The Leadership Hacker Podcast

Innovating Next Practice with Dr Ciela Hartanov

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

 

Full Transcript Below.

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Leaders Learn from Leaders with Adrian Simpson

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. <

Steve Rush: [Laugh].

Adrian Simpson: And no one wanted to be the president. And he said, because they suddenly understood the complexity of the decisions. And they all said, you've got a horrible job. And he said, no, I've got a complex job, right. And he said, but a genius was, you know, you'd be three weeks later. He'd be, you know, in some airline at airport, in the us. And you know he'd be getting on a plane and an air stewards would say, you know, Fred, it's all about cash flow. You know, he said he was like, you know.

Steve Rush: Yeah.

Adrian Simpson: But that was just a great example. And I was telling that story to, you know, some clients recently and one client just went, oh my God, that is absolutely brilliant, right. You know, I'm not saying I'm going to create a, you know, an exact board game like Fred did but that principle of how do I provide my frontline people with real operational data on which I'm going to ask them to make decisions, to help them understand the complexities of this business. He's fantastic and I just don't know if you get that level of insight from, you know, somebody who's in a, perhaps more of a kind of academic world.

Steve Rush: Yeah, I totally concur with that on the basis that your MBAs and your academic degrees will give you the information and the foundations of which you can then take decisions and make decisions, but it doesn't give you the level of intimacy you've just described, right?

Adrian Simpson: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. What clients love is, they like the kind of warts and all approach, you know what I mean?

Steve Rush: Right.

Adrian Simpson: Because again, some of the best sessions we've ever done at Wavelength is when we've had leaders who frankly are willing to talk with brute honesty about also failure and, you know, mental health issues and, you know, insecurities and imposter syndrome and all these things that, you know, so many leaders in the corporate world frankly, do suffer with and the challenge with, from time to time. But people aren't willing to talk about them, you know, when they get a chance to hear a peer open up about how lonely is as a leader, you know, and their struggles with leadership you know, they find it really reassuring inspiring, informative, you know, and that's leaves us feeling good as a business as well. We can help people who maybe you know, struggling with something to think it through, by providing them with some very relevant stimulus from somebody who's been where they've been.

Steve Rush: Yeah, imposter syndrome's an interesting one because my experience tells me that people have perception, this is just for junior managers or leaders moving from one place to another but every single leader, without doubt at one in time, would've suffered from that, right?

Adrian Simpson: Oh, unequivocally, unequivocally, it is probably the number one unspoken thing. I had a client years ago and they summarized it brilliantly. They just said, every year I kind of, I go slightly up the food chain, I get a business card with a bigger sounding, more important job title. I get more people. I get sent to business school to listen to academics who make me feel intellectually inferior. They give me a reading list that I'll never got to get through and don't understand. And then I look in the mirror and I kind of go, it's just me. They're going to understand it's me, right. And my partner looks at me as well and goes, yeah, I know. And he went, you know, and someday I'm going to be found out, right? [laugh] and it's so true that, you know, all of us, I think, feel that kind of, you know, you're faking it, you know, you're not real, but I think there's great reassurance in the fact that it is unequivocally every single leader, doesn't matter what level of seniority they're operating at in my experience. And I have had the pleasure of working with some, you know, interviewing, hosting, visiting some incredible leaders around the world. And it's just the same, it's their universal truth.

Steve Rush: And what I've observed about this whole notion of imposter syndrome is actually it isn't imposter syndrome at all. It's just facing new challenges that they haven't yet dealt with.

Adrian Simpson: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Steve Rush: Which is why learning from leaders who have faced other things and other experiences is the best way to get into the real nitty gritty of how to deal with that and how to respond to it.

Adrian Simpson: Yeah, yeah.

Steve Rush: Yeah. So, having had the opportunity to work with some of these fantastic organizations, if you had to peel back all of those experiences together, what would you say are the couple of attributes that would make a real great leader stand apart?

Adrian Simpson: I think one of them is, I think that there's a, the fantastic guy called Ed Schein, who actually having just talked about you know, the role of academics, I think there is, you know, I think he is an am academic at MIT and I think great leaders recognize a truth that he articulated a number of years ago, which is the only thing of real importance that leaders do is set and define culture. And I think that is, you know, so I think first and foremost, the very best leaders understand that's the most important thing that they do is set and define the culture and really pay attention to that. And if you do that, I think it drives and you know, in a related world, there was a lovely quote from the late great Herb Kelleher. The founder of Southwest Airlines who once said that power should reserve for weightlifting and boats, which I think is.

Steve Rush: Like it.

Adrian Simpson: Just a great quote, but I think it talks to, you know, unfortunately quite a lot of leaders don't realize that the most important thing they do is set and define culture and become obsessed by this thing called power, you know, and try and command, influenced by job title and you know, frankly, some not constructive behaviors where I think great leaders don't do that. And so, I think, you know, if you do that, then there's a number of things that I think that they do. So, I think they champion and encourage is probably, you know, number one. And again, I feel like there was a fantastic leader number of years ago, we interviewed who was a former board director of one of the world's most admired companies. And he talked about everybody, every leader is a CEO. And we said, you know, he said, but not in the traditional sense, every leader should be a chief encouragement officer.

Steve Rush: [Laugh] nice.

Adrian Simpson: I just think that's a really lovely mantra, right. Doesn't matter what level of senior you are, think of your job as a chief encouragement officer, you are a CEO in that sense. I think another thing is, again, this goes to setting culture, great leaders are on message. What I mean by that is, it was Terri Kelly, actually the former chief exec of W.L. Gore & Associates behind Gore-Tex who once said well, what’s your wavelength group? If you have director in your job title, you are forfeited the right to complain in public [laugh], which again, I just love as a kind of mantra because it's not about saying you can't disagree. Of course, you can have a disagreement or a different point of view to appear or a colleague, but it's about doing it in the appropriate forum, having those different, having those discussions, getting alignment, alignment, alignment, alignment, right. Because if you're the kind of leader that sits in a meeting with your peer group, you know, vehemently pretend to agree with something. And then as soon as you leave, go down the physical corridor, the virtual corridor to the water cooler, and immediately undermine everything that's been said, and everyone who said it. Well, what kind of culture are you creating?

So, I think, you know, to the point you talked about a little bit ago about imposter syndrome. I think they're self-aware as well. I think really good leaders are self-aware that they, Alan Jobe Unilever's chief exec. In fact, I'm doing a podcast later this week with Tim Munden, his former chief leading learning officer. At Unilever, they have a thing which is, inner game and outer game, which is, they have a belief that to be a really, really good leader. You have to, first of all, master your inner game, you know, what's your sense of purpose? You know, who do you stand for? What are your values? You know. Are you frankly, as comfortable in your skin as you can be. And once you've done that, then there's a chance that you can master your outer game, which is, you know, much more kind of the ability to enroll and engage others and, you know, create a great compelling culture and your operational excellence. You know, it's a really interesting way about thinking of leadership. So, I mean, there are lots of other attributes to great leaders, but just in the interest of time, there's probably a top, top group.

Steve Rush: The inner games, a really interesting one because it's where self-awareness comes from as well. But also, if you cannot master that inner game, then, you know, the voice in our head, our virtual coach, our personal coach, call it what you will, is not going to give us the right context, messaging and mindset to allow us to master our outer game.

Adrian Simpson: Absolutely.

Steve Rush: Yeah.

Adrian Simpson: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I've done, you know, speaking personally, you know, I'm a great advocate for building yourself a real strong network of people that will help you with your inner game. You know, coaches, mentors, you know whatever you want, clinical psychologists, doesn't matter, you know, like it's lonely out there. It's tough out there. Whether you are, you know, frankly, a large, you know, C-suite executive on the board of a large multinational, or whether you are a you know, a five person starter, you know, SME, you know, it's lonely and surrounding yourself with really smart, you know, informed people, specific expertise that can help you with your inner game, I think is invaluable.

Steve Rush: Yeah. So, having had the benefit of working with some really inspirational firms, is there one that sets itself apart as being the most inspirational you've worked with?

Adrian Simpson: I think there's probably two [laugh] if I maybe.

Steve Rush: Let’s dive into them, yeah.

Adrian Simpson: For different reasons. So, the first actually is in India and it is the truly astonishing Aravind Eye Care system in India, which is the largest specialist provider of eye care in the world. And what makes it quite incredible is, it was founded nearly 50 years ago by a then 58-year-old retired opthamtalmic surgeon in a tier two town in Tamil Nadu in India, who, “as you do” at age 58 in a tier two town in Tamil Nadu province in India decides the problem of needless blindness as defined by cataract. Requires the solution of scale of McDonald's. So, citing McDonald's as his inspiration for their ability to basically execute at scale, he decided to create the McDonald's of eye care and the Aravind Eye Care System was born with the purpose, which they've never changed to eradicate needless blindness. And although they're structured as a nonprofit, the metrics are insane. So, they've treated something like 70 million people over the last 50 years. Their operational efficiency, their productivity is five times greater than any other eye care surgeon in the world. So, the average surgeon at Aravind will do five times the number of surgeries and the next best in the world. That drives a quality, which is about 60% better than the next best in the world. It drives a cost control, which is a hundredth of the national health service to provide cataract. So, you're doing five times the level of volume at a hundredth of the cost at 60% better quality. They've never dropped an EBITDA below about 35% in 50 years. They're in partnership now with Google on the application of AI. So that's all the hard stuff that you, think's pretty impressive, but that's all-in pursuit of their purpose, eradicate needless blindness.

That means that nearly 50% of the people they've treated over 50 years have never paid a dime for the treatment. So, you're running a cross subsidy business model, if you basically literally walk up to an Aravind Eye Care System hospital, and you have a choice. Turn left, free hospital. Turn right, paying hospital, and you may get a potted plant and a nicer meal if you pay. But when you get to the surgery, it's the same surgeon. And they make a joke and say, it's a bit like flying business class. We don't change out the pilot. So, you're getting the same quality as you do if you pay, but nicer frills. You add to that the fact that, so you're making 35% EBITDA and giving away nearly, you know, 40% of your product. Their whole business model is to include the excluded.

That includes the people they employ, so are about 70% female workforce. They recruit about a thousand young women a year from rural backgrounds who are typically 16, who they recruit, train, educate to become the secret source of their productivity. They've a university with an open source to models. Another 300 hospitals around the world have been taught the Aravind process by Aravind. And if that isn't enough, they've got a manufacturing arm that has about 10% of the world's market interocular lenses or whatever lens you look at it, excuse the pun. Arvind is truly remarkable, about 5,000 people.

Steve Rush: Staggering results.

Adrian Simpson:  It is absolutely staggering. So, if you had asked me about that, you know, the power of purpose there is just extraordinary. So, it's the most purpose organization in the world meets arguably the finest performing organization in the world in terms of, you know, productivity, quality, cost, you know, EBITDA, I mean, all that stuff that the private sector cares about to drive a social impact, that beggers belief. So, for many reasons, they are remarkable at a more sort of, you know, classically well-known, so don't get me wrong. Aravind had been subject to Harvard and Wharton case studies, I think even in INSEAD, so they are known, but I don't think they're known well enough, and we've taken groups to India particular twice to go them. We actually had one their board with us in America last week. So, we have a very close relationship with them, and we even got a series of films about them, but the other one would be Southwest Airlines. And I just cite them because, you know, this is the world's most flown, successful, admired airline. And I think what makes them so remarkable is, you have to, first of all, I think really just understand the context in which any airline operates, you know, but Southwest, I was literally there 10 days ago with clients.

And they said, you know, we put 500,000 human souls a day in aluminum tubes, surrounded by jet fuel and fly them at 500 miles an hour [laugh] and you go, yes, wow. And you've got to do that with a level operational safety, which, you know, whether to zero tolerance.

Steve Rush: right.

Adrian Simpson: Add into that a business model, which is about low cost, high frequency and excellence in service is an incredibly tough [laugh] mix, right.

Steve Rush: Yeah.

Adrian Simpson: Where you've got so many things outside of your control, oil prices, you know, heaven forbid, you know, terrorism, health, security, you know, weather, you know, I mean, all the things that can affect the profitability of an airline. So to operate in that context where they have built a culture of just positively, you know, relentless, compulsive, obsessive focus on people, you're talking, you know, 50, 60,000 people to now go beyond America's borders, to be flying to Mexico, to Hawaii, to Latin America, where they are now, because they you know, they want to become the world's most flown most admired airline, as opposed to at the moment, they are certainly the biggest domestic carrier in America and people at the heart of their business, that the way that they do that delivers, you know, so their model is kind of, if you put people at the absolute epicenter of your business and you know, really compulsive obsessive focus on who you recruit and how you onboard them and how you enliven their spirit, there's a decent chance that, that they will then deliver positively outrageous service or indeed did they now call it hospitality to your guests, your customers.

And if you've got great people delivering great service to your clients, there's a reasonable chance you'll make a profit. And that's a model they've proven time and time again, to be over 50 years.

Steve Rush: But again, it comes back down to power of purpose, right?

Adrian Simpson: Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah. I was in America 10 days ago with 20 clients and we began our week together visiting Southwest. And you talk about purpose, you talk about how to engage people. So, imagine, so we were there on a Monday morning when they were onboarding about 500 new employees across the business, ramp agents, flight agents, you name it. And imagine this was your first day, the first minute of your first day at your new company. Because we got as a Wavelength Group to go and line what they called the red carpet.

So, imagine in the head office, they literally put a red carpet down the middle of it. A shuttle bus pulls up, out gets 800 new employees. They walk in the door, and they are immediately greeted by cacophony of sound being made by about 150 Southwest employees from across the business, whooping, hollering, sounding clasping were clapping with signs welcoming them to Southwestern Airlines, right. And we got to witness that as a client group. So, you think significant emotional engagement, right. You know, look at that, the principle there, I'm not saying that every company should do that for their people, but imagine, and literally these new hires had their phones out and they were looking around them going, oh my God, oh my God, what's going on? They were literally, literally you've arrived on your first day. And you are literally being, you know, welcomed by hundreds of people down a red carpet to the new Southwest Airlines family. And then you go through to a classroom, and you know, and now you're there with, you know, 300 odd people and it's like a celebration of your arrival. And within the first, literally 15, 20 minutes, there is a brilliant, brilliant video that is voiced by employees across the business that talks about the purpose of Southwest Airlines, you know, and its heritage and its values and where it's come from. And it was just, you know, it was magical to witness.

Steve Rush: I bet, yeah. Sounds and feels just, you know, emotional connection from the get-go is going to really lay some solid foundations. Isn't it?

Adrian Simpson: Absolutely. I mean, you know, yeah. I mean, it's like, you know, if you contrast that with the typical onboarding process, if there even is one [laugh] in most, you know, companies small or large, and I think particularly in this sort of remote hybrid era where a lot of people are onboarding, you know, and being onboarded whilst at home, you know and probably then if they're lucky they get a, you know, they might get you know, some sort of box in the post with a laptop in it. And basically, kind of like, you know, with an expectation to plug it in and tune into some sort of online tutorial on their first morning, you know, and I don't know. So, I think either the principle there is, you know, and particularly in the context of this war for talent and the great resignation, right. You know, what can be learned from that principle of providing, you know, new hire employees with a fantastically emotional experience that will stay with them probably for the rest of their lives and the rest of their careers.

Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely. So, we're going to turn the tables a little bit. So, you're a successful leader in your own, right. As well as having the experience of being surrounded by great leaders. And therefore, I want to tap into your leadership brain now.

Adrian Simpson: [Laugh].

Steve Rush: So, this part of the show, we're going to dive into trying to distill all of those leadership lessons you've had. What would be your top three leadership hacks Adrian?

Adrian Simpson: Whoa, gosh, I don’t know I've got three. I think think my big reflection is, the power of networks. And what I mean by that is, again, you know, started off earlier and saying, you know, absolutely whilst I believe in leaders, learning from leaders. And I believe in that fervently, I also, you know, do every now and again, tap into it, admire some sort of work of selected kind of, you know consultants or academics. And there's a brilliant book which I would advocate called the personal boardroom. And what the personal boardroom does is it talks about this point about the power of networks and not networking because networking is a concept, I think that sends most certainly British executives with an immediate allergic reaction.

Steve Rush: Yeah.

Adrian Simpson: And what, only in my personal boardroom is learning about who are the people that you should have around you that play a very specific role in your career. That you can tap into at times of need in terms of advice, when things are going well, when things aren't going well, when you're feeling low, when you're feeling high, when you're feeling, you know, in the middle, you know, who do you call and what the personal boardroom book does very brilliantly is, it kind of defines specific roles to say, ideally, and I like it as a visual to say, right, Steve, imagine, you know, you turn around in your house now and as a, you know, dining room table, and it's got, I don't know, 8 to 10 chairs around it, what their research indicates. And again, it's reality based because they interview lots of really, really successful leaders is that those chairs should be each occupied by somebody playing a very specific role in your career. So, for example, your mentor or a sponsor or a coach, there's a particular role, they love, they call the nerve giver, which I love, which is, you know, you've been asked to do a major presentation to your chief exec or, you know, the board, you are absolutely panicking. You call them up and they say, Steve, you're gorgeous, you've got this, right. You know, who is that person in your role? Or they make a very interesting distinction between, you know, a coach who really, I think tries to you know, ask smart questions of you to help you figure out the answer and mentor who I think frankly is the sort of person you ring up and just says, do this [laugh] because they've probably been there and done it and they're just much more directive in their advice. And then there's a, you know, kind of a sponsor who actually is the person who's in the room when the decision about you is being made, right. Who's talking about you to the people that you need to be, you know. So, my sort of leadership hack would be about really thinking about, do you have a personal boardroom? And what I mean here is, this is not colleagues who sit alongside you every day. I'm sure there are some people inside your, but I think most leaders operate in an echo chamber.

Steve Rush: Yeah.

Adrian Simpson: Where they're talking to people just like them in industries, just like them, or indeed inside their own organization. And they don't have that benefit of external validation, inspiration, nerve, you know, so I think my, maybe that's more than one hack rolled into one, but I think that my sort of number one would be around that. But I think aligned to that would be around this. And I've touched a couple of times is that. Do not be afraid to ask for professional support and help from, you know, a coach. Coach can be brilliant and I'm a massive advocate of coaches. Someone you can talk to, external to your organization about what's keeping you awake at night, or where do you want to go with your career? What's your next play or whatever it is, your hopes or your fears are or whatever it is, somebody who you can ask really smart questions of you and help you think things through and catastrophize if you need to, but in a safe space. I'm world class catastrophization. So, I've used coaches in that capacity, or, you know, if you need even more help, if you need to, you know, I lost my father tragically very suddenly to a heart attack five years ago, you know, and I even undertake some grief counseling for a while to get myself back on the straight and narrow. I've even worked with a clinical psychologist at one point where I just was not in a productive, good space. And you know, she helped me really sort of, you know, understand that, and talk about maybe some structures and systems and processes to address that. And, you know, so I think my second sort of one, I think would be, yeah, is the power of specialists to really help you in your career and frankly in your life.

Steve Rush: Yeah, awesome. Really, really helpful hacks and tips. Thanks Adrian. Next part of the show we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something hasn't gone well. Might have been quite catastrophic, but as a result of the activity, you've taken some learning from it. And it's now a force of good in your life and work. What would be your Hack to Attack?

Adrian Simpson: Well, I mean, in 2020, we lost 60% of our revenues in six weeks. Because my business was based on, you know, physical immersions. So, you can imagine that was somewhat catastrophic, kind of emotional state. But again, I sound like a broken record, but I, you know, I remember what happened was I was ringing up people in my network. Frankly, you know, very deflated [laugh] very you know, down and I couldn't figure out what the answer was to the problem we were facing. And we were toying with, so we've always had this program called connect. That's been at the heart of our business and fortunately we found a way to keep that program going. We managed to execute it in a sort of slightly hybrid digital way, but we were trying to turn up the digital element of the connect program to see whether we could add some more, you know, clients into the mix.

And it was a client, she now become a friend who I've worked with years. She said, for God's sake, Adrian, separate the two things out. You have amazing access to the amazing content. Leaders have never been more isolated than they have right now. There's never going to be a need to for what you can bring them, which is that inspiration, that education, that provocation. Create a digital only model. It will reduce your price point; it'll make your business more accessible. And I literally came off that call. I got a piece of paper and I scoped out on a piece of paper. And she said, you know, call it something like inspire. And I went, great, brilliant idea. [laugh] I literally sat down and that was the Genesis of the Wavelength Inspire program, which we launched in January 2021. And it has been the absolute best thing we've ever done.

We have now 657 people subscribed to it from all around the world. It's made our brand far more accessible. It's able clients to bring the outside world in its scale. You know, previously we only had to, you know, could only send 1 or, you know, 2, 3, 4, 5 people on our programs typically. Now they can send, you know, got 1 client with 150 people signed up to it. So that's fantastic. And it's taken us into incredibly new and exciting places. We've run sessions from South Africa, from Silicon Valley, from China, because it's digital, you can also, you know, you can access the content in a different way. Yeah, you can't sit still, I suppose Steve, you know, you cannot, sometimes you have feel deflated, you have to lick your wounds. You have to kind of like, you know, we made some, you know, it was very tough time, but ultimately you have to kind of pick yourself. And I had no idea, when come off that call and I did that one pager. And I said like, if we sell a hundred places, I'll be happy and we sold 300 in the first go and now we're at 700 and I just you know, in order to get going, get going [laugh].

Steve Rush: Exactly, yeah.

Adrian Simpson: Keep moving forward, you know, keep trying stuff.

Steve Rush: Definitely. Now the very last thing we get to do is, you get to do some time travel bump into Adrian at 21 and give some advice. What would it be?

Adrian Simpson: It's a really tough question to ask because I'm pretty happy with decisions I've made in my career. I think probably I think the one thing I would've done would've been to have got more help earlier in my career around some of things that, like all of us, we can display perhaps not brilliantly optimal behavior sometime. And I think you know, in my sort of late twenties, early thirties, you know, I'm driven by, you know, a passion and a belief and, you know, I'm energetic person and I love, you know, and that has some very positive attribute, sometimes not so positive. And I was too late, I think in realizing that I can't just rationalize my way out what was going on [laugh] myself.

Steve Rush: Yeah.

Adrian Simpson: And actually, the need to just stop, talk to somebody with real professional expertise to help me understand what was driving those behaviors and to direct them in a more productive way. So, I think I would have told my 21-year-old self, you know, don't be, you know, I think, it's either a combination of you feel like, you know it all, or actually it's a sign of weakness [laugh] asking for help and support. And don't be stupid. It's a sign of neither

Steve Rush: Super advice. Something that we perhaps don't even find out about until later on in life, when actually, you know, like you said, calling on that early, would've been really helpful. Love it.

Adrian Simpson: Yeah, absolutely.

Steve Rush: So, the very last thing we want to do today is make sure our listeners can connect with you.

Adrian Simpson: Yeah

Steve Rush: So, how is the best way we can do that?

Adrian Simpson: Number of ways. So, obviously with a great website wavelengthleadership.com, follow me on LinkedIn, should be great as well, very active on LinkedIn. Also, do-little bit of Twittering, not so much on Twitter, but certainly very active on LinkedIn. And the website also, I'm featured on various podcasts. We host our own little series called Making Waves where I also get a chance like you, Steve, to interview some, you know, really, really interesting people or just ping me an email at adrianwavelandleadership.com and yeah, we'd love to fill any follow up questions, or anyone's interested to discuss further.

Steve Rush: We'll drop those into the show notes as well. So literally people can finish listening, click and connect with you. I just want to say, thank you. It's been really lovely chatting. You've got such an enormous network that is now allowing us to learn from that and leaders learn best from leaders. So, thanks being on our podcast.

Adrian Simpson: Thank you, Steve. Really, really enjoyed it.

Steve Rush: Thanks Adrian.

 

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.

 

The ABC’s of Diversity with Martine Kalaw

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

Read the rest of this entry »

Because I Can with Timothy Bradshaw

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

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Beware False Tigers with Frank Forencich

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.

Work Made Fun Gets Done with Dr Bob Nelson

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

Read the rest of this entry »

Get Energized with Simon Alexander Ong

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

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Coaching The Brain with Joseph O’Connor

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.

SUPERBOLD with Fred Joyal

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

 

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The Courage to Learn Differently with Matthew Cox

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/

 

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