you can get into neutral at any point. Let's say you've gone down the road a little bit and you may one or two little snarky comments, as soon as you become aware of that, you can go, oh, you know, I probably shouldn't have said it like that. Let me rephrase that. Let me go back. And that's where big brain takes over because it really does. You're constantly evolving in that conversation. You're constantly going to have different moments of awareness, but if you can know that your neutral word is, I see, or oh really? Or you want to take some time and let's say somebody pushed pressure on you. Well, what do you think right now? And in the book, we have a section where we talk about time parachute. Giving you a little time before you answer a question. And, you know, one of the things that I don't like to do is when somebody pushes me, answer this now, right? I go, you know what, I need a little more time to ponder that. That's a really interesting thing. Let me think about that. Let me give that some more thought, let me give it the thought it deserves. Something like a time parachute, gets you out of a lot of sticky situations when you get into them. And I think it's one of those graceful exits that keeps you out of little brain. Steve Rush: It's also gets you straight to neutral. Kevin McCarney: Yes, exactly. And it's a tone of voice. As I never realized how critical it was, but if you watch any movie or any TV, you'll see how manipulative tone can be. Steve Rush: So, in the virtual world, how have you seen this change? So obviously you can hear tone, but I wondered if you could see tone through the way people are typing or the way that they are using emojis in the digital world. Kevin McCarney: Great question. It's more to difficult now than ever because tone is usually decided by the person reading the message, right? So whatever mood they're in, they're going to decide the tone that you wrote that in, whether it is not that tone or not, which is why I always tell people if they get a little brain email from somebody or the little bring text from somebody, instead of trying to out little brain them or out comment them in a text, pick up the phone and just say you know what, or say just say, you know what, can we talk? You know, can we have a conversation? Break away from that medium into a different medium? So, you can really have the time because it's hard to read tone in text, it's just almost impossible, but some people are really good at it. But most people, when it comes to the quickness of communication today, I think the internet has made everybody so fast and impulsive and how quick they think they need to respond. And one of the things we discuss is, no. You don't need to respond right away, give yourself some time, process some of the comments, especially in a business environment or even a family environment where you get an email where somebody was obviously upset or frustrated, you know, it's a good idea to ponder for a little bit before you respond to that. And it really is, go to neutral and think what's the best response I can have for this person in this moment, in this particular communication. Steve Rush: I'd never really joined the dots together actually in so much as when you receive written word, you read it in your own emotive state. Of course, you do. But actually, now you've said it out loud, it makes loads of sense. And that's why lots of people read same text and get a different message, right? Kevin McCarney: Yes, absolutely. And I've been the guilty party on several of those over the years. And I think that one of the things, and I've also been a receiver of so many where I look at something now and I really train myself. And I think that when it comes to communication, we have to constantly being the state of improving, evolving, and training ourselves to get better. We have to practice our verbal muscle memory really to get better at how we respond to different things. And I'm grateful that I've had the time to sort of focus on this for the last several years. Steve Rush: And to help that muscle memory as well in the book you call out some little brain baggage words. I just wonder if you could share to our listeners what they are and how we could maybe use them to help our communication? Kevin McCarney: Yeah, what we call out in the book, there's seven different areas of communication where all these different principles show up that I talk about, whether it's control, tone, words, time, responsibility, power, and awareness. These are the seven areas where all these things can show up, but little brain, again, little brain. These baggage words is the last impression you made. And it's the last thing you said, or the last interaction you had with that person. And so, if your little brain you're going to have under control, you're going to rude. And, you may have under tone, you may have disrespectful and words, abrasive. People know this stuff, they remember this, they remember the little brain component of your last communication, more than they remember the big brain component, because they'll remember if you were immature or snarky, they'll remember that, and a big brain, you know, legacy words, you know, you've got to work harder to make people remember those, whether it's sincerity or trusting or welcoming, considerate, it is two different worlds when it comes to what people think about you. And it really is, you know, essentially your reputation is online with every communication that you do Steve Rush: To your knowledge and experience, is the reason why we can remember little brain words more because it sits in the emotional part of our brain rather than the logical part of our brain? Kevin McCarney: Absolutely, and again, with tone, but a lot of these words are how they make us feel. And the negative feelings are definitely more prominent and it sits there a little bit longer. And, you know, I think that you can erase these words by the way, you can get rid of the negative little brain baggage words by recognizing, oh, with this person. The last time I talked to them, I think I was a little bit rude. So next time I talked to them, I'm going to start off with, you know what, hey, by the way, apologize for last time, I think I was a little snarky or something. You can just take it away. And that's the beautiful thing about, anybody that you've had a difficult communication with. You can go back and look where you may have made a mistake and you can undo it. You can erase it by, going in and literally addressing it and dealing with it so they can say, oh yeah, okay. I remember that, but he said something and he's he apologized or they said, oh yeah, it was for a different reason. The idea is, you always have control over this communication. Even if you said something wrong, you can go back and fix it. Steve Rush: So, I guess falling into the trap of little brain language, little brain words, and baggage words, that's natural behavior because we've learned that way of doing things. And we've learned a response set in response to different emotions or events. So how can we make sure that we are spending more time in the big brain? Kevin McCarney: Well, I think the first thing you can do is, every day you can take a look at where you're at and recognize it. You get up in the morning, you go, okay, what's going on today? Is anything wrong physically? Is there anything bothering you emotionally? What are some of the outside influences that might be controlling you today? And so, if you go through that and go, yeah, you know what? I got this report due and I'm of anxiety. Just go through, and there's a whole list in the book, check them off. There're eight little areas, check them off to make sure that if you know, you've got something, a situation that's going to go into little brain, you know, that going in, which means you can stay in big brain much longer. And it really is a daily checklist of making sure you can do that. The other thing I think is the most important thing is every day, wake up with the idea that if you control your tone, you control your life. Steve Rush: I like that, very powerful, the same words, different tone, different outcome. Kevin McCarney: Yeah, different outcome completely. And that's the greatest lesson, because you know, I've seen it so many times and I've given so many presentations to different groups and you watch sometimes when you talk about neutral, you see light bulbs go off. I have people practice their tones. I go, okay, say this word in an angry tone. Now say this word in a pleasant tone. And when you really use a little bit of tone training, all of a sudden you get people immediately to become aware, oh, and it's because we're not taught this in school or when we are growing up, we gather our information on communication by the environments we're in. And if the environment doesn't teach us, then we've got to go out and find it somewhere else. Steve Rush: So, here's the thing. It's a really interesting point you just come across. Actually, I've had this conversation with a number of people over time. What's the reason we don't teach this stuff at school? Kevin McCarney: You know, I think interpersonal communication is sometimes seen as it's not academic. And it's not something that people have paid attention too. My local school, just beginning to pay attention, because you know, everybody's talking about mindfulness, right? Well, mindfulness begins with the way you communicate. And I'm pushing them to do something along the lines of getting people to communicate. And again, not just about, you know, how to handle confrontations or things like that, but really how to communicate more effectively. And I think from an academic standpoint, they're looking at curriculum and that's all they have time to deal with. So, it's outside the curriculum, and I've spoken at a school every year, locally here to this group of kids because they want this message for that group. And it's outside the curriculum, but it's inside the school. And it's really beginning to help. I think it would be wonderful if more people could do this because you're right. I just think that the academic world is not their fault as much as they're not necessarily aware of this. And even my book, isn't going to be seen by an academic culture as, oh yeah. Even though it's laid out where you can teach this, it's going to be, they have to understand it's not based upon some academic school, this is street psychology. This is observational life psychology. And it's not about white coats and animals testing or putting wires on people. This is everyday life and it's more difficult for people to accept. Steve Rush: And ironically, the more academia we have it's put into work in everyday life, which is the, where the rubber really hits the road. So actually, what you have in absolute terms is the effect of all of that psychology going on, which I think is why it plays out so well. Kevin McCarney: Yeah, I think it does. We have to always understand that we're evolving in our communication every day and every situation and every environment we're in and we can get better at it. And I think that everybody has the ability to get at communicating. And I think that's going to be the challenge. I think that one of my favorite stories is my own story where, you know, I got much better at tone after my five-year-old daughter taught me a lesson when I was under a Christmas tree, trying to put up some lights. And I saw her walking up the steps of a ladder, and I said, Caitlyn, get down from there, right. And then she did, she kept walking up and I yelled again. Caitlyn, get down from there, raise my voice, right. And I get out from the tree and I'm about to launch a very louder, angry tone. And she looks at me and she's got an angel in her hand. She wants to put it on top of the tree. I did not see that, which is a metaphor for life. We don't see everything, you know, that we react to. And I looked at her and she looks at me and I said, Caitlyn, it's dangerous. You've got to get down from there. And this five-year-old looks at me, she goes, I like that tone better daddy. Steve Rush: Wow. Kevin McCarney: Wow. Steve Rush: How interesting is that? Kevin McCarney: Yeah, because if we're tuning into our kids, they're much more pure in their communication. They're much cleaner in their communication. They're not muddled, by all the other extra words, they know what they're reading, they're reading tone. So, it's a wonderful lesson for me. It was a wonderful lesson and it still is. Steve Rush: Yeah. Kevin McCarney: But it really comes down to, we're constantly evolving and don't ever think that we've learned enough to where we don't have to learn anymore about communicating. This is everyday communication. We still have to get better at it. Steve Rush: And it'll always be evolving because the world's changing. The way we communicate changes, the medium in which we do so changes and in therefore our response to it. So, it'll always be something that's new and fresh for us to get into, right. Kevin McCarney: Exactly, and I'm grateful. We got podcasts like yours, that are out there to get the word out to more people. Because I think podcasts have been one of the greatest things that the digital generation has created. More information, more sources of good information where people want to take the time to listen. The idea that there's taking the time to listen to a podcast. They're not just looking at something on a screen, but they're listening is fantastic because we have to train people to listen more. Because that's when they start thinking things through when they're listening. Steve Rush: Yeah, superb and thanks for endorsing our podcast as well. And the genre, because I'm with you, right. This is a means to help people and grow people's awareness. And actually, the more we can do that collectively as an entire community, then the better. Kevin McCarney: Yeah, absolutely. My goal is to get the entire world to neutral for a while. Steve Rush: Yeah. Kevin McCarney: You know, so we can pivot and be more productive. Steve Rush: So, I'm going to ask a step into neutral as we now pivot into the next part of our show. Kevin McCarney: Okay. Steve Rush: So, this is part of the show where we start to tap into your broad and extensive leadership career and I'm looking for you to kind of tap into all of that experience and think about, what would be the top three leadership hacks you could share with our audience? Kevin McCarney: Probably one of the most important is something that came out of a situation again where I had employees not talking to each other and they were grunting. And I finally sat one of them down and said, listen, there's a meeting coming up. The other, person's not going to be here. I want you to say three things that person does really well at the end of the meeting, and then end the meeting. And he did a wonderful job of doing that. And the next day after that meeting where the person who he wasn't speaking to wasn't there, but the next day he walked in and all of a sudden that person was speaking to him and being very friendly. And what we noticed is that, without her being there, he used what we now have labeled as good gossip. Good gossip is one of the greatest leadership hacks ever because you can strategically use it. It has to be honest, otherwise it won't work, but it's strategically talking nice about somebody or saying nice about somebody behind their back, because it does multiple things. In today's world, it gets back to everybody, there are no secrets anymore. You can't whisper, that doesn't make a different. People just turn up the sound. And when it comes to that internal communication of a company. Gossip is a cancer where good gossip is a cure. Steve Rush: Fantastic. Kevin McCarney: Because if you can say nice things about people behind their back, it not only makes that person to feel good, because they'll hear it, but it makes the people that are listening to you, trust you because now they're getting, oh, that's really cool that they're saying something nice about somebody because that elevates their trust level in that person. So, I would say, definitely say one of my hacks would be good gossip because it's absolutely incredibly powerful and incredibly useful. The next thing I would say is, control your tone. You know, it is probably the most important thing and practice your tone. And I think that, you know, realize that no matter what situation you're in, you always have a choice. You always have a choice. You don't have to do or say anything. You always have a choice. It's going to be to understand and really use these words, say it to yourself. How I can communicate is who I am. And how you communicate is who you are. And if you can understand it, how you communicate and that the words you use today are going to be with you forever. Especially in this environment, we're in where everybody's got a recording device on their hip. The words you use today will follow you forever. So, choose the words you want to follow you. Steve Rush: I love those. I particularly love the good gossip. I think it's just a great notion and would drive so many positive outcomes. Kevin McCarney: I saw it work and we still see it work so often. And again, watch it even amongst your own friends and watch how they respond when you're talking good about somebody who's not there. And it's a way we can train people to use good gossip because it travels the same path as gossip, exactly. But it has completely different and much more productive results. Steve Rush: So, the next part of the show, we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something hasn't worked out as well as you'd thought and would work out or maybe it's quite catastrophic, but as a result of it, there is a learning experience for you. And it's now a positive in your life or work. So, what would be your Hack to Attack Kevin? Kevin McCarney: Well, I think that the thing that has taught me the most is standing behind the counter at the restaurant for the first seven years and realizing because I was so good at winning arguments, you know, customers would come in and they would say something and I know I'm right, right. I knew that they ordered the food wrong or something. And I kept trying to win the argument with the customer. And only realize is it's not that the customer's always right. They're not, and I don't want to throw employees under the bus. Oh, the customer's always right. The customers not always right. But in the pressure of the moment, customer actually believes that they're right. And I learned that lesson a couple times when I was trying to win the argument and I saw people storm out and I realized, gosh, how do I get that person back? I don't want to win the argument. I want to win that moment. I want to win that person back. So that was part of the Genesis of what we're talking about is that, I had to learn that winning the argument is sometimes losing. And it's not that the customer's always right. Again, they're not. The customer believes though in that moment that they're right. And you have to bring them back. You have to bring them back to your reality because we're in the hospitality business, we're in the business of bringing people back to life. I realized when I was behind the counter that I'm in the business of serving people with low blood sugar. Steve Rush: Yes, it's true actually, right. Kevin McCarney: So, they walk in, they're hungry. So, they're not necessarily mentally exactly who they normally want to be. And so, if you get anything wrong, it's physiological. They're hungry. So, what I learned is, oh, okay. There's a physiological state here that I'm dealing with. I have to train all my people, how to deal with people in this age, because our job is to bring people back. I want to bring as many people back, you know, there was situation in a restaurant where a customer got completely out of control, and we were able to bring her back and to the point where she apologized. And when I tell my employees right now, I said, look, the word restaurant comes from the word restaurant it's a French word, right? And it comes from a 1765. A guy named Boulangers in Paris is the story that Marion Webster puts out there. Couldn't get into any of the food union. So, he created his own little soup and stews place, and he put a sign, at his window, come in you weary traveler. And my stews will restore you. And it's the perfect idea of what the restaurant business is all about. And I think any business, really. People are looking to be restored. They're looking for something to make them feel good, whether it's listening or whether it's eating, they're looking for something and make them feel good. So, they're going to come back to something that makes them feel good. I'm in the business of restoring people. They come in, they're hungry. Somebody was angry at work. Our job is to send them back out restored. My employees have done a wonderful job of doing that for 37 years. Steve Rush: And what's made Poquito Mas so successful Kevin? If you put communication at the heart of all of that, right? Kevin McCarney: Absolutely, communication and honesty and freshness. And just knowing that your customers are human and your employees are human and you know what? You're going to work with whatever situation comes up, it will be fine. I can't say I'm not surprised, but I'm not shocked by many things anymore. Steve Rush: Now the last part of the show. We get to give you a chance to do some time travel. You get to bump into Kevin at 21, and you get to give him some advice. So, what would it be? Kevin McCarney: Listen more than you speak, because you will learn so much more and you will know what to say when you do speak. Because my 21-year-olds self was not a great listener. And I think that listening was probably the one lesson that I learned gave me the most insight. Do that, listen, and don't be in a hurry. Steve Rush: Really powerful words, really powerful. Love it. Now, having listened to you today and knowing all the great work you do, Big Brain Little Brain, by the way, is a great read. It's packed of tools and traps you call it. So, if folks will listen to this, I wanted to copy of the book or wanted to learn a little bit more about your work Kevin, where's the best place for us to send them Kevin McCarney: bigbrainlittlebrain.com. And you can go to kevin@bigbrainlittlebrain.com. And I return all my emails and you can click on the link and get to Amazon to buy a book and please leave a review, good or bad, leave a review, whatever you feel about it. I think it's the most important thing right now is to get the word out to people. Steve Rush: And of course, unless you're in California, you're unlikely to bump into Paquito Mas. Kevin McCarney: Yes, absolutely. Paquito Mas is in LA. We've got eight locations. We've been around, like I said, 37 years and we make everything from scratch every day. Every tortilla, everything. So, it's good food. And you know, we're still in business and I feel grateful that we've survived this last year and a half. And I know that no matter what's ahead of us, we'll deal with it. Steve Rush: Yeah. Kevin, thank you ever so much for sharing your stories and helping us all find our neutral word. I think that's the goal for the day and sharing your wider experience with us and just thanks of being part of our community on The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Kevin McCarney: Well, Steve, I can't thank you enough for doing this. I listen to your stuff and it's just such so healthy to listen to a program like this. It's healthy, and I appreciate you're here Steve Rush: And I appreciate you too. Thanks, Kevin. Kevin McCarney: All right, sir. Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there: @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.  

Crystal Robinson is a retired professional Basketball player and coach who's played the highest level in the Women's NBA. Today, she's a thought leader in the space of conscious leadership, mental health, and diversity. In sharing her life and professional lessons Chrystal talks about: Growing up in poverty in rural Oklahoma and learning to deal with poverty and racism while dealing with her own sexual identity. How Basketball became her coping mechanism. How learning to deal with life's challenges helped build resilience in her career. After writing her book, “Finding Myself”, she admits she still hasn't found herself and continues to learn. Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Chrystal below: Finding Myself Book: https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Myself-Crystal-Robinson/dp/1777573726     Full Transcript Below   Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   And a special guest on today's show is Crystal Robinson. She's an American basketball coach and former Women's NBA, All-Star. And she was the first black woman to be inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. Now, after chronicling her life's lessons in her book, Finding Myself, she's now an ambassador for the LGBTQ Community, but before we get a chance to meet with Crystal, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: In the news today, we explore how diversity and inclusion has evolved and diversity education started in the sixties, so it's nothing new to us. And over time we would have all become aware of how it's evolved to take into consideration inclusion. And while many think that diversity and inclusion are the same thing, they're not. Diversity is the act of creating community, comprised of people with varying backgrounds, creeds, ages, differences, and inclusion is finding a way of making sure that all of those people feel really valued in what they do and how they behave. Wait, where did equity come from? Well, it's always been there. In recent years, diversity and inclusion issues have been bolstered by the addition of the concept of equity and unlike equality, which focused on providing equal resources, regardless of context. Equity actually focuses on the process of just being fair. Equality is treating everyone the same. Whereas equity is about achieving the same benefits, even if it means that everyone receives different, there's still fair and justified treatment and experiences. Regular listeners will know that we love the difference that makes the difference. And that's because all humans are different. We all have components of our identities that are both seen like race, gender, identity. And then there are hidden things like our mental health or disability or sexual orientation, and whether you're willing to admit it or not, we all come from different backgrounds and we hold multiple interconnecting identities and biases that show up in our relationships and our workplace. Research also shows that higher levels of diversity may lead to increase conflict and misunderstanding. And often because we struggled with accepting and celebrating our differences. Inclusion doesn't mean that we can just pretend those differences don't exist. It means that we can acknowledge those differences and take advantages of differences to create diverse, equitable, and inclusive communities that we work and live in. And therefore, we now arrived at our current incarnation, this essential tool that features equal and equitable attention on diversity, equity and inclusion. And as I reflect on this, a single piece of the puzzle missing could create an incomplete picture. Diversity is the heart of different voices in any conversation. Inclusion is uplifting, validating and hearing each and every voice and equity as a manner in which we amplify those voices. So, the leadership hack is dead simple. When you're thinking diversity and inclusion, think everyone everywhere, and do you have equity? Not equality. Making sure the right treatment for the right people, the right places at the right times means that we all get to benefit from diverse and inclusive behaviors and diverse and inclusive communities. That's been The Leadership Hacker News, I would love for you to share anything that's on the top of your agenda, so get in touch. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Crystal Robinson is a special guest on today's show. She's a retired professional athlete and coach who's played the highest level of basketball in the Women's NBA. Today, she's a thought leader in the space of conscious leadership, mental health, and diversity. Crystal, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Crystal Robinson: Thank you for having me. Steve Rush: So, let's just start by calling out a few of your kind of credits to your name. So former WNBA player and coach, named an all American by the WBCA, you earn a rookie of the year award and an ABL All-Star, you've been indicted into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame, indicted into the NAIA Hall of Fame, drafted overall sixth by the Women's NBA. Now author, coach, and ambassador for the LGBTQ community. Wow, that's not a bad backstory. Crystal Robinson: Yeah, I've had a pretty fun and exciting life. Steve Rush: Now, it hasn't been always that smooth sailing to be fair, has it? So, I know from the last time that we met, you grew up in rural Oklahoma. Having had a really kind of tough upbringing, having to navigate some poverty, a lot of racism issues, and then having to deal with and come to terms with your own sexual identity along that, on the journey, I guess. So just tell us a little bit about how early life really was for you. Crystal Robinson: Overall, I guess, at some point in life, you know, I was just a poor kid growing up happy, you know, you don't know you're poor until you learn you're poor, but lots of struggles, but I think everybody in life has struggles. I think in my book, I write about them, but that's really, for me not wasn't the focus of my life. I think I wrote about those struggles basically for people to understand that that are commonalities with all of us. We all have struggles, but just kind of how we end up dealing with them, determines where we end up in life. Steve Rush: Yeah, wise words, is often the case, isn't it? Crystal Robinson: Yeah. Steve Rush: You know, often, most people are faced with adversity of some kind, but it's a reaction to that adversity that makes the difference. And clearly, you know, you face into those really well because you ended up as a professional athlete. So, tell us a bit about the journey of how you ended up in baskets ball? Crystal Robinson: Both my parents were college basketball players. I was just something, they were both all Americans that I was an innate. I was born with a great ability and five years old; they gave me a basketball goal and I started playing on it and fell in love with it. Then the rest was kind of history after that. So, I just excelled, I played basketball all the time. Basketball became a place for me to take out my anger and anything that I wasn't feeling good about. It was a place for me to, you know, just release all of the negative feelings that any negative feelings that I had. Steve Rush: And having the foundations of using basketball if you like as a bit of a coping mechanism, most people will use some form of coping mechanism to deal with some adversity, but there is a different level of coping when you turn into being so good at it. You become recognized in your country as being the elite in your sport. Tell us a little bit about when that kind of pivotal moment happened for you when you became a pro basketball player? Crystal Robinson: It's so funny, you know, there was no professional women's basketball whenever I started playing basketball, you know, we were young girls. We didn't have the ability to look and say, hey, I wanted to be in the WNBA one day. So, you know, I just played all the time. I play with my guy cousins and overall goal was to be as good as my best cousin and things just kind of snowballed from there. Then I ended up being recruited by every college in the country. The town I grew up in, it's a population of about 400 people. It's called Stringtown, Oklahoma. So, you start having people from all over the United States coming to watch you play basketball and offering you scholarships. I'd say at that point, I thought I was pretty good and believe, but I don't think it wasn't until, you know, hindsight after your career, you kind of evaluate and see where your skillset fit in to your professional career. Steve Rush: Yeah, and you've told the story through your book, which is just an amazing read, called Finding Myself and tell us a little bit about how you decided to put your stories down into pages for others to read about? Crystal Robinson: I wanted it to be interesting, one, because, even though I've been a basketball player, I'm not Kevin Duran or Stephan Curry or no one with a big name like that, putting your story down for other people. It was about, you know, helping people, helping people see that. One thing, there's few things that we all have in common. Like it doesn't matter what color you are, what race you are or how rich you are, nothing matters. We're all going to encounter obstacles. Some of them make us stronger. Why does it make some of us stronger, and some of us not? You know, some of us suffer. So, I think that lots of people that are suffering feel alone, but just putting those stories out there that we all suffer at times. It's just about, you know, figuring it out. The perspective on how to navigate it. Steve Rush: Was there an element for you as well, as you wrote the book and you put all the stories down and into kind of words and stories, was there a little bit around another bit of therapy going on there for you at the time as well? Crystal Robinson: Honestly, it was all therapy going on there. Steve Rush: Yeah. Crystal Robinson: Honestly, to tell you the truth, I went to therapy and I was told to journal and I didn't set out and write a book like, oh, I'm going to write a book. I started journaling and just writing things that bother me, things that made me feel good, things that just, I don't know, things. And after seven or eight journals later, I felt better. And I sent and all of it to one of my friends that writes for the Amsterdam News in New York. And she said, this would be a really good book. You should organize it. So that's kind of how the book journey started. It wasn't that I just sat down to write a book. It just kind of happened. I probably have stories together and then put it in book form. Steve Rush: I would love to get into some of the stories if you are okay with that, because there were some really inspirational things that happen to you that we can all get some life lessons from. I remember the time that you talk about it in your book, when you were playing little league baseball, your dad turned up at a game to watch you, he was blind drunk. And despite that, you kind of played a brilliant game. What happened for you in that process and how did you use that as a positive? Crystal Robinson: I think in those moments, you don't ever feel like it's a positive, I think, but for me, I think that it taught me perseverance, you know, and at an early age, I had to figure out how to, you know, really just walk with my head, held high, even though everybody in the town knew that my dad was a big drunk. But my dad was a very functioning drunk. He worked, he went to work at times, you know? I think that taught me, first off, you know, the people who are going to care are going to care. At that point, I think I started to learn to not care about what other people thought, you know, some circumstances we were put under, we don't ask for them. We just have to learn how to deal with them and cope with them. Steve Rush: I would imagine that taught you a huge amount of resilience. Crystal Robinson: Yes. Steve Rush: Not just that occasion, but many occasions like it, I guess. Crystal Robinson: Definitely resilience. And I think that just in life, anybody who wants to make it, or just to be successful in life, it takes resilience. I'm sure when you started this podcast, it wasn't easy. You have to get people to come on, you know, you have to get all this things together, and I'm sure there's many, a times that you go through things you might want to quit, but you're resilient enough to know the benefits of it down the road, or you have a foresight to keep going. That's the best way to say. Steve Rush: Absolutely, yeah. And some of that kind of resilience, I guess, was also born about, through your experiences in high school. And I also remember reading in the book that when you were playing high school basketball, you came acquire a bit of, you know, racial slurs and verbal abuse. In that environment, you know, how do you deal with that when you're trying to focus on playing a game? Crystal Robinson: Oh, man. My stance on this has changed so much over the years, just recently in my hometown, I was racially profiled and pulled over, basically taking the jail for no reason until they realized who I was. Then they tried to let me go after like six hours of wasting my time. And I said, no, so they trumped up a charge. And it was just a lot, like, it just kind of changed my stance on just how I am. I think that the racial environment in the world right now has everybody on edge. And I think that I find myself having to go back to a lot of that stuff and a lot of the teachings and a lot of the way that I used to feel, just because of the place that the world is in now and the experiences that I've had. Steve Rush: That's really interesting. You you're most talking as if at one stage in your life or your career, you thought you'd got through that, but it seems to almost have another resurgence. Crystal Robinson: Well, I would say that, I would probably say that I didn't experience a lot of racism as a young kid. I did once or twice in my life, but I live in rural Oklahoma where there's no, we still bury people in black cemeteries and white cemetery. So, racism is definitely alive and well. Steve Rush: Wow. Crystal Robinson: You're really good at sports and you really good at things. You know how it is, people overlook that. And then at the back end of my career, you know, people change, times change and some young cops pull me over and don't know who I am and they just proceed to search, the car, I'll all this stuff because I have my dreads down. And then when the speaker of the house representatives and the judges are called in, like, what are you doing? And at this point I'm a voice. I'm a voice that can bring some attention to it. And it was just a lot, so my stance on that, I find myself, I won't say in prayer, but really having to check myself and think about that a lot more now, just because I feel the world is racially charged right now. Steve Rush: Yeah, it is. I sense that as well, right. And here I sit as a white caucasian guy who has had no racial issues to deal with per se, right? Yet, I still feel there is that racially charged tendencies. In fact, there is this terminology, isn't there? For people who are of my ethnicity called white fragility, where, you know, we're not having the conversation because we're almost afraid to. What's your spin on that? Crystal Robinson: For me, the people who are on that side, people like you, you shouldn't have to carry that burden, it's just like the Taliban. There's a certain amount of people with money that are racist, but everybody has to pay the price for that. Do you understand what I'm saying? Steve Rush: Absolutely. Crystal Robinson: Just like certain amount of my population that might be thugs. That might be certain things, but all of us have to pay the price for that. But those people are louder than people like you. Steve Rush: Yeah. Crystal Robinson: Heard more, and I think that when people stop having that fear and stop feeling guilty, you have nothing to feel guilty about, you know, but I think a lot of Caucasian people have a feeling of guilt and stand on the sidelines because I've had to really reconcile some of my friendships because I feel like some really powerful people stood on the sidelines and are standing on the sidelines that could expose this. And it would stop, but they have no interest in that because they're not boat rockers. They keep going the way it is, it doesn't matter that they hurt my career for no reason. Steve Rush: The whole kind of racial tension that exists today seems to be far louder than it ever has been. And I remember, so I grew up in the outskirts of London, very diverse community, lots of different ethnicities in my community. I didn't even know there was a racial issue until I probably hit high school, right. So, at what point do you think we're going to actually have a face into this and deal with it or do you think we could ever deal with it? Crystal Robinson: I think that there's a group of people that doesn't want it to change. It'll take a lot of bravery on a lot of people's parts for it to change. For some reason in society, there always has to be someone getting stepped on. I don't know why that is. I saw something on the news the other day, not the other day. I saw it maybe today scrolling through on Instagram. And I saw where Mexicans were showing up down there, given the Haitian people water and food, lots of things that they were providing for those people. And I was just thinking it's always the downtrodden that show up first because, no one's more, you know, trying to cross the border or get into the United States or do, you know, more than Mexican people. So, for them to be down there helping the Haitians, it was amazing to me. Steve Rush: Yeah, awesome. I think the more we can celebrate that and promote that, then the better it will be, right? Crystal Robinson: You're saying it so good. What you just said, what you said was basically, media publicizes the bad things. There's not enough said about things like. Steve Rush: That's very true. Crystal Robinson: They keep us at odds because that's what you see. And I shared that story simply because, you know, I said, it's not enough good things being shown in the world today. There are good things happening, so. Steve Rush: Hallelujah to that, yeah. So, as you were growing your career in basketball, and as you becoming more successful, not only had to deal with the racial slurs, but internally there's stuff going on for you, as you were trying to work out your own sexuality and having feelings for the same sex. Tell us a little bit about how you dealt with that kind of confusion and managed to come to terms with that and move forward in your life? Crystal Robinson: Very sloppily, to able to figure those things out. I knew I was different; I knew it wasn't accepted. I knew I lived in the Bible bell. I did go to church, and how are you supposed to be when everyone tells you your whole identity is something that you're going to hell for? I mean, you know, it was a lot at that time. That's all I could say. I didn't really have anybody to talk to. I just went with it. But at a certain point, I just, you know, I think that you get to the point to where either I have one life to live, I'm going to live at the best way I possibly can. And the people who want to be friends with me will be friends with me and the people who won't want. And that's just life in general. Steve Rush: Yeah. Crystal Robinson: I think that once you break it down to, you know, that simplicity of that, no one likes anybody a hundred percent of the time and no matter how good you are, some people are still not going to like you. Steve Rush: It got so bad for you at one state though, you were seriously thinking about taking your own life, right? Crystal Robinson: Oh, yeah. Steve Rush: That doesn't get any deeper than that, does it? Crystal Robinson: On more than one occasion, I felt like that, you know, but I won't say it's because of the way people treated me, it's because I just wanted to fit in. I didn't want it to be different. I didn't want this; I didn't ask for it. It's just who I was. Steve Rush: Yeah. Crystal Robinson: I was born this way. Steve Rush: And you still live-in rural Oklahoma. How have things changed for you? Are you more accepted by those same people? Have they become less bigoted and more educated? Tell us what that fell like for you now? Crystal Robinson: I wouldn't say that. Oklahoma is still about 25 years behind the rest of the world, you know, I have a group of people that are very educated. They travel, they do a lot of things and they don't have no problems with it, but there's always going to be a group of people who will have a problem with it, but won't say it out loud. They might talk behind their back and stuff like that, but I don't spend any energy worried about those people. Steve Rush: Good, and also you can see it and spot it, can't you? Because there'll be little micro behaviors and micro language you'd spot, perhaps because you've had more experience of it than some. And therefore, you can make those choices, right? Crystal Robinson: I think that for me, you know, being a professional athlete people that don't even like you, still will come up to you and ask you for an autograph, you know, that's just a kind of a part of the thing. I just kind of take it for what it's worth, you know? And I think that's one of the strengths that people should work on building is not really caring what other people think, you know, and living your life to the best of your ability for you. Steve Rush: That's really that easy to say though, right. But you've been in the public eye, you've been featured on TV. You've been, you know, press would have followed you. And that's got to take some toll when that's adverse commentary, right? Crystal Robinson: Yes, it's different. I tell you; I really took a completely different stance and approach as a pro athlete. I kind of immersed myself with the fans. They all knew who I was. They spent time with me. If they saw me, be like, oh, hey Crystal, I was around so much that they left me alone. I didn't put a barricade between me and them to set myself apart to where they wanted to be around me. If you understand what I'm saying. Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely, so, yeah. Crystal Robinson: I gave them access, like after games, I might stay two hours and sign everybody's autograph. And that way, when they see me with my family, it's just, hey Crystal and they keep going. You know, I think that that's one of the things that was just different about me. I love basketball. I love what I did. I was blessed to be able to do it, but that's just what it was. It was a great talent. It doesn't really change or sets me apart from people, on the fact that I had some really great experiences. Steve Rush: I love the way you've approached that, by the way, because many people in the public eye aren't accessible and actually become less accessible because of their publicity and their public figure. Whereas actually, I wonder if some of our pro sports people and actors and other people in the public eye, if they gave more of themselves to their fans and their public, whether or not they'd actually have much more of a peaceful life anyway. Crystal Robinson: Well, you know, that is true. I agree with that. But at some point, some of these fans are not normal, right? I mean, I had a teammate named Debbie Black, this man had a whole sex change and change his name to Debbie White and sat outside and he stopped her. Steve Rush: Oh dear. Crystal Robinson: There is some danger to it. Steve Rush: Sure. Crystal Robinson: Oh, and you know, when you get a certain level, like I'm not a star to that point to where people are wanting anything like that, other than the autograph. But, you know, for some people, it is definitely dangerous. As little as I am, I just was, you know, it was inducted into the New York Liberty Ring of Honor. And a media person made up a bunch of lies and tried hard to tell me they wanted me to be in a documentary and all this stuff. My publicists kept telling me this stuff, but she didn't have no credentials. So, a lot of the big things that she should have, so it just didn't make sense to me. And she was not legit. So, stuff like that definitely happen. Steve Rush: So, when I read your book, one of the things that struck me was there were, you know, paragraph after paragraph, there was real crappy experiences, lots of abusive relationships, lots of adversity, but on every occasion, you managed to find it in yourself to kind of lift above that and keep positive. Just for those listening to this who maybe are struggling to find themselves like you did. How did you manage to just keep that positivity? Crystal Robinson: I think it's probably sheer, what's the word I'm looking for? Just the fact that I don't ever like to give other people control over me. I can't be anybody's victim. So, I had to figure out a way to persevere and persevere in a way that I was still whole. I wouldn't say that I found myself. I think I'm still finding myself every day; we grow and we change, but, you know, I didn't want those experiences to control my life. And I think that when you get stuck in places, those experiences control your life. Steve Rush: Yeah, I love that. Was there a particular time though for you, as you were coming to terms with who you are today and the great work that you do now, where you thought, yeah, I'm happy, I'm content. I've found myself for now. When was that moment? Crystal Robinson: I would say I haven't. Steve Rush: Oh, great. Crystal Robinson: I definitely different. There're people who have the same jobs for 50 years. And I applaud them to be able to do that, but I'm not that kind of person. I'm the kind of person who I was great at sports. I mastered something in the business world, thought leadership world now, and I'm trying to master that. I'm pretty comfortable being uncomfortable. And for me, the experiences in life is not, I don't want to be at the same job for 30 years. I want to experience as much as I can. So, lots of people look at that and they say, oh, you're not settled, or you don't do this, or you don't do that. But you know for me, that's how I choose to experience life. Steve Rush: That's fabulous, and the reality is of course, for those people who are comfortable and aren't in control, probably aren't actually growing as much as those that are restless and are comfortable being uncomfortable. Crystal Robinson: I would really agree with that statement. I think that, you know, young ages at sports, I went away from my parents and stayed for long periods of time to be able to play basketball. And then I went to Europe, I played in Europe for eight years. I have had so many different kinds of experiences in so many different countries. And to me, that's what life's about. Like, I don't have no opinion about Italy. If I can't go there, I spent four years there. I live like the people, you know? And to me that's where I found value in life. Steve Rush: Yeah, can you knock up a great Italian pasta dish though? Crystal Robinson: Oh, I can make, pasta, actually my own tomato sauce. Steve Rush: Awesome. Crystal Robinson: So, I lived in Italy. I actually had a translator my first year. And then the second year I was there, I stayed in that country for four years. One of my teammates was going to college to learn English. So, I helped her with English. I had a Spanish background, so it just kind of came together. And then by the end of that year, I was completely fluent. So, I loved Italy and most countries that I did play in, I just really tried to understand their culture and at least learn enough words to be able to live like them. Steve Rush: Empathy is everything. So, you had a super pro career, then you coached pro basketball. So how much of that experience in your sporting life is now shaping your approach when you coach others? Crystal Robinson: Well, I think that leadership is leadership. Like as a player, I was a leader on the team and I think that as a coach, I have the opportunity, you know, we kind of were trailblazers. There was no WNBA. We started something and these young players are figuring it out, you know. When I played, there was no free agency. Now there's free agency. True free agency, where girls can go out and get their own endorsement deals. The league owned all our likenesses. So, we couldn't shop our names around. So, there's so many things that I still have a hand in with the younger generation, helping usher this end for them and help them make decisions that I still am highly involved in, in basketball. Steve Rush: That's great. So, on the basis, you're still finding yourself, which I love by the way, what's next for you? Crystal Robinson: What's next for you? We will see, I took a year off of work to promote this for basketball. To promote my book and who knows next year, I could end up back in basketball. But I only want to be back in basketball in an head coaching basis, just because it's a lot of work at the pro level. You don't really have a life; coach has a life because the assistants do all the work. Steve Rush: But you've earned that even the ability to be able to pass on that knowledge and to help guide, and actually also helps other people lead in that space as well, doesn't it? Crystal Robinson: How much public speaking as I can possibly do. I like to influence, so those are probably the two things that I would end up in. I'm already public speaking. I do a lot of that. Next month, I'll start doing a lot more of it. But eventually I'm sure basketball would probably call me back into it. Steve Rush: Is it a bit of a drug for your, basketball? Crystal Robinson: It used to be. Now is a completely different challenge. Now it's a challenge of convincing people. As the head coaches about psychology, you have all these great players. Convincing them to give up seven shots and give up a $50,000 potential bonus to help your team win. Like it's all psychology of moving people. And to me, that's a great challenge. It's easier to do things than it is to get people to do them. So, I'm still very driven towards perfection and figuring that out. And I think that, you know, as an assistant coach, most of the time I've been hired, it's been because of my ability to problem solve and my ability to keep the locker room good. So, I'd like to try that from a head coaching angle. Steve Rush: Cool, look forward to seeing you on the WNBA circuit soon then. Crystal Robinson: Yes. Steve Rush: Yeah, awesome. So now I'm going to turn the lens a little bit. Crystal Robinson: Okay. Steve Rush: Now you talked about leadership as a player and as a coach and having been a thought leader in your space as well. I'm going to ask you to try and think of, to distill all of those great leadership learnings that you have. And to narrow those down into your top three leadership hacks, what would they be? Crystal Robinson: My top three leadership hacks. The first one, probably be, treat people how you want to be treated, you know, being relatable. I think that one of the things that I've learned as a leader now with this younger generation, if they don't relate to you, you can't convince them to do anything you want them to do. It's going to be a fight and struggle with everything, you know, being relatable. Second thing I would say is, I was recently told by someone that I went into business with, you know, I'm a partial owner of a business and he told me, you can't tell people what to do if you don't know what to do. So, I suggest you get down there on the bottom level and learn what to do. So, I think, know what your employees are, what the people you're leading have to do. So, you can go back to relate to them, to help them along to be able to do it a better way. And then I would say, make sure everyone, it's not input. Everyone has to feel valued, you know, as a head coach in sports, you have this always a balancing act, you know, of treating everybody the same, but then you have players that score 30 points and you have player the score, no points, being able to make them feel important, no matter what their role is, I think is something that a leader should be able to do. Steve Rush: Yeah, that's great advice. It's not all about scoring goals, isn't it? Crystal Robinson: Yes, not all about that. I'm telling you, the best teams I've ever played on. It was a bunch of mediocre players who completely knew their roles and work together to make it happen. And it takes good leadership, and for me, I was in college, I could average 65 points a game, but in games where I could score 10 points and we could still win, I'd give my teammates their opportunities to shine. So, when I take over games, they, got out the way and they were very conducive to what we were trying to do. Steve Rush: The next part of the show Crystal, we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something in your life hasn't worked out well. And we know already having learned some of the stories from you already in this short conversation and having read your book, you've had a bunch to choose from, but maybe if there was one experience in your life that was perhaps at adversity, but you now use that specific advent for something that's positive in your life or work, what would be your Hack to Attack? Crystal Robinson: I was drafted into the American Basketball League and I was almost the last pick taken because I ended up leaving the NCAA school and going to a really low-level school, but I was still beating everybody at a high level. The American Basketball League where I was rookie of the year, and I was first team, all everything, it folded after two years. And I had no idea what I was going to do with my life at that point. I had a teaching degree, but I didn't know exactly what I was going to do. And then I got drafted in the sixth overall pick in the WNBA. Through that time period before that happened, I had gained some weight. I've kind of given up and whenever the WNBA came into play and I was the sixth overall draft, it just changed my life and my outlook on everything. And in terms of, you know, I almost given up hope, like I had been given this gift of basketball, and it would just snatch from me. I just made up my mind that, no matter what happened to WNBA, if anything ever happened, I was going to land on my feet and have a plan and be ready to go. Steve Rush: Yeah, and sometimes it's just being available and open to coincidence as well, isn't it? Crystal Robinson: Yeah, it is. Steve Rush: Sometimes when you're driving so hard to achieve things, you don't often see what else is going on around you. Crystal Robinson: And not being prepared for it. Steve Rush: Yeah. Crystal Robinson: You know, I just thought it was going to last, you get caught up in that euphoria, just wasn't prepared for it. When I retired from basketball, I retired at a very early age. I retired at the age of 34. I probably could have still played for four more years. But I knew basketball wasn't what I was going to do forever. I'd done everything I could possibly do in it. And my body was sore, so I retired. Steve Rush: Yeah, get out of the top. That's what it's about, right. So, if you could go back and meet Crystal at 21 and give her some advice, what would be your words of wisdom to her then? Crystal Robinson: I think my words of wisdom would be, always be kind and never give up, even when you don't see a way, don't stop. That would be my advice to my young self. Steve Rush: very profound, and indeed your pussy cat like that. Crystal Robinson: She just got closed and now she's making noise to get out. Steve Rush: So, Crystal. Your book by the way, is a fantastic read. So, any of our listeners who want to get their hands on a copy of Finding Myself, where's the best place for us to send them to? Not only get a copy of your book, but to learn a little bit more about the work you do now? Crystal Robinson: Amazon.com or go to susanhum.com. It's a thought leadership platform where I speak for a foundation called Still Rose. I'm also on the board of a foundation called Code Red, it's a foundation. It's a lot to that foundation. One of them is sex trafficking. And one of them is school shootings. We designed an app that schools don't have surveillance systems in them, but this app goes on teacher's phones. And if in a situation like that, it turns into a surveillance system, it's route it to a private company. And then I'm on a foundation of a board of Go Friends. You can also go to gofriends.com and read things about me. And basically, we go into prison systems, female prison systems, and we teach goal setting to try to help them when they get out of prison, hopefully they can stay out of prisons. Steve Rush: You're doing some fantastic work, honestly, from the journey you've been on, the adversity you've been through to now still being in the service of others. I just wanted to drop my hat and say, thank you. And thank you for being part of our community here on The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Crystal Robinson: No, thank you so much for having me. These are the podcasts that I love. I would much rather prefer to talk about this stuff than basketball in general. So, thank you for having me. Steve Rush: It's our pleasure. Thanks Crystal.         Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the Leadership Hacker.    

Matt Phelan is an entrepreneur, the Co-Founder and CEO of The Happiness Index. He's also the author of Freedom To Be Happy: The Business Case for Happiness. In the superb episode you can learn from Matt:   How to turn emotions like happiness into business metrics. What the business case for happiness is. The role neuroscience plays in happiness. Why happy people are also the most productive.   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Matt below: Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewphelan/ Happiness Index Website: https://thehappinessindex.com Matt on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matthewphelan Join the humans and happiness community: https://thehappinessindex.com/join-happiness-community/     Full Transcript Below     Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   On the show today, we have Matt Phelan. He's the Co-Founder and CEO of The Happiness Index. And he's the author of Freedom To Be Happy: The Business Case for Happiness. Before we get a chance to speak with Matt, it's The Leadership Hacker News.   The Leadership Hacker News   Steve Rush: On today's show, we explore the notion of, “is crisis caused by communication?” And the reason we're focusing on this today is there are a number of different things happening globally, where because of communication; situations have arisen that might not have existed in the first place. Here's a few examples. There was a chip shortage around the world. Now, not a potato crisp or a bag of chips if you're in the UK, but the electronic chip come under great shortage due to supply and demand issues. And the reason that's happened is due to supply and demand due to supply chains, and of course, the COVID pandemic has massively impacted on it. But because of the hype that's been caused by the communication, It has caused manufacturers to overbuy, also causing big motor engineering companies and electronic manufacturers to grab hold of every supply they can. Therefore, rocketing price and reducing the market flow that would ordinarily be there.   Early in the pandemic we saw the same thing happen with supermarkets, where we were told that there would be a shortage of supply. Of course, it wasn't. Yet many people still bought toilet rolls to fill spare rooms and pasta that would last a year. Most recently in the UK, we have a driver shortage for haulage firms and lorry drivers. Taking our fuel and our goods and services around the country. And as such, the media said there might be a fuel shortage. And guess what? You're right. Panic buying at the pumps, people filling up cans and cans of petrol, diesel and fuel. Supermarkets going bare, why? Because the media is driving something that perhaps wouldn't be there had we just carry on our day-to-day life and routines.   So, what's the leadership hack? Well, if we think about how people respond to communication, if we have a perceived problem or a perceived threat that may not be true, and communicate it early, we could reinforce behaviors that could actually make that problem become a reality much sooner. And it may be the problem that wouldn't have arrived. Had we rethought our communication strategy and approach. So, the leadership lesson here is, if we think there may be a problem, be sure that there is a problem before you communicate it. Have foundations, have evidence because unintentional communication can send people down a rabbit hole and lead to challenge and adversity. Thank you for those have raised this through our social media platforms with us this week, so that we could bring it to the attention of our listeners. If you also have some stories or insights that you want us to hear, let's get in touch. In the meantime, let's get on with the show. Start of Podcast   Steve Rush: Matt Phelan is the Co-Founder and CEO of The Happiness Index. He's also the author of Freedom To Be Happy: The Business Case for Happiness, Matt, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast.   Matt Phelan: Thanks for inviting me on.   Steve Rush: Delighted you're here too. So, tell us, how did you end up running and leading The Happiness Index and what is it?   Matt Phelan: So as with most of these good stories, complete accident, so when I was twenty-five, I started a marketing agency and we used to have a saying that employees come first, not the customer. So, we were the opposite. We didn't believe the customer came first. And over a ten-year period, we delivered something like thirty-three quarters of growth. I'm a data geek, and I started to wonder whether that was true, because it sounds good, doesn't it? Your customers will be happy and the business will grow. But as a geek, I've got a very inquisitive mind that I wanted to find out if it was true. So, we built a piece of code to correlate at the beginning. Just to understand the correlation. Is there a correlation between employee happiness and customer happiness? And then our customers of our marketing agency started asking for the code. And we said, you can't have it. It's a rubbish, rubbish piece of code. We'd be ashamed to show at twenty-one, but like most entrepreneurs we saw more and more phone calls came in. So eventually we realized that there was probably a business here called The Happiness Index. And it went from being an internal tool to being a business entity in its own rights.   Steve Rush: So as an organization, how might I use it?   Matt Phelan: So, you would use it, I would say to start off with, to visualize your culture, to figure out where you are. And once you know where you are, you can start to plot where you want to go. So, we say, it's an upgrade on employee engagement. It does measure employee engagement, but also includes employee happiness, which we think is subtly and importantly different.   Steve Rush: So, how would you describe happiness, Matt? Somebody asked you over a beer, what is happiness? How do you response?   Matt Phelan: Yeah, there's technical scientific answer, isn't there? I love your question, Steve. And this is why I'm sort of filling to try and answer, which is, I would say, it's your happiness of how you experience it is just a window into everything else. Like your wellbeing, how you are in life? I see it as a data point. I know that's a very geeky way of seeing happiness, but I think your own happiness can be a way of understanding how the rest of your life is. That could be in your personal life. That could be in your career. That could be in your relationship.   Steve Rush: And your hesitance was because you were going down that kind of geeky data space, right?   Matt Phelan: Yeah.   Steve Rush: Tell us a bit about what's the flip side of that kind of emotional response then? Matt Phelan: Yeah, so the reason I hesitated is because we collect this information in over a hundred countries. So, I'm in the spreadsheets every day, but what I can share with you is like, everyone's different, right? So, my happiness is different to your happiness and so on and so on. But there are huge trends that we have that are similar and also different. But if I give you the top four which is, we define happiness as what the heart needs. So, to give the analogy, if you were thinking of a car, we say engagement is the sat nav. So, it's like the direction. So, it's the clear direction where you're going, what the route is going to be. Whereas happiness is that energy that you need to get there. I used to say, it's the petrol in the car, but it's, I think it's electric vehicle week Steve.   Steve Rush: It is indeed, yeah.   Matt Phelan: I have moved to electric. So, I'm trying to find a new, so let's say it's the electric in the car. The sat nav is the engagement and the happiness is the electric, is that energy, but the top four are psychological safety, positive relationships, freedom to take opportunities and feelings of acknowledgement.   Steve Rush: And are they consistent in all of the teams that you work with and the organizations you work with? Do you see that those manifest themselves in positive score?   Matt Phelan: So, relationships is always number one. But what is number two, changes per person, per company, per country or region?   Steve Rush: Interesting, yeah.   Matt Phelan: I know you have a lot of North American listeners, Steve. I pulled out an example from the data for you. So, European companies often lumped together. The United States of America and Canada, which we shouldn't for many reasons, but in our head, we see this kind of like geographical mass. If you take all the American data and all the Canada data. In America that the second most important thing, and I'm going to add engagement now and happiness together. The second most important thing in America is actually an engagement metric, which is a clear direction. In Canada, it's acknowledgement. So, you could look from over from Europe, you could look over the pond and think they're very similar in terms of their culture and so on and so on, but there's a clear difference every time we run that data, I've got some views and why I think that is and feel free to jump in Steve and why you think that might be, but that's what we see in the data, very clear different. So, if you're an HR Director that indicates that you need a different strategy for the different locations.   Steve Rush: I think it's probably a few things that kick around there, isn't there? You have some cultural differences between Canada and the rest of the U.S.   Matt Phelan: Yeah.   Steve Rush: Which could present itself in the results you get. But also, I would imagine that even within Inter-country and inter-regions, there are nuances that are also different, right?   Matt Phelan: Yeah, absolutely. And I don't want to get political, but I think in America, in the United States of America, your employment is very much tied to also things like your healthcare.   Steve Rush: Of course, yeah.   Matt Phelan: If you think about that, if you think about, I'm in London, if the happiness index failed and I lost my job and my family would still retain their health care. So, acknowledgement can be higher. It's a bit like the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. But if you know that if you were to lose your job and you would lose your health care. Clear clarity on what your role is, is hyper important, Isn't it?   Steve Rush: Absolutely.   Matt Phelan: So, you think it would be the same for everyone, but we're human beings and those underlining elements change how we are in the workforce.   Steve Rush: That's really fascinating. And I guess also organizations make assumptions about what makes people happy, right?   Matt Phelan: Yes, every single day. And we all do it consciously and subconsciously.   Steve Rush: So, what would be some of those assumptions and how right or wrong are they?   Matt Phelan: So, let me run a live case study for you in a real life. There European pan wide retailer, they were focused. The HR team said to us when they briefed us before they did their cultural assessment, that the number one priority is staff retention. Which is a normal thing to hear.   Steve Rush: Yep.   Matt Phelan: When we ran their first cultural assessment. And we cross-reference that with their financial performance data, we found that the managers of the stores that had the highest performing stores financially had been in the business the shortest amount of time.   Steve Rush: Fascinating, yeah.   Matt Phelan: So, the reason that is an important assumption is, the assumption is, retain staff things will be better if we retain our staff. What they found is, the newer managers had happier teams and were performing financially better. So, this is where it's important to not make an assumption again, the second assumption. So, the first assumption was staff retention was the most important thing. The second assumption, and then the next bit is where you can easily lump into assumptions again, which is, for example, you could think, okay, after five years, the employees get bored or lazy, or you could make an assumption actually after five years, we've we just left people alone and actually they need training. So maybe they need to call Steve Rush and think about how they can develop people over the entire employee experience. So that's where data just gets rid of the assumptions, because you could make so many assumptions on those two things, we've discussed there Steve.   Steve Rush: I'd love to get into that whole notion of how you take all of these data points and map that into something that is typically been described as something pink and fluffy. Happiness, it's an emotion, right? So, how do you shift from taking an emotion and turning into a business metric?   Matt Phelan: Yeah, it's really hard for me to answer that because I'm so converted the other way, and I deal with this every day, but I'm going to go out and try and take a step back. So, I think the first stumbling block and the first change in people's mind is a business term called, if you can measure it, you can manage it.   Steve Rush: You hear it a lot, don't you?   Matt Phelan: You hear it a lot. I believe that to be wildly untrue. And what I would change it for is, and I say this as a measurement company, if you can measure it, you can better understand it, which is a subtle change, right, Steve. But I think we've gone down this road where we almost view people as robots. And we think, oh, if we can measure it, we can manage it. But I think, and this is quite a big concept to put out there. But I think the entire idea of management is flawed.   Steve Rush: It's Ironically made up too. We created management in the last hundred years, it didn't happen before that.   Matt Phelan: Exactly, and it goes back, this is sort of taylorism and the factory floor stuff, isn't it?   Steve Rush: Right.   Matt Phelan: So, I think trying to see data as better understand, lead you to seeing data is helping you make better decisions. If we go back to your original question, how is this helping? And this is the second change that I would like to leave people. So, the first is not to use data to manage, but to better understand. The second one is, if we take a piece of data like revenue, generally, if revenue goes up, it's good, and if it goes down, it's bad. Emotions are supposed to fluctuate. It's normal for you to feel happier at one stage in the day and feel unhappy at the other, that's normal, right? So, trying to artificially get people to be happy all the time is actually not a good strategy. So, the second thing I want to leave your listeners with is to see emotional data, more like a weather report.   Steve Rush: Yeah, and can you forecast it?   Matt Phelan: You can certainly start to, we say, today's emotions are an indicator of tomorrow's performance, and that's why we call it the happiness index, right? So, the reason I think this is useful is that if you're a board and you're looking at this data is giving you an indicator of what your future performance may look like. There are subtle shifts, but I think once you start to do that, you start to realize that actually these are important business metrics. They're not the only business metric. They all have to work together. Just like you have revenue in your P&L. We now have companies as big as half a million employees that are measuring happiness in their board report.   Steve Rush: Yeah.   Matt Phelan: Times are changing, but it takes time to take people on that journey from the sort of taylorism that you say, like we've made up in the last a hundred years through to seeing happiness is a really important business metric.   Steve Rush: I totally agree, and productivity is a sidekick for happiness. Happy people are more productive than less happy people. You don't need data to see that, you can see that around you in any store, in any factory, in any office location, happy people are more productive.   Matt Phelan: Yeah, and one of the things that we plot. We're doing this on the modern version of radio. So, I'm going to try and draw it in your head for you. Happiness without engagement is unfocused. So, we see this in a lot of charities where they have happy staff, but not engaged.   Steve Rush: Yeah   Matt Phelan: But we also see the flip, which is highly engaged and unhappy, which is, you get this in a lot of organizations where they think they have a thriving culture when really what they have is a competitive culture which can show up some good metrics. But under the surface, lots of nasty little things are happening. It's going to eventually hold back the growth. So yeah, if you imagine it as a full box quadrant, we want the top right box to be where people are happy and engage is what we're trying to work towards.   Steve Rush: And you also, I know from the time that we've met before, you apply a lot of neurosciences, so this isn't just about data, we're talking about data and science and the people skills coming to this. So, what role does neuroscience play when we look at happiness?   Matt Phelan: Neuroscience is massive for us because if we think again, we've sort of looked at the history or business and taylorism, and so on and so on. If we look at the history of psychology, a lot of psychology is based on observation. Sorry if people eating their breakfast, but also dead brains. That's where we got a lot of our understanding of the body and how we work, observing people in the workplace and also dissecting their bodies, which, sorry, if you are eating a breakfast that I've really offended you.   Steve Rush: Or any of the meal at any of the time, of course, being a globally diverse podcast.   Matt Phelan: Really good point, isn't it? You should be allowed to be upset while eating your dinner as well. But I think what neuroscience just from a technical perspective is, it allows us to go under the hood and see what's happening in a body in real time. So that a huge leap forward, but before everyone turns off the podcast. The reason I love it so much, let's say you're, let's keep with a car, let's say you in a car later, there's a road rage incident, what neuroscience does is it helps you question why you acted in that way? Like, why did that person make me feel angry? Or when I had my meeting with my boss, why did I feel unsafe? Neuroscience is really just helping us understand the emotions. We divide it into four, how you instinctively feel, how you emotionally feel, how you actually feel and how you feel in a reflective basis. Which we think is really important. Businesses tend to be bad, understanding emotions and the instinctive behavior and focus on rational and reflective. But I think it goes back to that. If you can measure it, you can manage it quiet. It's easier to measure and manage rational and reflective beings, but guess what, Steve, there's no human beings out there that are holy. We're all emotional and we're all instinctive. And personally, that's what I think makes us beautiful.   Steve Rush: Well, the emotion reaction comes first anyway from a neuroscience perspective, we'll have an emotional reaction, which we either then can rationalize or not rationalize. And that's where we hit that kind of fight, flight, freeze or appease moment.   Matt Phelan: Yeah, and that's why we say from a neuroscience perspective, there's no such thing as too emotional. So, if your boss made you angry, your emotional responses is how that makes you feel. Anger is just something you're feeling. What you do with that anger is like the good or the bad thing. Because if you feel angry at your boss and then you punch them in the face, that's illegal, right? In most countries. If there is country where it's not, please tell me, Steve, that's bad behavior, right? Punching your boss in the face is bad behavior, but it doesn't change the fact that you instinctively and emotionally felt like that. And that's why we see emotions like happiness as a data point. Because if your boss makes you feel unsafe, it's important to step back and think, why does my boss make me feel unsafe? Maybe this is time to get out of here or speak to someone else or change role. But from a neuroscience perspective, telling someone they're too emotional is like telling a parent that they love their children too much.   Steve Rush: That a great analogy. Yeah, love it. So, here's the thing. Can you ever be Too happy?   Matt Phelan: Yes, the answer Steve.   Steve Rush: Oh Okay!   Matt Phelan: To be happy all the time is a mental health issue as severe, as being unhappy all the time, which people are often shocked when they hear that. But our emotions are supposed to fluctuate and the fluctuation is what is important. This is kind of why I wrote my book. Self-help books, good to a certain degree, right? But if you have a chemical imbalance, which means you're unhappy all the time. You need to go and get help to get out of that. And it would be the same if you were happy all the time, that would be a condition there that you would need help with. We took a lot at the moment about incongruous, did I said it right?   Steve Rush: Yeah, yeah, you nailed it.   Matt Phelan: Incongruous emotion. So, and incongruous emotion could be your mother dies, but you feel happy. So, you feel happy because she was in pain for five years. And you feel that she has had a release, but you feel guilty that you feel happy. The emotion that you feel happy, you can't help how you are feeling in that moment. But what happens is, you can then end up feeling bad. Your rational brain can tell you to feel bad because you think you should be unhappy because your mother just died. So, these are all complex subjects, but it's important to know that it will fluctuate. And the reason I bring up the incongruous bit, sometimes people end up on a downward spiral because they feel unhappy and they get annoyed that they're not happy.   Steve Rush: And it makes it worse.   Matt Phelan: Yeah, certain event. The other way can happen as well. So, to answer your question. Yes, you can be too happy, which I think does surprise a few people when they hear that. Steve Rush: Yeah, it does. And, I guess the reason that might surprise people is, because it's easy to notice when people are less happy than when they are happy, right?   Matt Phelan: Yeah, and I think we need to bring up an elephant in the room on this one, Steve.   Steve Rush: Let's do it.   Matt Phelan: Which is toxic positivity.   Steve Rush: Oh, go on…   Matt Phelan: We made this mistake when we first started The Happiness Index, which is, as soon as we built that software in our old company, we made happiness a target. As in, we said, we want our staff to be on average eight out of ten or above happiness. What I learned from doing that is, it's a terrible idea and don't do it. And the reasons it's terrible idea, and don't do it, is that if you saw someone in the office or down the pub, and they looked unhappy, it's the equivalent of telling them to cheer up. If you tell somebody who's unhappy to cheer up, the only thing that's ever going to happen is, they're going to get unhappy.   Steve Rush: That's true, isn't it? Very true.   Matt Phelan: Yeah, and it goes back to that, seeing it like a weather report, you can't tell the rain not to rain and the sun not to shine. It's just natural, this is what's happening. So, all you can do, if you see someone unhappy is to be there and try and understand what's driving that emotion. And if you can help then great. But if you can't, your job, like we've all learned is to be there to listen. And actually, just the process of listening could actually really help people. But you need to get permission before you go into fixed mode because I think it's an entrepreneurship thing and there's also gender differences in this element, but I'm definitely somebody who likes to jump into fixing.   Steve Rush: Yeah.   Matt Phelan: Before I've been given permission that this person actually wants me to help. That's definitely one of my own developments as leader that I've had to work on. Steve Rush: And in terms of getting balance over the last eight months, two years, where we've gone through this crazy world, that we've been all experiencing, how has that kind of presented itself in terms of people's happiness during and through the pandemic?   Matt Phelan: So, I'm going to use a word from the island in geography back in the day, which it's been a kaleidoscope. I've just been waiting to get that word in really.     Steve Rush: Yeah, I think it's the first time anybody use that word on our podcast. So, congratulations, well done.   Matt Phelan: Thanks Steve, I'm going to send it to my mom. So, she's proud of me, but I think in reality, it's just been different. It's been different for everyone, but there's huge themes again. So, similar to what I was saying about global emotions, some people are happier. For example, introverts many introverts have preferred working from home. Because they don't have people like me walking around the office, asking them how they are.   Steve Rush: Of course, they get their energy internally. So, they don't need to be surrounded by other people to get their energy and focus.   Matt Phelan: Absolutely, some people have really struggled. I've really missed human connection myself. The relationships bit is definitely key, really important for me. The top level, the world was way unhappier in the last two years than it's ever been recognized of unhappiness, just to get that on record. But where we've seen is, we've seen people want to communicate times for the normal amount.   Steve Rush: Wow, that's a lot, isn't it?   Matt Phelan: Yeah, which shows that the digital world is great. But it leaves you with what we call an emotional deficit. So, I think the digital world, I don't want to get too much into hormones today, but I think the digital world really drives your dopamine. Like that reward signal thing that you get from all the social.   Steve Rush: Instant gratification.   Matt Phelan: Yeah, I think we get that a lot from tech and that's not by accident. The Mark Zuckerberg of the world know how to design platforms to do that for us. But there's a huge piece missing on connection there that sitting around the fire, having a chat, all that sort of stuff, you can get bits of it from the digital world. But ultimately, I do think there's a real-world stuff that we need.   Steve Rush: Yeah, I agree. And given all the research and data points, you get, you've gathered data from all over the world. Has there been any pockets of happiness or sadness that spikes, or where's the kind of happiest place to live right now and where would be the place that we might want to avoid?   Matt Phelan: So, this comes up a lot because the nordics always come out as the happiest place. But actually, I think if I'm really brutal with the analysis, I think all human beings, I don't think there's a happier country and a less happy country. There are facts that do come into it that we can't ignore like war and famine.   Steve Rush: Of course, yeah.   Matt Phelan: There is no doubt that if you're in Afghanistan at the moment; that it's going to be impacting how you feel. But if we just take a normal situation, I think in reality, there's measurement differences on it. So, I really encourage everyone to go back to what is important to you and your environment and what's around you because. Denmark and so on, always come out really high, but guess what, Steve, I have to deal with the situation that I have in front of me, which is what I always encourage people to do. So, it's great to be inspired by other countries and other locations, but I think it's more important to look internally and look around you in your own facility. Otherwise, if you heard of that Roosevelt quote, it's like comparison is the thief of joy.   Steve Rush: Yeah.   Matt Phelan: And you can easily do that. Like when I went out to Copenhagen, I loved going for a swim in the harvest that they have there. But I can't do that.   Steve Rush: And here's the other thing that was really interesting bit of a data point overlay on that. Denmark the highest taxed country in Europe, you pay more tax out of your earned income than in any other country in Europe. And in fact, I think in the Northern hemisphere.   Matt Phelan: And I think we talk about that a lot. I talk about that with Jens Nelson. Who's our representative in Denmark and there's a mindset shift. They don't see tax as the thing that's being stolen out of your back pocket after you've done your work.   Steve Rush: Interesting, yeah.   Matt Phelan: There is something that is contributing to society and good. They see it as good; we would need a podcast just to get into the cultural.   Steve Rush: Oh gosh, that's a whole other show, right?   Matt Phelan: Yeah, we'd be back to King John and the Magna Carta to understand that from a UK perspective, maybe that's the follow-up Steve would do King John and the Magna Carta and happiness.   Steve Rush: And then we'll have to of course involve the Romans who started all the thing.   Matt Phelan: Totally.   Steve Rush: Yeah, so you created a fantastic community by the way, called happiness and humans community.   Matt Phelan: Yeah.   Steve Rush: And you always have this question that you'd like to pose and it's what makes you happy. So, I'm going to ask you the same question. So, what makes you happy Matt?   Matt Phelan: Oh, thanks for asking me, Steve. It's where I got the title for my book, which is Freedom To Be Happy. So, freedom was in those top four that I mentioned earlier on happiness, but for me, it's by far the number one thing. like for me, I see life as an adventure. I didn't come from a wealthy family or anything. So, I do have to earn money to pay the mortgage and stuff like that. I do have that side to me, but I can't work anywhere for a second if I don't have freedom to be myself. And it's really higher in that perspective. So, that's all parts of life. That's in my relationships with friends, with my family, with my work colleagues, like I need to know that I can leave at any point. If I was told to come on this podcast, it's very childish. I wouldn't have come on, but because you invited me, I came on. I know it's a very subtle difference.   Steve Rush: It is.   Matt Phelan: I probably need some therapy to work through it, but for me, it's freedom.   Steve Rush: Lovely, awesome.   Matt Phelan: And you, I have to ask?   Steve Rush: Oh, I knew you would do that. So, I'm trying to just articulate this because I've not thought about it and I should have done so it's kind of schoolboy error. I think it's around environment for me. So having happy and calm people around me makes me happy. When there is anger and disruption and chaos, that makes me really unhappy. And I react emotionally in those environments differently.   Matt Phelan: Can you feel that, Steve?   Steve Rush: Oh, hugely. I can feel it even before it happens, so I can sense in a room or in an environment, mood shift and change very, very quickly before it presents itself in the either physical or verbal way.   Matt Phelan: I think that's one of the most important aspects of the COO role. I think a lot of people, when I think about the COO in an organization, I think that person is one of the most organized people in the business, which is also true. But I don't think you can have a COO that can't sense that because the COO has so many interactions with all the different teams.   Steve Rush: Well, actually, I coined the phrase, my Leadership Barometer, right? So that's kind of how it feels for me. You've made the correlation with weather earlier with happiness, didn't you?   Matt Phelan: Yeah.   Steve Rush: So, it's ironic that even without having this conversation before or even connecting the dots, that's exactly what happens with me. I get a sense, a barometer of mood shift, energy shift, culture shift, and I migrate towards it and can energize it and make it better. And I avoid it when it's not or tackle it to re-engineer it, so that it is.   Matt Phelan: And I'm just going to get a bit of free consultancy from you for all your listeners quickly, Steve, with one more question, and then I will stop questioning. I get the sense that you intuitively do that, right?   Steve Rush: It is an intuitively.   Matt Phelan: But if you get people that are not as natural at doing that, right. If you went into an organization and they were low on that skill, do you think you can coach and help people improve that? Or do you think you're just born with it?   Steve Rush: No, I totally believe you can coach it and have done because it's around awareness. So, starts with yourself, and are you paying attention? Are you noticing? And then secondly, it's around, how do you notice? So, what are the clues, the cues, the things that happening around us that make us open to those coincidences. Open to observing those behaviors. So, it's definitely a learned behavior. It might be an intuition for me now, but it probably wasn't twenty-five years ago.   Matt Phelan: That's brilliant Steve and I'm thinking about lots of clients and stuff now where I know that's a challenge they've got.   Steve Rush: Anyway, back to me, it's my show, [laughter] I'm going to spin the lens now and we're going to hack into your leadership mind. So, you've led some really successful businesses and still do, and therefore want to get your leadership spin on how you might do that and what's going to set you and others apart. So, first thing I want to ask you is, if you think about all of the experiences you had, what would be your top three leadership hacks Matt?   Matt Phelan: I think the number one is, I love from my granddad who I never met. So, I learned something from my granddad that I never met, but I learned it through stories passed on to me. This leadership lesson sounds a little bit outdated, because we're probably talking about it from like the forties and fifties. But the thing that I learned from my granddad is that as a leader, your job is to help someone. I'm trying to think of the exact phrase, but it's help someone improve. And I think when you look at it, forties and fifties, it was more like, like my family were immigrants. So, it's about like working your way up and all that kind of stuff. But in a modern world, I see it as personal development. I think if you look at all your employees and think, how do you help them improve? Ultimately that's going to help your organization improve as well. But the massive caveat that I would add to it. For it to really work, you have to be able to have an honest conversation with someone when you think that improvement will be better served outside your current organization.   Steve Rush: Yeah.   Matt Phelan: Which is tough, and you have to park your ego to do that and you to have open lines of communication. But if you've worked with someone for example, five years and you both think, you know, what the best thing this person could do is go and work at this other organization. You have to have a relationship where you could have that conversation with that person. So, I think it's focusing on their improvement, but the caveat that you would be aware that sometimes that improvement might not come from in your organization.   Steve Rush: Yeah.   Matt Phelan: So, we've got number one. And number two, I think is, we've mentioned it before Steve, which is listen. And again, the caveat is not jumping into problem solving. So, it's really listening to your team. But waiting to be invited on the fixed part. And I've learned that the hard way.   Steve Rush: Yeah, easy done though.   Matt Phelan: Yeah, and I think the third point, and this is why I think this is why your podcast has done so amazing Steve is, the power of storytelling. Because I'm a geek, right? And ideal in data, but unless you can turn that data into a story, it just sits in a spreadsheet, isn't it?   Steve Rush: It does, yeah. Matt Phelan: They're just numbers, aren't they? But until you start looking at trends and then once you turn them into trends, you start saying the stories, that's how other human beings learn. So, when you're looking at your cultural data, then taking out those little nuggets and stories, that's how we share it. And we learn and we improve as an organization. So, to recap that I would say self-improvement for the team, really proper listening. And the third point which I just mentioned.   Steve Rush: Love it, really great advice. So, the next part of the show, we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something in your life or work has not worked out at all well. Could have even been quite catastrophic, but it created a learning experience for you that you now use as a positive in your life and work. What would be your Hack to Attack Matt?   Matt Phelan: I think my Hack to Attack was where you were going to Steve, a bit with like listening to your own body. So, I learned through coaching, my coaches is a neuroscience coach that the most important thing I could do is listen to my body. And the reason that was important was when I first started, I was twenty-five and, you know, what's it like, we took an off the record about how tough the last year has been for both our businesses. But like, you can hit these big moments, can't you? People resign, you lose clients, cashflow is tough. What I used to do to deal with tough experiences. Like when I came home, I found it hard to switch off. So, I would drink red wine to sort of like, get that nice hazy feel.   Steve Rush: Yeah.   Matt Phelan: But what I learned from listening to my body is that it would give me that hazy feel and it would push back the negative thoughts, like, oh my God, we've lost this client or this has happened. But then those thoughts would come back to me at three o'clock in the morning which was a downward cycle because then I couldn't sleep. And then I was getting less sleep, which was negatively impacting my wellbeing. So, Hack to Attack, now I look at my wellbeing as I know that if I'm going to turn up for a meeting or a podcast, my wellbeing and foundation to be myself, needs to be there. So, I've learned that I just need to keep feeding that in. So that led me to doing a year off alcohol. I came back drinking for my brother stag do which I felt like I obliged to him because he drank on my stag do and so on and so on.   And I want it to be part of that, but actually, I don't know if I'll drink again. Now, I've came back for that social event. And I definitely think that I'm a better leader. And the other thing I've learned from it is that there are non-drinkers within the happiness index that have gravitated to me towards me socially.   Steve Rush: It's very interesting.   Matt Phelan: Because in the media world, drinking is part of the world. And that was my old world.   Steve Rush: Yeah.   Matt Phelan: Actually, it's like a diversity thing, isn't it? Which is, drinkers socially gravitated towards me. And my co-founders drink, but actually as a diversity perspective, the fact that I'm a non-drink is actually quite useful. So other people would come to me and say, Matt, we're doing this event, it's got drinking involved. Maybe we could do a different type of activity. Whereas I don't think they would've come to me if I hadn't like explained why it cut down on drinking.   Steve Rush: And we avoid the rabbit hole that says also there's a chemical reaction that gives you an instant high when you drink alcohol, but then it also impacts you negatively after the event.   Matt Phelan: I would recommend to read Alcohol Explained. And for any level of drinker, I wouldn't say I was someone who was a huge drinker, but I was someone who became aware that, I looked at it like a loan in the end, which is, I reckon I had one day up for two days down. And I thought, you know what? This is like a high interest loan that I don't want to keep paying off with interest.   Steve Rush: Like you currently can.   Matt Phelan: But that book alcohol explained, especially if you're into neuroscience and stuff, it explains why that high comes and so on. And I don't want to preach because I've many years of actually really enjoying drinking and lots of friends and families do drink, but I would recommend people to read Alcohol Explained whatever your level of drinking from. Problem drinker to one a month.   Steve Rush: Great stuff. Now, the very last thing we get to do is we get to give you a chance to do some time travel, bump into Matt at twenty-one. And you can get to give him some advice Matt, what would it be?   Matt Phelan: You don't realize how much opportunity you've got. And I would say, go and work in other countries. Like right now, obviously we're in the middle of the pandemic, well, we're not hopefully we're at the beginning of the end, but again, like maybe I'm saying this because our freedoms been locked down and stuff, but I think you can learn a lot from travel, right. But imagine how much you can learn by going and working in another country.   Steve Rush: Yeah.   Matt Phelan: It's been good for me because I've become very ingrained in London. So, anything I need or speak too, like my network in London is huge and London's a global city. So, I've benefited from that perspective. But actually, if I were speaking to twenty-one-year-old Matt, I'd probably say, go and work in Shanghai for a couple of years.   Steve Rush: Yeah, I didn't start working my professional career abroad until in my late twenties and then only really in the last kind of ten or fifteen years, if I had the opportunity to travel the world and see and experience those, and you do get much of a richer experience and diversity of thinking and behaviors, is really powerful, isn't it?   Matt Phelan: Yeah, it would be as simple as that.   Steve Rush: So beyond today, if folk wanted to continue the conversation with you, stay connected with you, where's the best place for us to send them?   Matt Phelan: Yeah, at the moment we realized that moving from engagement to happiness for some can be scary. So, any company in the world of any size can go to the happinessindex.com and they can do a free trial for three months of our entire platform. So that's it on a product perspective. From a keeping in touch perspective, the happiness and humans community, you can find that on the happinessindex.com as well, the test is, do you want to positively shape the future of work. If you are thinking, yes, that's what I want to do, Matt and Steve, then please join that community is people from all around the world. People pose questions, challenges. But most importantly, people connect up and there's been people that have become friends, business partners, they've hired on there. So, yeah, please join the happiness in humans community if you want to positively shape the future of work.   Steve Rush: And we but a little join here button on our show notes as well. So, people can do that as soon as they started listening with us.   Matt Phelan: Thanks Steve.   Steve Rush: Matt, I love chatting with you. You bring a really great perspective to something that is an emotional subject, and you have given us that business case. So, thanks for being part of our community and thanks for being on the podcast.   Matt Phelan: Thanks for having me, Steve.   Steve Rush: Thanks, Matt.     Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.  

David Wheatly is the Principal and Chief Question Asker at Humanergy, he's the author of “What Great Teams Do Great” and “50 Dos For Everyday Leadership.” You'll love listening to David talk about his journey from England to the USA with lessons including: The components and elements of leadership choices The common themes that set great teams apart The red path and green path (which one are you on?) What makes great questions “great.” Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about David below: David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/humanergy/ Humanergy Website: https://humanergy.com David on Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidwheatley1 Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Joining me on the show today is David Wheatly. He's the Principal and Chief Question Asker, Humanergy, leadership development consultancy. He's the author of What Great Teams Do Great and 50 Dos For Everyday Leadership. Before we get a chance to speak with David, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: When the chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Indra Nooyi was asked by Fortune magazine, what's the most important leadership advice she's been given. She said, whatever anybody does or says assume positive intent. And when you follow this advice, your approach to a personal problem becomes very different. When you assume negative intent, you're often angry or annoyed. If you let go of this anger or annoyance and assume positive intent, you'll be able to listen generously and speak straight and more effectively. And this advice is not insignificant from a leader who has made one of the boldest moves in their industry in recent years. Nooyi was featured in 2015 issue of Fortune for her bold move of taking PepsiCo in an audacious strategy shift beyond unhealthy snacks and drinks. Despite her critics at the time, PepsiCo has had positive year on year organic growth and has crushed the shares of rival Coke. Assuming positive intent is clearly a powerful leadership move. However, to get good at it, you must first recognize your automatic tendency to sometimes see the negative intentions in people. And then you must deliberately practice looking for positive intent. When you look for positive intent, you automatically give people the benefit of the doubt, and you give yourself a chance to learn about what could have caused the situation you find yourselves in. In fact, you might even be surprised something you hadn't expected might come out of the woodwork. Maybe in a few cases, you'll learn that the person had positive intent, but it just landed negatively. Allow yourself to learn this rather than jumping to conclusions without clear information and doing so you can take action. And of course, by assuming positive intent, you're also practicing great leadership. You'd like to avoid many of the embarrassing situations that come with having negative connotation. So, the leadership lesson here is when you hear or see something that feels negative, reframe it and ask yourself what could have been the reasons behind the action behind the event. And you'll find some positivity in there somewhere. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. We'd love to hear your stories and insights. So please get in touch. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: David Wheatley is a special guest on today's show. He's the Principal and Chief Question Asker at Humanergy, a leadership development consultancy focused on helping people transform themselves along with those who work with them. David's a co-author of What Great Teams Do Great and 50s Dos For everyday leadership. David, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. David Wheatley: Thanks for having me on. Steve Rush: So really keen to get into your backstory that helps send us down a little bit about why you do what you do now. So how did that go from Leeds end up working for The Met Police in London? David Wheatley: I'll try and give you the short story of this, but I put it all down to whitewater kayaking and I taught whitewater kayaking when I was a kid, I'd spent most of my summers in the lake district. And I was looking at different times to go in the Navy. I thought about Dartmouth. And then I'd always said, well, I don't get in there, then maybe the police. And I saw an advert for the police in London that had a guy kayaking on the front of it. And I thought that's the one for me. And so, I applied and got in and spent five years with what's known in England as the met, which is the police force for greater London. And so that was the easy story of how I ended up moving 200 miles south of my hometown to go seek my fortune in the Capitol. Steve Rush: So how long were you at the met police? David Wheatley: I was there for five years in the eighties, which was an interesting time to be in London. Steve Rush: Because London bit like most cities, if you look back in history and certainly some of the big cities in the U.S. and around the around Europe and the world actually. The eighties was kind of their revolving or revolutionary years where they went from what they were to where they are now. And London was definitely one of those cities, wasn't it? David Wheatley: Yeah, it was definitely in transition. So, there were places that you would feel safer than not. And there were definitely communities that were in transition at the same time. So, and now a few riots thrown in during my time too. Steve Rush: And when you look back on your time with the metropolitan police, were there lessons that you learned then that you now carry forward to the work that you do now? David Wheatley: If you look at anything, right. There should be a lesson that you can take out of it. And there were thousands of when I was in that place and I was a cop on the streets of London at twenty-one. And the advice I'd give myself is to stop being so fully yourself and arrogant and being an ass, start growing up a bit quicker and paying attention to what's going on around you. And I think that's one of those things, isn't it? That the great quote says when I was eighteen, I couldn't believe how stupid my dad was. And when I was twenty-one, I was surprised at what you'd learned in three years. Steve Rush: Yeah, it's a great quote, isn't it? David Wheatley: I wish I had the thought and the calm, the willingness to stay calm and question back then, rather than the energy and enthusiasm and excitement and arrogance of a twenty-one-year-old. Steve Rush: So how did you end up then becoming from a place officer to leading a great leadership consultancy in the U.S.? David Wheatley: Again, I put that back to whitewater kayaking, because I got to place in my police career where my colleagues were saying that's five down, only twenty-five to go, and then I can buy a house in the national park and a sports car and do all my hobbies and my hobbies, where, like I say, whitewater kayaking and a bit of climbing. And I thought, well, 30 years' time and a career of thirty years, maybe I won't be able to do those things. So perhaps now's the time to go. And I left the police and moved to the lake district of England, which is a national park in the Northwest. I went to a college in the heart of the lake district to get an education degree while I could still continue my kayaking. And across the lake from the college, I went to was another college that was doing management training using the outdoors. And they needed people with the right bits of paper. And so, I would quite literally paddle from one college across lake Windermere to the other college to go and work with these leadership teams whether it was building a raft or out kayaking, getting to know each other that way. And it evolved from there. We came away from the outdoors and it becomes much more about asking questions that people in their own settings these days. And I've been in the states now for twenty-five years and with Humanergy for twenty-one. Steve Rush: So, what was the pivotal moment for you then to leave blighty and move to the U.S.? David Wheatley: Well, it's part of that college course. I did a six-month exchange to the U.S. and I went back with a wife and a three-year-old. And so, my wife spent five years living in Kendall in Cumbria and decided that she'd love to move back to the states. And so, I looked for some work over here and got a job here in 1996, or as someone told me the other day, the late nineteen hundred which makes me sound really old. And I was working with my now business partner and that company folded in 2000 and we started our own company, Humanergy, which has been around since. Steve Rush: Awesome. Are you still Kayaking? David Wheatley: I was kayaking this last weekend, although the water's a lot less white around here. Steve Rush: Yes, indeed. Unfortunately, I have the Thames, so I'm able to jump on my kayak and shoot up the Thames as long as it's not going upstream after heavy rainfall. David Wheatley: Yeah, so we have the Kalamazoo River just on our doorstep here and it's a beautiful river, goes through the nature center. So, it's all very wilderness, but it's quite flattened, slow moving. So, my whitewater kayak looks a little out of place on it. Steve Rush: I bet it does, yeah. You co-wrote the book, What Great teams Do Great. And in the book, you talk about leadership choices. I fundamentally believe that there are loads of those, but from your experience, what are the kind of key components and elements of leadership choice? David Wheatley: Yeah, I appreciate you bringing that up because that's fundamental to our philosophy of leadership. We believe that leadership is not about your title or your rank or the size of your office, the brass plaque on your desk or any of those things. It's about the choices you make that influence the people around you. And if you think about it that way, then everybody, every day is making leadership choices. They're making choices that influence those around them. And you break it down into that level of simplicity. I'm making a choice, that's influencing you. Then I have some level of leadership and then we broke it into a couple of areas that we could focus on. One is, that choice focused on me or the greater good? And you can kind of draw a line between those two. So, if it's a self-focused choice, then it's about me at the cost of everybody else. If it's a great good choice, it's about me and everybody else that I'm naturally connected to. And we believe that as a leader, you want to be closer to that greater good choice and of that continuum. The other continuum we identified as one of the levels of commitment, which kind of goes from a place of comfort to a place of impact. So, am I committed to my comfort or my committed to impact? And when you plot those two continuums, you end up with, what we've identified as four leadership choices that kind of show the different styles that go from destructive, which is I'm committed to impact, but it's all about me. Passive, which is I'm committed to comfort, and it's still all about me or the better choices which hit that greater good end of the continuum, which is a productive choice, which may be that I'm still committed to my comfort little bit, but I'm willing to help. And then a transformative choice, which is when I'm committed to impact. And I see the greater good and all the work that we do is trying to get people to make more choices in what we would call a top half of those four, which is the productive and transformative quadrants. Steve Rush: When you hear people talk about choices, often that comes with a connotation that people have made a deliberate decision, but I'm looking at your research. Often, the choices that they've made are contributory to where they end up, right? David Wheatley: I think that's just one of the questions we ask is, are your choices yours to make? And when people say yes, most of the time. Although I had a class this week and somebody said no, not really. If I'm told I have to do this by my boss, I don't have a choice. And then somebody else in the room said, yes, you do. You don't have to work there. And she said, yes, I do. I have to work here because I have bills. And then they got into the discussion about how they were all choices. Steve Rush: Yeah. David Wheatley: And even the decision to choose, to work there, to choose, to continue to work there after a boss mandated, we're all their choices. And it's kind of interesting at the moment, especially in the states, we're seeing a lot of people see that and make the choice to leave companies. There's a bit of an exodus of companies because people are saying, I don't have to put up with this anymore. There's opportunities and I'm going to choose to leave and choose to go find somewhere that fits a little better with my values. Steve Rush: In the U.S. actually, there's this great resignation that's going on at the moment where there is a bunch of people leaving in droves, their organizations. David Wheatley: Yep, and in some cases, they're not finding a role elsewhere. They're doing something on their own and other cases that lost to the ether somewhere. But yes, that's this mass exodus that people are making the choice to say, I don't have to put up with this. And I think it's interesting. I was just in a meeting before we came in here and people were talking about, they don't have people, which means that the people they do have are being pushed to do twice as much work as they would do in the past. Steve Rush: Right. David Wheatley: And the result of that is some of them are leaving. Steve Rush: Yeah. David Wheatley: So, that's a choice. It's been interesting to see that that's seems to be more comfortable choice for people at the moment. Steve Rush: What'd you think the reason is that some people, even though they are making choices, don't perceive them to be choices? David Wheatley: I think people get stuck, don't they? Especially over here, we could get a bit philosophical that if you're motivated externally, then the choices you make are about how you look and what you have. And I see that the most centered, balanced leaders are motivated internally and it's about who they are and doing the right thing and making sure they're constantly on the journey inwards. And I think it was Dag Hammarskjold who said, “The longest journey of them all is the journey inwards.” I think half of my work are leadership coach is helping people take that journey inwards rather than to take the journey outwards. Because if you're on that outward journey where it's about how I look, how I'm perceived and the stuff I've got, then that can make us feel like we can't make choices. Steve Rush: All right, that's back to that continuum of comfort and impact people feel comfortable. It comes with another load of emotions that make them feel secure or safe, but actually that sometimes can be holding them back, right? David Wheatley: Yeah, over here in Michigan. It's not unusual for families to have a cottage up north, on a lake somewhere. And you hear people say, oh yeah, I've got a cottage, but I've not been there this year because I've been so busy working. It's like, so why have the cottage? Steve Rush: Yeah, why not work from the cottage? David Wheatley: Yeah, exactly. And these days you can, of course, but it seems like it, but then people get locked into this. I have to go and work here. I have to make this much money. I have to do this stuff in order to have the things that I perceive, but I don't actually make the time to use them. It's one of the things I try to do in my work is keep as much balance as possible. So, I take a lot of Fridays off in the summer so we can hit the water. My vacation for next year is already scheduled. I don't know whether it'll happen at precisely that way or not, but that's important time to get, so I put that in first, before I start filling in the work around it, because it's those experiences that happen on my vacation that are important. And the bigger question is, are you living to work or working to live? Steve Rush: All of which, are your choices, of course. David Wheatley: Exactly. Steve Rush: Yeah, so you've done a lot of work with teams throughout your career and focusing on helping team performance as well. And I thought, what would be helpful is digging into the whole notion then that says, you know, what great teams do Great. Well, what are those things that set great teams apart? David Wheatley: Funnily enough, I have a book on this. It's available all at all good book store. There's a couple of things that we've identified that really work for the book, if I break it into two things. One of them is what we call the set-up box and teams tend to skip around the setup to get straight into the plan. And when we talk about the setup, it's about getting to know each other. So, who do we actually have on the team and what do they bring? Making sure we understand the environment that we're in at the moment and what that impact is on us. Getting clarity as to what we're trying to achieve and then establishing our non-negotiables. So, what are the small number of things that really, we want as our values or our non-negotiables, our behavioral expectations of each other, build that team. And the more time we spend there, the more we're setting ourselves up for a successful experience. And folks can often jump through that because they think, oh, let's just take that as read and we'll get straight into what we're going to do. And then they find issues occur later that require them to come back and spend the time though. So, it's another one of those things that I know of find that time to do it right by always make time to do it over. Steve Rush: Yeah, exactly. David Wheatley: And teams that spend the time in that set up box will save lots of time later on because they did the work. The second piece is that comes back to the choices we make and we break it into green path and red path choices. So that productive and transformative choices I talked about earlier will be green path. The passive and destructive will be what we call red path choices. And it's when we have issues and red path choices, or when we see people be defensive, attack, avoid, accommodate, make excuses, whine, all of those things make the team worse. And we actually put them up there and labeled them so people can see if you're doing any of these, your part of the problem. The flip side of that of course, is the green path is, means I have to be caring, honest and direct. I have to be willing to listen. I have to take in all the perspectives and engage people in a way that drives us forward to a solution. And if I'm doing that, I'm part of the solution. And now that's significantly harder than the whining or the excuses or the attacking, avoid, but it builds the team and it builds the credibility of the team. And it sounds simple but putting it out in front of people and saying, you know, is this a green path or a red path choice, or in other words, is this building us or is this degrading us over time? Is the other thing that all too often, we see teams that have got problems and that could have been resolved six weeks ago if they had just had a good conversation about it, but they didn't. And then, it started to fester and they neglected things. And next thing, the teams falling apart and the results, aren't where they need to be. Steve Rush: So, for those teams who do follow the green path, what's the reason that they're able to keep laser focused and follow the green path and not be distracted? David Wheatley: And the reality is we're all human. So, we all make choices on the red and the green path consistently. The better leaders make more choices on the green, but they don't necessarily make none on the red. What I find is that people are making more green path choices, it encourages and emboldens more green patch choices. So, if you come back from lunch and there's a piece of lettuce between your teeth, and I tell you, there's a piece of lettuce between the teeth in a way that's caring, then you will appreciate that. You might be slightly embarrassed, but you'll appreciate it. And then when you see me with something so good like that, you're more likely to let me know that so that I'm not as embarrassed later on, those are simple green path choices that help us build the relationship. But then that relationship helps us deliver the results that we need when we need it. Because when we build that relationship, we have that level of trust. We're more willing to do what it takes to get us to that that result. And if it means digging in a bit deeper, I've been a bit more creative or working on some things, I'm willing to do that because we built that connection. As simple as you were willing to tell me, I had a piece of lettuce between my teeth. Steve Rush: Yeah, it's the small things that make the big differences, right? David Wheatley: Yeah, and if I don't do that and you get home five o'clock tonight, and you're looking in the mirror and you say, wow, I've still got a piece of lunchtime lettuce in my teeth. How many people have I passed that didn't tell me that? Steve Rush: Yeah. David Wheatley: And then you go in tomorrow morning with a completely different attitude about those people, and you're right. I just was in a meeting where I said, I think I used the phrase, it's driving me crazy. And someone put it in the chat box, but we're really trying to lean away from using the word crazy because it cannot not always be inclusive to people with mental health issues. And I thought, wow, that's kind of cool. And, but rather than have the conversation in the chat box, let's have the conversation in the meeting so that we can get this out here and understand what you're saying. And I can learn from it as well as everybody else can learn from it. And if that's turning some people off, then we need to know it, but we need to be willing to have those conversations so that we can align and make it better as we move forward. Steve Rush: Yeah, I love that. Now, all teams, including high-performing teams have an achilleas heel, having your experience of working with many teams, what do you see as the biggest achilleas heel for teams? David Wheatley: Ego. Steve Rush: Okay, tell me more? David Wheatley: I wanted to see what would happen if I just said that and nothing else afterwards, but I think ego gets in the way, because we're not willing to see ourselves as being wrong or not perfect. And all too often that trips teams up when somebody or some people in that team let their egos get the best of them. If you think about my continuum going from self to greater good, in some ways I have to manage that ego to be part of the greater good, because if it takes over then that drives me back to the self and of the continuum and makes my choice more red path than green path. And that's when senior leaders don't want to be told that they might be wrong. When people aren't open to feedback, when people aren't learning from the folks who are operating machinery, for example, and I was talking to a client this week and the folks who operate the machines, keep telling the engineers that there's some better ways of doing it, but the engineers aren't interested because the folks who operate the machines don't have engineering degrees. In my mind, that's an ego issue that is negatively impacting that team. Steve Rush: Agreed. And it happens in every business, right? David Wheatley: Yeah, it does. If those engineers actually got on the floor and talk to those folks, they'd probably find out there as smart, if not smarter as their engineering degree, because they'd been operating that machine for twenty years. Now, they may not have the ability to draw it or to capture or do all the technical stuff they learned in college, but they know what that machine is doing and they know how to get the most out of it. And yet it's ego that gets in the way of that. Steve Rush: Agree. So, one of the things I wanted to kick around with you is this whole notion of failure versus success. So many teams that I've worked with or work for often spend quite a bit of time debriefing what went wrong and getting stuck in the moment of failure versus elevating themselves into success. What's the reason that that happens typically? David Wheatley: I think that's fits with the red path, green path idea because when we're looking at failure, we're really looking to blame and we're looking backwards. I think that failure can drive opportunity. The American army have a process called the after-action review. And it's a simple learning cycle, you know, what did we say we were going to do? What did we do? What did we learn from this? How can we apply it next time? And so, you could pull that out. And so that's a simple learning cycle. One of the key differences is, the attitude they want, when you go in, this is not about blame, this is about learning. This is not about rank. This is about what we did. And if you had a part in this, you've got an equal say in this conversation. And again, that comes back to our ego conversation, doesn't it? If I'm willing to say all of this could have been wrong, but we're going to learn from it and apply it next time, then people are more likely to follow you then if I'm trying to scapegoat and looking backwards at failure, and I don't know why people spend so much time on yesterday because they can't do anything about it. Steve Rush: Yeah, it's interesting. I had this the same conversation, not so long ago about performance management in so much, as many people get stuck in looking at historic data and past performance. And actually, you can't manage performance because it's happened. You can do is manage the performer when it's going forward, which is your green path way path. David Wheatley: Yeah, and the green path said, we're forward focused on a solution. And that should be the attitude all the time. I might use yesterday to help educate me, but I'm educating myself to make tomorrow better. And leaders who drive that way, are a lot easier to follow than those who want to spend a lot of time on failure. Steve Rush: Aren't they just, yeah. Now you'll known at Humanergy as the Chief Question Asker. So where did the Moniker come from first of all? And then let's get into the concept of asking some questions. David Wheatley: Because some of your listeners are in the UK. I probably say this a little bit easier. We've never had titles in our organization. We've always said to people use the title that will get the job done, whatever title you need, you have that title if you needed to get the job done. And a few years ago, my business partner, I noticed on his LinkedIn, it said chief insight officer. And I thought, that actually fits with him. He's the kind of deep thinking one on the team. And so that fits, but what am I going to put now? Because if we're going to this, I should have something. And my first thought was chief humility officer, but I figured I might be the only person that thought that was funny. Steve Rush: That's right, yeah. David Wheatley: And then I started thinking about, when I'm doing my best work, what am I doing? And it keeps coming down to this. I ask a good question. And if I can ask a good question that unlocks that thinking of other people, then that's where, you know, where I have my value. And so, this idea of being the chief question asker was just a different way of looking at how I want to lead and the work I do at Humanergy. Steve Rush: So, if you ask a good question, how do you know if that's a good question or not? David Wheatley: Usually because people stop and you can see the cogs whirring as they think. And the key to a good question as well in my mind is to leave a lot of space afterwards, because if it is a good question, you can literally see it having its impact. And as people stop and think and their eyes, you can see them adjusting as they going inside their brain. And they're applying that straightaway. It's literally unlocking their head. You can see it happen in front of you. And when that happens you can just sit back as a coach and that warm feeling and say, I probably don't need to talk much for the rest of this meeting because they're going to come up with everything. I just had the question that unlocked their thinking, and now they're ready to go and primed. In a good coaching session, the less I say probably the better the coaching sessions been. Steve Rush: Yeah, and great questions also should be informed by the conversation not pre-ordained, or I see some sales teams having the top fifty questions to ask clients. And, you know, for me, if you're pre-loading your questions like that, you can't be then listening to your responses because listening is a sidekick to great communication when you ask great question, right? David Wheatley: Yeah, in my mind, that's the foundation for a great question, is the listening piece and not only the listening, but also being able to summarize what you're hearing. And sometimes you don't need to go to a great question. You just simply summarize what you just heard and that's enough for the person to say, oh, I guess that is what I said. And now I hear it back to me, this is what I'm thinking. And you've unlocked their thinking again, but absolutely it's in that order, you first have to listen, then you summarize well, and then potentially you ask a good question that unlocks their thinking. And so absolutely you're right. It's all part of a set. Steve Rush: Yeah, so this is the part of the show where we get a flip a little bit. So, I'm going to think about your leadership experiences, leading others and coaching many, many leaders throughout your career and ask you to try and distill them down into the top three. So, if you could, what would be your top three leadership hacks? David Wheatley: One of them we've already talked, about the powerful question and knowing what makes a powerful question. And it's quite often, it's usually a question that can't be answered yes or no. And it's not a question that's advice, disguised as a question. So, if you can stay away from those things, then you're probably leaning closer to a powerful question. The second thing that goes with that, and I've already alluded to this too, is what a friend of mine shared. This comes from some of the work of Humble Inquiry. There should be ten seconds that you leave after a question, because most people's thinking doesn't really kick in until about second seven. And I actually have a group that I'm working with at the moment, and they have a lawyer in the group and I have to wait till twelve or thirteen seconds for them because that's when his question kicks in, but it's kind of funny to literally count. And I count to ten and there's silence for ten seconds. And then I keep a little bit longer just for this one individual. And his question usually comes at twelve seconds after, or his thought comes twelve seconds after my question, because he wants to think about it. All too often, we're not comfortable with that silence for that length of time. But if I ask a question, I should give the space and the time for people to truly think about it before they respond. And then the third one in my mind would be assume positive intent. And this is something we use quite a lot in our work that all too often people's problems are because they assumed that somebody had ill intent about it. And if I go through life, assuming that people don't mean me ill, then my life will be so much more fruitful, better and enjoyable than if I worry about all the possibilities that could be happening when I see two people in the distance talking, or they're talking about me? I assume positive intent. And if they are talking about me, it's for good reasons. So, then I can let it go and not have to worry about it anymore. So those are my three, the powerful questions, leave ten seconds, at least after your question and then assume positive intent, Steve Rush: Great hacks, great advice. Interestingly, the last one. There's been some scientific research done quite a few years back. That's actually proven that 99.9% of our actions are with a positive intent. They might not often land positively and they may have a different impact, but the intent is positive. And I think just reframing that even when people screw up and do horrible things and you feel bad about it, if you can reframe that and allow yourself to recognize that it started out with a positive intent, it can often help you deal with different, right? David Wheatley: Absolutely, yeah. And that's green path thinking in my mind, I'd love to see that research too, because that's been my intuitive assumption. And yet half the time we're working with people who see something and they do what I call conspiracy theory thinking. Where they think about every bad possibility that could be going on in that world, and then life gets depressing. And just switching that off and saying, well, if we assume a positive intent, what could be going on? And you start to see them say, well, I guess they could be thinking this way or that way. And night and day switch people's perspective on a situation. Steve Rush: Yeah, you're right. David Wheatley: But it's hard. Steve Rush: Yeah, next part of the show, David, we call Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something hasn't gone well. It could be that we've royally screwed up at work, whatever the case may be. But as a result of it, we've learned from that experience that we now use it as a positive in our life or our work. What would be your Hack to Attack? David Wheatley: Well, it's to take feedback. And I think when you're younger and people give you feedback about how you could be better or something that's going on or something that you haven't done quite as well, it can be very easy to resist that feedback and for your ego to get in the way. I've found that the more open I am to feedback, the more life is enjoyable and I get better at what I'm doing. It doesn't mean that I have to agree with it, but at least about process it, then there's usually something valuable comes out of it. And that, you know, I can be mad about it for a while and I can be frustrated by the fact that I got the feedback, but usually that frustration is based on the fact that I didn't like my performance and the feedback is accurate, but I don't necessarily get there straight away. And there's a great English comedian, Sarah Millican, who has a rule that she calls the 11 o'clock rule that applies to her comic stand-up that if you had a bad stand-up gig on the night before. She has till 11, o'clock the following day to whine and mope about it, and then she has to stop and let it go and move to the next one. And the same goes for when she has a great stand-up gig. She has till 11:00 AM the following day to celebrate it. And then she has to stop and get on with the next one. And I've actually used that a lot with people that are in leadership roles. If you get feedback, if somebody didn't go right, if something's really making you mad, then you've got till 11 o'clock the following morning to fester on it and then stop and move on. Steve Rush: I think it gives you some boundaries, doesn't it? David Wheatley: Yeah, I like that fact that it's saying, yes, you can mope about it, but only for a very limited time. And so that's the Millican rule or the Millican war is my Hack to Attack. Steve Rush: Awesome, and I never realized that we'd ever get Sarah Millican even by reference on the show, on a Leadership Hacker Podcast. David Wheatley: There you go. Steve Rush: So, you alluded a little bit to this earlier on in the conversation, when you were reflecting back on your days in the Met, we kind of always close out around giving some advice at twenty-one, but thinking back on all of your experiences, if there was just one kind of opportunity to bump into yourself and say, right. It's just this one thing, David, what would it be? What would you change? David Wheatley: I said some of it earlier, but I guess it can be summarized in don't take yourself too seriously. Steve Rush: Yeah, it's easy said than done that, right? So, it's an academic. You don't take yourself too seriously. I think has been said to me many times. And I have also probably said it to many associates, children, the family, right? David Wheatley: Yeah. Steve Rush: How do you go about doing that though? Because it's easier said than done. David Wheatley: I think it's one of those things that we again get stuck in ourselves, especially when we're younger that, you know, the world revolves around us, whoever you are, the world revolves around you. Someone once told me that we're all extras in everybody else's movie. And so that sense of, you know, you Steve sees the world revolving around you because you can't suddenly step out of your body and be somebody else. And it's that realization that everybody else is in that same spot. And the older you get, the more you realize that everybody has a backstory, everybody has issues that they're dealing with. Everybody has a broader sense of life that you're not aware of. And it's getting out of that that place that said the whole world revolves around me and understanding that everybody's got a little piece of it, which, you know, don't take yourself too seriously. Because we're all in this together kind of thing, is easy to say. The recognition, the realization that everybody is in the same boat and they have their issues and a backstory is the difference maker in my mind. And so, getting people to think about that and explore other people's perspectives can sometimes get you out of everything's about me. Steve Rush: Yeah, I like it. So, what's next for you and the folk of Humanergy? David Wheatley: Well, I continue a book, What Great Teams Do Great, which was released just in time for the pandemic. And so, we couldn't get out and physically advertise it. So that's still ongoing and we're constantly looking for what's next. At the moment, we've got some training that we call our high-impact leadership training, which is a twelve-month leadership adventure which takes four hours of classroom time a month. We used to do that. Face-To-Face in different locales, but COVID took it virtual. And there's been some fun doing that on Zoom with people that are coming in from all over the country, in some cases, all over the world to participate in a leadership journey that lasts for twelve months and continues to build, that's the fun project that we've got expanding at the moment. Steve Rush: Awesome, and wish you every success with it too. David Wheatley: Well, thank you. Steve Rush: So, our listeners might want to get hold of a copy of What Great Teams Do Great, and some of your other work and indeed find out a little bit more about what you and the firm are doing. Where's the best place for us to send them? David Wheatley: Well, humanergy.com and that's humanergy.com is where you can find everything about us and contact us and What Great Teams Do Great is available. All good bookstores and Amazon. Steve Rush: Awesome. We'll make sure those links are in our show notes as well for you. David Wheatley: What I'm encouraging folks to do. When you think about that greater good continuum is, if you can hold off a little bit, then go and order a book from your local bookstore that's been struggling for the last eight-teen months. It might take a little longer to get to you. It might be a little bit more expensive than it is on Amazon, but at least we're sharing some of the wealth with some people who've been struggling. And Jeff doesn't need any more money. Steve Rush: That's a great, call, love it. David, thanks ever so much for coming on the show, loved talking about the journey. I can really see the value that you talk about from red path, green path. I can see how teams can adopt that language super quick to really help them focus on the right things and thanks ever so much for being part of our community on the podcast. David Wheatley: Well Thanks, Steve. And I look forward to continuing listening to this journey. Steve Rush: Thanks very much David.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.  

Dr Jeffrey Hull is an author, educator, and consultant with more than twenty years' experience partnering with C-suite executives on issues of high-performance leadership, change management, organizational strategy, structure, and culture. He's the CEO of LeaderShift Inc and also a clinical instructor in psychology at Harvard Medical School. In this inspiring show you can learn about: What is organizational anthropology? Why leadership really is an art and a science. Learn about the age of the post-heroic leader. Jeffrey's F.I.E.R.C.E. leadership model. Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Jeff below: Jeff on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffrey-hull-ph-d-bcc-062b09/ Jeffrey Hull Website: https://www.jeffreyhull.com Jeff on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JeffreyHullPhD Jeff on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drjeffreyhullphd/ Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Joining me on the show today is Dr. Jeffrey Hull. He's the bestselling author of the book Flex, he's in Harvard faculty member, a C-suite coach and CEO and founder of LeaderShift, Inc. But before we get a chance to speak with Jeff, it's The Leadership Hacker News.   The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: As generations as pass through the workforce, they become more transient and no more so than Gen Z. Gen Z has had enough, according to a recent Adobe survey, 5,500 workers found that 56% of those aged between 18 and 24 in the workplace say they're planning to switch jobs within the next year. Research from Microsoft and Bankrate back this up reporting that 54% and 77% of Gen Zs respectively are thinking about quitting in their organizations. Sometimes these statements don't always line up with actions, but across the globe, a record number of Gen Z quit their job in April equivalent to twice the number of the previous April. Anthony Klotz, a business professor at Texas A&M University has deemed as the great resignation. The term that's caught fire in recent months, Klotz explained that many employees only stay at their jobs because the cost of leaving is higher than the cost of staying. And this ratio has shifted for many workers in the past year. He goes on to say, “The costs of staying have risen due to burnout while the costs of quitting have decreased due to unexpected pandemic savings.” So how as leaders, can we avoid this Exodus? Here's a few ideas that will get our Gen Z workers wanting to stay. Ignite their passion. We all have differences and gap have recently concluded that the great resignation is actually just a great disconnect. So rather than being an issue with pay or industry or working conditions, the pandemic has changed the way people work and how they behave. So, reversing the tide in any team or organization requires leaders who care, who engage and who give our workers a sense of purpose. Really find what it is that turns them on and makes them successful and energetic and aligned their work to that Passion. Banished the busy-ness syndrome. One of the real issues ushered by the pandemic was a need for newly remote workers to look busy, particularly for those who were young and relatively unproven in their careers, trying to make a name for themselves. Half of remote workers in a recent study showed they were worried that their manager had doubts about their productivity leading to 44% to work longer hours and 37% even skip breaks, which of course naturally is going to impact on productivity negatively. In the Adobe research suggested that 86% said that their task would now becoming more mundane and repetitive. And therefore, as leaders, we've got a real opportunity to strive to banish the busy-ness syndrome and find things that are purposeful, meaningful, and give people the opportunity to be creative. And the last thing that comes out in this survey is get rid of the nine to five mentality. Of the workers in the Adobe study, who planned to switch jobs in the next year, 61% said they wanted more control over their schedule. And this applies particularly to Gen Zs as only 62% say their most productive hours fell between nine and six. It's time for our leaders to banish the idea of that mandatory nine to five, just exploring why people can be more productive outside those hours can really unlock talent, unlock ideas and creativity. The rules for leading people have changed. Even in turbulent times. The key particularly to retaining Gen Z employees is not a mystery. Retention requires an intentional commitment as leaders to understand to their unique needs and demands. We can't expect Gen Z to behave like Gen X, Gen Y, Baby Boomers. They've been born into a different world and have different perspectives. And the war for talent is definitely putting pressure on organizations and teams to provide the next gen employees, the opportunity to be successful. So, the leadership lesson here is create some awareness here and understand how our Gen Zs are thinking, feeling, and behaving and make sure that you can adapt and provide them with the opportunities to grow, notwithstanding, maintaining great standards and expectations. That's been The Leadership News. We'd love to hear from you, if you have any insights, stories, or quirk things that we'd love to get on the show. So please get in touch. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Joining me on the show today is Dr. Jeffrey Hull, he's the CEO and founder of LeaderShift, Inc. He's a Director of Global Development at Harvard Institute of Coaching, and he's also a faculty member of Harvard Medical School. He's a speaker and the author of the book Flex. Jeff, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Dr. Jeffery Hull: Good to be here. Thank you for having me. Steve Rush: So, you really have a fascinating story and loads of experience, and I'd love to just start with a bit of a summary if you like, of how you've arrived at leading the organization you do now? Dr. Jeffery Hull: Well, I think it's probably the easiest way to sum up my career is in three phases. Early phase after college, in graduate school, was in HR working for the consultancy based in New York. Global strategy firm called Booz Allen Hamilton that many people know. I worked my way up early in my career to a director of HR role where at that point I discovered my favorite part of that job was mentoring and coaching the up-and-coming leaders. And it was really kind of early in the coaching profession. So, I don't know that I had the option to become a professional coach at that point, but I knew I liked that part of my work. So, when I had an opportunity in the second phase of these three to jump into an entrepreneurial stage of career, a good friend of mine who was an investment banker, we were in New York. At the time we got together, we started a company to do leadership development consulting. And over the next five to seven years, built a pretty successful practice with leadership training, customized seminars and retreats, and with financial organizations, software companies you know, we worked back and forth between Europe and New York. And over that time, I've kind of honed my training and development skills, but also started doing more coaching. And that led to the third phase, which I guess I'm still in, which is eventually really kind of honing in on executive coaching. And so, for the last 15 years or so, I've really developed a pretty wide-ranging practice of executive coaching in all different industries, whether it's still in the financial space, but also software, tech, pharma. And then more recently doing a lot of work in healthcare where I got connected to Harvard medical school and the folks at the Harvard Institute of coaching. And that's kind of where I kind of give back, give back in my career. I work part time as one of the leaders of the Institute. And it's really an opportunity for me to get involved with research and education around scientific or evidence-based underpinnings of this profession that we call coaching, which these days, I think it's safe to say as a profession, but, you know, it's still, it's still the growth phase. I mean, it hasn't been around that long. It's still quite a relatively new notion, isn't it? In an organizational sense. Of course. Exactly. Yeah. And you've also as part of your work and your studies as an organizational psychologist over the last 20 years have kind of really developed an interesting spin on things. And you have this notion of organizational anthropology and I'd love to learn a little bit more about what that means and how it differs. I think that that's just my euphemism for going below the surface and being a bit of a detective of what is going on within an organization that may not be explicit and may not be visible. It may not be seen, but may actually be having a huge influence or impact on the organizational success or on the leaderships way of interacting with their people. So, I was trained originally in my doctoral program in Jungian psychology. There's another quick phase I went through earlier where I want it to be a psychotherapist. That's a long story we'll do for another day. But out of that training came my recognition that a lot of the time, the way things are really happening in organizations are sort of implicit or unvisible or invisible. And so, the anthropological part of me is looking at my coaching opportunities with clients to dig under the surface. Like what's not so obvious that's going on in the dynamic with the team or the way you interact with your people as a leader and having an opportunity for people to feel safe in a coaching dynamic, then they can reflect on some of these blind spots where they're not even aware of the way they're coming across or the way they're interacting with their people. And that can be helpful I think in two ways. One it can help the leader become more self-aware and then secondly, it can also help with the culture building aspects of organizations. Steve Rush: Right? Dr. Jeffery Hull: Because a lot of the aspects of culture, as you know, are more implicit, they're more kind of the way things we do around here. And, you know, this is the way we put our offices, or this is how we operate in virtual calls these days or whatever it is, but there's sort of the unwritten rules. So that's what I mean by kind of the anthropological lens, like looking under the surface and getting into the shadows, so to speak. Steve Rush: And that's a skill, and a massive skill to get below those couple of layers because we all come with our lenses and we all come with our layers. What are the things that you've noticed that really help you to be able to get really deep and underneath those kinds of layers? Dr. Jeffery Hull: Well, I think a lot of it is being an observer of the dynamics between individuals and their teams that they don't even notice. You know, I look for, and I wrote about this in my book as an example, I look for the somatic or the energetic dynamic that's going on between a leader and their people, not just what they say by that, I mean, you know, in live space and example would be how they handle the energy of the team dynamic in terms of where they sit, how they set up their office, the timing, who participates and who doesn't, power seats and, you know, presence, you know, how do they hold their body as a leader? Do they lean in or do they lean back? Do they look at people directly or do they often kind of look distracted are they on their cell phone being, you know, texting and things like that. So, some of the more subtle physical elements are ways to detect kind of what's really going on underneath the surface, despite what people may be saying. And I would add that that shows up even more, or explicitly, in these virtual situations where we're now like on Zoom calls or Microsoft teams or whatever, and all of those things, my clients are often surprised when they hear from me that some of the more non-verbal physical presence dynamics are actually even exaggerated in the virtual space. Steve Rush: That's really fascinating, most writing or articles I've certainly read in the last 18 months to two years as we've been going through this crazy world, suggest the opposite. How have you managed to fine tune your skills and your acuity to find that in what you do? Dr. Jeffery Hull: Well, it's a great question, but it starts with some of the basic scientific principles. And I mentioned, I wrote about some of this in my book too, which is, you know, we're learning more and more about how people operate when they feel a sense of psychological safety or how they build trust or what it takes to operate at high performing levels. And these things often trace back to physical or somatic energy issues such as eye contact and feeling like your being listened to, you know, this sort of a subtle thing. Like when you ask someone, how do you know when you're being heard? You know, that's kind of a subtle question. How do you know? Right. So, when you think about that question in the virtual space, it becomes quite granular. And the studies have shown that things like direct eye contact and smiling and on a virtual call showing, your hands occasionally. Not just being, you know, the talking head from the neck up, those small gestures, those small things actually make a lot of difference. People feel more connected. They feel more heard when you look directly into your camera, rather than looking distracted. Now that's true in the real world, but it's even more exaggerated in the virtual space. Steve Rush: Right., yeah. Dr. Jeffery Hull: So, a lot of what I do for my coaching around how to become more effective in those Zoom calls or those Microsoft team calls is to pay attention to the way you're paying attention, right? Steve Rush: Conscious, consciousness Dr. Jeffery Hull: Exactly, and know your habits. We all have our little bad habits, you know, like looking down and taking notes or occasionally glancing at my cell phone or, oops, I got a text message better read it. That's all, you know, even in the real world, that's a little bit distracting, but in the virtual space, it can come across as downright rude. Steve Rush: Yeah, it can, can't it? Dr. Jeffery Hull: Yeah, exactly. Steve Rush: The book that you've written, Flex: The Art and Science of Leadership in a Changing World, if ever there was a time to have written a book, right? now, is it. Tell us a little bit about the inspiration behind the book and maybe some of the key themes it covers? Dr. Jeffery Hull: Well, the inspiration for the book was really more on a sort of macro level, which is that in my executive coaching practice and in my work with the Harvard Institute where I get to interact as part of a community of hundreds of coaches around the world, you know, there was a sense that the demographics and the dynamics of what it takes to be successful in a leadership context were changing rapidly in the last few years. And I think it's now become pretty well known that organizations are becoming flatter, more networked, more democratic, more interconnected, more multicultural, more multi-national. I mean, the whole thing with the pandemic and virtual work is just exaggerated all of that. But what that leads to of course is you have a new generation of leaders stepping up that don't always come the same way as the ones that I coached early in my career. For example, they're not all white men and they're not all charismatic and they're not all authoritative leaders. So, there's a lot more variety than there used to be. And what I'm called on to coach around. Things like emotional intelligence and building trust and getting high performing teams to be cohesive and work together in alignment with a vision, you know, these things are more complex and the good news is there's some good research on how to make that happen. And so, what led to the book was basically my recognition that, you know, we needed to kind of move on from what I considered to be the paradigm of, you know, probably 2000 years of leadership, you know, the white guy coming in on the horse to lead the troops with the vision and the directive style. Not that that's really not appropriate when I'm under the surgeon's knife, I definitely hope he's a nice authoritative directive person, or when I'm sitting on an airplane, I expect my pilot to be authoritative and directive. But, you know, in most situations these days, there's room for a lot more variety. And sometimes in fact, there's a benefit to bringing in the more consensus driven collaborative maybe the leader who leads by following or building a coalition. And so that's really what led me to want to describe in the book, case studies and coaching examples of a really much wider, diverse range of what I considered to be sort of the next generation of leadership. Steve Rush: Definitely, so. You state actually in the book that we're in this age of the post heroic leader. Dr. Jeffery Hull: Right. Steve Rush: So how might that have looked and what would be the stark differences? Dr. Jeffery Hull: Well, I think the fundamental theme is that the traditional archetype is that heroic leader, right? So, as I mentioned before, you know, the Knight that comes in on the horse to save the world, and that is a very individualistic definition of leadership, that it's a particular person with a particular personality that shows talent, that has high potential. And they, you know, they need to be groom and then they run off and lead the world. And, you know, as you're getting back to your question about anthropology, you know, that's an archetype, it's not a fact. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Jeffery Hull: And so, in today's world, there's much more space for a whole broad range of leaders to be impactful. And some of the most influential leaders that I work with are not like that at all. They're actually more introverted. They're actually more consensus building. They're actually good listeners. They actually create an environment that more and more people can lead as a team. So, the fundamental shift is from an individualistic approach to leadership, to a team or community, or a group focused way of leading, and that sort of collective approach can be equally effective. So, I consider that to be post heroic in the sense that there's no longer always just one singular individual leading the charge. And the best leaders, and I think I dig into this in the book are those that really understand the benefits of both ends of the spectrum, what I call the alpha, which is the heroic type, and then the beta, which is really more of a consensus builder. Steve Rush: And equally they bring different skills and attributes to a team. I guess the key here is finding others around you that have different perspectives and more diversity, right? Dr. Jeffery Hull: Absolutely, and that's probably where you're pointing there is one of the fundamental themes of my book, which is this adage, that there are only a few people in any organization that are considered the high potentials that we should, you know, give extra training or extra focus. I really think that's an outdated meme, that the best teams these days recognize that there's leadership potential in everyone. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Jeffery Hull: So as a leader, your job is to uncover that talent and nurture and exploit or take advantage, or leverage the talent and all of your people. Steve Rush: And that's really massive for me when you played that back, because I instantaneously think back to when I was in leading businesses and I was working in HR. You have a typical talent grid, maybe a nine-box grid, and you identify those who are talent, and who's not. I wonder how different the world would be today if all of those nine boxes were classed as talent, yet we just reframed it in a different way. Dr. Jeffery Hull: Well, you know, it's so interesting you mentioned that because I too have come full circle around that dynamic. And one of the things that I do with my clients now that are like heads of HR or chief operating officers, or even CEOs, is I will support them to go through that exercise to identify those individuals in their organization, that show, you know, really what I would consider to be evident talent. Like they're sort of a natural born leader, right? So, oh, those are the superstars. So, we create our nine box or whatever it is that we're doing to evaluate for succession plan. And we create our list of the top tier of the next generation of talent, so that's cool. But then what I do is, I throw a wrench in the mix, when I say, okay, I want you to go through your talent pool. And I want you to pull out all the people you think are not high potential, top 10, top 50, you know, what are those people that you think are real questionable? And so we go through that exercise, and then I throw the second wrench, which is, okay, I want you to reflect on whether or not the people you just threw on the dust pile or on the trash bin are the most talented people in the organization. Steve Rush: Interesting. Dr. Jeffery Hull: What if you think of the people who have the least potential as the ones who have the untapped most potential, how would that change the way you operate? Steve Rush: Really neat. I'm literally playing it through, in my mind as you're describing it. What it really tells us is that there are lots that we just don't know about people. There are lots that we just don't understand about that capability. And ironically, we might never know if we exclude them from some of those conversations. Dr. Jeffery Hull: Yeah, and I'll give you two examples. I mean, what you're really pointing to too when you go through that exercise is number one. If you're in a leadership seat and you're going through the list of potentials, you know, all the people on your team that have been working for you. Let's say for a year, two years, three years, and you pick out the ones you think are obviously high potential. Well, guess what? They're all going to be just like you, that's the stereotype. Steve Rush: Right? Dr. Jeffery Hull: Our affinity is for people who are like us, oh, I love Mary. She does a lot of the same things that I used to do when I was a child. Like, great, okay. So that's just keeping the stream moving of everybody being the same, but the other side of the coin is the people that your kind of frustrated by, or, oh God, that guy, he doesn't have a lot of potential. He works in the middle of the night. He never shows up at 9:00 AM like everybody. He has no potential, but he's a maverick. Oh, maybe he's super creative. Maybe he's very, very innovative, but doesn't toe the line. So, the people at the other end of the spectrum, as I said, that you, as a leader are kind of dismissing because they don't fall into your stereotype of towing the line, the way you do to become a leader. May actually be the most creative, innovative, talented maverick folks in your whole organization. They may be secretly working at two o'clock in the morning on solving the problem that will make you millions. Steve Rush: That's right, yeah. Dr. Jeffery Hull: So, it's worth taking a second look, I guess, is the bottom line, right? Steve Rush: Definitely, so now you call the book, Flex: The Art and Science of Leadership. And I wonder for most people listening to this, they'll get the science because it's prevalent and we talk about Neuroscience; we talk about some of the tools and techniques and Jungian approach you talked about earlier, but what about art? Is leadership really an art? Dr. Jeffery Hull: Yes, because I think there's an intuitive, creative, almost really hard to put your finger on a piece of interconnectivity with people that is kind of poetic or musical, or if you think of the works of art that stand the test of time, they would be hard pressed to be created through scientific means. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Jeffery Hull: Right? They're special, they're unique. And, so I think that's what I'm pointing at when I say, you know, the good news is we have more evidence about what it takes to lead a group, to build trust, to build alignment, to share a vision with communication strategies that really connect the dots for people. So that they'll follow. I mean, we do know what it takes to do that. We've done studies, but on the other end of the spectrum, if you run your team all through data, all through science, you know, people are not robots. People are creative, intuitive beings, and you want to tap into the imagination. You want to tap into that sort of unspoken, intuitive side. And as I said earlier, sort of learn to nurture the Mavericks. If people are acting a little crazy. And I gave you that example where I did have a statistics guy who was refusing to work during the day, because he was just super creative, late at night. And his boss was frustrated with him. And you know, I had a counterintuitive coaching discussion with my client because I said, instead of being mad at this guy, why don't you dig underneath, what's that creative impulse that shows up in him at 2:00 AM? How do you nurture that? Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Jeffery Hull: So that's the art side of it. Steve Rush: I buy that and I wonder how much mindset plays into this whole principle of me being a leader and thinking of myself as “artistic” in my trade. Dr. Jeffery Hull: Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's kind of what I get into when I talk about the anthropologic. I asked my clients, you know, when you think about blind spots, that's sort of a paradox, right? Because a blind spot is something you can't see. So therefore, how could you know what it is? And that is often an opening for a conversation with my clients around the benefit of, first of all, being open to feedback. And second of all, to see that the people that you're getting feedback from, if they have your best interests at heart, are going to point out things to you that are going to be super supportive in expanding your skills, expanding your repertoire and that, you know, everything that you think you're doing is great is not necessarily seen, not necessarily what's you know. I mean, it may be some of your hidden talents that are showing up that people are taking advantage of or aware of. And so, learning about those sorts of unseen gifts, I think is a really important element of being an effective leader and doing the same thing with your folks. Steve Rush: I love the way you framed that by the way, unseen gifts. Just allows us to receive it in a way of a gift, doesn't it? Dr. Jeffery Hull: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because again, going back to the science, we now know that if you frame things positively, as opposed to problematically, then people can look at something that appears to be negative and reframe it with a mindset that turns it into an opportunity. Steve Rush: Yeah, love it. And you have a model that you help your leaders with called Fierce, F-I-E-R-C-E. Love you just to spin through how we might use that as leaders in our work? Dr. Jeffery Hull: Well, that was simply a distillation of a lot of the research and interviews and focus groups that I did with my clients and with many, many coaches that I work with to discover what are the areas that leaders need to really hone in on and today's world to be effective. So, there are six dimensions that just keep coming up over and over again, one is decision-making and developing a flexible style. So that gets back to the core of what we talked about before, which was, you know, are you authoritative and indecisive or are you flexible and being more democratic and consensus building and both are valuable, but they're two ends of a spectrum. The second is the acronym and fierce is the letter I, which is intentional. So being more intentional in your communication style, and we've already talked a little bit about that. Looking really closely at not just the words you use, but the way you communicate. The tone, the eye contact, the gestures, the use of humor, all the different components of effective persuasion and influence. The third, the letter E is emotional intelligence and becoming aware of the key side of human beings, which is emotions is crucial, you know, developing your own emotional intelligence is like a muscle that leaders these days cannot avoid developing. The next one is R in the acronym, and that's building up your integrity and your credibility through authenticity or what I call realness. And that connects to being more humble and knowing when to be transparent and open and vulnerable. So, a lot of leaders tend to focus on competencies and strengths, which is great, but at the other end of the spectrum, you also need to be humble and vulnerable and connect to your people as a human being. And that's kind of the other end of the spectrum. So, all of the different components of being an authentic leader are absolutely crucial today. And then the final two components have to do with collaboration. You know, the letter C for me, I started to dig into how do we effectively become coaches for our people? You know, it's great to have a coach, but you also need to become a coach. So, I dug into some of the science that we use at the Institute of Coaching around becoming an effective coach for your people. Listening, asking good questions, creating a sense of safety, confidentiality, knowing the difference, for example, between mentoring and coaching, because they're not the same thing. And then finally the letter E is about how to engage with your team. And we spoke a little bit about that in terms of how to create an environment that gets the best out of everyone, whether you're in a virtual space or in a real office or in a hybrid. And that focuses on the energy that you exude as a leader, your nonverbal communication, how you create the space for people to show up, how you facilitate introverts and extroverts. So, it's really sort of stepping back and looking at some of the key principles of creating and motivating an environment where everyone can operate at their best. Steve Rush: I love the model; I love the framework. It really helps people get into that space of ask yourself some questions around each of those six acronyms. Dr. Jeffery Hull: Right, exactly. That was my intent. Steve Rush: And yeah, you'll start to find out then what you need to. kind of pull the leavers on, right? Dr. Jeffery Hull: Exactly. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Jeffery Hull: And, you know, and what I did is, then I brought a lot of case studies in, so that as you're reading through some of the science or some of the themes, there are lots of different examples of people sort of at different ends of the spectrum in all those categories. And so, the idea was to be able to reflect on your own leadership style, whether you're early in your career or whether you're the CEO and say to yourself, oh, I recognize myself. Steve Rush: Exactly, yeah. It starts with us as leaders. Doesn't it? Dr. Jeffery Hull: Exactly. Steve Rush: It starts with us. And in terms of leadership, I'm going to spin the tone a little now. Trying and hack into your leadership brain. Dr. Jeffery Hull: Okay. Steve Rush: Having led businesses and teams over a number of different years, I'm going to try and ask you now to take all of that learning and distill it into your top three leadership hacks, what would they be? Dr. Jeffery Hull: Top three? Well, my top one is to own your blind spots. Like as a leader, one of the most humbling aspects is to even recognize that you might have blind spots. So, if you have a starting point from saying to yourself, okay, I'm a human being. I must have a blind spot. What is it? So go on, you know, like almost an architect, what would be the word? Archetype dig into your own blind spots, ask your friends, ask your spouse. Don't be afraid to find out what it is that gets in the way of your operating at your finest, that's number one. Steve Rush: That's a big one too. And I'll tell you, I have a funny story about this. When I was coached by my coach a couple of years back, and we were talking about blind spots and I had this really crazy moment of going. No, I just don't see it. I just don't recognize it. It's a blind spot. Dr. Jeffery Hull: Yeah, oh yeah. Okay. Just starting point of being aware that you might have a blind spot is a really important step as a leader because it's humbling and it gets you going onto an investigation where you may be open to feedback. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Jeffery Hull: Number two hack is kind of along those lines. And I call that to know the strengths list of your people. Because if we're going to move from this heroic style of leadership to a more group or post heroic style, then what you need to do is to know your people. And the best way to do that is to put together a short list of their strengths. So, I make all of my clients do this exercise, which is if you have 10 people reporting to you, or you have five people reporting to you, get out a notebook and write down the top three strengths of every single person on your team. Because if you have that as a handy dandy available note, you'll be able to use that when things get tight or there's a crisis, or there's an upset, because you'll be able to say, oh, but Mary you're so good at X, Y, and Z. I need to know what happened when this didn't happen, right? So, knowing the strengths of your people is really important and you'd be surprised how many leaders don't take the time. They're like, oh yeah, I like Mary and Suzie's good. I'm not so sure about Peter, but then when I dig one level below that, and I say, yeah, but what's Peter's number one strength. They're like never thought about that question. Steve Rush: It's a great situational hack, isn't? Dr. Jeffery Hull: Exactly. Steve Rush: It looking for those opportunities? Yeah. Dr. Jeffery Hull: Yep, know your top three. No, the top three strengths of all your people. And then the hack number three, which I think is the real punchline of this whole line of questioning is know how the strength becomes a liability. Steve Rush: Would that be an overplayed strength? Dr. Jeffery Hull: Yep. Steve Rush: Yep. Dr. Jeffery Hull: Exactly, know the strengths of your people and yourself, so know your own strengths and then ask yourself, when does that strength get me into trouble? Steve Rush: Love that. Dr. Jeffery Hull: Because 90% of the coaching I've done in my life, we have ended up somewhere where wherever the big talent is of my client is also their liability. They overuse it. They rely on it too much. One trick pony, whatever way you want to articulate it. It's incredibly common that the thing that we do super well often becomes the thing that trip us up when we want to go to the next level. It goes back to Marshall Goldsmith, who I'm a big fan. One of his 100 coaches. What got you here won't get you there, right? Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Jeffery Hull: His best-selling book. And the theme of that book is really whatever it was that got you to where you are, is probably going to get in the way of getting you to the next place. Steve Rush: Very, very good. Like that a lot. Next part we'll show Jeff, we call Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something in your work or life hasn't worked out as you'd planned, may have been even that we've screwed up in the process, but as a result of the process. We've learned from it, and it's now serving us well in our life or our work. So, what would be your Hack to Attack? Dr. Jeffery Hull: Oh, well that one is, I love that question because it's actually really easy, but embarrassing, but hey, you know, that's life, it's a humble. Steve Rush: Let's do it. Dr. Jeffery Hull: No, but the truth is I was very fortunate that I screwed up very early in my career, right out of college. I was hired as a recruiter for a tech company and I was only in my early twenties and, you know, got a fancy cube. I didn't get an office, but I got a very fancy cube. And I got a secretary, I had an admin and within the very first few weeks of my job, what did I do? I asked my secretary to get coffee for me. I was like, oh, can you do this? Can you do that? I was like, oh my God, I have my secretary. She's going to do things for me. And about a month later, my boss came to me and he was like Jeff, I have to sit you down and just discuss the way we work around here. Because this was a tech company. And then even though it was quite a few years ago, even back then, it was really a more egalitarian invite environment. And he said, you know what Jeff, you really should learn to get your own coffee. And I looked at him and I was like, what? He goes, your administrative assistant is really there to support you to do your job better. Not just to be your lackey. Like, you know, she can get coffee. It's not really a problem, but is that really the best way to treat people? And so, it wasn't so much the getting the coffee that was the issue. It was my attitude, and that was humbling. And I was young and I was immature. But I have to tell you that advice treat people well, realize that even the person who takes your coat or the receptionist who welcomes you in the door or the administrative assistant, who's just setting up the coffee and the bagels for the meeting. Those are human beings. And not only are they deserving of respect, but as I've learned over the years, they also have a lot of inside information. Steve Rush: They do, don't they? Dr. Jeffery Hull: Yeah, exactly. Like 10 years later, when I was the director of HR and I had learned my lesson and I learned to be respectful. I remember we were interviewing MBA candidates and what I would do at the end of the day, they would come in from Harvard and Northwestern and Stanford and Yale, and be very arrogant. And, you know, just as I probably was back when I was in that age bracket and I would say to the receptionist, okay. So, tell me who should I hire and who should I not hire Steve Rush: First impressions? Dr. Jeffery Hull: Yeah, exactly. Her name was Irene. And she said to me, you know, Jeff don't that guy. And I'm like, yeah, but he came across really smart in the interviews. She goes, yeah, but he was really rude to me when he first came in, he basically threw his coat at me to hang up and, you know, that's the fundamental lesson, treat people with respect no matter where they are in the organization, because they are part of the fabric of the team. And not only do they deserve to be treated well, deserve to be treated with respect, but they also have a lot of insights. So that was my big learning. And, you know, I'm not perfect. I probably still snap at someone once in a while, but I really took it to heart that, you know, it's the people at the lower end of the totem poles that really, not only do they do the yeoman's work in an organization to keep things humming, but they also have incredible deep insight into what's really going on in the C-Suite or behind the scenes. And you can learn from them those people. Steve Rush: Super lesson, yeah. Dr. Jeffery Hull: Yeah. Steve Rush: The last thing we want to do today, Jeff is give you a chance to do some time travel. So, you get a chance to go and bump into Jeff at 21 and give them some advice. What would your advice to him be then? Dr. Jeffery Hull: My advice would be to learn from everyone. Don't get into the habit of just being funding with the ones that have big titles or big paychecks, you know, look at every single person that you interact with in your community or organization, your network, and think of them as being able to offer you something Steve Rush: Awesome advice. Every day's a school day. Dr. Jeffery Hull: Exactly, you know, and I hopefully learned how to be a student along the way and I'll never stop. Steve Rush: Great stuff. So, what is it you're working on next, Jeff? Dr. Jeffery Hull: The things that most interest me now are taking leaders from sort of more traditional environments like finance and software and integrating them into the more eco sustainable world organizations that are environmentally more attuned to what's going on with our climate change and the planet and all, you know, we need to integrate these things. And so, one of my passions is helping my leaders that I work with, get more in tune with broader impact that their organizations are having on the planet. Like if we look at, you know, all the crazy stuff that's happening with the climate. Steve Rush: Exactly, yeah. Dr. Jeffery Hull: And we just don't have the luxury anymore of saying, oh, well, that's all in the energy department, you know, I'm in finance. I don't have anything to do with that. Well, you know, downstream, it's all one stream, right? So, my passion is trying to get my leaders in all these different places to become more in tune with how they have impacts in the world. Not just impacts inside their organization. Steve Rush: Love it, yeah. Dr. Jeffery Hull: You know, and it's a challenge, but we coaches we have a role to play. So, hopefully going to do my part. Steve Rush: Good for you. So, if our listeners want to get hold of a copy of Flex, or they wanted to learn a bit more about the work that you do, Jeff, where's the best place for us to send them? Dr. Jeffery Hull: My own website under my name, Jeffrey Hull, H-U-L-L, jeffreyhull.com. We'll have a lot of information and access to the book. Obviously, the book is available on Amazon and all the other, you know, outlets that we find our books these days. And then I would also encourage folks to look up the instituteofcoaching.org. I'm there as part of the leadership team. There's a lot of interesting resources. So those are probably the best places to go. Steve Rush: Wonderful, and we'll make sure that those links are in our show notes as well. Dr. Jeffery Hull: Great, appreciate that. Steve Rush: Jeff, I've really enjoyed talking with you. I love the energy that you bring to the subject and I love the work that you're doing. And I just wanted to say, thank you for being part of our community. Dr. Jeffery Hull: Well, it's my pleasure. It's always good to spread the word on what kind of leaders we all want to develop into and develop into the world, bring into the world these days. because there's a certain amount of urgency, I think. Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely so. Dr. Jeffery Hull: If we are going to save the planet and ourselves along the way. Steve Rush: Well said - Thanks for coming on the show Jeff. Dr. Jeffery Hull: My pleasure. Thanks Steve   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.  

Lisa Marie Platske is the President and CEO of Upside Thinking, a leadership coach and speaker, she's also an international best-selling author, In this intimate show we explore some amazing leadership lessons including:  How being in New York at 9/11 in law enforcement became a turning point in her career How self-examination can help with forgiveness The 3 steps and 7 pillars to unlock courageous leadership How can we remain relevant as leaders in such a dynamic and changing world? Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Lisa below: Lisa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisamarieplatske/ Upside Thinking Website: https://upsidethinking.com Lisa on Twitter: https://twitter.com/UpsideThinking Lisa on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UpsideThinking   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker. Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you Lisa Marie Platske is our special guest on today's show. She's an award-winning leadership expert and number one, international bestselling author of Designing Your Destiny.   The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: In the news today, we explore the notion of the law of attraction or LOA, as it's often known. Simply put, the law of attraction is the ability to attract into our lives, whatever we're focusing on. And it's believed regardless of age, nationality, religious belief, we all susceptible to the laws which govern the universe, including the law of attraction. And it's a law of attraction that uses the power of the mind to translate what is ever in our thoughts and to materialize them into reality. And here's the thing, in basic terms, all thoughts turn into things Eventually. If you focus on negative doom and gloom, you remain and direct cloud and be pretty grumpy and miserable. If you focus on positive thoughts and have goals and ambitions and aim to achieve them, you'll find ways to do so. The law of attraction is one of life's biggest mysteries. Very few people are fully aware of how much the impact of law of attraction has on their day-to-day life. Whether we're doing it knowingly or unknowingly. Every second of our existence, we are acting as a human magnet, sending out our thoughts and emotions and attracting back more of what we put out. Unfortunately, so many of us are still blind to the potential that is locked deep within us. Consequently, it's all way too easy to leave your thoughts and emotions unchecked. And this sends out the wrong thoughts and attracts more of an unwanted emotion and event into your life. And unfortunately, because it comes with a bit of a stigma because people have this perception that it is pink and fluffy, and it's not particularly real, people often don't pay attention and don't focus on it enough. The law of attraction stems back to mystical and historical claims haven't been first thought of by the immortal Buddha. It's believed he wanted to be known that what you have become is what you have thought. And this is the belief that's intrinsically deep within the law of attraction. So is the law of attraction pink and fluffy, or is there science behind it? Well, the work of quantum physics during recent years has helped really shine, greater light on the incredible impact and the power of the mind has on our lives and the universe in general, some would argue it's actually just a mindset. As physicists and neuroscientists come to supply us with more and more information regarding our brains. The law of attraction simply becomes more logical and the more we can rejoice in truly liberating impairing the realization that we are, the creators and the controllers of our life and the energy that we give out and attract the more successful we become. The best description I've heard or seen about the law of attraction is thinking of ourselves as we were artists with a blank canvas, creating pictures of our intended life and making the choices and actions to make that happen. So, what if you don't like the picture? Well, you can change it because life is a blank canvas of possibility. We're in control of what that finished picture could look like. And the law of attraction is just that. And it's just that simple. There's no catches. The laws of nature are completely imperfect and the law of attraction is no different, no matter what you're looking for, what you want to achieve in your life. If you can hold on to an idea and see it for yourself in your mind's eye, then you can make it yours because you'll start to find and look and notice for the opportunity, the natural caring coincidences that help you fulfill that picture in your mind. So, the leadership lesson is here. How much of our work as leaders is about helping people realize that mind's eye view, helping them articulate, helping them paint that picture and helping them on the journey to attracting the right energy, the right behaviors and people around them to be successful. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. As always, we're delighted when you nudge us comment and share our stories. So please get in touch if there's anything specific you want us to feature on the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Our special guest on today's show is Lisa Marie Platske. She is the President and CEO of Upside Thinking. She's a leadership coach and a speaker. She's also the international best-selling author of a number of books. You want to hang on to the end of the show today because there's a special gift that you can get hold of later on, and it is the “Influential Leadership Blueprint” from Lisa. Lisa welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Lisa Marie Platske: Thanks Steve. So excited to be here. Steve Rush: Me too. Lisa Marie Platske: Thanks for having me. Steve Rush: So, you had a really fascinating meander to get to where you get to. Started out, your early career in law enforcement, and now leading Upside Thinking, tell us a little bit about how your journey evolved? Lisa Marie Platske: Well, I can honestly share that I was never looking to be an entrepreneur or run a leadership development organization. I started off in law enforcement because I just loved the work. And back then, when I was looking for career paths after college, there was no internet to go researching. There was a library and lots of little books and file folders, and it sounded really exciting to be working in international trade and travel. And so, I took my criminal justice degree and went into law enforcement. And on that journey, loved leadership, was passionate about leadership and was fortunate to have the opportunity to develop leadership curriculum, both at The Leadership Development Center in Dallas, Texas after 9/11, and also to teach at The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in the United States. So, for me, this was something that I just was loved and I was getting to utilize the leadership pieces. However, I was faced with an opportunity and that opportunity was marriage Steve. So, I couldn't figure out how I could both be good at a 24/7 career and have a husband who also was going to have a 24/7 career in law enforcement and how we could both do this. And so, I just figured I keep doing it and live in a different state and just continue moving forward. And it actually was a friend who said, you know, people who get married, usually live in the same household. Steve Rush: That's right, yeah. Lisa Marie Platske: And I said, all right, so then what will I do? And the love of leadership is one of the reasons why I opened up side thinking was I believe that leadership affects every single decision and every facet of our life. And so, to be able to do this and take what I learned in law enforcement and look at what the world's best leaders do differently has been just such an incredible journey. Although, you know, if you also understand owning a business has its unique pieces to it, for me, has been the greatest personal development journey of a lifetime. Steve Rush: And I bet it hasn't stopped either? Lisa Marie Platske:  No, No. Steve Rush: Exactly, and that's the gift that we have, I think in doing the work that we do in terms of coaching and helping leaders on their journey is that every single time I have a conversation with a podcast guest or I learned some new content, I'm just constantly learning. Lisa Marie Platske: Yes. Yes. And there are more opportunities to be filled up if you're open, I believe on this journey than I could have imagined. And I thought that every day was a new day when I was in law enforcement and truly the entrepreneurial journey is a very unique animal. Steve Rush: So, an interesting notion I wanted to share with you, and that's while hearing you talk about your career in law enforcement and then leadership in law enforcement. Often people have this perception of those who work in public office or in the military or law enforcement that they can see visibly people's leadership progressions because of the stripes on their shirts or the pips on their shoulders, and they often don't recognize that does come with a completely different set of skills. That is that leadership responsibility. How do you notice the difference between what you learned in law enforcement and what you see externally now? Lisa Marie Platske: You just said something that I believe is so brilliant. So, I really want to reflect and say, thank you! Is that what I walked away with in law enforcement was understanding human behavior. And when you put on a uniform, there's the expectation that you have certain qualities or characteristics, integrity, is one of them. I remember getting my credentials that said, you know, this officer possesses integrity. And I thought, wow, this is like almost like a seal of approval or a stamp. And it was so interesting, you know, to think about that in terms of how we look at leadership. And if we could only walk into an organization and see somebody's credentials to have that stamp, where were all of their qualities and characteristics were listed. And you know, when I look at human behavior and the little nuances of what I learned then even from micro-expressions or how people show us who they are just by little movements. In business, it's been just critical to take those skills. There's something I'll do at my annual conference. And it's in reflecting back to the use of force continuum and how the use of force continuum started with officer presence and then went to verbal commands, soft techniques, hard techniques, and deadly force. And it's something that no officer ever wishes they're going to ever get to deadly force. And yet in business, it's interesting because those same use of force continuum. And I see forces as really more of a power move. Steve Rush: Right. Lisa Marie Platske: And that is how you show up, the words that you speak, the techniques that you use and how you knock somebody out with your presence, your executive presence. It actually translates really quite beautifully. Steve Rush: There is a lot of parallels, isn't there? Lisa Marie Platske: Yes. Steve Rush: So, remember when we met first, you talked about this kind of quite pivotal moment in your career when you were in law enforcement and 9/11 happened. And not only did it change law enforcement and probably the careers for all of us actually in hindsight, but there was a real kind of big turning point for you at that time. Tell us a little bit about that moment? Lisa Marie Platske: Well, with law enforcement, I was stationed in New York and over 9/11. And so, I was in the height of, in the midst of everything and working sixteen-hour days, twenty-one days, straight, very little sleep, and just the entire country was on high alert. So, a lot of angst, just the feeling when you walked out of your house, you could feel the heaviness and the stress. And what I realized after sending employees to funeral after funeral, after funeral for honor guard, losing my mentor and sending employees to look for what would be remains at the site. I recognize that there was this level of anger that was growing inside me, and it wasn't good, Steve, like it was not, it was a mixture of tiredness and sadness and grief and frustration and helplessness, just all rolled into one where, you know, the human body, it's made to rest. It needs a certain amount of rest. Steve Rush: Right. Lisa Marie Platske: And so, I got to a piece when I recognize what was going to be, what would open that and change that and shift that and keep me from being a really angry person was forgiveness. And so, I went down a journey of learning about forgiveness, what it is, and really being willing to forgive self, forgive others so that I could lead unencumbered without any judgment, without any negativity. And it has been one of the best decisions. And it's been something that in bringing it into organizations in business, recognizing that sometimes there are actions that are holding organizations back in their leaders for years, for decades, because of a lack of forgiveness. Steve Rush: Definitely, so. And as you speak, you can hear in your voice, by the way that kind of, the resonance that comes with that. So, as you're recalling that moment, I can sense in your tone that it's still real for you. How did you use that as a positive and how did you flip from anger to forgiveness? What was kind of the trigger moment? Lisa Marie Platske: It's interesting that you can hear it because it's one where I can feel my body be moved to tears, and yet it's been, you know, many decades and yet that lives within you, that moment, that experience still lives inside me. And so, I just really appreciate your acknowledgement of it because it was such a painful time. And, and that, I don't know that going back to that moment, that doesn't go away. The moment that, you know, if I could sum it up in one moment, it was a situation where and perhaps you've experienced this or maybe not. It was a situation where I was going to be spending time with somebody that I actually really liked, okay. It was a friend that I enjoyed spending time with and I was out, you know, its good time. I'm outside having something to eat. And there was just a small little something that should have been a small upset that I recognized an incredibly irrational reaction of mine. And so, I understood at that moment that I wasn't angry at what was going on. I was just simply angry and that anger was not directed at a person or a place or, you know, not getting my food. That anger was just an internal rage over the injustices that I saw were going on at families, losing loved ones for no reason. The sense of stress that my colleagues were experiencing, just many things, that for me, I no longer had joy being around people that I loved. I no longer had a, you know, a sense of, you know, life is good and the world is a safe place. And recognizing that in that moment, that if I did not do something, that the people that I was with, the people that I was leading at work, you know, that would carry through in every interaction and just simply would poison. The organization would poison the team, would poison my family relationships. So, it wasn't like it was this big aha moment that came down from the sky. It was a simple outing that with an irrational response that had me look at who I was becoming Steve Rush: Really profound, and what you described is academically dead simple. I just forgive everybody and cleanse myself and it'll be fine. Academically sounds simple, behaviorally though, that comes with a whole set of processes and systems that need learning. So how did you go about that? Lisa Marie Platske: You're you are so right. Like it's not just well, we had the awareness and then the next day everything was wonderful. One of the pieces on the journey was extending grace. And so, I say that the forgiveness had to start with myself because oftentimes when leaders will see themselves or see a response, they will, you know, be angry. Like why did I respond that way? And that doesn't help the situation. So there had to be self-forgiveness. And so, I began identifying not just in this situation, but what were the times when my responses were not ideal and began doing a journey of self-examination. And so, to dive into various principles, I went into the process in emotional intelligence and the research that was there around, you know, self-examination. And I took myself on retreat. I went and was quiet and reflective. I began researching instead of reading books that were on law enforcement or on criminal behavior. I began reading books that were more about the mind and human behavior in the sense of empathy and compassionate leadership and changed what it is that I was putting into my mind, into my body. And I also focused on my health. And one of the things that I recognized is that when you're angry and then when you're stressed and even if you want to be in forgiveness, it's really hard to do so. So, taking better care of me, allowed me to then better care for others around me, whether that was the guys that I worked with, or whether it was family members that I went to visit. And it was a journey, it was a journey of forgiveness. Forgiving me first, and then forgiving others for perhaps their own limited views or their own paradigms in the world versus being angry. Steve Rush: I love the way you considered the whole approach by the way, because it does start with self-assessment. It starts with the self-actualization; and again, it's one of those things it's dead easy to say, but putting yourself first can often be seen as quite selfish or self-centered, but in my experience, if you don't do that, then everybody else suffers, right? Lisa Marie Platske: Yes. Yes. It's interesting. When I opened my business sixteen years ago, that was one of my, you know, core pieces that I would teach is, self-first, family second and work third. And when I would go into organizations, they would say, you can't teach that. And I said, if you really want employees that are going to perform and research shows that you don't get the best out of your employees, the best you get is 80%. And if you, and that's like the best of the best. So, on average, you're getting between 40 to 60% output on an employee. And if you really want that to increase so that your bottom line increases and your operational effectiveness increases, then you will invest in your employees the way that you invest in your innovation and new ideas, because they are the ones that are going to implement. That doesn't mean that you're not looking at. It's not important to just give people whatever they want. That's not what it's about. It's about understanding that we're humans in this experience, in this leadership experience, and as human beings, we require different things in order to have optimal results to produce, to thrive. And so, you know, I had focused so much in the past on the human doing this, that I forgot the human beingness part and getting back to the being it's really difficult when you're in the doing, and that's your sole focus to enter into the forgiveness journey, but the health part and sort of the putting self-first piece and all of the people who said that was, you know, crazy or frivolous or selfish, you know, it's what led me. You know, now I have seven pillars of leadership that I've researched over the years. And in pillar, number four, there are seven areas of wellbeing and wellbeing is simply a word for wealth. And what I found in those seven areas of wellbeing is that too often individual leaders and top contributors would tell themselves that once I do well at work, then I'll be able to take care of my physical health or that's when I'll be able to take care of my financial health. That's when things will fall into place. And I found that that's not true, that you've got to start with the physical, you've got to start with you in that area and your emotional wellbeing and your intellectual wellbeing and your spiritual wellbeing and your relational wellbeing before you can truly thrive and be wealthy at work. Steve Rush: A hundred percent agree with that, a hundred percent. You've taken to writing, you've written three books. Connection, Design Your Destiny, Turn Possibilities into Realities. What was it that drove you to put pen to paper and share some of your stories and learnings? Lisa Marie Platske: Like I said, with the entrepreneurial journey, so much of it has been this, you know, well, what's put in front of me and that's why I say it's somewhat accidental. There's intention in it, and there's also sort of surprise. And so, my first book in 2007, the reason why I wrote it was not because I had this idea that it was going to be great to write a book. It was because I was going into organizations and Steve, I would ask three questions. Who are you? What do you want? And why does it matter? So, I would be in these coaching sessions and these trainings and ask those questions and get this blank stare. And I found it fascinating because the answer of who I am was generally titles. And what do I want was generally, well, I'm supposed to want the next promotion or the next opportunity. And when I would really dive in and say, why does that matter? And like, what do you really want? What I found was that the overwhelming majority. Over the 80th percentile truly didn't want what the next opportunity was that was in front of them. And if they could have had it all their way, they would have been doing something different. And that for me was just so mind-boggling. Steve Rush: Yeah, right. Lisa Marie Platske: How could this be? Steve Rush: And what did you find the answers were? Lisa Marie Platske: Well, it was more giving people permission, permission to be in that conversation. I remember a woman who was chief counsel in an organization and her saying to me, and I believe at the time she was forty-two years old and she said, no one has ever asked me that question. What do I want? I was sad. I was sad. I thought, how could this be? And so, here's someone who has a family and children and people that are watching you and role model, and you've got a position and the position is something that's well-respected and you had to go to school and operate in choice, and you're ending up here. And now we're having this conversation. And you tell me that no one has ever asked you that in four plus decades of your life, like, it was just heartbreaking. Steve Rush: I bet, yeah. Lisa Marie Platske: I thought, so if I could write a book that would give people permission to ask that question and to sit down and have some thought and intention around what that would be, wouldn't that make the world a little bit better? Steve Rush: Yeah, it sure would. Lisa Marie Platske: And so that was the impetus, you know, for that, and for the last fourteen years, I've done an annual three-day conference called, the same name as the book, Design Your Destiny Live, or similar name, we go through my seven pillars of leadership. And in the end, it's about, like who are you? What do you want? And why does it matter? Because I believe everyone's got something. I mean, that's one of the things I loved about your story, Steve, you know, you're someone who went, well, like, who am I? And like, what am I doing here? Like this isn't what I'm called to do. This is not what I'm hardwired for. Like, I could stay here and, you know, I'm probably being paid pretty well. However, I making a contribution? Am I a force for good on the planet? And you know, from our conversation, it was, you know, it's what really inspired me to want to be in deeper conversation with you. Steve Rush: Sure, I appreciate That. Thank you. So, of your three books, do you have a favorite child? Lisa Marie Platske: Do I have a favorite? I actually can say that every book, every article, everything that I've ever written, there's no favorite. They're just a series of lessons learned that allow me to relive them. Steve Rush: Said like a true parent and any custodian of work! Lisa Marie Platske: Yes, yes. Steve Rush: Brilliant. Lisa Marie Platske: Like, oh yeah. I remember that. Steve Rush: So, your seven pillars then. You have three steps and seven pillars, and I wondered if it would be worthwhile, if we could just spin through them? Lisa Marie Platske: Sure, sure. So, the seven pillars came from research. So, I wanted a shortcut, you know, here I am, I'm a criminal justice major. I had my career in law enforcement. I loved it. And now I'm opening up a leadership development company. And so, it's like, well, what do leaders do? The best ones? What do they do differently? So, I just began interviewing people and I got seven themes and the seven themes are. I had them all magically start with a P isn't that great? Steve Rush: That's very innovative! Lisa Marie Platske: So, and then they have phrases. So, the number one is plan. And it's start with a written plan. Begin with the end in mind. I found that all the leaders I researched did that. Number two was understand your personality, be clear who you're not and who you are. And I found the best leaders really understood their strengths and delegated the rest. Number three is partnerships, create partnerships, create powerful partnerships. And this was all around the essence of connection. They had networks and really understood that you could make life easier by being deeply connected to others. And they weren't formal partnerships. And then number four is priority, not priorities. And it was understanding what matters most. So, live your priority. And regardless of whether or not other people look at it, and it makes sense to them. That's where those seven areas of wellbeing live. And it's where that idea of putting yourself first lives too. And then number five is all about presence, creating a meaningful and memorable presence in three areas. By what people see, by what you say, and by being in the moment. And so, there's gratitude. There's positioning that is all in this element. It's a very, very robust pillar. And then number six is progress, and this is evaluate your progress. It's also the pillar of profit. With this pillar I find that in organizations, sometimes people will talk about the annual performance review and performance is something to be evaluated daily. It's to be evaluated moment by moment. What do you want? You're either moving further away or closer to it by every action and every word that you speak. So, I'm in self-examination and reflection daily and evaluating my progress, whether I'm on track. That was a hard one for me, Steve, because I was really hard for me to get rid of ideas that I created. Steve Rush: It's unlearning some of the stuff that you'd learned, right? Lisa Marie Platske: Right, yeah. Exactly, exactly. So, that's just so true. And then number, number seven is professional development and personal development. And that's investing in personal and professional development. And I found that the leaders I spoke to who really were just so far ahead and the best of the best, they took time off. They had these circles, mastermind circles and peer connections and coaches and people they learned from. And so, it was amazing how intentional there were about where they went and how they were some were industry specific and some were that had nothing to do with their industry. And just who was the next person for me to learn from. Steve Rush: I love those, they're really succinct. And if people are listening to this for the first time, just having those seven pillars to go through is a great blueprint to kind of set you up for success. So, thank you for sharing them. Lisa Marie Platske: You're welcome. You're welcome. I want everybody to dive in and I share that, you know, sometimes it's just a small tweak. You might do really well in five of them or six of them. And there might be a small tweak that can just make a huge, huge difference. So, they're important. And those three elements came from, well, what are the seven pillars rest on? Like, what's the foundation for them? And the three elements are really all about courageous leadership. And those three elements are vision, vulnerability and voice. And vision is having that clear vision, the key or the hidden key that unlocks it is clarity. Vulnerability is not a marketing tactic. It's a way of being, and it's how you live out your vision and the hidden key to unlock that is forgiveness. You can't be vulnerable and have it really be authentic and transparent unless you've done your own forgiveness work Steve Rush: Wow that's really quite powerful. Yet, I've not actually thought of it in that way, but your so, so accurate in the that you reflect that because vulnerability means that he can't be carrying any baggage, can you? Lisa Marie Platske: Exactly. Steve Rush: In order to be vulnerable, you have to get rid of that. Lisa Marie Platske: Otherwise, it comes out really weird and that's when it sounds judgmental. Steve Rush: Yeah. Lisa Marie Platske: And you go, huh? I can't figure that out. Like, what is it? It seems like they're being vulnerable, but something not right there. Steve Rush: And we're built intuitively, and you would have been taught this in your law enforcement days, to spot that disingenuous behavior. We're trained unconsciously to notice when it doesn't feel and look right. Lisa Marie Platske: Exactly, that's is so true, which is the reason why you and I can be an ocean away and still, you can feel what I felt when we were talking about 9/11. Like as if you were looking at me as if you were, absolutely. Steve Rush: Yeah. So we've been in a bit of a crazy world in the last couple of years, and you know, as every decade goes on, there are events that come and shape the way that we work and the way that we live. And certainly, the pandemic is one of those. How do we as leaders keep and remain relevant when the world is changing such a lot? Lisa Marie Platske: You know, when I look at how the world has changed, there for me is, I go back to a story and an experience that I had, and that is a business coach who said to me several years ago, Lisa you're one disaster from going out of business. And I said, how could this be? Like, I have, you know, all of these clients and all of this. And he said, yes. And he laid out, you know, the vulnerabilities in my business. And so, I went on this journey to, I didn't know at the time, but to pandemic proof my business in the sense of who, is it that has all of the information in the organization, what are the activities that I'm doing? Who is it that I'm investing my time with? What's my most precious commodity? And, you know, when you speak about how the world has changed and how do you remain relevant? As humans, we're often creatures of habit and being comfortable for many people is a high value and comfort doesn't change the world, vulnerability really opens doors. And so, it goes back to what you and I have had many conversations, have brought up in conversation many times is the idea of the self-reflection. Remaining relevant means looking in the mirror and asking the question over and over again about where have I gotten comfortable? Where have I gotten stagnant? Where have I gotten, dare I say lazy? And where have I gotten entitled? And when I looked at my business several years ago and was really honest with myself, I had a mentor at the time that I had a conversation with. And he said to me, you know, Lisa, here's what happens when there's too much sizzle and not enough stake. And I understood what he meant, right? And so sometimes when things are looking good or things are running smoothly, even if someone has fared really well like myself through the pandemic, there's still the need for examination, examination, examination in order to remain relevant. And when you're busy or there's additional work that's coming in, I find that organizations and leaders often put that on the back burner. They take care of what's urgent and self-examination and organizational analysis and assessment falls under that important category and important in the long run is always more valuable than urgent. Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely. Love that, thank you. So, this part of the show is where we're going to turn the lens and we're going to focus on your leadership career and over all of the experiences I'm going to ask you to try and distill them into your top three leadership hacks or tools or tips that you would like to share. What would be your top three? Lisa Marie Platske: Top three hacks to share. One schedule, schedule, schedule yourself in your calendar, put yourself in there as the most important meeting of the week and just get quiet. That's so important because there will always be people and situations pulling at you. And if you don't do that, it's not possible for you to truly be in the vision, vulnerability and voice courageous leadership conversation. Number two hack would be invest in what you do best and network the rest. Steve Rush: Nice. Lisa Marie Platske: Spend time using your gifts and do not, do not invest time in learning something that's just not yours to learn. Time is your most precious commodity. And number three, the third leadership Hack. Steve, I can't say enough about the who versus the how. Focus on the who on your journey, not the how. There have been so many things that have happened that I have no idea how they've happened. How many doors in organizations? I have no idea how they open. And it always came from who was in my circle and who I invested time with and the who always matters more than the how. Steve Rush: Yeah, very powerful. Like it a lot, thank you. So, the next part of the show, we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something in your life and work hasn't particularly worked out as you'd planned, but as a result of that experience, you now use it as a positive in your life. So, what would be your Hack to Attack Lisa? Lisa Marie Platske: When you talk about things that didn't work out, it's like that is, I have learned to become friends with failure. Like that's truly like a superpower. Steve Rush: In fact, I've become so friendly with failure. I actually just now call them learning. Lisa Marie Platske: Oh, there you go. There you go. Yes, it's just one where I go, you know, I didn't see that. And so, one of the pieces to share with this is I trusted somebody. It's a good example. I just trusted somebody, ended up hiring, actually it was more of an investment. An opportunity that someone was having an event. And the person took my money and it was ten thousand dollars, and they said, sorry, I'm not giving it back. And I'm not honoring the commitment either and your choices to come after me or, you know, or not, but I'm not honoring the commitment. I'm not honoring the contract and I'm not giving you your money. Steve Rush: Wow. Lisa Marie Platske: So, it was one of those pieces where at first, I was really embarrassed and really like, how could you not have known better, Lisa? How did you not do all the research? You know, you were, how could you trust this person? Just a thousand and one things. And then there was this part of me that was like, okay, so what's going to come out of this because I could take lots of money and lots of, excuse me, lots of time and chase after this. And I could go after this person or I could see what else to create. And what ended up happening was my decision to forgive and let go. And just say, there must have been a reason that this showed up me. And as you said, it's not a failure, it's a lesson learned. What happened was over the next six months. My business literally quadrupled. I'm sorry, not quadrupled, tripled. It was three times. Had I invested energy and chasing after an air quotes, missed opportunity, I would have failed to have put the time and energy into what was right in front of me and what was for me all along. Steve Rush: Yeah, really powerful stuff. And you know, what goes around, comes around. Doesn't it? Lisa Marie Platske: Absolutely, and I'm not tracking it. Steve Rush: Yeah, I'm fairly certain karma, call it what you will, it catches people up eventually. Lisa Marie Platske: Yes, yes, yes. Steve Rush: So, the last part of the show, Lisa, is we get a chance to do some time travel. You get to bump into Lisa at twenty-one and give her some advice. What would be your words of wisdom to her then? Lisa Marie Platske: Everything happens in divine right timing. Everything happens in divine, right timing. Trust the journey and enjoy it. Steve Rush: Yeah, very powerful stuff. I wish we had some more time to talk, but unfortunately, we're coming to the of top of our show. And I just want to say, thank you. I really loved talking with you. I get a real sense of some commonalities and some shared passions that we both have. So, I think that helps in extract some great conversation. So, our learners and our listeners can be connected to you. Where is the best place for us to send them? Lisa Marie Platske: My website is upsidethinking.com, U-P-S-I-D-E, and the word thinking T- H-I-N-K-I-N-G.com. And if you do “backslash” stay-dash-connected, you'll get access to my influential leadership blueprint as well as I have an upside thought, which speaks about lots of lessons learned and one action to take each week, Steve Rush: Brilliant stuff. We'll make sure that we'll put the links in so that people can get hold of the influential leadership blueprint, as well as all your social media and other links as well. So, we can continue the journey beyond today. Lisa Marie Platske: Thank you. Thanks so much, Steve. You pulled things out of me that I've never shared, and I just feel as if we've known each other for a very long time. Steve Rush: Yeah, feelings mutual. And Lisa, thank you for being part of the community and we'll have to do this again sometime. Lisa Marie Platske: I would welcome that. Thank you. It's been an honor. Steve Rush: Thanks Lisa. Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.      

Dr Jeffrey Magee is a Chief Culture and Learning Officer, Editor in Chief at Professional Performance Magazine, author of 31 books, he's also a speaker and board adviser. In this really inspiring show you can learn about: The importance of investing into Human Capital How to become part of the Top 1% high achievers Why settling for a “B” grade will stimulate mediocrity How to find your X Factor and trajectory Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Jeffrey below: Jeffrey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjeffspeaks/ Jeffrey Magee Website: https://www.jeffreymagee.com Professional Performance Magazine: https://professionalperformancemagazine.com Jeffrey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/drjeffspeaks   Full Transcript Below ----more----   Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker. Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you Dr. Jeffrey McGee is a special guest on today's show. He's a human capital developer and chief culture and learning officer. He's also a multiple author and editor-in-chief at Professional Performance Magazine. But before we get a chance to meet with Jeff, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: In years in the news today, we explore some research completed by Boyden, a premier leadership and talent advisory firm, who's completed the study on talent led transformation in a post pandemic world. The global study explores the business outlook among CEOs, boards and other senior leaders, talent trends, priorities, and investment in the wake of the pandemic throughout 2022. Studies finding show that while seventy-seven percentage of respondents are extremely confident or confident in their organizations, growth potential just forty-seven percentage are extremely confident or confident in having the right talent to align to that strategy. Half of all respondents describe their business approach in 2022 as one of growth or expansion. And just over a quarter twenty-six percentage as a learning or transformation opportunity, this bullish approach versus a lack of talent alignment, jeopardizes post pandemic growth. And this lack of alignment goes up to board level with fifty-two percentage respondents saying that the different mix of skills is needed at the board. And despite this only thirty-eight percentage of respondents are likely to conduct a board assessment or review over the next two years. The findings do show that respondents are reinventing talent. Seventy-four percentage are extremely likely or likely to invest in leadership development for high potential employees, sixty-six percentage to hire new leadership talent and six five percentage to redeploy or retrain existing people. The research shows a number of trends that are looking at talent, and it reveals a lack of alignment across the leadership team, particularly around things like diversity, only forty-seven percentage of HR leaders think that it's extremely likely that their organization will hire talent into diversity roles. Sustainability, forty-two percentage of marketing leaders think is extremely likely or likely that their organization will hire talent into sustainability roles compared to thirty-one percentage of CEOs and supply chain. Thirty-seven percentage of finance leaders think is extremely likely their organization will hire talent into supply chain roles compared to twenty percentage of CEOs. In submarine attracting talent respondents consider the two top drivers to be a strong overall company's reputation, fifty-seven percentage and a purpose driven organization fifty-two percentage. Followed by the workplace of the future with a hybrid working arrangements come in at thirty-eight percentage. And the leadership lesson here is, however big organizational team is. There's never a wrong time to start reassessing how you go about nurturing and growing your talent. It's our future. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. If you have any insights, news or stories? Get in touch. Start of Podcast   Steve Rush: Dr. Jeffrey McGee is a special guest on today's show. He's chief culture and learning officer, editor-in-chief at Professional Performance Magazine. He's the author of 31 books, a speaker, and a board advisor. Jeff, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thanks for your time, Steven. Steve Rush: No worries. Listen, let's get into it, but before we do, it'd be really great for you to give a bit of a sense to our audience about your backstory and how you've arrived at being a multiple author and as well as a speaker and a board advisor. just give us that backstory if you could? Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Great question, dangerous question. We could go on forever. So, I'll try to make it really concise. I grew up in the Midwest USA on a farm. Went to college on an athletic scholarship and journalism scholarships. Running and running, I've always been passions. And after college I spent some time in Midwest USA as a journalist doing broadcast news and print and kind of fixated in the area of business and found that to be fascinating area. But very quickly also became discouraged with the state of journalism in the eighties and nineties as a very negative caustic and toxic industry. It's obviously not that way today at all. And that caused me to kind of leave that the industry. And as I tell people in my audiences and just in conversations, if you're ever discouraged with what you're doing professionally or you're unemployed, there's always a job anywhere in the world, but especially in America. And it's called the sales job. Now, if you're not good at sales, you may not keep it, but there's always a hunger for the person who generates the revenue for an organization. So that took me into sales very quickly and in a trajectory, I had not planned on. And I had the opportunity to spend a little time with a fortune 100 company in the United States in sales. They introduced me to adult learning, which I didn't know existed as an industry where you would go, you know. To advance training or education at the college level or business development programs at a local hotel that might be a day or two-day long program. And I was doing that after hours and found that to be fascinating. To jump forward over the past thirty years, that evolved me into training and development, which led me into management roles and leadership roles into owning a business. And along the way, I started writing some books. Those books caught traction here in the U.S. and globally became a couple of bestsellers. And that led me to designing and creating a training and development company. While I worked with business leaders around the world from Berlin to Vermont wherever. Helping them to basically leverage their human capital as I have come to learn and even you and your business, I would believe you would agree. You can get a building, I can get a building, you can get equipment, I can get equipment, you can buy vehicles, I can buy vehicles. But the one thing that really makes us different at the day is the human equation. The people that work for you don't work for me and vice versa. And that's what led me to where I am today in terms of working with business owners and leaders, to accelerate their growth and success through leveraging their human capital and creating a culture and environment by which great want to come and be a part of you and stay with you. Steve Rush: Awesome. Now the interesting thing here, right, is the whole notion of human capital. It's something that's been recently reintroduced into our vernacular almost, but from your perspective, having worked with organizations where they are investing in their people, their human teams, is there a real return on investment to be had in your experience? Dr. Jeffrey McGee: It's a great question. So, one of the training companies, I was a part of for many years and sold my stake in here in the U.S. at least for our global listeners today, if you're a CPA in the financial accounting world, or you're an attorney in the legal world, you have to have ongoing educational credits every year to keep your license and certificate, to be able to professionally do your practice. And in that space, I started learning many years ago that we spent a tremendous amount of time in every business. White collar, blue collar, labor intense, automation, doesn't matter. Training and investing money into equipment and assets and tangibles and buildings where we typically say, okay, what's the ROI on that going to be? And then we do a lot of technician training, you know. How to work the machines? Or et cetera. And a lot of, you know. Return on that investment through efficiencies and productivity and profitability. One of the elements I have been using, even at the title on my business card for decades, even though you just made comment, it's come back and it's fashionable today, but people like you and I have known it for many years, and that is human capital. So, one, what is human capital? We spend a tremendous amount of time talking about that. Two, how do you develop that human capital on talent pathways, career expectations, market needs, business needs? And is there then an ROI on that? Absolutely yes. And I believe there's a greater and a more lasting ROI on human capital than any other capital you can have because almost any other measurement of capital, which is around tangibles depreciates very quickly. You buy a new car soon as you drive it off the lot there in London, or you drive it off the lot here in Las Vegas. It depreciates tremendously, as soon as you leave the parking lot. Human capital depreciates, if you don't challenge it. It depreciates if you don't hold it accountable. It depreciates if you're not growing and developing and feeding what individuals goals needs and purposes are. But if you can align all of that, the ROI is massive. Steve Rush: And you can see on the balance sheet as well, can't you? So, if you look at the organizations who do invest in their people and have strong engagement scores, low attrition, holding onto that talent, then there's a direct correlation of those businesses returns in real sense, too, isn't there? Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Absolutely, you can see from the, you know. The boardroom conversations to the executive suite, to frontline, you know. Leads supervisors, managers, directors, whatever the title is that an organization may have for its first level, and then, you know. Sending upward of leadership, absolutely. And, individuals, you know. They come to an organization where they see an organization best in their people and provide multiple for development and growth and development of those people, not just in the job, but development of them in terms of promotability, sustainability, longevity, absolute, it's a massive recruitment tool as well as a retention tool. And then again, think about the turnover. There's a hard HR statistic that's used globally, and you can debate the number, but even if you debated it, doesn't change the output. And it says, basically, let's take an administrative job and a business, a white-collar job. I hate the labels, but it gives us some point of reference. And they talk about the amount of financial attached to the turnover. Let's say Steve's working in our business and an administrative role, white collar role, the amount of money attached to losing you, advertising, promoting, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding someone to get them up to baseline functionality of what Steven was doing is any work between one point five and three times what your annual paycheck was. So, it's very expensive. And then you add on additional, such as again, what are the relationships that Steve had before he left? And if those were good, both with vendors, suppliers, coworkers, colleagues, employees. It could take a long time to rebuild those relationships. So, can you start to put some numbers to it? Absolutely. The institutional knowledge that someone has to know how to finesse relationships or situations to be more productive and profitable, if I'm in a client relationship role, development role, again. Knowing how to cross sell, upsell. Knowing what a client's long-term goals are and how we can align those with our own organizational goals? Yeah, the conversations can just go on endlessly, but the finances attached to it are staggering. Steve Rush: Yes, there are some big numbers there, aren't there? And if you think, even small organizations, that's a massive number relative to the operating cycle of a business. Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Absolutely. Steve Rush: Yeah, so you develop the principle and notion of Talentification, which is also you wrote book about, so what is Talentification? Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Great question, so looking at the concept of talent, and you can finish that statement for our listeners today, a lot of ways, whether you call it talent management, talent development, talent acquisition, and I started recognizing working in this space over the last thirty years, both with fortune 100 global clients to individual industry, rockstar businesses that the common person on the street would never know the name of that business, unless you're in that space, whether it's agriculture or manufacturing or high-tech, or what have you. So, to me, Talentification that concept in the word deals with what I've identified to be the eleven elements to execution and achievement. I used the word achievement as capital letters. There's, you know? Those letters stand for each of the eleven phases of what talent life cycles are about. So, it's eleven elements of execution and achievement of the talent management model that I've identified for basically healthy and sustained and engage organizations. And how do you create that culture where everyone, not just the leaders, not just the talent management team understands what their role in stake is in health and wealth of an organization? Again, if you're my supervisor or you're my peer, you're my subordinate, doesn't matter. All of us have to understand when it comes to talent, what really are all those key aspects we're talking about? So that's what the book deals with, those eleven phases. It talks a little bit strategically, tactically about what each looks like from anyone in organizations perspective. And we can look at high growth organizations, again, just as you said, whether they're a small family business, a sole proprietor, or whether there are mid-size or large going concern, you know? Those eleven phases are critically important. And as you get people engaged at their capacities, eleven different areas, it also becomes a massive retention tool. Your entrepreneurial energy becomes organic to some of the questions you and I were just visiting around. Steve Rush: So, if I was a leader, listening to the eleven phases and thinking about my talent and my talent strategy, is there a, maybe a golden starting place or a golden end, is there maybe one place that you think that has to be part of my talent strategy? Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Absolutely. So, you know? In the human relations world, HR Management. There are different models that are used. One of the models that kind of has grabbed the globe in the last decade is, using stars as a metaphor for your employees. And so, to answer that, let me share, teach a model real quickly, because I think it absolutely is explosive in answering your question. It also answers the questions of how you can guard against making sure you don't have a toxic cancerous person in your team that's going to be working actively or passive aggressively against you and take you down. So, to me, there's different sort of stars. You have a rock star in your company, rockstars are from an aptitude and a level very high on the scale and from an attitudinal level, very high on the scale. So, they're, you know? They know what they're doing. They're your subject matter experts, are always looking to grow and develop themselves, but they're always willing to push and achieve more. So, you have your rock stars, then you have developing stars. These are people that have good attitudes. They need knowledge and attitudinal growth, which could take time. And some people are not patient for the amount of time it may take to grow their brain in any sort of a job or vocation. You have, you know? Emerging stars, these are people that that know how to do the job, but they've got a chip on their shoulder, or they're not as motivated or they're somewhat discouraged. We have to know how to engage them. You have your problem players, which I call those, your crashing stars. You have employees that maybe you don't know very much about. Those would be your unknown stars. And then you've just got your work horses. You know? Basically, you're contributing stars. And lot of times contributing stars want to be a part of organization, but they don't really want to ascend upward into, you know? Any sort of job role with this lot of spotlights. They don't want to be a leader, a boss. So, you need the whole mix's. To answer your question. What I've recognized, you know? In working with global talents. also from my media company, Performance Professional Performance Magazine. Interviewing phenomenal people all over the planet, is that the real secret to your question is the rock star population, that rockstar demographic, knowing that if I've got a rock star at any job, sit down and do some character analysis and say, okay, what are the quantifiable that makes Stephen my rock star at job ABC? And when I can start to write down those characteristics of Stephen as a rockstar in his job, I now have a benchmark template. I can use the interview to find another rock star. I could use it and kind of put it up on a wall for anyone else who wants to become a rock star like Stephen and said, okay, these are the traits or characteristics or skills or behaviors or actions that you need to exhibit or master. And I think that's how you start to answer your question is to clearly focus on the rockstars. See the reason I go off on that tirade is that what we've done for the last twenty to thirty years, and we were not paying attention on the planet is, we actually started lowering the performance bar where mediocrity is actually seen as rock stars today in most places on the planet that I go.   Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Jeffrey McGee: And if mediocrity, as soon as the rock star, then you can see how pathetic and how bad it gets real quick. Here in the United States, Gallup Organization did a massive research project right before COVID. And so, it got lost in the noise. The challenge to the research project model, Steve is, I think the numbers are worse today than what they said before, but basically said this. They surveyed thousands of American and global businesses based in U.S. And they found that fifty-six percentage of the respondents. So, thousands of businesses mean tens, if not hundreds of thousands of individuals participated in the survey, but fifty-six percentage of responders said they're disengaged or complacent in the workplace, so fifty-six percentage basically saying, hey, I'm going through the motions. I realized I don't have to kill myself. So, it's kind of like, you know? If I'm doing some tough love here, what's the minimum I have to do for maximum paycheck? Then fifteen percentage identified as actively disengaged. These are people that wake up every morning, look for something new to complain about, which leaves you mathematically with twenty-nine percentage leftover that are engaged. So, let's call those engaged, you know? Some of the rock stars or developing stars or emerging stars. And that's what you realize. If you want to have a successful business, you build it around the star metaphor, but you build it around rock stars, because if Steven's a rock star and you hire me, then I know where the performance bar is set and I'm going to step up. And as consumers, you and I, and the listeners today can validate what I've just shared as consumers is, look at the places you go and ask yourself, are you really getting rockstar level service, or are you really getting mediocre service that people are calling rockstar level? And so that's a series of answers to your powerful question, Steve Rush: That's a great response too, and it's interesting that the whole mediocrity can be really cancerous in an organization, can't it? Because if you allow your average to be sub average, than your average, occasionally we'll just continue the slit versus your average should be your rock stars of now. Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Absolutely. Steve Rush: It should be your average is in the future, right? Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Yeah, I coach people that if you have, again, we can call them whatever you want. So, I don't want anybody to get hung up on labels here, but as a reference point, if you have a job description or a job profile that says I'm hiring Geoffrey McGee to do job ABC, I'm going to hire Steven to do job XYZ. So obviously we're both going to ask our boss the same question, which is, okay, great. What's this job responsible for? What do I do? What are the expectations? So, when you start to identify the work product and then how does it need to be accomplished or how often, or how much? We have clarity to our job and everything's built around it. But with that, what I coach is, if someone is doing one hundred percentage of the job you've hired them to do so, first thing I just said is 100 hundred percentage of the job you've been hired to do, then that means they're meeting expectations. Meeting expectations would be like, you're going to school and you're getting grades. And again, we use different scorecards around the globe. So, in the United States, if you're going to kindergarten to high school and into college. The grading system we use is A, B, C, D F. Well, I always tell people, if you want to get clarity, get rid of letter B for boy and get rid of letter D for dog. And all you should have is either an F, C, or an A, you're doing a hundred percent of the job expected. Then that's a C, you're meeting expectations, you're average, but that scares people. Therefore, any part of your job description, you're not doing, you have to get an F. I mean, we're not going to give any wiggle rooms for B's and D's. So, someone says, well, how do I get to be an A? Then I say go right back to your job description. And in any one of those areas that you exceed, that I, as the organization amount, obligated to give you an A in that area. So, if you take that metaphor and you use it to any sort of a job we have, I mean, everything has been degraded down. I mean, if you're a rock star player and you wake up tomorrow morning and you're not motivated, and you're just, you know? Not highly excited, we've all had those days. I tell people and ask people, well, what do you bring to the office? Do you bring you're A game and your B? Well, most of the answer is B. Well, if you go home within that day and reflect on, I brought my B game to the office and I'm still a rock star by a mile. Well, what do you bring back on the subsequent day? You can bring back you're A, or do you calibrate down to B? And most of us, we calibrate young to B, and then someday in the future, you wake up, not motivated. Do you bring your, A, B or C? Well, we know A is not in the game anymore. So, you bring your C and that's how we've done things, we make an exception. We elect people that are mediocre, and then we make excuses when they're pathetic. We hire people that are mediocre, and then we make excuses when they're pathetic. And that's, what's sad about the model, instead of all of us trying to be the best we can be and raised the bar, we've actually made it globally convenient to lower the bar. Steve Rush: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Spot on. I love the concept that you've applied to the kind of ACF, because it removes the opportunity to sit in some middle ground, doesn't it? Dr. Jeffrey McGee: You hit it dead center, and that's the element. I mean, if I am going to traditional college that are traditional age, we have all those wiggle grades, and it's amazing how we, our faculty, our parents, we justify those wiggled grades. But now, if you and I are business people, as we are here today and majority of our listeners, and you were paying out of your own pocket to go to a developmental program to get more education, so you can become better. It's amazing, we're paying it. We don't want the wiggle grade. We want the best grade possible. Well, imagine if the B and a Ds off the table, it either is your understanding the topic, so that's C. There's nothing wrong with that, where you're not understanding it. So, we're not going to pass you. You're going to get an F. I mean, you go in for brain surgery. Do you want your surgeon to be an F, an D, an C or an B surgeon for med school? Would you prefer they be an A? Steve Rush: Exactly, you don't want your brain surgeons to be a B on any type of surgery, do you? Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Your parents, you're taking your child for heart surgery, I changed the model, and I say, a parent, you're taking your child and you want your surgeon to be an F, D, C or B or an A? I mean, so if you change the dynamic, everyone kind of like raised their eyebrows. Like it's obvious A, but then in other professions, we accept C's and D's and F's all day long. Steve Rush: And did this thinking set you on your trajectory? I'm going to use the word Jeff, to when you wrote your Trajectory Code. So, this is a book that you wrote around how to change your decisions, actions, and directions, and to become part of that top one percentage of high achievers, right? Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Absolutely. Steve Rush: So, you've got within that, your mental DNA, just tell us a little bit about what that is and how we could get into that top one percent? Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Great question. So, a couple of models, it's a really easy book. I tell people it's not going to be difficult. I spent two years in first grade as a child. So, nothing I do is hard. It's pretty simple, but what I identified of the thirty-one books, I've written, twenty-one languages, four bestsellers, and four graduate management textbooks. Your Trajectory Code is the only book, so people can buy it online, or they can buy the audio book. The only book I've written, it's about personal success. And it primarily draws upon one business model I've used for years called the trajectory code, the trajectory code models, like a letter V for victory. And that that diagram helps us to recognize what actions, behaviors, and mindsets take you to derailment and failure. And what are the actions, mindset, and behaviors that take us to success. Within that, there's a concept called your mental DNA, and it plays off of a formula. So, it's chapter five in the book that talks about your player capability index. And so, I'm a formula kind of a person. So, what I recognize, if I look at Stephen and Stephen comes to Jeff Magee and said, I like you to be my performance coach and helped me to accelerate my successes. Here's the goal of where I want to go. Well, I'm going to have to do some diagnostics, whether it's an online platform or just you and I are visiting via video call. Because I prefer video calls versus to telephone that way, we can see each other. Because a lot of visual communication takes place. It's very insightful. But what I've recognized in that formula, Stephen, is that there's very specific variables that make up a human being such as knowledge.   So that's one of the letters in the formula. So, whether it's formal or informal education, technical, non-technical, certification, non-certification. Another part of it, it's going to be our life experiences. How does one life experience build and set the stage for the next? And how do we leverage those to be better? You know, the next time we do something. How about the culture we were raised in, or the cultures we've been a part of or, you know? Ebbed and flowed in and out of. That influences how our thinking styles and belief systems and confidential, we lack thereof. So, there's a lot more to the formula and it's very easy to read and understand, but that becomes the DNA. So, if I want to grow someone in, let's say between today and in the future, we don't know what the future date is, to be the new CEO of a business. Family owned a global international business, a local mom and pop shop. Then I would first, okay. So, to be a great executive, I use the same DNA model and you and I, or whoever the appropriate stakeholders would be, we would sit down and say okay. For us to have a great CEO, what would we like them to possess in terms of knowledge or skills or education or degrees or certifications? You know, some, none, what are they? What sort of attitude, mindsets? What sort of passion? What sort of experiences do we want them to have? What sort of a relationships? People that we want them to have interacted with, grown with? Network with or known? So, this formula also gives us a great DNA chart to scope out how do you build a great leader. Leader of nations, leader of communities, leaders of business, leaders of our ourselves. So, the DNA concept has multiple applications, personal development, career development of someone, creating, you know? Job descriptions that client says, hey, I need something, listen to what the client says they need. They'll tell you exactly where you need to go. But the last way of answering your question is that part of this model, Steve is very objective and that's the real power behind it. It gives you the objective template to assess yourself or someone else and pull all of the emotion and ego and personalization out of it to see exactly what we need to do to be smart at the end of the day, Steve Rush: Laser focus. Dr. Jeffrey McGee: You got it. Steve Rush: Yeah, and in the book also, you talk about having the opportunity to understand your X factor when you're on your trajectory. Does that form part of this? Dr. Jeffrey McGee: It is exactly. So, the X factor is the first side of this equation. I know I'm talking to a global audience here and we have, you know? fortyish percent of your listeners are in the U.S. and forty to forty five percent might be in the UK and the others are global. So, this X factor concept is not like the entertainment show from the great British businessman, Simon Cowell.   Steve Rush: He has a lot of answer for X-Factor now, doesn't he? Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Exactly, so I've been using my X-Factor longer than he as, of course, he's richer than both of us, bam, he wins. Steve Rush: Exactly. Dr. Jeffrey McGee: But the X-Factor represents any thing you're measuring is what X represents in this formula. So, if we're measuring, you know? How fast can you run? That's an X-Factor or how fast can you compute some mathematical questions? That's an X-Factor, you know? How good are you at wood crafting? I mean, so whatever it is you're measuring, that's X. So, to answer, let me use this example. So, let's say we go on to any school campus around the world of, you know? Kindergarten, to primary, to high school grade. And you were to say on that campus, there's a range of athletic sports that are offered. Well, the varsity sport, the highest level of proficiency that high school, I'd say. Of a hundred percent of the kids on that campus. If we're measuring athletics as our X-Factor, of a hundred percent of the kids on any campus, X percent would actually be good enough to make the varsity team of any sport. So, if you ask that question to a group of people, it's always going to be a small number. Of a hundred percent of kids on the campus. You might hear someone say twenty percent, or ten percent or five percent, then I said, okay, so let's track it two more times. Of a hundred percent, then of those high school, varsity athletes, X percent would be good enough to go play it at a collegiate level, at a college level. Get a scholarship to go to the advanced level, what percent? And it's always a smaller number that migrates and said, okay, so final question. So, we started with a hundred percent mass at a high school, and we saw that how many kids are were good enough to be on the varsity sport at a high school level, smaller number, go play at the college collegiate level, smaller number. So, what percentage would be drafted from a college level to go play at the professional ranks? Whether it's, you know? Football, rugby, whether it's, you know? Basketball, football, hockey, whatever, it's always a really small number. So, get people to recognize whatever you're tracking is an X-Factor and whatever that smallest finite number you just came up with using athletics is what we tracked. We're all professionals, so if you really want to see where you should be focusing your energy or how to grow and develop yourself, what are you really proficient in as an X-Factor? So, let's do the math. Let's say high school is twenty percent, would be at the high school team. How many go to college? Let's say it's five percent. How many go on and play at the pros? Point zero, zero, zero, whatever percent. Oh, okay. So that point zero, zero, zero, that's you and I, as professionals, we're not competing on a planet about the twenty percentiles, because this is not high school.   Real life is not high school. It's not college, it's pros. So, if you really want to be successful, then you've got to identify, what is your X-Factor. For me, growing up in primary school from kindergarten to high school, I was not a great writer. I thought I was, I mean, teachers were very critical of my writing. Well, maybe it's because I wanted to be a writer and they were giving me additional attention. I didn't really like to read books in high school or college. So, it's fascinating, you know? Forty years later, I love to read, I love to write, I love to do research. And all of that forms a basis of my ability to coach executives and businesses to be in hyper-growth faster, quicker And sustained. Steve Rush: It's a really, yeah, lovely way of thinking about it, this whole kind of one percent or zero, zero, zero, point one percent of professionals. I wonder how many people actually can even associate that in their profession today, they're already there? And that's a lot to do with mindset, I suspect. Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Absolutely, you know? It is. And there's actually some quantifiable ways to answer that because you've posed a great question. Someone says, okay, how do I know if I'm in the top percentage of my industry? Or how do I know if I'm starting to rest on my morals and accomplishments? Or how do I push myself? So, I always tell people, in your job and your profession, is there another formal educational degree you could achieve? And if yes, then you're not at the top of the list, pull yourself down at least one notch on any scale, because there's something there you can quantify that you could go after that you're not, or are there certifications in your industry? And if that's a yes and you don't have them, then bring yourself down another notch, you know? Have you written any papers or are you asked to speak on this? Are you asked to be the trainer in your business on these topics? So that's a great question. You've posed for our listeners. How do you know when you're at the top of the game? There are ways of knowing it. And if you study another way of looking at this one percent factors, I've interviewed, you know? World leaders from your country, Tony Blair, to Richard Branson, Richard Branson, I've written three books together, whatever you look at incredibly successful people. What you'll recognize is that they associate with and typically hang out with, from their view, their vision, other phenomenally successful people, whether it's in their industry or not, you don't see a great athlete typically hanging out with losers. I mean, there might be, you know? A phenomenal singer. It might be a phenomenal artist and maybe a phenomenal business leader. You know? So again, successful people typically associate with other successful people. Because that's one of the ways they benchmark themselves to always be being pushed because great successful people in any capacity can call you out on whether or not you're truly working or you're coasting.   Steve Rush: It's interesting, as you were saying that Jeff, I was thinking about sports people. Perhaps are easy to quantify because they've got measures, personal bests, they've got fastest times, greatest passes. All of those things are quantifiable, but in business they're perhaps around us yet we don't spend as much time quantifying it. And I think that's a really key message for me. Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Huge, you just said something massive for the listeners, thank you. A pro athletes live for quantifiable performance feedback in real time when they're practicing, they have videotapes. They can go back and study. They have coaches and sub coaches that are always, you know? Measuring them, pushing them, tracking them. And so, it's interesting in what I call the real business world where you and I live, it's amazing how the mindset of most people is, we resist performance feedbacks. We resist performance reviews. We don't like quantifiable data. Because sometimes, you know? It's misused against this instead of being used to help to grow us, we need to create that pro athlete mindset around performance execution, and then we'll become much more successful in any capacity. Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely so. So, in your experience Jeff, has human capital, the world of talent management changed over the last couple of craziest through COVID? Dr. Jeffrey McGee: It has, you know? And it's interesting. I find myself posing the question just this recent weekend. I was here in Las Vegas on the strip speaking to a large convention. And, I posed a question that, if you and I were sitting in a large business audience conference, whatever topic, doesn't matter, and it was January of 2020, and the person in front was asking the audience questions like how many of you have a business plan, a game plan for 2020, almost every hand would go up. You know? How many of you are optimistic for 2020? Everyone's hands probably would go up. From a sales standpoint, maybe the more specific question then. How many of you have a sales plan or strategy for 2020? Almost every hand would go up. What about your talent management, your human capital, you looking at your key employees in your organization? You feel comfortable with that team? A lot of hands would go up. Are you looking to hire hands would go up? Have you thought about flight risk and anyone leaving you? Probably hands wouldn't go up. No one thought that way. If we would have posed the last question in January, 2020 to a large business audience, you know? What about letting a lot of your employees work remotely or virtually, you know? How many of you are open to that idea? Very few hands would have went up, but if we would have had that same conversation in June, just three or four months into COVID. In June of 2020, I said, well, you know? How many of you are working remotely or have a lot of your employees working remotely or, you know, virtual? Tons of hands would have went up. So, we jumped into 2021. We're recording this here in, in August, September of 2021. And what I'm finding is that a massive number of businesses that have had to make massive changes in 2020 to stay sustainable, or that have actually been in thriving mode, have embraced looking at how they do their businesses differently. So COVID has pushed our business models easily ten years into the future, just in the past year. They've pushed businesses to actually operate the way that we were only considering a year ago. And so, from a human capital standpoint, it's also pushed us to recognize where are some of our hidden jewels that maybe we were smothering and didn't realize we had phenomenal talent before COVID that is actually stood up in shined. And it's caused us to recognize how do we keep people engaged? How do we maintain our culture? When we have pockets of people working together and some are distant. And how do we grow and develop our people to keep them at peak performance? So, has it changed in some ways? Absolutely, no. Because how to be successful in a position? A lot of similarities. The other way of answering it, has it changed? Absolutely, yes. I think, looking at how we are more mindful of our people equation, our human capital has really become more front and center today than where it was a year ago. So yes and no to that question Steve Rush: And many different rockstars now than perhaps two years ago. Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Absolutely. Steve Rush: But equally as important of course, is to make sure that rewriting that DNA of what the rock star is today in today's world, right? Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Exactly right. A hundred percent correct. Steve Rush: Love it. So, this is part of the show now where we get to flip the leadership lens on you. I'm going to hack into your great years of experience of leadership development and leading others. And ask you to try and distill down, if you can, your top three leadership hacks, what would they be Jeff? Dr. Jeffrey McGee: I think one, that we have actually touched on and that is to player capability and next model. Really recognizing what's the unique talent that you can possess, that I can possess that can allow me to be competitive with the market space of today and tomorrow. Anticipate where the market's going, so I can be not just competitive, but I can set the bar of what competition looks like. That's one, two is accountability. I've really have learned that people fall into very distinct camps when it comes to accountability and reliability and trustworthiness and integrity. And so, number two is not a very, a fashionable conversation. Going to make people feel uncomfortable, but the reality is, there are a lot of disingenuous people on the planet and you just have to be conscious of that and put your big, you know? Your big adult armor on. So, they don't penetrate you and kill you because everyone has an agenda and that'll be the third answer. And once you recognize everyone has an agenda and it's not necessarily right or wrong, just everyone has an agenda. Then the real mastery is to find ways to align your agenda, personally, your agenda professionally with others agendas. And when you can find places of alignment, then great success can happen forever everybody.   Steve Rush: Alignment is just massive, isn't it? Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Absolutely. Steve Rush: Yeah, and it's really interesting. The whole accountability thing in my experience as a coach, when you use just simply use the word accountability, you can almost see people think that means I have to deliver on something. Yes, that's right. And that's no different, isn't it? Dr. Jeffrey McGee: It is. Steve Rush: To any other day of the week, but by just simply raising its awareness. Dr. Jeffrey McGee: And that's what scares people. And again, if an organization supports its people to be the best, they can be. Then within that are going to be layers of accountability, whether there, you know? Obvious or not obvious. And again, if people want to be the best they can be, then there's going to be accountability. And their businesses around the globe that really demonstrate, you know? Accountability. And so, when I look at successful businesses, I've identified accountability happens on five levels. And so, here's another teaching moment for our listeners and business leaders. You know? First of all, the way, you know? You have a truly engaged workforce organization that is going to be in survival mode on its worst day. And there'll be in thriving mode on almost every day, is accountability level one is self. People hold themselves accountable. So, if I'm looking to interview or hire someone, I should incorporate accountability questions to vet and find out, is this person hold themselves accountable? Yes or no. And again, you can still hire someone if they fail the first question, at least now, you know what you're in for. Accountability starts with self. Then it goes to number two is going to be systems, what systems or processes or checklists, or, you know? What do we have out there that we can put our arms around, they help to hold us accountable so that we can go back to default number one? So, one is self, two systems. Three is going to be peer. Do we have peer to peer accountability? Do we work in an environment where no one's trying to play I gotcha? No, one's trying to toss you under the bus. But it's, you know? We're all here because we all have skin in the game. We all want to help each other to be vessels or peer accountability. And then four is going to be an essence customer. If that's an external constituent, what mechanisms do we have in place? Our customers can give us feedback, help us to be more successful every day. And so, they hold us accountable. And if we ask for customer feedback, we really listened to it. And do we really respond to it? Or is it just a game we're playing? And you have these layers of accountability. So again, one is self, two is system, three is peer, fours is customer. You'll five is going to be boss. You know? Whatever you define boss to be. Supervisor, leader, executive team, ownership, the board of directors, mom, and dad at home. You know? The boss should always be last. So, in any organization where you have the paradigm flip, the other direction, where you have accountability, it's driven by bosses first. You're never going to have a culture that's going to allow people to be truly successful because there's going to be questions of, does the organization trust me? Do they believe in me? Do they support me? Will they empower me? If the boss is always having to be there with their thumb on everything? So, accountability is scary. And that's problem we have in the world, I mean, I grew up to be a journalist and I love to write articles on successful people in organizations and share that story. So, people could replicate success, but here in the us, I mean, those articles are settlement ever written. And that's why I love your podcast because it's always about success. Just like my magazine, Professional Performance Magazine. It's always evergreen content, and it's about success from other people's lenses. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Jeffrey McGee: But journalism is, should be holding all political people accountable. Don't have an agenda in A and B playing favorites. Don't be a journalist and like one political party over the other because you're not doing your job of accountability. And that's what we see happening on the planet is, all of these mechanisms for accountability have been bastardized, polluted, degraded or just imploded. And that's why, you know? Sometimes when we find a great person or a business that blows our brain up. Because, oh my gosh, that's what success looks like. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Jeffrey McGee: That should be norm. Steve Rush: Yeah, it's a great, great reframe, love it. So, the next part of the show, we call it Hack to Attack. So typically, this is where something in your life or your work hasn't worked out well, but as a result, you've got some learning from it. And you now use it as a positive in what you do, what would be your Hack to Attack? Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Woo, there's a loaded question. So, I merged my business years ago with another business. It doesn't need to be named. And what I learned is that when you work with someone for a number of years and you decide to align yourself with them and go into business, it's a completely different mindset you take in that relationship. Then if Stephen and I, you're in the UK, I'm in United States of America, we know of each other. We don't really know each other. We've never really worked with each other. If you and I were to merge our businesses, we would ask a lot of forensic questions, not to be mean and rude and disrespectful. We'd ask a lot of forensic questions to make sure that this merger of human capital and minds and product and deliver and businesses make sense. And if it does, we would have a great relationship. So, what I learned is that whenever you're you go to work with someone, you need to look at it from an objective lens as if you've never met them and really do the discovery questions. So, it's like when I worked with an organization, if I have any prior knowledge of them. I've learned to not bring that to the table in the beginning, backup and ask all of the questions you should be asking if you didn't know them to really vet and find out, are you in alignment? Are you both being transparent? Does the data add up? Make sure you're not about to get scammed. And that probably has been my number one lesson learned for the past decade plus. Matter of fact, I wrote an executive article on it with thirteen questions I didn't know to ask that I learned afterwards and it was saved me a lot of pain so that the hack that really has caused me more success. And sometimes I'm still guilty of violating it because when you're romanced in your head and you like someone, or you like the thought of doing something, you sometimes are not as objective as you could be a need to be. So, I go back to those thirteen questions in an article I wrote years ago. So, it really is be more objective and you will have more success. Steve Rush: And I love that because most people, whether they own a business or whether they work for an organization often just have too much emotion in the game. Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Absolutely. Steve Rush: And therefore, won't allow themselves to be as objective as they could be. Dr. Jeffrey McGee: You got it. Steve Rush: So that forensic look, I think it's really key. Dr. Jeffrey McGee: That's the way I lived. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Absolutely, it will save and your listeners, a lot of pain, grief and that loss of money. Let's say it that way. Steve Rush: Indeed. So that last bit the show Jeff, were we get to give you a chance to do some time travel and bump into yourself at twenty-one, toe to toe and give them some advice. What would your advice Jeff be at twenty-one? Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Great question. And you have stolen a page right from me, Steve. I use that same question when I get a chance to interview phenomenal people for my magazine. So, I love that question. It's fair turnaround, right? Steve Rush: Yeah, absolutely. Dr. Jeffrey McGee: You know? At age fifty-seven today, I don't see myself at fifty-seven. I always thought that was an older person's number. Now that I'm there, it's like, oh my gosh, it's pretty doggone young. So, the question, if I went back to twenty-one, I would think I would share a couple of pieces of information. Number one, I might've shared, get serious and focused faster and find a way to do a career that twenty to twenty-five years from age twenty-one. You could retire out of and have a base income, base benefits to rest on for the rest of your life and use that first career to gain and learn as much as you can, that you could then leverage in your second career in your mid-forties to go on and have a phenomenal life. And I say that because as I look over the horizon and see people that have done just that, you know? The ability to be in your fifties and sixties and have a base retirement paycheck for the rest of your life and a base, you know? Health benefits to have for the rest of your life. It twenty-one, you don't understand the magnitude of what that means, but at fifty-seven, looking at that as massive, because now you could do your second career in a lot of ways and not have the stress of, I've got to make a paycheck, I have to, and you finish that have to in a zillion way. And one is, I would say get serious. I see a lot of successful people today. They're successful because they have that base set up. If you're in your mid-forties and you've changed jobs, many times, as a lot of your listeners have, and maybe you've not doubled down and really got a lot of good advanced education because you started your family and had jobs that you just didn't make the time happen. You really find yourself in a challenged position of having to work really hard next twenty years, if not the rest of your life. And that's the norm on the planet today. And that's also the norm I see with a lot of young people today in their twenties that are not hearing this advice that I'd give back to myself for your question you've posed. And they're setting themselves up thinking that they're magically going to be wealthy, whatever that means and not have to work the rest of their life, whatever that means. And I think they're setting themselves up for a massively rude awakening. Steve Rush: Yeah, here, here, I agreed. So, Jeff, listen, I always love chatting to you. You create some great content, both verbally through your talks and speeches, but also through your written work. How can we make sure our listeners can keep connected with you? Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Great question, I appreciate it. There's three ways that we can stay connected. One, we should definitely be connected on LinkedIn. So go LinkedIn, again Jeffrey Magee, Dr. Jeff speaks, we need to be connected, follow me. I don't sell anything on LinkedIn, but in the spirit and thing of what we've just been visiting with here, I post on LinkedIn every day, some sort of mental piece of information, whether it's a quote, whether it's an article, whether it's a video, whether it's a blog to cause people to think at a higher, deeper, faster level. So that's one, if you want to find out more about, you know? Products, deliverables, how I do what I do, then obviously you can go to jeffreymagee.com, that's my website, jeffreymagee.com. It's J-E-F-F-R-E-Y. So, it's the non-British spelling and McGee is M-A-G-G-E and then my media company is professionalperformancemagazine.com. So those would be the three places, professional performance magazine.com, jeffreymagee.com or go to LinkedIn, and then we can stay connected and keep the brain going. Steve Rush: And we'll shoot those links into our show notes as well. Dr. Jeffrey McGee: You're awesome. Thank you so much, Steve. Thank you very much opportunity to share information ideas with your listeners and anything I can do for you and them, just let me know. Steve Rush: Jeff, it's been amazing to talk, take care of yourself and thanks being part of The Leadership Hacker community. Dr. Jeffrey McGee: Thank you so much. Closing Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers. Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handle there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.      

Brandon Smith is, "The Workplace Therapist.” He's the Founder and President of The Worksmiths, an Executive Coach, Speaker and Author of the book, The Hot Sauce Principle. In this fascinating conversation you can learn about: The reason there is so much dysfunction in the workplace. The best survival tactics for eliminating dysfunction. How to stimulate urgency and avoid panic when driving performance. What the Host Sauce Principle is, and why getting balance is essential. Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Brandon below: Brandon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonsmithtwpt/ The Workplace Therapist Website: https://theworkplacetherapist.com Brandon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheWPTherapist Brandon on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewptherapist/   Full Transcript Below   Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   On The Leadership Hacker Podcast today, we have Brandon Smith, the workplace therapist. He's a founder and president of Worksmiths, executive coach and speaker and author of the book, The Hot Sauce Principle. But before we do sound speaker Brandon, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: Have you ever avoided just putting stuff off that you know, that you should be doing. Well, procrastination could be the most expensive cost in life and business. Leading to stress, misunderstandings and missed opportunities. Many people put off task until the last minute. And according to psychology today, twenty percent of people are chronic procrastinators. More than ever people are getting pulled in different directions and demands on time, schedules and energy are increasing. So, in order to cope with the pressures of life and work, many spend excessive time tuning out non-work activities, scrolling on social media, engaging in group gossip, reading blogs, watching TV. The activities that make us feel better in the moment yet prevent us from taking the action on our tasks. So how can we perform at peak performance levels? When our self sabotage can often hold us back. According to an article by Balkis & Duru, procrastination occurs because of a number of things, including poor time management. I like to call that self-management by the way, lack of motivational skills, organizational skills, inability to concentrate, unrealistic expectations and personal problems, a fixation on negative thinking or negative beliefs about one's capabilities, perfectionism and anxiety, and fear related. Also contribute to procrastination. So here are five tips for peak performance and to bust through procrastination. Number one, question yourself like you've never questioned anybody else. The voice in your head is the one voice you wake up to in the morning, but it can be questioned. So, have you asked that voice in your head questions like? Are you setting and realistic expectations for yourself? Am I putting pressure on myself? What types of things are you hearing? What's the why behind what I need to do today? What are the consequences and what are the rewards of getting this done? Take time to just keep asking those questions. Two, you might be familiar with the Eisenhower Matrix often called urgent and important matrix. In a time where everything is urgent and important. The reality isn't really that true. So many of our tasks and deadlines can be adjusted or renegotiated and a powerful strategy that can help us do that is the Eisenhower Matrix. There are four quadrants that help label tasks, urgent and important, urgent and less important, less important and urgent and less urgent and less important. So, identify which of the task go into which quadrant which will help focus your energy time and attention. Number three is called the one-minute method. Start something for one minute. All it takes to get into action and get moving is one minute, sixty seconds. Jump in regardless of how you're feeling. Start that task before you're ready. Many people think too much, take too little action. Set your timer for sixty seconds and take action. And before I call the bracelet technique. And I learned this technique while studying neuro-linguistic programming. Start out by getting an elastic or rubber band and wear on your wrist like a bracelet. And every time you find yourself putting something off or thinking negative thoughts, snap that elastic rubber band on your wrist. This act associates, physical pain with negative thoughts and procrastination. It can be an effective way to overcome procrastination and the negative thoughts that sometimes come along with it. And number five, the timeline. Can setting deadlines and timelines really help when overcoming procrastination. Well, according to a study mentioned in the psychological science journal, it's been reported that setting deadlines does in fact, improve the ability to complete your task. Self-Imposed external deadlines, really quite effective. Play a game with yourself, run an experiment and set a small internal deadline to see if you can complete it in a specific amount of time, a little competition between you and your internal voice in your head and your words and actions can be fun. And it also turns out the procrastination is actually a mindset. So, if we think we can do it in the time we have, and we can do it now, and it won't cause us discomfort, we're more likely to do it. And if we think we can't, guess what? You're probably right. So, the leadership lesson here is when you're engaging with your team and the people that work with you. Think about and observe, are they holding back something? Are they're procrastinating? And if so, how can you help them engage the voice in their head? How through the power of questions, can you help them unlock their thinking? So, they can really hit peak performance. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. If you have any news, stories, insights, you know where to find us through our social media, we look forward to hearing from you. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Our special guest on today's show is Brandon Smith. He's the founder and president of The Worksmiths. He's an executive coach, speaker and author of the book, The Hot Sauce Principle, Brandon, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Brandon Smith: Steve, I am thrilled to be on the show today. Steve Rush: Me too. It's been a real challenge for us to get our calendars to connect since the last time we spoke. But the world's a very different place too, to be fair, right? Brandon Smith: That's absolutely right. That's absolutely right. You know, it's funny. I used to think to myself. Oh yeah, I'm pretty good about predicting what's going to happen. Steve Rush: Yeah. Brandon Smith: The last eighteen months has been very humbling for me indeed. So, I've thrown my crystal ball and it's just, you know, take it as it come. Steve Rush: Exactly right. Now I remember from the first time we've met; you have a really kind of tragic slash challenging kind of upbringing that really kind of led you on the path to what you're doing now. For the listeners that haven't had the chance to meet with you perhaps, can you just give them a little bit of that backstory? Brandon Smith: Sure, sure. So, I was the youngest of three boys. Both my older brothers were adopted. My parents were told they couldn't have children and surprise I showed up. And so, both my older brothers were twelve and eleven years older than me. So, I would always tell folks, you know, if you've ever had older brothers like that, you know what the inside of a dryer it looks like, you know, it's like someone say, don't ask questions, just drink it. That's what older brothers do to little brothers. And my life was, you know, when I look back on it, I would say generally, I feel grateful, but there was some times in my life where it's was very dysfunctional as hell. My older oldest brother, Chris, he was in and out of either jail or rehab centers, my entire life growing up. And when he was home, it was a lot of yelling and screaming in my house. And so, when I was ten, he ran away from a rehab center and he was living with us and he just decided life was too hard. And he took his life one night and it was very, very tragic and very, very challenging for all of us. In fact, it was so challenging for me that within about six months of that happening, I came down with an uncontrollable stutter. So, I couldn't speak in public at all. And so, every day before school, I would go in and see my speech therapist early in the morning. I'd work on my Bs, my Ps, and my Ts, the letters that would always trip me up, and then I'd go on to the school day. So, between growing up with that dysfunction of my house, and then the way kids with stutters are treated at school. I made a kind of a conscious or unconscious decision that I just wanted to distance myself from people. They were just way too dysfunctional. And so that's kind of how I went through high school all the way to college and university. I just kind of kept myself kind of arms distance. Well, ironically enough, I ended up majoring in communications at university. And like most communication majors. I couldn't find a job after graduation. And I took a job in a small chain of retail stores. It was a family-owned business. The woman who started the business had fifteen stores. And I was going to be the assistant manager at one of these stores. And my boss was the son-in-law of the owner. So, her daughter marries this guy, he's, my boss. So, on my first day of real work, so I'd worked other jobs before, but this was my first day post university full-time job. I show up at the store, he greets me at the door and he says, I'm so glad you're here, before you get started, I have task for you. Waiting for you in the back room is the current assistant manager of the store, but he does not know you're coming. So, your job is to go back there and fire him and you get his job. Steve Rush: Wow. Brandon Smith: That was my first task on my first day of work. And that was how my manager rolled. He loved to do everything that we know as kind of really followers and lovers of leadership. He would do everything that's opposite of what we believe to be true and good about leadership. He loves to do surprise visits, to try and catch people doing the wrong thing. I had to do more layoffs of people in that first six months of that job than any other time in my career. That kind of experience really woke me up, made me really realized three things about my life. First, work should not have to suck. It should be a place for fulfillment and purpose and meaning for all of us. It shouldn't be a place of anxiety and depression and worry. I mean, it is work, it's not perfect, but it should have all those positive things. Not those negative things. We can't always choose the families we get, but we could choose our workplaces. We have a lot more control over that. Second, if my boss was any indication of the state of leadership in the world, I really want to change that. I want to improve how we lead other people and the impact we can have on workplaces. And third, that was where my purpose was born. I decided at that moment, I want to eliminate all workplace dysfunction everywhere, forever. Having no idea what I signed up for Steve. Steve Rush: Yeah. Brandon Smith: So, I went on and pursued a clinical therapy degree and practice in the clinical world for many years. And then also then got my MBA to kind of balance those two things. So, my version of kind of chocolate and peanut butter combined, somehow it works. And that was where my handle of kind of the workplace therapist was born. So that's a little bit of my journey that kind of got me on the path that I've been on. Steve Rush: And having met with you and looked at some of the work and spend some time looking at your book. There is a real purpose behind this. This is not something that somebody is doing for a job. You are doing this because intrinsically it's something that you want to eradicate, right? Brandon Smith: Absolutely. Absolutely. We have enough challenges in life, you know, if we can make work, not one of them, that would be a really great thing. Steve Rush: Yeah, so what do you think the reason is that there is so much then dysfunction in the workplace today? Brandon Smith: There's always been dysfunction in the workplace for one primary reason. We bring our own stories to work. We bring our own histories; we bring our own family dramas and family place to work. And so, you know, we put that on other people. So that's always been true about us as human beings. So that's always going to be a challenge, but you used an interesting word in that. You said, why is so challenging today? So, today's a little different time in the workplace. So, what I've experienced and you've experienced is, it doesn't matter where in the world we meet somebody. There are two things that are true about our workplace today. Time is our most precious resource. It's not money, it's time and everything feels urgent all the time. And that creates a whole other set of distinctions to fall along with that, because we're rushing and everything feels urgent, we don't spend time giving positive feedback to our team members. We don't get to know them or look to align with other leaders in the organization. It causes a lot more challenges particularly with communication. So, there are some interesting challenges, we can even go further down the rabbit hole of working remotely on some of the challenges there, but there's a real interesting opportunity let's say, for our workplaces today. Steve Rush: And the world has changed as we've moved to more of a hybrid world working from either our desks or our homes, or a combination of both. Have you seen the change to how people are responding in that environment? Brandon Smith: Yes, absolutely. So, in the first six weeks, two months of this event, everyone around the world probably said something to this effect. Well, you know, this isn't so bad. I just picked up two or three hours in my day. I'm not commuting, so I can kind of wake up in the morning, have some coffee, maybe have a little bit of breakfast and then hop on my first meeting at nine am. At some point around that six-week mark, eight-week mark. Everyone realized, everyone wasn't commuting and they start scheduling meetings at eight thirty in the morning, eight in the morning, seven thirty in the morning, six o'clock at night, six thirty at night. Steve Rush: Right. Brandon Smith: So now when I talk to my clients, one of the challenges they say, they say, I don't know how I'm going to go back to the office because I have staying meetings at seven thirty in the morning. That's when I'd be commuting. And I have meetings during lunch. So, we we've packed our days, even more full with all these meetings, and so that's the first one. Second, I hear constant kind of complaints from folks about being on camera all day long and the strain that's putting on them. I think that's the second one. The third one is people just aren't able to really fully connect. It's hard to build relationships over zoom or teams or whatever platform you use. Those meetings tend to default to more task, operational things. Let's catch up about how your weekend was. We often do those over meals and we haven't been able to do that. So, it's hard to build those relationships. I met a lot of people. I know you have two that have started with a new employer within the last year, and they have not even ever met their coworkers yet. Steve Rush: Right, exactly. Brandon Smith: Let alone go into an office. So, I would say those three at least would apply to everybody that's been working remotely. There's been some real challenges around that. Steve Rush: And the principle of everything being urgent all of the time has been expedited because of that, right? Brandon Smith: That's right. It's very difficult to tell what really matters and what doesn't matter. And because there's constant change. And we could attribute some of this to technology, we're always available, on call all the time. We could also attribute some of this to general global media. There definitely a frenzy regardless of what media you listen. It definitely heightens that sense of anxiety and urgency really is that. Urgency is anxiety, so we're living in a very anxious time right now. Steve Rush: Of course, the only one person that can control it, is ourselves. Brandon Smith: Well said, well said Steve Rush: You wrote the book, The Hot Sauce Principle, how to live and lead in a world where everything is urgent all of the time. So, what is The Hot Sauce Principle? Brandon Smith: So, it's a really simple analogy. From now on, for everyone listening to this. When you think of urgency, I want you to think of hot sauce. And why that analogy works so well is because, you know, I love hot sauce personally. I really do. I put a little bit hot sauce on something and that's flavor, it adds focus, it adds spice. It really makes it stand out. And so, urgency by itself is not a bad thing. It's really preps prioritize things. But if everything that's coming out of the leadership kitchen is covered in hot sauce. The appetizer, the salad, the entree, the brownie, the iced tea that you're drinking, at least in the U.S. we drink a lot of iced tea here. If all that's covered in hot sauce, your mouth is going to be on fire. You're not going to be able to taste anything and you're going to be overwhelmed. And so that's really why the idea is so sticky because we want to make sure we're very thoughtful and intentional about what we're putting hot sauce on for our teams, but also pushing back if our leaders are putting hot sauce on everything, because it makes everything a priority, which then means nothing's a priority. The other reason why this is also such a great analogy is, you know, we know our teams, some members of our team just need to drop or two hot sauce and they they've got it. They know what they need to do. And often running, we've got other members of our team that need a bottle or two to really get them moving. So, knowing your people and knowing how much urgency they need is another kind of important element around that analogy. Steve Rush: I love it. It's really, I'm quite a visual guy and therefore, and olfactory. So, I can see this and taste this and smell it. And therefore, it's a really great analogy tip to let leaders know that actually you're holding the hot sauce bottle most of the time as well, right? Brandon Smith: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And what you choose to put hot sauce on and how much you choose to use is going to either create an amazing, wonderful dish, or you're absolutely going to ruin the whole lot. So, it's a good image for leaders. Steve Rush: So, here's the thing. It's a really fine line between urgency and panic. How do you differentiate the two and maybe how do you recognize it even? Brandon Smith: So, I'll tell you a story to illustrate that point. So, I was having a conversation with a client of mine some years ago around this idea, this analogy, and he was an entrepreneur. He owned a marketing business and he was probably one of the most anxious guys I've ever met. And so, kind of unusual to be an entrepreneur. I mean, he was almost shaking when I'd meet him. He was just so wound up. And when I spoke to the folks in his organization, they said, you know, we really like it. He's a really nice guy, but he makes everything urgent all the time. And it's really creating burnout around here. To your point, it's like panic. So, I told him this analogy, well, on his own, after our conversation, he went to the grocery store and he bought three bottles of hot sauce. And he put them on his desk, one, two, three, and whenever there was a new project or initiative, when he was assigned that to a member of his team, he would hand them one of the bottles of hot sauce. And he instructs them to keep the bottle of hot sauce on their desk, representing the importance and urgency of that initiative. And until the project was done, they had to keep a hot sauce bottle there. But once it was done, they had to return the hot sauce bottle to him. Here was the beautiful thing that kind of gets to your question. He only had three bottles he could give out. So, because he only had three bottles, that was like a forcing mechanism for him. So, he was able to prioritize, but he couldn't create panic because he didn't have an infinite number of bottles. So, any way you can limit the number of bottles you put out, or the number of hot sauce items you create, that will help to keep it on the urgency side and not tip the panic. Steve Rush: And what do you notice in people's response? Either through their verbal and nonverbal communication that might help you recognize as a leader, if you've gone too far, you've nudged into the panic zone? Brandon Smith: So, the panic zone by itself is not as concerning as the apathy zone. That's where you get past panic. So, we pass panic and now we're into full on burnout. And that's when the people are just apathetic. So, no matter how much hot sauce you put on them, they just respond to the same way. That's when you know, you've gone too far. And so, another way analogy around this is, I've often heard working today in our workplaces, it's almost like you have to think about like interval training, high intensity interval training. So, you're running or pushing or exercising at a high intensity, but then you need to take time to rest and then do it again, time to rest and then do it again, and time to rest. And of course, the challenge with our workplaces today is there there's no time to rest. So, another way that we can manage panic is make sure that, you know, if you are pushing your team really hard on something that's urgent, give them a little bit of a pause before you immediately throw another urgent item on them. Steve Rush: Yeah, I want to go back to the apathy bit. Because something you said that really struck a chord with me, most people, when they hear apathy would maybe have a thought process or a connotation of somebody who is lazy, disengaged and not the opposite, which you described as going past panic. And I wondered what you'd noticed and how that might've played out for you when you've coached your clients? Brandon Smith: So, when we think about love, the opposite of love is not hated. The opposite of love is apathy. We were no longer invested. So that's why when you get to that place, it's a really dangerous place to be because you've lost your people. They're no longer invested. They're no longer committed; they've got nothing left. They feel like, it doesn't matter how hard they try. It's never enough. They've almost given up at least emotionally and maybe even mentally. So that's a real, real, a dangerous spot to be because when I see clients get to that place, really the best antidote for them is to take a vacation or holiday. They need to take some time away to reset and recharge it. Often it takes at least two weeks. And the more time they can take off the better. Because it takes at least week to get that apathy out of your system and start to really reconnect to what's important to you in life and what really matters to you, but you need that space. So, my hope would be that leaders don't push their folks that far because it takes time to recover from that. Steve Rush: And most of it, of course, from a leadership perspective, in my observation, in any case, is this, isn't an intentional thing that leaders do. It's often very unintentional as a byproduct of bad behavior or too much urgency, right? Brandon Smith: That's exactly right. And I'd say that the biggest culprits in this would be your publicly traded companies, because what they do is, because of the way the markets move, the markets put pressure on them to change quickly and transform. So, then those C-level executives make everything urgent all the time and pat themselves on the back and say, I'm a great leader. I just pushed lots of urgency into the system. And all they've done is just given the organization an overdose of anxiety. And so, then that goes down to the next level of leaders who push it down to the next level of leaders who push you down to the next level of leaders. And it just kind of funnels all the way through. And so, it's a real dangerous place for us to be. And so, if more leaders can be conscious of how much they're doing of this, it can be good for not only performance because it creates more focus, but the overall health and wellbeing of everyone in that organization. Steve Rush: And I suspect that also then contributes to more dysfunction in the workplace? Brandon Smith: Absolutely. Absolutely. Funny when you said dysfunction, the first word that came to mind for me was kind of a close synonym to that, which was chaos. A lot of chaos, a lot of chaos, because again, if everything's urgent, nothing's urgent, it's just chaos. There's no focus. And then it becomes really hard to know what to work on, to align, and do all the other things that we need to do. Steve Rush: Yeah, indeed. And in your book, I love the fact that you call this out, you have an emotional booster shot. Love you to share with our listeners what an emotional booster shot is and how might they want to go ahead and get one? Brandon Smith: So, let's think about how you can do it for yourself. So, when we talk about an emotional booster shot. Think of it as resilience, we really want to try and help ourselves have more resilience, be kind of stronger, almost more flexible, like almost like stretching. We're going to stretch if we use the analogy again of, you know, a workout, okay. So, there's a couple of ways we can do that. First, we can reframe the situation. So, when people are pushing down more urgency on you, you can reframe the situation as this is not a crisis, we're going to get through this. And you do that with your teams, communicate that, we can overcome this. Second one is, think of it as a learning opportunity. I'm going to learn and grow through this. It may be really hard and challenging, but I'm going to get stronger. And it's going to help me, help me grow. And the third way we could look at this is kind of how can we maintain kind of hope that things are going to turn out better on the other end of this, that everything's going to kind of work out for a reason. There was a famous theologian at Emory University name James Fowler, and he used to have this beautiful saying, he would say. As leaders, we want to give people hope and handles. And I just think that's so beautiful, hope and handles. Steve Rush: Love it, yeah. Brandon Smith: What's the future going to look like? And what can we do right now to move kind of further down that path. So those are all ways that you can reframe it for yourself. But also think about how you can use those same techniques, with your team. Steve Rush: Yeah, I love it. I love the principle of the hope and handles and hope is a word that we sometimes quite uncomfortable in business using because it has this notion of being not grounded in purpose and not grounded in something, because it's hopeful, but actually that's where most vision and purpose drives from, right? Brandon Smith: I agree with you, hundred percent. Hope feels like it's out of our control, but if anything, over the last eighteen months as taught us, there's a lot of things out of our control. And so, it's okay to be helpful. We're hopeful that we can meet our teams again, by the first of the year, we're hopeful that, you know, life will start to resume some sense of normal by 2022. Hope is a good thing. Steve Rush: So how do you see the future of work playing out as the workplace therapist and in the work that you do with organizations with Worksmiths, what do you think the future of work will look like for us? And how might we want to adapt for that? Brandon Smith: Here is what I hope it's going to look like. I hope that we we've learned a lot from how we've learned to work together over the last eighteen months, and we carry that with us into the new future. So, I think hybrid workplaces are very healthy things. That said, I still think we need that time with each other. So, I'm really worried about the organizations that say, oh, we're going to go virtual from now on. I've worked with fully virtual organizations before that were virtual, even before the pandemic. And they have a whole set of dysfunctions that are very difficult to cure. Then there's largely two of them. One they really struggle with alignment because they don't ever get in the same room with each other, they're virtual. And two, they struggle with giving each positive intent, assuming positive intent. So, they give each other feedback, some of the feedback in those organizations is absolutely brutal because they just don't know each other. So, I still think we need those times and moments to meet each other in person for collaboration, innovation, and frankly, just connecting over a meal. That's always been important to us as human beings. So, I wouldn't want to lose that, but if we can bring in technology, I think it can allow people to have better work-life balance, a better wellbeing and a lot more care and compassion each other. Steve Rush: Yeah, I agree. It comes back down to compassion a massive driver here, isn't it? More we understand about people, the more we can empathize, the more we can adapt ourselves. Brandon Smith: Absolutely, and just hearing you say that Steve reminds me, you know, now we've been given the gift of being invited into a lot of our coworker's homes, at least virtually. We may see their children; we may see their pets on camera. We may be talking to them in their kitchen and they're dressed more casually. And so, we've learned more about their lives, and I think that's a really good thing. Steve Rush: Do you think we'll have a return to the future moment at some point in the future where we become more connected and go back to being more office and location focused? Brandon Smith: I do think so, but I think that is going to be not nine to five, Monday through Friday. I don't see that for most workers that are able to work virtually. Now, there's always going to be jobs out there where you don't have the opportunity to work virtually, you're a frontline worker, so you've got to be onsite, but for those jobs that allow for virtual work and collaboration, I think a hybrid is likely, I don't think there's going to be a lot of organizations that are going to require everyone to be back in the office nine to five, if there's options. Steve Rush: Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? That for so many decades, we got into a routine of doing things and within eighteen months, the whole work environment has completely changed. Brandon Smith: Absolutely. Absolutely. And most organizations that were really nervous about that change. Their fear was, I won't be able to see my people working. Therefore, they won't be working there. It's going to lower productivity. And all the research that has come out has actually shown increase in productivity with people working from home. So, the good news is that fear wasn't valid. But again, how we carry that forward is going to be the real challenge. Steve Rush: Yeah, it's going to be the game changer, isn't it? So that we don't move beyond urgency into panic and we maintain that trust and work-life balance as you called it. Absolutely. So, so what's the focus of the work with Worksmiths and for you now, Brandon? Brandon Smith: Yeah, thanks for asking. So, I've always still had my practice, which is the Worksmith, probably is very similar to you. I'm an executive coach and I work with individual clients as well as teams and also teach and facilitate sessions on helping people become better leaders. And that work really hasn't gone away, even through the pandemic. There's still been a lot of leaders and teams that have needed that extra support and counsel. The one additional change is I co-founded another business this past year called The Leadership Foundry and what we do there is we do leadership development, all virtual, but with cohorts of leaders. So that's been a big change because a lot of organizations still want to develop their leaders, but by necessity, it's going to have to be done virtually. Steve Rush: Right. Brandon Smith: But without it, it's actually a lot easier to coordinate. You can easily schedule a two-hour session. You don't have to find a big meeting room or a hotel ballroom or whatever happens to be location, to get everyone in. And you can give people kind of small doses of leadership tools and training to kind of keep them nourished and supported. So that's been a new evolution that I've really enjoyed, kind of exploring over the last year. Steve Rush: Great stuff and congratulations on the new venture as well. Brandon Smith: Thank you. Thank you. Steve Rush: So, there's a subtle shift to the tone now is we're going to start to hack into your leadership brain. And my job as a leadership hacker is to grab hold of those great ideas, tips, tools, or ideas. So, if you had to wrap your arms around your extensive career and narrow that down to be your top three leadership hacks, what would they be? Brandon Smith: So, the first one, and this is order of priority. First one is, drive clarity. You can prevent fifty percent of dysfunction in your workplace by setting clear expectations, not only of yours, but also of the person that you're working with. What do they expect of you? Whether it's your boss, your customer, you're a direct report. So, clarity from my perspective, it's the first job of any leader is for her or him to drive clarity. Second, I think it's really important that leaders look to continue to find opportunities to connect and spend time with their people. That consistency is really, really important. So, we've got another kind of letter C here. Consistency is really important. So, making sure that you're consistent in your rhythm and your meetings with people, that's really important. And that goes out the window when everything feels urgent all the time. There was a group of researchers and they did work on studying kind of what's the most dysfunctional kind of leader to work for. And I expected them to come back with angry, yelling and screaming boss or the micromanager. None of those were the worst. The number one worst was the one who is highly inconsistent because you don't know what you're going to get. So, the more we can be consistent with our messaging and consistent with our meetings, the better. And the third is just probably a really simple, easy tactical thing that all leaders can do, all individual contributors can do. Be highly, highly responsive. There was a piece of research that found that the thing that separated the best managers from everyone else is they were highly responsive to all of their people on their team and that communicated that they valued their people and respect to their people. So, if we drive clarity, we're very, very consistent and highly responsive, it's going to really create a strong team environment. And it's going to prevent a lot of dysfunctions. Steve Rush: I love It. It's really simple, but very, very effective advice. Thank you for sharing that, Brandon. Brandon Smith: Of course, of course. Steve Rush: Next on the show we call Hack to Attack. So, in essence, this is where something hasn't worked out well, might've even been quite catastrophic, but as a result from that experience, it's now a learning and a positive in your life or work. So, what would be your Hack to Attack? Brandon Smith: So, I would say probably the number one for me, you know, thinking about the way you say that, there so many Steve, gosh. Things I learned from, miss steps that I've made along the journey. I would say there was one. And this was probably more driven out of fear. So early in my career as workplace therapist, I kind of straddle the fence. I taught part-time and multiple universities. And then of course, I also did my coaching and leadership development practice. So, I kind of lived in both worlds. And what I found was the university world was a very political world. And it actually limited a lot of my other opportunities because it was one that consumed a lot of my time. But there was fear of leaving that because not only would I maybe lose some of the credential, I lose some of that stability. And ultimately, I made the decision to it. And it was scary. It ended up working out for the best, but I would say the learning in that was, I probably waited a good five to ten years too long to do that. So, if I could go back in time, I would probably say, wow, Brandon, you should have probably done that a little bit differently. Steve Rush: That's really interesting. You're not the first person on this show. And certainly, the many leaders I've worked in coached over the past ten or fifteen years have also said that it's sometimes the fear that holds us back and the stability and not being comfortable with discomfort that stops us moving forward, right? Brandon Smith: That exactly right. I've always heard this adage that, you know, when you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else. Steve Rush: Yeah. Brandon Smith: And the opposite was true in this situation. If I say no to that, that means I can say yes to a lot of other things, but the scary thing was, I didn't see what those things were. It wasn't like I had a whole bunch of things I could choose from. I had nothing to choose from. So, I was kind of creating this vacuum where this void hoping that it would be filled. So, there's that word hope again, and luckily it did. Steve Rush: And of course, you can't sometimes even see those things until you've said no. And the yes appears, right? Brandon Smith: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Steve Rush: Yeah, really fascinating. Love it. So last thing we get to do today is give you an opportunity to do some time travel and you get to bump into Brandon at twenty-one and give them some advice. What would be your words of wisdom? Brandon Smith: Okay, here's probably, gosh, I have a couple. One, here's what I would tell the younger Brandon. Younger Brandon really watches the relationships that you're in, personal and professional and make sure you don't stay in some of them too long. So that's been a big learning I had. I had a business partner for some years that I worked with, wonderful man, wonderful guy, brilliant man, not a very good business partner. I stayed in that too long. I've had some other folks along the way that I've been, you know, stayed in too long, that ended up limiting. So, I would say, you know, make sure that all the relationships you're in, are always healthy and are getting you what you need and you're giving them what they need. The second one I would say is, write your book sooner, Brandon, you don't need to wait until you're forty-six to write it. You can write it sooner, it's okay. Steve Rush: Yeah, there's this strange notion, isn't there? About putting pen to paper. That you have to have this inordinate legacy of a career behind you to share your lessons. Whereas when I coach some very young leaders now, they already have some fantastic lessons that need to be shared. And that comes back, I think, to your point around fear saying no, opening another yes, and vice versa, right? Brandon Smith: Right, exactly, exactly. And then of course, with something like a book, a bigger project like, that no one else is putting on your plate, you're putting on your own plate. You've got to be really intentional with your time and block that off and, you know, manage that. Which was a hard thing for me. I struggled with that for many years until I finally hired a book coach to hold me accountable. Steve Rush: Yeah, right. Brandon Smith: Yeah. Steve Rush: So, is there a book two? Brandon Smith: There is a book two, I'm working on a second one right now. It'll be out at the end of the year. I'm really, really excited about it. I won't spoil it yet, but I think it's going to be so incredibly helpful for leaders. Very practical, easy to use, help them learn how to sit in the right seats with their leader and with their team. So ultimately, it'll get them using their time in the way they should be. Steve Rush: Awesome. We'll make sure we get you back on the show so you can tell us a little bit more about it another time. Brandon Smith: That sounds fantastic. Steve Rush: So beyond today, we want to make sure our listeners can stay connected with you. Where's the best place for us to send them? Brandon Smith: The best place frankly is, just go to theworkplacetherapist. I'm the only one, so if you just google the workplace therapist, you'll naturally go to me. And so that's a site, it's got free resources, it's got blogs and articles and podcasts for my show that folks can listen too to help their workplaces become smoother and better and less bumpy. And then of course, if they're interested in anything beyond that, then there's links on that site that will take them to either the Worksmiths or The Leadership Foundry. But the workplace therapist is the best place to start. And if you haven't bought a copy of the book, The Hot Sauce Principle, how to live and lead in a world where everything is urgent all the time. You can find that on Amazon and lots of other places as well. So that's another option. Steve Rush: Awesome, we make sure they're in our show notes as well. Brandon Smith: Okay, thank you. Steve Rush: And I'd just like to say, thanks, Brandon. I think we've had just enough hot sauce today to get everything to spice up. So, you've done a brilliant job in the time that we've had together. I've always enjoyed talking with you and just thanks for being part of our community at The Leadership Podcast. Brandon Smith: Steve, this has been absolutely fantastic. Please keep up the great work. I know you're doing so much good in the world. Steve Rush: Thank you very much, Brandon. Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.    

Jeremy Snape is an ex-England International Cricketer, since retiring from playing internationally,  he studied a master's degree in sports psychology and has been a coach and advisor to business leaders, premier league football clubs, other international cricket teams as well as the England Rugby Team. Now he is the CEO and Founder of Sporting Edge. In this amazing show you can learn about: What does make a champion? The valuable role mindset plays in performance. The common parallels in sporting champions that also are present in Business Leaders? How neuroscience helps us and holds us back. Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Jeremy below: Jeremy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremysnape/ Sporting Edge Website: https://www.sportingedge.com Jeremy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesportingedge Jeremy on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeremy.snape/   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker. Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Jeremy Snape is our special guess on today show. He is a ex international cricketer. Since retiring from playing cricket, he's studied is Master's Degree in sports psychology, and now coaches and advisors, business leaders and sports teams around the world. He's the founder and CEO of Sporting Edge, and now hosts podcast Inside the Mind of Champions. But before we get a chance to speak with Jeremy, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: There's a mindset theme in today's show. We're going to explore to be a great leader you need the right mindset. So, the question, do organizations get the best bang for their buck from their leaders because mindset can sometimes hold them back. Well, research suggests that it's likely because most organizations overlook the specific attribute that's foundational to how leaders think and behave, which of course is our mindset. In some research conducted by a friend of the show Ryan Gottfredson, and if you missed our show is episode twenty-three, Success Mindsets. Well, he identified four distinct sets of mindsets that have been found to affect leader's ability to engage with others. To navigate change and to perform in their roles more effectively. So, we're going to summarize those four different characteristics of mindsets to help you think and consider how you might rethink and reframe your own. Growth and fixed mindsets. Well decades of research have found, those with the growth mindset are more mentally prime to approach and take on challenges, take advantage of feedback and adopt the most effective problem-solving strategies and provide developmental feedback to those around them. Learning and performance mindsets. Compared to those with a performance mindset. Leaders with a learning mindset are more mentally primed to increase their competence, engaging deep level learning strategies and seek out feedback to exert more effort. Deliberate and incremental mindsets. Leaders with a deliberate mindset of heightened perceptiveness, to change. Do you recognize it? And can you help them rethink and reframe how their mindsets either helping them or holding them back? Please keep sending in your stories, insights or nudges of ideas that you'd like us to talk about on the show. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Our special guest on today's show is Jeremy Snape. He's an ex-England international cricketer, and since retiring from playing international cricket, he studied a Master's Degree in Sports Psychology, has been a coach and advisor to business leaders, premier league football clubs, or international cricket teams, as well as the England Rugby Team. Now he's the CEO and founder of Sporting Edge and hosts a superb podcast Inside the Mind of Champions. Now you'll want to stick around to the end of the show to find out how you can get a special discounted membership to the Sporting Edge members club, Jeremy, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Jeremy Snape: Hi Steve. Steve Rush: So, you have an amazing sporting career, that for those outside of the UK might not have had an opportunity to see, unless of course, you're in the Indian Premier League or South African Cricket, but for those that don't really understand your backstory, perhaps you can give us a little bit of a potted history around, you know, how you got into cricket and how you ended up pivoting into what you do today. Jeremy Snape: Sure. Well, that's very kind, to say it's an amazing career. I think I was the journeymen pro pretty much, but yeah, I suppose growing up sport was always something that we did on holiday and in the back garden, I've got an older brother, so grew up pretty competitive trying to keep up with him. He was taller and stronger all the way, and that probably forced me to be more competitive, but got into a cricket, sort of early teams and actually got into the system. And I think once you get into the under eleven, under twelves, under thirteens for your province or your county in the UK, then you get into that conveyor belt, if you like. And, that led me through to captain England under fifteens team, which was a huge surprise to my parents. Because we were planning to go on holiday and completely the other direction to where the tournament was heading the next day. So, we have to cancel our holiday. And I took on the role as England captain, which is a great thrill. At sixteen, I started as a professional cricketer and went through the ranks with North Hants with some stellar names that were incredibly talented individually, but never really won anything as a group. I moved then to Gloucestershire with the journeymen team, but actually we won and dominated English cricket in the one-day format for about three or four years. That was incredible, and that springboard it'd be really in the England team because coming from that successful county set up, it gave me a chance to play eleven times for England. Test myself against the very best in the world. Sometimes it worked, many times it didn't, but I learned a huge amount about, you know, performing under pressure. And then I went on to Leicestershire, finally I was doing my Master's Degree in Sports Psychology at Loughborough, which is nearby. Captain Leicester, we won a few trophies there in this new innovative tournament, the 20/20 version, which was much shorter and forced us to rethink our strategy. So, I guess, yeah, innovation, mindset, strategic leadership were all the sort of threads that have woven together into my second career after the Master's Degree, which was working with elite sports teams and business leaders. So, I now spend my time interviewing elite performers or coaching elite performance on mindset and team culture and leadership, or actually you know, working with corporate leaders around the world as well, because for me, you know, getting the best out of ourselves and getting the best out of our talent, you know, is exactly the same in sport and business. Steve Rush: So, for those listeners who are in North America, who perhaps don't really understand the game of cricket or don't get an opportunity to see and experience it, like we do, it's really quite a strategic game. And there's lots of parallels. isn't there? between the teaming in a cricket team, as you would expect to see in a boardroom or a business team, perhaps just give us your perspective on that? Jeremy Snape: Well, we'd need hours I think to explain the rules of cricket our North American colleagues. I'm not even going to go there with that one, but imagine it's like baseball but more fun. So, I think, you know, just like baseball, it's incredibly statistical, you know, the transparency around individual's performance is really that, you know, and also the collective, you know, teamwork, it's a great game, you know, full of psychological pressure, full of strategy. You know, lots of cat and mouse that goes on within the game. And, you know, certainly, you know, it was a thrill to me to be able to play for nineteen years and again, you know, play against, with some of the best players in the world and, you know, moving into my second career in psychology and leadership development, you know, getting a chance to, you know, study the mechanics and the theory. But actually, I did that on the back of seeing these brilliant leaders and captains and coaches delivering it in person. So yeah, a real privilege for me to play at that level for so long Steve Rush: Now, having worked with champions and indeed coaching champions, your podcast by the way is just amazing. It's one of the very few that I get an opportunity to listen to and absorb myself into. So, Inside the Mind of Champions Podcast, let's talk about the notion, first of all, of what really is a champion, how would you define that? Jeremy Snape: Well, it's a great question. And I think a lot of these definitions are being reflected on at the moment. I don't know whether it's the sort of the great pause that we've just been through with the pandemic and everyone's reflecting on what success really looks like in our lives or whether it's the Olympics that we're seeing recently. I think obviously a champion by definition is somebody who overcomes the odds and beats their rivals to get to the pinnacle. So, you imagine a, you know, somebody with ripped muscles, standing on a mountain top, you know, holding a loft, some kind of trophy or metal, but I think that's a metaphor really for me, you know, I think everyone has the opportunity to be a champion every day. I think the way I sometimes look at this is, we get two versions of ourselves, one wakes up a little bit sluggish, pulls the duvet over, you know, switches the alarm on to snooze, the duvet beats them. They have an extra 40 minutes in bed. You know, they have a sort of not particularly healthy breakfast or they skip breakfast, they don't have a very productive morning. They get a bit grumpy; they don't have any water, they fall out with a few colleagues, don't do that to do list, get annoyed, get frustrated, no exercise, you know, eat unhealthily, have too many drinks and then their sleeps compromised the next day. And that's contrasted with the sort of champion version of ourselves, which is, you know, getting up early and doing something that feels good to us, whether that's meditation or mindfulness or yoga or running, or a dog walk or whatever that might be just to get our heads straight for the day, really zero in on those priorities of what's going to be a gold medal day for us. And that can be two or three key things. And again, this isn't, you know, for somebody who's been struggling with depression or with anxiety or whatever, you know, even just getting out of the front door and going to the shop could be part of that gold medal plan for the day. So, I think for me being a champion is doing the difficult things, you know, on hard days when you're not naturally motivated to do it. And of course, what we see with the Olympians or with the elite performers in sports and in business is they aggregate those days, almost like they're linking, you know, links in a chain together. And that chain of good days connecting together actually has transformational impact. Whether it's about our mindset, our savings, our business strategy, or our, you know, health and wellbeing. If we have two hundred good days in a row or twenty good days in a row, then we're in much better shape than if the chain had been broken, you know, every second day. So, I think that the champions idea is a metaphor. And I think what I'm trying to do with the podcast is translate the lessons from the elite performers that I've worked with and met, and actually translate them into everyday strategies that we can all use in our teams and business, so, yeah, Steve Rush: And I love the reframe you have on it. From the last time we met, I remember you reframe it, almost personal mastery, whereas it doesn't matter where you start from, having a champion outcome day by day is what's most important. And that does definitely start with that mindset, doesn't it? Jeremy Snape: Yeah, and I think we're so, you know, we have to make everything competitive and we celebrate these icons, what they look like and how much money they've got and what house they live in. And, you know, this world of comparison and individual icons is the world we live in. That's the story our media gives us. But, you know, I think as you say, we've all got our own personal quest that we've got to define. And I almost think we've got to turn the volume down on the outside on what everyone else is doing, you know, normally that's a eighty percent and the volumes twenty percent on ourselves, it feels selfish to be thinking about our own goals and what we want to do, but actually it takes real discipline to turn down the noise and you know, just focus on what's going to make us happy and successful. And actually, it's irrelevant what anyone else is doing because they've got different resources, you know, different networks, different timing, you know, and that can just be demoralized. And of course, use it occasionally to give you a, you know, a kick up the bum and a bit of motivation if you want to chase somebody down, of course, but we shouldn't be living our life in other people's shadows. I think part of being a champion is, you know, carving your own path and you know, chasing it down every day, inch by inch, day by day. And actually, it's the striving where the great thrill and fulfillment comes from, not the achieving, you know, many people who've won the lotto or the lottery, you know, they're not any happier than they were, but people who sort of building a business and you know, building a network and building content and those kinds of things, or learning new skills, that's where we tend to see people in their element. So, we shouldn't be too quick to get to the destination and we should enjoy that process of chasing mastery and excellence in our everyday life. Steve Rush: Yeah, I agree. And one of the things that's really interesting is, there's lots of science behind this as well, isn't there? it's not just, you know, observed behavior. There are some scientific evidences to suggest that if we don't put ourselves first, then the people around us don't become better and healthier and fitter physically and mentally as well. What's your spin on that kind of whole self-discipline before others? Jeremy Snape: Well, you know, we hear on the airplanes when we used to travel, make sure when the oxygen masks drop down, put your own on first, before you sort of look after your kids or the people around you. And I think, you know, that's more than a survival mechanism. That's a thriving mechanism really, because, you know, I've been a brilliant selfless team player, and I've also been a destructive, selfish force in a team. And I think when I'm investing in myself, when I'm healthy, when I'm doing lots of exercise, when I've got my goals clear, then I'm a pretty good person, because I feel like I'm balanced. If I'm not being disciplined with myself, then I can take that out on other people. It's just my frustration. It's not that they've done anything wrong. So, I think the first step always has to be for us to take accountability. I like to think of it, like I'm the CEO of my own performance company, and I've got a share price that goes up and down through the day and through the week and the better choices that I make around my exercise, my prioritization, my communication, you know, my health eating or whatever it might be. Those things affect my share price. Now it's not always going from bottom left to top right. Of course, I'm human like anyone else. But I think when we take control and accountability for the choices that we make, a we start to build some momentum around them, then that can have transformational effects on our energy and our focus and that then cascades into other people, our relationships, our teams and our leadership. And I think that's why starting with yourself and your own mindset is actually not a selfish thing to do. It's a great thing today, if you're trying to develop a high-performance environment for everyone else. Steve Rush: So how much of that high-performance mindset is learned versus inherited through our DNA? Jeremy Snape: Well, that's a very good question. I think some of it's probably inherited and, you know, nature without a doubt. But you know, there's that whole field of epigenetics as well, isn't there? Where whatever you've got in your DNA and your genes gets activated by the environment that you find yourself in. And, you know, to me, again, part of this champion mindset and this growth mindset for me is that you take accountability. You don't make excuses, you drive, you know yourself to get into these positions. So, I'd love to think that we can learn these new skills. If we look at, you know, the work of Carol Dweck with the growth mindset, it's been very, very popular around the world. And then if you look at the neuroscience behind the back of that, around neuroplasticity, that people's brains actually changed shape and form, the dendrites and these connections between different pathways in the brain actually strengthened when people learn a new skill and got to have the discipline to start learning a foreign language or learning the piano or whatever. So, our brains are adaptable. And when our brains adapt, obviously that gives us that foundation to be able to build those skills and build those instincts on the top of it. So, I'd like to think that we are twenty percent set, and eighty percent is in our control. That's just the way I look at things. I'm sure it's probably not quite like that, but I think it's incredibly liberating, no matter how many challenges or whatever difficult situation you've been in to see that you can sort of champion your way out. You can find a way to win from any position. And I think that's incredibly liberating. Steve Rush: It isn't? Yeah. And also, if you consider that the notion that everybody has the opportunity to grow and develop, then everybody has the opportunity to become their own champion in their own world, right? Jeremy Snape: Yeah, and I think that's really important and I think there's so much satisfaction and pride that comes from growth. I think, you know, we're actually built for safety. We're built to park in the same place that we've always parked. We drive the same way to work. We try and eat the same foods each week. So, so we're built for habits and to dumb down everything into its simplest form for the brain, so that we free up as much of our energy for that threat that might come around the hill, you know, in the form of a saber tooth tiger or a, you know, nasty email from the boss or whatever it might be. So, we tend to prioritize short term survival and safety and routine. Whereas our most fulfilling moments usually come from stretching ourselves, achieving something we never thought was possible and doing it with people that are different to us. You know, so it's a really strange situation that our proudest moments are achieved in diverse teams, doing things we never thought we could achieve, and we've been stretched. Yet our personal instinct is to stay safe, stay on our own and do what we always used to do. So that's where the role of leadership and coaching comes in, to help people to sort of make that step change into that new future and help them to stretch and have the confidence to make that change. And I think it's, you know, I've seen lots of people that are, you know, you would think have everything, but are actually quite unhappy. And it's because they've stalled in their progress. They've achieved everything they thought they could. And actually, if you can keep continuing and keep growing and keep pushing yourselves, then I think it's, you know, that's where the pride and the satisfaction comes from. Steve Rush: Perfect example actually of a fixed mindset, isn't it? So, people have this perception that people with fixed mindsets, don't excel, don't get on in their lives and work, but actually they do, but hit a plateau at some point where they've self-actualized what they think they can achieve. And that's when you notice a fixed mindset play out for those kinds of people, right? Jeremy Snape: Yeah, and it's a little bit like, I suppose, you know, I work with smaller businesses and massive corporations and lots of the big corporations that I'm working with at the moment are really struggling to transform their business model because of, you know, digitization or, you know, the COVID epidemic or whatever it might be that the consumer has completely changed their behavior of the last few years, but small businesses have lots of flexibility. And as the business matures and scales, we need more systems and processes, which actually become more like the scaffolding. And then they become more like the concrete. So, before you know it, you've built, you know, a ten-story building that can't shift anywhere. Whereas, you know, previously that the sort of young, small supple businesses, more like a, I don't know, bamboo tree, you know, that can flex a little bit in the environment. So, I think we're the same when we're young and, you know, entering a new sport or scale or whatever it might be. We're open-minded, and we'll explore different avenues and possibilities. But then as we prove ourselves, actually we become more about preserving that pride and that achievement, rather than almost breaking down the building and starting again, which I think feels like a massive risk when you're a high achiever. And that's why some people that have achieved incredible success in business and sport actually find it the hardest to adapt and to make that transition away from their first career or for something that they've been renowned for, because it's so entrenched and sort of interwoven into their identity that they sort of can't see themselves being anything else or doing anything else. And that can be a stressful place to be. Steve Rush: I guess some of that is also about unlearning what you've learned to be able to relearn thinking new ways. Jeremy Snape: It's just about courage I think, you know, curiosity, you know, what else is out there? What else would I like to do? What else could I be? You know, where else could I take this? That's a really exciting set of questions and mindset to have, and then just having the courage to sort of fail forwards into that and say, well, I'm not going to be a concert pianist, you know, after ten days. So let me just make a few bum notes and, you know, it'll sound a bit squeaky to start with, but, you know, I'm enjoying learning, you know, again, we're trying to compare ourselves to other people who can play the piano brilliantly and have everyone round for a dinner party and play Tchaikovsky or whatever. Steve Rush: Yeah. Jeremy Snape: But actually, you know, enjoy the learning and enjoy the process, enjoy the development because, you know, I've met lots of people that have achieved their dream and they're now happier than when they were striving. Steve Rush: Yeah, it was the old attitude that the journey is more alluring than the destination sometimes. Jeremy Snape: Absolutely. Steve Rush: Yeah, so what would you say would be the common parallels that you've observed in your sporting career as well as now, coaching business leaders that present themselves in both situations? So, sporting champions and business champions, what would be those kinds of common things that are present in both? Jeremy Snape: Well, I think, they have to have a goal. I think there's an ambition statements and the champions in sport can do something very special. They can almost visualize what that's going to feel and look like. It's almost like they can see themselves lifting the World Cup or lifting, you know, having the medal around their neck and seeing their family and friends talk about them. They can almost read the articles of how the characters shone through. So, they've got that ability to, you know, jump forward in the timeline and really immerse themselves in what that change will bring to them. It'll be a change in the way people perceive them and the way they perceive themselves when they've achieved that goal. I don't think business does that so well, I think business just sets a financial target. So, I think there's the ambition. Then I think there's the focus to say, well, we are going to do this, but we're not going to do that. And I think the second one of those of what you're not going to do is important because we can say yes to everything and that just slows us down. I think there's that courage element and confidence to be able to take risks and be bold in those situations. And then I think there's the resilience to handle the setbacks and just keep going, you know, so few days have your name in sort of head lights and spotlights. It's all about what you do in the shadows. I think that's what I've seen, you know, that daily grind and that process, and just stick into those almost like the gold medal behaviors that you're doing in the gym for four years are the thing that present the gold medal opportunity for you, you know, in the Olympics. And I think that the leaders in business that are disciplined enough to stay on that track and keep doing the reps, that's, you know, transformational over time. And then of course you bring in the coaching and leadership elements of where you need to inspire the people to be the best they can be and be aligned to what you're trying to achieve. I think it's easy to micromanage when your name's on the top of the, you know, the business, or, you know, you're solely responsible for the sales figure at the end of the year. It's easy to micromanage everything, to take control, but actually if you can coach people and unlock there potential and get them to strive and improve and get on that sort of growth journey, then you can achieve exponential success. Because now you've got, ten, twenty, thirty people that are all flying and, you know, moving the business forward. Whereas it's very heavy lifting if you're trying to do all that yourself. So, I think being able to let go a little bit and become more of a coach rather than a dictator is a critical thing that translates and unlocking that diversity in the teams, you know, new starters, people from different businesses, people from different backgrounds, you know, unlock all of those ideas and those silly questions because there might be absolute gold in it. You know, our consumer base is incredibly diverse. So why shouldn't our teams be diverse in openness to create the best solution, Steve Rush: Some great parallels there, really good stuff. Thank you for that. So, when was it that you first noticed that mindset and you paying attention to your mindset was going to be something that you needed to spend more time on? Was there a moment perhaps in your international playing time or your county cricket time where you thought my mindset is not helping me here, or my mindset is helping me here? Jeremy Snape: Well, it's a good question. And I don't think, you know, the sort of, I retired in two thousand and eight and obviously things have moved on significantly in the last decade or so. So, I think there was one particular moment when my mindset seemed to be, some days I felt bulletproof confidence, in control. I was going to dominate the game and I did, you know, there were rare occasions, but that was the case. I actually felt like I could win the game for my team. I got man of the match on my England debut and, you know, there was some great performances where I was absolutely, you know, in the moment and absolutely loving in my element. And then there was a moment in India. I think it was two thousand and one, two, where I played a previous tour in Zimbabwe and smaller team and smaller crowds. And then India, for those that don't follow cricket is the powerhouse of international cricket. So, there are one and a half billion people, and they either like Bollywood films, or they like cricket, and they probably liked both. And I think half of them were packed into the Eden Gardens Stadium in Kolkata back on this balmy night where England were desperate to win this game of cricket. There were hundred and twenty thousand people in the stadium, which is just massive. I mean, I played at Lord's and other big stadiums around the world, and there were usually about twenty-five, twenty-eight thousand people. And that was all, you know, got the nerves jangling, but you're sort of used to that, but a hundred and twenty thousand people, it was incredible. I made a bit of a mistake. I sort of run out one of my team mates, which wasn't great, Freddie Flintoff. To be fair, He was the only person he could have won this game for England. So, it was down to me. So, I was left in the middle of this massive stadium, like a cauldron of noise. And there was just this, you know, despite there being a hundred and twenty thousand people screaming, the loudest voice was the one that was in my head that was saying, what have you done? You know, you're not good enough to be here. What do you think you're doing? You know, it's all on you now, what are the press going to say tomorrow after that? You know, and basically, I was so focused on, you know, nerves and failure and what the consequences of my actions were going to be. The critique of the media the next day, but I forgot to watch the next ball and I missed it and got out myself. And I was walking back to the pavilion, just thinking that was just like the craziest minute of my life, because I felt like I'd been emotionally hijacked and sort of carried into this false hostage situation where I couldn't move my arms and legs. And couldn't think straight, my heart was racing. My eyes were flickering around the place, and I wasn't even thinking straight. So, I think we all write these plans on a flip chart or in our diary, but unless we can deliver them under pressure, we're never going to be able to progress. And that moment for me was, you know, a bit of an epiphany really, because I realized that if my mindset's not right, then I'm not going to be able to deliver what I want to do. So that's when I started my Master's Degree and actually came to the back end of my career and used some of those strategies in some games. I've learned about focus, I've learned about taking my mind off the outcomes and, you know, the score board and that kind of stuff. And actually, focusing on controlling my mind, controlling my breathing, controlling my posture, because if I can control those things, then I can actually control the way I respond to the way the bowl pitches or throws the balls. I've been using some of these techniques and training as I've done my Master's Degree, and I was in this massive final. So again, I was, you know, in a high-pressure situation, a few balls, we needed four runs to win, you know, one of the best one-day bowlers in the world, Azhar Mahmood running into bowl, you know, my brain could easily have taken me away to that place of, here we go again, you're going to fail. But actually, I started to refocus back on my breathing and my posture and my game plan and where my strongest shots were coming from. And in that moment, when I was thinking about my breath, believe it or not, I played one of the best instinctive shots I've ever played, hit the ball for a four, time it perfectly. And the players run on the pitch and carried me off. And we got sprayed in champagne. And it's one of those moments where you think I just played one of my best shots ever. And I wasn't thinking about cricket, because I think your muscle memory, you know what to do, what you've got, what you've actually got to do is get out of your own way, get out of your own head sometimes and let that instinct and let your flare come through. So, again, that sort of transformation moment for me that I know the power of our mindset, because it's so intangible, we don't know how to invest in it. Everyone says mental health is critical. So, I've made a real concerted effort through Sporting Edge to try and create a framework for mental health. Because when we say mental health, we often talk about mental ill health, which is sort of depression, massive anxiety attacks, and suicide potentially, but mental health should be like our normal health. It should be eating healthily, exercising, you know, socializing, those things affect our normal mental health, but then we've got confidence. Then we've got, you know, our focus, we've got our ability to think clearly under pressure. We've got, you know, all of those different elements, our ability to reframe setbacks, these are life skills that help us to keep a healthy mindset so that we never have to worry about mental ill health. We've built a sort of a six-factor model at Sporting Edge around the winning mindset. And we've got a thirty-day course that's helped thousands of people to develop the skills because I think they're fundamental. And if we can get our mindset right, we can achieve everything, you know, whatever we want to, that's not to say we're all going to be you know, billionaires or NBA stars. But I think if we all set goals and feel like we're making progress towards, that's liberating in itself. Steve Rush: They're great lessons to look back on. And I remember specifically, you shared the whole principle of emotional hijack at that moment in India. Well, actually that's neuroscience playing out. Because technically that's exactly what was happening. You were cognitively impaired because your focus was elsewhere, right? Jeremy Snape: Of course, the amygdala was trying to play the shot for me. Steve Rush: Yeah. yeah. Jeremy Snape: You know, the amygdala takes you higher cognitive function and executive function offline. And, you know, interestingly through our research at Sporting, I have interviewed neuroscientists talking through that process, but no one had ever told me that could happen. They would just say things like, oh, he choked under pressure, or we lost this head under pressure, well, that's not particularly helpful. Because I don't know what that means. And I certainly don't know how to retrain myself. And I get it a little bit now speaking at conferences around the world, you know, there might be a thousand people in an audience and I still get those butterflies and these sweaty palms and my brain starts to spin a bit, but I've now got strategies to understand that, that's just my body preparing for performance. So now I go through a little routine that helps me to stay calm and focus so that my, you know, first line comes out okay. And from then on, it's fine. Whereas I think, you know, we've all got a brain and we should understand how to use it. And I'm amazed this isn't part of our school curriculum to be honest. Steve Rush: I had many conversations with academics and people in education with exactly the same principle, the sooner in life, we can allow people to know that these things naturally happen for us. And there are ways to control them from a very young age, the more advanced, I think people will be in their own mental health. And you rightly called this out around when people perceive this to be mental ill health, I call it mental wealth because actually the more you invest in your thinking, your strategies and understanding about how you react to certain situations, the less likely that you're going to get adverse reactions. Jeremy Snape: Absolutely, and I think one of the transformational huffs of comments is that, you know, that voice that we all are have in our head, that's the voice of our parent, a teacher, an early coach, the media, a critic, it's somebody who got in there early and we've never argued with it. We think that's the truth just because it's the same voice that we carried around for fifty years. You know, it's almost like being in a courtroom where you've got the prosecution and the judge, but no defense. So, it basically says you're not good enough and I can prove it. And there's no defense to say, well, hang on a minute. I've done this before. And I have played well here and I do care about people and I have practiced. And you know, I've got a track record here, you know, because that would be quite an interesting debate, but we tend to just take that negative voice, which bear in mind is trying to keep us safe. It's trying to keep us away from anything that's threatening our ego, like playing in front of a hundred and twenty thousand live on television or standing up at a conference and making a speech, that threatens our ego and our pride and our self-esteem. So, it wants us to stay sitting down. That's why it tries to hijackers, but if you sort of speak gently to it and say, well, yeah, thanks very much for the warning signs, heart rates and sweaty palms and vision getting a bit blurred. But I'm just going to take a couple of deep breaths here and, you know, focus on my first line because I want to do this because I know I'm going to feel better for it. And I've got lots of people that I need to help here. So, thanks for the warning, but I'm carrying on anyway. I think that's an important lesson for us. Steve Rush: Yeah, it is. Yeah, It's great. So, you've had the opportunity to interview some real global superstars and really get inside their champion mindsets from the people that you've interviewed met and work with. Who'd be maybe the kind of top two or three that have been real outstanding and memorable experiences for you? Jeremy Snape: Well, I think there's lots of different people. And if I had to build a perfect composite, that's probably what I'll attempt to do. Some of the coaches, Eddie Jones from England rugby, incredibly restless. He almost this T shape of the leader where he can skim across the, you know, the forwards, the backs, the nutritionists, the strength and conditioning, the people that are organizing their schedule and he can drop down at any point into the weeds, into the detail and forensically examine. It's almost like he's got this whole system mapped out and he's on it. So, here's sort of ruthless around discipline and standards across the whole matrix of a high-performance environment, I find incredible. So, Dave Brailsford from team sky, team cycling, I think his ability to translate, you know, things down into simple solutions and processes when they're incredibly complex was fascinating. And then there are people like, I met two of the guys actually that were in prison with Nelson Mandela for twenty-six years, Ahmed Kathrada and Denis Goldberg. And they feature in one of my podcast episodes, which is really about, it's called Lessons from Isolation. And you know, two of them, they didn't need to go to prison. And this is the thing I find remarkable, but they knew that if they went to prison alongside Nelson Mandela, they had more chance of him staying alive and being protected for as long as he was there. So, they gave up their lives to stay alongside their team mates. You know, they had all sorts of things done to them on Robben Island, in prison for 20 odd years, all their privileges were taken away. And they stayed resilient because they had a deep burning purpose that they wanted to overthrow the Apartheid regime. So again, you know, people with a purpose, people that want to make a difference can do incredible things. Those guys, I think there was eight of them in this particular group. Never break ranks, never snitched on each other, never broke the chain in this team. And they stood together strong for twenty-six years and walked out of prison together. And when they came out, because of their solidarity and their personal resilience, they changed South Africa, and over throw the Apartheid regime and they changed the history of the world and, you know, that was from isolation and I'm sure they all had negative thoughts and incredibly low moments, but they stayed together and did incredible things. So yes, some of the insights and lessons have come from sport, but equally they've come from some of these other, you know, academics or incredible, you know, characters that I've met along the way as well. Steve Rush: It's an amazing story of resilience and mindset playing out in real time for us to all observe as well, great lessons. So, I'm not going to flip a little and tap into your leadership thinking and your leadership mind and ask you to think about all of your experiences and studies and try and distill in if you could, into your top three leadership hacks. So, if you could call out the kind of two or three things that really drive and guide you, what would they be? Jeremy Snape: That's a good question. I think one of the first principles would be, everyone's so focused on the outcome. Everyone wants the gold medal. Everyone wants the billion-dollar turnover, you know, and most of the clients I work with, that's how they set their goals, but we have to use those almost like a north star to look up at them and think, yep, that's where I want to get to. But then we need to say, right, if I want to win, w-i-n, if I want those billion dollars or that gold medal, I need to look down now and say, what's important now? Or what's important next? that's what winning looks like on the day. So being able to translate our long-term goals into short term controllable behaviors and habits that we can build discipline around is transformational. And none of the media are interested in the swimmer getting up at six o'clock, five o'clock every morning and swimming five miles because it's not sexy. They want the outcomes and the times and the gold medals, but actually that's where they won in the shadows of the process. So, process against the outcome and also not comparing yourself to other people's outcomes. I think that can be, you know, debilitating. I think probably the second thing is about lead the ship and that's definitely to create a high-performance group around you, a talented group of individuals and empower them. You know, don't stifle them, don't direct them too much. Give them that intent to say, we need to solve this problem over here. Here's the commercial lens. Here's the ethical lens. Here's the method, you know, that's been tried before and discuss it a bit, but then set them free and let them go and do it for themselves because when people feel like they can own the sort of tactics and the strategy, then that can be incredible. So, I've seen that, you know, make a massive difference, empowerment. And then probably the third thing is about, you know, our hunger to keep learning and that can be following people on social media, listening to podcasts, and it can also be surrounding yourself with a, you know, almost like a virtual board. Maybe there are five or six people in different industries that you can get hold of that you can just catch up with once a quarter for half an hour, just to pick their brains and maybe can meet them once a year or whatever it might be, but have these industry leaders, all these thought leaders, all these culturally leaders, you know, at arm's length. So, you can dive into them and pick their brains because if we're continually stretching ourselves and we've got the confidence that our ideas are on the right track from these mentors, then we can really commit to our skills and, you know, do special thing, Steve Rush: Thanks for sharing those Jeremy, there amazing hacks. Thank you. Next part of the show, we call it Hack to Attack. So quite simply, this is where something hasn't worked out well. It may have been quite a catastrophic event, or it might not have worked out in the way that you wanted it to, but as a result of the event, you've learned from it. And it's now a force of good in your life and work. What would be your Hack to Attack? Jeremy Snape: Well, big failures, there's been many. I think one formative one for me actually was failing, an eleven plus exam to go to the same school that my brother was at. So, I was eight, eleven, three papers, messed one of them up and didn't get into this school. And actually, it scared me a little bit, I felt like a real failure to my family and, and myself, you know, I'd let myself down really with it. And that really gave me the drive then to say, I'm not going to fail again. You know, I'm not going to feel that embarrassment and that shame again. So, I think that spurred my work ethic on for any setback that I've had, you know, since then, I tend to look at them in the moment and say, okay, you failed that because you didn't do this and didn't do that. That's on me, next time I can make it better. So, I don't see myself as a failure. I see myself as somebody who's failed in these moments with specific skills. And I can transcend that if I keep working hard and, you know, testing my ideas with other people. So that would probably be, sort of overcome setbacks with a bit less emotion and to sort of skip through them as learning experiences. Steve Rush: Brilliant reframe of mindset as well, because as you use the word failure, what you actually described was learning. Jeremy Snape: Yeah. Steve Rush: Yeah, great. The next part of the show is to give you a bit of an opportunity to do some time travel. So, you get to bump into Jeremy at twenty-one and give him some advice and some words of wisdom. What do you think it might have been? Jeremy Snape: Twenty-one, well, I was playing professional cricket then, I'd just finished my first degree. I was sort of bursting into the first team, I suppose, of my first professional county and I probably got some doubts. So, at twenty-one, I'd probably say I was traveling the world, which was great, so that was fun. But I'd say you're good enough. I probably, you know, whisk myself away from the crowd. I'd probably be having a few beers with teammates after the game or whatever, and I'd just pull myself to the side and say, you're good enough at this. You're going to be good enough. You'll find a way to be successful, but you got to be courageous. You've got to take some risks. When somebody coaches you and gives you these different strategies, it might feel like you're going backwards for the first few days, but stick with it and try it because you're in the experimental phase. And if you have courage, you could be, you know, twice the play you are. So that's probably the advice I'd give myself. Steve Rush: Powerful advice as well. As we've kind of get into the end of our show together today. It's not going to be the end of our listeners, hooking in with the work that you do. And we want to make sure that we can connect our listeners to you and vice versa. So, where's the best place for us to send them? Jeremy Snape: Well, my Twitter is at @sportingedge. LinkedIn is where I post most of my, you know, thoughts. So that's Jeremy Snape on LinkedIn, but also sportingedge.com. So, the podcast Inside the Mind of Champions features all the interviews that I've done and breaks it down into a toolkit. And then we've also got access to our video library. So about thousand, two-minute videos across eighty different business themes and leadership themes. So, we've got a community called our members club and that gives people access to our events and our digital content. So, they can kick off a zoom meeting or just a, you know, keep your own learning going and trying to accelerate your own quest to mastery. So, over a hundred experts have been interviewed there and every one of the videos has got little practical toolkit for you to use in your career. So, yeah, sportingedge.com, and LinkedIn are the best places, but it'd be great to connect with your network as well Steve. Steve Rush: and also, our listeners get an opportunity to get a discount. So, you've got a special discount code that they can use to get some access to sportedge.com. Jeremy Snape: Absolutely, yes. The membership is normally, twenty-five pounds per month, but, if you use the code podcast fifty in the checkout, then you get that half price for that first month to have a good look around. So, it will be great to introduce some of your network. Steve Rush: We will make sure they're in our show notes as well. Jeremy, I just want to say thank you. I know you're incredibly busy guy and I do love listening to your podcast and it's just a great honor and a privilege to have you on our show. So, thanks for being part of our Leadership Hacker Community Jeremy Snape: Thanks so much for the invitation and good luck to everyone listening. Jeremy Snape: Thank you.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.

John Warrillow is an entrepreneur, author, podcast host as well as being the CEO and Founder of the Value Builder System. In this super conversation you can learn: Why he coaches entrepreneurs to consider selling from the outset Making yourself dispensable - your ultimate poker hand - so what is that? Why we should focus on value above all else “Parenting” your team and business can deliver great value   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about John below: John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnwarrillow/ Value Builder System Website: https://valuebuilder.com John on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohnWarrillow Full Transcript Below Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Our special guest on today's show is John Warrillow. He's the founder of The Value Builder System, a practice management software for business advisors. His best-selling book, Built to Sell has been internationally recognized as one of the best business books. He's also the host of the Built to Sell Radio. But before we get a chance to meet with John, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News So, as we head towards the end of the summer holidays, business leaders and team leaders are going to start thinking about how to get ready for 2022. Although we can't predict a future, we can say that next year will not be returned to business as usual. The pandemic, social unrest, cultural divisions, new remote, or hybrid working, schooling possibilities, all but guarantee that leading teams of businesses in the coming year will be anything but business as usual. The technological trends in which workers will need to learn new skill sets outside of their roles, combined with new ways of working. Remote, in person, or hybrid of the two, would require leaders to be nimble, empathetic, and inclusive as well as strategically focused. So how do we get ready for 2022 and beyond? Use technology in human ways and for human reasons, when it comes to even the near future, the ability to adapt to new technology is always going to be a priority. And the question often in its minds of its workforce, is this tool a force of good or the enemy? Professor Roshni Raveendran research explores the integration of novel technologies into the workplace and where those technologies intersect with the psychology of human behavior. With studies include an examination of monitoring technology and the use of virtual and augmented reality. Raveendran keeps focus on the use of new systems to augment human life and how to use those new technologies responsibly. For example, the use of avatars may relieve a sense of social threat through psychological distance or an organization's behavior tracking application may be used for better. If it's for the information for its employees to self-analyze, rather than making them feel monitored constantly, as companies start thinking about making remote work a long-term reality, one key challenge pertains to the missing social connection, the feeling of being part of the same group, said Raveendran. So, there'll be a lot more demand for immersive technologies like virtual reality. That's why it's important for us to understand the psychology that drives people to adopt some of those technologies. Let's look at maintaining and improving company culture. If a company does maintain remote work as a status quo, how can leaders nurture a sense of teamwork and company culture across a distance and the difference that might exist? Well, Darden Professor Laura Morgan Roberts is an expert in human potential, diversity and leadership development. She knows compassionate, responsive leadership is what every organization needs, whether it's face-to-face or screen to screen, because learning needs to happen so rapidly. The fastest route is often peer to peer through nonlinear ways of thinking. Even after a crisis, there will be a normal, normality and leaders need to map out old values and behaviors and norms, even especially the unspoken ones. And then contrast them with what we now know to be the normal as it is today, or as we'd like it to be. As companies compete and grow, the successful ones will emphasize with a culture of inclusivity, authentic ways of developing and retaining their talent. And the last thing I want to call out for how organizations and teams can get set up for 2022 is advance your diversity efforts and intelligent inclusion as we move forward next year or any year for that matter. Successful leaders will forge beyond diversity efforts and developing minority talent, pushing their organizations to embrace the importance of intelligent inclusion, ultimately the impact of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. However well-meaning will depend on how they're viewed. Professor Martin Davidson, who also serves as Darden's senior associate Dean and global chief diversity officer, said, create an inclusion climate is inherently ambiguous task, how organizations and to take inclusion matters is key. Decades of research in social psychology and organizational behavior show us that when individuals questioned the value of group identity, the social identity threats they register are massively damaging, not just to the individual, but to the individual's relationship with the organization they work in. Davidson and explores how those organizations can design and Institute programs and policies that work to eliminate racial inequality by reducing that psychological reactivity that arises in response to any racial friction. While Davidson's research was focused on racial equality. For me, intelligent inclusion is about any minority. Age, race, religion, sexuality, cultures. The more we can recognize that we're all in the same boat, heading in the same direction, the better we can serve each other. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. If you have any news, insights or any information that you'd like us to showcase on the show? Please get in touch. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Our special guest on today's show is John Warrillow. He's an entrepreneur, a writer, he's a podcast host, and he's also the founder and CEO of The Value Builder System. John, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. John Warrillow: Hey, good to be with you Steve. Steve Rush: So, delighted to have a fellow podcaster and an entrepreneur on the show today. But for the folks that listening for the first time that may not have heard a little bit about your backstory, let's just give us a little flavor of how you ended up creating The Value Builder System and doing what you're doing now? John Warrillow: Oh man, it goes back 25 years ago. I had a market research business where we did quantitative market research for big companies. We had a decent sized company. I think we were five or six million in revenue, 20, 30% profit margin. So, it was a good business. I thought I was sitting on a gold mine and I went to see an M&A professional guy named Harry Mielly in Toronto. And I said, you know, what do you think it's worth? And I was kind of rubbing my hands together, waiting for his number. And he said, well, it kind of depends on the answer to a couple of questions and I said, shoot. He said, all right. So, like, you do research? And I'm like yep. He said who does the research. And at the time we worked with these massive companies, Bank of America, Apple and JP Morgan Chase. And so, I was involved. So, I said, well, I'm involved in the research. He said, all right, who does the selling? And I'm like, we're working with these giant companies. Of course, I'm doing some of the selling, right? He says, okay, well John, there is nothing here I could sell, your company is worthless. Steve Rush: Wow. John Warrillow: And man, that was tough to hear for me, especially going into that meeting, thinking, I was sort of sitting on this goldmine, kind of counting my shekels, so to speak. And leaving, realizing that I had built this business that was effectively unsellable. And I spent the better part of, I guess, three years, really trying to listen to what Perry had to say and others frankly, and transform that business, made much change we create. It's a subscription model I got out of doing the selling out doing research. Long story short, it was acquired by a New York stock exchange listed company in 2009. So, it had a happy ending, I think kicked off for me to sort of lifelong journey that I'm on to this day, which is to really discover what drives the value of a business. And hopefully, you know, you talking about purpose-driven leadership, hopefully helping other entrepreneurs you know, not have to experience what I felt and maybe save them some years off their lives by building a business from the start that's valuable. So, I've written a few books on that topic and of course, Value Builder is a software platform that advisors use to help their clients sort of understand some of these principles. So that's me in a kind of nut shell. Steve Rush: Was that kind of an epiphany for you at the time where you had a perception there was valuing the business because of its turnover, yet when it comes down to its underlying asset value, there was a real mismatch. Was that the kind of defining moment to set you on this path I guess? John Warrillow: Yeah, I walked around thinking my business is going to be valuable because it's profitable. And because we have great clients and people would say to me, they would say, wow, you work with Bank of America, you work with IBM, you know, fill in the blank, large enterprise organization. You're going to be, you know, this business is going to be valuable. And, I was under the impression that an acquirer would buy us for our client list. So, my focus for many years was to really win clients that were prestigious clients, right. We worked with British Telecom, biggest Telecom company in Europe at the time. And that was an aspiration for us. Not because they were necessarily great clients or the biggest revenue, but because we could put that logo on our PowerPoint slide deck to say, hey, we worked with British Telecom, and I was chasing the wrong stuff. What I came to learn was that clients are great and having kind of blue-chip clients can help the value of your company, but they're not going to make the value of your company. They're instiller tertiary to the overall value. So, it was a real learning experience for me. Steve Rush: What's your experience then John, in helping other entrepreneurs on this path, when they start to think and realize that value isn't derived from turnover? John Warrillow: Yeah, it can be a bit difficult, right? Because again, we have these yardsticks, I think as entrepreneurs. As a society, we celebrate top-line turnover, right? Like that's all the newspaper articles and the magazine articles are like this company's growing this quickly. And their top line revenue is this amount of money, yet it's generally not necessarily the most important driver for value. You mentioned Built to Sell radio in the intro of podcasts, where I interviewed different entrepreneurs. I did two interviews kind of back-to-back a few months ago. And one guy distributed a product and distribution companies by their nature, terrible businesses to sell, they're really difficult to sell. And he distributed product, built it up to $15 million in revenue turnover, and ultimately sold it for 25% of one year's revenue. Well, literally the next day I did an interview with a guy named Rob Walling who built a company called drip, which was a SAS product software and service product. And he focused exclusively on this one product, focused a hundred percent on recurring revenue and built it to just two million dollars of turnover. So, the day before I'd talked to the guy who had a business with fifteen million turn over, sold for twenty five percent of one year revenue. The next day I learned from Rob Walling that he sold his two-million-dollar turnover business for somewhere between nine- and thirteen-times top line revenue. He didn't show the exact number, it was a multiple of revenue, not a multiple of profits. And it was a large, high multiple of revenue. And it was just such a black and white contrast for me, of here's two companies. One is a fraction of the size of another. Yet the tiny company is trading at a much, much higher value than the large company. And so, I think we boast about and kind put out our chest and say, yeah, we get a million in turnover a week. You know, we got ten employees or we're at five million or whatever the boast is, but oftentimes it's kind of revenue sort of vanity, I think for a lot of entrepreneurs. And yet the real value oftentimes is not in the revenue, in the other elements of your business. Steve Rush: So, what are they John? What are the other elements that you would really drive conversations to focus on value? John Warrillow: Probably the biggest one, I think is finding something, an area where you can absolutely dominate. One feature, one product, one offering where you can be the dominant provider. Because again, when you look at an acquire, if you put your acquire hat on for a second, they've got generally tons of money. They've got tons of resources. If you're just selling a commoditized product, if you are offering something where you're competing on price, you're responding to RFP'S, you're selling by ounce or pound or whatever. That large enterprise organization is just going to basically come to the conclusion that it's a lot cheaper to compete with you than it would be to buy you. So, this is going to lower the price in the market for that service or product. Steve Rush: Right. John Warrillow: Get in a bidding war with you, and basically pick up your business. Whereas if you do something really unique, they're going to draw the conclusion that it would take years to replicate what they have bill. You know, if you go back to Rob Walling and Drip, he had a really beautiful, elegant email marketing software, which lead pages, which was ultimately his acquire didn't have. And he had some features that would have taken years to build out. And he had a two- or three-year head start, could lead pages with enough developers have replicated Drip, of course, but for lead pages where time was money, they thought, you know what, this is too unique. We can just acquire this. And I think, again, going back to distribution companies and why that fifteen-million-dollar distribution company was so difficult to sell and ultimately got such a huge discount is they're not selling anything unique. They're basically taking someone else's product and selling it. And again, if you're a fortune 500 or a large enterprise organization, you can simply do that without buying the company. Steve Rush: Right? Yeah. It's a pretty interesting perspective, isn't it? And also, there's been some recent articles around the human capital element that plays into that value stream. So that's the people on your balance sheet versus the assets on your balance sheet. How do you frame that in? John Warrillow: Yeah, look, the people on your team, again, a lot of acquirers will look at that and say, could we recruit all these people with some unique skillset? Yes, of course is yes. With enough money and time could, in many cases acquire will look at that and say, you know what, it's just going to be a lot cheaper rather than spent two years and many hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds on a recruiter. Why don't I just buy this company? Now, those valuations are referred to as acquihires in the industry, those generally are much lower than you would expect from a acquire who is placing value on other elements of what you do. So, I don't think you're going to get the highest valuation for your business if you're just looking at an acquihires, okay, effectively, you're selling your team. But you will get some value for that in particular, if they have some unique skill set that that is, you know, obviously if you have a bunch of people who are doing AI right now, or even people who have a real skillset in the area of digital marketing, those are very hard to come by. And so, someone might value that team of yours, but generally that's not going to be an astronomical multiple relative to having some sort of unique product that is more valuable. Steve Rush: Sure, is there anything in the value set that you look at that should be avoided by potential entrepreneurs? John Warrillow: Interesting, yeah. I mean, I think cross selling is probably one of the biggest mistake's entrepreneurs make and they come by it, honestly, because if you listen and talk to virtually any sales and marketing guru that gets the stage or writes a book, they'll tell you that cross selling an existing customer is like eight or nine times cheaper than going and winning a new customer. And so most entrepreneurs here that, they're focused on scale and growing and top line revenue and they say great, we've got a few customers, let's cross them. And by doing that, they're ultimately diluting their value proposition and ultimately making the business less sellable, certainly less valuable than it would be if they stuck to their knitting. I'll give you an example. There's a woman I interviewed on Built to Sell Radio named Stephanie Breedlove. She built up a payroll company and they had a special niche where they did payroll for parents who had a nanny, an HomePay to pay. And her niche was very small. And she reached a point at three hundred thousand dollars in revenue where it started to become harder for her to get new parents who had a nanny to pay. She was based in Texas. She was focused mostly locally. She reached three hundred thousand dollars in revenue, so tiny business, was just her and one employee. And she had this kind of fork in the road. She could go, and although it would be hard, find new parents who had a nanny to pay, or she could do what everybody else was telling her to do, which was to cross sell other services to her existing customers, right? So, what else did busy parents have a nanny need? They need, you know, lawn care services and meal deliveries, and you could go on and kind of brainstorm what busy parents need? And Breedlove was being told at the time that that's how you grow your business. Yet to her credit, she did not do that. She instead took the much harder road. She went and said, I'm going to double down and go find more parents who have a nanny to pay. Twenty-five years later, she built her business up to nine million dollars in revenue, ten thousand parents who have nannies to pay. Nine million in revenue over twenty-five years. It's not liked the next Tesla, right? Like it's not a super-fast growth company. It's a kind of twenty-five-year overnight success, it's a slow burn. Steve Rush: Yeah. John Warrillow: And she goes to sell it. She sells it to care.com, care.com, I'm not sure if they have it in the UK, but basically if you plug in your postal code and it will render babysitters and Au Pairs in your local market, that all be five stars rated. Have you seen that, Steve? Steve Rush: Yeah, yeah. Right. John Warrillow: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, she finds care.com and care.com at the time of the acquisition had seven million subscribers. So, she made the case, look, with just one percent of your seven million subscribers by my payroll service. That's seventy thousand customers. We're a nine-million-dollar company on the back of ten thousand customers. Long story short, Stephanie sold her nine million business for fifty-four million dollars. Steve Rush: Wow. John Warrillow: That's like six times revenue. That's like unbelief. It doesn't make any sense on any valuation table you could possibly conceive of. And it would never have happened, had she done what ninety five percent of gurus would have told her to do at a time, which was to go cross sell her existing customers because care.com wanted a very elegant solution to provide payroll to their seven million subscribers. They didn't want meal delivery services or lawn care services, right? Like they had a very specific need. And that's really were understanding what a strategic acquires looking for and sticking to your knitting. Doing one thing is where I think so much value can be added, but also undermined and lost if you sort of follow the mantra of growth is good. Top line revenue is our number one goal. I think you can, many cases hurt you more than it can help you. Steve Rush: That's super fascinating. Almost contradictory to what certainly I've heard. And most people have muted along the way because you build up a client base to cross sell more revenue. So, but I get the whole focus on the whole be great at your niche or your niche. And most importantly, be super, super good at that. And therefore, it just grows and develops and its strength and capability, right? John Warrillow: Yeah, and again, put your acquirer hat on for a second. And when you're looking at company, they closed the boardroom door, you're not invited to the meeting. And the head of corporate development sits down with the CEO and says, why are we buying this company again? And why don't we just compete with them? Are they doing something that unique, that's special that we need to acquire them because it'll be a lot cheaper and a lot less disruptive if we just get in a price war with them and for six months drop our price, ten percent below them, we can sustain that way better than they can? Why don't we just do it and get in a price war? And then the corporate development head as to fight back to the CEO and say, no, but you don't get it. They got something really unique that would take us years to build, you know, many millions of dollars to replicate. And that's the conversation that happens when you're not in the room. Steve Rush: Yeah. John Warrillow: And so, if you're just selling a bunch of, I mean, like, I don't know what it's like in the UK, but in North America, the cable providers had a monopoly and they would package up their television programming so that if you wanted like one or two channels, you couldn't buy the one or two channels, you'd have to buy like two hundred channels. And it was the most frustrating thing on earth, right. Because all you wanted was a couple of channels and you're paying for something you really don't need. Steve Rush: Yeah. John Warrillow: And then along comes Netflix and now Disney and all these discreet channels where you don't need cable anymore. And they're obviously losing customers in droves because people are like, all I want is ESPN, Disney and Netflix, and I'm good. And I don't two hundred channels. Steve Rush: It's exactly the same in Europe. John Warrillow: The Acquiror of a business makes the same. Steve Rush: Exactly the same. You have written the book Built to Sell. And it comes from that mindset of how you encourage entrepreneurs to consider building their business with the intention to sell at some point in the future. Tell us a little bit about what that mindset is and how we might need to reframe some of that thinking along the way. John Warrillow: Yeah, I mean, the essence of building to sell is you're creating a company that can thrive without you, the entrepreneur, founder, doing all the work. And when you've created a business that can succeed without you personally doing the work, you've got all of the options, like think of the poker player who gets like a royal flush. I mean, you can't lose basically. So, you can run your business without having to do the hard lifting, right? The hard yards, as they say. You can just simply be the CEO and letting your teams sort of run the business and take lots of time away from the company. You could bring in a manager and literally leave and have the manager run the business. While you kind of think of it as a passive asset, as it works, you could bring in a private equity group and sell sixty percent of the company, put some cash in your jeans and then continue to run and get a sort of second traunche of equity. When the private equity group sells, you can sell to a strategic. I mean, you've got every option available to you. If it can succeed without you personally doing the work and the inversus is not true. If the business is deeply dependent on you showing up for work, you've got very few options. You've got effectively a job, not to put too fine point on it, where you can't really get out of it. And then you're in this weird position where you got into business for the freedom, right. Freedom to do what you want, when you want, financial freedom, et cetera. Those were all, and for many of the entrepreneurs I speak with the aspirations. And yet, if the business is dependent on you, you actually have less freedom than most employed people. Steve Rush: That's very true. John Warrillow: Like if you go to work for Proctor & Gamble and you put in your fifty hours a week, and you're a good corporate citizen, you can have your weekends, you can have your evenings to do the things that you want to do with your family, et cetera. If you run a company that's dependent on you, your life sucks. You're not only putting in your fifty hours, but you're working all the hours in the evening, the weekends, you're on call for your customers, you're thinking about it constantly in your back of your mind, worried that this is going to happen, that's going to happen. So, you have none of the freedom and none of the benefits. So, for me, I think if you're going to create a business, really the aspiration should be, if freedom is your goal, to get it to survive without you. And that gives you the ultimate program. Steve Rush: Yeah, so you hold all the next play, don't you? And of course, if you are part of the play, so your part of that key human capital, then actually you could be at risk financially and probably the value of the business will be less, I guess. John Warrillow: Absolutely. Steve Rush: Yeah. John Warrillow: The other piece of this is, that you can get out more cleanly if and when you decided, just did an interview with a woman based in the UK, your name's Jodie Cook, she started a social media company and the beginning, it was her. It was actually JC Social Media or something. It was her initials in the name of the company. So, it was totally dependent on her. And over time she realized that really what she wanted to build was something that didn't actually depend on her. And she ultimately came a decision that she wanted to sell the business and what she did not want to do, which is what most, every entrepreneur in the marketing services industry has to do, was to sign up for an earn-out. An earn-out is when you have a portion of the proceeds of the sale of your company at risk in the future. And you've got to reach some certain goals that the acquire puts in place, and Jodie is an independent woman, and she just had no interest in that, right. Of kind of working for a company for three, five years and have some goals out there that she had. So, she said, I'm going to create a business, that's not dependent on me. And she focused on building out her standard operating procedures. These are like the processes that people need to follow to do the work. And she spent months building out these SOPs. I said but Jodie. I mean, for a young entrepreneur, like you, that must have been torture to spend all that time kind of systematizing your business and thinking about all the processes and so forth, Yeah, John think about this way, if you're going to go to jail, would you rather go to jail for four months or four years? Steve Rush: It's an Interesting philosophy, isn't it? John Warrillow: And her point was, I could sell the company, but then I'm going to have to be in a four, five year earn-out, while I'm working for some middle manager who reports to some senior manager, who reports to some division for some giant conglomerate and have no control over my destiny. Whereas if I do this work in creating standard operating procedures now, yeah It sucks for a few months, but man I'm much better off. And so, she sold her company,  She left two weeks later and that's almost unheard of in marketing services, almost all marketing services deals have some sort of burnout, but good for her for doing the work. Steve Rush: Totally, right. Yeah. So, what's the reason you think then John, that entrepreneurs fall into this trap? John Warrillow: You know, I think there's an element of ego to it, if I'm honest, I was just, you know, the same as I think many entrepreneurs. It feels good to be wanted, right? It feels good to be the Knight in shining armor, you know, that swoops in and saves the day and fixes the customer problem. And this, you know, this happens in virtually every industry where you, as the owner gets brought in to some really technical challenge or some difficult customer relationship, and you solve the issue. And for a few months or years, or a few weeks, probably. It feels good to be there and be the Rainmaker for your company. I got a chance; this goes back twenty years. So, bear with me, Steven. It was a while ago, but I got a chance to go to something called the birthing of giants. It's simply, it's been renamed, something different these days, but it was a group of sixty entrepreneurs who were invited to MIT's executive education center for a three-year program of entrepreneurship, it's called the birthing of giants. And we got to hear from these amazing speakers, like Patrick Lencioni who wrote The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and lots of other books in the area of leadership. He came in and spoke, and there's lots of speakers that came in. One day, this guy came in towards the end who just sold his company. And he started off the conversation with a ploy. Okay, raise your hand if you're involved in selling your product or service. And like every one of our hands went up. This is like sixty eager young entrepreneurs, we were all kind of, you know, the fourth grader got with the answer to the question when the teacher asks, like, we were all sort of like proud of that. And he said, all right, put your hands down. He says, here's the deal. You've all got the right skills. You're selling the wrong product, hire salespeople to sell your product. Your job is to use those same skills to sell your company. And it was like, for me, it was an epiphany. Like I felt like an amateur who had just seen a professional game for the first time. Like I actually saw that my job was not to do the work. It was actually to sell the company and I don't mean sell it transactionally. I mean, to promote it, to be having conversations with strategic investors, people who might one day want to buy the company, that's the job of the CEO. I'll never forget that meeting again. It goes back twenty or so years now, but it was a real light bulb for me. Steve Rush: Yeah, it's interesting that a lot of the principles that you've created within your writing and your books are all around that kind of take stock and be thoughtful about your role as the business owner, the CEO, rather than being the practitioner inside the business, right? John Warrillow: Absolutely. I think one of the things that helps people get their head around that, or start the journey down the road of getting it to not be so dependent on them is this concept of recurring revenue, because for a lot of businesses, there are some transactional business models, right? So, you kind of run around bidding on jobs, finding clients, responding to RFP's to win the project, and then it takes it two or three months to delivery. And then you kind of wake up, you delivery the project and then you've got nothing on top to follow and you're on this kind of hamster wheel that gets really frustrating over time. Because you kind of have the sense, I think, at least I did at the time when I was in a kind of a business transaction model where you just not making any progress. Every month, you kind of dread the beginning of the month. Because you know, you have to go create the magic again next month, right. And, you know, sell everybody. And so, I think one of the things in addition to finding one thing that you're really good at, Stephanie Breedlove did, I think the other thing is, is to create some recurrent revenue, put your company as much as possible on an annuity stream where customers have to opt out versus opting in. Steve Rush: Yeah. John Warrillow: And I don't mean that in a nefarious way, but I do mean, like if you're a carpet cleaning company, you know, don't wait for your customer to call you to come in and clean their carpets. Most customers frankly have better things to do, then think about how clean their carpets are. And most people only remember to clean their carpets well past the date where they should've had them cleaned, right. Whereas if you say, look, once a month, we'll come in on the third Tuesday of every month and clean your carpet, let us know, if you ever don't want us to, but we'll be here on the third Tuesday of every month. And all of a sudden, first of all, taken something off your clients or customers to-do list to remember, to have the carpet clean and come in every period of time. And number two, you've got recurring revenue. Now you can decide how many people you need? How many trucks you need on the road? et cetera. It creates this sort of domino effect where it makes a much more predictable business and ultimately a whole lot more valuable. So, I'm a big believer in this notion of recurring revenue as an important element to building a valuable company. Steve Rush: Of course, if it's recurring revenue, it's also bottom-line value on the balance sheets as well. John Warrillow: Absolutely. I mean, I just looked at this recently, the security companies, you know, the folks we use to secure our homes and offices, you come in and they put together the sensors on the windows and they call the fire brigade if there's a fire. Those companies have two forms of revenue. They've got their installation revenue where they come in and do the initial setup for the system. And then they had their monitoring revenue. And you have the kind of thirty, forty, fifty-dollar revenue a month, they charge us to come on the system. Those companies, when they go to sell a typical acquire will pay about 75 cents for every dollar of installation revenue, because it's kind of one and done transactional, not very valuable. They'll pay between two and three dollars for every single dollar of monitoring revenue. Another way your recurring revenue is worth like kind of three, four dollars for every dollar of installation revenue you have. Steve Rush: That's really fascinating, yeah. John Warrillow: We see it in virtually every industry. Carpet cleaning, you can look at HVAC, you know, heating and air condition, any industry. Your recurring revenue is going to be what acquirers place the highest value on. Steve Rush: You know, it's just struck me actually, there are a number of different businesses taking the same approach. I have the same now with coffee beans. So, I have a coffee machine. It knows broadly that every two months, I need another three kilograms of coffee beans. And every three months I get a box of coffee beans. So same principle, right? John Warrillow: Absolutely. Think about? For that coffee company, how much more valuable you are then sitting around, waiting for the phone to ring or buying Google ad words, trying to get you to stimulate your purchase because that's what most people do. They effectively manufactured demand through advertising. Whereas you're locking in, actively demand by subscribing. It makes it easy for you. You don't have to worry about that, you know, the morning you wake up and there's no coffee beans, it's like the dreaded morning of my life. Steve Rush: Absolutely right. John Warrillow: And so, knowing that you're going to get that order every two months or whatever preemptively allows you to just kind of sit back and relax and know what's coming. So, it's good for the customer. It's not something nefarious thing. It's good for the customer. Not only that, it makes it way, way easier for the coffee company, because they're probably not, you know, they're probably not growing their own coffee beans. They're probably buying them from a supplier. And when you're at the mercy of a transaction business module, you never know how many coffee beans to buy. I reminded of a company I wrote about in the automatic customer called H. Bloom, and they do flowers on subscription. They focus on hotels that want to have like a fresh cut bouquet of flowers on their reception table. Typical flower store, at least in North America. I'm sure it's the same in the UK or similar. Typical flower store in north America, will throw out sixty percent of its inventory every single month. Why? Because it's dead, rotting in your refrigerator, right? Like you guess wrong, you guess how many people are going to come in and want gerbera daisies, verses roses, verses daisies or whatever. And so, you've got a bunch of inventories you can't sell and you throw it out. 60% of the inventory, a typical flower store is thrown out. H. Bloom comes along and says, we're not going to sell flowers in some retail shop. We're going to sell flowers on subscription, were going to focus on hotels, four- or five-star hotels that just want that bouquet of flowers fresh cut every two weeks on the reception table. There spoilage rate, in other words, the percentage of their flowers they throw out every month is less than 2%. Steve Rush: Wow, that's amazing. John Warrillow: I mean, if you think about, which company would you rather own? Which company would you rather invest in? I mean, it's not even an argument. A company have a predictable revenue where you only buy the number of flowers you need to fulfill the subscribers you have is a much different model than worrying about guessing how much you need every month. And again, for your example, same thing. They're probably buying their beans from a third-party provider and beans have a shelf life. And if they guess wrong, they've got a bunch of beans that can't sell. Whereas if they get guys like Steve to subscribe, they only buy the coffee beans they have for subscribers, they need to fulfill. And it just changes the business entire. Steve Rush: Yeah, it really does, yeah. So, when it comes to that moment where I'm now going to sell my business, walk away and leave it, is there ever a perfect time to sell it out? John Warrillow: Well, you might make the case that right now is pretty good. I mean, I think, you know, interest rates are very low and of course, acquirers, in many cases in particular, private equity groups are one of those common acquires for SMEs right now. They make their business model work on debt. Like it doesn't work without debt. So, they take on a bunch of debt to buy a business and they try to sell it later on for higher multiple. And they put a little bit of equity in, but they give a lot of debt and that allows them to choose their return on investment for their investors. Private equity is fuel on interest rates. And right now, we're at a point in the history of our world where interest rates are still very, very low. And so that's creating an enormous sort of volume of sort of acquisitions. I think on the flip side of that. I think we're also in a point where a lot of SME owners have come through the worst of the pandemic, I realized as we record this, the pandemic is not over, but there is a lot of entrepreneurs that have kind of come through the worst of it and said, enough is enough. I can't do this anymore. And they're willing to leave their company for less than they might have prior to the pandemic. And, I see that again, I do this Built to Sell Radio episode or Podcast. And in the last few weeks I've had that sediment two or three times where people said, yeah, you know, I was just at my wit's end. I wanted out and, you know, almost at any price. And so, I think those two things are off setting one on the right now. On one hand, you've got a lot of demands. On the other hand, you've got a lot of really burnt-out owners who are effectively willing to sell for lower prices. So, I think they're balancing right now, but you might make the case, at least economically that right now is a pretty good time. Steve Rush: So, as we start to transition into me hacking into your leadership brain, the last time you and I met, we had a really fascinating conversation around Fortnite and how kids were getting dragged into Fortnite and consumed by video games. And that you had a great parallel to this, which is this whole concept of leadership being a bit like a parent. There's tell our listeners a little bit about that. John Warrillow: Well, I think a lot of SME owners, small business owners, think of their role as being the leader of their company, the CEO, oftentimes they're involved in doing some of the selling, the rainmaker, the driver of their company, right. And that's all fine. I think a lot of us would be better served thinking of ourselves, not as the CEO of our company, but as the parent of our company. And again, I'm sure a lot of your listeners are parents. And if you think about your job as a parent, it's, you know, some people want their kids to go to Oxford or Harvard or some fancy school, but for most of us, we would be happy if our kids got out of the basement. They went into the world as adults and they were happy functioning, independent adults and like box check that as a parent, if you're able to succeed and do that. And so, you know, despite the fact that many parents are sitting there with their, you know, kids play a lot of Fortnite and wondering, will they ever sort of get out of the house? I think that's the job as a parent is to kind of nudge them and cajole them and teach them to be independent functioning adults. And if we're successful in that, then we've done our job. And again, I think if we go back to our job as the owner of a company, I think if you can get your business to thrive without you, to be independent of you, it is the most rewarding thing in the world psychologically, but it also gives you all the cards when it comes to the value of your company. So, I think we'd be better served in a lot of ways, not thinking of ourselves as a rainmaker, as the CEO, but more as the parent of our business. And our main goal is to get it to become an independent thriving adult. Steve Rush: Yeah, it's a really great reframe. I love it. So, we're going to now start to tap into your leadership brain, having led and run businesses and coached other businesses for over twenty years, I want to hack into that leadership brain of yours. So, if you had to distill your top three leadership hacks or tips, what would they be John? John Warrillow: I'm a big believer in journaling and really reflecting on what's working and what's not. And whether you do that in a sort of formalized program or just a white paper or white board every week or so. So, I'm a big believer in journaling and having the people you're leading also journal, I think is big win. So, I think it helps you, one for yourself personally. And two, for the people you're leading. I guess, you know, to take that hack to another level. I think there are some really good journaling tools out there. I know I'm a user of the high-performance planner, I this its Brendon Burchard product. I mean, there's nothing magical about it per se, but it's a good journal. And I think having some sort of system around that can be super helpful. So, I'm a big journaling guy. Steve Rush: Me too. So, the next part of the show we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something has gone wrong and as a result of it going wrong or not working out well, you've now used the experience as a driver and a positive force in your life and work. What would be your Hack to Attack? John Warrillow: You know, I would actually go back to the very beginning of our conversation. And I think my hack was when I really got punched in the nose by a Perry figuratively. And he told me in no uncertain terms, that what I built was not a successful, not a valuable company. And so, I take that, although it was really strong cheese for me to hear at the time and very, you know, difficult, frankly for me to hear, I have now taken that. And also, you know, it's really informed everything that we do professionally, out the books and so forth. So, I think that's been super helpful and I'm also maybe inspired a little bit by that fairly straightforward with business owners, probably it's sometimes offensive at times where, you know, I make the case hopefully gently that a business isn't as valuable as they perceive it to be because it's too dependent on them personally. So, I think I've tried to sort of to honor that as time has gone on. Steve Rush: Awesome. Last thing we want to do, give you some time travel. So, if you could go and meet John at twenty-one and give them some words of wisdom, what would your advice to him at twenty be? John Warrillow: Stop chasing other people's approval. At twenty-one, I had graduated, I'd left university early because I hated university and I was trying to get a job. And I was in this funny zone where, you know, my father had worked for company all his life and I thought, okay, that's what I should do. I should go get a job and climb the corporate ladder. And so, I also knew at the time that I wanted to do my own thing, be an entrepreneur. And I was in this kind of really conflicted zone where I wasn't sure which path to take. And I spent a couple of years working for a company and probably three years actually. And I wish I had, if I can rewind the tape basically just started as an entrepreneur at twenty-one. I think I would have learned more. And I think I would have, you know, in retrospect gotten as much, if not more experience just doing it. So, if I was twenty-one again, I would say, look, this one time in your life where you don't have dependents. You don't have stresses; you can live on a couch. That's the time to start something and really go all in. Steve Rush: Yeah, isn't it? John Warrillow: Some people have the opinion, oh, you should work for a company for 10 years, get experience, understand the corporate world and then start a business. Well, good luck doing that when you've got, you know, a spouse, a mortgage, kids on the way, the whole idea just seems so much less attractive. But at twenty-one, I think that's a great time to start something. Steve Rush: That's great words of wisdom. Thank you for sharing that, John. So, we're very fortunate, in the fact that in order to keep our conversation going and keep our listeners connected with your work, you're going to create a URL for us. So, we can get some free resources to share with us a little bit about how our listeners can get hold of some of that stuff. John Warrillow: Yeah, just builttosell.com/hacker. We put together a landing page where you can get free video series on the eight key drivers of value in a company. We've also put the nine Subscription Models at the whole recurring revenue theme was sort of resonated with you. We've got a checklist that you could identify, which of the nine models might work for you. And then the art of selling your business workbook, which again is a digital workbook. You can work through to help you think about what you need to do to get prepared to sell your company. So, it's all free and it's builttosell.com/hacker. Steve Rush: Thank you for doing that, John. And that's some great resources and we'll make sure that, they in our show next too, and of course, outside of the corporate arena, you blog, you're regularly quoted in lots of different articles. So, we'll make sure that your social media links are in our show notes as well. John Warrillow: Thanks Steve. It was fun being with you. Steve Rush: Love chatting, John. Good luck with the new book. Good luck with The Valuable Builder System continuous growth and thanks for being on the community. John Warrillow: It's my pleasure. Steve Rush: Thanks John.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.  

Dr Alise Cortez is the Chief Ignition Officer at Gusto, Now! A management consultant who ignites passion and purpose. She's the author of the book Purpose Ignited and the host of her weekly radio show; Working on Purpose Radio. In this show you can learn about: How Alise found her purpose and how she ignites others Why in finding our true passion, it will help us contribute to the world How conscious capitalism is full of purpose The steps and stages to ignite our passion Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Alise below: Alise on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisecortez/ Gusto Now Website: https://www.gusto-now.com Alise Website: https://alisecortez.com Alise on Twitter: https://twitter.com/alisecortez Alise on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alisecortez/   Full Transcript Below: ----more----   Dr. Alise Cortez is a special guest on today's show. She's a management consultant, radio show host and Organizational Logotherapist. But before we get a chance to speak with Alise, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: We've recently had International Friendship Day. So, in the show today, we explored the notion around should leaders be friends with their coworkers and teammates. So can you be properly friends with somebody you work with? While some will say yes and others will say no, yet there's plenty of research to suggest that generally speaking, we highly value workplace friendships and having these friendships positively impacts on the work that we do and our approach to our jobs. A study of thousands of employees by UK based team building company, Wildgoose found that more than half. In fact, it's 57% of workers said that having a work best friend made their work more enjoyable while 22% argue, it makes them as or more productive. What's more, it seems that many workers who don't have strong relationships in the workplace may be struggling with things like loneliness, since 15% of those who were surveyed don't have a work best friend, but would ideally like one. All of us appreciate having good friends in our lives says Nic Marks, happiness expert, statistician and CEO of the Friday Pulse. Nick's also a good friend and was the guest on show 18, hacking happiness. Nic said, it's good to have people whom care about us and who care for us. Why should work be any different? Especially when we consider how rational the world of work is. Nic explains, we have a thick core relationship within our team, as well as a thinner, more peripheral relationship with other colleagues and customers and suppliers. The quality of these relationships is not only affects our own experience at work, but work is indisputably better when we get along with people, it's also business critical, but workplace friendships remain a controversial topic for a number of reasons, not least because they're associated with the formation of cliques and friendships can also be potentially undermining effectiveness of teams. Some of the worst performing teams, I know are great friends, but they can't get anything done said Pam Hilton, a collaboration expert and author of Supercharged Teams - 30 Tools of Great Teamwork. Collective intelligence research tells us that teams who avoid constructive conflict in favor of consensus make fewer successful decisions because they don't challenge each other enough. Hamilton believes that while it's easy to assume that friendship is the first step towards team ship, it's really the other way around. We need to come to work to achieve something, whether it's to launch a new product or to serve our customers and putting friendship before team ship means that we might launch an inferior product because we don't want to hurt someone's feelings or to forget to serve our customers because we're too busy having a good time. So regardless of whether leaders promote or frown upon workplace friendships, they'll continue to exist. Humans are hardwired to form connections with others, and we're likely to form especially strong bonds with those that we have something in common with. Inevitably, we're likely to find more of those people at work. So, the leadership lesson here is awareness. If we're aware of friendships that are productive and helping us as a business move forward, we should encourage and promote it. But where we recognize their clique and holding back performance of productivity, we should challenge it. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. We're looking forward to hearing from you, interesting stories and any insights that you might have. So please get in touch. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Our special guest on today's show is Dr. Alise Cortez. She is the Chief Ignition Officer at Gusto Now. A management consultant who ignites the passion and purpose in her clients. She's the author of the book, Purpose Ignited and the host of a weekly radio show Working on Purpose. Alise, welcome to the show, my friend. Alise Cortez: Thank you so much for having me, Steve. It's so great to be on your show. Steve Rush: It's great to have you on our show too. And we've had the opportunity to have met a few times over the last year or so. Really looking forward to getting into the whole principle of purpose and passion. But before we do that, maybe just for the folks that are listening for the first time and haven't met yet, be great to give us a little bit of a backstory as to your early life and passions. Alise Cortez: Well, I grew up in a small town in Oregon and literally it was a great place to grow up Steve, but honestly, I couldn't get out of there fast enough. And in my late teens, I found myself in Portland and then finally found my way into college at about age 24 after bottling around for a bit and made myself a promise when I got into college, Steve, and that was, I needed to learn French and play the piano. So, I did those things going through my first two years of college. And then I found myself with my boyfriend. And when I was 26 years old, he got moved to Madrid, Spain for his company. And I came with him. I was just a college student. I didn't have a career. And so now here I am, mind you, small town girl from Oregon. I've landed in Madrid, Spain. I can speak French. And I learned some Spanish in the restaurant I worked at when I was waiting tables to get through college so I could speak the Spanish. And so, I'm going to Madrid and I'm like, oh my gosh, this place is amazing. Everybody is kissing, there's amazing communication. So, I went all over Western Europe on my French and my Spanish for about six months. And then they moved us to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where then learned Portuguese and went all over South America for two years. And so, Steve, I just couldn't get that out of my system, right. Steve Rush: Right. Alise Cortez: Once that had been imprinted for like almost three years, there was no going back. So that's where the passion for language and travel started. Steve Rush: And you still have that passion for language and travel now. Alise Cortez: Absolutely, I do in fact, I still use Spanish. I do Spanish programs and I do some Portuguese programs and yes, I keep traveling, absolutely. Steve Rush: What do you think it is that creates that Alise in you? Where does that come from? Alise Cortez: Yeah, good question. So, you know, I remember distinctly when I was growing up in school, my parents had a big restaurant. Breakfast, lunch and dinner place. And I worked there when I was in high school and waited tables. I was the oldest of four siblings and my parents expected, being the oldest that I would take over the restaurant, but what they didn't know, Steve was that all those years that I was waiting tables in the small little town with 4,800 people. And it was that people from really exotic places like Portland, Oregon would pass through and I would learn from them and hear about these outside world experiences. And I just was drawn to what what's out there. What could there be? Steve Rush: You got a really curious mindset as well, haven't you? Which I suspect is why you've ended up doing what you're doing now. Tell us a little bit about how that epiphany came about? Alise Cortez: I do have a curious mindset. I'm learning that more and more as I go through life. You know, I have to say, one of the paths to purpose I should say, Steve is paying attention to and learning from what's ailed us in life. And so, you would think that amazing experiences that I had living in Spain and Brazil, where incredibly phenomenally positive, and they were, but at the same time here I was 26 years old living in Brazil. I had a maid, chauffeur and a gardener. I had the world by the tail, you would think, but there was just one problem. And I problem was that I was miserable in many ways, because what I really wanted to do was to matter. I wanted to make a difference in the world somehow. And all I was doing was consuming a beautiful life. And what we know about meaning and purposes is, when you're serving other people, that's when you're most fulfilled. So actually, had a meaning crisis back in my mid-twenties. And then later on in my early thirties, when I came back to the states, it manifested into what I would call a sort of an early midlife crisis. And so that my friend is when I found my way into getting a PhD. I didn't have an affair, buy a sports car, no. My answer to a midlife crisis was to get my PhD. So that defining rod that I like to say was working its magic. And then just literally over time, I just kept paying attention to, trying to literally, you know, feel my way to what that dividing rod was trying to tell me to do. And that's when I found my way into the human capital industry, some 20 years ago. I began studying meaning and work and identity for my research and PhD, consultant along, engagement performance, leadership, et cetera. And then I have to say, I found myself just this incredible internal force of, you know, replicate that research, at least make it bigger and make it deeper. And I did that in 2014 and I got published by going to a business conference there. And of course, I was in India. So, I have three weeks in India. And I had that experience, right? The experience people talk about going to India, totally stepped into my soul and really realized this is where I need to be. I need to be doing this meaningful purpose stuff really more on a full-time basis. And lo and behold, Steve, right around in there is when VoiceAmerica called me and said, hey, do you want to host your own radio show? Oh my God, this is all connected, right? So that's were working with purpose radio was born. And that's really how it all started for me Steve. It was this ongoing, unfolding, unveiling of like literally my soul emerging from myself, I would say Steve Rush: The one thing I noticed about you Alise is, I still don't think you found the end game for you. I know from our conversations that we've had together, that, you know, every day is a school day for you and you're continually learning and continually evolving your thinking and continue looking for new ways to ignite not only other's purpose, but also finding new elements of purpose for you. Alise Cortez: Oh my gosh, thank you for seeing that. I agree with you. And it's so amazing to be seen like that Steve, thank you for that beautiful gift. Yeah, every day is a learning day for me. And I can't wait to see what's around the corner. I have no idea what I'm doing next in terms of how I use this meaning and purpose work in my life and for my clients, but I love it. Steve Rush: Yeah, and we'll come back to mindset, which I think determines whether you see things as really exciting and alluring versus scary and doubtful. We'll come back to that in a moment because I want to kind of get into the premise of when you started to do your studies, you bumped into the notion of logotherapy, and that really was quite an inspirational guide for you, wasn't it? In terms of how you evolved and developed your own thinking? Alise Cortez: Yeah, you know, I really ran into when I started my PhD studies in my early thirties. And of course, you know, here I was doing a PhD in Human Development. So, I was studying Lifespan Human Development Psychology. Of course, I ran into Viktor Frankl work, he's written like 22 books or something, but logotherapy became really sort of a way of life if you will, for me. And what I was drawn to is that it's really a therapeutic approach that helps people find meaning in life. And the whole premise is that our primary motivational force in life is to find meaning. And so that just made a lot of sense to me. And of course, what did I do? I went off and studied me needing work and identity, but today, why is that one of my two main anchors? It's because that local therapy is really an optimistic approach that teaches that there are no negative or traumatic aspects of life that via the stand we take to them, which is also about mindset. They can't be transmuted into positive achievements. And I find that so empowering. Steve Rush: Yes, yes. Alise Cortez: Why wouldn't I want to stand in that space. Steve Rush: Yeah, so thinking about its linked then to mindset, so you call it your governing star. So, what do you mean by that? Alise Cortez: Well, you know, I love that question. Thank you for that. And so, when we think about mindset, it's really our internal operating system, right. It orients where we put our attention and how we interpret the world. And really frankly, it dictates our success and failure. If we think we can? We can. If we think we can't? We can't. It's just so deciding, right? It's so definitive. So that's why I call it your governing star. Steve Rush: That's quite neat, isn't it? And I suspect that's the reason why when you frame it, as it's exciting, I'm really excited about what's coming around the corner. However, perhaps with a different mindset could feel in fear of that? Alise Cortez: No doubt about that, absolutely right. And thank you for that. That is such a really important point to make for our listeners because how we orient ourselves to the world. In fact, I was just listening to a podcast this morning when I was getting ready. When we say things like, well, I have a terrible memory. Guess what? You're going to forget things. If you say things like, I remember people's names like nobody's business, guess what? You do. It's just so definitive. So, when you think, what's this great beautiful life that I'm going to go live today versus, oh, what am I dragging myself through today? You can see the difference in the energy right there. Steve Rush: And people often say to me, you know, Steve, this is a little bit kind of pink and fluffy, but actually it's based in science. It's neuro-plasticity, it's creating new layers of memory that are either going to help us or hold us back. And I wonder what your experience of that was with perhaps your clients? Alise Cortez: Oh gosh, no question about it. You know, one of the greatest things speaking, neuroplasticity. One of the greatest things that I get to do my work, and I think we talked about this when you were on my show is, I have never replicated the positive feeling of witnessing someone, literally their molecules change in front of my very eyes as they transform themselves, right. Steve Rush: Right. Alise Cortez: I don't know of a better feeling than that. And the work that you and I get to do allows us to do that. So, we literally are witnessing that neuroplasticity in the works as we watch them grow. So yeah, and teaching them away. And that's why like therapy so much Steve is because logotherapy teaches them a way to be able to achieve this for themselves every day of their lives. And therefore, I'm empowering them. They don't need me after we work together. If I do my job right, I've empowered them. Steve Rush: Yeah, and the empowerment creates habits and positive rituals, and eventually it becomes the way we do things, right? Alise Cortez: Yeah, and then it's got infinity to it, right. And magnitude to it, and who knows where that goes. Steve Rush: Yeah, exactly. In your book, one of the things that I read that I really loved, and I want us to explore and share with our listeners is the fact that you encourage people to be moment hunters. So, if I'm listening into this today, how do I become a moment hunter? Alise Cortez: That's such a delicious question. And thank you again for such a lovely read of my book. So, you're the one who read my book. It's so good to know. So, where I got the whole moment hunter idea Steve, as you know, I've been hosting my radio show, Working on Purpose for six years, and generally speaking, the last two or three years of that has really been interviewing subject matter experts and authors and business leaders. And so, I happened to come across a book called Ichigo Ichie and it's by two authors name, Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles. And essentially what they are talking about is this Japanese concept Ichigo Ichie, which means something like what we are experiencing right now will never happen again. And so therefore we have to evaluate each moment like a beautiful treasure, and that takes being present and mindful and grateful for the moments and cherishing them as part of our one precious life. And so, when you realized that you literally can be, at least if you allow yourself. A child skipping through life, really enjoying and savoring the moment, what a difference that is again, then dragging yourself through a day, right? So, if I teach you to become a moment hunter and I I empower you and you learn a lifelong habit of doing that, that is a night and day difference to the way that most people tend to go about living. And that's where I want to be. I want to be at moment hunter. Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely. It's one of those things it's academically very easy to say, but it's quite difficult to practice to into a habit of doing so. So where would I start with that? Alise Cortez: Well, it's first it's mindset and I will tell you the first thing, this is a great story actually, the very first thing you can do is literally I kid you not just at the end of your day, just write down, maybe in a journal, three things you're grateful for. And what that starts to do, is it starts having you look for what's good and right in your life. And the story that I want to tell is one of my clients actually started reading my book and he got to the bit that we're talking about here, a gratitude and writing it down. He said, I got through that in my day. And I realized, I couldn't find three things to say that I was grateful for. This is a very successful man, runs an engineering practice. And he said, that's when I realized I need to fire one of my clients, they are just making me miserable. Right? And so, he said, as soon as I got present to that reality, and I then realized what I needed to do, I began to see that there were things to be grateful for. And then I could actually enjoy more moments, but it took him getting present to being miserable with this one particular client and then firing them literally. And what a difference in the lift he got. So again, if you start with what you're grateful for, you'll start to be able to step into the place where you can experience being a moment hunter, and more of that Ichigo Ichie. Steve Rush: And in your experience, the more you do that, does that present itself to be more natural in the future? Alise Cortez: Absolutely, it's a habit so many things in life, right? It becomes a habit, a way of being, right. I bet you I've gone through this, just like any one of us have, if we really think about it. Moments in time where we are more high on life, right? Then other times when we're a bit more low, but there is a way to cultivate that high. And it centered on mindfulness and centered and that's why mindset is so important, right. Steve Rush: Right. Alise Cortez: And you know that in your work that you do, right? If we're in charge of our mindset, we don't let it govern us. We have a much better chance of being able to be an ongoing moment hunter versus someone who's literally either auditing life or worse yet, walking through life dead. Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely so, and much of your work is focused on igniting purpose in others now, and you call out that relationships are a massive part of that. Just tell us about your experience? And also, maybe we can get into some of the techniques that you call out in your book. Alise Cortez: Yeah. Yeah, so in my book, I talk about this notion of in terms of wellbeing informed by what Dr. Martin Seligman refers to as the PERMA Model, which of course is an acronym and the R is for relationships. So, what we know about relationships is, we as human beings, we really are, you know, created as a social being, I don't care how introverted you might be or extrovert you might be. We still really do need meaningful relationships in our life to be mentally well and healthy. And so, what we find is that it's the lack of meaningful connection with other people that often contributes to mental and physical demise and where we get into depression and isolation, et cetera. So, finding a way to stoke relationships in a way, the ones that are important to you, not everywhere all the time, but the ones that you choose so that they're healthy and mature and reciprocal is really, really important. And let's take it one step further, right? So, when we're working from the place of purpose, the reason that purpose works so well is that it requires us to be serving other people. So therefore, it got a self-transcendent quality to it. And the moment we step out of being absorbed in our own life and our world, and we focus on serving and helping others, we're already in a better place. We're already in a much more healthy place. Steve Rush: Right. Alise Cortez: So that's two reasons why relationships are so important. Steve Rush: And you've got a technique called lifeline that you call out in your work, tell us how you would use it? Alise Cortez: Yes. So, lifeline refers absolutely to those meaningful connections that you have in your life, whoever they might be. Maybe it's your best friend, maybe it's your partner, maybe it's a child, but the lifeline is really about being, again, mindful and present to that relationship. What are you doing to nurture that relationship? What are you doing to really go looking for and see that other person? And I know that you know this too, because of the work that you do, developing leaders, right, Steve, right. So, to me, what's a great leader? It's the same sort of technique that you would use in the lifeline approach. And that is a great leader of goes looking for what's great and fantastic about the person on their team. And then they look to see how can I lead them to a greater sense of themselves? How can I bring them to see and realize, and go after what I know is even a greater aspect of who they could become? So, to me, a lifeline as you're practicing that sort of set of behaviors in those close relationships in your life. Steve Rush: Yeah, the one thing that struck me in reading that as well was we all have choices about our relationships, but we often don't bring that to our conscience enough and that helps us do that, right? Alise Cortez: Absolutely, exactly right. And again, that's why, you know, it's so important to have silence in our life too. We are the ones in charge here, not the rest of the world. So as fast as the world moves today, right. If we can come back to hold on just a second, I always have one thing under my domain, and that is my mindset. Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely. And it starts there, doesn't it? It literally starts there. Alise Cortez: Literally, yes. And ends there. I would say. Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely so, yeah, I agree with that. Now, true passion. You've called out in your radio show and the work that you do and it's in your book, you call it out as it being a real contributor to the world. Where have you may be seen that play out the most, or maybe some experiences where you've really seen that work? Alise Cortez: This is just where it gets really yummy. How much time did we get to talk about this Steve? That's so awesome, right. Okay, so I want to distinguish two things. So, passion is absolutely a mechanism to be able to contribute to the world meaningfully. So, what I say about passion, and this is absolutely explicated in the book is, passion is really one of our three sources of meaning through energy. I do this through for my local therapy sort of work. So, what passion really is, it's the creative value of what we give of ourselves to the world. It's something only we can uniquely give through our being, right? And so, the more we give of ourselves our passions, the more energy we have, right. And everybody understands the importance of energy, right? So, when we show up and we really channel our passions, what happens there is that can then lead us to our purpose. Not always, but it can, it's one path to our purpose. And when we serve from our purpose, of course, now that's where the real magic happens. And this is where it gets really interesting from my perspective, Steve. So, purpose acts as a unique filter through which each of us sees the world. And then when we look through that lens, we see possibilities, or we do something that no one else we've seen or done. And that is the source of innovation impact that we all aspire for. So, you know, that notion of people confuse passionate and purpose. They're not the same thing, right? Passion is really a way of being in the world. It's really sort of anchored in meaning and the expression of what it is that you find meaningful of yourself and purpose of course, is your north star, why? Which orients all of your activities and why you're doing something and the difference that you hope to leave in the world. So that's how I like to see those two together. It's profoundly important to be able to go after passion and purpose. Steve Rush: And they're not mutually exclusive, are they? Alise Cortez: No, not at all. Steve Rush: And people often get them confused. What causes that? Alise Cortez: That's a great question, you know, one is, we can't go through a day to day, I don't think Steve, without encountering, at least the words, meaning and purpose. People confuse those two words as well. And so, I think the reason people confuse them is because that word, passion, purpose, and even meaning has become so overly utilized and therefore it diminishes its utility. And it just becomes part of the parlance almost like saying things like yeah and huh. Steve Rush: Yeah, indeed. Alise Cortez: It delude it. Steve Rush: Yeah, I can see that. And unconsciously then by just merely saying, I have purpose, doesn't actually mean that you have purpose. It needs to be backed up by lots of other evidence and actions. Alise Cortez: Boy, now you're getting at one of my major pet peeves, Steve. So, when people say things like, you know, if I see another sign that says muffin on purpose, tires on purpose, I'm going to go ballistic, right? So, people say things like, well, you know, I do this on purpose or such is my purpose. Well, just because you declare something which becomes like a goal for you, does not make it purpose. The only thing that makes something purpose is that one, it literally is that which is called from within you and the service through that you're channeling for, makes a difference to the world and is in service of other people. Very often when people say things like, well, such and such is my purpose, engineering is my business or my purpose or whatever. Developing people, even as my purpose, if you just declaring it as something that you do or a goal, it's not your purpose, it's not the same thing at all. Steve Rush: Totally agree with that, totally. Alise Cortez: Right. Steve Rush: So, one of the things that struck me and I've never come across this notion before of conscious capitalism, but underpinning that is all of those things around passion and purpose. But I wondered if you could share with the listeners, what your view of conscious capitalism is and how we might want to use them in our roles as leaders? Alise Cortez: Another yummy topic for me, I actually devoted the last chapter of my book, as you probably know, because you read it, too the idea of conscious capitalism, that's chapter nine. And I have recently joined the board of Conscious Capitalism here in Dallas as well. To me, it makes so much sense. So let me share, there's four tenets actually of a conscious capitalism that will help our listeners really understand how it works and why they might want to be involved. So, the first tenets is just higher purpose. And so, this really gets to knowing your company's why and doing business beyond profit. If you're just in business to make money, that's one is going to get empty pretty fast. And two, you're not going to distinguish yourself in the marketplace among others that have elevated their gaze above just profit. So hard purposes is the first tenant, the second tenant is stakeholder orientation. And what that is, Steve is that's really a recognition that a business has an interdependence on the ecosystem in which it operates. And so, it's important that a business is focused on serving its employees, its customers, its suppliers, investors, the community, and the planet. Those are all part of the ecosystem in which it operates. And too often, what happens is we're focused on investors at the expense of everything else. And that's where the train falls off the tracks. So, the third tenet is conscious leadership. And so, this is the notion really that, you know, the human social organization, right? And so, it's guided by leaders who understand that they need to inspire others to travel along the same path of consciousness and purpose with them. To raise them along the way like I've been saying, and then the fourth tenet is conscious culture, right? So that's the FOS, the values, the principles, the practical's that underlie that social fabric of the business and connects the stakeholders to each other, united in their purpose and their processes. And of course, there people, so those are the four tenets. And if you listen to those, I can't imagine that you go, heck, I don't want to do that, right. Steve Rush: Exactly, yeah. Alise Cortez: What about any of that would make you say that you don't want to play with that? I don't understand. So, to me it's such a natural obvious path that unites the best of what we've been doing together as humanity to bring us forward. So, I think for me, it's a no brainer and it's important that listeners also know that conscious capitalism is only one of like 20 different organizations that are stewarding a similar mindset like this in business. So, this is becoming much more ubiquitous. Steve Rush: And its okay, to make money and be a capitalist underpinning all of the service to other people, if it's purposeful, right? Alise Cortez: Absolutely, in fact, you know, that's the thing about it is, what I appreciate about conscious capitalism is it celebrates capitalism as the best system that we found so far in the world. And frankly extends and expands it so that it actually serves even more interest to lift more boats. So yes, absolutely, profit is fantastic. Steve Rush: There's almost a mystique around the word capitalism because it has a different connotation in people's minds, but actually as you've described it with those principles, it becomes a really honorable and emotive thing to be thinking about as a leader, right. Alise Cortez: Oh, I liked the way you said that, Steve. Yeah, so to me what that is, is why would you get out of bed in the morning and go, you know, I think I just kind of want to fly under the radar and just do the minimum that it takes to get by. Why would you do that? When you could lift your gaze just a little and say, hmm, who could I help today? Who else could I help today? What else could I do to make the world slightly better today? Steve Rush: Yeah, and suppose if there were people listening in today who maybe don't naturally have that passion or still haven't yet found their purpose, maybe having a mindset that says, you know, it's too late for me to change. What would you say to ignite that passion today? Alise Cortez: Oh, well you're not going to like the first thing that I would probably say to them, let me say it anyway. So, if somebody said to me, you know what, it's too late for me to change. I can't find my passion. What I would say to them Steve is, get your shovel. Let's go ahead, you and I both start digging your grave because you're practicing death right now. And that's what I would say. So, it's never too late to work on passion. I don't care if you're in your nineties or a hundred, you know, I will tell you, Steve definitively, both of my parents died 28 days apart in January of 2019 and I'm firmly and all the more affirm in my logotherapy work. My mother was 73 years old. Yes, she had suffered a long time from COPD and she was tired of the suffering. She was ready to leave, but I am absolutely 185% convinced that if she had done something, than sit and watch the TV all day, she got out and even volunteer one hour, a week of her beautiful mind and given to the community. Gave her humor, which is part of her passion. She would still be with us today. That's how important passion and meaning are today. They actually literally can save your life, do save your life. Steve Rush: Yeah, I agree. And it, again comes back down to mindset because if you think you can't, when you think you can, you probably, right, Alise Cortez: You are right, yeah. Steve Rush: So, the next part of the show we get to do is spin around a little and I'm getting now tap into your awesome leadership brain. And the first thing I'm going to do is try and distill your experiences and ideas into your top three. So, if you had to do that, what would they be? Alise Cortez: My top three are, just coming off the last question that you asked. The first and foremost, find and plug into your passion. And the reason why is, just I've shared, when you live and work from it, you're irresistible, you're magnetic. People want to follow people on fire in their own life, right? So that's the first thing. Find and plug in your passion. The second thing which I've already alluded to is become an inspirational leader. And the way you do that is first you're on fire for your own life. And then you go looking for what's amazing and different about each team member that you have and you help them lead them into their greater self. That's how you become an inspirational leader. And then third go looking for and articulate to each of your team members, how their work threads up into the company's overall purpose. So, it's really important. What this does is it helps that individual person recognize just how important the work that they're doing is, and therefore it gives them meaning. And so, when we feel like we're connected to something bigger than ourselves, it's incredibly motivating. So go help them understand how the work they're doing, connects to the company's larger whole and purpose. Steve Rush: I love that, and also connecting those dots will create that higher purpose, which will lead to yes conscious. Alise Cortez: Yes, if we do it right, exactly. Steve Rush: So, the next part of the show, we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something in your life or work hasn't worked out. Could have been catastrophic or you screwed up. But as a result of the experience, you've learned from it and is now a positive in your life or work. So, what would your Hack to Attack be Alise? Alise Cortez: Well, I'm not recommending this for everyone or anyone for that matter, but this really worked well for me. And it's this little called divorce. Steve Rush: Yeah, little thing, right. Alise Cortez: It was not my idea to get a divorce. I'd been together with my ex-husband for 18 years, but it was a very good idea as it turns out and what it did was it forced me out of a certain apathy that I had fallen into in life. And it forced me to catalyze into a higher being and to grow and to learn from the pain and, you know, starting off in a different place in life. And I needed that. In fact, I will tell you that in my view, we all need this agitation catalyst in our life to grow and change. And I'm not saying it needs to be divorced, but usually it needs to be something pretty hard. Steve Rush: A disruptor. Alise Cortez: A disruptor, yes. Thank you. Steve Rush: Yeah. Alise Cortez: And so that was a huge disruptor for me. And what it did Steve, was it gave me this fantastic clearing that I could pursue, whatever I saw in front of my path that I wanted for myself. There were no more excuses for myself. And that was one of the best Hack to Attacks for me in my life to date so far. Steve Rush: Yeah, do you think you would have found your purpose had that not happened? Alise Cortez: I already had found my purpose. Here's the amazing thing. I was not living not living Steve and you know what? I hated myself for it. I hated myself for it. Steve Rush: Interesting, Isn't it? Yeah, it was always there, but you were probably suppressing a lot of it? Alise Cortez: Yeah, the worst thing is, is that when you're aware of it and you're not doing something about it, I will tell you that it's hell on earth. It really is. Steve Rush: I can see that. The last part of the show, we give you the opportunity to go back and meet Alise and do some time travel and you get to bump into her at 21. And give her some of your words of wisdom. What would your advice to her be? Alise Cortez: Oh gosh, you know, I would tell her to listen to the wisdom emanating from within. So, Steve, when I was about 21 years old, I did know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was one of those people that felt like to your point, I'd always been very curious. I'd done a lot of reading. I found all of this self-help literature in Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled. And you know, I was reading all those kinds of books and I came running to my mother one day and I said, mom, I know exactly what I want to do when I grow up. And I said, I want to lead success seminars. And she burst out laughing. She said, you can't do that. You are not successful. And then of course the little dream in me shriveled up and died. Steve Rush: Yeah. Alise Cortez: Well, what am I doing today essentially is, I'm helping people to really discover that which ignites them and helping them steward their field of human growth and transformation. And I didn't know how to call it anything else back then, except for success, which she was right. I wasn't successful back then. But what I would tell my 21-year-old self is listen to that just because you didn't quite get the words, right. There is a wisdom in there that when you listen to that, which is emanating from within you, it's trying to tell you something. Now the divining rod ultimately came around and took me there, but it took me 20 some years later to get back on that track. Steve Rush: Yeah, indeed. Good words of wisdom to have had at the time, maybe. Alise Cortez: Exactly. Steve Rush: And of course, everything happens for a reason, doesn't it? So, the other kind of, part of your evaluation that you take us on through your book is that it's kind of, everything is a learn. Everything is a lesson. If you choose to have that thought process around it, right? Alise Cortez: Yeah, absolutely, I love that. Everything is a lesson, there's so much to learn and enjoy and appreciate in this wonderful thing called life. Steve Rush: So, what's next for Alise, what are you working on? Alise Cortez: Yeah, gosh, what am I not working on? So, I've got my next a women's anthology book is coming out as being published next month, where I found 25 women from across the world to tell their stories, it's coming out in a book called Passionately Striving and Why. So that's one thing, I'm also working on the men's anthology as well. Looking for stories of men who are working from purpose from around the world, would love to hear from someone if they are. And then the other thing that I'm working on, that's really got my attention. You know, when we were going through the pandemic, I was trying to figure out how can I help? What can I do, right? How can I help more people, especially get out of any kind of a mental or wellbeing, demise or malaise? And I discovered that I could actually take the first part of my book which is really about how to develop passion and purpose within yourself and create that as a wellbeing, subscription, mini model for employees inside companies. So, they get literally a wellbeing, drip of content, of exercises and listening to something for a podcast every week. So, what I'm doing now is bringing that into companies as a subscription model. So that's what it's really got my gaze and my focus right now. Steve Rush: Excellent stuff. Good luck with that. Both projects or good luck with all three projects. Alise Cortez: Thank you. Yes, I told you, I'm having more fun than I'm supposed to have, so don't tell anybody. Steve Rush: I know, it's too late now. It's all out there. Alise Cortez: The cat's out of the bag, is it okay? Steve Rush: Exactly, yeah. So, if folks wanted to find out a little bit more about your work, where's the best place for us to send them? Alise Cortez: Easy to go to my website, alisecortez.com, that's the easiest place to go. Steve Rush: And there's a bunch of resources on there. There's links to your other social media that you're active on as well. And of course, you can get hold of a copy of Purpose Ignited, can't they? Alise Cortez: Absolutely, and please do. Steve Rush: So, I always love chatting to you. There's never a time where we've spoken, where I haven't felt juiced up as a result of it. And that's no exception today. So, I just want to say thank you for unlocking purpose in our lives. Alise Cortez: oh, thank you so much for having me Steve, it's been a delight. Steve Rush: Love chatting to you. Alise Cortez: Likewise.  Steve Rush: Thanks, Alise. Alise Cortez: Likewise, thank you.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handle there @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.    

Dr. Laura Gallaher is a keynote speaker, a leadership coach and Organizational Psychologist. She is also the CEO at GALLAHER EDGE. In this super interesting conversation, you can learn about: How she leads culture change using a blend of org' psychology and industrial engineering. Learn about the “inside out” model and that is all starts with self. Why changing culture, you can influence positive outcomes and performance. How to recognise if you have imposter syndrome, how you can go about dealing with that.   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Laura below: Laura on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-gallaher-phd/ Gallaher Edge Website: https://www.gallaheredge.com Laura on Twitter: https://twitter.com/drlauragallaher Laura on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drlauragallaher/ You can get Laura's new book here   Full Transcript Below: ----more----  Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Our special guest on today's show is Dr. Laura Gallaher. She's an Organizational Psychologist. Who's worked with Walt Disney and NASA to help transform culture. She's now a speaker and the CEO of GALLAHER EDGE, but before we get a chance to speak with Laura, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: If you're a regular listener of the show, you will know that we love diversity and difference on this show. One the news today we explore what leaders can learn about mindfulness and entrepreneurship from Bhutan of all places. So where is Bhutan? Well, it's a small kingdom located deep in the Himalayas and native of Bhutan Dr. Karma Phuntsho who's an Oxford educated founder of the Loden Foundation believes that leadership lessons from Bhutan can lead anyone to success in life and in business. Dr. Phuntsho first discovered the benefits of mindful leadership after studying as a Buddhist monk for over 10 years, he then obtained his PhD at Oxford, completed some research at Cambridge and was the first Bhutanese Oxbridge fellow. As self-described go-between linking Western business philosophies with Buddhist traditions, Dr. Phuntsho contains fascinating insights on humanity, culture, business, and how leadership ties it all together. Perhaps nothing demonstrates this more than the Loden Foundation. His non-for-profit organization for aspiring Bhutanese entrepreneurs built on mindfulness, innovation and tradition. At the Lowden Foundation, Dr. Phuntsho, whose mission isn't only to create a thriving network of Bhutanese businesses, but it's also to shape tomorrow's entrepreneurs as a force of good within their communities throughout the world. In 2008, Dr. Phuntsho, along with a small group of colleagues launched the Lowden Foundation to face the growing challenge of high unemployment in Bhutan, along with a lack of entrepreneurial spirit, largely caused by the tradition of hand-me-down farming, the non-for-profits supports entrepreneurship in Bhutan through education, inspiration, and outreach. They also offer interest free collateral free loans through the Lowden Entrepreneurship Program, which ties the repayment plans to the businesses strategy and structure. To date they've supported over 5,000 aspiring entrepreneurs and funded over 200 businesses in Bhutan, 72 which are run by women, the Lowden Foundations dedicated to preservation of Bhutan's culture and deeply rooted in its Buddha beliefs. And with this comes the intrinsic tie to being mindful, compassionate business leaders. And of course, demonstrating those mindful and compassionate leadership practices, cornerstones of course of the Buddhist philosophy. What Dr Phuntsho believes should be the cornerstones of every leader's philosophy, no matter where they live on the planet, he says it's important for us to bring prosperity, to improve people's ordinary standard of living, but we have to seek that without losing the overall meaning of life. And one wonderful way to never forget the joys of life is, been remembered that every human, every organization is somehow interconnected. And there's a great leadership lesson here. Of course, mindfulness and compassion are given these days, but the role that habits, rituals and mindsets play in communities is still rife and it sometimes takes a bold leader to disrupt that status quo. So, the next time you notice rituals or habits that may be holding your community or team back, will you be that disruptor? That's been The Leadership Hacker News. We'd love to hear your stories, insights from wherever you are in the world. Bring difference to our difference. So please get in touch with us. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Our special guest on today's show is Dr. Laura Gallaher. She is a keynote speaker, a leadership coach and Organizational Psychologist, is also the CEO at GALLAHER EDGE. Laura, welcome to the leadership hacker podcast. Dr. Laura Gallaher: Thank you so much for having me, Steve. Steve Rush: So, I'm really keen to find out how you ended up leading GALLAHER EDGE and what happened beforehand. So just give us a bit of a potted history of your kind of early career and some of the passions that led you to do what you do? Dr. Laura Gallaher: Absolutely, I started looking at psychology in college and thought I would go the route of being a therapist, something kind of, you know, traditional psychology starter type. And then I realized how interested I was in social psychology. What happens when we get groups of people together? And what are the ways that we form impressions and how does that affect the way we treat each other? And then I realized there's this whole field called Industrial Organizational Psychology, where we can look at those kinds of dynamics in the context of the workplace. So, I came from Phoenix, Arizona over to Orlando, Florida, and I studied Organizational Psychology for another five or six years after undergrad and got the chance to work for NASA. So, I was working for NASA while I was finishing up my PhD. And after about seven years there, I started this business GALLAHER EDGE on the side of the NASA job. And after about 10 months of that, I was like, you know what? Let me try this full time. And after about six months of that, I was like, Ooh, I don't know about this. And I went back to a nine to five role with Disney and 10 months later, I was like, you know what, I'm going to try this again. And so ever since 2015, I have been running GALLAHER EDGE as my full-time role. Steve Rush: Excellent, and it was really interesting from the notes I made when we spoke first, you joined NASA at a real kind of pivotal moment in their history, and it was not long after the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy back in 2003. And you were called in to help transform and enhance the culture at the space center in Kennedy Space Center. What was it you noticed about what was happening at NASA at the time and what did you learn from that time? Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, so it was a really somber way to get things started my in my career, you know, and I obviously believed in the importance of psychology and organizational psychology, but to have the chance to come in and work for NASA. When they did the investigation about the accident, the investigation board report said that NASA's culture was as much to blame for the accident is the actual piece of foam that struck the orbiter during the launch. Steve Rush: Wow. Dr. Laura Gallaher: So, yeah, it was a pretty strong indictment of the culture and what I find so incredibly remarkable about this. And you know, I worked very closely with my now business partner, Dr. Phillip Meade. He had been out at the Space Center. He was working there for many years before the accident occurred. Was that just months before the accident happened, NASA was rated the number one place in the Federal Government by its employees. So, when they surveyed all of the employees and every agency of the Federal Government about their workplace and how engaged they were and how motivated they were and how much they had job satisfaction, NASA was number one. So, I don't know about you use Steve, but when I hear like, oh, culture was to blame for this tragedy, I'm like, Ooh, man, that must've been a, what a mess, you know. Steve Rush: That's right, not aligned is it? Dr. Laura Gallaher: It must've been just awful, people not getting along, like overbearing managers. Like this must be a terrible place to work and that wasn't the case. And so, what evolved in the work? I mean, I learned so much in my time there was understanding that there's a difference between having a quote, good culture and a quote, effective culture. So, it's really important to be able to say, what is it that we're actually wanting to achieve and accomplish in terms of results and how we truly designed the culture in a way that we will get those results versus just, hey, do people like working here? Steve Rush: That's a really interesting dichotomy, isn't it? Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah. Steve Rush: As you're saying it, I'm trying to kind of frame it almost as in so much as good cultures don't necessarily give you great performance. So, what was the gap if you like between the two? Dr. Laura Gallaher: Of course, as you can imagine, you know, culture. So, we described cultures as emergent property. It's based on the interactions of the common behaviors and beliefs with the employees and organizations are complex adaptive systems. So, I definitely won't have time during our conversation today to get into all of the details about it, right. And the reason I qualify it so much is because I think it's really easy for anybody to be outside of a situation and look in and go, how could they be so stupid? So, some of what I want to describe an point out, it's easy for somebody to fall into altruism and go, oh, well, I would never do that, right? Or that would never happen here. And when you do that, that's a deep form of defensiveness that stops us from learning from the mistakes of other people. Steve Rush: It does, yeah. Dr. Laura Gallaher: So, my invitation to everybody listening is, you know, see how you can actually take some lessons away from some of what I can share about NASA history and find out when might that also be true for me, right. Rather than going like, man, how did they miss that or whatever. So, there's really three levels that I can talk about when I explain what was happening in NASA culture, leading up to the accident. This is based on our inside out model. We have self at the core, everything comes back to self, and then we have team as the middle layer. And then we have the organizational level at the broadest layer. So, these like three concentric circles. So, at the organizational layer, one of the biggest challenges is they had the program manager for shuttle in charge of everything from safety and technical concerns, but also programmatic concerns like budget and schedule. So, when it comes down to it, you're looking to one person to try to effectively balance all of those things at the same time, that's just an organizational design flaw. You don't have people sitting around the table with an equal level of leadership, voicing their opinions when it comes to, well, what does technical say? What does safety say? Okay, what does the program say? It was all falling on one person. And so, they were essentially unknowingly creating a virtually impossible situation for this person to actually make good decisions, right? So, a big piece of what we looked at was how can we design the organization differently so that we're not asking people to fight against the system and ask an engineer who's two or three or four or five levels down from the program manager and say, yeah, stand up in a meeting and say, hey, I don't have a lot of data, but I'm really worried about the shuttle. Even though y'all have made a bunch of decisions in the past to say that we don't need to worry about this during flight, like, wow, like that's really challenging. So, at the org level, work design matters a ton, you really want to pay attention to how the design of the organization affects the culture. Steve Rush: My experience, having worked in lots of different organizations is often they try to fit org design to fit the team and the individual into the organization and not the other way around. Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, we work with our clients and organizational design, it's so funny because I'm a psychologist and more so human centric. And when we go into that process, we're like, okay, we really want you to not think about people. Like don't think about human beings. Don't think about who you have right now. We really want you to think about the organization as a system, the organization as a machine. And we want to design it optimally to get the results you want to get and not design it around the specific humans, right. Because then you kind of end up like duct taping things together. Like, oh, well this person, I don't know if we have right now a right person to play a chief revenue officer role. So, let's not do that. Let's just go ahead and, you know, keep this kind of biz-dev over here and this kind of sales here, or like, oh, you know what? I don't know if these two people really get along very well. So even though it makes sense for them to be in the same department, let's just break those up. They're doing the best they can, and sometimes they make very flawed decisions for org design because they're trying to base it around those specific people. Steve Rush: Yeah, I can see that. Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, so that was the org design, one of the biggest org design pieces. And that was one of the biggest initiatives that I supported when I first started my work there. At the team level, there were some things happening with communication. So, one of the findings that just, it actually got a lot of attention at the time was the phone strike. And so, for anybody who doesn't know, just briefly during the final launch of Columbia, a piece of foam fell off of the external tank, which is the large orange structure on the shuttle system. And it struck the orbiter, which is the part that looks like the plane. And they didn't know exactly where it hit. They could see that it hit, they could see it and make contact. They could estimate the general size of the foam, but they just weren't sure. And foam had been hitting the orbiter. Unfortunately, it happened numerous times before and it had never been dangerous. It was always something that they had to deal with when they check the orbiter back and processed it to get ready for the next flight. They would need to change out some of the tiles for the heat shield, you know, so they previously made a decision like, hey, when foam strikes happen, we don't have to worry about it in flight. It's something that we'll deal with during processing. So, this was something that they thought they decide and the foam strike, and because they didn't know exactly where it hit. And it looked quite large. It was some conversation, but it was like a third sub bullet, on a PowerPoint slide or something like that. And, you know, a presentation to the decision makers. And so that was one of the things that got a lot of attention was, hey, like what's happening with our team communication here and are we over-relying on trying to make things really brief and succinct and not giving things enough airtime to really understand what it is that we're deciding. So that's one of the things that I really invite leaders to do is, we're all so busy, right? And we all feel so stretched for time. And it's so tempting to just want to push through decisions really quickly and not give them enough airtime. But, in some cases, unfortunately in this case potentially catastrophic. Steve Rush: Yeah, sometimes you just got to go slow to go fast, haven't you? Dr. Laura Gallaher: Absolutely, I slow down to speed up is one of our favorite mantras. We're always inviting our clients to do it. And do you know what? We work on it too. It's something that we feel is vital, so I can understand the difficulty. And the other piece that I want to share, it just always stood out the most to me as a psychologist, was that the self-level. So, at the self-level, when it comes to culture, there were numerous people, numerous little groups, little teams, actually around NASA that were looking deeply into this issue of the foam hitting the orbiter, and they were really concerned. They were really concerned, but they didn't have a lot of data. And NASA is very data-driven. And so, like I was starting to allude to earlier, it's really difficult. It was difficult to NASA culture at the time to say, hey, I know we've made a decision in the past. That foam is not something to worry about in flight, but let's just pretend that's not true. And also, I don't have any data to actually tell me that this is going to be a catastrophe, but it might be. So can we talk about it and spend some more money to get some imagery so we can just determine better. That was a request that actually was made, but it was being made in all of these indirect ways, all these indirect channels and because of the interrupt, personal fear to like really stand up and say, you know, hey, I'm actually terrified about this. And I don't have data to back me up. Every time the request to get more imagery, was shut down. It wasn't well understood. And at a certain point, people stopped fighting for it because they just didn't know. Steve Rush: Yeah, and as a result, a catastrophic event happened, it could have been prevented. Had somebody been a bit more forthright or had communicated more effectively? Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, I mean, there's probably numerous conversations, right? That could have gone differently. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Laura Gallaher: And one of the additional challenges is, if they did in fact get the imagery and discover, oh no, this is quite a large hole that the foam has created in the orbiters wing. They actually didn't know what they would do about it. There was no clear path or plan to fix that problem. And so, part of what we believe is that, if I don't think that I know how to solve a problem, or if I don't think that there's anything that I can do about it, then subconsciously I might actually convince myself that it's not really a problem. And then not even allow myself to be fully aware of it. And that's a big part of what we think was happening when it came to the decision making of the shuttle program manager at the time, just, you know what, it's not an issue. There's nothing we can do about it, so it's not an issue. There's actually a quote in the Columbia accident, investigation board, almost exactly to that effect. Steve Rush: That's really fascinating. We could spend loads more time on that, I'm sure. But culturally, that kind of three layers that inside out model you just described, all played out here, you can still have a good culture, but that's where performance problems can happen. Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, it's, you know, there are so many things that unfortunately ended up working against the intention. Like one of the key things that was also happening for the agency was there was a lot of pressure, mean the shuttle program at this point was over 20 years old, it was constantly considered to be on the chopping block in terms of budget. Maybe they were afraid the program could be canceled. Everything that they were doing to build a space station would potentially be canceled. They had huge schedule pressure to get the international space station finished by a certain date. So, this whole like save the program mentality, led people to subconsciously make much more risky decisions than they would have otherwise. And we equate it to, you know, if there's a large beam, just going 50 feet off of, you know, the Sears Tower and I put a hundred-dollar bill at the end, are you going to walk out and get it? Most people would say, no, I'm going to pass. But if I put your child out at the end of that beam, are you going to go and get your child? Steve Rush: Yeah, it changes the dynamic somewhat, doesn't it? Yeah. Dr. Laura Gallaher: Absolutely, so when it's like save the program, saves the baby. Because that's how the program, the shuttle program felt for a lot of people, they would subconsciously start making riskier and riskier decisions to save the program. So riskier decisions to try to maintain schedule, riskier decisions to say, oh, we don't have to worry about that right now because we need to keep moving forward. And so those were a lot of the things that we helped leaders pay attention to and take a look into. Steve Rush: Some great lessons too. Dr. Laura Gallaher: Absolutely. Steve Rush: So, you were then hired by Walt Disney to help with their brand. And this is another interesting dynamic in so much as that when people think of Walt Disney they think of this high energy, positive culture. Tell us a little bit about what your experience was like with Walt Disney and then how that might have changed their perspectives around what culture meant for them? Dr. Laura Gallaher: When, I was working for Disney. I was really excited about what they were focusing on because the big culture change, they were wanting to bring was around changing how I did performance management. And if you think about performance management in any organization, if you ask people like, hey, how do you like it your performance management process and system? It tends to just get met with groans, right? Leaders start to look at those conversations as like performance rating, justification conversations, employees tend to feel, you know, demoralized and frustrated and judged. They feel like they ended up trying to defend their own performance. Like almost nobody likes them. And the worst part is they don't actually tend to improve performance, which is the whole point. They're supposed to help improve performance. And so, what I loved about what they were doing was they wanted to get away from this whole idea of, you know, judging the people and saying, here's your rating, right? We're going to grade you now to say, no, we want to train leaders how to coach. It's a totally different part of the brain. It's a different way to show up, it requires growth mindset, right? And not just for oneself, but a belief that this person I'm talking to can and absolutely will grow. And we're in it together kind of thing. And so, I thought that was a really exciting project that they were doing and huge because it changes so much of what people are comfortable with. This idea of like, it's so much, we just kind of give people a grade and then move forward. And so, I was working with them primarily on that project. And it was actually still an ongoing project when I made the decision to leave and focus full-time with GALLAHER EDGE. Steve Rush: It's a massive mindset shift though, isn't it? Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yes. Steve Rush: Moving away from self-justification of here's what I've done versus here's how I'm helping the future evolve, which is what that coaching culture will create, right? Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, part of what I took from that, and I have continued to build on with the clients I work with now is a paradigm chapter, I mention model chapter around, what does it mean to look at your employee's performance? Stop thinking about your employee's performance as a result of, you know, your employee's competence, right? It's their performance is actually a result of their performance and your performance and the relationship the two of you have together. And when you start to think about your employee's performance in that way, then it really makes it feel in these conversations like this is you and me on the same side, working toward a solution together versus that you versus me thing that happens with those performance justification conversations, right? Of the more traditional style. Steve Rush: Exactly, and the other really strange notion I've found is that you actually can't manage performance when it's done, it's done. When you have achieved a result, it's done, it's locked in time and history from that point onwards and therefore spending time over analyzing that is almost counter-intuitive, isn't it? Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, it can take people backwards. You may remember where this came from Steve. I can't remember the attribution, but feed forward instead of feedback. Steve Rush: Yeah, it's something I deployed all the time, Dr. Laura Gallaher: Love it. It's such a powerful concept and it starts to become like we use this communication framework. It's an acronym, Fric. It's FRIC. And so, you know, useful, especially when you think about this whole paradigm is shifting performance management away from rating and judging and more into just regular coaching conversations. We want it to be regular. We want it to be timely. We want it to happen in the moment. And so sometimes that it's hard. People are like, Ooh, these are hard conversations. So go ahead and start with the fear of the feeling. Get that out of the way, acknowledge if there is any emotion that you're noticing within yourself as your parts of the conversation, just lead with vulnerability. The R is for request, what do you want? And this is an example of feed forward. So, I'm not harping on somebody for something that like you've said, Steve is done. It's in the past, it's over, it cannot be managed, but I can make a request of what I would like from you in the future. And it's not a demand, it's a request. And then the, I is for inquiry, which is essentially, you know, what can I do to make it easier for you to honor my request? And this is recognizing that whole co-creation idea, this recognizes like, hey, whatever's happening with us, whatever's happening with the performance. We're both creating it. We're both contributing to it. And I think I see something that I'd like from you, that's my request. What do you see within me? What would you like for me? How can I also participate and move together with you towards a solution? And then you want to get to at least one commitment, maybe two. And sometimes it's more, sometimes people have some communication debt and they don't really talk openly for a while. And so, they actually want to go back and forth to make multiple requests. And what they're doing is they're designing how they want to work together. And it's very, very effective at getting people past some of these conversations that they normally avoid, whether it comes to improving performance or improving team dynamics or anything like that. Steve Rush: I love the simplicity of that little model and you can actually help just frame the conversation as well if you use that simple process as well. And one of the other things I also noticed that kind of is aligned to that almost is the principle. When people talk about performance, I get people to talk about the performer rather than performance, because the performer drags their performance, between better and different. Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yes, very true. Yeah, I keep the focus on the person. Steve Rush: Love it. What are the things that you're working on with GALLAHER EDGE and blending that psychology and industrial psychology together? Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, so this is really fun. So, I mentioned Dr. Phillip Meade is my business partner and he and I worked at a closely at NASA following the Space Shuttle Columbia accident. So, we've worked together now for, I guess, about maybe 15, 16 years, something like that. And so, he's got this industrial engineering background and I've got this industrial organizational psychology background. And so, when we bring that together, it's been for me at least, it's been really cool because I get to stay really focused on the psychological elements. I get to stay deep within the human issues that are going on because humans within ourselves, we are these complex adaptive systems, right. But then at the organizational level, there's this whole macro, you know, systems, theory, systems thinking, and how can we really make sure that we're fully designing everything, so we use metaphors of like, you know, designing a car, like, what are the design requirements of a vehicle? Are you trying to create like a dump truck that can carry heavy loads? Are you trying to design a race car that can turn really quickly around a corner? Like there's no good or bad, but let's just be really intentional. So, he's brought so much of that macro, like organizational level thinking and allowing me to stay really focused on the human side. And we've built this model that really connects all of that, where we focus on these cultural traits, these things that emerge, you know, maturity, diversity, community, and unity, but we tie it deep into human motivation, like fundamental human motivation. We cause that there are four key drivers within us. And this gets you away from carrots and sticks, right? This is just human staff. We are all driven for growth, for belonging, for connection and for identity. And so, you know, these are like the missing links. We talk about linking the human beings together in a way that we can tap into these drivers, these fundamental motivations, and then what we get are these emergent traits. And so that's been a really exciting process. We've writing a book about that and tying in all the work that we did with NASA's culture, following the accident, what we've learned and how we've continued to apply that throughout working with different clients throughout different industries over the years. Steve Rush: It'd be great to get you and Phillip back on a later show when the books out and really get into some of that together. Dr. Laura Gallaher: That will be fantastic. Steve Rush: So, from the last time we met, which is you present as a really confident, successful individual, who's got a huge track record of success and cultural shifting and changing behind you, but it hasn't always been that way for you. And I remember from the last time we met; you had this real problem with imposter syndrome for some time until you had this aha moment. And I wonder if he might be able to tell us a little bit about that. Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah absolutely. Gosh, imposter syndrome. Well, I mean the first time, the first time that I really felt imposter syndrome was certainly when I began my work with NASA, I was actually 24 years old when I was hired. And I was asked to consult directly with the senior executive service director of engineering, which was this new organization that was being formed, right. As we were reorganizing the space center. I'm like, okay. Now what is it you're going to be able to share with him that he's going to look at me as this 24-year-old kid and go, okay, great, thanks so much. Steve Rush: Right. Dr. Laura Gallaher: So, I really struggled with that when I very first started and I noticed that in this technique, this took me many years to figure out. That it really came down to a lack of genuine self-acceptance, right. Which means being fully okay with myself. Exactly as I was in the moment, all my flaws, all my imperfections, all the things I didn't know, and also being okay with my talents and my strengths. So, in the beginning, the imposter syndrome hit me super hard and it would result in a lot of like, I would end up being rigid sometimes, right. So instead of being more flexible and co-creating with the people that I was working with, I was really just wanting to be right. And what that meant is I was focusing too much of my energy on trying to prove that I was right, rather than focusing on getting it right. And, you know, working with them and where I really saw that affect my performance was actually with my peers. So, the crazy irony about my early career, you know, I was brought in to NASA to really help them focus on psychological safety. How can we help leaders create psychological safety so that people are no longer afraid to say, hey, I don't have any data, but I'm really afraid about this. Can we please have an open conversation or whatever it is, raise a dissenting opinion, champion a dissenting opinion. And so that's what I was working on with my internal customers and that was working out reasonably well. But I went through this experience. It was a five-day workshop called the Human Element just a couple of years into my career. Threw out that week, I got all kinds of feedback just as we were going through. And it was a lot of stuff that felt really weird at the time. But the short version is, I found out that I was actually engaging in a lot of the same exact behaviors with my team, that I was asking the leaders in my personal organizations to not do. So, I wasn't creating psychological safety within my team. I was shutting people down without realizing it. And that realization like shook me to my core. I mean, I didn't even realize up to that point that I had low self-acceptance or lower self-acceptance. I mean, it's not dichotomous obviously, but it really made me take a much deeper look at things. And so, it took me still a couple more years to really figure it out and recognize that, you know, being competent isn't about knowing stuff. That's a very, you know, like grade school kind of mentality that children are taught, you know, learn this stuff, memorize it, take a test and then it's right or wrong. It's very binary, very black and white, but competence isn't knowing stuff. Competence is the ability to learn, grow, adapt, figure things out. Steve Rush: Yeah. Dr. Laura Gallaher: And I can do that with other people and I don't have to be right. And so, I understood my own defense mechanisms to a much greater degree. And once I got there, I realized that this idea of imposter syndrome, Steve, it's actually very like arrogant and judgmental because if I have imposter syndrome, part of what I'm saying is, oh my gosh, these people around me are so stupid. I have fooled all of them into thinking that I actually know what I'm doing. And I was like, whoa, like I thought imposter syndrome was kind of this like internally, like, oh, you know, I'm just, I'm insecure. And yes, it is. And insecurity leads us to not only judge ourselves, but judge other people. And so, it just started to completely shift my whole lens as I looked at what this meant. It's like, you know what, do I know everything? Not even close, right. The more I learned, the more I realized, I don't know, but my value isn't just in knowing stuff. My value is in being able to work with other people and continue to learn and grow and adapt and even whatever it is that I think, I know, I don't know anything, like were all wrong all the time. And so, if we can just shift the lens and get away from binary thinking, I think a lot of imposter syndrome will start to fall away from people. Steve Rush: Yeah, and by asking more questions and learning more things, not only do we get richer, but we actually create more aha moments in other people as well. Dr. Laura Gallaher: Absolutely, yeah. Asking questions and really listening are two of the most powerful and sometimes underutilized behaviors and skills. Steve Rush: Yeah, so I if our listeners are listening to us talk about imposter syndrome and they have a perception that that could be them. What would be your counsel to them to maybe go about dealing with that? Dr. Laura Gallaher: So anytime we can develop a practice of self-acceptance, it's going to significantly reduce this feeling of imposter syndrome. And so, I define self-acceptance as being fully okay with yourself. Exactly as you are right now, that includes your flaws and imperfections as well as your talents and strengths. So, I'll give you a couple really tangible things that listeners can do to develop a practice of self-acceptance. And it's a practice you can think about it, like something you want to do on a daily basis, brushing your teeth, for example, or, you know, moving your body, some kind of physical exercise. It's not a light switch you just get to flip on and off. Okay, I've accepted myself. It's a practice, it's a rewiring of your brain. So, one way to practice higher self-acceptance is, we call it taking credit. Another way to frame it is like, what am I proud of myself for? So, let's say for example, I want to start running. And I'm like, I'm going to run three miles and I get all my gear on and I go out there and I run and maybe I'm like not quite a mile in, and I'm starting to cram and I can hardly breathe and my legs are on fire. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't think I can do this. And so, I might have this raging imposter syndrome in the moment and I'm like, oh my God, like, I want to be a runner. Who am I kidding? I can't possibly be a runner. So, taking credit would be, instead of focusing on the gap of, oh my gosh, I wanted to run three miles. I only ran one. What is wrong with me? So, embarrassing. Like I'm an idiot, why did I think I could do that? Right. All that really negative self-talk the inner critic. Taking credit is saying, you know what? I am proud of myself for getting out there and running a mile because that was a mile more than I ran yesterday, or I'm proud of myself for getting out there and giving it a shot because that was a kind of a tough step for me. And I want to allow myself to feel good about that as an incremental step. So, taking credit or being proud of yourself for things that represent courage, represent progress, doing that regularly will actually accelerate your whole journey of growth and make it much easier for you to get over this whole idea of like, oh my gosh, I'm a phony and they're all going to figure me out. Steve Rush: I love that. Dr. Laura Gallaher: So that's one tip. And then I'll give one more tip too, which is around forgiving yourself. So, we're really trying to quiet the inner critic with a lot of these and like give more volume to the champion voice. So, forgiving yourself, it's so easy for us to fall into a pattern of beating ourselves up. Most people actually, at some point in their lives, they believed that they have to beat themselves up or they won't learn, grow, improve. They think that they need that really mean voice in order to actually get their button gear. And until you can truly experiment with quieting that voice and leaning just in the champion voice, you'll never learn that there are so many other things that still motivate you to move forward because it's something that we're just fundamentally wired to do is grow as humans. So, find the things that you want to forgive yourself for and forgive yourself as quickly as you can, even if it doesn't feel totally real, like let's say that I miss a meeting with a client, you know, something happened with my schedule or just, I don't know, I dropped the ball and I missed a meeting with a client. I could beat myself up. I could get all mired down in all of the ways that you know, oh my gosh, who are thinking, I'm kidding. Trying to, run this business, trying to be a consultant. I can't even show up to a meeting on time. That's my inner critic, right? And she can be really brutal or I can say, okay, you know what? You actually did have a lot going on. And you know, that you would never intentionally miss a meeting. So, let's make sure that we learned from this and, you know, whatever it was that caused me to miss the meeting, I'm going to make sure that I always have a reminder set for myself. So that doesn't happen again. And it's okay. And so, it's this combination of having self-compassion while also recognizing that, you know, I'm not living up to my current standard. And so, when you can bring in that balance of holding a boundary for yourself while also having self-compassion, when you fail to meet it, that's you forgiving yourself. And these are practices that when you do them every day, your self-acceptance will get higher and higher and higher. And not only will you end up defeating these imposter syndrome moments, but you'll just be able to work so much better with other people. You'll be able to laugh at yourself. You'll be more attentive to other people, and you'll be able to emphasize more easily. You're going to basically have a deeper trust in your underlying ability to cope with whatever the world throws at you, because it's always going to throw things at you. Steve Rush: Exactly, right. And what you've just described is almost a rewiring of that neurological pathways that we've created those previously bad habits. Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yes. Steve Rush: With replacing them with positive rituals and positive behaviors. And I love the fact that you call it self-acceptance practice because exactly that's what it is. You'll continually have the practice at it until it becomes second nature, right? Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yes, absolutely. It's a practice and it gets really metta to Steve because if I find myself falling away from my self-acceptance practice, I can actually practice self-acceptance around that. Steve Rush: Yeah, your right. Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, so, you know what, I have actually been really hard on myself lately and I haven't been using some of these tools and that's okay. It's a lot of wiring I'm working against and I am committed to bringing in that practice back. Steve Rush: Excellent, brilliant. Okay, so this part show, we close out on three things, and the first thing we're going to close out on is to tap into the leadership aspects of your work in your career. And I'll ask you to narrow down some of those things that you've been working on, but to call that, perhaps your top three leadership hacks or your top tips or ideas, what would the top three be? Dr. Laura Gallaher: Top three, okay. The first one we've alluded to a little bit when we talked about slow down to speed up, so, pause. The power of pause, you know, I think that when leaders are really struggling, it's usually because things are moving so fast and in the moment their energy is not leaving enough space, for other people to truly be who they are and sort of this angsty energy can spread throughout. And it ends up stifling conversation and decreasing the effectiveness of decision making. So, taking more moments of pause in conversation, I think significantly improves the quality of those conversations. And that's another practice that leaders can bring into their daily lives. I invite my clients to do like an eight second pause between every meeting, between sending an email, literally just eight seconds of breath in and out, and then onto the next task. And it just sort of brings a calmer energy to the whole thing, which I believe is much needed. Steve Rush: Yeah, it's almost a little bit of a reboot, isn't it? Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yes, oh, I love that framing of it. Yeah, that's really good. Another one is listening, listening, listening, listening, and I know that Steve, you do a lot of working in change and I'm sure you've heard this too. I work with so many leaders who, when they're wanting to bring about a change and they're feeling resistance, either passive or active, but the people just aren't, they're not doing it. They're not stepping in line. They tend to focus on, I guess I have to tell them again, I guess I have to tell them differently. I guess I have to tell them louder, right. And what I want them to do instead is, like you were saying, ask questions and listen, listen, they may not even know themselves. Why they're resisting the change or whatever it is that you're asking them to do. They may not be self-aware enough, but when you can ask those questions and really hold space and truly listen, not only to what they're saying, but listen for how they're feeling. Listened to the things they're not actually saying out loud, you will increase their self-awareness as well as your own. And then you're going to actually know, oh, okay, this is the true problem for us to solve here so that we can get back on the same page. So, listening, very powerful. And then the third one I would say is openness, which another way you can talk about that is vulnerability, I think. I think this is becoming something that leaders are understanding more and more, but too many leaders I think still believe that they're supposed to know, or they're supposed to be able to figure things out. And their lack of vulnerability in conversation leads them to actually show up with more rigidity, which again, stifles communication, it can shut down conversation and it can harm trust actually. So, when leaders can go first with vulnerability, go first with being open about what they're really thinking and feeling, being open about you know, what they'd liked. We use that Fric acronym again, here to invite leaders to be more open, then others tend to also be more open. And that's where we get more information flowing back and forth. Trust increases, collaboration increases and performance, super Steve Rush: Super lessons. Thank you. Next part of the show we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something in your work or your life hasn't worked out. Could even screwed up, but as a result of the experience you've learned from it, and it's now serving you well, what would your Hack to Attack be? Dr. Laura Gallaher: Hmm, well, I think, you know, the biggest one for me for sure, was what I had described earlier with, you know, my experience finding out that I was actually stifling the people that I worked with without even realizing it. But I'll go a little bit deeper into that whole recovery process because once I became more self-aware and I realized that I was not actually creating psychological safety within my team, my immediate go-to response was to try to imitate other people who seemed like they were doing it well. And it seemed, you know, I think I was still like mid-twenties at that point. So, I was like, oh, this is great, you know, I can just watch behavior and I can model that behavior. I even had like acting experience as a kid. I was like, oh, I can totally nailed this. I can behave like this. I can act this way. And I came to learn, unfortunately in the first several months of trying this approach, that trying to only shift my behavior only shift how I was showing up on the outside without actually believing anything differently about the world, or really just sort of being in a lot of inner turmoil. I was actually still hurting trust. So, people were noticing that I was showing up differently, so totally know how to be around me because they could feel that I wasn't being myself. And so, you know, I think the Hack to Attack would be to don't think that you can just focus on shifting behavior and think that all the rest will follow, really see what the belief is underneath. How can you rewire your brain? That's driving the behavior. So, the behavior changes is a more natural, more emergent reality. So, focus on what is it that I believe about myself and the people around me, because that's, what's driving my behavior. How can I shift those beliefs around? Because you know that at least some of those beliefs are wrong, right? So much of what we believe is wrong. So, if I can shift my beliefs and allow the behavior change to follow, that's going to be a much more genuine way to approach growth. Steve Rush: And ironically, you know, from a psychology perspective, you know, this more than most being an organizational psychologist, we have as human beings in innate BS monitor through our neuro transmitters. Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yes. Steve Rush: Whereas we listing and smelling it and sussing this out straight away that it's not congruent. And then straight away we can recognize that it doesn't feel right. Dr. Laura Gallaher: Absolutely. Even if we're not totally sure what it is, we're like that conversation did not feel good. Steve Rush: Exactly, exactly. And the last thing we're going to do is ask you to do a bit of time travel bump into Laura at 21. And you now get to give us some advice, what would it be? Dr. Laura Gallaher: Oh, I would want her to recognize as early as possible that she does have very strong perfectionist tendencies and that this drive with perfectionist tendencies is actually working against her. So, I would want her to lean into being messy and recognize that, you know, you go forward even five or six years in your life and nobody gives a crap about your grades. So, like there were so many things that I was so focused on that just didn't matter. And of course, you know, getting good grades in college helped me get into grad school and that's great, but I literally will tell students now, especially those who are in grad school and like, you know what, just learn, focus on learning. I'm like, I don't know if I would've listened to this advice myself, but I was so focused on the evaluative component of it. And any advice that I could have given to Laura at 21 to encourage her to instead focus on the journey and focus on the learning and growth that's occurring rather than this sort of, how do I look to other people? Steve Rush: Fantastic advice, really good stuff. So, we're going to have to find some way of working together, you and I, because we've got lots of parallels and lots of commonalities in terms of the work that we do. Dr. Laura Gallaher: I would love that. Steve Rush: We have to do that. Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yes. Steve Rush: But outside of today, our listeners are probably wanting to learn how they can get to know a bit more about you, GALLAHER EDGE, when the book comes out, how can they find him? Where's the best place for us to send them? Dr. Laura Gallaher: Best place to find me is at gallaheredge.com. I know a lot of people think it's Gallagher, because that's way more common, but it's actually GALLAHER. So, gallaheredge.com and there you can you can email me and you can see our phone number there, or you can just see the different ways that we work with people. Steve Rush: We will make also, they're in our show notes so that people can go straight away from listening to this and connect with you. Dr. Laura Gallaher: Thank you. Steve Rush: Laura, I love talking with you. It's been a few months since we met last and every time, I do speak with you, I get this real sense of desire for more learning. You spark things in me. So that's been great and I hope our listeners have got that out of our show today. And I just want to say thank you for coming on and being part of our community and wish you every success with the book launch. And we'll have to get you back on the show in the future. Dr. Laura Gallaher: Thank you so much, Steve. Steve Rush: Thank you, Laura.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.  

Matt Somers is a super coach who helps senior leaders to become better coaches; he wrote the amazing book, Coaching At Work. You can learn bucket loads from Matt in this show including: Why leader coaches get confused between leadership and expertise The importance of focusing on the right type of goal How to coach in a way of being as a leader/ line manager What the “Peak” coaching model is and how to use it   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Matt below: Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattsomers/ Matt's Website: https://www.mattsomers.com Matt on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MattSomers   Full Transcript Below   ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker. Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you Our special guest on today's show is Matt Somers. Matt is a management consultant specializing in providing coaching skills for managers and leaders. He's got over 20 years' experience as developing leaders as coaches. But before we get a chance to speak with Matt, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: There's a coaching theme in today's show. So, for those of you that have been regular listeners, you may have heard me talk about the notion of having helpful conversations. There are purists out there who condemn coaches for giving advice, tips, and ideas, and straying off the line of pulling the information and helping their coaches self-discover. Well, the lines are often blurred between coaching, teaching, mentoring, and counseling. And the reason for this is that many people receiving coaching or coachees are they're often referred to have challenges, situations, and goals that are not very linear in fact, need a blended approach. And that's why I invite you today to reframe coaching into having a helpful conversation that way we don't beat ourselves up for not sticking to the script. You'll hear Matt talk today about the coaching leadership style, which embraces the helpful conversation philosophy. A coaching leadership style is an approach that creates the culture of high-performance. The characteristics of this coach is collaboration, empowerment, fulfillment, and collaboration is the most important these characteristics. And this is often contrasted against the command-and-control approach, which we all know stifles potential. Coaching leadership incorporates, coaching mindsets, and behaviors, synthesizing them to create a highest potential and the highest performing type of leadership. And it does it by unlocking and enabling potential. So, the next time one of your team or a client asks you for coaching, take the opportunity to consider your approach, but don't get hung up over the conversation. Just make sure it's a helpful one. I just want to take this time to say thank you to our listeners. Who've been sending us information and ideas that appear in The Leadership Hacker News week on week. So, if you also have a topic or an idea that you'd like us to cover, please just continue sending them in and get in touch with us through our various social media sites. So that's been The Leadership Hacker News, let's get into the show. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Matt Somers is a super coach who helped senior leaders to become better coaches and have more powering and sometimes difficult conversations. Matt is also the author of Coaching At Work. Matt, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Matt Somers: Thanks for having me on. Steve, great to be here. Steve Rush: So, tell us a little bit about Matt? Matt Somers: Tell you a little bit about Matt? The place to start probably is, I'm a failed banker. So, I came out of education and started working in banking here in the UK and found that I wasn't very good at that Steve. I would lend people money; they had a habit of not giving it back. These days, they probably qualify you for a knighthood, you know, but back in the early 1980s, when I started my career, that wasn't much. So, I guess somebody somewhere thought, well, we need to do something else with this guy. And I found myself in the world of personnel and training and so on, you know, and found that that was a very comfortable place for me to be. I really enjoyed this idea of thinking more about the people who work this side of the counter, rather than the public, the customers, the other side. So, began really a lifelong interest in the idea of developing people to the point where later on in my time in banking, I found myself on a coaching course and learning about coaching. This would have been the early nineties where the idea of coaching and business was still pretty new. To me, it came along as an absolute revelation. And I remember thinking, well, if I'd been managed this way? Life would have been a lot easier, you know, and I'd have probably gone a lot further. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matt Somers: And then when I took my exit from banking and set up by myself the obvious specialism that was suggesting itself to me, I suppose, was to get into the idea of the leader as coach and courses and programs and so on with that in mind. Steve Rush: Awesome, and you've dedicated your whole career really, since then in helping other people and helping leaders think of themselves more like coaches. Matt Somers: I have, yes. I mean, I've done other things. And I suppose though that one of the things that I discovered was that there was little else that seemed to be as useful to the leaders that I was working with. Then getting their head around the notion of coaching for performance, getting results from their staff, making that transition from being somebody who got results for him or herself through their own endeavors. Through to getting results via other people, which I think is one of the trickiest career transitions to make Steve, isn't It? It's very obvious in say something like sales, where typically we take the best performing sales person at that point in time and give them the role of sales manager and then wonder why they struggle a bit, but the skill sets almost diametrically opposed. They're very different discipline. Steve Rush: So, if somebody said to you Matt, what is a leader as a coach, and how does that differ? Just give us your spin on that. Matt Somers: Well, this is really interesting to me because I'm going to say, I'm not sure it does in important ways. So, I have this idea that leaders or coaches, whether they like it or not. And the Genesis of that idea, as I said in the previous answer, alongside one in my coaching courses would do other sorts of leadership development type activity. And I would often get the groups I was working with to produce lists, and I would have them list the qualities of an effective leader. And then on other programs would have them list the qualities of an effective coach. And what I began to find more and more was the two lists were very, very similar to the point of being identical. For example, qualities that were often cited on both lists would be trustworthiness. It would be able to keep focus. It would be being a good listener. I mean, boy, that came up time and time again. So, I realized that certainly viewed through the lens of what is it that our people want, then the roles of leader and coach are synonymous in my experience. Now, you know, other people have fought me over this and that's fine because I understand that there are, you know, if the two Venn diagrams overlap at that point, then there's clearly sort of other things that both roles do separately. But in terms of the leader as coach, you know, I found that the level of skills and attributes and qualities, they're so similar. Steve Rush: So, I'd love to kick this around a little bit more. Matt Somers: Okay. Steve Rush: The whole principle of I'm a leader and leader by the way, as you know, I've been bleating on about for years, it doesn't have to be a hierarchical thing. It's somebody who assumes that role and provides that support, council, encouragement. It doesn't have to be a job role, but let's just assume for this conversation, we're talking about leadership in terms of hierarchy and management levels. Matt Somers: Okay. Steve Rush: What's your experience that as people gain that hierarchical levels, so they become more senior in their roles. Do you observe them coaching more or less? Matt Somers: That's a great question, Isn't it? I think I observed them coaching less. Steve Rush: Yeah, that's my observation too. And I just wondered what your thoughts were as to why that would be? Matt Somers: Well, I think firstly, that is because of a confusion between leadership and expertise. My observation would be that leaders often feel that they assert or they feel they have to assert their leadership through their expertise. They've got to be the guy with the answers. If people come to them with a problem, leadership requires them to solve that problem, you know, to seen this before, to have encountered this issue before and know what to do about it. And I think, well, my goodness me, if that wasn't the case before February 20, it certainly isn't the case now, post COVID. I find that a lot of work I'm doing is with leaders who say, look man, you know, my experience, my expertise is kind of redundant now. We're coming back, to this so-called new normal and the rules of the game have changed. How do I help my own people when I don't any longer have the answers? You know? So, I think one of the reasons why leaders coach less is a false expectation that they shouldn't have to somehow if that makes sense. Steve Rush: Yeah, it does. And I think the other notion is, as a senior leader, who is also maybe managing senior leaders, there might be an assumed level of capability and expertise that requires them to coach less we're in my experience actually, is that that's a great opportunity to really unlock that knowledge, skills and capability to coach more. Matt Somers: I'd agree with you. I think it's this idea of leadership by osmosis. You know, somehow, you're supposed to be imbued with all of these skills and abilities overnight, because somebody now put the word leader on your business card, on the description. I have a friend of mine, quite a well-known speaker called Andy Hanselman. And he has a lovely turn of phrase when he says, leadership's the job you get by being good at something else. Which goes back to this idea of, you know, the best performing sales person, turn them into leaders, wonder why they struggle. Because in many ways, you know, leadership is a learned skill, isn't it? there's certainly skills and attributes that that can be developed even if one is a sort of natural leader to begin with. So, it's fair to expect that people are going to need to go through that learning journey and get a chance to practice their leadership skills, get a chance to develop them and to be able to acknowledge when they're struggling with the leadership requirement. Steve Rush: That's right, yeah. And I guess also many leaders are also line managers and there is maybe a subtle difference with coaching as a line manager. We have skin in the game, having absolutely no vested interest. And I wondered what your thoughts and observations were about that as a notion? Matt Somers: I agree with that. I think if I recall the days when I would have groups assembled in front of me, we we'd be running coaching programs and this would often come up in discussion and I would find myself saying, I think people like me, external coaches in some ways have an easier job than does the internal coach, because we don't have those other requirements to manage at the same time. So, if I'm a line manager coaching a group of people. Well, I've also probably got to manage their workflow, you know, I've got sickness absence to deal with. I've got all sorts of other things going on at the same time, including by the way that I might have to be maybe the disciplinarian sometimes with some of those same folks, you know, having to have some difficult conversations and have people wake up and smell the beans. I think that, you know, coaching alongside other management responsibilities can be a tricky combination, but it can certainly be done. Because I think where the coaching approach is sort of inherently part of the managers or the leadership styles. So, it's coaching as part and parcel of who I am and how I conduct myself rather than coaching as a task that I pick up and put down like a performance appraisal or something else. Then I think the beauty of coaching is, it enables you to have that sort of default way of dealing with people that you can move in and out of then, you know, and perhaps toughen things up if that's even the right expression if you need to. Steve Rush: Yeah, so what I think I heard you say, was coaching as a way of being rather than something that you periodically do? Matt Somers: Definitely, yeah, definitely. I think that's where the prize is. And again, when I'm working with leaders who wants to learn about coaching, I think one of the barriers that they'll start the training with is, where the hell am I going to find time for this? You know, if I'm not busy enough already, and now this guy's going to have me wanting to do all these coaching conversations. Well, the way that I address that is to say that all of those occasions in which you could do some great coaching aren't happening anyway, you're just maybe not seeing them as a coaching opportunity, but I think really as a line manager or a leader, and I'm going to make the distinction and say to me that somebody who has to get results through others, at least in part, you know, so my assumption is that somebody got the typical sort of six or eight people that reporting into them. Were really at any time, one of those people calls you up and has a conversation about something that they're struggling with or something that's already going quite well. They getting bored now and want to take it to the next level. Those are coaching opportunities; the day is full of them. And so, in some ways, you know, if we abandon this idea, that coaching has to be some formal timetable set up and instead it's part and parcel of natural day-to-day activity. Well, then you don't need to find additional time to do a new task. Steve Rush: That's right, yeah. Great stuff. I remember from when the last time you and I met. Goals have been something that's forefront of your mind, that's part of your kind of coaching philosophy. I just wanted to explore the fact that in the changing world that we're in now, how easy is it to help people keep focused on their goals when the world around them is changing so readily? Matt Somers: Yeah, well it depends what you mean by goals, I think first and foremost. Steve Rush: That's really a good place to start, right? Matt Somers: Yeah, well, because when we think about say that the smart model. The goal ought to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound, or variations thereof, those what I think of I've come to appreciate as performance goals, you know, so run a hundred meters in under 10 seconds, or put a thousand people through health and safety training in a given year. We need only to think about the start of 2020 when the pandemic hit. So, you realize how vulnerable those sorts of goals are to changing circumstances. So perhaps the way to deal with that is to recognize that there are other sort of elements or other parts of goals If you like, now I'm going to say this was popularized most recently by Simon Sinek. You know, the idea is start with the why. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matt Somers: So, the why or the end goal or the dream goal using my same two examples would be, I want to win the Olympic gold, or we want to eliminate accidents, so if we keep our eye on the long term, the ultimate goal, then we can adjust the performance goals underneath that without quite so much disruption and the way to do that. There were various ways, people have vision boards or storytelling is very popular now to describe that sort of high-level goal. And then the ones that cascade from that we can be much more nimble with, you know, they sort of survive ever changing circumstances. Steve Rush: Yeah, and I guess also underneath those performance goals, there are things that you have every single day that you have high levels of control over that make those performance goals become more of a reality, right? Matt Somers: Well, I call those processes, yes. So again, if we follow those couple of examples. The dream is to win Olympic gold, and then the performance goal might be on one occasion, run a hundred meters in under 10 seconds, but there need to be supporting processes of course, wouldn't they? Training regimen and diet, all of that, same with the health and safety requirements, you know, you're going to need six sheets and control and check mechanisms and all sorts of processes. And when I'm coaching people, one of the things I find is often very useful is to make sure that those three things line up. The end goal or the dream, the performance goals, and the processes are all synchronized if you see what I mean. Steve Rush: Yeah, totally. And I guess without that focus on those processes and performance, the end goal, isn't going to happen anyway. Because you have absolutely no control over it, right? Matt Somers: Of course, yeah. And I think the other thing that happens and it often makes people in a work situation, very frustrated is, maybe the end goal has changed or has inside of them, you know, what they consider to be important, but they're still pursuing the same old processes. You know, their work life therefore becomes very sort of boring and frustrating and tedious because their end point has changed, their other goals and processes haven't sort of caught up and it can happen the other way round as well. This is very common; I think in coaching. That people are very focused on the sort of the end point, the big picture, the vision. But haven't really thought through, down to a detailed level. What does this require me to do sort of day in day out or week in, week out in order to move slowly, gradually, but definitely towards that? So, you need all three, you know, we need the inspiration and the mechanism and the goal as well. You know, that sort of determines what that looks like, the specification, Steve Rush: I wonder if it's because those folks who are very successful during the pandemic perhaps had that focus around what was in their control versus those who felt out of control at that time? Matt Somers: Yeah, I think so. And I think that other people may be found that during the pandemic, certainly at the start, I mean, the stuff that I follow online was full of people who had escape, what do you call it? The mouse is wheel, you know, they were like a rat that had been lifted out of the maze and then stopped sort of running around, banging their head against a walls. And it actually, maybe for the first time in their career, really been able to stop and sit down and think and wonder about what they really wanted from life and what was it all about? And I think we're still seeing that shake out now. And I think it'll carry on for some time to come before we, as a society have moved fully through that process. Steve Rush: Yeah, I agree Matt. Matt Somers: Very interesting times. Very interesting times to be working in fields like yours, and mine Steve. Steve Rush: Definitely, yeah. And the great news is, with a little bit of focus, little bit of clarity of some of the things that people can have high levels of controlling, it sets the motivation and momentum off, doesn't it? Matt Somers: It does, yeah. Steve Rush: And you wrote the very successful book Coaching At Work and within that you created the peak coaching model and I'd love to kick around the concept of what the peak coaching model is and how we could use it? Matt Somers: Okay, sure. Well, the first thing I want to say is that model it's very much a synthesis of the work of two main influences on me. Now, one would be, listeners might have heard of these guys. One would be Tim Gallway, most famous for The Inner Game of Tennis, but also a series of inner game books. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matt Somers: And then the late Sir John Whitmore here in the UK. Steve Rush: Great guy. I had the pleasure working with them about 15 years ago. Matt Somers: Oh, well, okay. So, you know, he was a great guy. We miss him terribly and he and Tim did a lot of work together, of course, so they influenced each other, but I want to say that I've always felt my book did a poor job of acknowledging them and the source of my ideas. So, I'm always very happy to sort of reinforce that a lot of what I talk about in my stuff, you know, very, very much builds on and take some of those ideas and resynthesize them. And my model that I wrote about in my book, I guess, would be take a while to explain, but I thought it might be nice just to pass on a couple of sorts of essences from that people can start to play with. Steve Rush: Awesome, let's do it. Matt Somers: Straightaway, hack. So, taken from the work of Tim Gallway is something that became known as the coaching equation and that you would set out as saying that a person's performance is equal to their potential minus the interference, right? So, if you can imagine that sort of express deserve formula, you've got a big P equals little P minus I. So seen in that way, if we want to improve performance. And you know, that itself comes under a number of guises, but it might be, you know, sales improvement or quality, or who knows how we would judge performance, but to improve that we can do one of two things. We can either add to potential, and that's what a lot of Orthodox training and development is all about, isn't it? It's giving people more stuff to lean into. More skills, more experiences, or we can look at reducing or eliminating interference. And this to me is one of the ways in which coaching is different from other training and development methods. And I think that we do the latter of those less often. And there is low-hanging fruit by paying attention to that. One of the things that I encourage coaching leaders, coaching managers to do is, to speak what is interfering. You know, there might be external interference that could be to do with policy, position, procedures, culture, the way the organization runs more often though. It's what we might think of as internal interference that the individual who's trying to do, their best stuff is experiencing in the moment. So that is probably some sort of expression of fear or self-doubt. Imposter syndrome is very popular at the moment. People talking quite a lot about that, you know, the way in which mentally we get in our own way. So, there's a first hack, you know, rather than put all of our attention on raising potential, pay some attention to reducing interference. And I think you'll find that you know, there's some immediate headway to be made on that. Steve Rush: Great, I love that. I really love it. Matt Somers: And now the other hack. My model sort of goes on to build on that because performance, doing something that we're good at. Doing that well, I think is a key source of this idea of intrinsic motivation. Now, again, that in itself is a big topic, but intrinsic motivation to me means, you know, something that's motivating inherently in the work itself, rather than being introduced externally from outside, pay and another rewards. Performance, doing something well is a source of intrinsic motivation. But so too is learning and enjoyment. So, learning again, let me clarify. I don't mean necessarily going off on courses and qualifications, but finding the work interesting, you know, being able to be curious about things and get answers to questions and enjoyment. Okay, again, not necessarily something introduced from outside socializing or something like that, but just finding the work inherently enjoyable. But I think the mistake that we often make is to see those things as separate and almost competing activities. Steve Rush: Yeah. Matt Somers: Almost as if we could say, well, we can be performing, we can be learning, or we can be enjoying, but again, there's a quick win there. If we start seeing those things as part and part of the same experience, if we can start creating an environment for people in which they can perform, learn and enjoy at the same time, the potential for that to effect results is mammoth. You know, there's some real headway to be made there. Steve Rush: Yeah, sure is, definitely. So, we've tapped into a couple of coaching hacks. Now it's time for us to spin around a little bit and think about your leadership experience and all of the great leaders you work with and for, and the teams that you've led, what would be your top three leadership hacks Matt? Matt Somers: Well, I, again, I mean, many of them, I suppose, are going to resonate with the coaching approach, but maybe that's because I have this idea that they're almost one in the same thing, but I guess it comes down to three, three hacks. Ask, listen, and observe. So, to go through them one by one. Ask, if we think of, maybe we've got somebody working the telephone and they're editor in a customer service role or a sales role or something like that, they're working with customers. What I don't mean is the typical sort of high level, how did that call go? That's not what I mean, by asking more questions, it might be something like thinking about the call you've just had, at what point in that call, did you know you were going to have a successful outcome? And depending on what the answer is, we might delve into that more deeply. Well, was it something to do with the customer's tone or was it the word that they used? You know, when I ask a question that's really going to require the person that I'm leading or coaching to notice what's happening to them. You know, it's a subtly different sort of question. I think good leaders are able to be incisive. They're able to cause their people to pause for thoughts and learn from their own experience, so, asking more. Listening, that comes up always, doesn't it? Steve Rush: It does, yeah. Matt Somers: If we're trying to develop a leader's ability. And I think that of the countless times I've asked people to think about improving their listening, or what do they notice in those that do that? Well, three things are key. One is, use of silence. I think pausing, just being quiet as a leader, you know, enabling your people to speak. Find the words to describe their own thoughts without being hurried along, is massively important. Removing distractions, and I don't just mean, you know, get stuff out of the way behind when you're on a Zoom call. I think, I mean, probably remove internal distractions more. Worrying about the call that you've just had, or the calls that's going to come, to try to really give the person who's speaking in that present moment your fully on divided attention, difficult thought that is, again is key. And then the third listening tip would be to summarize using their own words. You know, there's something very engaging about hearing people saying, so if I've understood you correctly, what you seem to be saying is, and playing back their words, you've done that a couple of times on this call today, you know, it's really helpful in enabling people to think well. Steve Rush: Hmm, yeah. Matt Somers: And then observe, I mean more difficult these days, I guess if we're not doing quite as much face-to-face interaction as we once did. But it's really a question of, is the body dancing in tune with the words that the person you're using? And if it's not, if there's a dissonance there, it's perhaps being able to challenge that in a sensitive way by saying, okay, you know, you're telling me you're full of enthusiasm for this latest change initiative, but that's not what I'm seeing in the way that you're sitting. Is this something that we can talk about some more? So, those would be the three hacks to ask, to listen, to observe. Steve Rush: That's great. I love that last one as well. And I think it's probably one that we still don't tap into enough and it's that intuitive response when we see somebody in something that's in-congruent, as a coach and as a leader, as a coach. Our job is just a voice that, isn't it? Matt Somers: Yeah, I think so. I often say perhaps the big trick is just to do it from a place of curiosity. So, Steve, I'm noticing that what you're saying is X, Y, Z. But what I see is A, B, C, you know, it could be me, but could we just talk about this for a moment or two? So, it's almost providing that gentle opening for the person who's answering the question so, well, actually, now that you say that, yeah, here's what I'm feeling. And as a leader, that might be a difficult thing to have to hear, but I've always found that it's much better to get it out in the open, then this thing just kind of going on under the surface. Steve Rush: Definitely, so, and of course it could also be a bias from the coach themselves. And therefore, again, just by using your words of curiosity, by being curious about it, at least it gets it out. And therefore, we get to know whether it's true or not, don't we? Matt Somers: Yeah, what harm in the coach saying, well, this could be my bias, but, you know, because it's the spirit of exploration. I mean, to go back to Tim Gallwey I mentioned earlier on, he has this lovely turn of phrase, and he says that. Coaching is a conversation in which two people are learning. And yes, that's absolutely been my experience as well. This is not about the coach, you know, kind of doing something to somebody. It's two people meeting as equals, exploring a situation. And I invariably find out lots about the way that the world works and the way that people operate in it when I'm poaching people from the wonderful answers that they give me, you know, the fantastic thinking that they're able to do. Steve Rush: Yeah, great stuff. So next part of our show, we call Hack to Attack Matt. Matt Somers: Okay. Steve Rush: So, this is where something in your life or work hasn't worked out, but as a result of the experience, it's now serving you well, what would be your Hack to Attack? Matt Somers: Okay, my Hack to Attack. So, this goes back to my early career which I mentioned at the top was in high street banking. And when I was on the counter, we used to call it in the UK, working on the tilt, you know, but you were facing the public exchanging money and so on. We had a leader, she was called the first cashier, I think, in a space that would be the head of teller or something like that. And she would often close down, you know, busy time, but she would close her tilt down and start doing other things. And this sort of really annoyed both the staff and the customers alike. And one day when I guess, was feeling particularly miffed about this. I got some correction fluid and I added a little S at the front of her sign that she would turn around, which would normally say tilt closed, you know, and she would put it in a glass screen and let the world know that her tilt was closed. So, I added this S which means it's still closed, you know, now this raised a laugh and I suppose, made everybody sort of have a chuckled and feel a bit better for a while. But what I realized looking back on that was, I absolutely undermined that lady's leadership by doing that, you know, and I'm pretty embarrassed about it now, if I'm honest, because what I realized really the Hack to Attack is, that if you want to be a better leader, well start with being a better follower, you know, if I was in any way, feeling that she wasn't asserting the greatest of leadership, well, then why not help, you know, instead of make her job even harder. So, I got a nice ego stroke out of it, you know, cause obviously the clown for an afternoon. But it wasn't great looking back on that, certainly not to be recommended. Steve Rush: That great awareness though. Having gone through that experience and recognizing that you actually can really help leaders by giving them some feed forward, can't you? Matt Somers: You can, sometimes again, it comes up in the sort of training I do. Matt, can I coach my boss? And I'll say, yeah, absolutely. And please do, because I'm sure they need all the help they can get. I mean, you might not sit them down and say, right boss, I'm going to coach him for the next two hours, you know? So, we're going to turn the lighting down and sit in soft furnishings, but the idea of coaching enabling other people to work with greater awareness and learn from their own experiences, you know, is not connected in any way to a hierarchy. It can flow in all kinds of directions. Steve Rush: Yeah, it can. So, the last thing we're going to do is give you an opportunity to go and do some time travel, bump into Matt at 21. And you're able to look him in the eye and give them some advice. What would it be? Matt Somers: Well, I heard this question come up on some of the other podcasts I listened to before this. So, I did do some thinking about this in advance. And then the first thing I wrote down on my notes here actually is, I would say to him, don't have that next Budweiser. It really doesn't end well, but that's a conversation for another day. Two things really, seriously to my 21-year-old self or anyone at that stage in their career, two things. One is, take more risks. You got less to lose and you have a lot longer to recover, you know? So, I wish I'd gotten involved in trying to set up my own business or do something entrepreneurial a lot earlier than I did because by the time I was working in that way, you know, I was married, I had a child and mortgage, all of those things, don't make it impossible, but it's certainly not easier. So, take more risks and have more fun. I always say to people you've only got 10 years to be in your twenties. It's a short time, it flies by. You may still be in your twenties. Steve Rush: As you well know I'm not. Matt Somers: I think probably took myself a little bit too seriously back then. It was all about the career, you know, and sort of moving up the greasy pole and I already had a mortgage on a home. I don't know, I could have waited. I could have spent more time perhaps drinking Budweiser and doing other fun things, you know? So, take more risks, have more fun, is what I would say to 21-year-old me. Steve Rush: And they echo very similar conversations I have with my 21-year-old daughter. And I've got two boys in their early twenties as well. And you know, it's that kind of seize the moment. And I love the notion of you've got a longer time to recover because I don't think you realize that a young age, do you? Matt Somers: No, you don't. I think, I've got to cut it all sort of squared away. And again, you know, there's the COVID lesson isn't there. Lesson they had, so much disruption in the last 15, 18 months that I think, yeah, some of those other concerns can wait, they can be working a lot longer in their lives than you and I are Steve. There's plenty of time. Steve Rush: Exactly right. So, what's the focus of your work right now, Matt? Matt Somers: So, I found a sweet spot. A sweet spot between executive coaching that sort of one-to-one relationship and the coaching skills training. So, in other words, I'm doing a lot of coaching skills training, still helping leaders adopt a coaching style of leadership or to build that into their style. But I'm tending to do that now on a one-to-one basis rather than a one to many, a typically, which is great. I think for two reasons, there's one. Going back to one of our earlier conversations, for more senior leaders who perhaps don't want to sort of launder these ideas in a group setting, they can find that very helpful. The other great advantage, of course, everything can be done real time on their own business, you know, rather than sort of fictional case studies or things that they might have encountered on a program. So, that's proven to be quite popular and working quite well. Steve Rush: Great stuff. So, if our folks wanted to find out a little bit more about the work you're doing and maybe get copy of Coaching at Work, where's the best place for us to send them. Matt Somers: Oh, okay. Well probably the best place would be my website, which is wwwmattsomers, M, A, double TT, S O M E R S.com. But equally and preferably actually I like it when people reach out on LinkedIn. So, I'm on LinkedIn forward slash Matt Summers. And I prefer that because that tends to mean we can get a dialogue going, you know, and have a discussion about things. So, find me on LinkedIn. That would be lovely Steve Rush: And they won't need to find you because we'll make sure in the show notes of this show, they can click on those links that will be embedded in there for you. Matt Somers: Oh, that will be great Steve, thank you. Steve Rush: Matt, I've loved talking coaching with you. Thanks ever so much for taking time out, to be on the show and really appreciate you being with us. Matt Somers: Yeah, that's my pleasure Steve. Been really fascinating and thank you again for having me on. Steve Rush: You're welcome. Thanks Matt. Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there, @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.  

Cody Lowry is the President of the Automotive and Retail Division of the Intermark Group. He's also the author of Schmooze, What They Should Teach at Harvard Business School. Listen to Cody share: How he went from blue blood wealth to rags, moving 32 times before he was 11. How he intuitively used his schmooze to get on in life and work. Why paying compliments is more powerful than paying a gratuity. How to avoid the “What If Syndrome.” Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Cody below: Cody on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cody-lowry-63a339a/ Cody's Website: https://mrschmooze.com Cody on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/misterschmooze/   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you   Today's guest is Cody Lowry. He's the President of the Automotive and Retail Division of the Intermark Group. He's also the author of Schmooze, but before we get a chance to speak with Cody, it's The Leadership Hacker News.   The Leadership Hacker News In today's news, we explore the concept behind hybrid working, or as it's often referred to, flexible working. Since the onset of the pandemic, a myriad of corporations have overhauled the way they operate. Now with the possibility of return to office on the horizon, only two thirds of workers are wanting to remain working from home, according to a recent survey by Gallup, their research has found that organizations need to develop a long-term hybrid work strategy that meets the needs of both employees and businesses. In determining these approaches, leaders should keep one concept at the top of their priority list, and that's flexibility. So remote working is no longer an added benefit, but a requirement for happy and productive people. So, here's some tips and ideas to help you think about your hybrid strategy. First things first, people come first. Support and organizations don't make assumptions about the way they think their employers currently work and want to in the future, you need to know exactly how your people want to work so that you can plan and putting the necessary steps in place, by gaining better insights and asking the right questions of your team, you can adapt and think about getting the best out of them so that you benefit as an organization. Create a number of different spaces and when I mean spaces, not physical spaces, but workspaces. Of course, some permanent desk spaces will still be needed, but your organization might want to start thinking about hot desks, video conferences, called pods or remote collaboration spaces that will help you get the best out of people working differently at different times, and from different locations. Create a truly inclusive workplace. There are obviously huge benefits of embracing the world of hybrid working, but it's also important to avoid that any inclusivity issues may arise when you kind of move to this model, there are concerns by some that it actually might lead to a creation of a two-tier workforce. Those who are constantly present in the office and those who designed to work more remotely, and as leaders, we need to make sure that people understand that whether they're in the office or not, their work is equally valued, you also need to be thoughtful around how and when meetings are held so that everybody feels included. Health, safety, and wellbeing are at the absolute heart of this activity. It doesn't matter whether your people are working from home or in an office. As a leader, you have a duty of care over your team. For those in an office, it's important to ensure that all the necessary steps are taken to create a COVID safe environment or those working from home need to be informed of the ways in which to protect their physical and mental health. And remember mental health is just as important as physical health, especially at the moment. And there's lots that we can do to make sure that we keep our physical and mental health employees at the front of our conversations. So, in summary, let's think about what needs to happen. We need to be thoughtful about the people, their environments, the choices that they make, and tapping into technology that helps us do that the best, whether we're in an office or whether we're working remotely. What's most important is, without your people being motivated, focused, and engaged, it doesn't really matter where they are. That's been The Leadership Hacker News, if you have any insights, information, please get in touch with us. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Cody Lowry is a special guest on today's show. He's an entrepreneur, he's the President of the Automotive and Retail Division at the Intermark Group. He's also a speaker and author of the book Schmooze. Join me in welcoming Mr. Schmooze himself, Cody, welcome to the show. Cody Lowry: Well, thank you so much, Steve. I am delighted to be with you today and your folks out there, don't know how popular you are, but Steve and I actually had a conversation nine years ago and I finally got an opportunity to be on his show. So, I'm tickled to death to be here. Steve Rush: Schmooze and accent already, and we've only just got started, huh? Cody Lowry: There you go. There you go. Steve Rush: So, Cody, you have an amazing backstory and I will be really interested for the listeners to get a sense of kind of where you came from and how you've arrived to do what you do? Cody Lowry: Yeah, Steve, I really got a different story. We always hear about the rags to riches, while I'm actually a riches to rags kid. I was born into a family of wealth and blue blood, and by the time I was five, it was all gone. We lived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and with a seven-year period in a seven-mile radius we moved 32 times. So, it was you know, the lights were turned off. St. Vincent De Paul was my favorite Saint because he used to be there Christmas day. But, you know, just backtracking a little bit. There's a high school in Detroit named after my grandfather, there was a book written. He was the first President of Wayne State University. My mother was, actually, I call her the debutante mom because she made her debutante and went to a finishing school in Washington and, you know, had all the trappings of, you know, just a great life and a good life to come. She met my father, they were both camp counselors, swimming coaches at camp Chicopee in Northern Michigan. And he came from a pretty well to do family, but for whatever reason, they got married, had four beautiful children. And I was one of them. And they came to Florida and ran through whatever money they had. My dad became an alcoholic. My mom was an alcoholic. It was kind of a Helter Skelter childhood, was screaming and hollering and, you know, no food, the lights being changed and then moving 32 times. We actually lived in two places twice. Steve Rush: That's incredible. Cody Lowry: I can remember coming home with my little brother from school and we didn't live there anymore. So yeah, I had kind of a different childhood at age 11. I started selling papers and you're from across the pond there. So, you know who the Artful Dodger is. Steve Rush: Sure do. Cody Lowry: And at times I felt like the Artful Dodger, you know, my mom and my other siblings have been very successful. And I credit my mom. I can remember her after, you know, a few martinis looking across and say, you know, we may not have anything now, but you guys, you kids have blue blood in your veins and you can do whatever you want and blah, blah, blah. So, she instilled a confidence in us, I don't think otherwise would have had. And one of them was, you know, you got to get out there and make it happen. And, so at age 11, I started selling papers for the Miami News. Now I've got to ask you a question, Steve. Steve Rush: Go for it. Cody Lowry: And I want you to be real honest with me here. Would you buy a paper if I told you where you got your shoes, what state you were born in and how many birthdays you've had? Steve Rush: Pretty neat, yeah, I would think. Cody Lowry: Of course, you would, for a nickel. You got your shoes on your feet. You were born in the state of infancy, and you've only had one birthday the day you were born. Steve Rush: Nice. Cody Lowry: So, when you look at you know, where I came from and then I was raised with the doctors' kids and the lawyers' kids, because my mother made us believe that, you know, we were as good as anyone. And so, with that said, we always worked. And I think selling papers actually gave me a pretty good foundation for my life in general. Steve Rush: It's really interesting that 32 moves in such a short period of time is just a huge amount of disruption, isn't it? For a young person, young family, Cody Lowry: Christmas day, we moved. Steve Rush: Wow. Cody Lowry: And then my my mom is screaming at my father about you know, what about the Christmas tree? What about the Christmas tree? And the next thing, you know, Steve, he runs in the house, grabs the Christmas tree, lights, Tencel, and throws it on the back of a pickup truck. And with some expletives said, get in the truck and we're leaving. He did leave by the way my mother raised the four of us. And yeah, I can't tell you how much she really means to me. And, I think my siblings would pair at that comment. Steve Rush: Sure, I did some research a few years back, actually around resilience and what are the foundations and what could cause resilience and ingenuity and irony is, those people who are brought up in a service background who move a lot consistently in childhood have greater and deeper resilience. Cody Lowry: Really? Steve Rush: Because they're used to having to adapt. And I wonder if some of those foundations that you've got in your adult career and being successful around that resilience and that grit and determination come from that learning to adapt in those 32 moves? Cody Lowry: I would guess it did, you know, not everybody is obviously wired the same. And I can tell you that, I mean, I love people. I engage people at restaurants, the waiter, by the time that food is delivered. I know everything about that person and, you know, where they're from? What their dad did? And I just find that terribly interesting. And there's so many people in this world that we're never going to have an opportunity to meet. And I kind of regret that, and so, you know, I think when you're young and you're going through all those kinds of things, you learn how to make friends easily, or, you know, I say easily, you learn how to make friends. And with that, you know, you ask a lot of questions and I always ask a lot of question. I ask a lot of questions today. Steve Rush: Now you were affectionately known as the king of Schmooze. For people who have not heard of schmooze or not familiar with that, how would you describe what schmooze is? Cody Lowry: Well schmooze actually comes from the Yiddish word, which means to chat ideally, or to chat in a friendly persuasive manner, especially to gain favor in business or connections. And what I have done Steve is, I've redefined the word schmooze. And for me schmooze is a lot of things. The publisher put up 25, you know, different attributes for schmooze. And it's about building relationships. It's about a winning smile. It's about, you know, looking out after the little guy. It's about being contrarian and it's about, you know, having a heart and you know, it's about appreciating and there's 25 of them. I could list them, but it would you know, take a while here. Steve Rush: Sure, now you recognized at an early age that, we would call it, in the side of the pond, gift of the gab or the schmooze was the key foundation for you to be successful. What was it when you realized you were onto something around using this as a positive to help you become successful? Cody Lowry: So, I guess I learned, you know, the school was difficult for me because you know, moving around like that. And didn't, you know, live up to my own expectations. And so when I finally realized that, you know what? I got something here, I actually transferred from one high school to another high school. And it was transferred in my senior year. And I wasn't there, you know, probably six weeks and they were doing the superlative, you know, for the seniors. And somehow, I made it to my senior year, I don't know how. And they nominated me for the most talented, how did I get nominated? You know, I'm not even in the school two months and people are nominating me. Well, you know, that turned out to be a pretty pivotal year for me, Steve, because I was, you know, I was master of ceremonies of this, master of ceremonies of that. I got really heavy into, you know, theater and speech productions. And I think that's when I really found myself. And, you know, it obviously helped me once I got into college, Steve Rush: You managed to use schmooze in a number of different situations. And there are a couple you call out in the books. I'd love to explore them with you. Cody Lowry: Absolutely. Steve Rush: One was, how do you set up the meeting with the President in just one week from nowhere? Cody Lowry: Yeah, that was really something. At the time I was general sales manager for a large Chevrolet store and Jimmy Carter was coming into town. And he was running in for President and we were having a management meeting with the dealer and the General Manager, and what have you. And I just started thinking about him coming into town. I thought, oh my gosh, wouldn't that be a great PR move? If we could somehow set up a meeting with the President of the United States. Now I got to tell you, I had an angle. And my angle was, is that our dealer, Anthony Abraham. He was a very conservative guy, but he really thought that Jimmy Carter was taking a lot of heat at the time. He ran an article in the Fort Lauderdale news. I'm sorry, the Miami Herald, The Tampa Tribune and The St Petersburg Times. And it was called A Summer of Discontent by Walter Annenberg, another, a very conservative guy. And the thrust of the article, Steve, was that, you know, no matter how much you dislike the President or whatever issues you have, he's the only President we have, and we've got to support him and coming from two very conservative guys, you know, that was, you know, quite a tribute to put those full-page ads in those newspapers. So, I did have an angle and I said, the President coming in next week. Why don't we set up a meeting and see if we can't get a little PR out of it? And the dealer laughed and the general manager who was always watching his back thought I wanted his job, you know, he kind of ridiculed me somewhat, but they said, well, go see what you can do. And I did, the office I called was Jody Powell. You may remember Jody Powell, but he was the President right-hand guy. And he threw me to one guy, and then they threw me to another office and this office. And finally, I got ahold of the scheduling office and you know, my persistence was, you know, on full charge. And I was really wanting to make this thing happen. And the guy let me know really quickly. He said, Mr. Lowry, do you realize how many people want to set up a meeting with the President of United States? And I immediately shot back Steve. I said, well, that's probably true, but you could count on one hand, how many men just spent $20,000 in three of Florida's largest newspapers in a state that's going to be critical to the President in the upcoming election. Steve Rush: Wow, yeah Cody Lowry: And then he started “hoobadda habbada hubbadda wheeer!” you know, who am I talking to here? You know, and next thing, you know, I get a meeting with Kesha Grant and let her know what's going on. And we have a meeting with the President of the United States and that, by the way, you can Google that. Cody Lowry, President Carter or Tommy Abraham, and it shows, you know, the President's schedule back then, and today. They've got every little minute, you know, logged in, what he did? Who he talked to? And so, yeah, so we set up a meeting with the President of the United States and that did not hinder my progress with Abraham Chevrolet, I did very well after that. Steve Rush: Awesome. And also, there's a couple of whacking, great leadership lessons there isn't there? That whole kind of persistence and resilience and never let up is a really big one for me. But you know, the other is the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Cody Lowry: Absolutely. Steve Rush: And you know, if you're really passionate about something and you want people to know that you're passionate, if you stop squeaking, you're not going to get the oil. Cody Lowry: Well, that's absolutely true. Yeah, I agree with that. Steve Rush: So, the other one I was really fascinated by, is you ended up carrying the Olympic torch for the Olympic games, and that again was because of your schmooze. Tell us how that came up? Cody Lowry: Well, you know, in the book I talk about mentoring and the importance of mentoring. I can remember when I was in college driving a Corvair, unsafe at any speed that used more oil than gasoline. And I was, you know, robbing Peter to pay Paul as they say. And you know, I was a big brother, and that's not in the book, but for those out, in other parts of the world. Big brother and big sisters, where you take on an individual, a young child who's comes from a, you know, a really difficult situation and, you know, you mentor to them. And so, carrying the torch was just that. As you pointed out in the beginning of the show, I'm in advertising. And at the time we represented all the Chevrolet dealers in the Tampa Bay area. And one of the gentlemen that was in charge of Chevrolet at the time was Kurt Ritter and just a wonderful guy. He lives in Bel Air California now. And he is, I think, chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising, but at the time he was moving up the ladder with a Chevrolet and he had moved out of the Tampa Bay area, went to Detroit. He was head marketing manager for Chevrolet motor division. And I get a call one day, and while we were close, we weren't, you know, I mean, we talked, you know, maybe every six months if saw each other at a meeting, but his son was living in in Tampa and struggling at the time. He graduated, just graduated from college and was having a real difficult time getting a job. And, and Kurt called me and asked if I could spend some time with him, and I said absolutely. So, we did kind of like, you know, Tuesdays with Morrie's right. It was Tuesdays with Kurt's son, and he was, you know, flipping hamburgers at Friday, that's a hamburger joint. And would he just couldn't get his footing in the segment he want to get into, and that was a film, and what have you. And so, I remember after about six weeks, he called me up. He says, can I come in and talk to you? And I said, sure. He was excited. And I kind of thought maybe he had a job. And he said, I got a job. And I said, really, where is that? And he goes, he says, well, it's with Campbell Ewald. And all of a sudden, a red light went off. Campbell Ewald was a national agency for Chevrolet. And I know how he got that job, and that's not the job he wanted. And after he was done telling me about, you know, being a junior account executive, and I just looked across the table from where we were, and I said, you know what? You don't want to take that. I said, that's not what you want to do. Your dad can pick up the phone today, tomorrow, a year from now and get you that same position. I said, you're passionate about the film industry. You're passionate about, you know, what you went to school for. I said, stick with it. And don't, you know, he took my advice and a week later he got his dream job out of Miami. Well, now I start becoming very close to the family. I'm invited to weddings and, you know, when he's in Florida, you know, we go to the football games together. And I think the mentoring is what really makes it happen in life and being able to give something back. Then the next thing I know out of the clear blue, he calls me up and said, Cody, he said, how would you like to carry the torch in the Olympics? He had reached that level at Chevrolet motor division, where he could pick a couple of people. And I must tell you, he had relationships with agencies that were huge, right, the dwarf mine. Steve Rush: Right. Cody Lowry: He knew all the big Chevrolet dealers in the country. He called me and asked me, and I credit it with the mentoring. Steve Rush: Yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it? And it just goes to show that if you're not open to opportunity, because you've been directed or you've been following a path that you don't believe to be true or purposeful. You miss out on that natural occurring opportunity, right? Cody Lowry: Absolutely. Steve Rush: Yeah, so when was it you thought, right. There's definitely something in this schmooze, so I'm going to write a book about it. How did that come about? Cody Lowry: So, you know, I knew I wanted to write a book because some, you know, obviously crazy things have happened to me. If you'll indulge me here, you know, getting a baseball signed by The Pope, getting a super bowl ring from an NFL hall of fame coach, auditioning for Saturday Night Live within a 48-hour notice. And, you know, I just felt like I was wired a little bit differently. And you know, I was living this journey, this eclectic journey that I'm still living. And some really wonderful things have happened to me as a result of, you know, reaching out and being there for other people, and my personality, I don't know if your pre notes show it, but I was actually born with a lampshade on my head. So, you know, the humorous aspect of my personality didn't hurt. And I just decided that I was going to write a book, and that was 2017. And, you know, I'm still working full time. And so, you know, I did it at night and put together what I thought was a really good life story, not a biography for sure. But you know, life lessons from somebody who's walked the walk. Steve Rush: Yeah. Cody Lowry: So many times, I'm in a situation where I see a speaker, great in front of an audience, or I'll read a book and so much of it. And I say this respectfully is, regurgitated, internet stuff. And then I hear the same thing this guy said, and this person says this. And, you know, every story in the book that I have, I mean, it's me, it's real life. It's, you know, it's really, you know, it's from somebody who's walked the walk. Steve Rush: Did she walk the walk or did you schmooze the schmooze? Cody Lowry: I think I probably did a little bit of both; you know, I was schmoozing and when I didn't know what the word meant. Steve Rush: Exactly, yeah. So, in the book, you call these out as schmooze essentials. So, what are they and how as a leader might I use them? Cody Lowry: So, yeah, the last chapter is schmooze essential. And it's a collection of things that I wanted to leave people with that are just real important and you know, paying a compliment. There's actually 10, so I won't go over all 10, but paying a compliment. You know, you go into a restaurant, somebody gives you a great service and you throw down your money. And I know in some countries that's not required or not the custom, but in the United States, you know, we leave a gratuity. And one thing that I have learned over the years, it's much more important than a gratuity is to pay a compliment. You know, John, that was maybe the best service I've ever had. And I mean, they light up like a Christmas tree. I mean, it's amazing. So, you know, paying a compliment. It's about laughing at yourself and, you know, some of us take ourselves way too seriously, and I've been with some movers and shakers who are, you know, they wouldn't put a smile on their face if they had to, but, you know, it's about actually not taking yourself too seriously. I'll tell you a real quick story, if I may. I'm charging and I come home, I've got three little kids and I said, little kids, they're ten, nine and eight. And my wife and I had just bought this brand-new suede couch, green suede couch. And, you know, I really felt like I had arrived, Steve, you know, to have this couch. And so, I walk in and I look at the couch and there's a big stain on the couch, and I almost can't believe it. What happened? Well, immediately I called the three children. Cody, Chelsea, Kit, get up here right now and up they come, you know, and I look at that couch, the stain, and I said, I want to know who did it? I want to know now, and I want to know the truth. And young Cody looks up at me. He said, dad, you can't handle the truth, from the movie, you know? He disarmed me and I started laughing. How stupid? Why am I getting so upset about a stain? And so, you know, it is about laughing at yourself. It's about making sure that you understand that, you know, not just, Coca-Cola not just Nike, you have a brand. Who are you? What slags do you waive? If a hundred people had to say something about you, what would they say? And think for young people starting out in business, I think it's so important that you establish who you are and build your brand. And so, you know, that's in there, it's about appreciating what we have, you know I told my kids when they were growing up, you know, bemoan the fact that maybe they didn't have the latest and the greatest this or that, because I didn't believe in giving it to them. You know, you have it better than 99.9% of all the people that have ever lived on the face of this earth. And you know, I think that actually connected with them, you know, in the book, I've got all kinds of things. In the last chapter, there are 10 different things. Steve Rush: I resonate with that. I had very similar conversation with my youngest son just this weekend actually. Cody Lowry: What happened? Steve Rush: Well, it was a case of just not recognizing the value of what he had versus the value of what he didn't have. Cody Lowry: I gotcha. Steve Rush: And sometimes it's just about helping people who have been, and I class myself to be very fortunate in having the spoils of a successful career behind me. And he's been born into a life that I wasn't born into with lots of spoils and lots of other things that I would have never had at his age. And just sometimes helping to reframe how fortunate they are. Isn't all about either material things. It's about the surroundings and the environment they're in too, right? Cody Lowry: So true. So true. You know, one of the things in the last chapter is, I tell people to be a pushover, you know, I'm an easy mark for these people on the street. And I mean, I never say, no, I feel guilty if I look down and, you know, I'm in my car and I don't have some change or some whatever to give them, but I've done my homework. And most of these people they're hungry, 85% of these people are hungry. So yeah, there are some people that are trying to put you together. And in the book, I talk about being a pushover and I actually talk about a story when our whole family went to a West Virginia and the airport was closed down. And I went downtown with my kids and my bride and we were going to get some food and it was a cold night and the kids were probably right around that, you know, 7, 8, 9 ages. And all of a sudden somebody grabs me on my shoulder and I turned around and, you know, I see this guy with all his hair going on and, you know, kind of, you got some money or something like that. And I said, no, I don't. And, you know, I kind of shoot him away, I thought, and then, you know, about a minute later, there he is again. And now I get in his face, because I'm really upset. I'm very protective of my kids and I don't want this guy, you know, endangering my family. And I react like, I guess any father would. So, you know, I got in his face, tell him to get out. I was going to call the police, so on and so forth. I got to the restaurant and my son Cody remembers this. And I said to my wife, I said, you know, I didn't really treat that guy too well and who knows what's going on in his life. And so, I gave her my watch. I gave her all of about, you know, 50 bucks that I had. And I said, I'm going to go find him and see what's going on. So, I left the restaurant, I walked up this alley and down the street and there he was, he was sitting on a park bench with his significant other, and they had a blanket around them. And I came up to him from the side there. So, he didn't really no I was coming and I said, Hey. And he looked at me, he almost jumps, you know? And I said, no, no, no. I just want to tell you, I apologize for the way I acted. And I said, are you guys hungry? And they both looked at me and they said, yeah. I said, well, come on. Let's go. And so, I was actually thinking about taking them to the Mexican restaurant and there was a McDonald's across the street, not too far from where we were. And he said, well, how about McDonald's? And I said, sure. So, we went into McDonald's and, you know, his girlfriend was first and she looked back at me and I said, go, whatever you want, just get it, you know? So, she got two big Macs, she got an apple pie, she got the big fry, whatever it was. And I thought she was ordering for both of them. And then he got up there. He said, I'll take the same. But, you know, my kids learned a big lesson, as I said, Cody still remembers that day. And all of my kids have followed me as it relates to being, you know, maybe considered overly generous to these people. But you know, when you look at what's been the stowed on me and my family and, you know, everything, even talking to Steve here, you know, it's you know, I've got a lot to be thankful for, you know, I know that everybody does, Steve Rush: It's a great lesson as well, isn't it? So, the one thing that struck me in the book as well, that you call out was called the what if syndrome. Cody Lowry: Oh, the what if syndrome? Yeah. Everybody is always, you know, what if this happens? What if that happens? And it's about, you know, when I talk about stepping out of your schmooze zone and I tell people that I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to jump off the Skyway Bridge or the San Francisco Bay bridge or bungee jump. But, you know, in life I have looked at things, I've looked at challenges and, you know, I've always gone for it. And I think a lot of people are held back by, you know, their peers and people that, you know, their bosses and what have you. And they have this fear of people. Well, I've never really had that fear. So, if I thought maybe, I could do something, you know, I just went out and did it. In the book I talk about, you know, running a marathon, somebody bet me a hundred dollars that, you know, I couldn't run a marathon. And I said, well, yeah, I could run a marathon and they laughed. And, you know, I'm really in great shape today, Steve. But back then I was a little sloppy, right. And I remember Steve Chapman, he was President of the DuPont Registry and he was running the Marine Corps marathon. And I said, well, I could probably do that. Maybe I'll do that with you. And he started laughing because it was the funniest thing I've ever heard. And I got to tell you in high school, I think the most I ever did from an exercise standpoint, I think I had to run a mile to actually get my diploma. So anyway, I took him up on it. And it's a great story, it's a fun story. But I got to tell you, when I started off the first the first week trying to, you know, kind of get into this thing, I thought, boy, I had really made a big mistake. I couldn't get a quarter of a mile before I was gasping for air. I was going around this Lake Hollingsworth, was three and a half miles. And I went, dear God, I can't even get around this lake. And but, before all was done, I had run around that lake eight times. And I did, I competed in the Marine Corps marathon. And so, I would say my advice is just, you know, go with what your gut tells you. And don't listen to some naysayers out there. And you know, we've got a lot of great people, have accomplished a lot of things in this world by taking that advice for sure. Steve Rush: Definitely, so. I'm going to ask you to step out of the schmooze zone now, Because I'm going to turn the lens a little into your world of leadership. So, you've been a successful leader of a number of different businesses. So, I want to really tap into that leadership mind of yours now. First place, I'm going to go Cody, is to ask you what your top three leadership hacks would be? Cody Lowry: So, you know, a big part of the book and a part of my background in business. And then, you know, my whole life has been building relationships, building relationships that last, you know, Steve and my business, if you have an account for two or three years, you know, you can be very, very thankful. We have accounts on the book that have been there for 30 years, plus 30 years. And I always tell people it's about the secret sauce. You say the three things, number one, build the relationship. And I think a lot of people get this wrong. They say, oh, it's going to take me years to build a relationship. You build the relationship within the first 60 seconds that you meet somebody. Steve Rush: Sure. Cody Lowry: And I'm well aware of that. If I go into a meeting, I know more about that guy than probably the people that work for him. So, it's building the relationships and then it's earning their trust, okay. That's the foundation of every relationship. It's the foundation of every business relationship, earning their trust and being there for them. And then number three, endeavoring to never let them down. And you know, I've got clients, I'm their blankie. I mean, they call me on the weekends, you know, Sunday, you know, and a lot of times it's not even related to you know, the business necessarily it's, you know, something that's happening in their life. And if I have been with them for 20 to 30 years, I'm also their friend, right? Steve Rush: Right. Cody Lowry: So yeah, so building the relationship, getting them to trust you and then never letting them down. Steve Rush: Awesome tips and ideas. Thank you, appreciate you sharing that. The next part of the show we've called Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something screwed up. Hasn't worked out well at all, but as a result of the experience, you now use it as a positive in your life and work. So, what would be your Hack to Attack Cody? Cody Lowry: Yeah, my Hack to Attack. I mean, you know, one of the quotes that's in the book and it's a Japanese proverb and it says fall down seven times, get up eight. And I can tell you I've done that, you know, many, many times in my life and no one is you know, everybody's got adversity in their life. And so, when I get people that kind of get carried away with it, I remind them of this deal that you know, you have to get up and you have to keep charging and early in business. I was, you know, I got taken by a guy that was, you know, I thought he was my mentor, right. And he was the big shot in the Tampa Bay area as far as advertising, I'm not going to mention his name, but he brought me on, he wanted me to work for him and that didn't work. So, he made me kind of a quasi-partner, if you will. And we became partners. And after about six months I realized that he had been going to the accountant and taking money out of the company to buy a home in St. Croix and this, that, and the other. Well to make kind of a long story short. When I finally realized that this guy needed to be out of my life, I had the accounting people came in and they said, well, Cody, you're in the hole about a half a million dollars. I almost couldn't believe it, right? Half a million dollars, me? Little Cody Lowery, you know, paper boy. I'm in debt, half a million. So, the attorneys got together and they decided the best thing for me to do would be to just file bankruptcy, you know, in our country, you can file bankruptcy. You can actually start the next day in another job. And they said, this is our only way out, your only way out. And I looked across the table at you know, three people that went to pretty good law schools. That's not what I'm going to do. And I said, I'm going to go to the suppliers. I'm going to talk to them. I'm going to tell them exactly what happened. The reason it got so big, we were dealing with TV stations and, you know, TV time, and it's very expensive, but I went to maybe six TV stations where the bulk of that was, and I met with the General Manager or President of the TV station. And I told him exactly what happened. And I said, I can't pay you today, but I will pay you over time. I believe I'm going to be successful. And you know what, there wasn't one that said no, and every one of them got their money, so, yeah. Steve Rush: It's a lovely story. Many people would have taken the easy route out and, you know, file for bankruptcy, but that just shows a kind of character that sits behind the man. So, congratulations for you. Cody Lowry: Thank you. Thank you. Steve Rush: The last thing we want to do today, Cody is give you a chance to do some time travel. So, you now have the opportunity to go back in time, bump into Cody at 21 and give him some words of wisdom, some advice, what would it? Cody Lowry: I would say, and not to rehash what we've already talked about, but if you have a dream, if you have a goal, don't put it on hold, find a way to, you know, go after that dream or that goal. And I would say, you know, get rid of the naysayers in your life. And, you know, when I was starting out at age 21, Steve, I mean, I got to tell you, I was a little naive and I don't think being naive is really so bad because you go down avenues that maybe other people would know or can't, what are you crazy? You know, and so I think part of my advice would be, you know, it's okay to be naive, you know, just, just real quick. Auditioning for Saturday Night Live within a 48-hour period, I was doing standup comedy and I went to New York. I had, you know, enough money to last, maybe a week. And, you know, I did catch a rising star and the improv and what have you. And I decided just you know; I've got two days left. I know what I'll do. I'll audition for Saturday Night Live. Oh, really? How are you going to pull that one off? Well, I was naive, you know, and it worked for me. And, you know, two days later there, I was for Saturday Night Live doing my Jimmy Carter. My name is Jimmy Carter, I always tell the truth. If I could tell lie, I grow another tooth. It's okay to be naïve, and you know, so that would be my advice. Steve Rush: Awesome, So Cody I've loved schmoozing with you, but for our listeners who might want to continue the conversation beyond our show today, where's the best place for us to send them when we are done. Cody Lowry: mrschmooze.com, that's mrschmooze.com. My book Schmooze, what they should teach at Harvard Business School. It's obviously available on Barnes & Noble and Amazon. There is also an audio book out there, which is I hear pretty good. And so yeah, the website's good and wherever books are sold. Steve Rush: Awesome, we'll make sure those are all in our show notes as well, so that people can literally stop listening to us and start listening to some more of you. So, Cody, thank you so much. I know you're incredibly busy and it's a real privilege and an honor for us to have you on our show. And thanks for being part of The Leadership Hacker Community. Cody Lowry: It was an honor speaking to you, truly it was. Steve Rush: Thank you, Cody. Cody Lowry: Thank you.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.    

Once upon a time… Ever wanted to speak in public as if you were on a TED Talk? Andrea Sampson is former strategist and consultant, she has spent over 25 years working in marketing and advertising, presenting and developing strategies for fortune 100 companies. Andrea is now a TED speaker coach and the founder and CEO of Talk Boutique. In this show you can learn about: The emotional connection in story is the same as when we buy How to put your brand ideas into the world The key components to design your story spine Why aligning your vision to your core purpose – is your story!   Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Andrea below: Andrea on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/acsampson/ Talk Boutique Website: https://talkboutique.com Andrea on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LightningRod29 Talk Boutique Twitter: https://twitter.com/TalkBoutiqueInc Talk Boutique on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/talk.boutique     Full Transcript Below   Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you.   Today's special guest is Andrea Sampson. She's an executive speaker coach, communication expert and business strategist. But before we get a chance to speak with Andrea, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: In today's news we explore why storytelling is so important in business. Humans always told stories and they're a vital part of our daily communication, but stories have meaning beyond entertainment value. In fact, storytelling is a strong business skill and when it implemented effectively, it can really boost business in a number of ways, such as improving customer loyalty, creating strong marketing strategy and increasing profit as well. Storytelling conveys purpose and businesses with purpose are noticed and win loads of customers more readily. So, it's not enough to just have a product or a service that can solve a problem, your company needs to stand out. The most successful companies have deep and thoughtful stories behind them that stir a sense of a larger purpose and meaning to what they do such as Google or Apple, who had not just businesses. Their brands made by visionaries who wanted and want to transform the world. If your business has a vision, the audiences can really believe in and buy into them more likely to be successful. People want to buy into companies that they believe care, empathetic companies. And that was highlighted in a global empathy index where businesses near the top of the list were among the most profitable and fastest growing businesses in the world. The top 10 companies also generated 50% more income and increased in value more than twice of the other companies in the bottom 10. And it was shown that storytelling was at the heart of this. And storytelling shows your company can be empathetic and is more likely to lead to your company's success. So, experts say, just watch Steve jobs on YouTube when he introduced the iPhone and told the story about why they were doing what they were doing back in 2007. Stories, emotionally connect people and create loyalty and the best stories of evoke emotional reactions, and people generally relate and connect with those stories that they believe in and believe in the company and what it stands for. When people listen to a story, they feel what the protagonist of the story is feeling. So good way of using a story to connect with the audiences, to tell the story about the journey you've been on or the mistakes you and your company have made, or a failure that wasn't going well for you. So, people can understand the reality of the journey and people will relate to this as we've all experienced mistakes and failures, and the more the audience relates to you and understand what went into creating your brand and your organization. The more likely they'll listen to you. And remember humans typically make emotional, not rational decisions. So being able to evoke an emotional reaction through a story is a powerful tool. So, transfer your vision into a captivating story and clearly communicating it, using a sincere and open approach and remember stories, give audience purpose and a motive to take action. An example of this was when Wharton Business School found that when participants in an experiment were asked to collect donations in a call center, those who told the donors how the money would improve the lives of others earned, were able to collect more than double than the other group who were merely just collecting cash. The sense of purpose led to the first group earning so much more because of the stories that were able to tell that invoked that response. So, in conclusion today it's difficult to find a successful brand that doesn't have a good story. Stories provide meaning, they create context, they evoke a sense of purpose. Most humans are more receptive to stories than compared to facts and data. So, stories help us to relate, empathize and to remember, and this is why businesses are increasingly recognizing the importance of storytelling and the leadership lesson here is, as leaders the more stories we can tell to create an emotional connection with our teams, the more likely we're going to get buy-in to the journey we're taking them on. That's been leadership, if you have any insights, information, or ideas, please get in touch. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Joining me on the show today is former strategist and consultant Andrea Sampson. She spent over 25 years working in marketing and advertising, presenting and developing strategies for fortune 100 companies. Andrea is now the founder and CEO of Talk Boutique. Welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast Andrea. Andrea Sampson: Thank you, Steve. Wonderful to be here. Steve Rush: I'm really looking forward to getting into the story about how Talk Boutique came about and the work that you do now with TED speakers. But before we get there, perhaps you can give our guests a little bit of a summary of your backstory? Andrea Sampson: Sure, so as you said, you know, I spent almost 25 years working in marketing and advertising, and most of it was working on the agency side. I worked for some of the largest agency networks in the world, and I worked on some of the largest brands in the world. My role within the agency world was a planner, and what that means is I was basically a strategist. So, I worked on understanding the basics of why humans make the decisions they do. We would do a lot of research, a lot of understanding at the human behavioral level. And then we would come up with, me and my team would come up with the underpinnings of many of the advertising campaigns that you see in market which would go of course, to the creative teams who would do the actual advertising, but we would do the strategy underneath it. Steve Rush: Oh, interesting. So, where there a number of key behaviors or you could identify that caused people to make decisions? Andrea Sampson: Well, you know, I mean, the reality is, is that we buy, we make decisions based on emotions rather than needs. And I think, you know, this is not news to anyone. But we forget it all the time. We think that when we tell people the features of a product or the features of a solution that people will say, well, yes, I need that, absolutely. And people do listen to those, but the reality is we buy what we want. It's a want versus a need always, which means that you need to appeal to the heart before you appealed to the brain. And that was, you know, 100% of the time that is true. So how can we get into the hearts of consumers in such a way that we help them to make the decision that is right for them, but was also in line with what we wanted them to do. So, it was always that sort of dance, I guess, a little bit, but what I found, you know, what was so interesting for me was that, you know, with spending all of the time in advertising and I got to a point, you know, after about 25 years where I started to realize that some of the early goals that I had as I came into the world of communications and advertising, I wasn't going to be able to hit. And those goals were really personal and deeply held. And I'm not sure that even coming into that world, I fully understood them because they were really based on making a difference in the world because ultimately Steve, I'm an idealist and, you know, I wanted to change the world and I saw this medium of advertising with its mass reach and thought, wow, now there's a way that if I can influence at a very core level, I can help do good in the world. And I tried and I really tried. And the reality is, is that while there are many brands out there who do good in the world, they're few and far between, and at the end of the day, I really wanted to do good at a very core level, not trying to get consumers to do something else. And so, I knew that, you know, as the idealist in a capitalist world, I had to start thinking a little differently about my future. And at this point I was, you know, approaching my 50th birthday and I started thinking, you know, well, I've got hopefully another 30, 40 years on the planet. What am I going to do with that time? And how can I start to address this, underlying need, goal that I had. And I had the very good fortune to be volun hired. And what I mean by that is, I volunteered, but I had to go through a hiring process to work with the team at TEDxToronto. And I was hired as a speakers coach. I didn't know what a speakers coach was to be quite honest, never heard of it, but I was presenting three to five times a day and, you know, in my regular day, because that's what I did all day, every day I present it. And so, I thought, well, with a little bit of training, I'm sure I can do this. Well, that first year that I worked with TEDxToronto, I worked with you know, a geneticist who was working on the worldwide human genome project. I worked with an architect who was connecting the internet of things to our daily tasks, to our walls, to our alarm clocks, to our windows. I worked with a food specialist who was looking at the way in which we were going to move forward with our food. And I worked with one of the foremost experts in the world on body language, I was hooked. Steve Rush: Yeah. Andrea Sampson: And what I saw was, I came to them thinking, okay, well, I can teach them, you know, probably how to present. But what I learned pretty quickly about myself was all this training I'd been doing for 25 years in advertising as a strategist where I was getting to that core consumer insight. The reason why we do the things we do was the absolute perfect training to take a TED speaker and be able to shape their idea because ultimately an idea at its core is an insight. And so, what I did in that first year was I became aware of this skill I didn't even know I had, which was taking insights and building stories around them. Steve Rush: It's kind of ironic because that's exactly what great marketing is, isn't it? It's about building those stories, creating the emotional connection with the audience so that they listen and pay attention to the advertisement you are creating, which I suspect is the parallel right to a TED speaker? Andrea Sampson: Well, that's exactly it. And I think when we're doing it as an advertisement, you know, we're not as uniquely aware of what we're actually doing because it's contextual, right? Like in advertising, you're doing it because you've got a product, a brand that you're putting out there with the consumer. So, you're putting the brand at the center, you're getting an idea that you can sort of, you know, build that, you know, take the brand idea and put it out there in the world. But we don't really think of it in the same way we think of a TED Talk, which you know, is often termed education. Sorry, how do they term it? Oh God, I can never think of it, it's the combination of entertainment and education. So however, you put those two edutainments, that's what it is. Steve Rush: Edutainment? That's cool, yeah. Andrea Sampson: Edutainment, so we never really think of an ad as we would think of a TED Talk because a TED Talk doesn't actually want us to change our buying behavior or the things we're doing. It's often inspiring us to look at the world differently. So, it's just contextual, like it was really making the leap that said, well, everything I've been doing in advertising is exactly what it was to create a good TED Talk. But now instead of trying to sell a brand, what we're doing is we're selling an idea and that idea has the ability to impact the world. Steve Rush: And do you notice any parallels in reverse where marketeers and now using the same principles of storytelling in their advertisements and their campaigns? Andrea Sampson: Well, you know, here's the thing. As I've become, you know, really an expert in this world of not only storytelling, but building talks that create impact and create change. I now look at all the work that I did in advertising and wish I had known then what I know now, and I'm seeing that many marketers are beginning to embrace the idea of very purposeful storytelling. You know, storytelling in the ad world was always a means to an end, but we didn't really pay as close attention to how to build out that story. Now, there are so many different story arcs out there. When you've only got 15 or 30 seconds to do an ad, which is, you know, your typical ad length. Steve Rush: Right. Andrea Sampson: It's hard to use one of these very long story arcs. I mean, most of the story arc is actually, you know, are meant for screenplays or books. Whereas, you know, in a 30 second ad, you just don't have time to build that arc, but you would. And you know, what we would often do is take pieces of it. But what I've learned in doing TED Talks and now working with very seasoned professional presenters is that it's really about building a story in five steps. And we developed, so my company Talk Boutique has developed a process that we call the story spine, which really allows for a speaker to take about, you know, anywhere from 30 seconds to three to four minutes at the beginning of their talk and set up the premise of a story that will hold the idea. Steve Rush: Really interesting. Andrea Sampson: Yeah, the spine is so important because what it does is it forces us as humans first of all, to think about the things that create good storytelling, because it starts off with what we call the environment. So, if you think of an environment, the environment is your sense of place. Now, most of us, when we're at a cocktail party or meeting up with a friend and we started telling a story, what do we do? We rushed through the environment, first of all, and we rush right into the purpose of the story. But if you take a moment and you step back and you say, okay, let me just set this up for you. So, I was walking in the woods the other day. Now it was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, you know, it was warm, but not hot. You could feel that the day was going to get really hot. But we weren't there yet. And the moisture in the air was activating the pine needles. So, I could smell as I was walking, that musky scent of pine, and it was just a beautiful morning and it was peaceful. Now you're all on that walk with me, aren't you? Steve Rush: Totally, I'm right there. Andrea Sampson: Right, now when you do that, what's happening is everybody is leaning in, but what's really happening is their brain has just gone to the place when they were last in the woods or a meaningful moment when they were in the words. That smell, the sounds of the birds, that the feeling of this sun dappled through the trees, everybody. Now, if I were to stop the story right there and ask a question around how everybody felt, the likelihood is, I've got everybody at the same place in that moment, which is in a peaceful place, in a memory that is enjoyable. And from there, it's almost like I'm a mind reader now, because now I'm controlling how they are feeling and what they're thinking. Steve Rush: Very powerful, isn't it? Andrea Sampson: It's incredibly powerful. That's the power of environment. So, once we have the environment, the next thing that we want to do is say, who's there with you? Who are the characters? Now, you know, characters, aren't just me and my friend. You can do that, but the thing is, you've robbed the audience of getting to know who you are and who your friend is. So, what you want is just a little bit of a backstory. So, there's me, you know, this was about five years ago. So, I was in a, you know, maybe an emotional place. This was just at the breakup of my marriage; I'm making this up. And my friend who was a dear friend who was supporting me through this very emotional time, her name was Shawna and Shawna was a lovely human. She's still a dear friend of mine, but she's one of those people whose incredibly compassionate and helps people through really difficult times. So here we were on this early morning walk, going through the woods and, you know, we can hear the birds chirping, and I'm at that point in the separation where we are, you know, separating stuff. And so, it's a difficult moment, and Shawna is helping me to see, you know, that I can let go of things that I thought were really important, but the reality is, they weren't. Now, again, I just want to stress here. I'm fully making this up. Steve Rush: Hey, listen, you may be making this up, but I'm still ironically with you because of the compelling use of language. Andrea Sampson: Right, and so listen to that, the language I'm using every piece of language is using rhetoric, really, right. I'm using a combination of metaphor. I'm using emotional words, words that have meanings that go deeper than just the core idea of that word. I'm also using in some cases repetition. So, I'm using metaphor all the way through it. So, what we've gotten through now is the environment, the characters, and we've gotten to the issue or opportunity. That's the third part of the story spine and this is where most people jump into a story because this is the real reason, I could've just started it off. Steve Rush: That's true, yeah. Andrea Sampson: I could have started off going, you know, the other day I was walking in the woods and Shawna was helping me figure out what I was going to give to my ex, right? Because that is really the story, except you can see I've built it out, right? And so, then what you want, the fourth part of the story spine is what we call the raising of the stakes. This is the difference between a good story and a great story because the raising of the stakes is that tension moment. It's the end to them, and so, you know, as Shawna and I were talking about the things that I was going to keep and what I was going to let go of, we came to that blanket. You know the one, the blanket that my family had given us, but it was also the blanket where we had our first date. And it was the blanket that had followed us all the way through our relationship. And there was a part of me that really wanted that blanket, but there was a part of me that actually didn't ever want to see that blanket again. And I was distraught in that moment. How could I let go of the blanket? Now I think if you're following me, what you know is that blanket is really a metaphor for the relationship. Steve Rush: Yeah, it is. But it's ironic, because it's still is also a physical thing. Andrea Sampson: Yes. Steve Rush: It's a metaphor, but actually we all kind of have something that we relate to in our day jobs and our lives that are similar metaphors of physical things, but carry loads of emotion with them. Andrea Sampson: Right, and so, as I'm going through this story, you know, anyone who's listening to this, you know, they may or may not have lived a similar story, but they have lived, everybody, because, you know, here's the thing about stories. Stories are all Mehta stories, as humans, we all live the same stories. The details are different, and so everybody has walked in the woods or has watched, you know, a movie or seen an image of walking in the woods. So, there's some experience of it. Everybody has a good friend who helps them through things. Now, you know, you may not have as good a friend or maybe your friend is better, but you have the experience of it. The human condition is that we all go through relationships and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't and heartbreak is common. And then the idea of having something that represents that, you can see, it's a Mehta story, right? Steve Rush: Yeah. Andrea Sampson: So, everybody, as I'm going through this story, everybody is having the same experience because they're living their own experience and my experience at the same time. And that's what makes it so powerful. So, when you take the time to build it, when you take the time to use emotions through it, what you're doing is, you're building a connection with anyone who's listening to that. Now we've gone through the four elements of the stories. By the fifth element is just the OCA. It's the way in which you tie it together. And so, in this case, it could be that in that walk in the woods, you know, Shawna helped me to understand that the blanket was in fact, a metaphor for my relationship. And as much as it was something that I was having a hard time letting go of, it was time for me to let go of it because I was letting go of that whole part of my life. And that blanket was in a part of my life that was no longer going to be in my life. So, it was time for me to let that go. And by the end of that walk, I had not only let go of the blanket, but I had let go of the relationship, I was ready to move on. So, there's the story spine in action. Now, when you're using a story like that. So, one of the things that we teach, because the story spine is one element. But the other thing that I did when I started working with TED speakers is, I started to understand that a TED Talk has a very robust underlying structure and that underlying structure gets eliminated in the talk itself, but in the building of a TED Talk or of any presentation, quite frankly, that structure is essential. And one of the things that I did was I developed something that I call the talk canvas narrative framework, and it's a framework that helps speakers and anyone from, you know, boardroom presentations to investment pitches, to TED Talks, develop their underlying structure so that they can literally obliterate it with story. Steve Rush: Yeah. Andrea Sampson: But it's such an interesting thing, because again, if I go back to, and this is a very long answer to your question, which was the, you know, the commonalities to what marketers do, this was where I really wished I'd had this structure because one of the things that I found was when I was in the agency world and we'd be building, let's just say a pitch to a new client, and we would spend, you know, countless hours, you know, stressful hours developing a presentation. And the question always was, is it understandable? And have we missed anything? And what the talk canvas does is, in my new details, shows you all of the things that you need to address in order for your presentation to land, to be compelling, and to have all the information that the listener needs in order to be able to take in what you want them to take in. And so, it begins with the story spine, so it starts there, and then we move into what we call a core purpose. Steve Rush: Great, so I wondered though, if you think about the notion of pitch presentation and speech, is there a huge difference and how you construct those or do they follow a similar path, but just the vernacular changes? Andrea Sampson: So, there are differences for sure. Steve Rush: Right. Andrea Sampson: You know a stage presentation, as an example, you have much more latitude to use less visuals and more storytelling. And, you know, that's why TED Talks are so incredibly powerful, right? So, what they've done is, they take an idea, they wrap it in story, and then they tell us this amazing story, which then gets unfolded throughout the course of, you know, 10 to 18 minutes. When you're doing a presentation in front of a boardroom, as an example, there's a bigger expectation that you're going to get to the actual, you know, sort of core meaning or the core thing quicker. You can weave story all the way through and you should, but what you're doing is it's a bit more of a dance between the functional, here's what I want you to know and the emotional here's, how I want you to feel. And so, Nancy Duarte, who's a TED Speaker and also an amazing thinker, developed what she called the shape of a presentation. And it really is a toggling between the functional and the emotional. And so, this is what we do in a presentation. We're using more visuals, because often we need those visuals to keep the audience, the boardroom audience with us. But what we're doing is we're moving between the visuals and the story and the visuals in the story. And then when you get into a pitch, which is a very different thing. Now, pitches you know, if we're talking about investor pitches, there's a lot of things that are really required, that the pitch, you know, that the investors know because they're putting up money. But what's similar is story and ideas still live in there. And what you're doing, the things you're telling them are a little different, but you're still using the commonality of story and idea. And that is true across a stage presentation, a boardroom presentation and a pitch. That's the commonality, some of the ways in which you do it are different. Steve Rush: Hmm, that's super. And the irony here is that we've learned through story from generations after generations, after generations for thousands of years. But it seemed that certainly through my early part of my career, kind of in the nineties and in the two thousand, we seem to lose that. And only really in the recent years, I've seen story re-emerge has been quite a powerful medium of communication. What do you think the reason was for that? Andrea Sampson: You know, it's interesting. I've thought about this a lot and you know, in the fifties. First of all, humans are hardwired to respond to story. And if we go all the way back into, you know, sort of the stone age, you'll see that the story has been our medium of communication. Steve Rush: You can see it written on the walls of caves. Andrea Sampson: Exactly. Steve Rush: And that's how they used to tell their stories, right? Andrea Sampson: And when you look at those cave drawings, what are they about? They're about the emotion of what was going on, right? There was the victory of the hunt, there was this sadness of the death. Like you could see it in these beautiful drawings on caves, but what happened for us is humans started to become more industrialized and really, you know, we've had about 150 years of industrialization with the advent of the industrial revolution. And with that, what happened is, we became much more efficient. We were focused on efficiency. The belief has been, stories are not efficient, now that's not true. In fact, stories are incredibly efficient, but the belief was, I just want the facts man, nothing but the facts. And so, as we became more industrialized, our stories became about facts and we got narrower and narrower and narrower on facts. What's happening now, and it's so interesting because we're at the dawn of the fourth industrial revolution. And this is the first industrial revolution where humans are not being industrialized. And so, and what I mean by that is in every other industrial revolution, humans became the labor force, right? Well, now what's happening is we're being released from the labor force. We're being allowed to go back to what it is we do best, which is to feel, to emote, to tell stories, to create and being in our creative place. And it's a challenging time because we don't actually know how to do this anymore. We don't know how to be creators without that end goal. Like I'm going to sit on the line and I'm going to put this widget in this hole. And at the end of the line out will come a car or a thing. Well, now there's robots doing that. We're not really very good at doing the same thing over and over and over again. That's actually not what humans are designed for. And so, as we are coming back into what we are designed for, which is to be creators, to be creative. We're bringing back this medium of storytelling. My own supposition is, that this is the first, you know, process of training our brains to go back into the creative beings we actually are. Steve Rush: It's great supposition, and one I have listened to you articulate it so well, can wholeheartedly concur with, because the whole principle of management is made up too Management only happened because of the industrial revolution, but we wanted to get some control and some measures and some guidance, which is also the reason why we lost some of that great core leadership experiences along the way as well. Andrea Sampson: You know, I'm listening to Yuval Harari great books Sapiens right now. And I love, you know, there's a part in it where he talks about storytelling and he talks about us humans, that's actually everything about our lives, our story. And he goes all the way back to the beginning of the corporation and his supposition is that the corporation is really just a story that we've all bought into Steve Rush: That's ironic, isn't it? Gosh, your right. Andrea Sampson: It's true, right? Steve Rush: Yeah. Andrea Sampson: It's so true, so we don't see it that way, right? Because it's like, well, no, a corporation is a corporation. It's a legal entity. No, actually it's what we've done is we've taken a story and we turned it into a legal entity. Steve Rush: My head's starting to go into crazy spins now thinking of different things, but it's, great that we're having this conversation because it's all really relevant to the role that we play when we're communicating with others, isn't it? Andrea Sampson: Oh, absolutely. It's so important that we start to use our storytelling skills again. Because you know, the more that we do this, this is where, you know, as I go back to my own journey into the world of speaker coaching, I started to understand that when I live in a place of emotion, that is where I'm creating the deepest, most meaningful relationships. Whether those relationships be with, you know, people who are in my family or with my clients, because when we're starting with story, we're immediately starting with heart and it's such a different place from business, you know, having been in the corporate world for 25 years, you know, I got to tell you, there was not a lot of room for anything that, you know, smelled of heart-centered ness and that's not the case anymore. Steve Rush: No, you're right. And one of the things I remember from the conversation that you and I had some months back, you were telling me that, you know, subject matter experts don't promote themselves very well. Is that a reason for them being dragged into the detail versus being thoughtful about their self-promotion? Andrea Sampson: Yeah, I mean it's interesting, you know, subject matter experts and that's one of the things I, love, love, love, love working with deep subject matter experts. These are people, you know, and just to kind of frame that for the listeners, you know, these are people who are often in the back rooms and you know, they work in science and technology and academia, you know, they're really, really good at doing the work that they do. And many of them are working on things that are literally changing our world, but they're so busy doing that work. And they know often the importance of the work they're doing in the context in which they're working, but they don't look up and they don't tell the rest of us about this work that they're doing. They don't self-promote because it doesn't even occur to them to self-promote. But here's the thing. When we don't understand what's actually happening in our world when these deep subject matter experts who are doing work in the world, that literally is changing our world. And we don't understand that we are at the effect of media, which also doesn't know that and who's choosing what we do know. And so, it's a real challenge for us to sort through what is real and what is not. So, these deep subject matter experts need to be heard. And we need to encourage them to come forward. And again, I come back to TED as a platform, also Singularity University, which is one of the partnerships that I've had through Talk Boutique. These are places where these deep subject matter experts are finally getting some airtime, but of course the challenges because they tend to be in these very complex places. What do they talk about? They talk about the facts. They tell us the process; they bring us into the world that is so complex and so abstract that most of us don't really understand it. And so that's not helpful either. And really this is where storytelling really shines. Steve Rush: Yeah, absolutely spot on. So, from a story perspective, you must have had the opportunity to work with some really fascinating storytellers and some really fascinating people. Has there been a moment in your career as a coach or even just as a listener to stories where you've gone wow! that is the most compelling story I've ever heard? Andrea Sampson: What immediately comes to my mind. So many years ago, I was working with a TED Speaker. He is a cosmologist, which is in the study of astrophysics, study of the universe, cosmology is the study of the actual universe. So not the stars, not the planet, it's not even the galaxies, the entire universe. So first of all, you kind of just go like, wow, I can't even contextualize that. I mean, as most of the subject matter experts that I work with incredibly smart, and this is sort of the story I hear all the time, oh, I'm not creative, right? So, here's an individual who says to me I want to talk about the origins of the universe, but I'm not creative. I don't really know how to do that. And as I spoke with him and started to understand more about him, it turns out that he also played in a band and he's does some visual art, of course not creative though, right? This is often what I hear from scientists. Steve Rush: Yeah, exactly. Andrea Sampson: But what was also really interesting about him, didn't know this, this was sort of fun fact, the driest place on earth is the south pole, which also happens to be the coldest place on earth. Now, why is that even a part of the story? Well, the reason is, is that as a cosmologist studying the entire universe, you need to have really powerful telescopes. Well, in order for a telescope to see the universe, you need to be able to have absolute absence of water because water obscures our ability to see in distance. So, in order to see the universe, you have to go to the driest place on earth, which is the south pole. And so, this individual lived for almost a year in the coldest place on earth. And so interesting story, first of all, like what is it like to live in the south pole? And then there's the story of the universe. Well, working with this individual, what we were able to do was to build a story that literally wove together the origins of the universe and his own experience of spending a year, isolated in minus 100-degree weather in a station with about 30 other people, as they literally begin to degrade because it happens every year with them. There's only about two or three months of the year where they can actually get in and out of the south pole, planes can't actually get in, it's too cold. And so, they can't land, the steel would snap. So, listening to this story, it was phenomenal. It was literally poetic and this is a scientist. He literally wove these two stories together. So that comes to mind and it's one of those, great for me, moments of working with a speaker where I saw the academic side ma married beautifully with the art of storytelling. Steve Rush: Yeah, that's great. Great story to refer onto it as well. Andrea Sampson: Yeah. Steve Rush: So as a CEO and a leader in your own, right, I'm now going to ask some questions of you in terms of getting inside of your leadership brain. Andrea Sampson: Sure. Steve Rush: And thinking about how we can share some great tips and ideas with our listeners. So, the first place I'd like to go, Andrea is to ask you what your top three leadership hacks would be? Andrea Sampson: So, number one is, as a leader, you are not alone. So, make sure you have a good network. It can be very lonely at the top. People say that all the time, but if you think of leadership as a solitary sport, not only is it going to be lonely, you're not going to be very good at it. So, the reality is all good leaders have a great network of people who are advisors, who are supporters and who help them. So, make sure you've got your team in place. Number two, take care of yourself. You know, you as the leader of anything, you are the one who's making all of these decisions. So how have you taken care of your brain today? You know, look at the self-care that will help you be able to show up at your best. You know, are you meditating? Are you finding ways to work through whatever blocks you have? You know, what is your routine? Are you exercising? What's your food intake like? These are things that people don't like to talk about because it's like, oh, you know, we've lived for so long in a world that said, you know, just sacrifice everything and do it all. And that is the worst advice that you can get as a leader, make sure you are taking care of yourself. And then number three, make sure that you have very clearly articulated and identified what your vision is and that vision isn't just for your business. It's also for your life. So, you need to have a vision that aligns with what your core purpose is as a business person, but as a human as well, because only then will you be able to continue to move forward with consistency. If your core purpose is out of alignment with who you are or what you believe, you will very quickly come to a point where you can no longer do it. You will run out of steam. So always asking yourself, do I have passion for this? Am I committed to it? Do I wake up in the morning knowing that I am moving forward on something that I deeply, deeply believe in? And if you can say yes to those things every day, you're going to jump out of bed and be excited for the work you're doing Steve Rush: Really powerful stuff. That last one, particularly also, I bet makes your storytelling much easier as well, right? Andrea Sampson: Yeah, absolutely. Steve Rush: If it's intrinsically connected to something that's overly emotional for you, then it's going to be so much easier to convey emotional stories. Andrea Sampson: Yeah, absolutely, yep. Steve Rush: So, the next part of the show we call Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something hasn't worked out particularly well, and it could be that it was quite catastrophic, but as a result, you now have created some core foundations or something that's working really well for you in your life and work. What would be your Hack to Attack? Andrea Sampson: So, you know, this past year, you know, we're recording this, you know, at a time where hopefully we're coming out of a global pandemic and this has been an incredibly difficult time, not just for me, but for everyone. Steve Rush: Right. Andrea Sampson: And you know, if I look back to a year ago where we were, I'm in Canada and, you know, in June of 2020, we were just coming out of lockdown and you know, wondering how the world was going to recover. Well, here we are in June of 2021, and also just getting out of lockdown and wondering how the world is going to recover, but we're in a very different place. Emotionally a year ago, I was really in a place of, I'm not quite sure how we're going to move forward. You see what had happened for me was I had made the choice to take over the company solo. I bought out my business partner just prior to the pandemic and suddenly the world fell down around us. And I didn't know whether or not I was going to be able to make a go of it with Talk Boutique because, you know, the reality was we were an event-based business. We work with speakers and every event was canceled. And so, a year later I look at that and go, oh, thank God, because you know, sometimes things need to die in order for them to live. And what I mean by that is when you're in a partnership, what we had created together was important, but it wasn't my vision. And I needed the deconstruction to happen. And I'm not sure that if we had continued, the business had continued as busy as it was in the pre pandemic time, but I would have had the time to really stop and think about my own vision and purpose. And so, this past year of retooling and re-imagining the business, I've had the time to do that. And so, I look forward now with so much hope and so much gratitude for what happened a year ago. And so, I can see now that what I'm creating is much more in tune and aligned with my own purpose and vision about shifting the social narrative, you know, working with thought leaders, working with those who are doing good in the world and helping them to get their stories out in the world so that we can all see the good that's happening in the world and contribute to that, become part of that. And a year ago, I'm not sure I would have been so clear on that. So, you know, that is for me, it's sometimes the breakdown is really a breakthrough. Steve Rush: Wow, that's really powerful words. I love the whole principle of how you framed that about breakdown to breakthrough. So, thank you for sharing, that's really powerful. Andrea Sampson: You're welcome. Steve Rush: The last thing we want to do is get a chance to do some time travel with you. So, our guest have the opportunity to bump into their former selves at 21. So, what would your advice to Andrea be if you could bump into her at 21. Andrea Sampson: So, Andrea at 21 was driven and passionate and fearless. And, you know, if I were to go back and give her some advice it would be to keep going, first of all but also to slow down, don't worry that everything has to happen right now. You know, that was who I was. I was this, you know, young person who wanted to make my mark in the world. And I would tell Andrea at 21, that life is long and there is plenty of time and you don't have to get it right the first time. In fact, you're not going to get it right the first time. And sometimes the not getting it right, is the whole reason why we do things, because it helps us to learn. Failure is such an important part, you know, I grew up in a family where we were very much driven to perfectionism. And so, if I couldn't get it right, I moved onto the next thing instead of sticking with the thing and getting it right. And now, you know, many years later, I've learned that when you focus on something and when you take the risk to do it, and when you take the risk to fail, you are going to learn so much more than if you just abandoned it because it didn't work out right away. Steve Rush: Yeah Andrea Sampson: So that's a big one. Steve Rush: It is, that's huge. So, Andrea, what's happening with Talk Boutique? Tell us about the journey you're on now and maybe how our folks can learn a little bit more about the work you're doing. Andrea Sampson: Sure, so Talk Boutique now, I mean, we are both a speakers bureau and we represent deep subject matter experts who are doing the work in the world that I've described earlier, and we are speaker coaches. I have a team of coaches who work with me, who have all been trained in my methodology. And what we do is we work with thought leaders. We work with corporate leaders and we work with teams and we help them to become storytellers in every presentation or talk that they give. We train them through one-on-one coaching and through programs that we aim at the, you know, the core of any organization, we bring the TED-style into the corporate world, and this is a really powerful program. We also have an open enrollment program that we call The Thought Leader Academy for anyone who wants to work with us on a one-on-one basis, but they might not quite be able to make the commitment to come in through a corporate program or to work with our coaches one-on-one. And that is a digital offering that includes group coaching. And so, The Thought Leader Academy, we do a couple of intakes a year. Our next one will be coming up in the fall, but we are doing some work right now around getting the story spine out there in a bigger way and doing some small trainings. So, if you're interested in working with us, you can go to our website at talkboutique.com, or you can email me directly at andreatalkboutique.com, either work. We love working with individuals and with teams. So always happy to help out in whatever way we can. Steve Rush: We'll make sure our listeners can hook up with you as well by putting your links for your website and email addresses and stuff in our show totes too. Andrea Sampson: Fantastic Steve, thank you so much. Steve Rush: You're very welcome, Andrea. I'm super glad that we have you on the show, the whole story spine, and learning a little bit about how you are making connections through storytelling is a really inspirational one. So, thank you for sharing and thank you for being part of the community on The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Andrea Sampson: Oh, Steve, thank you. It has been my absolute pleasure. Thank you for asking such amazing questions and for adding so much to today's call. It has been amazing. Steve Rush: Thank you. My pleasure. Andrea Sampson: All right, take care.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. 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