Sweet On Leadership – Details, episodes & analysis

In this episode, Tim Sweet delves into one of the most crucial issues in leadership: having the courage to remain authentic. He explores why the truth can be uncomfortable and how, in our society, we are incentivized to avoid disturbing the peace, even if it means advocating for what is right. This causes a tendency to sugarcoat or omit details. Doing so may seem easier in the short term but can lead to long-term problems.

Tim introduces the concept of the "fear barrier" and explains how fear influences our decision-making, potentially causing us to compromise our values. He shares personal stories and insights into why embracing truth and building trust is crucial. Tim also provides actionable strategies for embracing uncomfortable realities, staying authentic, and leading with integrity.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Dune - Paul Atreidis Quote
• Game of Thrones - Jon Snow Quote

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Contact Tim Sweet | Team Work Excellence: 

• Website
• LinkedIn: Tim Sweet
• Instagram
• Linkedin: Team Work Excellence

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Transcript

Tim 00:01

Many people would rather stay in the bubble where that narrative can be controlled, where they can keep telling themselves that story of absolutely everything is fine, and remember, we're not talking about things being wildly out of whack here. Often we're talking about just a few percentage points of your life. But those few percentage points matter, and they're held in balance of everything else good that we're doing. 

Tim 00:24

I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you, my friend, are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. I'm Tim Sweet, and I'd like to welcome you to Episode 40 of the Sweet on Leadership podcast. 

Tim 00:56

Well, hi, everybody. Today, we're going to tackle something crucial yet often sidestepped in leadership circles. The challenge of staying real, of staying authentic, of having the courage to embrace the truth and integrity, even when the pressure to compromise or to capitulate feels overwhelming. Think about the last time you faced a difficult decision. It wasn't just uncomfortable. It was unsettling. Maybe it was one of these moments where you felt compelled to ignore certain facts, to be part of the team, to accept a vision, to toe the company line. You might have justified a strategy or even the very purpose of a business, all while something deep inside you, the ground that you were standing on felt not as solid as you would like. It's in these moments when our options often feel limited, we want to be inspiring to create a sense of right, that we're here for a good purpose. We want to avoid giving power to focus that oppose our company's interests, but in doing so, sometimes we end up compromising a part of ourselves. Maybe you tackle the situation head-on, or maybe you sidestepped it, omitting a key detail here or there, spinning the situation a little just to make it a little more palatable. Well, it's in these moments, small or large, that we can start to feel like we're selling out. We're jumping on a bandwagon. We're playing a popularity game, and let's be honest, that can feel cheap and sleazy, and conflicted, and downright tiresome. In fact, it's exhausting. But what if there was a different way, a way that doesn't involve you compromising who you are or what you stand for, and this is where we're going to talk about what it looks like to really walk a path of truth and integrity, and courage. And I know all of you listening are good people, and you're all trying to do the right thing, and you are all brave people, but it's even in these little moments where we have to compromise that we can find a great deal of exhaustion. I have to tell you that this path of truth and integrity, and courage was one that I had to make a decision around several years ago when I decided to get out of regular management roles. Part of that was because I wanted to be beyond having to forward any particular campaign. So, I made a conscious decision that I wouldn't compromise just so I would have to be involved in that political space. It wasn't that I wasn't good at it. It's just that I found it exhausting. I also recognized that the people in businesses that I held to the highest esteem often were those that were able to be Maverick. They were able to say no, they were able to defy convention. And in those moments where they were living in that extreme truth, that risky truth, that's where they really shone as leaders, and that's who I decided to emulate as much of my daily life around from a professional perspective as I could. Now, look as a consultant and a coach, it's a bit easier because I'm paid to stand outside of a machine. In fact, there's many times when I'm brought into organizations or coaching relationships, precisely because they need a dose of reality. I'm often called a new set of eyes or an unbiased perspective. But in truth, it's simply a reset. It's a return to facts. It's establishing a through line, and those through lines have to be supported by data and analysis and reality if they're really going to stand up. One of these times when this clarity often hits home for people is right now, we've just come off of summer vacation here in North America, and during vacation, when we're away from the office, free from a Daily Grind and disconnected from usual dogma or pressures or community, you know, triggers and reinforcements, we start to sense our own truth more clearly. It's in these quiet moments when you might be driving home from the lake, or you might be mowing the lawn, or you might be just sitting around and enjoying a drink at the end of the day. When you're not surrounded by that constant hum of work, and you're able to disconnect just long enough to look at your life from an outside perspective that you can see things for what they really are. And it's here that people find themselves questioning, have I always lived true to who I am? Some people avoid vacations, even, because that step outside of reality is too uncomfortable. That step outside of the rat race, where they realize just how messed up their situation is, really makes them feel helpless. Many people would rather stay in the bubble, where that narrative can be controlled, where they can keep telling themselves that story of absolutely everything is fine. And remember, we're not talking about things being wildly out of whack here. Often we're talking about just a few percentage points of your life, but those few percentage points matter, and they are held in balance of everything else good that we're doing. So, they'd rather stay in the bubble. And let's face it, some organizations even prefer to keep people in the office. In fact, this is one of the reasons we're seeing why people are pressured to be back in the office. Why? Because they're in that bubble. They're where we can control the narrative. They're where we can have a singular reality that is focused around and justified by where we are in the world. So, as people that are out there wanting to do well, wanting to inject the universe with good stuff. Why do we find ourselves in positions that compromise our values? Why do we work contrary to those facts, even in small ways? Well, that's what we're going to dive in today. 

Tim 07:12

I'd like to introduce you to a concept called the fear barrier. 

[Start of Clip from Dune 07:16]

Paul Atreides: Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me. Where the fear is gone, there will be nothing; only I will remain.

[End of Clip from Dune 07:37]

Tim 07:38

Let's talk a little bit about fear because it's at the heart of why we make compromises. It's at the heart of why change is difficult. It's at the heart of why offices will polarize, why some people will excel, and other people are held down. And it may not be your fear, it may be the fear of others, but fear is at the heart of it because so many things come from lack of knowledge, lack of perspective, and fear. And fear takes many forms. It can take the form of avoidance. It can take the form of anger. It can take the form of our struggles. It is a force. It's what keeps us internally from speaking up, from challenging a status quo, from standing firm for our beliefs. It's what has us a fear of losing our place in an organization or losing our advantage in life. It has us thinking we might be seen as difficult. We might be seen as that squeaky wheel. We might have a fear of rocking the boat, but this fear doesn't just keep us silent, it also builds walls. And we build these barriers up to protect ourselves from the discomfort of facing the truth itself, from a risk of being that one who speaks up when everybody else says the right thing, or at the very least, is quiet. It's easier to go along, to nod in agreement, to sidestep the odd difficult conversation, just to get things done. But here's the thing, these barriers don't just keep the truth out, they keep us trapped. They're at the heart of why we have problems with equality in the workplace and inclusion in the workplace, that's all based in fear. We become trapped, as a company and even as a society, in a cycle of avoidance where pressure builds and builds until something breaks. It's that breaking point that often comes at the worst possible time when the stakes are highest. It's at that point where the costs are greatest and little decisions come back to haunt us. This is what the fear barrier is. It's that wall we use to shield ourselves from uncomfortable truths we don't want to face. And behind that fear is an imbalance. It's a conflict between personal courage, we sometimes call it vital courage and moral courage. Personal or vital courage, is the push for ourselves to succeed, to look after ourselves, to really fulfill the life that's important to us as individuals, to lead, to achieve our goals, to be who we want to be. And moral courage, likewise, is also noble. It's what pushes us to do right in groups, on behalf of society, on behalf of the organizations we choose to align ourselves. We have several of them. They can be our job. They can be clubs or sporting teams, or churches that we're involved in outside of work, and therefore we have to stand up on both sides of these things, demonstrating courage on both sides. And when we discount one, immediately, we're thrown into imbalance. When these two forms of courage are out of balance, we find ourselves making decisions that might feel safe in the short term, but long term, they have consequences. We get ourselves into situations that we can't easily undo, it's where the challenge lies, and it's where we need to be most vigilant. I remember that quote in Game of Thrones, where at the end of season seven, Jon Snow has to make this impassioned speech: When enough people make false promises, words stop meaning anything, then there are no more answers, only better and better lies, and the lies won't help us in this fight.

[Start of Clip from Game of Thrones 11:09]

Tyrion Lannister: But have you ever considered learning how to lie every now and then? Just a bit?

Jon Snow: I’m not going to swear an oath I can't uphold. Talk about my father, if you want, tell me that's the attitude that got him killed. But when enough people make false promises, words stop meaning anything; then there are no more answers, only better and better lies, and lies won't help us in this fight.

Tyrion Lannister: That is indeed a problem. The more immediate problem is that we're fucked.

[End of Clip from Game of Thrones 12:00]

Tim 12:01

This little quote, albeit fictional, helps us get to the very heart of what we're discussing here, the danger of letting untruths become part of our leadership and our cultures and our lives. There's a danger to omitting the truth. Let's get into this idea about omission, not outright lying, but the things we choose not to say. Omitting a truth, downplaying a fact, can sometimes feel like a safer option. We're not technically lying, right? We're just not telling the whole story. We're not kicking the hornet's nest. We're not poking the bear. But this, too, is a form of self-deception, and when we realize that we are in that place, we know we're compromising something. When we emit key facts, we're not just keeping things smooth; we're creating a version of reality that is there to suit our needs and to maintain a balance and prevent a tension or a conflict. It's what protects us, it's what keeps everybody comfortable, it's what makes us nice to work with. But comfort is not the same as safety. In fact, often, short-term comfort sacrifices long-term safety. What happens when these omitted truths finally come to light? What happens when that house of cards that we've now built comes crashing down because we chose an easy path rather than the right one? The truth we've worked so hard to build over all of our careers, what we've built ourselves up as, can sometimes vanish in an instant, leaving us and our teams to scramble and pick up the pieces. There's that famous saying that it takes 20 years to build a reputation and only five minutes to dash it, and it's really clear in our current media environment how quickly this can happen when uncomfortable truths come to light. As leaders, our credibility is absolutely everything, and people look at us to be honest, and forthright and stable, to be the ones who are going to speak truth, even when it's hard. When we sidestep, when we choose spin, we erode that credibility bit by bit, and once it's gone, it is incredibly hard to rebuild. One little secret here is most people enter a relationship waiting to be disappointed. They don't talk about it very often because it doesn't seem very amiable. They will think this very, very briefly, and then they'll move past it. But there's a small part of them for the rest of your relationship that might be looking for indications that you are that thing that they feared at one point. We're not talking about personal family relationships here. We're talking about our dynamics, where you are the person that they need to report to, and oh, boy, would they be worried about taking a job where somebody might be tyrannical. This is where reality comes in. This is where reality is your single greatest ally, but it can also be a very, very rule-keeper. If you're aligned with reality, it'll support you; it'll guide you, it'll help you build something strong and fact-based and enduring. But if you're not, it's only a matter of time before the universe gives you a slap that you will not forget. 

Tim 15:27

So, if this is true, why do people sugarcoat things? Well, simple answer is, sugarcoating feels good, especially in the moment. It's easier to soften the edges, to make the tough stuff a little more palatable, and often we're rewarded for it. We tell ourselves we're doing things to keep the peace and to protect others, and to maintain morale, and indeed, we're often rewarded for that. In fact, there can even be performance reviews at the end of the year where somebody says, you know, you are so good at keeping it level, at maintaining morale, at making sure everybody's included. But deep down, we might know that that is about protecting ourselves, our reputation, and protecting others in the absence of that thing that needed to be challenged. Being fluent when we're doing this, and especially having a practice where you're able to see where you are being positively reinforced for maintaining a short-term piece, short-term gratification, versus long-term gratification, where you are buying into a pitch that things need to just slow down, where we need to not share so much, where we need to keep someone on the outside. All of these things can ring a bell in us, a little bell that, if we listen to, we realize that you know what, this is the easy road. It's not the right road, but that temporary relief that comes from sugarcoating things, spinning things, just that, it's temporary. It feels super good in the moment, and it's trained to be there. Whole cultures have built mechanisms within them to make sure that people toe the line. But eventually, that truth catches up, and when it does, the fallout is often worse. Maybe it just takes someone we care about out. Maybe it takes us out. Maybe it takes an entire department or entire company, or sometimes an entire industry, through the mud. We know this. We've seen it happen before, and little spins do not make an untenuous situation. We shouldn't be overdramatic where we say that any form of truth carries the same weight. So, why do we do it? Because we're trying to deal with short-term discomfort, we might get ourselves into a long-term problem. Now, it's not always as dramatic as losing a job or losing a company, but what I want you to think about is even the small stuff takes energy. It takes energy, and it sucks it out of you, right? You have to maintain that thing. You have to shore it up because reality isn't shoring it up for you. You have to be the one. And it's like having to put a band-aid and duct tape on a wound that really needs time to heal, or it needs to be, you know, set properly, but instead, we just keep managing it, and it might cover it up for a while, but it's not healing anything. So, what happens when reality finally catches up with us? It's not pretty, and it's in those moments that we've been dodging when things can feel like they all come crashing down if you think about when a team is in crisis, if you think about when there's an emergency, you can usually step back through things using a five wise methodology, a root cause analysis, something where we get back to a decision point, when a decision was poorly made, and nine times out of 10, you're going to find that that decision was bereft of facts and it might have been self-serving in some way.

Tim 19:11

That harsh drop when everything resets and all of the mistakes become laid bare, is fertile ground for broken relationships, failed careers, losses of trust. We see entire project teams who have dedicated years of their lives to making something come over the line, lose all respect and credibility in the 11th hour. We see long-standing institutions lose credibility when they're not able to uphold fundamental truths, usually because we were avoiding something uncomfortable. Whatever form it takes, these resets are a wake-up call, and like the big reset, that can be very, very disturbing, to say the least, we can look out for small resets, small little indicators that, wait a minute, we might be canoeing up a stream. We might be fighting a current here, and that current might be the truth. It's in these times that we need to take a moment, breathe and assemble our team and our peers and say, are we on the right path here, folks? But the longer we paddle against a current, the longer we're expending energy, and when reality finally catches up, we may not have the energy to maneuver properly and to write our course. Those moments where we have to take a breath and reset and ask ourselves why we're here and where is this all headed, can actually be the start of something better. Remember, the absence of fact does not necessarily mean ignorance. It just means that something is off, so it might be having to go out and make sure that we're properly assessing the situation and that we're engaging in a discernment conversation, that we've asked the right questions, that we've got everybody around the table, and that moment, that little scare, can be the catalyst that pushes us to embrace the truth. So, it's not about always being on and being omniscient and knowing everything. It's not about being infallible. It's about learning and really getting keyed to say, are we paying attention to the feedback we're getting from the decisions that we're making? This has never been more important than it is in your own individual career. Remember that balance between personal and moral courage. Well, in the personal courage realm, we have to have the ability to, when we're feeling like something is off, stop and say, how did I get here? Why am I here? What am I actually feeling and what am I going to do with that? Then we can discern where are we going to go from here. When we start to embrace this power of fact and reality and any kind of time we feel that we're slightly off some truth, it's a chance for us to lead our careers. It's a chance for us to lead our teams better. 

Tim 22:16

It starts with this commitment, a commitment to say, I'm going to face the truth head-on whenever I see it, no matter how uncomfortable. And in this case, when a team supports this, when you have a culture of leading through fact and truth, it becomes very easy to shift people. It's actually harder to shift individuals in their career, because they tend to have much more complex, unspoken reliances and pressures on them. If you are a parent in a family and you are a breadwinner and you have commitments, well, you might shelve a truth about how you're feeling about your career, how you're feeling about how you spend your days, in order to just be a good mom or be a good dad, to just make your commitment to other things that are extraneous, that really can cloud things, and that's when it's most important to say there's got to be a way that we can balance all of these things together so that we can get what we want and be who we want at the same time. It's not about being perfect. In fact, if anything, it's about embracing our imperfections. We have to become fluent and sensitive again when we're tempted to omit and sugarcoat things, when we're tempted to avoid a hoarder path, when we do this, when we become fluent in that, something amazing happens, we start to build trust, not just with others, but with ourselves. When people compromise, when they force themselves into a situation, you have to remember that one of the relationships you're violating is with yourself, and if you constantly disappoint yourself, why would you love that person? If you're the hardest person on you that there is, if you're the one that gets you into deeper trouble than anyone else, if you're the one that promises things and pulls them back, why would you want to trust that person? It can create a real resentment for the decisions that you feel you have to make, and resenting yourself is a crippling vaquitas type of circle that can just bring you down into some of the most terrible lows that you're going to feel. The antidote has to be truth. The antidote has to be fact. 

Tim 24:44

So, there's a challenge before you, a challenge to stay real, both for yourself and for the people you serve. There's a challenge to embrace this truth and this integrity, and it's not easy, and it requires courage, and it requires self-reflection, and it requires you taking a moment to listen to podcasts like this, or other podcasts that allow you to pull yourself out of your day-to-day grind, of your family relationships, of the mind F's that you're giving yourself, and just look at your life objectively and look at your roles objectively. It requires that willingness to do that pull yourself out, stop doing the work, and start looking at the work, seeing the work, working on the work. It requires that willingness to face uncomfortable realities that you might have a person on your team you do not trust, you will not promote, you will never give them something to make them successful, but you're avoiding a tough conversation or even a dismissal because that would make you a bad person. It might cause you to face a harsh reality about a spouse, or a child, or a parent, or a sibling. It might cause you to really question what you're doing in this world and how do you get right with that? What I can tell you from personal experience is that the reward is worth it because when you're in this position where you don't have to second guess what you're doing, you're free to set all your sales forward, to cut loose the anchors that aren't helping you and to move. You can lead your own life with a newfound strength. You can form teams that build you up, and that you really deserve to have around you when you're striving to accomplish what you're going for, it allows you to align with organizations or to create your own that are going to be where you want to be in the course of a day. It doesn't mean the work is going to be easy. It doesn't mean it's not going to be challenging or risk-free. It means you feel like you have arrived and you are where you need to be in this universe. You only have 80 to 100 years on this planet if you're lucky. Why would you want to spend any of them really feeling like you don't belong? You can be afraid. Fear is good, but let's think our relationship with fear is really what's important. When we create this culture of honesty and the teams we work for and this instinct for truth and data that's around ourselves all the time. It helps us avoid the wrong types of fear. Look, fear is good. There's always a place for it. We should spend a certain amount of time an excited state, in an anxiety-rich state. That is what really precedes a lot of the best things in the world, a lot of amazing accomplishments. But it's that right type of fear, that fear of mitigating what's out there that we can't yet control, versus fear that we give into and problems that we create for ourselves. 

Tim 28:00

So, if you're finding yourself now at the end of, as this is recorded, the end of summer, we're right at the beginning of September here, or you're listening to this later through the year, and you find yourself resisting this a little bit, this notion that you might have fear in your life, I would use it as a challenge to sort of double down and say, Where are there areas that you have made uncomfortable, or, I would say, sub-optimal decisions that you knew were not the best decision at the time. Where did you sell out a little bit? Where did you avoid things a little bit? Do that, take that moment to step back and really say, you know what, I am fallible. It's a chance for you to challenge yourself, step outside your comfort zone. It's also a sign that you're on the right path. You're on a path of truth and fact and courage. So, take that step. Commit today to living without spin, or at least to recognize it, to face your fears, to challenge those uncomfortable moments. So, thanks for taking this time with me today. If you've lasted here to the end, I think you've probably had to swallow at least some uncomfortable concepts. I want you to take a step back now and reflect. I encourage you to journey with me. I'm on this road too. Follow me on LinkedIn. Please subscribe to the podcast, and let's keep this conversation going. Don't just make truth and authenticity a buzzword. Really live it and develop a practice when you can understand where you might be contrary to it.

Tim 29:48

Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If, like us, you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership, please give us a positive rating and review on Apple Podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders, and you can spread the word too by sharing this with your friends, teams and colleagues. Thanks again for listening, and be sure to tune in in two weeks' time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host, Tim Sweet, encouraging you to keep on leading.

In this episode, Time Sweet and leadership coach Massimo Backus discuss the journey of leadership through the lens of self-discovery, curiosity, and self-compassion. Massimo shares his personal transformation from an objectively bad manager to a transformative leader, emphasizing the importance of curiosity and working within the natural laws of leadership. The conversation delves into the pervasive nature of self-criticism and its impact on mental health, advocating for reframing self-criticism as a protective mechanism.

Trusting oneself emerges as a foundational element of leadership, often overlooked in discussions about trust. Massimo shares his journey of overcoming defensiveness and developing self-trust, touching on challenges like imposter syndrome and the struggle with self-compassion. Tim and Massimo explore the concept of authenticity, emphasizing that self-trust allows for honesty and transparency, leading to more genuine connections. The episode concludes with a call to action for leaders to practice self-compassion and kindness towards themselves, with Massimo encouraging listeners to reach out for book collaborations.

About  Massimo Backus

Massimo Backus is on a mission to help one million people believe they are worthy and enough. Like many ambitious leaders, Massimo faced early struggles with impostor syndrome and a relentless inner critic. Dyslexia was one of the main drivers for his insecurities and later, his perfectionism. The practice of self-compassion helped him see that what was considered a disability was actually cognitive diversity.

Facilitator, speaker, and executive leadership coach Massimo Backus provides no-BS one-on-one coaching with open-minded and committed senior leaders, and he runs transformative programs with organizations that are serious about change. His fifteen-plus years of experience in talent development and leadership coaching have given him a front-row seat to observe company cultures in the US, UK, and Canada, while working with 3,000+ emerging and seasoned leaders in mid-size and Fortune 500 companies, including Cisco, Accenture, Slalom, Salesforce, Nintendo, Amazon and Fox Entertainment.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Bob Hoffman - The Hoffman Process

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Contact Tim Sweet | Team Work Excellence: 

• Website
• LinkedIn: Tim Sweet
• Instagram
• Linkedin: Team Work Excellence

Contact Massimo Backus | Leadership Coaching & High-Performance Team Development: 

• Website
• Instagram
• Linkedin: Massimo Backus

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Transcript

Massimo 00:01

Leadership is about leading others in the human experience, in the human condition, and that isn't something to be solved. It's not a problem that we can find the single-threaded answer for. It doesn't exist. And so it will always be more art than science. It's a form of nature more than it is anything else. 

Tim 00:21

I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you, my friend, are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. I'm Tim Sweet. Welcome to the Sweet on Leadership podcast episode 39.

Tim 00:50

Hey everybody, welcome. Thanks again for joining us. Today, I've got a very special guest. He is an executive coach. He handles some very deep stuff, and through his powers of self-compassion and other things that he brings to his clients, he's able to change lives. He helps people become their best selves. And I'm really looking forward to this conversation, if what we've been talking about up to this point is any indication, I think we're going to, as we said before, Mas, we're going to be playing jazz. Please welcome Massimo Backus.

Massimo 01:26

Thank you so much for having me, and I am looking forward to playing some jazz.

Tim 01:30

Right on. Mas, why don't you tell us a little more about yourself, let people know who they're listening to today. 

Massimo 01:38

Yeah, I've spent my career in leadership development and executive coaching. I think most notably, I am a reformed, objectively bad manager and bad leader. I recognize the hypocrisy in that, it is not beyond me, and at this point, I've worked with over 3000 leaders intimately and closely, one-on-one, and observed their transformation. I fundamentally made an attribution error at some point, and I mistook the transformation of my own clients for my own. And it wasn't until I received some 360 feedback, which I'm sure many people are familiar with, getting feedback from peers and from my direct reports and skip levels and people above me in the organization, that some news came to light that I was not as great of a leader as I thought that I was, and that is what led me on an unexpected path of my own development that has then informed the work that I do with the executives and leaders that I work with today. 

Tim 02:34

How many years have you been focused on leadership as the science, rather than, you know, having to make some other deliverable. How? How long has that been your sole focus? 

Massimo 02:47

Probably around 12 years that it's been, and the thing about leadership, first of all, it's a word that is used so often that it loses its meaning entirely. There have been countless books on leadership written to this day, and in 10 years, when you and I chat, there will be another countless number of books around leadership, which indicates one thing to me, is that we're trying to solve the unsolvable because leadership is about leading others in the human experience, in the human condition, and that isn't something to be solved. It's not a problem that we can find the single-threaded answer, for it doesn't exist. And so it will always be more art than science. It's a form of nature more than it is anything else. What does it mean to actually be a leader? Is something that evolves and changes and is as unique as you and I, our as our thumbprint and as our fingerprint. And so recognizing that takes all the pressure off of me to have to be the quote-unquote expert and have all the answers, because frankly, I do not, and with that, I can approach you with a great degree of curiosity. And so I'm deeply curious about leadership. I'm deeply curious about what makes for trust in relationships. I'm curious about what makes for peak performances, individuals and teams. I'm curious about what makes for a long, rich, impactful career. In that curiosity, I have found certain things that seem to be North Stars, or maybe you could kind of consider them to be, like the natural laws of physics. I think there are the natural laws of leadership, but again, they're not to be solved. We work within those conditions. We don't solve gravity. We work with gravity. 

Tim 04:29

That's well said. It's definitely a mix of science and art and natural order and natural selection in many ways. And I think that there's so many different components, and I share your curiosity. I mean, in my time focused on this, I think one of the, one of the greatest privileges that I have is to be able to focus on the leadership experience, to be focused on, well, what does it mean for one person versus another, and how. Having dealt with 1000s of leaders and teams and these kinds of things share the same sort of scope, the excitement, the curiosity, comes because so many different people have to find their unique leadership groove. They have to find that way that allows them to accomplish that amazing thing that they can't do alone or to shepherd or support or enrich or, you know, really encourage others to go down that path. And so many don't have the, they're too busy doing to to to really experience the joy of it, in a sense, and to find that, to find that voice and find that style that's all their own. But when they do, holy moly, when they do, it is such an amazing thing to see. And even just this past week, you know, just having a leader in their manager report come back and say everything's changed. We happen to land on that, one of those things, that in two weeks, everything's changed. So I'm with you. I'm really glad that I have a chance to hear it from your perspective, because there aren't that many. There's a lot of people that coach, well, let's just say there's some people that dedicate themselves to it in different ways. Put it that way. Anyway, take us back in to your starting point, that moment that you received some feedback. Where were your blind spots? Where was the feedback, where, you know, you thought you were doing better than you were, for you personally. What was, what was a blind spot that you faced? 

Massimo 06:48

Well, let me just start by the gut-wrenching experience of getting feedback in that in that way. Just, you know, I believe that feedback is a gift, and I believe that we're all better off when we get it, but that doesn't mean we have to like it. You know, eating some of our vegetables is not doesn't always taste good, but it's good for us. And the main piece of feedback Tim was that I was defensive. That I was defensive in people questioning my thinking or my ideas, my approach to things, defensive in all areas. And like any rational person, I responded with, what do you mean? I'm defensive. I'm not defensive. You are being defensive. For saying that I'm defensive. I'm not doing anything wrong, right, because I was clearly on the right side of things. What I foolishly learned is that not only was I defensive in all the places that came back in the 360, but I was defensive in all aspects of my life. And once I got curious about it and realized there's some truth to this, not just one person saying many people are saying it. I asked my wife about it, I asked my friends about it, asked other family members about it, and lo and behold, it was showing up in a lot of different areas for me. I also learned that it was one of those behaviours that ran in the family, not to place blame at all, but to go, oh, maybe this is learned behaviour, and if it was well, then I can unlearn it. I can learn a new behaviour. So that was refreshing. Made me realize this wasn't something that couldn't be fixed. This was something that I now had the opportunity to fix. I spent six months on my own thinking I am a leadership development expert. I'm seen as this guru within the organization that I worked in. I have all these skills and knowledge. I should be able to fix this on my own. And six months later, I had a follow-up meeting with my then manager, and I was hoping that the feedback would be we can tell you've worked really hard, and you've made an incredible turnaround. It's not what I heard. What I heard was we can tell you've been trying, but you've made very little progress. That was devastating. And in that moment, I was pretty sure that I was going to be asked to leave the organization. But to my manager's credit, to that organization, they didn't do that. And in fact, they invested in me and my own development, and I ended up going to a retreat called the Hoffman process, which has been around for about 40 years, started by a gentleman named Bob Hoffman. And their slogan is, if you're serious about change, and I would say, for anyone who is serious about changing the way that they view the world, experience the world, and, most importantly, experience themselves, that it's worth checking out. And it was during that week long retreat that I had an epiphany, which is the epiphany that I that I want for all leaders. It's the epiphany that I want for all people, and it's a leadership epiphany, and it is the value, the importance, dare I say, the necessity, to have a practice of self-compassion. And it was at this retreat that, for the first time in my life, I was 36 years old at the time, that I experienced for the first time, what it was like to actually love who I am, to love myself, to accept myself for my shortcomings, my triggers, my biases, my limitations, but also my strengths and my gifts and the qualities that make me me. All of it, that was a what I call a bedrock moment, that that was a moment that has anchored me every day since, and will continue to be an anchor for me. I do not always practice self-compassion. I'm not always kind to myself these days, but I always remember what is possible when I do and that is that I was able to stop being defensive, that I was able to change my way of being. 

Tim 10:49

I think when you acknowledge or when you let us in, that you're not always practicing self-compassion, as you know the rest of us struggle with. I mean, if it's a meditation practice, you find the ability to silence your mind. You have these moments where everything goes still, and you are really nothing. And then you start thinking about that credit card bill you need to pay, or that the cat needs the litter box changed or something, and you realize you've slipped out. And then you have to strive to get back into that state, meditative state. And you never do it well, but all you can do is you can continue to practice so you get better at it, and that's why they call it a practice, and a practice of self-compassion, realizing and being able, I find in my own personal work, it's not just the realization that we're not or the you know, that we're not terribly self-compassionate, or that we're saying something that's untrue or whatnot, but it's that ability to suddenly hear it, like you can hear the thoughts in your mind saying and it can or at least you can pause and go, well, that wasn't really kind, or that wasn't really true. And you can take a moment with it and then immerse yourself in that practice of recentering, getting back into it, acknowledging what you were thinking, acknowledging what the trigger was, acknowledging what you know, where you need to get back to and and get back into it. And it's a practice. It's building those muscles, it's it's exercising them, and it's very easy. In fact, I would say it's epidemic in our culture that people lose the ability to hear when they're being cruel to themselves between the ears, and it's the easiest thing in the world, and it's the most accepted thing in the world. I think let's understand that it's a human condition to not trust yourself, because you know what. Nobody's let yourself down more than you because nobody knew all those dreams that you had that you didn't make good on. Nobody hears the language you use about yourself and others. So nobody knows how dark you can actually go.

Massimo 13:12

That self-critical, self-judgmental voice. It knows us very well because it is us, and it's hard to separate the noise of that from other parts of our psychology because it knows all of our triggers and, fundamentally, self-criticism, judgment, imposter syndrome, all of these things that ail us, that are, that are epidemic, are designed by us psychologically to protect us, to keep us safe. But there's one thing that they have wrong, and that is that as adults like they were formed when we were children, as adults, we don't need to be held safe in that way, that we are actually safer, as you said, when we do trust ourselves, we're safer when we can be kind to ourselves, we're safer when we humble ourselves to ask for help.

Tim 14:05

When we deal with the exposure, when we apply the stress and the adversity.

Massimo 14:07

Absolutely and accept our limitations instead of trying to hide all these things. And it's a show of strength. It's an incredibly difficult thing to do to face the most vicious and toxic voice in our lives that comes from us, to face that head-on and to not meet it with resentment or this ego death bullshit that people talk about, which I fundamentally think is wrong. It's about a relationship. Ego serves a purpose. There's value to it, but you need to have a healthy relationship with it, and, you know, to kind of make this real as an example, my defensiveness that I had for so many years was protecting me, or so I thought, by making sure that, well, I always have the last word. I need to make sure that I'm the smartest person in the room. I need to. To demonstrate my worth, but it was doing the opposite. Everyone else saw, that I was hiding my own insecurities, except for me.

Tim 15:10

One of my favourite bosses, still to this day, he's one of these forever bosses. Because, I mean, I went into consulting practice very, very early, and then when I finished school, I had. A number of years as a regional manager, big, big management position, but then very quickly, went back to consulting. But then was scooped by a couple of companies, and one of them was a company I was happy to stay in and I ended up working for a commercial team to, you know, raise my financial acumen and do all the stuff, and also the best experiences I still absolutely, you know, hold this guy in great esteem. And I remember that I'd be in these, these meetings with the C-suite, or with executives, like fairly high ranking people, and if I had a point to make, I always had a quote, or I had some research, or I attributed it to some author. And he said, you know, you're making all these good points, and it's very, very valuable, but you have to then cite it. And I said, Well, I come from a historical background, so, like, everything is provable in this kind of thing. He said, I don't think that's it says, I don't think you're willing to own that. I think you want to make sure that you can share the load with some other author or whatnot. And man that stung. That was because he had me nail like he had me totally made. And was one of the most valuable things I learned under his mentorship, because it was a few months later that I had to stand up for an idea to one of the top guys, big multinational corporation and I remember I stood on my own two feet. I made my point, and the point was tough to deliver, and it hit hard, but I felt in that moment like I was in a different gear, right? And it was that, in a sense, one of the facets of self, trust and love was to stand on my own two feet and be and like, you know what you're talking about here. Just go ahead. And it was like an arrival. It was like, I belong here. I know what I'm talking about. I don't have to apologize or whatnot. And I was never the same after that. That was one of those leverage moments.

Massimo 17:26

Yeah, yeah, one of those bedrock moments that you can always go back to remember what it was like when you truly trusted yourself. And you know, in the organizational context and leadership, you know, landscape, we talk about trust all the time, like leadership. How many books have been written about trust? How often in trust conversations, do we talk about the value of trusting ourselves, or do we ask, How do I know when I trust myself? How do I know when I'm not trusting myself? What do I need in order to be able to trust myself? What's present when I trust myself least? These are questions that are very rarely asked in the broader conversation about trust, it is always about another person or the team, and that's important, absolutely. But I believe, and I found, with the leaders that I've worked with throughout my career, that often when trust is not present on a team, there is trust that is not present for each individual with themselves.  

Tim 18:37

Oh, 100%. You cannot give away what you don't have. 

Massimo 18:39

Right. 

Tim 18:40

Absolutely impossible. So talk, talk about that a little bit actually, and you know what I'm going to I'm going to do something a little bit off the wall here. I was, saving a question. We have a question every episode, and I was going to save yours till the end, but because we are at this point in the conversation, I'm going to go ahead and and voice it. This comes from Peter Root with Wildfire Robotics, and he asked the question for the next guest, which is you, what are some of those pivotal ways that you build trust with your staff? With clients? Perhaps, you know. So I think you're landing on this now. So why don't you, why don't you flesh that out, speaking to Peter for a moment. 

Massimo 19:28

I love Peter's question. Tim, so thank you for sharing that and the conversation of trust. There's, there's very little that has not, that hasn't already been explored around honesty and transparency, credibility, competence, reliability. But when you think about going into a relationship where you want to build trust, the value of trusting yourself going into that relationship, if I trust myself, I feel grounded. I know my capabilities. I know the limits of my capabilities. I am going to be in a much better place, to be honest, because I am willing to show up in a way that is asking the other person to meet me where I'm at. I'm not trying to be someone that I'm not. I can say, here are the things that I'm good with, and here are the things that I'm not. Lucky for me, I have a huge cadre of other coaches and consultants that I work with clients will come to me and ask me to help them with some body of work that I might not be best suited for, and I know my shortcomings in the areas that I'm not best suited, but that's why I have this community of other talented people to bring them in. So I'm able to approach these conversations honestly and transparently and with confidence that isn't boastful. Now, Tony Robbins talks about confidence as a mindset. It's something that we can, you know, get ourselves into this mindset. And yes, maybe there's, there's some truth to that, but I think that it's actually a way of being. If I'm being honest with myself, then I'm able to be confident because I'm not trying to be something that I'm not. And where we get ourselves into trouble when it comes into relationships and building trust is we make some assumptions around who I need to be in order for this person to trust me, or if we're really, you know, going to the playground as kids, to like me, because so many people actually, they just want to be liked, they want to be included. They want to be picked for kickball, right? But if I trust myself, we could say, hey, like I'm, you can pick me on the kickball team. I'm a good kicker, but I can't catch for anything. They’re either going to pick me or not pick me, but at least I don't have to worry about being somebody that I'm not. And they might say, yeah, come on here. I'll teach you how to catch. Great. I want to be a part of the team, but I'm not trying to hide something that might be a limitation and say, you know, just hope the ball doesn't come to me because if it does, I'll be found out

Tim 22:03

That ability to distinguish when we're trying to develop ourselves and develop that confidence, develop that, I like to use the word fluency, of who we are, so we can be right with it. It's really important to differentiate that from the management of an identity, a visible thing that you want other people to see and that you want to you want other people to think, and that often covers up the guilt or the shame or the scarcity or the fear and you know, we, you often see people that are fronting so hard on something because it's the last place that they want people to actually question them or see what's under the surface, and to be able to let that go. Talk about energy management, I mean capacity. Now we, we've, you know, we're a few years past COVID, not past COVID, but anyway, we're coming out the other side in many ways, but organizationally, we have people that are still tapped. They are stretched capacity-wise, mentally, what a source of energy to not have to keep your deflector shields up, to not have to keep the holographic emitters up, to not have to keep the story going and and manage the and not to say that people do this even consciously. You know that it's not like they know they're putting on some sort of a mask, but that because the mask has been on for so long and it's there as a protection. But if you don't have to keep that up, wow, and just be confident that you're, you're, and I love… you and I both use the word enough a lot, and it's right on the top of your LinkedIn profile, but to just be at peace with the fact that it's like, you know what? This is what you've got. This is what you've got in front of you take it or leave it, and I'm super cool either way. And it's liberating. I recently, well, two plus, yeah, two years ago now, almost coming up on my two-year anniversary, actually had both knees replaced after lots of sports. It was a big surgery, a big pivotal moment in my life, because I've got 19-year-old knees, and not to take the speaking conch chair for too long, but I was following, or I follow this, this coach. She's in a spiritual sort of sector, but she made this point, and she talked about the meditative practice or the realization that, you know, that spark that is our consciousness, isn't it just uses the brain as an organ, and it uses the body as a mechanism, and to almost visualize yourself. I always think of of that scene in Men in Black, where they're eating pierogies, and the face comes open, and it's that little alien. But to realize that you're wearing this meat suit, right, and that you're, this is the way we get around the world is in this meat suit, but it's not you, per se, like it is, but it's not your consciousness. And when I started to think about that on the physical side and said, Well, hey, this is just my meat suit. My meat suit has two artificial needs. My meat suit requires certain things. It's built in a certain way. That means I'm capable of some things and not capable of others. Wow. What a liberating thought, and what an ability to kind of love my meat suit, because I'm not going to get another one anytime soon, and I can sit back and say. Hey, this, takes stock. This is what I like about it. This is what I find challenging about it. But I can love the whole mess and just realize it like it's a, you know, I think people often have more love for their cars than they've got for their body. And that's pretty funny, you know. And so I know that, that we're not talking physicality here, but again, it's that, that ability to say, You know what, even if I'm carrying some family baggage part of my operating system, I can still love that part of myself as I seek to to work with it.

Massimo 26:15

Absolutely. I mean, Tim, what you just shared is, this example is a beautiful example of what a practice of self-compassion looks like, and it balances the acceptance of what it is that we have with the compassion to take care of what it is that we have, right? So, this isn't a passive practice, this isn't something that is just accept my limitations and don't do anything with them. It's accept them and then, from there, choose what will I do with them? What am I going to let go of and accept and what are the things that I'm going to double down on and continue to improve and change? So it's a very, it's very proactive. This is a very energetic practice, and the energy that we need to do it comes from letting go of that mask or the hologram or all the different ways that you describe structure, which is so true. It the single biggest waste of energy in organizations today is people masking, hiding, parading, politicking, doing all these things to hide who they really are for fear that if someone saw them they would be rejected. And the reality is, the person that they really are is better on all accounts than the person that we pretend to be. We just have to trust ourselves enough to show that to people.

Tim 27:41

I think it's also really interesting when you're comfortable to lead with who you are, warts and all, and you're rejected, you're getting real feedback. If your mask is rejected, if the image you're putting forward is rejected, you're one step removed. You can actually be kind of deadened to the, to the reality that rejection doesn't really mean that much, no, nor does the praise, you know, or the positive feedback, because we're letting the marionette go first. We're like, you know, one of these guys with the Jim Hensen and it's a puppet. 

Yes. 

The puppet can take a lot of abuse.

The ventriloquist. Yeah. 

Tim 28:30

Well, you know what? There's so much farther to go. And I just want to really thank you for taking the time, because we've gone deep in the in the time that we've got. So I want to do two things here. Well, maybe three. First of all, I want you to tell everybody what you're most excited about, because you've got some big news. So, and I know you didn't want to really be the guy to come on and talk about it, but man, you gotta because I know I'm inspired to pick a certain something up. So, quick. Let's tell the people. 

Massimo 28:58

Thank you. It is very exciting. My first book, “Human First, Leader, Second: How self-compassion outperforms self-criticism”, is coming out in September, September 10, and people can find it on Amazon right now. And for anyone listening whose interest is piqued around, what is this self-compassion practice? And how do I start? This book is written for leaders and teams to start to develop that practice. And it's not a one-size-fits-all all. It's a choose your own adventure, and it will lead towards a place where that energy isn't being wasted and trying to be somebody you're not, but being your best self as a leader. 

Tim 29:40

If you had one, well, if you had one wish for anybody listening today, what would it be?

Massimo 29:43

Go do something kind for yourself. 

Tim 29:45

It doesn't have to be big. It doesn't have to be profound. Go do something kind for yourself. 

Massimo 29:51

Go do something kind for yourself. Take a five minute break in between meetings and get some fresh air. Go stand in the sunshine. Drink a nice cold glass of water. Call an old friend. Doesn't matter what it is, you're worthy of it. You're worth it. And Tim, I know there's a question that I should be asking for the next guest, correct? 

Tim 30:09

Yeah, what's, what's, what do you have on your mind?

Massimo 30:12

What is the one thing that you are most afraid to let go of? And who would you be if you did?

Tim 30:19

If people want to get in touch with your mouth. Where can they find you? 

Massimo 30:22

Massimobackus.com, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm pretty sure I'm the only Massimo Backus out there. And please reach out. And if you buy the book and read it, I want to hear what you think. This is something that I felt called to do. I had an epiphany. I want to share it with other people, and I take no ownership of the idea of self-compassion. I think I've been called to be a messenger, one of many, I hope to share the value of it. I don't see how the world could not be a better place if we all learn to be a little bit kinder to ourselves. 

Tim 30:54

Love it. Okay. Mas, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. It was a real pleasure. 

Massimo 31:02

Thank you, Tim. Talk to you soon. 

Tim 31:06

We'll be in touch when it comes to your launch party.

Tim 31:11

Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If, like us, you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership, please give us a positive rating and review on Apple podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders, and you can spread the word too by sharing this with your friends, teams and colleagues. Thanks again for listening, and be sure to tune in in two weeks time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host, Tim Sweet, encouraging you to keep on leading.

In this insightful episode, Tim Sweet engages in a thought-provoking discussion with Jagroop Chhina, the visionary founder of Psy Spark Strategies, exploring the transformative power of sharing expertise and experiences to create invaluable content and forge a strong personal brand. As they delve into the depths of this topic, Jagroop sheds light on the art of translating complex technical knowledge into relatable language and underscores the profound influence of psychology on the trajectory of business success. Furthermore, they navigate through the evolving landscape of attention in today's society, portraying it as the newfound currency and dissecting its profound implications for individuals and businesses alike in the realm of content creation.

The discussion goes beyond theory to practical methods for engaging audiences and maximizing impact through personal and business branding. Jagroop masterfully guides listeners through the intricate process of cultivating an audience and harnessing the potential of authentic storytelling to not only captivate but also inspire and educate. By imparting practical insights and actionable advice, this episode serves as a beacon of guidance for aspiring content creators and seasoned professionals alike, illuminating the path toward personal fulfillment and collective growth in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

About Jagroop Chhina

Jagroop Chhina is the founder of Psy Spark Strategies. A consulting firm that offers psychological solutions to solve business problems. With an M.sc. in I/O psychology he takes a behavioural science approach to branding, marketing, employee, leadership, and business challenges.

At 23 he launched his first company and went on to build a multimillion-dollar business in real estate. He’s advised companies like Shopify, Shaw, Lotto 649, Go Solutions, and London Drugs on their brand strategy. While also coaching politicians, entrepreneurs, and professionals on their personal branding and business challenges. Now, his mission is to transform 10,000 leaders into culture creators. Catalyzing great people to shape our society, make an impact, and move with purpose.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Jim Collins: Flywheel 
• Kevin Kelly: 1,000 True Fans

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Contact Tim Sweet | Team Work Excellence: 

• Website
• LinkedIn: Tim Sweet
• Instagram
• Linkedin: Team Work Excellence

Contact Jagroop Chhina | Psy Spark Strategies: 

• Website: psyspark.ca
• Instagram: @psy.spark
• TikTok: @psy.spark
• LinkedIn: Jagroop Chhina

Transcript: 

Jagroop 00:00

I think a lot of people end up becoming experts in their fields. And the next big step is translating that expertise for a more general audience. I've worked with quite a few engineers and helping them build their brands out becoming consultants and known in the space that they're working in. That's one of the big challenges that they have, they get very technical because they know that so well. And the challenge really does become how do you communicate in such a way that the average person is going to understand and be interested in it?

Tim 00:33

I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you my friend, are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. Welcome to the Sweet on Leadership podcast. This is our 30th episode. Thanks for joining us. 

Tim 01:07

Welcome back, everybody. Thanks for joining us again, here on Sweet on Leadership, I am welcoming today, somebody that I think you're going to get a lot of value from. And although I haven't known him for very long, in the short time that I have, I am very inspired and impressed. Jagroop, could you please say hello and tell people who you are? 

Jagroop 01:26

Hey Tim, it’s great to see you. I'm happy to be here. So, I'll do a little brief introduction of myself. I am he organizational psychologist who happens to do branding and marketing and solving business problems, basically. Right.

Tim 01:43

That's excellent. And when you were telling me about that, you had a really nice way of saying that, you know, that is an area where people need help, because they often don't realize that they have that tool, right? They don't have that option. 

Jagroop 01:57

It’s a phrase that has psychological solutions to business problems. 

Tim 02:03

Awesome. Yeah. So, if we were to see you on an average day when our first conversation a few weeks ago, I think what really inspired me about you was that it's not just that you're not just doing that, although that's I mean, it's a major focus for you, obviously. But you're involved in a bunch of other industries and a bunch of other hobbies. And such a passion for doing well in all of those areas. So, could you give also the people who are listening, a little bit of an understanding of how you are one of these, do-it-all kind of guys?

Jagroop 02:34

So, I like to take a bit of a generalist approach, you know, I've learned that when people are into something, there's usually something dope and interesting about that. Right? So, I'm always interested in like, learning new experiences and trying new things out. So, I've become a bit of a generalist just through that practice alone, right? So, I have a side business in building homes, you know, on the day-to-day, I might be consulting a business on tax mitigation, or a leader on how to put out content for themselves, right? So, my days vary, basically, from day to day. So yeah.

Tim 03:12

Your formal education is in Organizational Psychology. And when you think of any of those things that you strive to do, be a managing homebuilding company, or helping people with tax mitigation or answering very specifically those marketing questions. Do you find that that's a great vet to have? Like, is your knowledge and organizational psychology something that you lean on constantly? 

Jagroop 03:35

Oh, for sure. I think the basis of all business is psychology, you know, whether you're building out a team, you got to understand how people operate, their personalities, their motivations, you know. You're doing marketing and sales, how is the content that you're putting out being perceived, right? Sales, how are you actually persuading other people to buy your product, right? So, a lot of it really does come down to psychology. So, if you understand how people operate, then your business should thrive, right? 

Tim 04:03

This is why you and I have, I think such an intense professional connection. Because, you know, I'm all about helping people become fluent in how they think and how their teams think. Fluent in what they care about, and how they show up, and how do they find fulfilment in work? Where do they pinpoint those areas of joy? So, that, you know that massive amount of time we spend in our vocations can be a great humanistic time where we feel that we're growing and we're sharing and we're contributing and we're helping others, right? That's the next level away from saying, you know, I've got a job okay, fine. I collect a paycheck. Okay, fine. But is this now connecting me with something that's larger? Something that's that, why,  or that purpose? I’m totally–

Jagroop 04:55

It gives meaning to what you do. 

Tim 04:56

Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about that then. When we think about being in this world where people are often pushed towards specializations, right? They're having to choose something. What advice would you give someone that wants to open themselves up to thinking just how broad their contribution can be?

Jagroop 05:19

You know what, there's nothing wrong with becoming a master of your craft, you know, I think there's huge benefits to just doing that, right? So, when you learn one skill, what I have a tendency to do is to take that skill and try to apply it to a different field, to something that's completely unrelated, right? Or the other way around, right? You learn how to play music. And you learn how to improvise with a group during a concert or something. How does that play into say, building a business or leading a team of people, right? So, life is all a metaphor and as soon as you start recognizing some of the lessons you learned, they can be applied to other spheres and dynamics of it, right? 

Tim 06:06

That’s a great point. I mean, when I think about my own mind group, they're often specialists that are coming out of, say, geotechnical fields, or they’re professors at universities and these kinds of things. And they've made their career and they've established their sense of worth, and they've established their sense of professionalism within a bubble of experts. So, they might be very familiar, let's say if they're engineers, very familiar with the way engineers talk and the way engineers think, and they climb in those spheres. And at a certain point, they outgrow just the engineering bubble, and they burst out and suddenly now, they're outside where not everybody thinks like they think, but if they're solid in their own practice, and if they're masters of their craft, often it's something that we can leverage. And I remember that with engineers, when I'm teaching them how to build teams, it's one thing for them to say, Oh, I've got to now learn how to build a team. Well, let's not talk that way. How do you engineer your team? How do you apply your engineering principles when it comes to people? If you're a geotechnical person, how do you apply your geotechnical knowledge, which is all about, you know, understanding what's happening 1000s of feet down on the ground without ever seeing it, to uncovering the unknowns in some other sphere? Or if you're an organizational psychologist, like yourself, you know, how does that then not just translate to the people working in home building, but the home building process itself?

Jagroop 07:40

I think a lot of people end up becoming experts in their fields. And the next big step is translating the expertise and dumbing it down for a more general audience. So, I've worked with quite a few engineers and helping them build their brands out becoming consultants and known in the space that they're working in. Right? And that's one of the big challenges that they have, they get very technical because they know that so well. And the challenge really does become, how do you communicate in such a way that the average person is going to understand and be interested in it?

Tim 08:18

Not only can you be translated into somebody else's, and be interested in it, but I guess it works the other way, too. How can you use that as a gateway to understanding what they mean? Maybe enriching the conversation. We never think about that. Because we're an expert in one thing, we may forget about the fact that it's cross-applicable. 

Jagroop 08:40

Yeah, for sure. Like an engineer trying to build out their team? Well, they understand that in order to build out a product, there are certain variables at play. Now, when you're building out a team, what are the variables that you're looking out, to build that team out? Right? What are the characteristic traits that you want to see in a person that's going to mesh well with your culture, your team? So, reframing a perspective that aligns better with wherever trying to look at it, that's the game. 

Tim 09:07

I think about my first degree was in history. My next pursuit was to get a chef's papers and become a professional chef. I was good at it but didn't stick. But I still use lessons, both from history and cheffing, cooking. From history, it's I carry so much over into building an argument and understanding things and doing my homework, doing the research. But even from cheffing, the fundamentals of how to create this is in high cuisine, but how to create balance on a plate, balance in the flavour palate. And those are metaphors that I think of immediately, you know about creating balance in somebody's life. If I'm coaching or balanced on a team if I'm doing team building, and really appreciating the flavours that a person brings. And I would say that I have almost that olfactory experience of, you know, you're beyond just the sensations that you get from people being in front of you. It's not just about sight, smell and taste, there's something else, there's some other experience when you really connect with a person and are able to, you know, kind of find that symbiosis with them. 

Jagroop 10:19

Creating a harmony where you don't expect there to be one that you know. And it's from an accumulation of all the experiences that you've had, you know, you can take lessons from, say, cheffing, or sports or playing music, whatever it might be.

Tim 10:33

If we think of ourselves and those around us as this culmination, and this collection of all these different experiences, and all this lived experience, and all this acquired knowledge and all these lessons that come out of triumph and failure and difficulty in good times, and the rest of it, what does that then leave us with, when one thinks about, well, what do we have to offer the world?

Jagroop 10:58

I mean, that's what leads to the value you create, right? So, creating content is about delivering value in one form or another. And that can be either educating other people or entertaining them in some way. But when you've lived through certain things, it's just sharing those stories. That brings a value rate. When I work with, I want to say, more well-respected and older clientele. They focus on things like legacy and creating value for generations after themselves, right? Because after three generations, we as a person, were going to be forgotten, dead, and everybody who knew us, is going to be gone as well, right? And we are lucky enough to live in the day and age where now we can put out content that can live beyond us. Like, I would love it, if I could see what my great great great grandfather did back in the day, and how he was living a life, like how what was his perspective on things, right? And now we have the opportunity to actually document our lives, to share that with the people we care about.

Tim 12:02

My cousin, Dave Sweet. He was the chief homicide detective here in the city. He joined me for two episodes earlier on. When he approached writing two books, he said that it was so that his grandchildren or his great-grandchildren might have heard about this, you know, crazy great-granddad, that was this veteran policeman who did all sorts of crazy, crazy things. And so he wrote his first book, which was Skeletons in the Closet, I think it was called. And it was stories that he, Skeletons in My Closet that's what it was called, you know, stories about all of these things he had learned through these, these really quiet, what you and I would see as dramatic experiences. While this is a way for him to transmit that and now that he has retired from the police force, he is writing his second book, or it's about to come out. And it's called the Unconventional Classroom as his new company. And it's about learning from all of these lessons that people don't appreciate they got from life, really looking at it as what is this thing? If we think about life as an unconventional classroom? What can we extract from it? Right? And it gives us this next sense of purpose. And when you were talking about that idea that we have things now that we can share, what came into my mind was the picture of dynamite for some reason, or gunpowder. You know, when we think that gunpowder is a combination of sulphur, and charcoal and, and saltpetre, right, and we put these things together, and suddenly they create this explosion. And if we think about leaders, this is often why I look at multiple facets of people, when I'm helping them understand who they are, they kind of have their main gear and it's kind of the steady-eddy, the thing that they're always in. And so it might be you know, I'm really detail oriented. And so if they play on that gear too much, then suddenly they're micromanagers. Right? But if they start bringing in other gears, I'm a detail-oriented person who also really cares about trust, it takes on a completely different flavour. And sometimes they haven't quite connected to that other gear, that other skill. Whereas if we look at all the ways they provide value into the world, all the ways in which they've learned, it could actually really help a person balance themselves out and say, you know what, from this vocation, I'm going to take my engineering expertise, but you know what, over here, I'm a member of a curling rink. And so I'm gonna take some of my team knowledge, I'm gonna bring that into the mix. And over here, you know, I've volunteered at old folks homes, so I'm going to help people connect to like, what is it all for or something right? Suddenly, you become this, this really volatile, potential filled individual, when you know, carbon on its own will burn, but not nearly as well as if it has an accelerant or something else, then all of a sudden it becomes explosive. And so in a way, how do we become something that's just smouldering towards something that when it needs to, it can throw shockwaves of value and heat and, you know, move mountains literally? Right? So, get a little too into the metaphor, but there you go.

Jagroop 15:34

No, I love it's, it's bringing in a wider range of experiences and putting them all together. You know, I think Steve Jobs did some version of it, where he, at a time focused on learning calligraphy. And from learning those lessons, he translated that to producing the first iPod and iMac or whatever was right?

Tim 15:58

By being style-focused and really creating this aesthetic that nobody else had at the time.

Jagroop 16:02

Yeah, like just pursuing whatever you're passionate or interested in, you never know how further down the line that's going to become valuable to you.

Tim 16:10

I love that. It goes back to… let me take a quick aside, whenever I talk to Americans, talking to an American, we got an American, a really exciting American coming on the show fairly soon, we're recording. Well, whenever I talk to Americans, you know, sometimes we touch on this idea of the melting pot. When I was a kid, we were always taught that Canada was not a melting pot. Canada is a quilt or Canada is a motif, right? We take all of our differences and we use them to create something even more vibrant and even stronger. In the cooking analogy, we want the flavours of all the foods to come out, to be complex, we don't want it to be just homogenous. It's like, you know, a vibrant stew or something, right? And so, you know, when I think about us appreciating ourselves, even, is to see ourselves as this construct of all of these different identities that we have. All of these different ways we face the world. And not just switching gears from one to the next to the next to the next. But allow the other ones to, and appreciate the other ones for being able to give us. Are we accessing our entire Batman belt? Or are we only taking one pocket into the fight? Right? Like, do we have it all at our disposal? And maybe we do this subconsciously? But what if we do it consciously? What if we do it intentionally? And we appreciate ourselves for the–

Jagroop 17:37

For the entire tool belt? You know, yeah that's when you develop a superpower, basically, right? When you can tap into X, Y, and Z, depending on what the situation or circumstances require.

Tim 17:50

And blend those suckers as well. So, maybe they became something brand new.

Jagroop 17:54

Yeah, creating something brand new that didn't exist before and a new perspective that couldn't exist unless you lived it out the way that you lived it out, right? So the first step is basically to figure out who you seek to serve, and the next is to figure out what you have to offer, and then the last step is bridging that gap between the two. What do you have to offer and what does your audience need and want, and how do you actually bring that value to them?  

Tim 18:21

What’s your suggestion on what platform to choose?

Jagroop 18:23

It depends on what your sphere is right? So like if you’re doing it to build out your business and your clients are all on LinkedIn, but that might be the spot, right? But if you’re a boxer trying to make it to the Olympics, you probably don't want to be on LinkedIn, right? Tailor it to whatever works best for you and your audience

Tim 18:43

Should people be afraid of different types of media? Can they be written or photo or film? Or what's your advice about what should they focus on? Or should they focus? 

Jagroop 18:54

So I think the most valuable format these days is in short video, if you record a long-form video, and you can chop that up, that kind of works on every single platform, tick tock, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, all of them support video. But if you write a blog post, that's only going to go on LinkedIn, it's not going to be showing up on YouTube or TikTok, right? So go for the one that's most high leverage across all the platforms available to you.

Tim 19:20

What's the advantage of going in bite-sized pieces and having a whole bunch of small snippets where you share concept after concept after concept after concept? Rather than having it all in one large video, what's the advantage is putting it up like that?

Jagroop 19:34

It's top of funnel, right? So it's exposed to a lot more people and then they see who you are. And if they're interested in what you say. They themselves will seek out that long-form content.

Tim 19:42

And you'll also see where they're hitting on the short form so you can use it.

Jagroop 19:48

There's plenty of testing right there as well.

Tim 19:52

And then we get to, you know, the old marketing analogy of the of the unique selling proposition? Well, if you are a unique combination of all these things that make you you, and you find a way to bring all of that to bear, in a sense, leverage each other. So, it's one great harmonic within yourself, you are A) more powerful than you'd be otherwise and B) more unique. Because how can you replicate that? So, now you truly have something you can lean on that’s special. And I love that it fights against the idea that you should be something else. And that's the biggest thing when you read leadership books and stuff. I'll read a book, to become, somebody else, right? Help me, be me kind of thing. So the easiest thing in the world? Right? 

Jagroop 20:34

Yeah, I was just having a conversation about this literally earlier today. And it's trying to find the balance between what the world wants you to be or telling you who you should be versus who you authentically are, and bringing out the best versions of yourself, right? And that's the real hero's journey, hero's story, right? Is to bring out the best version of yourself, in a world that's telling you something completely different.

Tim 21:09

A diamond will not sparkle if it's only got one face. So, you know, what are all your facets and maybe get really fluent in those. And understand just what you have to lean on.

Jagroop 21:19

Yeah, there's lessons, I always think there's a lesson I can learn from every person that I meet. And at the same time, there's something that I have to teach them as well, you know?

Tim 21:30

Well, on that note, that's a great segue because I got lots more to learn from you and sort of people listening. Let's move into, you and I earlier had talked about, you know, a couple of the pieces we want to hit, and I think it's now time to bring up this idea. So, if we can establish what the value is that somebody has, in the context of everything that they are and all the potential they have. So, let's talk about that thought of sharing it and moving ourselves into that content creation or that engagement space. So, I'd like you to go a little bit into, around why a person owes it to themselves to share that. 

Jagroop 22:14

So, for me, personally, I was always a pretty smart kid. And I had a tendency to just write the answers to whatever the problem or the thing in the classroom was, right? And where I always lost marks was in showing your work. That was my feedback over my entire, like, elementary to high school, show your work, right? And that's what creating content is actually about. It's about showing your work and documenting what it takes for us to succeed, right? Because that's how we actually learn our lessons, you know, well, other people learn lessons from us is by showing them, Oh, this is what we go through on the day to day to build this out, right?

Tim 22:56

Otherwise, you're nothing but a black box, stuff goes in and comes out the other side and it's kind of a graphic picture. But we're given something to work with and suddenly we come up with a solution and they don't know how. And so given them nothing to connect to. We've given them nothing to believe in, in some ways.

Jagroop 23:47

Yeah. And then the added challenge of like, how are you known as well? Like, what's your reputation as well? Right? The problem is, most people struggle on in obscurity is what it is, right? And what you want to do is go from obscurity to notoriety, to being actually known as an expert in what you do, right? And that's what bridging that gap is creating content that delivers value, showcasing, yes, I do know about, you know, drilling oil or whatever it might be, right?

Tim 23:47

Yeah. So, I mean, some people are going to buck against that, in the sense of there are certain people that do not want to be notable, they don't want to be out there, they want to fly under the radar. And there is some justification for that, for sure. But I think this doesn't only apply as we're going to talk about in terms of massive audiences. But let's say you just are the owner of a business and that business does not need to be out in the sphere, although I think we both would challenge that. But let's say we just want to reach your team, you just want to reach inside. We're talking about the same thing here, we're talking about showing people your work, so that you can inspire others and give them a path to follow and give them a role model, right, that they can consider. And I like that aspect of there's no answers in the answer, right? There's answers in the decisions or the steps you took to get to the answer. And they might need to know, they don't just need to know this can be solved, they need to know, what am I missing, that's that I'm not able to solve it. And if they can find that in your journey, then there's something that they can emulate. Or it's very direct, it's a task or a behaviour or something. 

Jagroop 24:20

Yeah, for like, what I see for small business owners is that your clients can work with you if they don't know you. And it's overcoming that obstacle, which is difficult for most people, right? And I advocate for just documenting what you're doing because you're already kind of doing it. All you got to do is now hit record and share that rate. Because your expertise is going to come out through that, right? 

Tim 25:32

So, you may want to share everything. But it doesn't matter a lick if people aren't going to pay attention, so drop on them. Because you gave me a line a couple of weeks ago that I think it's just gold. So, tell me all about that. What do we need to know about attention?

Jagroop 25:44

I think attention is the new currency is what it is, right? So, the original way a business basically exchanges value for money. And that value is either a product or a service, right? But now we live in a day and age where money isn't necessarily the most valuable thing. It's people's attention, right? Where are they actually focusing, where are their eyes going? Right? And that's where it goes into the idea of content relating to the attention you get, right? So, delivering valuable content and the attention that that brings back to your business to whatever you do, right?

Tim 26:25

Anybody who has a child in school would, if they gave, that statement to a teacher, I'm sure the teachers would be nodding furiously because the ability to hold the student's attention long enough for them to learn and be transformed is their number one challenge. There are so many more distractions that are more enticing. It becomes a war against distraction, it becomes a war against dopamine. Like, short term–

Jagroop 27:03

There's quite a bit of work actually going on in the space where they're looking at people's attention spent and how they used to be compared to how they are now, right? There's a gentleman, he's a researcher, and his ability to read academic articles and studies has gone down over the past 10 years. So, before he could read and study for, say, six hours of just academic content, now it's down to say, three, right? So, our attention spans as a society are decreasing, and blame Tick-Tock, Instagram or whatever it might be. But there are so many more ways to get a quick hit of dopamine, that captures your attention, right? Compared to having the fortitude to actually like, focus on a single task for a given amount of time. Right?

Tim 27:56

Yeah, and learning, learning to attend to something, and that becomes a, it becomes economic in a person's brain. It's what's giving me more pleasure or usefulness or is flipping my switch.

Jagroop 28:06

Yeah, and it's so easy to just scroll away on TikTok, or scroll away on Instagram or whatever it might be. The big difference is the content you consume versus the content you produce. Right? Are you a creator or a consumer? And in business to make value, to make money, you got to be a creator, you know, you're delivering value in some way. And that's what it comes down to content, right? Like you have to focus on your kids, what do you want them to be consuming to actually help them grow? Right? Are they just watching dances and stuff? Or are they listening to educated speakers talk about their expertise? Are they learning lessons from that, right? Are they just looking to be entertained? Or are they actually looking to be educated? And the best version of that is when you're entertained and educated at the same time.

Tim 28:53

So, then there's a next layer of thought here, and that is, those dancing videos, those videos of oh, man, the ones I hate are the ones that are like staged emergencies and things that are out, that’s fake. Or dogs, doing whatever talks do, right, like, there's all sorts of things that we can waste time on. And so when we talk about getting the attention of others, we're not just talking about producing something that's going to join that river of useless information. Right? We're also talking about, well, we've got a purpose to why this is out there. And we have people that we want to connect to that use it. So, talk to me a little bit about the importance of the quality of that information that we're putting out there.

Jagroop 29:36

Yeah, I think a lot of leaders focus on making an impact, right? And this is where it comes on to a different scale of things. So, when you create great content, what you're actually doing is you're crafting culture in a new way, right? You're setting the agenda for the way you want society to move. So, all of a sudden, it goes from being Oh, this is just some goofy thing that I do for fun to just dancing or whatever it might be, all of a sudden, it's a major responsibility for leaders to make an impact and add value in a way that's going to resonate with the audiences that they seek to serve.

Tim 30:20

Jim Collins years ago, and good great talked about the flywheel principle. And he talked about how you can have this huge, if you can imagine this huge stone flywheel in the middle of things, you can go up to that and you can push it, it won't move, it will be this imperceptible amount of force versus the size of this thing. But if enough, people slap that thing, in the right direction, eventually it'll start to move. And eventually, it'll start to spin until it can finally maintain a momentum of its own. You still have to keep going but it's you know, it's spinning in its under its own inertia, or it's got a great deal of inertia. So, what's interesting about what you're saying about crafting these cultures, is that you may not have total control over the direction of the world. But you can certainly choose which way you want to slap that flywheel. You can certainly choose the arena in which you're going to play and the voice that you're going to have, and the vibrancy of that voice, and just how many angles you might give it so that people can connect to you and see themselves in your journey.

Jagroop 29:39

Momentum kind of builds momentum, you know. And the idea becomes people like us do things like this. So, your audience kind of has a tendency to find you. So, in the beginning, nobody's going to see what you do. I think that's something that everybody is really nervous about, especially early on is, oh, I'm going to be judged for looking X, Y and Z. You're saying something stupid in like a video or whatever it might be, but especially early on, nobody's really gonna see it, it doesn't really matter, right? But as you develop your craft, and you start putting out better and better stuff, that's when momentum starts building when you start actually building out a tribe of people who think and believe and look like you, right?

Tim 31:30

So, we see, there's all these reasons for us to get out there. There's all these ways that we might not be yet expressing ourselves. And now we're giving people a reason to say you know what, you can actually affect the world, it may feel small, it may feel imperceptible. So, we're not just talking about people putting themselves out there, but we're talking about them, helping to move this big flywheel, helping to shift culture, helping to shift thought in a certain direction. And to your earlier point, if we are showing our work, we're giving people a pathway to follow where they can start moving that flywheel in their own way, but still in the direction, so we're sort of starting that common effort. And they make it moving it in different spheres, they could be moving in different volumes from us, greater or lower. But we're giving people have stream to join, in a sense, literally. 

Jagroop 33:05

You’re creating a group of like-minded people in one way or another, right? I think it was Kevin Kelley that went into the idea of 1000 true fans, you know, when you have 1000, people who absolutely believe in what you do, or what you're about, your message, your story, and they resonate with all that, that's when you can actually deliver actual value, right? And when you have 1000 true fans, well, the next step is usually monetization, you know, how can you leverage that audience in order to create capital for yourself, right?

Tim 33:38

The idea of true fans is a great one. And Elena Schneider, who was on the phone, the phone on the show earlier, she had this great perspective, and it was around when I was going out there, and I was asking my clients for referrals. They were giving people an easy answer, oh, you're having a problem, oh here, call Tim Sweet, and people would call me. But inevitably, those people or often those people, the answer came too easy. And so they were never as fully invested as the person that found me, started following my stuff, and developed some trust with me before I even met them. And suddenly, when they call me, they're ready to do the work, like they are ready to get down. And they've already decided that I've got something that I can inject into their life that's good, or I can bring to their business. And I don't mind referrals, don't get me wrong. But there's something to be said for people that are true fans that have found a deep and lasting connection to you for reasons that you may not understand versus trying to tell them who you are. And, you know, just the fact that somebody signs off on me, or something like that, which again, I appreciate, but no work went into that, right? 

Jagroop 34:52

And that's the power of an audience, you know, you build a funnel of people who already see what you're about, and they naturally build that trust in you. Right? So, they become a warm lead right off the bat, because they already know what you're about. And they want to work with you. Right? 

Tim 35:10

Okay. So, I hope we've convinced people that there is power in seeking an audience, right, and developing a real relationship with that audience and giving them some of the inside track, some of the other facets of our personality, showing them our work, so that they can start their own journey of growth and learning. But here's the but, for people out there that have never tried to do this or have been primarily consumers of social media, rather than producers. And maybe they're in a line of work where they never really saw themselves as being social contributors. What would your pitch to those people be? What practical steps would you offer them to get started?

Jagroop 35:54

I look at it like this, how valuable would it be if your name was associated with your niche? So, say that you're a general engineer, and you work as an elevator consultant. If you're the most well-known and notorious elevator consultant, how many more clients are going to be inclined to work with you, right? So, it does become more of a business play as well. Building your name and reputation is about people doing business with people, right?

Tim 36:27

But let me give you a challenge then. A whole bunch of my clients are not motivated by money. They are academics, or they are specialists in the public health sphere or their educators. Maybe there's no monetary upside. If we take the monetary aspect away. What kind of benefit should they be focused on by getting a larger audience? 

Jagroop 36:55

A lot of is just sharing your knowledge, you know, you're an expert in your field, but nobody knows. And you don't actually deliver that to anybody. What do you actually do? You know, you're operating in a void. And the impact you want to make is by working with other people who gain value from your expertise, right?

Tim 37:16

Early in the conversation, you said, that in three generations will be forgotten. Everybody who knew us and loved us will be dead. Right? There was a Buddhist philosophy that I heard of years ago, which I really liked. And it was on their concept of the afterlife, that our ability, or the length of our afterlife was essentially a reflection of the amount of friction we caused in the world. amount of heat we put into the world, and how long it would smoulder and last. I like to think that the amount of my fingerprints will stay on the surface of this earth, is how many people can I touch, how many people can I help lead a better life. We spent a lot of time at work, I would love if all if it was joyful, right? If I can give people lessons that they pass on to, you know, their mentees or their kids. And that carries on for a few generations. When I've spent my entire life amassing this knowledge, to hold, it would be selfish. And to have it just benefit a few number of people feels inefficient, and it feels like a waste. When, you know, why help one person when you can help 60, why help 60 when you can help 600? Why help 600 when you can help 6000? I'm privileged to have the ability to go and learn all about leadership and learn all about teaming. And I don't have to lead a normal business. So, I can help CEOs that do, because they don't have the luxury to go out and find those lessons. I hear from you know, 1000s of leaders, not just you? Wouldn't it be awfully selfish of me to just hold all that back? Right? So. 

Jagroop 39:05

Elon Musk had a bit of an equation for this. So, it's the amount of value or impact you make, times the number of people, right? So, you can make a major impact on a few people. And that is as valuable as a small impact on a larger group of people. So, it's basically playing with that equation and how you want it to play out for yourself. Right?

Tim 39:30

Okay. So, we've given people a reason to consider who they are, and what their multiple facets are within their life, and just how much they've got to offer. We've talked to them about the value of creating an impact and really producing, not just consuming, into the public consciousness and how that can help them steer culture, and benefit themselves, if they are a business owner. I think that's important. We can't step away from that fact. But it's so much larger than just dollars and cents. It's about these true fans. And we've given them a couple of ideas in terms of how to motivate themselves. What are the very first actions that a person should take? 

Jagroop 40:09

First, is to figure out who you seek to serve? Who do you actually want to make an impact for? And then figure out the rest. What is it that you bring to the world that nobody else can? You know, you're an accumulation of a wide range of experiences and how do you package that all together to make the impact that you want to make for the people you care about?

Tim 40:35

I mean, something that I've been learning is that a lot of what I have to teach in a consulting arrangement isn't exactly what people necessarily want to consume on LinkedIn, or want to consume on Instagram. So, I actually start taking side roads in there, because that's what that audience wants to consume. They want to consume. Well, that's what they need, I should say. And so go where the need is. Great. Okay. So, we're at a point here, where I would ask if people want to reach out to you, what is the best place to find you?

Jagroop 41:11

Well, my website is psyspark.ca. And across all the platforms, I am psy.spark, and that's P-S-Y- dot spark.

Tim 41:21

And we will put those links in the show notes. If I was to ask you, what you've got going on, that you want people to know about.

Jagroop 41:31

Yeah, my focus these days is mainly on personal branding and business branding, right? So, helping leaders become content creators in their space. And I guide them through a step-by-step process, from figuring out who their audience is, to what kind of content that they want to push out, to actually putting it out there, right? Giving them my formula so that they got to invest the least amount of time to make the biggest amount of impact with what they do.

Tim 42:00

Second to last, what would be your wish for people, as they're moving forward here? If anybody has taken something away from this conversation, what's the key point you want them to leave with? What's your wish for them?

Jagroop 42:12

It would be to share the experiences and lessons you've learned so that other people can grow from them as well.

Tim 42:21

Generous with your knowledge. Inspired by Debbie Potts, I want to ask you the new question, we're gonna be asking from everybody that is on the show, not necessarily on this subject matter. But if I was to ask you, regardless of who the next leader is that comes on the show, what is a question you would like me to ask them to answer in the kickoff to the show? What's something that you think is a great question that somebody else should be put on the hot seat for?

Jagroop 42:52

So, the question that I usually ask is, what's the most significant lesson you've learned in the past year?

Tim 42:59

Awesome. All right, done it. Watch for it. Thank you very much for joining me today. It's been a real pleasure to spend some time with you. I hope that people can check out your site, I think it's going to be rewarding. And I think that there's so much there that can change a person's life. So, again, I really appreciate you coming on here and dropping a lot of knowledge and I can't wait till we have a chance to play again.

Jagroop 42:34

Thank you for having me on. Oh man, I really appreciate it.

Tim 43:27

All right, Jagroop Chhina. Thank you so much. Talk to you again soon. 

Tim 43:32

Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If, like us, you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership, please give us a positive rating and review on Apple Podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders. And you can spread the word too, by sharing this with your friends, teams and colleagues. Thanks again for listening. And be sure to tune in in two weeks' time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host, Tim Sweet, encouraging you to keep on leading.

In an empowering episode of Sweet on Leadership, host Tim Sweet sits down with Erin Ashbacher, a highly accomplished CSEP-certified personal trainer and Senior Health Advisor. Tim and Erin delve into the crucial intersection of health and leadership development, with Erin emphasizing the need to view health as a dynamic lifestyle change rather than a time-consuming endeavour. As a powerlifter and former dancer, Erin draws on her expertise in cardiac rehabilitation, challenging common excuses with a focus on small, consistent steps and flexibility in workouts. 

Erin emphasizes intentional movement, goal-setting, and the creation of personalized fitness programs. The episode explores overcoming the common “no, but” mindset with the mindset of yes, and. They emphasize the evolving nature of fitness journeys and the positive impact of investing in health on professional success. Erin's unique approach combines her expertise in listening, goal-setting, and life balance, positioning her as an invaluable resource for clients seeking personalized fitness and coaching services. The episode encourages leaders to prioritize preventative wellness and provides the resources to start your journey to a healthier work-life balance. 

About Erin Ashbacher

Erin Ashbacher, a distinguished Senior Health Advisor and CSEP-certified personal trainer, is a driving force in health, wellness, and fitness. Armed with a Bachelor of Kinesiology from The University of Calgary, Erin, a powerlifter and former dancer, seamlessly combines expertise in movement, nutrition, and motivation.

As the owner of ERA Fitness, Erin boasts a top 10 industry performance since 2016, offering personalized training and coaching services. Her approach, emphasizing life balance and aligning health with professional goals, positions her as a key collaborator for leadership development clients in Calgary and beyond. Erin's superpowers encompass listening, goal-setting, movement expertise, and the ability to create customized programs, both in-person and online. Rooted in a famous Alberta rodeo family, she brings a unique appreciation for farming and ranching to her multifaceted lifestyle, which includes enjoying outdoor activities with her partner, Doug.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Julie Freedman Smith

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Contact Tim Sweet | Team Work Excellence: 

• Website
• LinkedIn: Tim Sweet
• Instagram
• Linkedin: Team Work Excellence

Contact Erin Ashbacher | ERA Fitness: 

• TWE: teamworkexcellence.com/about
• Email: erashbacher@yahoo.ca

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Transcript:

Erin 00:01

There's definitely been a lot of people who think that being busy is really, you know, the gold standard and you know, making sure that we do it all. And it's hard when you're working in cardiac rehab, and you see people that have all of a sudden just been stopped in their tracks. And it made me really realize that preventative medicine, preventative wellness is where we want to be.

Tim 00:25

I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you my friend, are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. Welcome to the Sweet on Leadership podcast. This is episode 29.

Tim 00:59

Hey, everybody, welcome back to Sweet on Leadership. Today, I am thrilled to introduce to you somebody that I've known for years now. I mean, I think we've known each other since 2014. Or maybe even before that 2013, 2012? This is Erin Ashbacher. Erin and I met years ago when Erin was my trainer at a gym. And I would say it's been a friendship I value more and more every year that I know you. So, welcome, Erin.

Erin 01:29

Oh, thanks, Tim. That’s so sweet of you, I very much value our friendship as well. So, thank you. 

Tim 01:36

And for those of you that work with TWE, you'll know that Erin is our in-house trainer. Fun stat is about 90% of the executives that I work with rank their health and their balance as one of the things on the life side of the work-life equation that always needs work. And so recognizing this, I'm not qualified in this area but I sure as heck know somebody who is. Erin is part of our team and as well as running your own business, ERA Fitness. Erin is our key associate in this area. So, happy to have you as part of that team There. 

Erin 02:12

Yeah, I'm super thrilled to be part of the TWE team as well. Yeah.

Tim 02:17

So, Erin, why don't we just take a moment and besides what I know about you, why don't you take a moment and introduce yourself to everybody that's listening today?

Erin 02:25

I'm a Kinesiologist and went to school at the University of Calgary for Exercise and Health Physiology, started my career in cardiac rehabilitation, which was the scary side of being in kinesiology right, like people have already done and experienced a really traumatic thing and now they're super grateful to have a second chance. It was a really great learning experience for me and it was where I wanted to start my career. And then I eventually brought myself back to Calgary where I got to work downtown, and I went into kind of the corporate world and got to work with ton of wonderful, wonderful clients from all walks of life, you know, and got to experience what it's like to work hard, not only from like, I want to complete this race on the weekend, but just like a stress management perspective with my clients of getting them to be able to kind of add that health and wellness into their world. Yeah. And then I've gotten a chance to be part of a little bit part of everything that interests me, I've got my mountain bike coaching certificate, and I've been doing that for the last few years, worked with snowboarding and got my coaching with snowboarding. Although, I will admit I'm a horrible snowboarder. I just really love doing it and I enjoy coaching. Yeah, so that's my kind of professional career. And yeah, I grew up in rural Alberta, part of a big family on a ranch with cattle and sheep and I still to this day, well along with a lot of help from my parents run 100 head of meat breed sheep, which is super exciting, to just continue to be part of that.

Tim 04:09

And for those listeners that are listening from around the world, you may know that Calgary and the Calgary Stampede is a big part of our heritage here. We are an agricultural province besides oil and gas, that is one of our key areas. And of course, the Ashbacher family is renowned as being one of the big rodeo families in the province. And so something that I always think it's such a neat aspect to your life and what a thing to be involved in as well. I mean, you're a powerlifter, I think that's important to mention. And you're an award-winning trainer. You're not just a kinesiologist and a trainer run of the mill, you are award-winning. 

Erin 04:47

Yeah, I was recognized for I think four years in a row with my company as being the top trainer. It's interesting because it was never something I was really necessarily aiming for. But when you're doing what you love and things are just kind of clicking in place, it just made sense to me that all of a sudden, I found myself on top. And I was like, Oh, this is kind of cool. Like who knew? Yeah.

Tim 05:07

And I love when you talk to me about what you're learning and where you're going, that you're so active in that space. I mean, you're still attending conferences, you're still up on the literature, you're not passive when it comes to continuing to grow and to develop and to learn and to stay on the cutting edge of what it means to help others be healthy.

Erin 05:25

Absolutely. Our industry is constantly evolving, and there's constantly new evidence-based research out there that can be implemented. And I think it's really important to understand like how our society is evolving, and how the people around us are evolving, and how we can continue to make sure that, you know, health doesn't come in a bottle, that health is one of those things that we need to continue to invest in. And knowing how I can help assist my clients with that is really important. So yeah, continuing education is a big part of that.

Tim 05:59

Yeah, and I think for anybody listening, many people will have been exposed to trainers. And a lot of trainers are kind of fly by night, it's something that they're doing in the part-time, it's something that they do just so that they can, you know, I don't know, they don't tend to be educated much beyond what they're getting on the job site. For those of you listening, Erin is not that, okay? This is somebody who I admire because professionally, you are gripping and ripping it. I mean, you are always expressing yourself to the utmost of your potential. And that's something that I find inspiring. So again, just happy to have you here. And I can't wait till we get into what we're talking about. So, when we thought of having you on the show, we're really thinking about this balance that I see so many of my clients have, which is although they're excelling in their professional lives, and they're shooting for higher and higher levels of impact with their teams, perhaps going on promotions, and they tend to be you know, these are really leaders in whatever industry that they're in, they can still struggle with health. And an interesting stat, as I say is 90% of them will have health concerns. They don't feel like they're quite as balanced as they want to be in that area. And the other part is any of them with kids also tend to have 90% of people with kids had family concerns, which is why as you know, we have Julie on the other side with the family expertise. But for you, when you come through cutting your teeth with cardiac rehabilitation, and having been around business stress and professional stress, a lot of my life, we're no stranger to seeing people go down from that as a problem. Because it's often one of the things that people who work too hard and don't look after themselves have to face. How does that ready you or lead you towards your thoughts on the importance of one's leading their own health? Can you speak a little bit to that for me?

Erin 07:59

Yeah, I mean, there's definitely been a lot of people who think that being busy is really, you know, the gold standard, and you know, making sure that we do it all. And it's hard when you're working in cardiac rehab, and you see people that have all of a sudden just been stopped in their tracks. And it made me really realize that preventative medicine, preventative wellness is where we want to be. And I've always kind of said to my clients, like, let's try and make small steps for a better, more active, healthier lifestyle today, so that we don't get that big stop of, oh, gosh, we've had a cardiac event and now we need to change your life completely, right? When you're all of a sudden taken out of work and being able to care for your family because you've had this serious cardiac event. We don't need to get there, we can pull it back. And we can take care of it right now in small doses, that compound and build on each other in a really positive way. So, you know, making sure that we're taking care of our stress and taking care of our physical health as well as our mental health. Absolutely.

Tim 09:06

There's no shortage of examples of people who don't even get the chance to second crack, they work their entire lives, and they can often be very successful. They don't get a chance to enjoy retirement, they don't get a chance to see what's on the other side of all that hard work. They're always waiting for tomorrow, aren't they? And I speak from experience here. You're always waiting for tomorrow.

Erin 09:27

I don't have time today. I'll do it tomorrow. Yeah. Well, even some of my clients that have reached retirement, and they've had a really successful career, and now that they're retired, they're like, oh, now I'm going to take care of my health. But maybe they have an ailment that has been kind of creeping around on them. And so they just feel like they're starting at a really deep bottom. Like, oh man, if I would have just started going to the gym or being a little bit more active in my 40s or my 50s. Now that I'm in my 60s, I wouldn't have to deal with this big mountain, right? And then it can be a bit discouraging to people when they kind of thought that their retirement was going to be one way. And their health and physical limitations are creating some a different story for them. Right? So yeah, let's take care of it today.

Tim 10:14

I was facilitating and teaching a room of about 40 Higher Education executives last week. I was sharing with them, you know, we often think about how are we going to empower our staff, or our faculties, right? And the interesting thing about that is I was showing them how often when people start a job, they are never going to have more potential, they're never going to feel more optimistic about growth. And then we start to scuff them up. And the leader can inadvertently push that person down and liquidate that person's sense of potential and sense of growth. And then we're in a position where we have to build it back up. And I'm reminded of that as you're speaking, because we would never knowingly want to liquidate someone else's health and then have them have to try to on the back foot, get it back. We wouldn't let an employee do that. That would be outside the value set for so many of the people that I work with. But we seem awfully comfortable letting ourselves liquidate our health and then having to find ourselves on the backfoot trying to gain back our health, right, trying to gain back our fitness or trying to gain back because we had an event or where we've now had a nagging injury that's gotten worse and worse and worse. We would never treat anybody else like that. But we seem quite comfortable letting that be the standard of our self-care. Is that something that you see, too? 

Erin 11:43

Yeah, absolutely. Like, like you said, you would never let your spouse treat you that way. But yet you're willing to treat yourself that way. You’d never let your leader treat your employees like that, right?

Tim 11:55

Yeah, there's people that will take their dog for a walk because they don't want their dog to be overweight, right? But they won't make the time to take themselves for a walk. To keep themselves in fitness. 

Erin 12:05

I think some of the limitation on that too comes from there's this idea that taking care of your health and being physically active is a bit of a luxury, right? It's a luxury in time. It's a luxury in finances if you're paying for a gym membership, or whatever. And so this idea that I'm being selfish if I'm carving out this time for my health, and so I don't want to be selfish because I want to make sure I'm giving to my team or giving to my family. And so we kind of easily just kind of, you know, sweep it under the rug. I'll do that tomorrow. Right? And yeah, it's something that we are saying to ourselves that we really need to change in my opinion.

Tim 12:48

Erin, I want to play you a little clip here and get your thoughts on it as we continue here. If you don't mind?

Audio Clip 12:52

Baby, I feel sorry for you. Did you forget your headphone? Stop being a girly man and work out. I don't have enough time. Which of course the biggest bullshit I’ve ever heard because we have 24 hours a day. You didn't have time for working out, you’re not having time for taking care of your body, are you out of your mind? You don't have time. Manage your time better. Okay? The gym is too busy, well then go at five in the morning, you forehead. Okay? Have you ever seen a gym at five in the morning? There's almost no one there. So, just get up early and go to the gym early.

Tim 13:28

So, Erin what do you think when we hear Arney speak there?

Erin 13:31

It's a bit tipsy. Right? But I mean, it makes you laugh. And there's so much truth to it. I mean, we do, we have a ton of time in our days, you know, are we scrolling for an hour? What are we doing that we can put something more positive in, you know, we get so much more out of it. Right? So, stop making excuses. If you need accountability, find someone that can keep you accountable, right? Whether that's your trainer, right? Well-educated trainer, or whether that's a good friend, that you guys are making a commitment to each other. But yeah, he's not wrong. Take care of your body.

Tim 14:05

It's funny because he talks about, you know, I love how he uses the term, you know, get up at five in the morning, you forehead. And I don't know if this is what he means. But I feel like half the time we're in our own brains. We talk ourselves out of stuff. Practically most people know why it's important to work out. Most people understand why it's important to put in the effort and put in the time and not slack on that, like we understand, theoretically, that people have to exercise. We've received all of the information for the most part. Very few people can claim to be ignorant, that it's not important to you know, at least be active if not engage in resistance training or do something cardiovascularly. So, we don't need a lot of science to tell us that's important. And in many cases, we know we feel better when we go and we do it. So, why in your experience, do people find it so hard? What are some of the excuses? Or baby excuses that you hear?

Erin 15:05

So many baby excuses. Yeah. I mean, one of the big ones is, well, I just don't have a full hour to dedicate, or like, you know, an hour and a half to dedicate, by the time I get there and then get back to the office. Yeah, so I just like to tell people like stop making it so rigid. Like nobody said, your workout has to be an hour, you have 20 minutes, go for a really nice brisk walk, call it a good one. Try again, tomorrow, right? Doesn't have to be this rigid time interval. So, that's definitely a big excuse that I've heard. The other one that I've heard is always this. Well, you know, my boss won't let me get away from the office. And I'm at the office for nine hours a day. And then there's an hour commute. So it comes down to that, I don't have time. Yeah. But then they tell me about all the TV shows that they watch when like, maybe you can be working out while you're watching those TV shows, I don’t know.

Tim 15:53

Yeah, or they take a bunch of time to record a podcast. When Sandra Sherry and Arnold Schwarzenegger mean. You know, if we think about the time issue, and we think that really we could break it up into different choices, 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there. Another team I'm working with, when we went through, and we were looking at getting back a sense of camaraderie and teamwork that they seem to have lost. We talked about one of the traditions that they had lost, one of their senior leaders or senior colleagues had always gone around and tapped everybody on the shoulder and said, Come on, we're going for a walk for 15 minutes. And then as the group got younger, and he started to question whether or not he was sort of had the same sway or, because it was lateral. He wasn't their boss, he was their colleague, he stopped doing it. And he assumed that nobody wanted to be bothered. And he felt like he was bothering people. But the interesting thing was, is that I talked to those younger staff, and they were all like, Man, I sure miss when so and so would tap me on the shoulder and say, Come on, let's just go for a walk. And I really miss that. And so it's funny how we talk ourselves into these excuses. And look, I'm no expert here, you've heard me talk myself into excuses all the time. I was dealing with a knee replacement but I had focused because I knew that if I didn't get that movement back, and it's turned out well. But if I didn't get it back in six weeks, I was not going to see significant improvement. But since then, like I fell on my can over the Christmas holiday and so I had a sore butt. That sore butt has been a pretty convenient excuse for not getting up and moving. Right? And it's really late at home to me just how rampant sitting disease or I don't know what we call it officially. But you know, spending a lot of time sitting in an office, working virtually, working on technical things, is such an easy way to see yourself slip. So, very quickly. And then the little pains in the age start to come in. And we have reinforcers that oh, you know, it's hard. And you know, I've talked about this, but why is that such a flawed formula? You’re hard on me, I'm alright with it.

Erin 18:24

That’s loaded. I mean, it is hard. But I feel like most of us when we think about okay, we need to go back to the gym. Like I said, it comes back to that rigidity, if it has to be me lifting weights at my max capacity, it has to be me going to the pool for an hour, it has to be right and it doesn't have to be. It’s so easy to just say this is going to be hard, and I'm going to be in pain and I won't be able to sit properly for a month after I start. So, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that pain, right? And I think that like I said, your physical fitness needs to be and your physical health needs to come in as a lifestyle change, right? Go for a 20-minute walk. I am stressed out about all the things that have been flying at me on my keyboard today. I'm just going to take a moment and go for a 15-minute walk. And it might be brisk, or it might be strolling. You need to choose your own adventure in that right but stop getting wound up and all of the things that you think it has to be.

Tim 19:25

And it’s so counterintuitive, because if I feel really stressed, often it can be like Oh, I'm stressed I got so much to do. I better stay at my desk and slug it out, versus saying you know what? If I went for a 15-minute walk I'd probably come back and be even more productive. 

Erim 19:41

Absolutely, and there's there's tons of research that shows that that actually happens right? Even me, I had something come up just recently super stressed. I didn't know where to turn I needed to talk it out. I phoned up my bestie and I'm like we need to go walk the track because it's winter so we're walking the track instead of outside and you know we're gonna go do a workout. And we got five ways around the track. And I said, No, I still need to keep walking and venting. I can't I'm not ready to lift weights yet. And it was great. We had a, you know, short impromptu weight session after that, but there was no intention of doing weights. I just wanted to go for a walk and get it out. Right? So yeah, we just need to stop. And then just do. Yeah.

Tim 20:24

You forehead.

Erin 20:25

Yeah, I have one of my clients, they put a sticky note on their computer. And just when it gets hard, go for a walk, right? Or do 10 Push-ups, right, like, get away from that stress thing, the oh my gosh, my to-do list is 150 things long. And I only have 10 hours to do it in and just take 10 minutes, 15 minutes to yourself. They'll come back better.

Tim 20:49

Yeah. Julie has this thing. Again, Julie Freedman Smith is on the parenting side of our association here. But she talks about not having to be rigid around, Oh, we had a good day parenting and if in the first, let's say you have a messy morning, and then you know, the breakfast was kids were fired up. And it was they were whining and whatever. And then you're like, Oh, my whole day is shot now. She's like, What are you talking about? Like, there's another interaction coming around the corner, do well in that, like, start granulating your day down to saying, I can't get away for an hour, you've told me this, I can't go to the gym for an hour. So, I'm not gonna go. It's like, well, whatever, go to the gym for 20 minutes, or don't go to the gym, go to the grocery store and buy a couple of four litres of milk and walk home with them or do whatever, right? And it doesn't have to be fancy. Focus on the outcomes, not the definition of this is the only way to do it or your window is closed. Often it just we have to consider, is it our own limiting belief or our own definition of what things have to be that is flawed? There's a bunch of different ways to do it. And I remember seeing how people who are training for long-distance running. When you look at the much less affluent teams in Africa, when they're training distance runners. They have training regimes and equipment and stuff, which people would think comes from a junkyard half the time, it doesn't matter because they're focused on what's the roots of what they're trying to do. And what are the outcomes that they're seeking? They're not worried about how it shows up. It's just about getting it done in a way that's always moving towards progress. Because if they were locked into that they had to, you know, you're part of some community that doesn't have a lot of money and you're locked into some thinking that you have to have the latest and greatest equipment or you can't compete, they would never be showing the way that they're showing in the Boston Marathon or anything like that. They would be so paralyzed by all the things that can't be. 

Erin 23:00

Yeah, we need to we need to practice I feel being more a yes and when it comes to our fitness. Like, oh, my days crazy busy. I have to run to this meeting. And then I have to run with my kids. Yeah, and? Where can we put in 20 minutes of exercise? You dropped off your kids at the center, so they can go do their thing. And there's a gym right there that you have access to go spend 30 minutes, why not? Right? Yes, and, instead of the no, but. 

Tim 23:27

Yeah. I think of Gabby Reese, right? Gabby Reese is an Olympic volleyball player, married to Stuart Laird, the championship surfer. And I've talked about this before, she talks about this going first mentality where it's just like, sometimes you just need to risk it. Get off your biscuit and risk it. Right? So, what really makes it hard? Does life make it hard? Or the way we perceive life makes it hard?

Erin 23:58

Oh, the way we perceive it for sure. Right? That's a no-brainer to me.

Tim 24:04

One of the things I love about these conversations is I get to put myself forward as a proxy for the audience. You and I've had a lot of these conversations in part before, but it's always a rediscovery. I mean, and I'm being sincere here when I say every time I talk with you, it's enlightening. And I can't wait for other people to experience this when they get you one-on-one. But one of the emotions that this raises for me is I start to get really frustrated with myself. I start to be like, You know what, sweet, you know better than because right now, like I've told you, I mean, I'm dealing with a bit of back pain and the rest of it, but I know darn well when I was working at that university and I chose to walk back to the hotel instead of getting a cab and I'm rigged to walk back to the hotel, I wear certain shoes and I wear a backpack so that I can walk if I want to and I made that choice. The next day was better. I know what the math says. But I still, despite the knowing I managed to slip in behind and have to keep sort of vigilant about this stuff.

Erin 25:07

It doesn't easily become our lifestyle change, right? But giving yourself the opportunity to be ready for it right like wearing the right shoes, I have a backpack too, I'm ready to walk anywhere for any amount of time. And you know, it's late at night, I'll just hop in a cab instead, right? It becomes easy to like, take that second to stop and be like, No, I am equipped to walk back, I can do this, right? Any habit change is hard. So, when it comes to our fitness, just being able to give ourselves the best opportunity to just take that pause and say, Yeah, I'm gonna walk or I'm gonna do 10 Push Ups before I sit on the couch, or whatever it is, right? I like to give my clients these like tiny little challenges which amount to a lot when they stick with them. I think I've given you this one before Tim or like, I want you to go for at least a 20-minute walk every day. 

Tim 25:58

Or intentional movement 20 minutes a day. 

Erin 25:59

Intentional movement for 20 minutes, right, gives you a lot of opportunity to choose what that is. I've also given you the opportunity to do 50 pushups a day, they don't have to be all at once do 10 in the morning, before you get out of the bedroom and to the kitchen and do 10 more before, you know, sit back down at your desk, right? But eventually, I want you to do 50 in one day, and, and they can look all sorts of different ways. People say to me, I can't do a push-up. Great, but you can do a wall push-up. So, let's start there, right?

Tim 26:31

You can do a push-up against the stairs if you need to.

Erin 26:35

Yeah, so, when I'm working with my clients, I try to find, talk to them and find ways that we can add more movement into their day. So, that when they get to that one training session, or two training sessions, or three training sessions a week, they're not feeling like I haven't done anything since the last time I saw you. Right? Like, I want to give you that ability to just pause and say yes, and, every time you can. 

Tim 27:00

I like that, because it's you know, we often talked about pattern before perfection. I remember listening to one guy say, you know, even if you get in your car, and listen, he was talking about the gym, but he says even if you get in your car and you drive to the gym, you sit in the parking lot, you decide you're not going to go in, you drive home that it’s still better than having stayed in bed. Right? Because sooner or later, you're gonna figure out well, I'm already here, I'm going to go or whatever. And I think it doesn't have to be that complex. But like before you get nailed that, oh, I need to be cracking off 50 pushups the way I did when I was 18. Which I will say there's one thing that I think is really interesting, and that is for people who have been athletes in the past. And then if let things slip, I do believe there's like a mental barrier to come through because I've been a high performance, not professional, but I've been a high-performance high school athlete where I was, you know, captain of teams and wrestling and training all the time before my knees were shot. And I remember what those days were like, and I remember what it felt like, everything was in flow, and it was working. And then you know, you're like, Okay, well, I'm gonna try to do this again. And suddenly, it's like, well, wait a minute, guess what? You sit on your can for 20 years and yeah, burpees aren't gonna be that easy. So, we kind of disappoint ourselves. And then we get all in our heads.

Erin 28:26

So many of my clients have had this experience, like when I was 20. And like, yeah, you've sat on your butt for 20 years, right? Or I’ve even got the privilege of training some ex Olympic athletes, right? And they do the same thing. Oh, man, when I was training and like we always remember ourselves at our peak, we always remember what it felt like and how good we felt and how good we looked. When we are at the peak of our performance. We rarely ever remember what the first day felt like, right? And even myself, a competitive powerlifter, a couple of years, 2020-2021. I didn't train, I just wasn't lifting weights. It was not a possibility for me in my life and man got back into the gym and immediately wanted to go right back to Okay, this is where I stopped/left off training two years ago. Like, wait that's not where we start. And I was fortunate enough that I went through a back injury, which is what got me into powerlifting that I could remember, remember how crappy that felt when you started powerlifting. Let's go back to not the back injury, but just easing my way into it and giving myself the grace to come back to where I want to be, right? And like just because you were competitive 20 years ago, doesn't mean you to be competitive today. It's not necessarily about the competition, right? It's about making the best choices for yourself and your body so that you can make the best choices for your life.

Tim 29:53

So, one thing is that there's if we were to make sure we have that in the notes. The one thing is it's not about necessarily turning back to what you were capable of before. But accepting what means progress today. I think there's a counterpoint to that, that I'd like to talk about a little bit. And that is, sometimes we get very complacent about, we may be stuck with what we've got as well. So, then there's the other side of that, which is to say, it doesn't have to be what it was when we were 20 but there's lots to work on. And I'll give you a little story, when I was going through just recently here and getting a checkup on my knees and whatnot. So that involves getting a lot of X-rays and things like that. I was flipping through and researching, you know, this back issue and looking for, what does the skeleton look like? Just to educate myself. And I ran across some photos, and I'm gonna share one with you now. And I am going to put it in the show notes so that people can see it, and I'll put a link to it on the website, so people can take a look at this. And what this was, is I was going in for something called a scattergram, I used to have a leg that was almost three-quarters of an inch, but a centimetre shorter than the other, just through fluke or tremendous skill of my surgeon, now the Delta, the distance between leg length is less than two millimetres. And so I've got almost an equidistant leg length. And that's great, because my mechanics in my body are a lot more in line, although my body's getting used to it, which, you know, is still happening two years later. Anyway, I'm looking at these X-rays, and I'm gonna show these to you. One was sort of an illustration, the other was a full-body scan. And it was, you know, of people of various widths, I will say, I looked at these X-rays, you can see, well, the ones in illustration, you can see a simulation of two skeletons, which are the same skeleton. But one is showing a person that's carrying about 50 pounds, 80 pounds of extra weight, but the skeleton is the same size. And then when you look at people that might be the on the much more heavy, morbidly obese side of things, their skeleton is the same size as anybody else's. But sometimes in my mind's eye, and I'm a big guy, and you know, it's like, I'm more of a cartoon skeleton like we would have seen in WALL-E or something where this is all bone under here. Well it's not. I mean, my skeleton is still my 20-year-old skeleton, in a sense, it might be a little more beat up. But I've hung a ton of stuff off this frame. You know, I've hung sure muscle and stuff. But I've also hung a–

Erin 32:39

A little bit of adipose tissue. 

Tim 32:40

A little bit of pasta on some you know what it means, beer, is hanging off of there a little too much cheese and whatever. But you know, when I showed this to my wife, we were like, you know, this is actually quite a powerful image to have in your head to say, there is a delta here, there is a gap that we can close that it's possible, there's still this skeleton, this smaller form within us that we've decided to surround with things. So, from a weight loss perspective, because some people deal with that. There's so much potential, there's so much, so much can happen. And maybe for some people, it's more running distance, or cardiovascular or putting on muscle mass, or bone strength and bone density or whatever their particular gap is that they're closing. But it's not so much that you have to shoot for the old 20-year-old version of yourself. But what can you do today? Where's the potential? Because there's that saying, you know, if you want to know what you're committed to look at what you've got. And at the end of the day, there's only so many explanations for why a person could find themselves out of their own version of optimum health. People have different challenges in the rest of it. But are you doing the best with what you've got? Yeah, maybe you've got an endocrine issue, or you've got whatever, but are you doing the best you've got with that? 

Erin 34:19

Yeah, well, and I mean, there's this. Yeah, there's this evolution, right? I think that it's important for people to remember that. I mean, when I think back to when I was in high school, I was a competitive dancer, and I loved dancing. It was it was amazing. And, you know, I went to university and that wasn't an option anymore for me. And so I casually went to the weight room because I thought that should be something I was doing. And, you know, and then got into running when I came back from Australia because I was broke and I needed to do something physically active. Which by the way, I'm like, I admire runners because I ran every day or every six days a week for over a year, and I still don't enjoy running, so go runners. Good. Good on ya. Yeah, and then, you know, I after a back injury fell into powerlifting. And I mean, can I lift my leg over my head? Like I could and do the splits? Like I could when I was a dancer. Absolutely not. I cannot do that anymore. But that's okay. Because I became a runner for a short period of time I became a powerlifter. I took up mountain biking in 2020. And now I get to be a mountain biker, and I love cycling. So, I can bemoan the things that I don't have. And like, oh, well, I used to do this. And I used to love it. And my body used to be able to do this. Or I can say, Yeah, and I get to do this today, I get to fall in love with a new sport, a new activity, a new social engagement, right? So, I think that it's super important for all of us to just kind of be like, Yeah, we could do that. And that's okay, that this is where we're starting today.

Tim 35:57

So having that optimism and that openness, and that idea that things are possible, is important. And then there's the just, let's take a step. 

Erin 36:09

Yeah, let's let's put our heads down and be a bit serious about the fact that this is important to you, it's important to the people around you, and you need to get it done.

Tim 36:18

So, for people that are leading others, let's go back to this. That is our core mandate here, although we serve everybody, but for people that are leading others, maybe they’re parents, maybe they’re teachers, maybe they are working as leaders in a business, what would you like them to focus on when it comes to their particular set of excuses? If you could boil that down to sort of three key things that you think they should be taking away?

Erin 36:45

Three? Only three Tim? 

Tim 36:46

Okay, well, let's remove the number. What would you like people to think about?

Erin 36:51

I want people to think about the fact that when they're investing in themselves, in their health, in their wellness, it's not selfish, right? Like, this is not that you're taking away time from your team or taking away time from your family, it's that you're giving yourself back in an even better way. Right? Be a bit hard with yourself about making sure you're being active, there's so much benefit to being physically active. We have so much research to support that. Make sure you carve out that time, right? Whether it's daily, this time works for me 5 am, every morning, and let your spouse know that and you don't get into the office until seven, if that happens, or whatever time it is, right? I don't like daily, my schedules change every single day. So, I like sitting down on Sundays and planning weekly. But you know, you have to find out what works for you. Right? And then yeah, whatever excuse there is, find a best friend, whether it's yourself or whether it's an actual best friend to say, okay, yeah, that's just a roadblock that you're putting in the way let's find a way around that. Right?

Tim 37:55

When we deal with personal achievement, or making change in an organization or making change as I work with people around their careers, and coach them, it's important that one person's incentive is not necessarily going to work for somebody else. Do you understand yourself because if we think about some of the key ways in which a person is gonna see success, can they translate that into some into a currency that works for them? Some people, it's going to be achievement, it's going to be, you know, running a race or getting a bucket list thing off their life list. For other people, it will be social. For other people, it's going to be doing it because it's logical, and they enjoy the science behind it or something along those lines. Other people will be witnessing their own improvement. And other people, it'll be that sense of control, like so much today, we can trace back to longevity efforts, and those kind of things. And I mean, it's a million other things. But it's not all about you, sport. And it's not about like, No, all of those things can make us not just better for ourselves, but better for everybody that cares about us and the people that rely on us. And you know, that idea of it being just selfish. What a cop-out because it's like, what's really selfish is the fact that you're willing to liquidate yourself, you know, nobody will enjoy you and you won't be nice to be around and you'll be frickin miserable or whatever. You know, find your currency man. Holy moly, maybe that's money. I did this exercise and I remember telling you about it. But I figured out that every pound I carry that's extra costs me I figure and if you ever want to know the formula, feel free to give me a ring. But I figure costs me about $2,700 in productivity and marketing potential. And I've got real justifiable reasons for that. I actually think that it limits my market potential, I think it limits my productivity and confidence and everything that a person in my position who motivates others and has to inspire others can't afford. You cannot give away what you don't have. As we wrap up here, tell us, what's one thing that you're working on that's got you really excited? What's something that's coming up in your future? What's on your Horizon that fires you up, personally? 

Erin 40:28

Oh, for the first time, no, that's not true. Not the first time, I've put my entire summer towards coaching mountain biking and training clients exclusively. And so it's been this really fun balance of figuring out where I'm going to be on my mountain bike, but also having access to my clients when I need to be with them. And so I'm really excited about my summer I have coming up. For me, any day on my bike, it's a good day, except that one time, no, I'm kidding. Yeah. So, I'm really excited about my summer. It's kind of a bit of an experiment to kind of juggle this mountain bike coaching gig and my business. So yeah, that's what I'm looking forward to.

TIM 41:14

You know how deep TWE is in that. So, stay tuned, everybody. If people want to get in touch with you, where should they look for?

Erin 41:21

Right now I'm working on a new website. It's not up yet. But as soon as it is, I will send it to Tim, best way to get a hold of me is my email address, which is EARashbacher@yahoo.ca. Fire me an email and I'll get back to you right away, we can set up a virtual call and or an in-person call if you're in the area, and we can get you rolling on whatever questions you have, or whatever fitness journey you're wanting to embark on, for sure.

Tim 41:49

And for any of you that are already under contract with me, remember that Erin is part of the TWE team. And so, I'm not trying to be possessive there. I'm saying until you get your website up and we link to it. You can always find her at TWE.teamabout and take a look at everything awesome about Erin there. So, you are easy to get a hold of we're gonna make sure all of those dates are in the show notes. Okay, tell me a little bit about, if there's one takeaway that you could say, everybody here and you mentioned it a little bit earlier. But recap for me at this point in the conversation for everybody listening? What do you hope for them? What's your wish for them? 

Erin 42:31

Yeah, my wish is that everyone knows that investing in their health and their wellness is going to always give back in so many new ways, and so many different ways and all other aspects of their life. 

Tim 42:46

So, like any other change program, or investment we would make in business or any institution that we're working on. Let's take a look at this is not an area of cost. This is an area of investment. And we have to see it that way. And recognize it. Recognize it for all the good stuff it gives us back. Okay, awesome. Erin, I just want to tell you how happy I am that you took the time with me today to go through this and I know it's going to do a lot of good for a lot of people. And I can't wait to see how the world opens up for you. And for everybody that you help.

Erin 43:21

Oh, thanks, Tim. Super appreciated being on today and I had a lot of fun.

Tim 43:25

Thanks so much for joining us.

Tim 43:33

Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter, you can find the link in the show notes. If like us, you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership. Please give us a positive rating and review on Apple Podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders. And you can spread the word too by sharing this with your friends, teams and colleagues. Thanks again for listening. And be sure to tune in in two weeks time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host, Tim Sweet, encouraging you to keep on leading. 

Tim 44:12

Hey, did you have fun?

Erin 44:17

I had a ton of fun, Tim. 

Tim 44:19

Awesome. We’ve got some great people coming up. If you were to give me a question to pose to them that I guarantee I will ask them what would be a question you'd like me to throw by other leadership experts? 

Erin 44:32

Yeah, I want to know when does the imposter syndrome stop as a leader? Yeah.

Tim 44:37

Yeah. We'll make sure to talk about that. Newsflash. It never stops. 

Erin 44:41

Oh, good. I'm not alone. 

Tim 44:42

No, that's fine. But we didn't learn to deal with it in a much different way. And it can actually believe it or not, can be something that's an area of strength for you. So, stay tuned. We're gonna get somebody else to weigh in on that question. Thanks again, Erin.

Erin 44:58

Thanks, Tim. 

Tim 44:59

Okay, Big hugs

In this compelling episode of the Sweet on Leadership Podcast, industry leader Teresa Waddington joins host Tim Sweet on a mission to revolutionize the energy landscape. Teresa's diverse background, spanning from engineering to corporate relations, reflects her passionate commitment to converting her father's oil patch into a sustainable energy garden for future generations. The conversation explores multifaceted leadership, emphasizing the significance of authenticity and vulnerability in fostering cohesive teams. Teresa shares profound insights into the intricacies of the energy industry, addressing the delicate balance between profitability and sustainability. 

The episode underscores the transformative potential of leadership grounded in connection, creativity, and a shared vision for the future of energy. Teresa's advocacy for bold thinking and collaboration resonates, offering listeners valuable perspectives on navigating the complexities of the global energy crisis and the importance of continuous self-improvement in leadership. The episode underscores the power of diverse perspectives in driving transformative change within the energy sector.

About Teresa Waddington

Teresa is on a mission to turn her dad’s oil patch into her daughter’s energy garden. This has driven her contribution to shaping the global energy garden, helping to plant and nurture the molecules, electrons, technologies, policies, and workforce that will drive our energy transition. Teresa believes in thinking big, having fun, and that the intersection of creativity and technology will be the ultimate transformational force in our society. 

This mission – informed by her engineering education and diverse work experiences (from corporate relations to running a gas plant to leading a maintenance crew), along with a cheeky nature and a love of drawing - has driven her to create a YouTube channel where she animates a variety of industry-relevant topics. She’s been published numerous times in the Globe and Mail, typically from work inspired by her three kids and husband. She is always seeking to connect and communicate around energy.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• LNG Canada: lngcanada.ca
• SAGA Wisdom: sagawisdom.com

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Contact Tim Sweet | Team Work Excellence:

• Website
• LinkedIn: Tim Sweet
• Instagram
• Linkedin: Team Work Excellence

Contact Teresa Waddington:

• Website: Teresa Waddington
• YouTube: @teresawaddington
• Linkedin: Teresa Waddington

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Transcript

Teresa 00:01

Be yourself. And I mean that in the way of, do the hard work to know who you are. Take the time to constantly strip away all the outside influences and muddy up who we think we should be, what we think success looks like, and who we're performing for our parents or our children, or somebody else. Take the time to constantly strip that away into reground. So, that you can truly be yourself in every aspect of your life.

Tim 00:32

I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you my friend, are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. Welcome to the Sweet on Leadership Podcast, episode 28. 

Tim 01:05

I am really happy that I've got Teresa Waddington joining me. So, hello, Teresa.

Teresa 01:11

Hello, I'm excited to be here.

Tim 01:14

We're just saying off-camera, this feels like we've known each other for a couple of years, but it feels like a lot longer. And every once in a while, you meet people that I don't know, maybe we remind each other of other people in our life or just feels like we're we're in sync. So, I'm really excited for today. And let's see if that translates into a podcast. I think it will, as I mentioned that you and I've been connected for a couple of years now. And I remember the first time that we met was because I had run across one of your articles in my feed. And I remember looking at your profile bio, which you still have, which I would really encourage everybody to go look at. And the line that stuck out in my mind, as both of us were involved in the energy industry was turning my dad's oil patch into my daughter's energy garden, which just hit me like a ton of bricks. And that was something that always stuck with me. And then I think I reached out and we had a few conversations and it was good. But I really appreciate and cherish the opportunity, I have to talk to you and every time that you make time for me. So, thank you so much for that. And I can't wait to introduce others to you. So, with that in mind, why don't you tell everybody who's listening a little bit about yourself?

Teresa 02:23

You nailed it. My Profile bio, which I've spent a lot of time thinking about over years and years and years, is that I'm on a mission to turn my dad's oil patch into my daughter's energy garden. And when I think about who I am, and how I've come to my journey, it does feature a lot about my family and my family that I came from and my family that I've created with my husband, in terms of my parents and my kids. So, I come from a family of five engineers, it was a genetic requirement. My parents and my siblings are all engineers, there was a genetic requirement that I would graduate with an engineering degree. And after I did that, I joined Shell where I've held jobs in all kinds of different functions from Project Engineering to Commercial to Operations and Maintenance, to HSSE, and now I'm in Corporate Relations. So, a big kind of span across the energy industry. And really, throughout all of it, I've had a huge amount of mentorship and support from my dad, and my mom. My mom was also an engineer in the early days of the Calgary oil patch, although I wouldn't say it was her her oil patch, it was definitely something that she struggled with as she kind of came through her career. And now I'm building on kind of the legacy, they've left me to try and create transformation and change, not just in the molecules, electrons, policies, but also in the people that are going to build that future for our children. And when I think about that future energy garden, I really do think it is a whole host of things. It's a whole host of technologies, and couplings of those technologies between kind of old and new, that will really drive us forward. And we're going to talk about leadership today. A huge piece of what I believe my role in many of our roles is now is really, how do we lead and create a fertile ground for that transition, to enable other people to contribute in their kind of super specialized creative ways to lead and to create and to build that energy garden of the future.

Tim 04:18

I think it's really interesting. I mean, myself, I'm involved in oil and gas and a bunch of other industries as well. But having been brought up in Calgary, it's been such a part of our identity to be the oil patch or the energy center of Canada, and in many ways of the Western world. And there's no end right now to the controversy that we find ourselves in because of the world's relation with hydrocarbons. And it's really interesting to me, that from the outside, there's a general assumption that the bulk of people that work in energy are very focused on profit and simply, you know, producing this fuel or whatnot, and they don't really give a mind to, you know what else is going on. And I find that that's just not true. The you know, the people that are here are in service of society by and large, they know that at the state that the world is in this is required. I mean, we require hydrocarbons for fuels and advanced fuels, we require it for plastics, we require it for clothing, we require it for all sorts of petroleum-derived chemicals and whatnot. But nobody is feeling like it needs to stay the way it is. I think there's a wide recognition that if we're going to be part of the future, it has to move. And so Canada has always been at the forefront of ethical production, it's always been at the forefront of thinking about how do we transition this into something that is sustainable. Because even if we get away from combustibles when it comes to fuel, we still require petrochemicals to engage in environmental technologies. And so it's such a huge issue. And when we think about changing, as you say, when you think about changing the people along with that, I think that there's such a visionary component. And today, when we're going to talk about this, it's not just changing that garden from within, I see it is changing how people appreciate the role that this industry plays in modern life, and sustainable life and health care and everything else, all the things that work right now, not to dismiss the things that need to change. But you know. 

Teresa 06:38

It’s interesting because my dad's oil patch was in a bad place, in a lot of ways. There's a lot of values and ways of doing things that I think absolutely are going to be required as we move into that next iteration. But he said something early on that I think was super interesting that the concept of profitability being a bad thing, that we should be doing things out of altruism, and charity. And every dollar we spend is a vote for something. It's something we believe in or something that we value or something that we need. And so the fact that, you know, petrochemicals and fossil fuels still attract such a high rate of return, and they still get so much investment, just points to the fact that people are continuing to vote for them. And so we need to lead change, we need to make that difference, and I completely agree with it's kind of both, but to cast profitability as a negative thing, I think really undermines our ability to understand how we contribute to the world in an incredibly tangible way. ESG investing is a great example, where it's really uncommon, that higher ESG metrics are ranking truly translates into better profitability. So, why is that? Like? What needs to change? When is that going to change? Who's going to change it? Yeah, absolutely. It all comes back to people at the end of the day,

Tim 07:55

It's not simply a mindless pursuit of profits, it is voting with those dollars, making sure that they are of use to many people. And I mean, the reason why it is so strong is because people vote in ways that they don't even realize. I mean, when they buy a certain good and that good is reliant on transport arts relying on manufacturing, or it's reliant on chemical inclusion, or whatever it is, they are part of the supply chain, they're part of the decision to continue to extract resources and the need to extract resource in the enjoyment of everything that comes as positive as oppose. And as you say, ESG, environmental social governance, the fact that that isn't a high rate of return area, I guess, would be a fair way of saying it. It's not returning on value. 

Teresa 08:47

Having high ESG rankings doesn't necessarily mean people will pay more, or wherever it doesn't translate to direct value for consumers.

Tim 08:57

That’s right. It's not represented necessarily in the footprint of what people are paying for. So, yeah, I think all of that really needs to change, which then brings us around to what we're talking about today. And so there is a very heavy issue that has a lot of different opinions floating around, and a lot of learning to happen on all sides. And also, it's one of those issues that does not function well in a polarized society, because it really requires that we have that Rational Middle, that ability to have good dialogue, and to educate and hear from all parties. It doesn't deal well as a polarized issue, because then nobody's listening to each other. But this takes us full around to the fact that if you stay in your box, inside a company, and you're dealing with this and you're part of it, well okay, you're going to fulfill a function. But there's such a larger opportunity. And that's what we're really here to talk about today. And that is that idea of multifaceted leadership, you're not just leading operationally within your position, within some company. There are other opportunities to lead. So, when you and I started talking about this, I was really excited by what you were saying. So, can you take us a little bit down that path? When you think of a leader having multiple avenues of influence? Why is that important? And what does that mean?

Teresa 10:23

I'm going to start with a piece of advice that I think we've all been told at some point, and then come bring that back to leadership and multifaceted leadership, which is just be yourself. Which is unbelievably difficult to do, which is why it's so often repeated and is so critical in creating the change and the multifaceted leadership in terms of showing up consistently in all kinds of avenues and really helping drive belief in that you really do mean what you're saying in whatever area you end up standing in. So, I'll start with when I was a junior engineer, leadership looks like, you know, doing flare stack calculations and designs and adding an extra layer of insulation to help reduce CO2 or whatever it was, but it was really for me, it was about how do you make things that are both efficient and sound technically? And getting into my first few leadership roles I learned a lot about having technical know-how is great, it is a foundational element to be incredible in a lot of different areas, but being able to listen, and to really hear what people are saying, the technical elements are really important and being able to evaluate how to balance those, but also, what scares them, what inspires them? What are they really looking to do in their work? Are they looking to send their child to school to have a better ability to provide than they did? Are they really excited about creating change in the renewable space, whatever it is that's fundamentally driving people helps understand where they're coming from, and then also how you can connect into their energy to make even more happen. And then the final element is kind of within your peer group. And I found that as I've gotten further into my career and working with a big company, it's really how do I connect the dots between what other people want to do so that we can get an inspired group of people who support each other, who drive change, who truly create in every sense of the word in a business environment, and creativity is essential, I think, to everything we do. Because if you really want to lead, it means going into places where others haven't been or going there in a different way. And to do that, you need to imagine things that don't exist. And to do that with a collaborative group of people who are representing different points of view, different bits of expertise, different understandings of how the world works, and how to make it move. If you get a big group of people who really complement each other driving that change, you can build incredible things and bring incredible things to life. And so when I think of truly multifaceted leadership, it's being part of teams like that, with the urge to create, with the different skill sets that are required around it to do it, or they can go get those skill sets because they realize the gaps. Who really make things different in the world, who bring new things to life. And there's nothing better to me than being part of a team like that, that gets to drive something brand new into the world.

Tim 13:28

There is so much there to unpack, and I'm going to tell you what I heard. And we can see where it takes us. I thought it was really interesting when you talked about, you know, that drive to build belief in oneself. And I've been having some interesting thoughts about the word belief because the issue with the word belief is it requires untested faith. Like it requires things that, you know, we have to believe something on the surface. And I don't think we always use it that way. And when you were talking, I heard more about it's creating surety that we are who we say we are that we are thinking what we say we're thinking, and that is a huge component. In that, that's authenticity. That's I am what you see in front of you. And authenticity is one of those three key pillars of trust alongside logic and empathy. The other word there that's really important from leadership and team perspective, is that authenticity requires a certain measure of vulnerability to say, I'm going to be who I am, I'm going to tell you what I'm thinking, I'm going to tell you what my fears are. I'm going to tell you what my interests and inspirations are and I need you to deal with me on those levels. That doesn't mean they're not going to change, but you need to understand that this is who I am. And that I mean what I say when I say it, and I think that that's a huge part of this and it is a precursor to being able to go out and create with others. And what's really neat about teaching and making that the way in which energy professionals show up, is that then allows us to not only connect with people inside of organizations but to connect with people that are part of other interest groups, perhaps they’re Aboriginal groups or perhaps our environmental groups. And rather than ostracizing and isolating ourselves from them, we can talk with them at that level. And we can understand them at that level, what are your fears? What are your inspirations? What are your interests, what's driving you? What is your child's garden look like? But we're such a creature of fear. And the phrase that has been bouncing around, in my mind. And I don't know if I heard it somewhere, if I'm coming up with myself is that human beings are such children of fear, and they're such children of risk. I heard a great thing said the other day, and I've been sharing it where when we were primeval, or when we were developing, we could make an alpha or beta error. If there was a tiger in the grass, and we failed to see it, it would eat us. And that was a beta error, we deserve to be taken out of the gene pool, in a sense. But if we ran away, even if there was no tiger in the grass, we were right, we might have been wrong, but we were alive. Running away was the way to get into the risk and run away. So, I mean, from simulations, simulating being the way our brains are designed to create and to imagine the future and do all these things. If we imagine risk, there was a big payoff from staying in the gene pool perspective of running away, of stopping the conversation, and bolting. And so we're up against that, where we have to sort of stay facing the tiger in the grass, even when it's scary, and talk about our risks and talk about things that make us vulnerable, even if they're inspirations. The last thing that you said in there that I thought was great, was that it becomes this kind of skill set to be able to say, look, are we able to create here? Or do we need to get more opinions? Do we need to get other people involved? And so really teaching that ability to get over ourselves and then go out and gather more opinions, even if they are contradictory, and bring them into the fold, so that we can create and get into this chaotic space of developing something new that we didn't expect? How am I doing? 

Teresa 17:25

Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right. And the whole diversity, you're kind of making me think of a conversation my sister and I had when we were mountain biking in Bread Creek a little while ago. Both her and I are female engineers, we have both been told by various people we've worked with at some point, oh, you're a diversity hire. And we were talking about in the teams that we've worked in, you know,

Tim 17:45

Can I say barf real quick?

Teresa 17:46

Trust me, don't worry, her and I covered that. We've covered that ground. But it was really interesting talking about what are the limits of diversity that you can handle in a team before everything busts apart? And so we weren't talking about gender diversity, per se, we're talking about like true thought diversity. And how do you ensure that your team of people who are about to go create something and she has a startup on the side, so we were talking about that, has enough value-based overlap, and yet difference of opinion that you will want to stay together? And it's a physics concept, right? It's how much kind of magnetic force do you have before you start to lose things off the edge? And the concept of having a limit to diversity feels like a really difficult thing to say, like, are you allowed to say that, is that trending into some politically, very unsavory territory? But I do think the concept that diversity brings value, but only if you have enough common ground to want to move together. Otherwise, you just lose.

Tim 18:54

I think it's a great point, when we think about how teams perform, they can perform instinctually, which is down on the task base, they can perform from a planning a project space when they're in that sort of tactical zone, they can get strategic, and they can be deciding where they want to go. So, you sort of have the strategic tactical, operational, but then up above that, you have this challenge zone, which is where the team may have to look periodically outside, be exposed to external forces. So, I think to be functional, you're right, you know, you have to have cohesion. And you have to have a team that faces very little resistance, the work should be hard, but working together shouldn't. And so the team has to be crafted in order to go and do things. And indeed, having constant authenticity and trust operating within that team is paramount. When we're facing these larger challenges, I would say, every once in a while, we open ourselves up to a different facet to a different form. And we go out we gather and maybe we have periodic exposure to really challenging thoughts that keep us on the knife edge, then we take that and we return and we say, okay, how do we turn that into something functional thinking in terms of those phases? So, not just that we have different phases to our leadership into our team. But there's a timing element. And there's a, there's a practicality element that we have to say, you know, you can't always be interfaced with somebody who's in an oppositional, right? But you can certainly go and listen, have a good conversation, take those back and work them and say, Okay, now what if we could? What if we could change it to be more aligned? What would it take and seek that sort of common ground, but it's, I love that. I love that notion that you're saying of having that molecular connection, that cohesion, that natural gravity towards each other, where it's like, this makes sense, why we're all together. It really involves being connected not just on a professional level, but also on a linguistic level, and on a cultural level, and on on a personal, you know, interest, like you and I. I mean, when we talked in the beginning about having a natural kind of clique? Well, at least I feel that way, I won't speak for you. But it's kind of the static between us that makes it easy, makes it easy to come in. And we don’t come from the same backgrounds. And so I may be saying things that are a little on the outside, and you're saying things that are on the outside, and here we are. With that in mind, then let's talk about if we can do that, if we can find that rhythm and that magnetism inside and still remain open to what scared to what scares us, to what inspires us. And every once in a while, open the door to other thought, what's possible? What is possible if we're able to do that? How does that enrich, and fertilize your daughter's energy garden?

Teresa 22:04

I mean, that's a huge question. First off.

Tim 22:08

You're right. What do you see as possible, that is impossible today?

Teresa 22:14

So, I can't even envision the different ways that the world is going to merge the geopolitical crisis, the energy crisis, and the climate crisis. But I firmly believe that the whole people, planet, profit Triple Bottom Line concept exists, and that it is absolutely possible. But it will take huge leaps of faith, creativity, and a desire for people to come together without yet knowing that the outcome is possible to create a possible pathway. And like one super minor, and this is just because we're talking about the D&I thing afterwards made me think about it. I had a conversation with a guy who was very upset about the concept of D&I and hiring practices and kind of some of the equity stuff that was going on. And I said, Well, why? And he goes, Well, because we've got a perfect meritocracy now, why wouldn't we be keeping the meritocracy in place? And I was blown away. I'm like, you believe that we actually have a meritocracy in our workplaces? Because like, just putting it out there, buddy, I don't think it's perfect. I don’t think it works, the way you think it works, and opening up that space to say, Why do you want to preserve this, for the people who are exceptional at preserving status quo? And by that, I mean, like, CEOs of certain companies, you know, the people who are saying, we're not going to change, I would love to say, where's that conversation to open up why? Why do you think this is perfect, and what is worth preserving? Because I also don't believe that we need to throw away everything. And I think sometimes that gets lost in some of the like, rhetoric and some of the more extremist views is–

Tim 23:53

–very dangerous. 

Teresa 23:54

Everything is broken. Yeah, throw everything away and we're gonna have to go down this 100% renewables from day one standpoint as an example. And I think in order to get to the point where things have really changed, we do need to do a portion of that a portion of, you know, like, If Ford had built, you know, what the people wanted, he would have tried to make faster horses and he had to completely re-envision what does transport look like to get to a car? I think we're going to need a piece of that. We're gonna need that revolution, we're also going to need the evolution and we're going to need them to come together to really step change us into what is completely new. So, when I think about like, from a leadership perspective, it's being open to change. It's looking for the holes in your argument. And I'll give you an example of my own leadership journey. I've always tried to say what am I blind to? So what are people saying about me that I should know in order to decide if I'm going to change anything about what I do, how I show up, how I build my skill sets, how I build my allegiances because if I don't know, it might feel comfortable, it might feel like I'm not, you know, exposed to negative opinions of myself. But if I do know then I can make a choice and be comfortable enough to ask for the bad feedback, it requires a measure of worthiness or belief in your own worthiness. And when I think about the people that I mentor and support, the ones that I want to see continue to drive forward and change the world. It's reinforcing their own core worthiness, while at the same time gathering feedback. And last example, my kids all got their report cards last week, I think a lot of kids did in Calgary, and we sat through and we looked at their marks. And one of the things that I'm always really keen with my kids to understand is that their marks are not a measure of their worth. They are a moment in time and you know, in some of the marks that weren't great, I asked my kids, are you happy with this? Is this where you want to be? And do you feel in control, because the only thing I want, if you're gonna get like, the Alberta has this four-point system, if you get two’s, which means barely pass or just passing, but it's something that you are not wanting to put more time and energy into and you feel like you do have control, you could get better marks if you wanted to get tutoring or put more time in, then my goal is that you feel that you have control, and can make a choice on what types of kind of threshold you're able to achieve. And to put reality on that too. My one son just doesn't like English. And it's never going to be his best subject. But he has to pass it in order to get into the high school that he wants and university, right? So, that's part of the conversation as well as how do you acknowledge who you are, and what you're exceptional at, and not letting your weaknesses draw you back? 

Tim 26:51

Yeah, there's so much there again. I'll hit on a couple of them. The idea of meritocracy. Oh, my gosh. Look in pure meritocracy, sure people should–

Teresa 27:02

What even is it? How do you even measure–

Tim 27:04

Judge it on the merit of your work, sure. But as a roadblock we put up to change, it's so funny. And it reminds me of, I was working with a board of executives. And, you know, everybody was in large agreement that things needed to change. No one was terribly happy. But inevitably, when I'd gone in and interviewed all of those executives, and this happened several times. So, if you're one of my clients, yeah, I might be talking about you. But you're probably not the only one. There's an assumption that people see it your way, it's natural for us to assume that our view of the world is somehow the chief paradigm. And you know, I remember that we were going through this disclosure of everything that I had heard from people and what people wanted to see this team become. To their credit, they stopped the conversation and said, I don't get it. What's happening right now is really working for me. Why do we need to change anything?

Teresa 28:06

That really working for me, it's the perfect, perfect descriptor, sorry.

Tim 28:11

But that's 100%. I mean, it's myopic on, it's really working for me. But like any good scientific method, we need to, we need to change certain variables and test what the reaction is right? And so, you know, the reason why when it comes to diversity, and inclusion, D&I or EDI, if you talk about it that way, Equity, Diversity Inclusion, why we need to test these things is because we don't fully understand the degree to which the systems that we currently have, are resistant to change, are so ingrained, we don't even realize what we're looking at. It just looks like the woodwork. But when we look at the individual brains, it's like, look, this is really exclusionary. So, we put in, we get away from a meritocracy for a moment, and we look at be a quota systems or different ways to test it. These are just tests to see when we stress it, to look at what does it look like when we strive for 50% female inclusion on the board, or multiple orientations on the board, or racially diverse board, or all of the above as it should be representative of the society or whatever way you want to put it. And what starts to break, what starts to buck, what starts to fight us? Well, then we know we have structural conflict, and we can go after those structures. Because when we look at all of these things that we have in society today, you know, often we think, Okay, well the energy industry is broken, or the way we structure boards is broken, or the political system is broken. It's not broken. It's doing exactly what it's designed to do, which is sub-optimal, 100%. If we're not happy with it, but we have to realize that from a perspective, it's the outcome of the way it's designed. And if we want to change it, we got to change the design. But we got to get away from that. Yeah, might be working for me, but who isn't it working for? And the other thing you were saying about, I just had the same conversation with my son and my daughter. She just graduated high school, she's taking a gap year, she's thinking about what she wants to do. And she keeps saying, you know, I think I might go into biology or whatnot. And she loves biology, but she doesn't like the learning and the lab work and all these things. She loves it as a concept of curiosity. Meanwhile, she's this amazing artist, she's started her own jewelry launch, and she’s been running it for four years. And you should, I can't believe how good she's doing over in this space. Sea and Stone Jewelry on Instagram, by the way, plug, but, you know, play to your strengths, because she just has such natural creativity in this space. I don't want to hold her back from anything she wants to do, as long as she is, she feels fulfilled, as long as she's bringing everything she's capable of. And maybe this is me, being that type of, I don't know, performance-minded person. But whatever you do, whatever path you pick in life, you know, does it feel like we're really putting your best stuff into the world? And so I think it's, yeah, anyway, I agree. Grades are not the measure of the worth. It's what are you gonna do with it? I talked to a former dean of my university last week. And I mentioned to her how in my last semester of business school, I went to the dean of the business and said, I didn't want to take any of these courses. They're just useless to me. Can I write a thesis instead? And she said, Sure, but that's a little bit of a heavy lift. And I said I'll take it because it was an expression of what I wanted to do and who I was. Anyway, am I on your wavelength? 

Teresa 31:58

Yeah, no, when I went to university, I took engineering because it was the easiest path to a degree for me, that's what I'm good at. And so to have done, oh, God, anything in social studies would have just absolutely murdered me. So, it's interesting how it depends on what you're good at. And for the longest time, I valued things that I wasn't good at, in a disproportionate way because they were hard for me. So, my husband's a naturally gifted athlete, I'm like, Okay, I'm always going to be involved in some kind of athletics because that's important to me. And I placed the middle of the pack on mountain bike racing, which I did at the university, and stuff like that. It was important to me that I did it, but I could not win. And I inordinately valued the win on a mountain bike race, versus getting, you know, the gold medal for my year in university, which to a lot of outsiders is like you're an idiot. You're doing academically, incredibly well, why isn't that as important to you? And it's like, well, because it comes easily. And so one thing that I've really taken for my kids is, don't undervalue what you're fundamentally gifted at, but continue to hone it. Like perform at the highest level possible, within the things that you love and are good at. And don't ever think that it makes it less important, because you're good at them.

Tim 33:13

Oh, man, and I think you're rounding us around to sort of a natural conclusion of where I think we saw this going. And that is, when you're in that exploratory phase when you're honing all those thoughts, when you're really sharpening all of your areas of impact, whether or not they're the ones that you're naturally gifted at, you don't rest on your laurels, you know, you still are active and inspired and going out and trying to influence things. You know, those are those opportunities to go out and lead either directly, or to create, what a friend of mine actually years ago from Shell, he brought up the term. How did he put it again? The forums for collision, right? That you're opening up these areas where people can come in, and they can bring all their best stuff together and all their passions together and see what truth emerges.

Teresa 34:18

Just to build on the collision thing, and we kind of touched about, I think in a previous conversation about what are the things you do? So, I'm really active in a whole variety of places. I'm on a committee for the UFC board. I do, you know, I have a YouTube channel where I animate little videos, I put stuff out into the Globe and Mail and other forms. I'm really active in a lot of places. And I really believe that if I get too strategic on what is really important, where are the places that really need to show up? I cut out this whole area of what do I want to do? What's interesting, yeah, play and it creates intersections of people you would never otherwise meet. When I go to work events, and those who meet me at these work events can attest, it's kind of like this group of us that go around to all these different things, we see each other every time. It's not a lot of net new. And so going out and being a volunteer with Scouts Canada, joining UFC committee, like all of these things have broad net new relationships and viewpoints and super interesting tangents that I don't know where they're gonna go. And maybe it's not important that every single thing is done with perfectly forward-dimensional movement, it really matters that you create this raft and this kind of 3d shape around everything that's important to you and what you're trying to do in the world. 

Tim 35:43

And that 3d shape allows other people to get a foothold, and realize when they can reach out and connect with you. It is that 3d shape is the shape of your molecule that can then attract others that can then you know, thinking of like form chemical bonds, right? With others. Man, I love this. Sorry, we're playing right now. Right? 

Teresa 36:05

Yeah, absolutely. 

Tim 36:07

Okay, well, so much here, the big message here that we're trying to convey, I believe, is you embrace that play, you embrace that vulnerability, you lean into all those things, and even, maybe define or at least open yourself up. And man, you can lead or you can contribute in so many different areas. And it really enriches our time on this planet.

Teresa 36:39

And maybe just building on that Tim, don't treat networking as a get-rich-quick, like there is no one relationship that's going to pull you up through to where you want to be or to get you access to what you need to build what you want to build. It's like brushing your teeth, you do it every day. And in the end, you have great teeth. And if you just treat relationships with the same kind of diligence and care and constant routine around it, I believe that it creates the molecules that then really do make a change in the world. 

Tim 37:10

Yeah, wow, you really are talking about farming different gardens. And those relationships are part of that, you know, nurturing them and watering them, and tending them. Man, okay. I think we're gonna have to have another conversation. I always say this with people. But I'm like, there's going to come a point where we're going to have to solidify on something else here. And it's, as I go through these podcasts, I don't only keep all the guests in mind, but it has these different as I’ve learned through these different conversations, it opens up new areas of intrigue, and then I know there's going to be a chance for us to bring this back together. And I'm already getting some little sparks. But let's leave that for the next time and for a side conversation, thinking of the future ahead. What has really, really excited in the world, what do you want people to know you're doing? What you're up to?

Teresa 37:58

I mean, for me, personally, the work I'm doing with LNG Canada right now, bringing Canada's first LNG export facility to life is super exciting. So, my day job is absolutely keeping me busy and driven, and motivated. And I'm working with an incredible team. And I really do believe that opening that up is part of the energy garden, it's part of reducing global climate impacts, while at the same time enabling power to developing nations. And that kind of brain trust that's coming out of developing nations as they get increasing access to the types of things that have enabled the developed world's populations to contribute in the ways that we have, it's going to be transformational for our world in a positive way, I really do believe that. So, that's a big piece of what I'm working on, trying to get in a few more days on what's been a bit of a skinny ski season. It's another side project–

Tim 38:47

A lot of rocks.

Teresa 38:49

A lot of rocks out there. And then I'm also, as you probably know, I'm quite active on LinkedIn, and I have a YouTube channel that I make little videos on. And I've also done a few courses for a company called SAGA Wisdom. One is an LNG Fundamental, which is going to be coming out shortly. And another one is called Oil Patch to Energy Garden, Energy and Transition, which is a much longer course about all kinds of things including molecules, electrons, people, policies, geopolitics, all kinds of aspects of what does that transformation look like? And in a lot of those kinds of side work projects that I've been doing, it's really about how do I channel my energy into helping drive groups of people to join our cause, to help move forward, to help create that energy garden.

Tim 39:38

Yeah and for those on the outside, I just want to I want to put in a plug for for LNG for those of you listening that don't understand the difference between liquid and gas, petrochemicals. It has the potential to be transitional from a technology perspective, because if you're just thinking about combustion, what is it? It's one-quarter, as pollutive as the–

Teresa 39:54

Half. Half is coal. 

Tim 39:56

Half as cool. And so I mean, while we're figuring things out, not to mention, I mean, LNG is so critical when it comes to developing fertilizers and everything a bunch of other things. Look at what that would mean for the planet. And for anybody that hasn't that has not looked into that, understand the difference, understand the difference of why that there is a transition within the energy sphere, around what chemicals become dominant, what forms become dominant. I just want to put that plug in.

Teresa 40:29

Absolutely. And just I sometimes get well, you know, you work for an LNG company, obviously, that that's what you think it's actually the other way around. I work for an LNG company because that's what I think.

Tim 40:41

Yeah, yeah. Also, we'll put links to all of that in the show notes. If people want to reach out to you directly, what's the best way for them to find you?

Teresa 40:48

Join me on LinkedIn, I'm pretty good about responding to messages there. But feel free to connect or follow. I am a little bit prolific on what I put out there. All again, in service of this concept of oil patch to energy garden, and how do we, how do we collectively make that happen?

Tim 41:04

And as I ask my guests, if you had one wish for the people listening today, coming from all different walks of life, coming from all different industries and whatnot, what would your wish for them be?

Teresa 41:16

I’m gonna go back to that first piece of advice. It's be yourself and I mean that in the way of, do the hard work to know who you are, take the time to constantly strip away all the outside influences that muddy up who we think we should be, what we think success looks like, who we're performing for our parents or our children or somebody else, take the time to constantly strip that away into reground. So, that you can truly be yourself in every aspect of your life.

Tim 41:45

I think that is timeless wisdom. And I think that it's something that if people can get into that, you know, my relationship with wanting to inspire fluency of self. If you can define that for yourself, and realize why you're worthy, realize why you're worth, you know, putting love into and getting yourself out there, man, it opens doors. So, thank you so much for this, Teresa. I really appreciate it.

Teresa 42:08

Thank you, Tim.

Tim 42:10

All right, we're gonna do it again.

Teresa 42:11

I can't wait. 

Tim 42:14

Talk to you later.

Tim 42:20

Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If like us, you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership, please give us a positive rating and review on Apple Podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders. And you can spread the word too by sharing this with your friends, teams, and colleagues. Thanks again for listening and be sure to tune in in two weeks time for another episode of Sweet On Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host, Tim Sweet, encouraging you to keep on leading.

In this episode of the Sweet on Leadership podcast, Tim Sweet engages in a dynamic conversation with Richard Young, a seasoned expert in high-performance sports. The episode explores the transition from hope-to-knowing in achieving sustained success, emphasizing evidence, conviction, and a system-thinking approach. 

Richard, drawing from his experience with Olympic athletes, highlights the importance of simplicity, alignment, and well-being in optimizing high-performance teams. The conversation extends into the business domain, illustrating the applicability of these principles for building and sustaining excellence in various leadership contexts. Throughout the discussion, personal experiences and insights are shared, providing an exploration of the key elements that contribute to lasting success in both sports and business leadership.

The episode unfolds as Tim and Richard discuss the nuances of confidence, conviction, and the mind-body connection. They delve into the impact of evidence-based decision-making, the role of a cohesive team in individual confidence, and the systemic factors that produce conviction. Richard introduces his upcoming book, "Performance Leadership," offering a preview of the systemic differences between repeat medalists and non-medalists. The episode concludes with a powerful message, emphasizing the accessibility of performance fulfillment and the importance of focusing on the journey.

About Richard Young

Richard’s deep knowledge of people and performance has made him a highly sought-after speaker, mentor and strategist. He has experience across 10 Olympic cycles across most roles (athlete, coach, leader, researcher). He has won international gold medals, coached world champions, and created medal-winning programmes for three countries across innovation, research, learning and leadership. 

Richard has a PhD in medical science and later focussed on uncovering the key differences between medallists and non-medallists, their coaches, technical staff, leaders and the system they are in. Using his first-hand experience of leading people and programmes to create change for better performance he can make new high performance work for you. In your own arena, at work, and at home! 



Richards's values are family, productivity, belonging, discovery and transformation. He has been described as a ‘world-class performance creator’. Born in the UK, raised in Canada, he lives in Dunedin, New Zealand with his four children (and dog Dougal).

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Ange Postecoglou
• Anders Ericsson
• Belonging by Owen Eastwood
• The Living Company by Arie De Geus

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Contact Tim Sweet | Team Work Excellence: 

• Website
• LinkedIn: Tim Sweet
• Instagram
• Linkedin: Team Work Excellence

Contact Richard Young | Simplify2Perform: 

• Website: simplify2perform.com
• Linkedin: Simplify2Perform

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Transcript:

Richard 00:01

Hoping is a flag for evidence that's missing and knowing means the gap has been filled. So, it's a good word generally, universally for human nature to have hope but in the performance game is another trigger. And there needs to be a leader who spots that and says, Well, I hope it all comes off. And then we're looking at opportunity. And the opportunity is typically inside the gap and that could flag a gap in evidence. So, what don't we know?

Tim 00:32

I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you, my friend, are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. Thanks for joining us for the 27th episode of the Sweet on Leadership podcast. 

Tim 01:04

Well, hi, again, everybody. This is going to be one of my favourite episodes. I know that I'm confident, I don't have to wonder about that. I don't have to guess, I don't have to hope. I know it's going to be one of my favorite episodes. Why? Because I've got evidence. I've been with the wonderful person that's in front of me here today. Before I know what we're capable of. And I am fully confident. Please let me welcome Richard Young, to the podcast.

Richard 01:34

A right on Tim. Wow, what an intro. What an intro and same back to you too. So, always a pleasure joining, you ask deep questions and yet connect some dots. And we always get somewhere, I learn a heap. 

Tim 01:47

Well, the feeling is mutual. But before we get going too much for those of you that haven't checked out Richard in previous episodes, I'd like you to introduce yourself. Could you tell us who you are? Who do you serve? And what do you mean to those people? 

Richard 02:04

Yeah. Right on so. So, I live in New Zealand. I’m Canadian, you can tell the accent. And so I live in the south of New Zealand with my four kids by the beach here and worked in high-performance sports, primarily the Olympics my whole life. So, from an athlete, coach through to leader, and researcher all in three countries as well. Three years ago, I decided to do some of my own work, I felt without the kind of bureaucracy and the dogma around me, I could help more people faster. And so that's what I've been doing. So, I work primarily with sports leaders, so senior leaders into experts in sports, they don't necessarily run the sport, some could be ahead of medicine, and some do run the Olympic Committees and things for different countries. And I help them streamline their approach to high performance. So, typically, when you've been in the game a long time, I call it winners bloat, they've got so many good ideas, that one before, it's hard to filter. Because they can make a good case for everything that they've done before you get enough people in the room like that. And it's a real bloated place of great ideas. And so I help come in and streamline big rocks down to even bigger rocks. So, there's only a few of them. And there's a pattern in repeat medalists that I noticed. And they learned that at the end, and so I help people at the beginning, figure that out sooner. 

Tim 03:33

Awesome. And there's so many parallels, anybody who is listening, that's worked with me, you're gonna hear a lot of similarities. And that's because you and I come from very similar schools of thought. And we've trained together in certain practices. And so the whole idea of resolving conflict, and aligning tensions, and all of that is something that you and I are all over. So, before we got going here, I sent you a video and I thought I could really kick off our conversation today. And I was really inspired by what this person was saying, and I thought you get a real kick out of it. This is a quote from Ange Postecoglou. He's one of the premier league coaches for Tottenham MFC. And he's got a really interesting take when a reporter asks him, do you ever visualize yourself hoisting a trophy over your head? So, let's take a listen. And then we'll come back together we'll give it a talk. 

Reporter 04:24

Do you ever picture yourself lifting trophies as a more general question?

Ange 04:28

I got real pictures, mate. Quite a few of them. Just look at the ones I've got. I’ve earned them, I'm not lucky. I love winning, mate. That's all I've done my whole career. And now, don't say that dismissively that I've got pictures and I don't have them on my ceiling mate, as you suggested, but that's what drives me every year. I start the year hoping that at the end of the year, there is a picture of me with a team and lifting a trophy. That's what I've tried to do my whole career. And I've got plenty of evidence of that. So, that's what my sort of intent is here. It's not something that I have to visualize. It's what I do.

Tim 05:14

So, there's the video, what are your first thoughts when you hear that, Richard?

Richard 05:19

I hear the master in that leader. So, he's pointing out something very particular to the best in the game is that they do have a picture. So, Anders Ericsson, did all the research on you know, 10,000 hours and things and he had said, to become an expert, there needs to be a benchmark around you, you need to see what high performance looks like. And so some new sports of the Olympics struggle with that, you know, surfing and breaking and things like that. There's no benchmark yet. Whereas the other ones, you can see all these world records dropping, because they know the benchmark, they've seen the picture, and sometimes they're in the picture. So, what he's talking about there is, you wouldn't hire a coach who hasn't won before, is another way of putting what he's saying there is Tottenham would not hire someone who hasn't won before. So, he does have a lot of pictures. And you don't want someone learning on the fly, you want them tuning and synthesizing but not starting from zero. So, the best in the game are like him, they do have championship pictures or winning pictures around them. They may be aiming he says, aiming for better, and you know, the continuous improvement and all those things you hear about leaders, but their past is a record of victories, they have a history of winning. And that's what we find in the performance leaders in the sustained metal systems. The group, the people, the athletes are surrounded by people who have won before. And the sports that have a barren land of people who won before, they're doing their best. They're putting in a massive effort, but there's a misdirection on the main things.

Tim 07:02

You know, it's funny when I think of teams that I work with, it's a very common behavior for people to chart a win, really get something right, do something wonderful. And then steamroll, right past it on to the next thing, and not even take a moment to record or to acknowledge that that was a win. And then when it comes around the next time where they are having to do perhaps something very similar again, they almost can't recall that they had already, you know, had this experience. And you've talked to me before about being able to see those wins because Ange didn't start out being a Premier League winner. Those wins had to be found elsewhere. Right? So, can you talk a little bit about that for us? Because I love your perspective on this.

Richard 07:53

Yeah. So, his win, there's another great video of him because he was a premiership. I think he was a premiership player as well. And there's a shot of him in the dugout, and this is maybe last year with Tottenham. And the ball, you can tell based on his vision that someone's kicked the ball up high, and it's coming out of bounds, and it lands right beside him and he traps the ball. He's in a suit.

Tim 08:17

Oh, right. I've seen that body memory whap.

Richard 08:21

That’s right. Yeah, taps the ball and pushes it out to the field, and just shrugs his shoulders at the crowd. Who are you, I don't know if it's a standing ovation. But anyways, just so impressive, but there's the premiership history in him. And so in sports, there's this myth. And it's important to bust myths as well that you have to have been a premiership performer, or a championship performer to be a champion leader or a champion coach. And that's like asking a leader to be the best at you know, every department, he or she manages, and impossible. And so sometimes the best athletes do not make the best leaders. They can't see out of their own self because you have to be very self-absorbed to be an athlete and then you have to see wider to be a leader and a coach. And so if you've got winning those winning they need to be with people, not just you with a metal, Look at me go. It's the leaders and the change-makers that see like him, him lifting a trophy with a team. That's what he said it's not him with a trophy. It's with the team and so that perspective for leadership is the win is on us, it's not me, is vital. And you don't often see that in the leaders who are just working their way up. It's still about me they're still trying to prove like a new athlete selected to a team. It's natural to try to prove yourself first. They found that I did research on the All Blacks, they wanted me to review their caps, they call them caps here is how many times you've been in a test match, a championship game. And so the players under 15 caps, the players between 15 and 40. And then there's a cut-off that you're a senior player after 40 and someone like Richie McCaw, who was the captain down here. And by the way, rugby is crazy down here. It's like hockey in Canada. Everything is about rugby. Even in the town I'm in when the World Cup was here, there was going to be four games, not one of them an All Blacks game. There was a referendum of petition put out to there's only 120,000 people in this town. Should we spend 150 million on an indoor stadium for these four World Cup games, It'll take us 50 years to pay it off. It was a unanimous, Yes. So, and that's what we have is an indoor stadium. So, Richie McCall, I number of caps. But the difference was, it was all me under 15 caps. It was all us but I'm not sure where I fit between 15 and 40. And it's all us. And I know where I fit after 40. So, their picture changed from a me to a we. And so that coach there that you just quoted, interesting, he points out, it's a we picture and same with a McCall, but it's him with the team and the cup. 

Tim 11:23

Him with a team with the cup. And it's funny, because as you were saying that simplistically, I was thinking, Well, does a person have to have success as a leader going forward? No, not necessarily. I mean, this is why being part of that us as a junior, whether it's a junior person in business, or in education, or in sport, being part of it, you have to be part of the us, and then you have to think in terms of that collective thinking. And, you know, we often try to inspire that in leaders that they think, you know, around who are they serving, and that they don't get too myopic on their own needs, obviously. But this is actually a precursor for them to be able to even achieve those next levels. It's so much more than just a good habit. It actually is their conceptualization of success before success. And what does that look like? And boy, you know, I love talking to you, man, because every time there's so many examples, that, sure I may have helped people get past but it brings new light things and new realizations. And I'm right now I'm thinking of an example of a leader who was struggling. And this just explains so much that ego picture had gotten in the way that I picture had gotten in the way. Where they had all sorts of examples for WE wins, but they weren't accessing them. I mean, it speaks to one other thing. And I use one of your philosophies in my coaching practice. And it's all about that performance mindset. And once you have this experience, and again, as Ange says, in that clip, he has pictures of himself winning, he doesn't need to wonder if he can do this. You know, and you talk about hope versus know. And I always talk about in business, hope is a four letter word, don't tell me you hope something is gonna happen. Don't tell me you think it might happen. Like, let's access the data and everything we know, to take a very good educated guess of whether or not this is going to happen. And nothing's better than experience and evidence of it happening before. So, when you are working with these teams, what kind of an example would you give us about really helping somebody bridge that gap between hope and know?

Richard 13:44

Yeah, yeah. A lot of it is evidence-focused, right? So, the knowing means there are metrics around me or a picture that I can see this has happened and it can happen again. And so that conviction that brings for people, the data that I tracked it, six Olympic cycles now have medalists and non-medalists in a yachting group here who had won three Olympics. And they said hoping is a flag for evidence that's missing and knowing means the evidence the gap has been filled. So, it's a good word, generally, universally for human nature to have hope. But in the performance game is another trigger. And there needs to be a leader who spots that and says, Well, in the end, I hope it all comes off. So, before the Olympics, I hope I get lane eight.

Tim 14:40

Screeching tires. 

Richard 14:41

That's right. Yeah. So, there's the second question that gets asked. So, performance leaders ask the second question, and then we're looking at opportunity and the opportunity is typically inside the gap and that could flag a gap in evidence So, what don't we know? So, there was one rower who was World Champion, and they started to fade and they became kind of disillusioned with their fitness and their times are wavering and stuff and so the whole support staff thought it was mindset. And so the psych team, an army of good intent, wrapped themselves around her and things then the coach looked and he came at it from the hoping/knowing and he got to investigate what might be under the hood, for he knew her well, also. But it turns out it was and I had this one in the book as well, it turned out it was the evidence that they had numbers for but she wasn't aware of them. And so he just presented those numbers to her every day on how she was tracking. And suddenly, she had evidence that it's not as bad as I thought. Feelings aren't facts, facts are facts. And so suddenly, she progressed and she became the world champion that year. And he knew it wasn't mindset, because you can't hope your way to victory. You do have to have prep, you know, that goes into flow, which we can talk about later. 

Tim 16:12

For sure. It's funny that you say that, because something that started with me when I used to wrestle, and it's continued through university, and even now, it doesn't happen as often now. But you say, Sorry, what? Please repeat that for me. Feelings…

Richard 16:29

Feelings aren't facts. 

Tim 16:30

Feelings aren't facts. I have a very physical response when I'm feeling uneasy, or I don't have the facts, or I'm not sure of how something's panning out. I'll get tightness across my back when I was wrestling, this would show up as muscle impingement and stuff like that, right? Like it really got tight. And then all I had to do was kind of rationalize stuff. It sounds so silly, but if I was studying for a test and I was feeling tense, I’d start to feel this tension in my back. And so then I would just take stock of what I knew. And what I didn't know. And as soon as I had a handle on it, and I moved it sort of from that emotional side over to where I could see it. Honestly, sometimes it was like it felt like an injury and it just went away. Within hours. It was gone. And I've had this happen dozens of times over my life. I mean, it's this strange sort of mind-body connection. It sounds a little cheesy. But I felt, you know, I literally felt injured. Through uncertainty, I guess.

Richard 17:32

Yeah. Yeah. Awesome way to put it. Yeah. 

Tim 17:36

Well, I don't know if it's that. But it was just, you know when you said that it really gave. And I can imagine for this, this performer, once she had that data was just a deep breath. And like, Wow, I feel better right now. Like the fog just clears and the fog of war lifts and you can see what's in front of you and you remind yourself what your job is. And it's funny, you know, I think you and I've talked about this before, but when we talk about that hope versus knowing, you know, I love that there's always that circle with the pie graphs. And there's this little thin piece that says, we know what we know, these little thin piece that says we know what we don't know. And then there's this massive piece that says we don't know what we don't know. And I always think there's a fourth slice, which is that we forgot what we knew, you know, we actually failed to recognize what we already have learned and committed it to memory.

Richard 18:32

A friend of mine gave me a great line yesterday because he's a leader in a business. And he said a lot of my staff know what to do, but don't do what they know.

Tim 18:42

Yeah, no kidding. And that's a great segue, actually into the next question I got for you because you've mentioned the word conviction quite a few times here. Do you draw a distinction between conviction and confidence?

Richard 18:55

Yeah, so confidence is a frame, a mental frame, it is deeply inside, like your somatic sense of a feeling of being unprepared or something and that twinge in your back. So, conviction is deeply felt. It's just acknowledging and it's systemic, it's wider than me, it's bigger than me. There's something coming together here. My teammates, my staff, my home life, there's a whole picture is conviction, whereas confidence is this. That's right. Yeah, yeah. So, a much bigger piece is conviction. That's really a key difference between the sustained high performers and the rest because they are system builders. And when you have a system behind you, you just know the system's got your back, and suddenly it's conviction.

Tim 19:51

That's such a great way to put that. And again, when you build that system around people, and of course in the work that we do and the work that I do, so much of it is just helping people become fluent in where they are and what they've got. And that they're part of that system. And that system is around them and that it’s functioning. And so really, that is that feeling of being inside something that has a purpose and has a way of operating in a system of support or rules or code or whatever it is, but it's got a way to perform. Now all of a sudden, you are in that second space where you can perform, you're in that, it's not home, something else, it's a different vocation. And you have a role. And I think that that feeling of belonging leads to confidence as much as anything else.

Richard 20:39

Yeah, yeah. You’d love to read called Belonging. And maybe the listeners would like to read that too, written by a Kiwi. I think he's out in Britain now. But a lot of the rugby group and on this theme of cohesion, and team cohesion is a fantastic book. And there's a difference. You just pointed something out there. To him, the confidence is me. Conviction is we. 

Tim 21:06

100%. Great. And I'll add this to the show notes. But does that Owen Eastwood? 

Richard 21:08

Yeah, that's him.

Tim 21:10

Owen Eastwood. 

Richard 21:11

And he's on LinkedIn, by the way. So connected. I've connected to him. And yeah.

Tim 21:17

Send me an invite man. Put us together. So, unlock your potential with the ancient code of togetherness. Excellent. Okay, that is on my list for sure. So, I like that cover too, I want them to be a tattoo. Anyway. Awesome. Okay, so what have we covered, we've covered being able to see the wins and distinguish that hope from know that security that gives us and another layer of security, you have brought us into this, me versus we and this ability to access this layer of conviction now that we have purpose and everything else. And that will yield among other things, probably give us a greater sense of confidence individually because we are part of something. They've got to play off each other. I'm sure. So, man, that's fantastic. What's your thinking as were at this point in the conversation? 

Richard 22:13

Well, I'm not surprised we're connecting some dots here, Tim. So, you know, the synthesis between–

Tim 22:14

Strong galvanization? 

Richard 22:20

Yeah. You get a couple of system thinkers, there'll be a lot of listeners out there that you know, the system thinking folk at all systems mean is people, places, and things and how they interact. It's just a helicopter view of the environment you're in, the orbit that you're in. And so everything can be framed as a system, even the video you played at the start, we could analyze his conversation, that one line from system thinking. I just got off the phone with a coach who wants some help with their plans for the World Cup. And it's basically system thinking, just to have a reflector pointed out are these really the big rocks? And how do we interconnect people, places and things? So, just good coaching, you know, like you do for your clients and leaders, all we are our system reflectors, really. And we point the lens back at the expert in front of us who knows the context. And that's what sport is. It's a series of experts, some with massive egos, by the way, a whole series of experts, and they need to be coordinated together so that their output is like all the arrows hitting the dartboard. And it's one dartboard. There's not multiple dartboards. So, yeah, that's where you find cohesion produces a team performance. That's the exciting part about sport is particularly team sport, you know, the physiology sports, that's my background, it's pretty straight, you know, you can kind of tell who's going to be within. Like rowing here is the best thing in the world, and their training is repeatedly 98 to 99% of world records. So, that's what they do, just keep going. And so physiology can do that. Whereas in a team, you never know when they're going to lift and just be that different team, you know that, wow, look at that. And there's something exciting. And that business team is just as exciting. Because the same peek, the same flow can happen in a business team. So, you asked what reflect like, what's happening, I can see all of this pointing to business, really, you know, the area that we're in these examples, you're heavy into business, I'm heavy into sport, but the bridge between the two you can you can hear the similarities between them. 

Tim 24:38

I’m telling you the last few months have seen me crossing over. You know, I've been involved in cycling on that side. And now I'm getting involved in curling and pickleball was the most recent. So, you know, and it all is that sort of expression of well, I think conviction is the word but I love cohesion, finding that synergy, and really helping people be their best selves together kind of thing. I want to have you back and probably before too long, because I want us to have a separate conversation on flow, because that is one of my favourite areas to teach and play with. And then we can have a business focus discussion. Before we wrap up here, it's important to note that as much as we talked about sport, you are making huge inroads into business. So, if you are a business owner, you should really be thinking about checking out Richard, and especially if you're on that side of the pond, what are you dealing with? What are some of the most notable benefits I guess I could say? Or advantages when business owners start to take lessons from what you've learned in sport?

Richard 25:42

Yeah, so primarily, the high-performing team. So, I know that's a big focus of yours. And in performance–

Tim 25:53

Now it’s sustained high performance, somebody helped light me up to the difference between high performance, anybody can podium once, and sustained high performance. How do we do it over and over again? Do you remember his name? What's his name? That's right, it was Richard Young. Anyway, go ahead, please.

Richard 26:13

Yeah, so that's where the triangle came from. So, what I use in business and sport, and that's the theme of the next book, which is in finished drafts, so that'll be out in another probably two months. So, the key systemic differences between repeat medalists, sustained high performers, and non, and for us, it's pretty binary on metals and non so we have a pretty easy number to measure if you've got it. But inside that metal is a whole lot of depth if it's sustained. Anyone can win wants, it's actually pretty easy to win an Olympic medal, but to repeat it is totally different. And so they have a different and I don't mean to be little an Olympic medal, by the way, if there's listeners out there who've, you know, put their whole. So all I mean is the system required to do that even a business that achieves you know, they surpass all expectations. It's to repeat that. And you can just feel the difference in that while we got it together. But do we know exactly how we pulled that off, then it's more deliberative, it's sustained. So, the triangle is simplicity, alignment and well-being, so to keep it going, and there's a great book called The Living Company by Arie De Geus. He was the CEO of BP Oil a long time ago. And he was curious why some companies live longer than humans, but most don't. And the ones that live longer, that like past 100 years, they had certain things in common. They weren't connected to the ecology of their environment. They were adaptable, they were thrifty on their finance. So, it was a few things like that. And in sport, that translates to simple, we're not trying to do it all. We know what matters aligned, we're rowing in the same direction not as easy as it sounds when you've got a whole roomful of people who’ve won before. And then well-being means we're okay and you can feel the difference. You walk into a sport with systemic well-being. It's not gym passes, and they are fit already. But inside, there's a lot of pain in a lot of sport. And so the approach is changing completely in high performance because a lot of disasters that have happened for athletes and staff as well, which happens in other industries, but it's quite public in sport when something bad happens. And so it just means that there's all hands on deck to figure it out. So, that triangle works. And so the translation of that into business is a higher performing team. And you can call on flow, it's not psychological, it's preparation. So yeah, for sure, let's talk about that next time because there's this whole, you know, between us the session on flow, it's a deep, meaningful call to attention. It isn't something psychological.

Tim 29:16

I know we're going to do a good job on that one. All right. Any working title for the book right now?

Richard 29:24

Performance Leadership is the as the working title. Yeah.

Tim 29:28

Stay tuned to both of us because I'll be shouting that one from the rooftops. All right. And if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way they can get in touch with you?

Richard 29:37

The website or LinkedIn? So richardnyoung.com is the site that goes to simplify to perform but yeah, richardnyoung it's just a name easy to remember them.

Tim 29:52

No problem, we’ll put it in the show notes so that it's there. And as I asked every one of my guests now. Not the last time you were on, I don't think we started this little tradition. If you had one hope for the athletes, the business owners, the founders, the leaders that are listening today, if you could hope or you wish them… well hope, let's talk about the different kind of hope. What's your wish for them? Let's talk about that. What would you like them to feel and know coming out of this, this conversation?

Richard 30:23

We know this, that performance is more than a metal. It's deeply personal and its fulfillment. So the ones that achieve this sustained high performance, there's a sense of fulfillment and metal or no metal, all of what we've talked about, flow, conviction, metal matters but that isn't the main thing. There's a performance fulfillment that a lot of people never get to in sport and business, and it's closer than we think. So, yeah. So, hopefully, there's some trigger in here that it might be hey, you know what, maybe I've overcomplicated things. Maybe there's a couple of smaller arrows I need to be focused on than these big arrows, maybe I'm all results-focused, and the ones who are journey-focused, they get there faster than the rest. 

Tim 31:11

That is an experience or that is a feeling. Fulfillment is something that everybody deserves. And a lot of people don't think it's within reach, but it is. They just need to break it down a little bit. All right, Richard Young, man. Love spending time with you. 

Richard 31:29

Same with you, too.

Tim 31:30

Alright, let's do it real soon.

Richard 31:32

See you for the next month. 

Tim 31:33

Excellent, all the best. 

Tim 31:39

Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. Like us, if you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership. Please give us a positive rating and review on Apple podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders. And you can spread the word too by sharing this with your friends, teams and colleagues. Thanks again for listening. And be sure to tune in, in two weeks time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host, Tim Sweet, encouraging you to keep on leading.

In this episode, we dive into the inspiring story of Ryan and Shane Pegg, a father-son duo who prove that age is just a number when it comes to courage and curiosity. Shane, a parent and business leader, shares practical insights into parenting, emphasizing the creation of a mistake-friendly environment. Ryan, a budding entrepreneur, recounts his experience attending the Inventures conference at the age of 12, showcasing his fearless pursuit of knowledge and networking. The conversation explores the dynamics of learning from failures, the pivotal role of mentors, and the power of encouragement in fostering innovation.

Tim continues the conversation with Shane, who is currently working in a Cochrane-based incubator. Shane draws connections between nurturing creativity in children and guiding adult entrepreneurs. Tim and Shane discuss the significance of providing space for exploration, encouraging curiosity, and breaking down age-related barriers in the entrepreneurial journey. Ryan further shares insights into a school program focused on intellectual property exploration, prototyping, and marketing, providing a glimpse into the emerging entrepreneurial mindset of the younger generation. 

The episode concludes with Shane detailing his involvement in the incubator, where he offers support and opportunities for local businesses. Shane and Ryan encourage listeners to be fearlessly creative and curious. Fearlessness is a quality that transcends age, shaping the future of entrepreneurship.

About Ryan Pegg

Ryan loves meeting new people, creating ideas and inventing new things. He is currently a grade 8 student at Rancheview school, coming to the Rocky Mountains from Ontario and settling in Cochrane. His extra-curricular activities include track and field and playing on his school's Jr.A basketball team. Outside of school, he has been working on a startup built around the idea of fresh innovation and new creations. One of his biggest interests is hunting and getting outside, he has gone on many expeditions and adventures with his dad, scaling mountains and trekking coulees. This past summer, he competed in triathlon in the Alberta Summer Games, winning 2 silver medals.

About Shane Pegg

Shane thrives in connecting, serving and celebrating entrepreneurs and community leaders. He’s spent the last 2 decades in the Kitchener-Waterloo and Calgary-Cochrane innovation ecosystems, working in and with startups, scale-ups, large companies and incubators. He currently runs the new startup incubator in Cochrane, Alberta and serves on the Boards of Innovate Cochrane and the Calgary Innovation Coalition. He enjoys outdoor adventures and various sporting activities alongside his wife and 3 children.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Inventures: inventurescanada.com
• Startup TNT: startuptnt.com
• Carol Dweck 
• Amy Edmondson

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Contact Tim Sweet | Team Work Excellence: 

• Website
• LinkedIn: Tim Sweet
• Instagram
• Linkedin: Team Work Excellence

Contact Ryan and Shane Pegg | Innovate Cochrane

• Website: innovatecochrane.com
• Cochrane Business Incubator: cochrane.ca
• LinkedIn: Shane Pegg
• LinkedIn: Ryan Pegg

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Transcript

Ryan 00:02

I feel like business is not only about the money side of things like you're not only trying to make money, you're trying to build new things you're trying to help people. And that really changed the way that I thought of it.

Shane 00:18

It's amazing how money can follow when you're not focused on it. But you're focused on doing good or doing something that you really enjoy doing. And you do it really well. And the money will follow if it's meant to be.

Tim 00:32

I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you my friend, or a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. Welcome to Episode 26 of the Sweet on Leadership podcast. 

Tim 00:32

Welcome back, everybody. Thanks for joining us again, for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. Today, we're going to try something a little bit different. We have three of us here today. And I'm joined by a dynamic father and son duo who I met last summer. Well, last late spring/summer at Inventures here in Calgary. And I'm really excited to welcome Shane and Ryan Pegg to the show. Guys, thank you so much for joining me today. It's a show I've been looking forward to for quite a while.

Ryan 01:36

Yeah, we're excited. 

Shane 01:39

You bet.

Tim 01:39

So, why we've assembled this ragtag group of travelers today is because when I first met, Ryan, Ryan had reached out to me before I was giving a talk at this particular conference. This was a guy that just was so full of gumption, and get up and go, and announced that he was coming to my session. And I just was tickled because, you know, this is a young man who is passionate about business, and really seemed to have a path in front of him. And it was just such a pleasure to have you there. And then to stand and talk to both of you after that session. And ever since it's stuck with me, and what's got me curious is to really just explore what it's like, at this point in your life, Ryan, and Shane watching Ryan go through this, and the relationship that's developing with entrepreneurship and business and leadership. And for us just to really understand what that looks like. And I think there's some exciting things there. But before we get into all of that, I just want you both to introduce yourself a little bit. So, Ryan, why don't you kick us off? Tell us a little bit about yourself. What is life like for you right now? And then we'll get into entrepreneurship and business in a little while. But who are you? Who do we see in front of us here? 

Ryan 03:00

Yeah, so I'm Ryan. I'm a grade eight student in Cochrane, Alberta. And I love sports, not just business, such as basketball, triathlon, running, track and field on my school team. And I just love creating new things and going into the business world and looking at what people make. 

Tim 03:29

That’s awesome and Shane, on top of being Ryan's dad, who do we have in front of us?

Shane 03:33

Yeah, yeah, absolutely proud dad to Ryan, also have a couple of daughters, one older, one younger. We actually moved out here, my wife and I with the kids about four years ago to Cochran from the Kitchener Waterloo area. And so yeah, my life has been in the business world working for a startup and then acquired by a company out here, which brought us out here. And now I'm currently at a sort of incubator. We get into that a little bit later. And outside of the work world, we're involved in different things around town, a couple of not-for-profits, Innovate Cochrane, and from a sports side, I really enjoy getting outdoors into the mountains. That's one of the things we're excited about being here and playing some hockey and doing some running with Ryan, trying to keep up with him now, getting harder and harder, as the years go by. 

Tim 04:21

Young legs, they've got the speed, that we are certainly blessed with the mountains and having that nearby. And it's one of the real perks about living here. That's great guys. Ryan, maybe we can get into this a little bit when we think about what you're interested in. And there's lots obviously, you're interested in sport, you're interested in nature, you're interested in drinking it up right now. But specifically when we talk about what was that motivation to get to that, Inventures that entrepreneurial and innovation conference? What would drive you there?

Ryan 04:57

So, really my dad was gonna go to this conference and almost as a joke, I was like, Oh, can I come? And he was like, do you really want it? And I'm like, oh, yeah, sure. And he found a way to do it. And I was planning, like a week ahead of where I was going to go, what I was gonna do, everything. And I had it all planned out, and then emailed you or sent you a message. And it just started from there.

Tim 05:33

Awesome. Well, Shane, what was that like for you? Was that surprising to have Ryan make that request? Or can you paint us a picture of how that actually went down? 

Shane 05:44

Yeah, not necessarily surprising, you know, Ryan and his siblings have done and he'll probably talk this about a little bit more later. But they've done a little bit of entrepreneurial stuff before this. And so when he reached out, he loves, they all love getting into different adventures like this. And so it's like, yeah, you can come. But you know, this is, it's a big conference. And so make sure you do some prep work for that. And so that's why he did the research, the full schedule when he came out. And we talked about it and suggested maybe reaching out to some of the folks you never know until you ask, you can get into pretty interesting adventures. And so that's what he did, is reaching out to you. And it was exciting to be there. I knew a few people there but didn't know a lot of people, but having him there and then turning them loose at the event. I didn't go to your session, he went to your session, as you know, later on in the conference. It was encouraging to see that and just for him to take the lead and how to kind of lean into that and kind of create that space for him to go and do that. And that was exciting for me to see. 

Tim 06:44

Let’s talk about that space a little bit. Why is it important to create that space for you?

Shane 06:48

I find that each of these kids have their own interests and their own potential. And we can try to live our lives vicariously through them, or we can try and help them live their lives. And that space often can surprise you and delight you, watching what they do, maybe sometimes frustrate you, but watching that to say, hey, he's going to become who he was made to be. And part of that is giving him that freedom to go and explore, to try new things. And that space is, you can keep them close to you. And obviously, there are times when you need to for safety reasons. But on an event like that, at that time, he was 12 years old, he didn't have a phone, and he was in downtown Calgary, we turned him loose, and said, Hey, go to a couple of these sessions. We'll meet you back in a couple of hours. That was the plan. And there were 1000s of people at that conference. And so and he figured it out. And when you create a space like that, it creates that sense of independence, I think that's kind of part of the entrepreneurial journey is there are a lot of things you need to figure out. And there's no playbook for entrepreneurs, you got to kind of figure things out on your own. And have you just create that space to do that.

Tim 07:59

So, Ryan, you were turned loose at this conference? And besides the sessions themselves, what was that like? What was it like to sort of be under your own steam? 

Ryan 08:08

So, it definitely felt adventurous, like, you know, I was off on my own, there's a ton of people, but it just made me go like wherever I wanted, because, you know like I was alone. So, I could look at this stuff, look at different stuff, and just do what really I wanted to do. Instead of talking to people, my dad wanted to talk to or like doing the things that he had already planned to do. I could just like wander. And I love that, you know.

Tim 08:41

Yeah, well all those that wander are not lost. So, when we think about that, when you say you did things that you wanted to do, what were you looking to do? What were you looking to discover in that conference?

Ryan 08:54

I wasn't really looking to discover anything. I had some sessions planned out, like with you, and a few other people. And during the time between those sessions, I wandered, and I found exhibits, people to talk to like some people commented and like, Hey, you're kinda young to be here. I'm like, Oh, yeah. And then we just the conversation started from there. And then I met new people. And yeah.

Tim 09:26

What were the big takeaways that you managed to take away from the day? 

Ryan 09:31

Definitely, a lot from your conference. I have a full sheet of all the different notes that I took from your session. But the biggest one is that I feel like business is not only about the money side of things like you're not only trying to make money, you're trying to build new things. You're trying to help people. And that really changed the way that I thought of it. 

Tim 10:00

Wow. What's it like to hear that Shane?

Shane 10:03

Oh, it's encouraging I think there's only so much a parent can say that's actually going to stick. It's, you know, often it's somebody a complete stranger or something else that they read or see or hear from others. And so it's encouraging, you know and you try to model kind of an attitude of generosity and compassion, thinking of others and other first mentality. That's kind of a big part of life here. It's what about others, kind of takes your focus off of yourself. And so the kids are all great at doing that. And, yeah, it's encouraging. And that's certainly a life lesson that we find later in life. It's amazing at how money can follow when you're not focused on it, but you're focused on doing good or doing something that you really enjoy doing. And you do it really well. And the money will follow if it's meant to be.

Tim 10:50

Yeah, Ryan, I know you've got lots of ideas on the go, you're fostering a lot of things you've got, you're moving in different directions. When you think of that, and understanding that you're still at the genesis of a lot of what you're thinking, what does this open up for you as possibilities for your future and what you're interested in doing?

Ryan 11:09

Well, I feel like a lot of people have told me, I'm very creative. And sometimes I just get like a sketchbook and start jotting down random ideas. And these ideas, I'm suddenly like, Hey, this could work. And it starts like refining the idea, why would it work? Why wouldn't it? And just making it better. And these can be like, starters for business, and new ideas? 

Tim 11:44

Yeah. So, we were talking in the prep session that we had for today about some of the things that you're doing at school. And maybe you can tell us a little bit about the class that you find yourself involved in right now. Then I'd like to ask a few more questions.

Ryan 12:01

Yeah, so the class is an option that we have, but we don't really get to choose the option, all students do it. And we have to create an idea with either a partner or create an idea by yourself, and you'll be paired with someone. And when you have the idea, you have to go through different steps of creating the idea. So, we just finished doing a patent application. And then we have to build it, market it, create ads for it, and then a final product, which we can sell out a little business show at the end of the year, sometime, and people can actually buy your product.

Tim 12:45

So, you're learning about intellectual property, you're going through prototyping, you're going through marketing, probably market testing, then you're getting out into this. You know, everybody has their favorite subjects at school. Some people love art, some people love math, some people love science. What makes it easy to like that class? Do you think? What kind of people tend to gravitate towards really enjoying a class like that?

Ryan 13:10

They're really creative ones, for sure. They like creating the ideas. They're the ones that have the most love for that kind of stuff, where some people only like sports or video games. If you like creating stuff or like drawing, the arts, then you could create whatever you want almost like find a way to make that. So.

Tim 13:36

I mean, entrepreneurialism is a creative pursuit. So, Shane, when you think about your role now in an incubator, and we look at how this kind of parallels what you might see when people come in with ideas, and when they're fired up about maybe learning the basics, or just bringing something to market or going through. What strikes you about seeing this happen at Ryan's age, in a junior high school, versus watching this happen when you're at a municipally funded, you know, incubator? 

Shane 14:11

Yeah, well, first off, it's exciting that they're creating that course and the opportunity for these kids to go through, not all of them are gonna get into it. Like, Ryan may be more into that. And other kids might be more into other subjects. So, for them to kind of foster, create that environment that they could do that I think it's great, and then those that are interested in it. I think as a parent, it's great to be able to kind of show that support and ask the questions. And you know, when you're asking questions, we might know a little bit more on certain things than they do but we don't know a lot. Like, I learned a lot listening to Ryan, sometimes what he says goes over my head, like oh, I had never even thought about that. And so I think of other people in my life that I will bring into Ryan's life. It could be other friends of mine that are mechanical engineers, Ph.D. Bring them in, and it's like, you're probably going to be better off talking to my son than I am at some of these things he's thinking about. And so watching them kind of learn and ask questions and start getting into that, at that age, I think it's a neat opportunity, we'll see where he wants to go, interest can change, obviously, quickly. But at this point, you know, he's got that. And so we'll feed into that, and again, create those opportunities kind of in his life that if you want to continue pursuing it, and he's got questions, if I don't have answers, other people do, and I'm not afraid to kind of ask others to get involved and say, Hey, why don’t you have a conversation with Ryan and approach him?

Tim 15:39

In your role at the incubator, it's very much sort of in that mentorship space where you're connecting people and helping people deal with their own blocks and whatnot. And not unlike my role, I may be faced with a person that perhaps is an employee and wants to get into an entrepreneurial experience, they want to buy a business or they want to take something to market. And often it's dealing with the trepidation and the fear or the blocks that they've got in front of them. And helping them sort of get past those, get networked, and deal with the roadblocks that face them one after another. From your professional experience, when you're dealing with adults that are trying to bring something out for the world, do some good in the world. What would you see as some of the roadblocks that you commonly see facing people? What are they bumping up against, which threatens to stop them in their tracks?

Shane 16:33

There are a few things that I think of, a conversation just today with some folks that are either in incubator or thinking about coming in. It's around connections to maybe expertise, or kind of opportunities that I know I want to go here, but I don't know who to talk to. And so they're looking for connections, it might be for sales channels, it might be for talent, it might be for kind of equipment, that how to? I know where I want to go. Yeah, it could be yes, either. It's usually like, you know, obviously, if you talk to any of them, I need access to funding, I need talent, I need access to customers and the channels to get there. But I find there are some very passionate people that are smart, have a few connections here, but they're just unaware of what's going on in the ecosystem. And just Alberta, Calgary, and Cochrane or Cochrane and greater Cochrane/Calgary is there's a ton of great resources and programs and people available. And it's amazing that if you can make a connection, then just get out of the way. And so, you know, even up for Ryan and others his age, they don't know they're not exposed to this yet. But the adventures conference was just one example of meeting some very interesting people like yourself, like, look where the opportunity went. Ryan reached out to you and next thing you know, a few months later, we're sitting here on this podcast. Which is pretty neat. 

Tim 17:54

Yeah, I do a lot with Startup TNT, here in Calgary. And that is another group that's really, yeah, interested in unlocking the potential and great ideas and good businesses, and getting them in touch with people that can stand behind them and have their back and really help them move forward. And it's such a fun experience. And in the time that I've been there, given that it is in that precede focus, there's so much to learn. But when I met you, Ryan, and one of the observations that I would make, and even just thinking about what you're saying, Shane is, the questions and the fears that are blocking people even in adulthood, are the same things that Ryan is up against. It's the same things like they're not age specific. And I'm wondering, Ryan, can you hear what I see, and I don't know if this rings true for you, is that elements that you could consider challenging are the same things that adults face. There's no monopoly on where the good ideas come from and where the drive comes from. And I mean, I've met several people, your age, Ryan, and there's a difference. Some of them are interested in that creative exercise, and it's going to express in many different ways. And others are not so much interested in that. And that seems to track well with what we see in business generally, where we have a certain personality type or certain workstyle or a certain expression of value that likes to go forth and really try difficult things and push the boundaries and find the edges and challenge themselves. And I know Shane, you know, you and I've had a short talk about that, that opportunity to really help people find the edge and I don't think it's just Ryan, I think you're helping these entrepreneurs find their edge you know, you're not there yet a little bit further. Go take a risk, drive fast, don't use the brakes.

Shane 19:56

I think that's what's needed with Ryan and kids his age are, they're more fearless than us, like, look at them, whether they're bombing down to ski hill, or, you know, keen to get behind the wheel of a vehicle, little bit time there yet Ryan, but close. But they're just, they're fearless. And they're surrounded by a bunch of peers that are into all sorts of different things. As you get older, you start to kind of gravitate towards people that are like you. And so then sometimes you can lose that creativity based on kind of who you're hanging out with, what you're listening to. And often, your leaders talking about, listen to a diverse range of podcasts, read different books. And so as kids, you're surrounded by a bunch of kids you've been thrown together with at school, some of them are into hunting, some of them are into crafting like they're just into all sorts of different so that creativity there and that fearlessness are two amazing qualities based on your environment and how do you, when you get older, and you get a little bit more comfortable with where you're at who you're around, be able to ask different people for help, for questions, have that humility? You know, we start to think we know more as we get older. But as you get wiser and learn more realize, man, it's like, we get less smart as we learn more because we realize there's so much to grow. And the kids are just curious, and they're willing to try things, which is exciting to watch.

Tim 21:15

Yeah, I don't know if I've mentioned this to either of you. But my father was a principal. He was a principal in a school and an educator, and he actually specialized in Ryan's age group, and really how to bring that forward. And he was the principal here at the Calgary Science School, which later became Connect Charter. And they are really into that sort of innovative space. And he used to say, and I remember at his retirement when he was talking to the kids, he said, you know, be mindful of your friends, because your trajectory of success is going to largely be the average of those you surround yourself with. And I've always thought that such a good piece of advice because there's, you know, we want to make sure that we're surrounded both in our jobs and in our personal relationships with people that lift us up. And yes, there's going to be the time when we have to lift other people up, but we can't, or we have to be careful not to be dragged down, in a sense, and settle for that lowest common denominator, you know really–

Shane 22:13

Yeah, wise words, wise words.

Tim 22:14

So, Shane, you said that it's important to give them space, right, to make sure that they have a chance to find their own way. 

Shane 22:25

Right, you know one of the things that came to mind there is trying to create an environment and model, the fact that you're going to make mistakes, and it's okay. And I as a parent, you know, I make a lot of mistakes. I just think of it last week, I came in, I came in after a day at work, we had some things to do afterwards, we had the kids I'm like, my daughter and Ryan, like, Okay, can you guys like the barbecue? We're gonna have a quick barbecue, and then we got to get rolling, we got a sporting event. And I came in, and they're like, hey, barbecue, I haven't lit the barbecue, like what, it was like 10 minutes ago, like, but I came in hot. I was kind of frustrated. Like, I'm like here, grab this, and then I went and started it, and then lit it and got going but at the dinner table, I'm like man, like that's the wrong, there's a teachable moment right there. Right? And so you got to kind of suck up your pride. And say, and Ryan knows this, I've had to apologize a few times, right? And it's like, Hey, listen, sorry. And then just walk through. Here's what I should have done. Like, if I could replay that scene, I'd say, hey, laugh about it's like, oh, yeah, it can be tricky. And you guys have never lit this barbecue like this before. And walk them through it, model that, and show them that. So, there are a few lessons that you try and teach. And again, that's one example. There are many more that did not end as maybe great as that. But model that for them. Of it's, A. it's okay to mess up like dad messes up and then kind of walk through it and then talk and say what was the lesson learned and ask for forgiveness, and grow. And I think the people in Ryan's life, like you and others, take an interest, listen and ask questions, and ask him about what he's doing, which almost gives him permission to try things and work on it, and laugh at the mistakes and not berate him, instead of making a statement about a screw-up. Maybe ask them a Question. Hey, what do we learn? And how can we improve next time?

Tim 24:19

I mean, people that criticize you when you make a mistake, and they're armchair quarterbacking from a safe position. They don't have the information that we have, in the moment that we're making that mistake. And I just finished reading a book by Carol Dweck, but also Amy Edmondson, which I've referenced in the show before, her work is all about failing well, like how do we learn to fail forward? Or how do we learn to understand what it takes to be resilient and really, you know, make those steps and know that it's not about getting it right. It's about getting it. It's about over time, getting up, it's about getting it right eventually. After we learn, right, you can learn very few things through immediate success, you learn a whole bunch through short, consistent failures, that get you to the right answers. Right? 

Shane 25:16

Yeah, I think that resiliency is key. We talked, my wife and I talked about that as we moved west again, like, we're not moving to another country, like when we moved from Ontario out west here, when the kids were four years ago younger. And there's level of resiliency, like Ryan had his buds back there, and all our family. And so there's a level of resiliency of coming out here that we as parents need to understand, it's one thing for us to come out there and, you know, develop our new friendships, but also kind of looking out through the eyes of our kids. And there's a level of resiliency there. And so we love that it's tough, you're gonna kind of fail, I'm trying to make new friends and see it's tough, but you can either kind of swoop in and try and fix it for them, or walk along beside them in the journey and support them as they are finding their new friends, finding their way.

Tim 26:02

So, I'm curious, Ryan, do you follow anybody in the business world at large, or any celebrities or anybody that you find, starts to emulate kind of where you could see yourself going?

Ryan 26:15

I would consider you pretty famous.

Tim 26:18

Oh okay, thank you. I appreciate that.

Ryan 26:18

Yeah, you. For sure, bigger people, maybe huge business leaders like Jeff Bezos, maybe I could, maybe I could build a business big like him, or just be a leader, like you, or my dad, who's just running the incubator, and teaching people or you was also teaching people how to lead their team and bring their company to victory, I guess? 

Tim 26:58

Well, I mean, the most important thing here is that you figure out who you are going to be. And we find ways to tap into that, because you're gonna have your own very special way of bringing all this together. And whatever that is, I'm sure it's going to be fairly fantastic. Let's go the other direction really quickly, either for yourself or somebody that you've seen, been working with Ryan at school or otherwise. What would deflate somebody who's trying to take a risk? You know, when we talk about things that adults can say, or friends can say, that can really make it hard to take that risk? Could you pinpoint something for us?

Ryan 27:40

Yeah, so just telling them that it's going to be too hard is probably the biggest way. But anything that brings them down, like, it's too hard, it's gonna cost too much, you're not gonna be able to do it. You're not creative enough, anything that's gonna bring them down, it's gonna, and you have to bring them up instead of put them down. Because if you bring them up, then they're more likely to succeed. And build their path to victory.

Tim 28:13

Yeah, it's funny. And Shane, I want to give you a minute here, to formulate an answer. Well, I'd like to know what you're able to say to people when they hear that or they come to you having been challenged in that way. For myself, when somebody tells me not to do something, because it's too hard. Or if they come to me and say, they're not going to do something, because it's too hard. I will usually one of my key tools to come back. And as well, how are you calculating hard? Like, what does that actually mean? You know, is it too much time? Is it too much effort? When you say this is going to be too hard? You know, what are you seeing as being the effort, get into hard for me, so I can understand what you mean? Because their definition of hard, if they have one, and often they don't. It's just kind of this big, nebulous thing, that they're saying, oh, there's this boogeyman out there called hard and you're not going to be able to get past it. But when you ask them to actually explain it, they can't. It's just kind of this nebulous fear. Rather than saying, well, it's going to be really hard, because you're going to have to go and meet at least 20 people, and you're going to have to find funding for at least $100,000. And you're going to have to go and you're going to have to find experts in this space of design and you're gonna and by the time you walk them through all that. It's like, that's all stuff to do. But it's complex, not hard. It's something that I can put on a plan and say, gotta find $100,000, all right, can do it. Test the number, maybe it's $25,000, maybe it's $2,000. Maybe it's nothing. Right? But you know, get curious and quantify and, you know, before you stop yourself, just say and what do you mean hard? Like, what does that actually mean? So, Shane, what do you say to a person that comes up and says that they're thinking about packing it in because it's too hard?

Shane 30:10

Probably somewhat similar to what you do and your approach is. I just kind of asked them the question back of, okay, well, what are you going for? What is it that needs to be done? And then when you start breaking it down to those bite-sized bits, like you've said, like, if what was going through my mind was the same thing as you were just audibly saying is, okay, well, let's break it down. Like if you, Okay, so you last year you made $100,000? This, you need to make a million dollars. Okay. Well, how many customers does that represent? Okay, well, let's break it down just 12 months, there's four quarters, let's break it down monthly. What do you need to do? How many calls do you need to make? And then based on, you know, a 5%, close rate on that? Let's break it down. It's okay. Well, that means that you need to make 10 calls every day. Can you make 10 calls every day? Yeah. Okay. Well, let's just start. And then it just needs let's just start. Because the whole process of try something, learn, adjust, repeat. Like, that's business. It's, let's try something, especially in the startup phase, like people say, Oh, we pivot. It's almost like the word startup, the definition of startup is pivot. Like, you're constantly changing and trying and like, No, this didn't work that didn't work. It's all revolving around talking to the customer, the end user, the person you're with, like, how do you learn from them? And so really just asking the person, what is it and then it's that having that belief, like you said, there can be self-limiting beliefs. But sometimes you just need somebody to believe in them. Somebody needs to encourage them to challenge them. And you know, we both are into leadership and listen to great leaders and try to emulate them. You hear these great leaders, if you dig into all their pasts, I've had somebody or people in their lives that have challenged, encouraged, and called them to a higher level of leading and of living. 

Tim 31:53

Yup. Now you're speaking to the choir, because I mean, that's what I built my business around. That's what I'm interested in. Yeah. It's funny when we think about this, it reminds me of a story I have about my daughter. She's 18 now, but when she was quite young, I think she was probably seven, six or seven. She came to me and she said, Dad, I want a Barbie. And I said that it was this mermaid Barbie. And I said, okay, and she said, Can we go get one? I said, Sure. How much money do you have? And she said I've got eight dollars. I said, How much is the Barbie? The Barbie is $14. And I said, Well, I guess you can't buy the Barbie yet. That's what you want to do, is buy the Barbie. But I said I'll tell you what and we went to the store. And we bought five pounds of sugar. And we bought a bag of apples and I sprung for some chopsticks. And I sat and I worked for free. And I colored the sugar and I candied some apples and I put them on a tray and she walked out front. And she sold one for three or two for five. And she ate one or two. She pretty soon she came back and she had you know, I think it was 40 or 45 bucks or something she had anyways, it was a fair amount. I think people gave her more money than they were worth. But anyway, they gave her lots of tips. And she said oh can I buy the Barbie now? And I said well, you could. Yeah, you could buy the Barbie now. Or, and so then we took that 50 bucks or whatever it was back to the store we bought, you know, four or five bags of apples and a bunch more chopsticks and we still had sugar leftover. And I stood there the next week and I candied apples and there's these poor suckers. These kids down the street trying to try to hock lemonade. Well, lemonade wasn't selling but those candied apples sure did. And so we did that a few times. And by the end of it, she had, you know, this box full of like 600 bucks. She had cornered the market of Northwest Calgary for candied apples. And, you know, but it lit something in her. And so now she's running her own jewelry business. And she's done that for a couple of years, just out of high school, and now it's just going live online and the rest of it and she's still looking for work and whatnot. But she runs stock. And two summers ago, we learned about identifying her core market, we changed her messaging, and she rebranded and, you know, she's been able to do really well identify her market niche, not you know, not sell things that other people are selling, really hit the you know, and so it lights something in kids and it sure is exciting to see. You know, because it's just such, it's they're good lessons for life in terms of you want to do something, break it down, get it done. And it's not about I was also gonna say actually, as we were talking there, I've always thought that we shouldn't call it startup. You know, I think that's such a dumb word. You know, I need startup capital, or we're going to run a startup thing. I'm starting to think we should call it keep going. Right? Like, maybe we should say I need to keep going fund or we need to do you know what I mean? Because anybody can start up but can you keep going? I think is one of the key determinants there. So, maybe that yeah. Okay. Right on? Well, it's been a lot of fun for me today, having you here. Maybe before we say goodbye, we could cover a few bases here. Ryan, what do you have on the go right now in life, it doesn't have to be anything specific. But what's got you excited? What's got you excited as we move through the year here? 

Ryan 35:29

So, on the business side, I've just finished creating a first prototype of a future product that I wanna sell. And this is like a rough draft, I made it using an old t-shirt and cut it up. But first draft and it turned out great. I learned a lot, how it was built, and all that. And I'm hoping to build that to another level.

Tim 36:00

Well, when you're ready to launch it on the world and tell us because I know right now, you're still behind a veil of secrecy, which is just fine. But we're going to have you back. And we're going to make sure that we tell as many people as we can when you're ready to take that to the next step.

Ryan 36:14

Sounds good. 

Tim 36:15

Sound like fun? 

Ryan 36:16

For school. I'm on the school's junior A basketball team. And tomorrow, actually, we have a basketball tournament. And we've been working hard. So, we hope we do well. And learning lots, this is our first tournament of the year, so. 

Tim 36:37

Good luck with that. This is where the rubber meets the road. And all that hard work is gonna come and be put to the test. That's excellent. Shane, how about you? What's up?

Shane 36:47

Yeah, well, you know, these three kids of ours and watching the journey they're on and becoming who they were created to be is definitely exciting. And every day is a new adventure. So, loving that, on the work side, just started working the last couple of months at this new incubator here in Cochrane. And so kind of filling it and trying to become that place where if you want to start or grow a business in Cochrane, Alberta, or surrounding area, hey, we're gonna help you out and watching some of these businesses interacting with them, and seeing kind of the potential they have and helping them try to get to where they want to go. It's just super exciting. It's super encouraging, knowing being part of a startup in the past and the journey that it is, I got a little bit more empathy for them. And it's just neat because you kind of feed the fire, right, and just add fuel to that passion that they've got and it's just super exciting to watch.

Tim 37:45

Well, and you and I've had a couple of good conversations now about what it's like to see these incubators run in smaller towns, and what they're going to do for smaller towns now that we've had this revolution in work-from-home, or the caps have really been taken off the monopoly that large civic centers had on business. Well, how is this going to change the world as we see these incubators be more local for people? It's going to change where people feel they can operate?

Shane 38:19

Yeah, and connecting with others in the community. Like, we got the headquarters for Garmin, Canada, located right in Alberta. But you've got all sorts of great not-for-profits and other businesses that you connect the community together. And it becomes more than just a few small business startup founders. But it's the whole community where you've got mentors helping them out and then being inspired. And this this whole element of innovation happening in our community, which is super neat. And engaging with the local high school is going to have a pitch competition. And then Ryan's going to be on there next year, our oldest daughter is in high school. And so it just feeds from the youth, right up and giving back. 

Tim 39:00

And tapping into that amazing energy. Yeah. So, I'm going to have you back. And I want to talk to you about that at a later time. Because I think that there's a lot of cool stuff there too. But if people want to get in touch with you through the Cochrane incubator, where can they find out more about that? And then where could they contact you directly?

Shane 39:17

Probably the best place to start is by reaching out to me directly on LinkedIn. They can just find me Shane Pegg on LinkedIn. And then through the town of Cochran, if you go to the town of Cochran, go under the business incubator spot, it's under the business section. You'll be able to kind of learn about the incubator and then just reach out to me directly or dropping in for anybody that's local. At the station, right downtown Cochran, they can kind of stop in and take a tour of the incubator and see how we can help them out. 

Tim 39:43

Right on. Here's a question that I ask everybody as we wrap up. Ryan, if you can think about the people that are listening, they're going to be all different ages. There's going to be some adults, they're going to be some people that are working in businesses right now, they got jobs, there's going to be some people that are maybe founders, maybe thinking about becoming founders, might be people that are wanting to shift into leading teams and this kind of thing. If you could give them a wish. If you could wish anything for them, do you know what that would be?

Ryan 40:16

I feel like it would be bring the idea to life and do what you want to do. Don't just follow on someone else's path that they've said, oh, yeah, you should go this way. Or you should do this job, or invent this idea. You should just create your own idea and really make that a business or–

Tim 40:41

Or let it rip. Shane, how about yourself? If you could wish anything for a listener today, what would it be?

Shane 40:49

I’d go back to probably one of the first comments we made is creating space and opportunities for the youth like Ryan and others. For that learning, for building the courage, for curiosity. How do you allow them that opportunity to explore what they're interested in? And just keep kind of feeding that fire.

Tim 41:14

Well, you've certainly created some space for me there, fellas, so I appreciate that today. Okay. Can't wait to follow along and see how things shift here for you. And I just want to say another really big thank you for taking the time to come on today.

Ryan 41:29

Yeah, it was a pleasure. Thank you for having us.

Shane 41:32

Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity, Tim.

Tim 41:34

All right, well, good luck at your basketball tourney tomorrow. We will catch up real soon in the future, and all the best guys.

Tim 41:47

Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If like us, you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership. Please give us a positive rating and review on Apple Podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders. And you can spread the word too, by sharing this with your friends, teams, and colleagues. Thanks again for listening. And be sure to tune in in two weeks time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host, Tim Sweet, encouraging you to keep on leading

In this dynamic episode, Tim Sweet and Elayna Snyder discuss the transformative impact of understanding one's unique perspective in marketing and leadership. Elayna challenges common misconceptions, asserting that the essence of a personal brand lies in understanding one's perspective and creativity. Tim engages her in a thought-provoking conversation that unravels the intricacies of marketing, emphasizing the need to slow down to speed up. Elayna shares her remarkable journey, transitioning from teaching in Japan to becoming a personal brand coach, illustrating the transformative power of articulating one's perspective. 

The episode delves into the concept of "guardrails," exploring their role in authentic connection and effective translation of one's heart across diverse cultural contexts. Tim and Elayna navigate the continual process of calibration, highlighting the importance of validating others' experiences and utilizing insight timelines for personal and professional growth. Elayna's upcoming project, a creativity tracker, is introduced, accompanied by an invitation for listeners to ponder the liberating question, "What if it were easy?" as a catalyst for overcoming obstacles and nurturing creativity.

About Elayna Snyder 

Elayna Snyder, your atypical personal branding coach, is on a mission to redefine how we approach brand creation. Having lived in four diverse countries, Elayna thrives on translating her curious heart and creativity across cultures. Beyond traditional personal branding, she guides individuals to authentically communicate and lead by understanding and leveraging their unique perspectives. A seasoned coach and consultant, Elayna engages in thought-provoking discussions on LinkedIn and shares invaluable insights through her newsletter: thereframenewsletter.com. Passionate about transforming conventional ideas, she's unveiling an exciting project—a creativity tracker that fosters self-awareness and taps into innate creativity.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Marianne Williamson: goodreads.com/quotes
• Julia Cameron: goodreads.com/en/book
• Tim Ferriss: instagram.com/timferriss

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Contact Tim Sweet | Team Work Excellence: 

• Website
• LinkedIn: Tim Sweet
• Instagram
• LinkedIn: Team Work Excellence

Contact Elayna Snyder 

• Website: elaynasnyder.com
• Facebook: Indigocollectiv
• Linkedin: Elayna Snyder
• The Reframe: thereframenewsletter.com

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Transcript:

Elayna 00:01

When we're talking about creating opportunities for ourselves specifically in the marketing space, that truly is a translation. Let's look at LinkedIn for a second, the way that you show up there cannot be the same as the way that you show up in your delivery with clients. And I find that so many people, they're thinking that it's a direct translation, well, I do this with my clients, this must be what people want to hear, or they just have no conception of how we're going to build in those guardrails to create a really powerful translation so that people who don't know them yet know to lean into them.

Tim 00:42

I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you my friend are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. Welcome to the 25th episode of the Sweet on Leadership Podcast.

Tim 01:13

Welcome back, everybody. My name is Tim Sweet. And you are here with us on the Sweet on Leadership Podcast. Today I am joined by a very special new friend, this is Elayna Snyder. Elayna, you are teaching me all sorts of new things about how to approach myself, and how I represent myself to clients. In the short time since you and I were connected, you've got me thinking in totally different ways about how I need to be presenting who I am in the world. And I have to say, it's helping me feel a lot freer about things. But enough about me. Tell the people who you are. And let's get into this because it's an exciting topic. 

Elayna 01:55

Yeah, Tim, thanks so much. And thank you for showing up to play with me in that way. Because not all of us are for everyone. So, I'm glad that we've had this immediate connection already. And hello to your audience. I'm very happy to be here. In terms of who I am and what I do. I work with top coaches and consultants. And what we're really looking at is this main question around, how do I powerfully articulate what I do to create more of my best clients at the fees that I desire? And there's another question that comes on the back of that, too. And that question is, how do I integrate more of myself into my work? What's that next big idea? Maybe it's a new offering, a book, or even the creation of a movement. So, I want to just preface this just a tiny bit more for us. Before we dive in, Tim because we've already been having so much fun. In both of these questions, what we're really looking at is the idea of truly owning our perspective, and unlocking our creativity, because it's on the other side of that, that those yet to be imagined opportunities exist. And truly, that's what I believe we're really after.

Tim 03:07

And I'm really excited for the people that are listening today, not only because this has application when it comes to, you know, marketing a business and the rest of it. But for those that are listening, that are employed, or are in leadership positions, which is a huge part of my audience, this has legs. This idea of being able to articulate who you are and really the essence of that for yourself and others, allows you to lead in really authentic, really powerful ways. And in my experience, that fluency really helps us unlock a pathway to connect with other people and to do really interesting and profound things that matter to us. And through that excitement, are that much higher quality for others. So, I think if you are not solely in the marketing interest or running a business, there's still going to be something here for you. So, hang on, because Elayna has got a lot of good stuff to share. Well, Elayna, perhaps as a way for us to kick off, we were talking earlier around what it means to have a sense of who you are, and we hear a lot of terms kicked around around this. We hear the term, you know, is it your character? Is it a persona? Is it how you have to show it professionally? Is it your personal brand? Can you give us some thoughts about what those terms mean to you? What are the terms that are being used out there? And what do we need to know? 

Elayna 04:38

Yeah, and let's start with that last one that you said, the personal brand because most people are going to call me a personal brand coach, and they come to me to help them build their personal brand and the first thing that I always tell them to do is we're going to throw the idea of personal brand out the door. There are huge misconceptions around what that is. And they end up getting in the way from the actual discovery that we need to explore and really harness who we are. So, the way that I describe personal brands, because I am going to contextualize this in that, that we've got a little bit of a foot in the marketing space. But as we continue our conversation, I think that we're going to see how that dissipates pretty quickly. But when I'm thinking about personal brand, what I'm really thinking about is the way that you see the world. And this is your perspective. And there's this other thing that comes in too, because it's not just the way that you see the world. It's also the way that you express the way you see the world, which I call your creativity. And this is so unique to you, when we really get down into it, that when we lean into those definitions, and when we explore from that side of things, what we discover is truly yet to be imagined just about ourselves, but then that leads to these opportunities that we're looking to harness and yet we don't have the language around what they really are.

Tim 06:17

So, if we have that expression of the way we see the world, and how we express it to others, how do you capture that? What would a term that you would use if not personal brand?

Elayna 06:27

That's a good question. I use personal brand, because it's a catch-all. And we can definitely talk more about that because that is very marketing. I've thought a lot about this for myself. But when I'm sitting on the couch, drinking my coffee and thinking about it, I'm thinking about it strictly as creativity. It's your perspective, and it's your creativity. What does that mean? How do I deepen more into it for myself? How am I supporting my clients to do that? How are we doing that in our communities? 

Tim 06:58

Awesome. When we think about that expression of creativity, and how people experience us, that's really core to some things that I teach around leadership. I do use the term brand and I think we can't get away from that. But for the duration of this podcast, everyone who's listening, please, when we consider this, if we say the word brand, let's keep in mind that we're using it in this evolved sense that it's not simply a tell them who we are set of words, colours, imagery, whatever, we're not trying to manipulate anybody, it's about that genuine article, if they're going to experience our brand, it's going to be tied into how we see the world and how we genuinely express that. So, if we fall into that, that's where we'll continue from. But what's really interesting about that, to me is that if people don't have a handle on this, if they don't understand how they see the world, or at least they haven't articulated for themselves, or they try to be something else, because they're supposed to be, they should all over themselves. Right? If you're not intentional about it, it's going to come out anyway. You can tell people one thing, but through your actions, and through your comments, and through how they experience you, your brand or your viewpoint on the world and how you process things, it's kind of come out. So, the question is, do we want to embrace that? Or do we want to say one thing and do another? And when we miss that, I mean, we can cause all sorts of problems for ourselves. 

Elayna 08:35

Very much so. I think the other side of that, too, is that when we're looking to create something and when we're learning something new, we tend to think that the answer lies outside of ourselves. How do I do that? Where can I learn how to do that better? And this hidden assumption often comes with that. I have this all the time, I check myself with it daily, minute by minute sometimes. And that assumption is that we're adapting something new, what we have is not good enough, or it needs to be changed, or it needs to be filtered in a different way. And the first thing that I am always doing with my clients, and what I am a little bit obsessed about is creating experiences, even in conversations like this, for us to think about that in a different way and to harness the awareness around that piece of it because it gets in the way. It doesn't allow us to see what's already there because it's not just that it's getting out right like it's not just about your brand getting out. It's that it truly is already there. What happens when we look at it and put some intentionality around it and harness it?

9:55

And get other things out of the way. It’s funny because, in a conference last year, I was speaking about the trouble we get into when, this was for startups, and a lot of them are coming from science and technology. And so if you're coming from a STEM background, you tend to think in an additive way we're taught in school, that when we go through learning, or we go through an experimentation, it's about step by step, one thing, complete it, then go to the next step, add another thing, add another thing, and everything is additive. And when we want to bring value, or we have that feeling that we're not enough, it's always well, what do I need to add? What do I need go and get? Because of that, because we're always missing something, there is this subtle scarcity, this, this deficiency that creeps up, where we're always like, what's the next thing I need? If I can just get that I'll finally be good enough. And then you get there. And it's like, well, wait a minute. Now I'm missing this. And I gotta go get that. Rather than taking a reductive approach and saying, What can I give away? What can I end my relationship with, so that everything else can kind of shine through? Coaching the other day, I said to somebody, maybe we don't need to set any more sales on your boat, maybe we just need to cut a few of these anchors loose. Right? So, tell me a little bit more about that feeling about being enough, and how that gets into people's way. 

Elayna 11:21

Gosh, there's so many different ways that we can explore this. And it's funny, I think I'm tripping up a little bit in the idea of it being around being enough. I'm taking a beat here to really let that sink in. I think that sometimes the excitement around it can mean that we're looking for that idea so hard, that we're looking for those ads, we're looking for the next and we don't actually stop long enough to even have the question of, Is this enough? Or am I enough? And yet I love that you've brought that up. Because it's a few layers down, it's just the access to it. We have to be able to slow down enough in order to have that.

Tim 12:16

To sort of take stock. Take stock and say what do I have working for me? Before I go out and gather more? 

Elayna 12:21

Yes. Well, definitely, that is exactly it. Because really what we're talking about, when I'm talking about owning your perspective and unlocking your creativity, what I'm really saying is what's already working for you? That thing that you want to create, that thing, that next big idea that you know, you need to add something or change this or, and you're looking for that coach who might help you or you've just been journaling on it, and you're in that motion, you're in the action. That's all really good. But if we don't have that moment where we can really sit with the process, and slow ourselves down enough to realize that this frustration, this wandering, this need to do more, is part of the process of building into that idea. And so it's that paradigm of slowing down to speed up, which I love how you've talked about what anchors do we need to cut because oftentimes those anchors are more things that we're just doing. So, we're going, we're going, we're going. Slowing down to speed up is a huge piece of how this can all really begin to click in place in a way that we can feel it. 

Tim 13:44

My friend Richard Young always talks about athletes and athletes, when they hit a certain age of 16, 17-18, they begin to question. It's a natural evolved response, they start to reject authority. So, they begin to question and reject the advice of coaches and teachers and parents, right? And then they start to look for those extrinsic things that they need to adopt. And this can be the superstitions, this can be the latest vitamin, this can be the training regime that they need to be on because everybody's doing it. And they begin to add these things on. And so much of what Richard proposes for these teams is get back to a state of what really determines whether or not you are able to express yourself through the sport. And what are the essential parts of that and are you doing those rather than all this getting distracted with all these other things? And so I think naturally as human beings were hunter-gatherers, we go we find that thing and then we store it away. We have to bank all of these supplies, in case we need them. We're loading for bear constantly because you never know when. And that idea of enough is probably too simplistic. It's sometimes you have to go learn something, right? I guess what I'm visualizing there is that we're getting in our own way sometimes. As you say, we need to take time to process to experience that. And calibrate, maybe? 

Elayna 15:26

Definitely, what you're getting into there with the word calibrate is the fact that this is all a continuum. This is all a process and there are different stages of that process in terms of where we're at with understanding our perspective, owning our perspective, expressing that to the world, and creating those opportunities for ourselves. It's never linear. It's one of the most confusing parts about marketing because marketing is all about people. It's all about connection. And what do we know about people and connection? Well, it's messy, it's changing, it's shifting. Our energy is changing and shifting in the way that we're showing up with each other right now. And it could have been different, or it was different 10 minutes ago versus 20 minutes ago. And so how do we harness all of those nuances? And yet, not get caught up in those supposed complexities of that, right, because that we could feel that everything that I'm saying is so complex? Well, what do I do? Is it even worth it? Or, we could slow down to take a minute and realize, well, yeah, I do know I'll to be true.

Tim 16:43

So, let's turn this lens on you for a bit, because I think this is a great time for us to learn a little bit more about how you found yourself here. When I hear you speaking, I would assume it's very important to you that people find that sense of self that allows them to fully express their value, or really feel like they're fulfilling their purpose or those kinds of things. So, that seems like it's a driving factor for you. Would that be accurate? 

Elayna 17:09

Yeah, and I really came to that through feeling like I should be adopting something else to make this business thing work, because I don't come from a business background. 

Tim 17:21

Tell us a little bit about that. Why don't you take us up to now, give us a bit about your history?

Elayna 17:25

I have a track record of doing things that are completely unknown to me. I do not come from a marketing background, I don't come from a business background, I come from a background of teaching English primarily in Japan. So, when I got started with marketing, I was following a system, then changing systems, what I was doing was actually really working, I ran a really successful program all about being authentic on LinkedIn and getting clients. But what I started to realize is that it was attracting a certain kind of people. And it was keeping me and those people in a box. And the reason that it was doing that is because I had a very specific guarantee on my services. It was, you know, work with me and we'll get your next one to three high-paying clients, or I'll work with you for free until we do. Great for sales. But what that ended up meaning is that if they didn't follow these exact steps, they weren't going to get what was promised. And the other thing that I was realizing is that most business owners don't actually know what they do, or who they do it for. And I was also realizing that as a business owner, which I completely fell into, I didn't know what I did or who I did it for. And so I went on this incredible journey of trying to figure that out. And a huge piece of that, that I couldn't name at the time was understanding how my perspective and where I came from with my teaching background and I've lived abroad for the majority of my adult life as well, how that experience perfectly positions me to help tap leaders, coaches, consultants, translate themselves to create new opportunities. So, this looks like marketing, personal branding. But I really want to step out beyond that, because so many of my clients discover things that they didn't know to want in the beginning. Including, I had one client who got so clear on who she wanted to work with. She fired a few clients, had some space, started a new business, and I helped her build the brand of that business. She could have never imagined that when we began together. So, the most important piece of my story for me, which is also the most important part of my story for my best clients as well. It's usually what gets them leaning in. That's the trick, right? Not the trick, the truth rather.

Tim 20:06

That's the key. 

Elayna 20:07

That's the key. I love that. Yes, that's the key. And the key really is, is that for me, because I have spent the majority of my life outside the States, I have always been looking for ways to translate my heart into whatever culture, context or language I was connecting through. And that is a skill that I didn't know that I was building at the time when I went to Japan. I didn't speak the language, I knew nothing of the culture. And I had no idea that I would need it in the way that I did. I lived so rurally, that if I didn't speak the language, I would not have any friends, or just not have any life, right? And so when we're talking about creating opportunity for ourselves, specifically in the marketing space, that truly is a translation. Let's look at LinkedIn for a second, the way that you show up there cannot be the same as the way that you show up in your delivery with clients. And I find that so many people, they're thinking that it's a direct translation, well, I do this with my clients, this must be what people want to hear, or they just have no conception of how we're going to build in those guardrails to create a really powerful translation, so that people who don't know them yet, know to lean into them, know to lean into their perspective and the unique gifts that they have to bring to the world. 

Tim 21:40

Think that idea of guardrails is really interesting. So, what I'm taking from this more than anything, and perhaps the most profound statement that you've made to me, is this idea of being able to translate your heart into other cultures and languages, into other situations. Right? So, that people can appreciate it from their perspective. I love that statement that says, we start where they are, we don't start where we are, right? If we're going to present ourselves to others in order to make a connection that's really clear and help them see us or experience us in the way that we want to be experienced. So, that there's not a lot of noise. We have to be conscious of where they are and how we speak in that moment, or how we act in that moment, or how we convey in that moment. And those guardrails, that idea of having guardrails really takes me back to the statement that said, you know, the human brain is only able to process so much information at once. And when we see people walking down the street, and we're with friends, we can't process everything, the feelings of everyone that's around us, or what's happening. We can focus on our friends as ourselves as the main character, and that's our supporting cast. But everybody else has to remain as background, they’re NPCs, as my kids say. They’re kind of background imagery and noise. We understand they’re people, but they're just figures moving. And in the same way, that guardrail helps people give people something that they can digest that they can get their hands around, that they can conceptualize in sort of a semi-pure form, without being distracted about all these other things that they might have to consider. So, we're helping guide thought, am I on track there with what you're thinking? 

Elayna 23:34

Definitely, definitely. And I find that so many of us, we have this thing that we want to talk about. And that's really good. I would say that when we start to speak, we do want to meet the person where they're at, right? So much of that fuel, though, comes from within us. So, to be able to kind of dance with the within and the connection that we're trying to create at the same time, is so important. And this is one of those weird things that language does is because I know that you agree with that. And sometimes when we try to communicate these ideas, we have to choose almost which one is more important. What I find with myself and my clients ask me this a lot too, is that I have this thing that I want to talk about. I love talking about creativity. But my best clients aren't sitting there thinking about creativity. So, if I want them to listen, I've got to validate their experience right now. And we can talk about that as being pain. You and I were talking about this earlier, right? Like there's a quality of it that yes, it can be pain, but a lot of us don't sit there thinking that we're in pain even when we need help. I don't think that way. So, we're really looking to reach into that experience of these other people, our best people and then look at what's really under that because what's really under that, for me, is almost always creativity. I can take any conversation and show you where the creativity is. So, what is that for you? Right? This is kind of a fun thought experiment for your listeners. For you, Tim. It's like, what is that thing that you can always refer back to? That thing that you want to be known for that thing that you talk about all the time that fuels you, throughout your day? 

Tim 25:25

That question you want to raise in the minds of others that that impression, you want to leave them with that feeling? All of that. That is exciting. And it's funny, when you talk about creativity, my mind always strays back to the idea of flow. And that in a positive direction, when we have a state of flow, we have this creative anxiety that's balanced properly, with a sense of control and a sense of, you know, we’re creative, but we also feel secure, we feel safe enough, right? So, that we're not straying over into fear, and being unnerved. And when we think about trying to control, especially an abstract or an inauthentic message to someone, it just sucks the creativity right out of the experience and slows us right down. And not only that but why are we doing that? We're doing that because we fear not being enough as we went back to. So, we have to be this something else, this thing we're supposed to be. But if we also keep sort of on the flow analogy, doing too much of that control, especially when there's no payoff and no juice in it for us, leads us to boredom and apathy. And one way that I've seen people burn out on their careers, and absolutely cave, when it comes to having to be a solopreneur or a founder and starting something is by chasing somebody else's dream or chasing that thing of what you're supposed to be in, it doesn't feel natural. And after a while, you get kind of bored of it. It sucks the life force out of you. And you're just left feeling unrestored, there's no payoff. Right? And so, when you help people connect, and clarify, what is their source of creativity, even if that's not how, they're saying, you're helping them tap into a fuel tank, you're helping them find their juice in the world, right? So, you've expressed a little bit about how this has led to your own enlightenment or your own your own drive. Could you walk us through a hypothetical or, you know, a name-free case study of what this transformation might look like in practice, how a person may come to you? And what kind of conversations are had so that you can illustrate for us what does this transformation experience actually look like?

Elayna 27:58

I mean, like any, it looks very different for many people. One of my more recent clients came to me, he'd been in business for four years and wasn't making sales. And he knew that there was something that he needed to address. And he just didn't really know what. And so by tapping into his perspective, and looking at what he did through that, it gave him an entirely different way of seeing the need for it, positioning the need for it, and having the clarity and confidence to have those sales conversations. And within six weeks of working with each other, he lined up all different kinds of conversations and got a new client from that. That's a very kind of quick overview. What I'd like to do is actually invite people into some of this practice for themselves right now. 

Tim 28:56

You can use me as a guinea pig if you want. 

Elayna 28:57

Yeah, okay. So, really, when we're starting with looking at your perspective, the most paradoxical thing about this is that your perspective is so close to you, how do you see it? It's not something that you can just look at. And so what I do with my clients is help them tap into ways that they can experience their own perspective. This is something that we're really not taught to think about. And so I invite all of us right now, wherever you're at, to look around you. And this is kind of funny, but like, literally, you are the only person in the entire universe who is seeing what you're seeing, even if you're sitting with someone right next to you.

Tim 29:49

This is just my paradigm and nobody else holds this. 

Elayna 29:52

Yes. And the other piece of that is that we often think about our perspective and talk about our perspective as just being one of many, right? And that we need to be aware of that, we need to be careful of that. And I'm not discrediting that. But that's not where I'm coming from. Where I'm coming from is that your experience, how you've lived your life, all of that is sitting with you right here at this moment, and guiding you to pick up certain things in your surroundings, and that will naturally be different. So, it's not just about the fact that I'm sitting in my sister's living room, I'm in the States right now. But it's what I choose to actually see here. And it's that, that when we're talking about coaches and consultants, it's that, that your best clients want and they need when we're talking about leaders. The people who need you to lead them, they want your perspective, you will help them see there's in a different way. There's fireworks that happens there. That's where new insight comes from and that's really what's going to help us tap into creativity and innovation.

Tim 31:09

When you see teams trying to collaborate, and I've got clients in the throes of this right now that I'm helping on team and departmental levels, organizational levels, is when they misconstrue what a person's motive is either from the service side or from the beneficiary side. It immediately causes consternation, it immediately causes friction and the inability for them to digest each other's values. And to serve properly. They're operating from this space of assuming that the other person thinks the way that they think that they see the world through their eyes, and that they understand what they understand. And just that realization that only we can see the world through this space and time. The implication is, the other person has just a unique of view. And so tell me a little bit about how we bridge that or what's the next step. 

Elayna 32:08

The next step for me and my clients is actually not to look at the other person yet. It's to look deeper into ourselves because now we've seen that we have this unique perspective just because we're looking around ourselves. But how do we actually have that what has happened? What has catalyzed us into this perspective that we have? And so what I do with my clients is we're looking at what I call their insight timeline. It's not the experience that matters, it's the insight that comes from that experience. So, we're looking at what have been those major insights across your life that positions you here today. And how do you understand that better in preparation for the next step, because the next step is to leave yourself at the door, and to look at who you're here to serve as a leader, as a coach. And now we're looking at what I call perspective matching. Where are those ways in which you really connect into the people that you lead? The clients that you serve? What does that mean? What does it mean to connect with them, validate their experience and help them see what they need to see in order to achieve what they're looking to achieve? 

Tim 33:38

I like that, and those insights, I mean, the vernacular that I've always used is, we all go through this life, and we amassed different understandings. So, there's pivotal moments, there's pivotal learnings, there's things that shape us. And we add them to ourselves as a construct. I often use the term you know, this is where we take on new beliefs, and we craft our identity around them. And I like the other term that you use, you said catalyze, but that categorization or that crystallization, or that construction now that this belief or this thing that we feel this identity, we hold this insight that we've taken on it forms us, it becomes part of our understanding of the world, it becomes how we explain things and how we are biased towards one thing or another. So, to back up, the first thing is the basic realization that you are unique. You are the only person that is seeing things through your eye. The next thing is to fully digest that or at least do some work to get fluent on what those things are and bring those into the conscious brain. Only then are you even remotely prepared to go out and say, okay, now I can appreciate or begin to appreciate what the other person is. Am I following? 

Elayna 35:02

Yeah. I mean, of course, this is nonlinear too, right? We need language to give us enough structure to be able to communicate it together here. But there's always going to be that feedback loop between understanding who you are because you're helping me understand how I'm being received right now. And vice versa for the people that you serve. How do these things all fit together? And how do they–

Tim 35:28

–it's not three stepping stones, it's a million different steps where every step brings us a new realization that opens up something else, if we choose to take that opportunity, that then gets us to another position, another paradigm where we can then take on the next piece of information. And it's really organic or nonlinear like that. That you can't just say, Okay, we're going to define all this. And oh, boy, howdy, do certain tools, try to promise you that you can, right? That you can just run I mean, I run, there's a couple of different inventories that I will use around performance and work style and how people find their genius. They're pretty humble in the sense that they don't attempt to explain everything. And do people ever want to have a shortcut towards this stuff? I don't know if it's because it's work or it's scary, or it's almost unnerving to realize that you are as unique as you are because that comes with the with the caveat that all that also means you're terribly alone in some ways. 

Elayna 36:31

Yeah. I mean, we think that we're afraid of the darkness, when truly we're afraid of the light, and there is so much light in each of us to truly bring that to the world is the scariest thing that I think we can ever do. It's definitely the scariest thing that I've done. And it's not something that you finish. That's another piece that I feel like our conversation is going towards is this idea that there are tools to help you do X, Y, Z. Great. And yes, some of those can be really helpful. But this is not about getting to this space where we have everything that we need and we just can sit back and relax and watch everything happen in front of us. I'm sure there are people who want to believe that that's true and those are the kinds of people that I don't work well with. Part of what I love about this kind of work is that once you've done it once, you have a different way of interacting with it for the rest of your life. 

Tim 37:34

When you take on that responsibility, when you don't absolve yourself from that knowledge, then you've come up face to face with the awesome realization that you've got a lot of choice. And that choice then means that there's only so much runway for staying ignorant. And as you were talking here, I was racking my brain trying to find one of my favourite quotes. And we've talked a little bit about all the lists or the records we keep, I have a massive favourite quotes file that I maintain. Because I just don't want to let these things go when I want a man that's pivotal. And I'm always sort of scanning over it if I need inspiration, but one of them was from Marianne Williamson. And she said, Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. And I think it's such a fear because then we have the acknowledgement that we may not be utilizing our brief time on this planet. Well, that's quite an inspiring and terrifying condition for some people. But for those of us, for those searchers, and those people that are looking for you and looking for me, I mean, we do have one thing going for us and that is they are people that are driven to be more or to find clarity or to fully actualize like they are. They're heading in that direction. Searchers is what I like to call them, right, because it's and, you know, being careful not to say that you're always deficient until you're complete. People are complete right now, today. And what can we do with that? So if you were to leave people with one thought, anybody who's listening, they're into a marketing effort or they're into a sort of self-discovery effort. What would be the key takeaway that you would want people to take, from this introduction to the way you're thinking? Which I think is absolutely fantastic, and I can't wait till we can connect because I have some questions. I provide guidance and answers, but I never want it to be thought that great coaches don't have great coaches. Great coaches need, you know, a support system. And as many of the people know, I mean, a lot of the people that are a part of my company, I hold them as counsel. Right? They are qualified in areas that I am not. And they are able to help me see the forest through the trees, you know because you can't see that when you're on a limb of a specific tree, and you are trying to appreciate everything that we are, right? It's just not our business. But what would be the thought you would leave people with? Or the hope, or the wish you would have for them? 

Elayna 40:35

What I would encourage all of us to do, and I'm going to include myself in this because I'm in a constant evolution with my own business, is get that thing that you want, in your mind, like feel that for a second and feel like the should I do this? Or should I do that? What's that next thing? Because we can feel like that kind of shaking energy. If you can see me, I'm kind of shaking right now. Because we, we know that it's there. Right? And that's the key. It's there. So, feel that and really look at what's already happening here. And how do I work with that? Actually, let me rephrase. It's not how do I work with that? It's how am I already working with that? 

Tim 41:27

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's funny when you said that I just had a thought crystallize in my mind. And that was so often I think we are mistaking a feeling that feeling of anxiety as something that is absent because we mistake that for something that's a gap, versus something that is not fully tapped into yet something is going unused. You know, that statement when you're a kid, and you're given some money, and they say it's burning a hole through your pocket, you can't wait to spend this energy on the planet to get something done. Okay, that's a pretty negative analogy in the sense that we're not supposed to spend money, willy-nilly. But when we think about we have potential that's burning a hole in our humanity wallet. And yet we mistake that for a feeling of uneasiness that could be easily misconstrued internally, as I'm not enough right now. Or I'm not I'm missing something. But what we're missing is that expression, that ability to emote or create with that thing, that's that unused tube of paint, it's that palette knife, we need to grab and I'm vibrating with you. I'm like, Oh my gosh, I got I've got something in the basement here. I gotta go. And I've got to get it out. And sometimes it's just, I love the the work of Julia Cameron, right, she talks about unlocking/unblocking writer's block, right? And people who've been part of my morning pages group that's called The Morning Stoke, we go and we do a writing exercise where we journal down all these random thoughts, just so we can get them out of our brain, we spend 12 minutes there. And that for people is often enough to just get those monkeys back in their cage. You know, spiritual windshield wipers is what Tim Ferriss calls it, we just get we get through all that. So, we can go and we can be. So, this is super exciting. What is the most exciting thing you've got on the go right now? What if we're looking at you, albeit through our paradigms, but if we're looking down from space at Elayna, what are we gonna see her doing right now? What's got you excited? 

Elayna 43:46

Yeah, I'm really excited about continuing to reframe all these traditional ways that we look at marketing and business. So, one of the things that I'm working on right now is a way of actually noticing what's already happening, and figuring out how we're already working with that. And that might sound really vague. But there's a few different pieces of it. One is it's kind of an anti-productivity hack of sorts, like we're not, we're not talking about productivity and time management, because those kinds of things just create more space for us to do more. I'm in the process of developing a different kind of tracker, a creativity tracker, although it's not necessarily about tracking creativity. It's a creative way to track and build awareness around what's already happening for you, and how to work with that. So, that's a new offer that will be coming in the new year that I'm extremely excited about. The other thing that I want to leave us with is this question of, what if it were easy? And I'm saying this right now because this idea that I've had, I've been mulling over for like, literally years. And this morning, I finally just sat down and wrote in this notebook right in front of me and wrote down everything that's needed in 15 minutes, using the question, what if it were easy? Moving us into this space of where are we getting in our own way? What does it look like if we just ask ourselves, what if it were easy? And then come from that space? 

Tim 45:32

What if we just did the actions? What if we just went forward with it? And what if it was the easiest thing in the world? I want to invite you back because when that tool is ready, I would love for you to introduce people to it here, as well as wherever else you're putting it out. 

Elayna 45:46

I'm super excited. And just think, as wild as you can, because that's what this is going to be.

Tim 45:53

Wow, love it. Where can people connect with you? Keep you on their radar? What's the best place?

Elayna 46:01

Two places I'm active on LinkedIn, I post often there these kinds of insights, this kind of conversation. I also have a newsletter. And you can find that newsletter at thereframenewsletter.com. So, either one of those places and the newsletter is really all about reframing these usual ideas that’s up. 

Tim 46:22

All right, well, we will put both of those in the show notes. Do you have a title by the way for this creativity tracker? Is there a working title or something? 

Elayna 46:32

Oh, gosh, I wish I could just pull one out of my head–

Tim 46:35

Oh, no problem. Well, let's maybe I can help you workshop it. That would be fun. All right. Well, oh, man, Elayna, thank you so much for taking the time to introduce yourself to a whole new group of people. And I am very excited to see where your own creativity unlocked, helps people that I care about. And maybe even helps me to care about myself once in a while. It's gonna be awesome. So, such a wonderful take on things, and I really appreciate it. So, thanks again for spending time. 

Elayna 47:12

Yeah, Tim, thank you so much. And thank you so much to the ears that are with us right now. It's been an absolute pleasure and reach out if you hear this conversation. I really do just love connecting and having more conversations. So, thank you. 

Tim 47:27

Well, I can't wait to help you spread the word. All the best. We'll talk soon.

Elayna 47:32

Thanks.

Tim 47:37

Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If like us you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership. Please give us a positive rate rating and review on Apple Podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders. And you can spread the word too, by sharing this with your friends, teams, and colleagues. Thanks again for listening and be sure to tune in in two weeks' time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host, Tim Sweet, encouraging you to keep on leading.

Discover the powerful parallels between poker and leadership as Tim Sweet engages with Erin Lydon, President of Poker Power. Erin, with a Wall Street background, shares insights into teaching poker for leadership excellence. The discussion explores vital skills like courage, risk-taking, and resilience, drawing parallels between poker strategy and effective decision-making in various contexts. Erin highlights poker as a confidence and negotiation tool, especially for women in business. 

The conversation delves into key poker strategies, emphasizing their practical applications. Erin also discusses Poker Power's impact on corporate programs and its mission to empower young women early in their careers. The episode concludes with Erin's advice for leaders: embrace change, say "yes" more than "no," and recognize the transformative power of taking risks.

About Erin Lydon

Erin Lydon, President of Poker Power, is a finance industry veteran and advocate for workplace equity. Fueled by her early challenges on Wall Street, Erin founded Poker Power to empower women through poker-based leadership training. With a background at JPMorgan and as a strategic advisor to Evil Geniuses, a global e-sports organization, Erin brings extensive experience to her mission. 

Recognized with the Global Gaming Women “Women of Inspiration–Woman to Watch” award, she holds an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and a BA from Bates College. Erin is a sought-after speaker, having graced prestigious stages like TEDx and Money 20/20 RiseUp. Erin's dynamic leadership journey, commitment to workplace equity, and pioneering efforts at Poker Power showcase her as a trailblazer, inspiring women globally to harness the strategic prowess of poker for personal and professional success.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Inventures: Inventurescanada.com
• Duncan Wardle: duncanwardle.com
• Don't Just Do Something, Stand There
• JPMorgan: jpmorganchase.com

Contact Tim Sweet | Team Work Excellence: 

• Website
• LinkedIn: Tim Sweet
• Instagram
• Linkedin: Team Work Excellence

Contact Erin Lydon | Poker Power: 

• Website: pokerpower.com
• Instagram: @joinpokerpower
• Twitter: @joinpokerpower
• Facebook: Poker Power
• TikTok: @joinpokerpower
• Linkedin: Erin Lydon

Transcript:

Erin 00:00

So often at a poker table, nobody has a made hand, you know. So, it really is going to come down to the person who's going to play their chips most aggressively and get the other players to fold. That person is going to win the hand. That is something you have to practice, shoving your chips all in, when you have imperfect information, you don't know the cards still to come. And you certainly don't know what the other players have. That's a learned skill. Because it's scary.

Tim 00:30

I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you my friend are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. Welcome to the 24th episode of the Sweet on Leadership podcast. 

Tim 01:03

Welcome back, everybody. Thanks again for joining us for Sweet on Leadership. My name is Tim Sweet and this is my special guest Erin Lydon. Erin, thank you so much for joining us today. 

Erin 01:11

Delighted to be here, Tim. 

Tim 01:13

Well, you and I had a chance to meet last summer here in Calgary as we were both presenting at Inventures, which was a tech and startup conference here in the city. And that sure was a lot of fun. I remember we first met sitting at a table on the very first day during the keynote.

Erin 01:29

We did and actually, I thought you were one brilliant, two really funny, and three really easy to talk to. So, it was a great first experience for me at Inventures.

Tim 01:39

Well, I thought you were absolutely welcoming. You were game for anything. And we just took the challenges of the speaker and it was Duncan Wardle, I remember. And he was giving us games to play. And we just jumped right in. And it was so much fun. So, I knew right away that I had a person next to me who loved to play games. And what you might not know about me is that I actually have a long history and a love for Dungeons and Dragons of all things. Because it teaches people, well, a. it's role-playing. So, you're allowed to go and have a different experience and get out of your own head. And at the same time, it's like improv. So it's several people sitting around, and I played with my kids now. And it's like you're writing a story together. So, you learn to pick out people who are game, who are ready to just, you know, drop all the pretense. 

Erin 02:33

Yeah, I take that as a huge compliment. Because during that session, we really did have to put down our barriers and get very vulnerable. And remember, we had to draw, you are much better at illustration than I was, but there was just there's a lot of connection that happened quickly through that session. So, I'm thrilled we're back together for another conversation.

Tim 02:51

Oh, that's wonderful. I think for everybody listening here, it would be remiss of me to not give you a chance to just explain who you are. I mean, I know. And the really exciting thing that you bring and that you brought to Inventures and that you're bringing here today.

Erin 03:07

I am Erin Lydon, and I'm the president of Poker Power. I've been in this role for almost four years. We are a startup, I say we're a long-standing startup at this point. So, we have made it we're over those initial barriers of startups. But that's really not who I am, you know, deep down or for most of my life. I was not a poker player. And I'm sure we'll get into that. But I have been in startups since 2012. I love the chaos. I love the energy. I love the success and the failure that comes with being in startups. But prior to that, I was on Wall Street. So, I had a very serious corporate job at JPMorgan. I worked with many clients, I traveled three or four days a week. And the only reason I left that job truly was because I had a young daughter, I was getting into my late 30s. And I really struggled on how to be on that very fast track career, and also have a newborn at home. And for listeners who are much younger than I am. This is in the 2000s. And we really didn't have the programs and the policies and the opportunities that now so many firms are making available to working parents and new parents. But before all that I grew up in Maine, so a long way from Calgary, but somewhat similar weather I think. Truly, I just had a terrific childhood. You know, I spent most of my summers on the ocean, on the main coast, on a sailboat, and went to college in Maine at Vates and then moved to Chicago, and shortly thereafter went to business school at Northwestern, and everything started from there. 

Tim 04:29

That’s excellent. And when you think about an industry and a location to cut your teeth, in the professional world, I can think of few examples that are more aggressive than Wall Street. So, I mean, you were in with both feet. This is not for the faint of heart.

Erin 04:48

No, and I didn't go into it with eyes wide open. I'll be honest, I had been in healthcare previously before going to business school and actually expected to go into healthcare management. I loved, I was a fundraiser primarily raising money for cancer and women's health programs. And really saw that as my career path forward when I was in my mid-20s. What happened in Business School is one, I figured out that I was very bad at consulting interviews, because that's the direction I was heading down. So, when I failed at those, I had to pivot pretty quickly. And it was actually one of my dear friends, he said to me, one evening, early in September of our second year, he said, Erin, you should go into banking. And no one had ever said that to me. And my dad's the CFO, you know, he'd worked with nurses his whole career, but I literally had not had a math class in years. And so in order to really make that change, for a career pivot, I had to get a lot of classes, I took a lot of finance classes, in my first semester, and I got very good at interviewing for the banks, and interviewing for the banks is a whole different experience than interviewing for consulting. And it turned out that I was very, very good at solving the questions that they were asking. And so when I, you know, hit Christmas time of my second year, I had eight banking offers. And I really had my choice of where to go next. And I always say I picked JPMorgan because, during my holiday break, my future boss called me one time over the holidays. And he wished me a Merry Christmas and said he hoped my family was well. And the competing firm called me every single day of my holiday break and started to badger me about why I had not accepted the offer. And what that taught me, this was an early tell that I picked up on, is that I am not the type of person who's going to call you every single day and try to make a sale, that would never have been me. So, I realized pretty quickly that I'm not going to fit there. And I fit very, very well at JPMorgan.

Tim 06:34

There's two things I love about that scene that you've painted for us. The first is that you're not going to be the one that's going to be pushing rope, you want to be pulled into something and you want others to be pulled into something. The other thing is you dropped the word tell. That was an early tell that they gave you which I think pulls us right towards the knowledge that a game like poker can begin to give us. You're in Wall Street, you start your career there. How then does that take you to now? Can you give us a bit of a sense of what the travels were at that point?

Erin 07:08

It was not at all a linear progression. And truly when I say I would still be at JPMorgan, I would still be at JPMorgan if I had been able to solve for the early motherhood challenges that I experienced. But it ended up being you know, as so many times in life, you know, when the door closes, the window opens. And I think you know, several windows opened for me. The first is that I was able to move into startups. And then secondly, one of my original, very early clients at JPMorgan, I had stayed in touch with all those years. And she had this idea around teaching teenagers how to play poker, particularly teenage girls. And she shared it with me over the holidays in 2019. And I said that's a really stupid idea. And I really meant it. Because my whole time on Wall Street, there was always a poker game going on. And I never felt included. But worse, I never felt like I could ask to sit at that table. I just didn't see myself there. And so poker was always on the periphery. But I was never a part of that game. So, once you have this idea, and what the reason I said it was stupid is because I couldn't fathom outside of you know, James Bond, Hollywood movies, and basement really gross places where men play poker. I couldn't fathom what this could become. Fortunately, she laughed too. And she came back a few weeks later. And she said, No, I really think you need to get involved with this. And that was three weeks before the pandemic. And if you can remember in February, and going into March, none of us thought this pandemic thing was going to last very long. And at that time, when you think about poker, you think about real humans, real chips, real cards, it's very hard to imagine this game in a virtual world, especially when you don't know how to play it. But that's exactly what we had to figure out. And the pandemic was our perfect storm. Because while the teenagers went the wayside because they were so overwhelmed by their new virtual lives, suddenly, every single company around the globe was looking for a way to get us to turn our cameras on, and to engage with each other. And just at that moment, we had created a virtual curriculum. We had a poker app to play on. And we were able to really break down the barriers of bringing the game into companies first in America, and now globally. 

Tim 09:17

When you think about breaking down barriers, that really is one of the key parts of this, and I thought you'd been in Wall Street, there was a poker game going on all the time, but you were never at the table. And women and even men, often the challenge that they come to me with is I want to go up in the organization, I want to be in with the senior team, how do I get invited to these tables? How do I position myself so that I can, you know, get behind those closed doors so that I can be part of things and that's a huge progression that when leaders are wanting to really accelerate their career up into senior leadership and executive leadership. That's a skill that many people have to stumble upon, and not necessarily learn. So at this point, you've got this, this app, perfect storm, things are rolling. I mean, I remember that wasn't that long ago. But I remember myself getting involved in virtual social activities, just so that we didn't feel like we were going crazy. When we were in the middle of lockdown up here in Canada. You were positioned there. And so what was the initial reaction? Were businesses clamoring to get on this? Was it individuals? Were you originally marketed as this way to get women involved?

Erin 10:39

We were as soon as we pivoted to corporates. And we actually started with Morningstar. So, a very well-known financial firm headquartered in Chicago. I think back to 2020 and them being willing to take a risk with us because we were clunky. Like every other business that was now a virtual business and trying to figure out how to, you know, engage across the screen. What we figured out pretty quickly though, is 1. Poker has to be fun, doesn't matter who the players are, you have to think this theme is fun in order to want to come back. And then 2. because poker is such an intimidating game, for so many people. It's the jargon, it's the rules, it's the math, all these things prevent people from wanting to engage with the game. We knew very early on, we had to make it highly accessible, and very bite-sized. And if we could get those two things, right, make it fun, so you want to come back, make it approachable and quick to learn, so you only have to remember two or three things in every one of our classes, then you're going to start to engage with us. And that was the secret sauce is exactly as you described him. During that first year, the pandemic, people were looking for regular touch points with other humans. And we were a little tired of talking to the ones that were living in our homes at that point. And so the opportunity to be in a classroom setting, playing a game, getting better at the game. And best of all, in a competitive game, there is something that brings you back. And you have to understand what Poker Power, there's no money transacting. So, there's no gambling, there's no money put into the app, it is truly competing for bragging rights and a leaderboard. And that was enough, it's still enough that you know, you want to see your name at the top of that leaderboard. And that's what we figured out. And then we were able to package it up as leadership development, professional development, and started first with financial firms because that's where we have so many good relationships. And now we have 230 corporate partners. So, we have expanded across industries, all sizes of firms, and women at every level. You know, as much as I love having interns and associates. I also love having the C-suite learn to play this game. 

Tim 12:37

Yeah, for sure. Okay, so let's get a little bit into, there's two things that I want to know when I'm trying to decide what order to hit them in. I want to understand why this speaks to you. And when you were going out for funding, what was the personal skin you had in the game? Right? Why was this particular venture so compelling for you to get involved in? And then I want to get into a little bit about the mechanics and what a person can actually learn in poker that they can't learn otherwise.

Erin 13:06

During my time in banking, during that first year, at the end of the first year, you all get a bonus. The firms done well, your team has done well, you've done well, you get a bonus, and it's a large number, it's usually more than just your salary. And when I received my first bonus, it was a really big number for me, because I was coming from a nonprofit background. And I received it, I shook my boss's hand, and I adored him. I learned so much from him over the last year. And I just said thank you very much. And I walked out of the room. This is at a time when there were paced secrecy rules. So, you were not allowed to share your numbers. Some of that has gone away, a lot of it truly hasn't. But as often happens, you know, it gets late at night and all the new cohort gets together and you share. And in that moment of sharing, I learned that I was paid significantly less than a male colleague to the point that it was 1000’s of dollars, not hundreds of dollars. And my response to that was, how did you get that? It was a genuine question. How did you get so much more? And his answer was that he had asked. And for me, it had never crossed my mind. I was supposed to ask for more. And that sounds crazy to me now because now I know how to negotiate and so many people know how to you have to ask in order to receive. But I truly was just in a position of being grateful. I went on with my career, things got better. I'm glad I learned that lesson early on. However, it always stuck with me as why didn't I already know how to ask? Why wasn't comfortable? I didn't have the confidence, the courage, the background, and what was holding me back? And if it's holding me back, it's probably holding back a lot of other people, especially a lot of other women. And so fast forward almost 20 years later, I do a TED Talk and the TED talk is all about equal pay. Because truly from that day of not receiving the bonus I wish I had I got on to the Equal Pay bandwagon. And in that talk, I have five really great solutions for equal pay, none of which are poker because I didn't know about poker yet. But I say if I were to do that same talk today, I would only say the answer is poker. And the reason for that is through learning poker and playing poker, you are honing the skills that you need for negotiation in a really critical way. And you're building confidence and you're building confidence certainly in the game, which then translates to more confidence. All of those things will be done at the poker table. So, it is very personal to me because while I missed out on an opportunity, you know, early in my career, I don't want other women to miss out on it. 

Tim 15:29

What are some of the key skills that poker teaches? Could you give us some of the highlights?

Erin 15:35

Our curriculum has 12 leadership lessons. So, each one of our weekly lessons has one of the skills as the theme. The first lesson is courage, it takes a lot of courage to sit at a poker table. The second one is bold, and the word bold really is slash aggression. So, the word playing aggressively the word aggression in a poker game is a really strong positive. And the reason I say that is and you’ve played poker Tim, so you understand, is so often at a poker table, nobody has a made hand, you know, so it really is going to come down to the person who's going to play their chips most aggressively, and get the other players to fold, that person's gonna win the hand. That is something you have to practice, shoving your chips all in, when you have imperfect information, you don't know the cards still to come. And you certainly don't know what the other players have. That's a learned skill. Because it's scary. Like the first time I ever did it, I had butterflies and I wasn't even playing for real money, and I still had butterflies. So, lesson number two is being bold and aggressive. And then we go on with risk-taking. With every hand that you play in poker, it's a risk because you don't know the outcome. One of the great things about playing a poker game over and over is you get immediate feedback on your risk-making decisions. There aren't a lot of areas in life where you get that immediate feedback, like that was the right decision, you won the pot, that could have been a better decision had you made some different decisions along the way. We continue with resilience, perseverance. We do teach poker math, it's a really important part of the game. A quick story about poker math is that it used to be lesson three and it was our most skipped lesson during the pandemic. And we couldn't figure out why. We're like, Why is no one showing up for poker math, until of course, a marketing person said, Well, you're calling it poker math. 

Tim 17:16

Poker math. You said the “M” word. 

Erin 17:18

So, we moved it to Lesson Seven, because I know once you've already taken six lessons, you're probably gonna come back for lesson seven. And we now call it calculating. It's really about the calculations and the equity and the probability of the game that we want to teach.

Tim 17:34

The thing that really resonates with me is this idea of aggressiveness and boldness. And, you know, when we think about… I think I can't remember what the number was. But when when we have a reaction to men, or women being aggressive in the same situation, 76% of the time, women will be seen as too aggressive. When they're right at the same level, when only 26% of men will be accused of being too aggressive. And there's all sorts of labels. And there's all sorts of mechanisms in place, cultural mechanisms, and whatnot, that really work against women in the boardroom, where they're written off, or they're talked about as being too emotional, or they're talking about, you know, all sorts of manner of degrading assumptions can be made. You know what I mean? This is very common. I've seen this happen firsthand, where women are made to feel not enough in the situation when they push their chips all in. So, focusing on that for a minute, when we think about the kinds of lessons that you teach in that first or second segment, what would be one of the key messages that you draw out of that?

Erin 18:49

You know, it's actually fascinating to watch a total novice play this game, in the early days, because typically, in the beginning, there is a lot of hesitation to push the chips all in to shove. And the reason is, even though there is no monetary value, is that a woman will say during the game, that's so many of my chips, can I just hold back a few of them? 

Tim 19:13

Ah, scarcity mentality? 

Erin 19:14

Yes, and I have now played poker with a lot of men, and I have never, ever seen a man say, can I hold back a few of my chips? And I think it's that pattern of behavior that we are trying to change. And so if I can get you to practice, it's a physically doing the move. It's physically feeling what this feels like to have something at risk. And it's also getting that, you know, did you win the chips, or did you not win the chips? It's often good that you don't win the chips and you lose, because then we pause, and we talk through what happened. And so there's this learning element to decision-making that is so critical to making better decisions. And so one of the things that you will see with professional poker players is they write down their hand histories so they're, you know, if they're on their phone, they might be surfing but they're probably write down their hand histories, so they can go back and study points in the game where they made a misstep. It's a very analytical game from the sense of you can improve game after game, day after day, week after week. And you can see that improvement. Yeah, I've now been playing almost four years, and I play a lot of poker now both do in our app, and I also play in Vegas. And I know I have better. Am I great at this game? Absolutely not. But has it given me a new framework and a new method of problem-solving, and thinking through situations where there's a number of different outcomes that could occur? Absolutely. It's changed my perspective.

Tim 20:34

It's funny to talk about hand history because often one of the coaching techniques that I'll use is to have people even write down and observe, what are they feeling in the moment. How are they playing this situation with a staff member, or with a boss, or with a partner, or a customer? At one point, you have to be there, you have to be present, you have to be authentic, you have to be building trust, but at the same time, you have to be fluent in how do I typically react in this situation? And what is that like? And is this, am I feeling the pressure or the tension with a belief of what I'm capable of or not capable of? And is that pulling me towards a certain behavior? And can I resolve that tension? So, I can act in the manner that's needed in the moment? And you know, hearing you speak about poker and I remember, I believe it was when we were in Inventures, or maybe it was your presentation. But it was the notion of, yes, I feel this way. Yes, I feel nervous or whatnot. But now I can shelve that. And I can make the right move. And I can essentially, observe my own behavior and get out of my own head and say, What is the situation require? And how am I going to behave in this situation? Right, so that it can become somewhat, not careless, but in fact, very, very intentional. And it's like I'm about to make this move. And it may not be comfortable. And that's not the issue, the issue is, what's the right thing to do in the moment? 

Erin 22:06

Right, and it's the repetition because one of the great things about poker is it's a very fast-moving game. And so yes, you lose a hand, you give up some of your chips, but the cards are already getting redelt for the next hand. And it is because of that practice, you get to do, you know, in an hour playing poker, you can play 10, 15, 20 different hands. And so you're getting to make a number of decisions, with all these different inputs that are always evolving, you know, as the cards come out in the center of the board on the other table, your decision-making is going to change based off of new information, and based off of what you're observing from the other players. So, it's a very dynamic game from that standpoint. And you have to keep rethinking, what do I do next? You know, how big is my chip stack? How big is your chip stack? What are the patterns that I've observed with you over the last half hour and what do I think you're going to do next? And all of those characteristics make it such a fascinating game, to practice because it is the boardroom, it is the interview room, often it is the classroom. And so if you can get better in a simulated scenario, you're going to be able to translate the gameplay from the table to the gameplay in your real life.

Tim 23:14

Yes, and I think and you'll be able to carry that metaphor back into your real life. Whereas when you're learning it in that metaphoric sense, in this arena that's taken away from the regular work world, you're able to approach things with a lot less fear. And I think what's important here for people to realize, too, is that it's not just an app, yes, you're training people on the app, but you're also running live events. And you're working with corporations, and you're working with higher education institutions. And you're able to bring this into a very real situation where you have colleagues playing together, and they're able to pull out of that. And if I go back to that D&D thing, we have a program called Budgets and Boardrooms, which is based on it's a D&D module that we play in a business sense, and it's pretty–

Erin 24:00

Oh, I love this. 

Tim 24:01

Oh, yeah, it's a lot of fun. But, you know, when we think about these opportunities that leaders have to build teams, or to impart skills, or to really challenge limiting beliefs, you know, Poker Power gives us an example of that, in that there are some characteristics that leaders should be looking for, and you've spoken to a lot of them already, where they're able to be in this sandbox. They're able to experience the consequences of their decisions very quickly, far more quickly than you would get in normal life. So, that they can practice, and they can see themselves, and they can have this iterative type of development experience. And those are very important. What would be some of the other things that just generally you think that a good off-site or development session has, naturally I appreciate that Poker Power would be demonstrating that but on a wider contextual basis, what should leaders be looking for? 

Erin 25:00

Stay with poker for just a moment, but then I will go from there is the poker table of being a meritocracy. And I think that is a critical factor when you gather people together of all different levels. And the reason it's meritocracy is if no one really knows how to play this game, then it doesn't matter where you went to school, doesn't matter what your title is, doesn't matter how big, or strong, or tall you are, all of those things typically designate winners in our culture, in our businesses. And all of that goes away. Because at the poker table, the only thing that matters is how you play your cards. And that's all up here, that is inside your head. And for women in particular, it levels the playing field immediately. And in fact, one of the best things about poker is you actually don't ever have to speak. And the reason I highlight that is so often in a boardroom setting, in a meeting setting, a woman will contribute an idea or plan, and she will be overtalked, or the idea will be taken and put into the mouth of someone else. And this is a real pet peeve of mine and something that I care a lot about women being able to reclaim their words and their ideas. So, they do own them. That happens at a poker table because you don't have to speak all of your decisions, all the way that you show value is through how you maneuver your chips. And it's like a light bulb, you know. And so I like to take the scenarios that happen within a poker game, and then translate them to the real-world scenarios that you know, all of us are experiencing in our business lives. I think another thing that is really important, is enabling women to feel that they can take a risk. And it is, okay, if it fails. You know, so often like you think about when women apply for jobs or promotions, will only do it if we literally tick every single requirement that's been put into the job description, and then men only need five or six, if that and they're going to apply. So, women are more hesitant in many scenarios to take that risk. When you are playing poker, unless you literally plan to fold every single one of your hands at some point, you're gonna have to put chips into that pot. And that's a risk. And so I want you to know that even if you lose the hand, there's a lesson and a learning that's going to come to that, that as you start to piece together these different learnings from the poker table, they're going to start to make sense and how you interact and behave within a business setting.

Tim 27:21

That I think is such a great takeaway from this in the sense of, you know, it is two things there. One is what do we do in the face of risk? And are we able to translate that risk into opportunity? Is it the risk itself that creates the differentiator that allows one person to move forward or not? And how we handled I think that's a great part. The other thing is, and I know this as a coach, and learning and development specialist that facilitates a lot of these team sessions. Primarily, the tools we give people are verbal in nature. And so, you know, you've really got me thinking what a bias that immediately imposes that we talk our way out of situations, or we do these kinds of things. Whereas the physical, and the ability to let you know, even for myself when I'm say facilitating a strategic session, or if it's a conflict resolution or something, silence is such an important skill for me. There was a great book back in the day that was for facilitators called, Don't Just Say Something, Stand There. And it was like, just let the room breathe and see what they're going to do. And that silence is a very real power. And sometimes the person who speaks first truly does lose, wow, that's not entirely true. But it's like, you know what I mean that you need to you need to use it, and you need to use your physical presence as well.

Erin 28:47

There are certain moves in poker, in the actual gameplay that we talk a lot about, just as you have said. So, the move that you just described that pause, and call it the power of the pause, that's the check move. So, when you're playing a hand of poker, it's your turn, and you're the first to act. And so you have a decision to make, you can put chips into the pot, you can raise the amount of chips in the pot, or you can literally tap on the table or verbally say the word check. And what that does, is it gives you that breathing space so that the gameplay moves to the person who is to your left, and they will then make their decision. If they decide to put chips in, it's going to come back around to you. But in that moment of checking, you're saying, I'm just going to observe what's going on here. I'm going to step back for, it could be seconds, it could be you know, 30 seconds, and really think through my next move here. That's huge. That's huge that you can play a game where you get to actually control the tempo of the game and how you play your moves. Because that's what you want to do in a negotiation. You don't always want to be the first to speak, you want to state you know what you want. You want to give the breathing space for someone to respond to you. 

Tim 29:50

You don't want to set an anchor. 

Erin 29:52

Yeah, you've gotten them to speak first and then you can take that moment of pause and I think so often we are, and partly, it's just, you know, having spent so much of our time now in a virtual world and we have so many digital inputs that come to us, is we feel this need to respond immediately, to a slack, to an email, to that text message. And in fact, I use the power of the pause, that check move in just my day-to-day interactions with my team, with other people within the firm. Like, I actually don't have to answer this right now, I can pause and I can think through what I want to say, that's empowering to know that you can do that. Yeah, and then I think the other move that's so important that follows that that check is the power to raise. So, to really put a lot of value into a poker game, and say that you're dominant, to tell the story because so much of poker is telling a narrative of strength or weakness. And so you put a lot of chips into the pot, and you are telling everybody else that you'd like your hand. Now, you might be bluffing. And bluffing is a really important skill in poker. Or you might actually have, you know, those two kings are those two aces and a really strong hand. But you're able to decide how you're going to maneuver and push around other people at the table. And I always say that when women get a big chip stack, so they have a lot of chips in front of them more than anyone else at the table. We always say you're now you're the bully. And that's a real like, you will see women actually sort of recoil at that word or like pause, like, why are you calling me the bully. And I'm saying in a really positive way, you're the bully at this table because you have the most value in front of you. And you can push other people around. And so infrequently do we get into those positions of power that we can make in the workplace, doing it at the poker table is incredibly enlightening. And it also helps you understand being on the other side of that when you don't have the big chip stack and you're being bullied around, what does that feel like?

Tim 31:42

We're talking about bullies, and we're talking about the ability to force people's hands or anything along those lines. Poker is naturally an adversarial game. And so I mean, it is really us against the table. But I think it's important for the listeners to realize that even though we're testing it, we're testing ourselves in that form. It doesn't preclude us from being collaborative, it doesn't preclude us from coming together and accomplishing something. However, when it comes to getting your thoughts across, or being as influential as you need, or having that confidence, or being able to articulate and represent an idea, without softening or stepping back on important issues, and the rest of it, that's when these skills come in. So, they're not absent in a collaborative sense. I mean, obviously, we're not going to bring a bully methodology into a team environment. But they do exist. And it's not about always seeking a win-lose. It's about making sure that you advocate for yourself and advocate for your ideas. And, you know, sport teaches us so many good things about this, but not everybody has had the experience of having to be in an aggressive competitive environment, be it sport, or dance or gymnastics, or Taekwondo or whatever they're doing. Fencing, you know?

Erin 33:01

Yeah, no, so many young women drop out of sports once they hit high school, you know, 13-14 years old, and they and they stop. And one of the surprising things that has happened in our games is that, yes, it's a zero-sum game, just as you describe, one person is going to win the pot, everyone else is going to lose, and you don't want to play again. But in that moment of someone winning, what is happening at the table is very fascinating to me, because the person who wins is, she feels like a rock star, like literally feels like a rock star. And she's often you know, taking pictures and selfies of herself, scooping those chips in. But the other thing that's happening at the table is those eight or nine other women that she's seated with, they're celebrating her, and that I do think is a very uniquely female characteristic is you just took all my chips, but I am so incredibly proud of you, I am so happy for you. And the reason this is so important at our poker table is our tables feel good. So, even if you lose all your tips, you're doing it in a setting that feels very collaborative, very supportive. And one that you want to be back in again, like women tend to like those types of environments, we're willing to play the game. But we also want to make sure that we're all feeling really positive about the game. And I think that then lends itself to the poker table being a place where networks are formed, relationships are built, deals get made, we know that's what happens, you know, at or at real poker tables. And we want to give women those same spaces and environments to experience them.

Tim 34:28

It's got me thinking back to, you know, when you see these caricatures of people, when you watch professional poker on TV, oh, and by the way, I mean, there's a reason it's on a sporting network and not on something else, right, because it really does have this competitive edge that you don't find in a lot of cerebral games. You know, but you see these caricatures and these archetypes of like the Phil Hellmuth where he's just, you know, the biggest whiner when he's losing and so arrogant when he's not versus other players that come to the table. And at least they're controlling it that way. But they want to have fun. And they're trying to encourage, you know, they're wanting to make it jovial. And notice the others that sit there and say absolutely nothing. What a way to be able to explore who we are, and really test ourselves and become fluent in how we're going to approach certain situations and gain some awareness and face up to some potentially challenging facts about ourselves, and maybe how we were raised or what beliefs and identities we hold. And we have accessible to us so that we can fill our toolbox with other options. So, I mean, this is really exciting stuff. Erin, I hope we get another chance to talk and see how this goes. I think it's absolutely fascinating. And I can't wait to hear a little bit more. But in the meantime, let me ask you a couple of questions. When it comes to Poker Power or your life in general, what's the most exciting thing that's happening for you right now? What do you have going on?

Erin 36:03

Well, I'm in a state of transition personally, in just that my children are grown, life is going to probably take me in a different direction. Certainly where I live is changing. I actually live in North Idaho of all places. And so I think, you know, there's a personal transition that will happen in my life, and I'm really excited about that. I love change, I thrive on change, so it doesn't scare me. And when people say, Well, what's next, I'm like, I don't know, it's gonna get figured out, you know, the cards aren't all dealt yet. So, we'll just wait and see. I think for Poker Power, we're also in a state of transition, you know, we've been a startup, successful startups are very good at trying a lot of experiments or pilots, things that you fail at, you know, that's what makes a really good start, because you've failed a lot. And you've learned from it. And you've been able to pivot and really focus on what is working for the business. We're at that stage now. So, our corporate program is fantastic. You know, we have inbounds from corporates all over the globe. And we work in 40 countries virtually. And so we feel that's a really strong part of the program. What's coming next, though, is I need that teenager, and I need that young woman who's in college, because if we can get her to start to think and strategize and negotiate like a winning poker player today, you know, when she's 20 years old, not 40 years old, she is going to enter the workforce on a more level playing field, at our origin, at our most important mission at Northstar, that's what we're trying to do is get the skills and strategies into the hands of young women as early as we can, because we really do think it's going to have a generational impact on leadership and success. And then I think, what's next, I'm hoping to get to the beach in a couple of weeks. You know, it’s been a long year. So, I'm not heading back to Canada, as much as I like to ski and as much as I love Calgary. I'm heading to the beach, here in a few weeks. 

Tim 37:53

That’s great. If people want to get in touch with you, where can they reach out? 

Erin 37:56

Yeah, so pokerpower.com is our website, you can access our app there. And you can also get it from any of the app stores. It's called Poker Power Play. And that's how you can start your poker journey with us, you can also register for virtual lessons that we offer every week, you can do that on the website. And if you just want to reach out to me personally, please do so on LinkedIn, I'd be happy to DM with you and learn more about, you know, any of the interests that you may have. 

Tim 38:20

We'll put all of those links down in the show notes. Last question here. If you were to have a wish, for one of the leaders listening today, what would it be?

Erin 38:31

I would say to say yes, more than no. And the reason I say that is for about 25 years that has really been my life motto is that I say yes to everything. And that gets me in trouble, absolutely. I get myself into situations that I don't know how to solve, necessarily. But I figured them out, you know, with a lot of effort. And you know, a lot of us sort of self-awareness, I figure things out. I think leaders have to fail too, they have to say those yes’s, and then they have to have mistakes that are made and lessons that are learned you can't ever stop, you know, those experimentations and taking the risk. And I love being around people who say yes, instead of no, in all parts of my life, I find that very energizing.

Tim 39:11

You can't lead from the room that you've closed the door on yourself. Right? But you can certainly lead when you've said yes and you're on the other side of the door and then we'll take it as it comes. Right? But anyway, Erin, this has been absolutely fascinating. I am just tickled that you and I had a chance to talk again, and I can't wait for the next opportunity. So, thank you so much.

Erin 39:32

All right. Great to see you, stay warm up there.

Tim 39:35

Will do. Okay, see you soon. 

Tim 39:38

Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If like us you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership. Please give us a positive rate rating and review on Apple Podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders. And you can spread the word too, by sharing this with your friends, teams, and colleagues. Thanks again for listening and be sure to tune in in two weeks' time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host, Tim Sweet, encouraging you to keep on leading.

In this emotionally charged episode, Hanne Ballhausen, a dynamic entrepreneur, opens up about her journey from a challenging childhood in post-GDR Germany to becoming the founder of Outer Earthlings. Tim Sweet skillfully guides the conversation, emphasizing the transformative power of embracing emotions in the workplace. Hanne discusses her early experiences, highlighting the struggle to express emotions in an environment that viewed vulnerability as a weakness.

The pivotal moment arrives when she shifts to managing a research project, fostering an open, vulnerable work environment amid the pandemic. This experience inspired her to launch Outer Earthlings, a T-shirt brand advocating for emotional expression. Proceeds support Friendship Bench Zimbabwe, linking her personal journey to a broader mission. Tim and Hanne explore societal expectations around emotions, particularly for men, and the impact of emotional suppression on mental and physical health. The conversation concludes with insights into the positive outcomes of embracing vulnerability and the potential for creating a more compassionate and connected world.

About Hanne Ballhausen

Hanne Ballhausen is an innovative entrepreneur, skillfully blending her expertise in project management and strategic planning with a profound commitment to societal well-being. Her extensive experience in management, operations, and research forms the backbone of her endeavours, particularly her passionate pursuit to enhance the lives of individuals living with diabetes.

Beyond her significant contributions to healthcare, Hanne is the visionary founder of Outer Earthlings, a pioneering platform that champions the cause of emotional authenticity. This initiative reflects her deep-seated belief in the importance of emotional health and her ambition to empower individuals to embrace and express their feelings more freely.

Hanne's unique combination of entrepreneurial spirit, dedication to emotional wellness, and ability to empower others sets her apart in her diverse pursuits. She continuously strives to make a meaningful impact in both the healthcare sector and the broader domain of personal well-being.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Greta's Podcast Episode
• Friendship Bench Zimbabwe: friendshipbenchzimbabwe.org

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Contact Tim Sweet | Team Work Excellence: 

• Website
• LinkedIn: Tim Sweet
• Instagram
• Linkedin: Team Work Excellence

Contact Hanne Ballhausen | Outer Earthlings: 

• Website
  • Outer Earthlings
  • The OPEN Project
• Instagram
• Twitter
• Email: hanne@unbound-projects.com
• Linkedin: Hannah Ballhausen

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Transcript:

Hanne 00:00

The relationships that I've had, ever since I've been down that path of actually sharing my full open self, have been so beautiful, nurturing, trusting and kind and compassionate. We are all carrying weight with us through our experiences that we're having. We all go through this life, which we all know that as a roller coaster, we cannot always be 100% performing strict executives that are always rational and logical because we are feeling beings and we cannot deny this to ourselves.

Tim 00:42

I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you my friend are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. Welcome to the Sweet on Leadership Podcast, episode 23.

Tim 01:13

Hey, everybody, welcome back to Sweet on Leadership, we're already having a bunch of giggles over here. I'd like to welcome my special guest, Hanne Ballhausen.

Hanne 01:22

Hi. So happy to be here.

Tim 01:25

Oh, great. And I'm still working on the pronunciation. I'm just gonna go ahead and own that fact, but I'm doing my best. Dear listener, we are in for a treat. Because not only do we have an amazing person in front of us, but we get to say that this is her very first time being on a podcast. And I am so honoured that you chose to let me introduce you to the world in this way. 

Hanne 01:49

Awe, thank you so much, Tim. I'm super excited, a little bit nervous. But I'm super stoked to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me.

Tim 01:57

Well, you have so much to offer. And you have such a delightful way of doing it. And that's one of the things that we're going to get into here. So, maybe we could start though by just, give everybody a bit of a snapshot of who you are right now in the world. 

Hanne 02:12

Well, right now I'm sitting where actually everything began. So, I'm back at my parent's place for a couple of days before I'm travelling on. So, I recently moved to the Cayman Islands. So, I'm always going, yeah, in between here and there, up and down, across the world. I’m a global citizen now. But I grew up what used to be the GDR, the German Democratic Republic, or basically like I always say, I grew up in a forest and I mean that quite literally. It's quiet here, very quiet. It's snowing a lot outside right now. But this is where my journey began. And once I was 18, I obviously packed all my things that ran away. Since then I have gotten a background in management, and corporate sustainability, worked in different leadership roles, and specialized myself in diabetes over the recent years, got my own company now, which I'm very, very proud of, and get to work with lots of amazing people all across the world and the diabetes space. And you usually will find me either exercising or somewhere in a deep meaningful conversation, or in my kitchen near my fermentation station. And yeah, that's me in a nutshell, I would say.

Tim 03:29

Well, you certainly have an effervescent personality. So, you in fermentation go side by side. Anyway, with that in mind, as we were sort of getting set up for this conversation, and I should mention, for those of you that are paying attention, you'll realize that we previously had Greta on and she is also involved in the diabetes space. And your introduction to me actually came through her. So, thank you very much. And we'll put a link to her episode down if you haven't listened to it because it's also a lot of fun. But focusing in on you, as we were getting set up for this conversation and getting to know one another and talking about our different viewpoints on the world and whatnot. We lit upon this part of your identity, that is really fascinating. And I'll let you speak more of it. But I'm really referring to the idea that you feel you're a person that is highly empathic, you're a person that can empathize with others, that has deep feelings of their own. And when you first brought that up to me, in some small way, there was some indication that in the past that's been seen as a weakness. 

Hanne 04:46

Yeah, absolutely. 

Tim 04:48

So, maybe you can take us back and talk a little bit about how do you conceptualize largely the importance of emotion, empathy, authenticity in your professional or personal life? What's your relationship with it?

Hanne 05:05

That's a lot of points that you just mentioned there.

Tim 05:10

Let's narrow it down to one. So, if I were to ask, what's your relationship with being a highly emotive, or being an empathic person?

Hanne 05:19

I would say, it's mostly a loving relationship, but sometimes can go a little bit down the love-hate relationship as well. Because it is also exhausting to feel a lot and to feel so much. But I wouldn't want to change it for the world. Because I feel that it makes me connect on a deeper, more authentic, trusting level with the people that are around me. I also made it my personal purpose to spread joy in the world and spread the message of feelings are your superpowers in the world. Because I think that's what it is for me. And I can be a better, healthier human being, allowing myself to feel the things that I feel, and to explore them, even though they're not always good things. But they all have a purpose. They all belong.

Tim 06:25

When we think about certain workplaces, and I have lots of clients that are in what I would consider linear vocations. They're in vocations that are highly logical, they're straight ahead, they can be very quiet workplaces, they can be very serious, they can be very academic in nature. And in all workplaces, accessing our feelings and whatnot, it's not always safe, or it doesn't feel like the norm. For those that are listening, and may not yet fully understand how we're defining this. How would you like to paint a picture of a person that is on this emotional spectrum? How are they presenting themselves in the workplace? What would you actually observe? In your mind?

Hanne 07:13

So, for me, I've obviously connected with other highly emotional people in my work life as well. But I, of course, can share mostly my own experience of how I think I'm presenting myself. And the relationships that I've had at work, in my recent career, ever since I've been down that path of actually sharing my full open self with the world have been so beautiful, nurturing, trusting, and kind, and compassionate. We are all humans, we are all carrying weight with us, through our experiences that we're having, we all go through this life, which we all know that as a roller coaster, we cannot always be 100% performing strict executives that are always rational and logical, because we are feeling beings, and we cannot deny this to ourselves. So, I'm incredibly blessed. And so excited to even hear when I'm now connecting with people that I've worked with. And I've told them oh my god, I'm having this amazing opportunity of speaking about having a kind and compassionate leadership and leading with the heart to someone on a podcast. To the amazing Tim Sweet on the podcast, they've all come back to me. And they all said, like, Oh, this is why I loved working with you so much. Because I could, I felt like I could be myself around you. And I feel this is like, for me the nicest compliment that my efforts of trying to create a safe work environment, a trusting work environment, are actually successful. And people they connect with me. And I hope that this will be much more the case in also other environments. And this was by the way was a research environment and I was incredibly blessed to have such a fantastic team around me that were all very open as well and shared there every day. And you know, it's totally okay to stand up in the morning and be like, Hey, guys, I really do not have a good day to day, didn't that happen yesterday? And I mean, you don't always have to share specifically what happened. But sometimes it also connects you when you actually say like, my dog died, and I'm not feeling well, and I might have to take out a couple of days today. And usually, the answer is not like oh, how dare you? It's like, oh my god, are you okay? Why are you even at work? Take Your time, it's okay. That happened to me a year ago, I know how you feel, let's have a tea and talk about it.

Tim 10:08

I mean, there is this pressure for many people at work that they feel that they have to leave it at the door. And that's a belief that's really has survived for generations now in the workplace, is that you're not meant to bring your home life or your personal experience into the job, you're there to do something, you know, buckle down, we're not here to deal with those issues. That's the pressure. And so as a result, we have people of all different emotional ranges, that find that they can't bring these feelings up. And the one thing that I would like to say to anybody who's out there who's listening, is that I've worked with a lot of people, 1000s of people on teams and leaders and whatnot. And the ones that think they've got this locked up the most, or are trying the hardest, to never let it out, are the ones that show it the most, they don't necessarily show it in terms of emotion, they can bottle something up. And then eventually, that's where we'll have a blowout, it's like too much water behind the dam. And then finally, when it does come out, it's dramatic, it can be very off-putting it can be violent even, it can be verbal and very messy. So, we can have these blowouts. The other thing is maybe a person is very good at controlling it. But it comes out in other ways. It can come out in sternness, impatience. It can come out in labelling people, it can come out in all of these ways that really have nothing to do with the external, they are largely intrinsic in nature. And it's that person's own struggles with their situation, their identity, their beliefs, and all of these things that are bubbling up to the surface in ways that they didn't intend. So, I think one message that I say to most of the leaders I work with is, you're not as good at holding all this back as you think you are. It is very possible that it's going to come out at some place because you are under tension. And that tension with whatever you're feeling has to be resolved in some way, shape, or form. So, we can either deal with that on the surface, or we can hold it back, which is why I think it's so encouraging when you say that when you finally tell somebody that your dog is sick or something has happened, they will rally around you. And human beings are meant to do this. We are programmed to be communal, we are programmed to support our compatriots up, right? Has that been your experience?

Hanne 12:43

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, with those people that you just described that bottle up, there's the saying hurt people hurt people. And it's so accurate. And there's also been studies now that are showing that if you're not sharing your emotions and your feelings, and you're not great at emotional regulations, all of that can actually lead to not just, you know, mental health problems and depressions–

Tim 13:13

Physiological problems. 

Hanne 13:14

–It can actually, exactly. It also presents physiologically, and it's not worth it, it's really not worth it. And like you said, people rally around you because at the end of the day, no matter how stern or how executive cool, powerful, we want to present–

Tim 13:34

Stoic. 

Hanne 13:35

Yeah, like all humans at the end of the day, and evolution has put these emotions inside of us. They serve a purpose, they are meant to be there and they are meant to be felt. And they help us in so many ways, decision making, like the very famous gut feeling. There's so much about that that is so true and so powerful. So, I think we should all tap into use it more.

Tim 14:03

I said, stalwart and I also said stoic in the same sentence. What's really interesting about the idea of stoicism, we hear this lot, there's a resurgence in stoicism, which is excellent. However, that word in particular is misused. It's used typically in terms of unshakable or strong in this kind of thing. Whereas really, when we think about the pursuit of stoicism, I don't want to go down this path too much. But it's a great example of how the word has been co-opted. There's one thing to say about rational control, but that doesn't mean that we impede useful emotions. It doesn't mean that we stifle someone's virtuous expressions, you know, and we have to be accepting of these things. And understanding that there is no sense in covering up reality. And when we look at emotional constraint, if it is an effort to mask reality, then not only are we not being logical, but we're also not being authentic that this is something that we're dealing with. And so the new manager in my mind, the new leader, and the new expectation on leaders, and where some people, frankly, are being left in the dark, and in the dirt. They are being left behind, is that there is power in emotions. And you and I have talked about this. So, I'd love your thoughts on that. What's the power, what's the benefit that people unleash, when they come to terms with and are the owner of their emotions?

Hanne 15:43

So, the power is, for me, obviously, I have so much more joy in life, a lot of energy. And I look at the world always in wonder like a little child that sees for the first time, the sky turning red at sunset, or sunrise. Feeling a lot can be exhausting, like I said earlier, but I wouldn't change it for the world. It's also in terms of relationships with friends, and also my husband. I think that I have quite meaningful, deep relationships with the people around me because I always openly share how I'm feeling about certain things, even if it's sometimes a bit more difficult. But this is where trust comes in. And I believe when you have an open, authentic emotional expression, with your loved ones, it will only just grow trust more and lets you have a more genuine human connection. It combats loneliness because you are connecting to people so much. And loneliness, by the way, we all know since the pandemic is on the rise, and it's really getting a big problem out there as well. It combats, I think depression and anxiety somewhat as well, because you're openly sharing how you feeling even in your darkest hour. And I think in the workplace as well, it's beneficial because, from my experience, I think I created a safe team environment, where people hopefully love what they were doing and working towards a common goal together as a team. So, I think it also creates a deeper bond in the workplace with your team that you are leading and that you're having around you. And they are much more likely to actually hop onto a task, and you get them to buy into the goal that you're setting, the strategy you're setting. So, I think tapping into your feelings and tapping into that potential of that power. It only expands you as a human being and it expands you in your space. And things come to you as well when you're just open and vulnerable, like opportunities like getting to speak on a podcast about it.

Tim 18:17

And there's lots of other good things which we'll talk about in a minute that have come to you through this exploration. So, we've established, at least in part, that openness and the expression of our feelings and being at peace with our feelings can lead to inclusion, it can help us in terms of health, both physical and mental. And loneliness is not a small subject. I mean, the feeling of loneliness is not that far away from nihilism. And if we're alone, and we're not sure why we are in the world, it can lead to some pretty dark feelings of what is it all for. And that the interesting thing there is a life without feeling, a job without feeling is a series of connected tasks. We can go and we can do and we can execute on something. But that's just the doing of something, right? Whereas the living, living a life, is feeling a life. It's the feelings we get through all of these different situations. There was an excellent thing that I just read and it talked about the idea of and what we're seeing in Alzheimer's and what we're seeing in memory generally, and the loss of memory that we've had in childhood and things like this. We may lose the facts, but we rarely lose the feelings. We may lose the pure context of what happened, but we don't lose the feelings. Right? And that our life is an expression of one feeling after another, one event that yields an emotion that leads us to another event that yields an emotion. But oh man if we were to live life without feeling, it would be like turning down all the colors and just living in a gray world.

Hanne 20:06

Yeah, absolutely. And it's so nice to hear this from you, because you're a man at the end of the day, right? And especially in–

Tim 20:13

Jury's out. No, I’m just kidding.

Hanne 20:16

–And especially, you know, for men to express their feelings, I think there's a whole nother ballgame then for us women to stand there. And there's been studies where showing emotions is, you know, that word unmanly. And where we now see also, the results of that there are actually higher, way higher suicide rates in men than they are in women. And the highest suicide rates of those are in Africa, specifically Sub-Saharan Africa. And I know that mental health care is not really accessible there. And also not very much talked about, but also Europe is, I think, second in the ranking. I think the statistic was that 18 in 100,000 men commit suicide. And if only men were allowed to feel, and if we could encourage them, little boys from you know, small onwards, when they're babies, when they're toddlers, to talk about their feelings, to feel their feelings, wouldn't also the world be a safer place?

Tim 21:33

I think so. I mean, the issue right now is we still have a culture where feelings can be weaponized, and they can be weaponized against people and they can be weaponized towards people. And there is some, I would say evolutionary reasons why men and women, and I'm talking about 500,000 years ago, where it was an evolutionary advantage for the hunter of the tribe, or the warrior of the tribe, or whatever you want to say, to not feel an emotion in the moment and be able to go forward and do something. Now, this doesn't always have a place in today's society. But we have to remember that I mean, we are still, physiologically, we are still very much the same being that we were 100,000 years ago, right? Like we are, we haven't, we haven't evolved. We're very, I say this over and over again, we're very dumb monkeys like we're very dumb apes, we sort of have, we are apes with choice, which we probably aren't really prepared for. But your point is not lost. Men do deal with this, are dealing with this on a cultural level. And I think that when we talk about wokeism, or awakening, and how important that is, it's not just an outward expression of understanding how other people are feeling and living their lives. It's actually an embracing of how we present in the world and how we're in our in between our ears, even that, just saying that I know is going to turn off a whole bunch of people that are listening to this. Because that is a scary prospect, to fully embrace what we're feeling and why we're feeling it. What the histories behind those feelings are and how much we may have been programmed or have given in to certain things and to come to terms with that, at this juncture in human evolution, over COVID through the Me Too campaign around the George Floyd issues, here in Canada, around the residential school issues, we've had to come to terms with how we feel about all of these things, environmental issues. I mean, the list goes on and on. The Middle East, Ukraine, all of these things come to the forefront. And if we don't talk about it on those levels, how do we ever get down to the truth of really getting down to why we think the way we think and why we feel the way we feel? So anyway, I mean, thank you, I think? But at the same time, we're rounding around a couple of things here that I'd like to steer us back towards. And that is, we've outlined why this is interesting in the present and why it's helping you in the present. But would you be willing to go a little into your own personal journey with what it meant for yourself? How you framed being emotional as you grew up? And then what were your first experiences, career-wise, school-wise, that have led us to today? Because I think for some of the people that are out there, it would be very helpful for them to hear a journey someone else's taken. Take us back to as early as you'd like to go.

Hanne 24:45

Sure. So, like I said, I grew up in what used to be the GDR, so I'm a post wall came down, baby. So, born in the 90s and my parents, specifically my dad, I think we have to go even a bit further back. He must have had also a terrible childhood. And they do say either you reproduce what happened to you as a child, your traumas, or you go a complete different way. Unfortunately, I got the reproduction site. And my childhood and teenage years were not easy. They're a dark place that I don't often journey back to. But I do remember when I was a little child, I was never allowed to cry, because apparently I was acting. And it was tough when you constantly get criticized and shouted at, not to cry. So, I always tried to suppress it. So, much so that I ended up hyperventilating, which usually made things worse because I was acting even more.

Tim 26:03

Yeah, you're being even more dramatic. 

Hanne 26:06

Exactly. So, I learned from very early on that my, let's call them bad emotions, my negative emotions, me crying was bad. On the other side, from my mom's side, I'm gifted with an infinite pool of tears. So, it comes from my granddad that has come from my mum. And now I'm gifted with this too. I cry at everything, be it happy, be it something, a moving conversation, be it little puppies on Instagram, being my best friends getting married. People being happy, I cry at those, I cry at everything. My husband always said that that's one of my superpowers. So, we have like those two very polarizing effects that I grew up with in my childhood. And in my teenage years, I was so awkward, I was so weird. And I fully like ended up in depression. So, I never really fully fit in this tiny place here that I grew up. And I was a yeah, in a very, very dark place. As a teenager,

Tim 27:22

You were in a dark forest. Literally.

Hanne 27:27

Literally. It's easy today to talk about it because it's a story. That is part of me, but it just doesn't define me of who I am today anymore. So, the more I talked about actually suffering through depression in my teenage years, and sharing those feelings with other people. It made it easier for me to share the story. And when I was 17, this was when anxiety enters the room. You're about to, you know, finish school, head into this big, bad world out there.

Tim 28:01

You managed to survive your childhood and your teenage years. And am I going to be enough when I enter society at large? What is that going to look like?

Hanne 28:10

Right? So, I left the big dark forest and took my–

Tim 28:18

Literally and figuratively.

Hanne 28:20

–Yes and I took my anxiety with me, I kind of managed to overcome the depression. And I ventured out into the world. And I was in London. This was when I first kind of experienced fully fleshed capitalism and Liverpool Street with all its big buildings, and everything that was there. And I ended up actually studying international business for my bachelor's. And, again, I've felt weird because it's business. So, everything is business and you get taught to be in a certain way, and that your vibrant self doesn't have a place there. Your anxiety doesn't have a place there because you're obviously gonna be a high performer. You're gonna finish your Bachelor's with the best marks. 

Tim 29:12

And oh, by the way, emotions do not factor in that. Yeah, right. The high performance and emotions, it's not in the same category.

Hanne 29:23

Yeah, it totally, don't go together. I mean.

Tim 29:26

Well, they do. I mean, this is the thing we're learning. They do. But at that time, in your experience, you slipped into the cultural definitions of what high-performance meant. 

Hanne 29:36

Exactly. And then for my master's, I got the chance to study at a quite prestigious university. It's a solely postgraduate University and intensely grateful for this experience because I didn't come out with a degree but also with a husband and friends for life. So, that was an amazing experience. But again, I encountered these people that made you believe that when you study management and your only way is to enter one of the top five consultancies, that's your like, goal, that's what you want to achieve. That's where you want to be at. And for that you obviously, again, you're going to be a businesswoman, you're not gonna share your feelings, you're going to be tough, you're going to be hard. And you're just going to, you know, work 80 hours a week and sleep two hours a night, and then you're successful. And people actually sometimes told me, what do you want in a consultancy, because I again, was a bit weird for being a management student. And so here it comes, I enter the work world, I work in a big corporate an American corporation. And again, I don't feel like I'm fitting in and I'm trying to be different than who I am, toning myself down, toning down my muchness as I call it, trying to fit into the mould that they needed me to be a bit more greyed than colourful. Keep my private life outside, just be a corporate Hanne, with clothes that I didn't like wearing, and just to fit into that mould. And three months down the line, I had locked jaw, I had tinnitus. And I muscled through two years, because that's what they say, right? Your first job, you should keep it for two years, if you want to make it in your career and I muscled through and poo, it was not good, it really wasn't. 

Tim 31:39

So you, the picture I have is, you had a very conservative, you're in a small town, forest town, mountain town, things were pretty in a box, how things happened, that came with consequences. And then you left the dark forest, you found this new, divergent space where you could be yourself, meet all these different people, have all these different ideas, start to learn about your talents. And then as we start to say, Well, where are these talents applied? We're looking at one of the big firms, we're looking at traditional corporate, Western-style corporate environments, you're back into a gray, risk-ridden existence, where there's a whole bunch of shoulds of how you should be behaving yourself and what it means to be a professional at your level. You're back into a dark forest at that point. So, you came out into the light for a bit, and then you were back into it. And that's when this physiological issues started to manifest, right? What was the moment when you said no deal? Where you said, this is not the way I'm gonna keep going forward.

Hanne 32:53

So, that was actually unintended. It was just me throwing myself in cold water and just doing 180, a friend of mine, who's a pediatrician, amazing researcher also lives with type one diabetes. She's one of my closest friends, and we had to catch up, and haven't seen each other for a long time. And I knew that they had gotten a big grant for a research project. And I was asking her about it. She was telling me how they were looking for a project manager, couldn't find one. And she said, Hanne. And this was the moment where I was like, Okay, this is it. I'm going finally, like, this is it, where I leave corporate, for now behind. And I just punched myself into cold water being an internal research world, with different universities and institutions spread over five countries. That was at the end of 2019. So, of course, you know, what's coming next, the pandemic hits. I’m managing about 30 people across five countries, throughout the pandemic, in this big 1 million euro research project that's been funded from the EU. And because my friend is in it, I'm more myself because I know her and

Tim 34:14

The roots were in friendship, not in professional optics and what you're supposed to be, right? It wasn't about your professional brand and degree it was about friendship and trust.

Hanne 34:24

Exactly. So, I've applied this kind of trust and openness to the whole team. And of course, when you talk to people only online, you've never seen them in person. And we're all suffering through this dark veil of the pandemic and are so insecure about what's going to happen and scared. And we're just, you know, in our meetings, talk about how we're feeling, who had a friend, the friends who had COVID, how did they do, oh my god, how we're feeling and through all of this vulnerability and openness, all of a sudden I started tapping into this potential of a safe, non-toxic work environment, where people are talking about how they're feeling. Where people are talking about like, Oh, my dad is sick, I'm worried. I don't know if I should work today or not. And I'm like, please just turn off your laptop, go and see your dad, it's way more than important.

Tim 35:26

And I take it, they're still highly productive, and they're still high-performance. And they're still getting the job obsolete. In fact, maybe more so. And so emerging from that dark forest, all of these rules that you were given about how to show up, and what you needed to be, what it meant to be strong, what it meant to be professional, they're falling away, is the picture I have. These are not actually the answer. In fact, they're holding us back from what is truly possible. If we just incorporate feelings into the professional experience. Am I close there? 

Hanne 36:08

Yeah, 100%, we've delivered this very big research project, very successfully. I think there were like 18 publications that we got out of it, with very high-profile journals out there. And some of us still talk to each other, work together. We're always plotting on how we can get back together because we had such a blast. But you know, as it is, with projects that are not meant to last, so–

Tim 36:32

Transient, yeah. 

Hanne 36:34

–It eventually finished. But I think despite COVID and everything sort of shutting down, we were so successful in what we did.

Tim 36:47

Hanne, I have a question. So, as projects are, you just said they're transient? And away you go. Right? We’re on to other things. How many of those teammates do you still keep in contact with? 

Hanne 37:03

Very closely? Well, definitely my friends. And another two, three people, four people.

Tim 37:11

But you keep tabs on them, you have a personal relationship? On top of the professional relations. 

Hanne 37:13

Yes. 

Tim 37:14

And if this had been a traditional Big Four consultancy House Project, we would have been around these other people all with our shields up, right? The project would end and what would happen? They would sink back into the background, we would never talk to them again. And big deal. Right, they were just walk-on extras in our lives for a while and away they go. You're opening something for me, because one of the things that's always been kind of natural to me, I guess, is I maintain relationships with people from my very first jobs. And I reach out to them, and we're quite close in the rest of it. And maybe it was because I'll just share a little bit about myself. I went through a period where, you know, I was a heavy kid, I wasn't obese by today's standards, but I just was broad and endomorphic. And, you know, it always played sports and whatever, but I was always the big one. So, I would either get challenged to fights because I was the one to knock down or try to, or I was the one that was a little bit different. And so, you know, easy to pick on. And I countered that with being the class clown for years and doing things like that, that was my compensation. And maybe I still do that. I don't know. But um, you know, I was quite at peace with that. I remember, at a fairly young age, this moment, where I was kind of fatigued about trying to be somebody for somebody else. And I just said, you know what, I'm just going to be myself, and they can take me or leave me. And that kind of always carried in. And so maybe it was some sort of rebellion, or maybe it was some sort of, I don't know, selective learning? But I never put a lot of stake in social orders. Right? It's probably something that's helped me now because I go up and I deal with senior executives and I don't have a heck of a lot of fear. You know, I go up and I just, I like, these are people, they put their pants on one leg at a time. Everybody poops, everybody pees, we're all human beings, like don't act like you don't. So, at some point, we just go and I meet with them on that level. I start with them on that level. But I've had relationships last for decades, long after we close out the work. And we talk about all the struggles that certain people have maintaining client bases and being you know, validated in the eyes of others and the rest of it. At the same time, if we're– and I'm saying there's a very real nugget for people who are listening to incorporate into their own personal brands or their own ideas of growth. Think what becomes possible if we connect with people on an emotional level where they actually see us as human beings and care about us, we care about them. It makes a lot of the professional stuff just so much easier. I don't think we can really tack a lot of, we could probably not identify a lot of professional sports teams that don't have some degree of care for one another. Right? So, anyway, that's one of the things that you're ringing for me is that you stumbled on a way to create deep and lasting relations with people that can't be based on transactional means. Because then it's only good, well, you're good for me. Rather than what about what I'm good for you? Anyway, sorry. Taken over a little bit there. Apologies. But how does that sound? Am I on your wavelength? 

Hanne 41:05

Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with you. And I mean, this journey I've been on is fairly recent. So, it's been kind of since 2019, since I'm on this journey, and maybe since last year, when I'm fully consciously leaning into it. And seeing that it's a strength as a leader, or as a person that wants to be a leader, to tap into this potential and be your true self and be open and vulnerable. To be soft, it's not a weakness, this is something that I've been told my whole life by, also, my dad is, oh god, you’re so soft, how you're gonna make it, but actually being soft, you are so courageous, and you're so brave to be soft, in a hard world that is out there. And with all of the softness, and that light you're sharing, you're gonna touch so many more people out there, and they are going to remember you. They're going to look out for you when you need needed the most, they will be there for you. And be it the people that are your friends and your family and your chosen family. I'm all about the chosen family, but also people at work, they will have your back when you cannot be your 110% super power energetic woman or person to perform. They will have your back and they will pick up your slack and they will be there for you. So, I feel you can only win by putting yourself out there.

Tim 42:47

This has been proved again and again and again. And I mean, I remember back in the mid-2010s, working with several groups that are doing mega projects, where they're several different contractors, some of them competitors coming together to deliver large, very large projects. And that historical tendency is that these mega projects when we're talking about in excess of two $3 billion. They are prone to providers under bussing one and each other, hamstringing one another because if I can make my competitor look bad, then I'll get more of the work kind of thing. Right? And they also are the ones that tend to be overspent. They've blown their schedules. And they tend to result in a lot of litigations and changes and things like this. And it goes way back, you know, we see a whole bunch of behaviours that come out of that they underbid and then disappoint the client later and all sorts of things. Well, we sought out to change this. And so we started to really get into not just collaborative contracting, but collaboration and teamwork from the start. And so in two-year projects, we would see competitors, instead of looking for opportunities to underbus, their project colleague, to actually get to have opportunities to stand them up. Even when it might have slowed themselves down. They were more communal and said, so we can get the entire project done. It doesn't make any sense for us to move faster, because we're not on the critical path, you are. So, what can we do to help? They would lend resources, they would lend people, they may have received materials first, they would give those materials over trusting that they would be replaced with the competitor's order when it finally came in if it was delayed. What happened? We had a team that came to the end and we had very seasoned workers that had been doing this work for three decades. That said, I've never worked on a project like this. And I've never felt that the entire team has my back. And we had young workers with new families saying, I feel like they're telling me to be safe and they mean it and they really care whether or not I get back to my family safe. And I remember this one young woman, she was probably 27, right at the beginning of her career. And she came from a difficult personal life. And she was out in this remote location working with these groups of strangers. And she said, You know, I come back to this place, and it feels like a family. I miss this place when I go. I mean, she was there for two, three years. And she meant it, she meant every single word of it, because not only was it stable, from a cultural perspective, but emotionally, it was so supportive. And she really felt like people had their back. And I remember this other young professional woman said, at the very end, she had the very last word, and she said, It's not goodbye, it’s see you later. And she really meant that. And she, I've talked to her since and she's carried so many good relationships forward with her. So, it's just so inspiring to see those types of people have those experiences. And that's what we're at the root of here, in a sense, and you're helping to illustrate, is just that there is so much personal potential, if we let the tears flow when they need to flow. And we deal with them when they're happening. 

Hanne 46:10

Yeah, well said.

Tim 46:12

Tell us a little, sorry, you're just bringing up so much for me that it's like it's really quite great. Can you tell me, please, what are the things that you're working on right now? Because you've got also some new chapters in your story that had been opened because of these realizations, I would love for you to share that, because I'm so excited for it.

Hanne 46:36

Thank you so much. Yes. So, with leaning into all of the potential of feelings and the power of it, I wanted to make T-shirts for myself with emotional messengering on it and just, you know, proudly, boldly walk around there in the world, on the beach in Cayman Island, or in the streets of Berlin, where I used to live, just to kind of plaster it into people's faces, like, hey, you know, feel your feelings. And then my husband was like, Nah, you can't do that, you really need to make a webshop and put it out there for people to buy them and for people to also wear them if they want to. And I'm like, okay, so I actually sat down, and I've never done anything like that before. And I built my little Shopify, online shop and designed a t-shirt with a beautiful friend of mine from London, who's a designer as well, big shout out to Sam. And we came up with this t-shirt that we actually managed to launch on the 10th of October, which is World Mental Health Day. And it reads very, very big on the back, how're you feeling? Because oftentimes, you know, number one, we don't take the time to check in with ourselves. And oftentimes we get the How are you feeling, good you? Yeah, well, good, bye. Okay, ciao. But no, we want to give you a moment to take a moment, take a breath. And just really think about how are you feeling right in this moment. So, hopefully, in the future, there's going to be more T-shirts, definitely with big bold messaging around feelings. And maybe people are interested to also boldly wear their feelings on their sleeves, and just join that movement of giving feelings and emotions that stage that they deserve, the attention that data serve, and tap into that superpower that our feelings are.

Tim 48:44

So, to step back through your story, from the little girl in the dark forest, that was bottled up, through the university student that found a new voice, through the professional consultant that was back in the dark forest and a little bit bottled up, through the person that took advantage of a friend's kindness and found a new voice. We now see this emergence, Hanne, who is going to grab the world with this vision of having people literally wear their hearts, maybe not on their sleeves, but on their backs, and create and really fight for a new standard of what it means when we ask a person Hey, how are you doing? Or what are you feeling? Or how's it going today? To have the space to actually deal with that for real, rather than just steamroll past it into what I'm really asking, which is did you get that TPS report completed or something right? So, there's some room for emotion here and sharing your belief that so much good stuff is opened when we make this part of us not just when we wear it, we wear it. We literally wear it. 

Hanne 50:02

Yeah, 100%. And it's not just about having done this and hopefully encouraging people to also sign up to this mission of making the world a more feeling place. But also, the proceeds are going to a good cause. So, I've chosen a charity that's very close to my heart. In Zimbabwe, it's called Friendship Bench Zimbabwe, and there is no access to mental health services. So, what it does, is they’re training community workers to give evidence-based counselling to people who really need it, by just using WhatsApp and booking an appointment with a community worker who you then meet on the bench, and you can talk about your depression, your anxiety, any struggles, you're going through, suicidal thoughts, even. And I think it's so impactful. And so important that in places without access, something like this exists. So, very passionate about this as well. And it just kind of aligns very beautifully as well with the mission that Outer Earthlings. So, this is my little T-shirt company.

Tim 51:10

I was about to prompt you to make sure you give us that name. 

Hanne 51:14

Yes, it’s called Outer Earthlings, which is actually a German word for not sure how to spell this German word. Außerirdischer (not sure if this is correct), so, an alien, but it's a literal translation of it, an Outer Earthling. So, it's about you coming out of your shell, and sharing your feelings. So, very much Friendship Bench Zimbabwe, and lines a lot with our mission at Outer Earthlings and getting to people to feel more openly and honestly and vulnerably. So, yeah, I'm very excited about that.

Tim 51:42

Anybody who knows me knows, I'm a huge fan of putting stuff on T-shirts. So, I am so excited for your journey, this will not be the first and the last time you're with me if I can do anything about it. Because we're going to follow up and see how things are going. And I just really want to say thank you for spending the time with me today and sharing your story so that other people can use this as a ladder to consider their own lives and where they're climbing to. I've prepared you for this. But let's go through it once again. You've already told us about Outer Earthlings, we're going to put the link in the show notes. If people want to get in touch with you what's the best way?

Hanne 52:25

That’s probably via LinkedIn. So, just by finding my name, and there are two Hanne Ballhausen’s out there, both of us are German, but one of them

Tim 52:34

Both of you are in pharmacy and/or have had experience in med tech.

Hanne 52:39

Quite similar, actually, it's quite funny but message the one that's based in the Cayman Islands, and you'll get to me. Otherwise, you can reach out on the website of Outer Earthlings as well. As well, as our Instagram page, Outer Earthlings. And you're very welcome to also drop me an email anytime if you want to. 

Tim 53:02

And we will of course put all of that contact information in the notes. So, that is awesome. Last question is where we wrap up. Amazing journey. Thank you for sharing with us. If you could hope for something if you could make a wish for someone who is listening here today. What would your wish be for people that are listening here today? How would their lives be improved?

Hanne 53:29

So, if I can make a wish for the people listening today, I hope you're kind to yourself. I hope you treat yourself with compassion. But also put that kindness and compassion out there in the world. Trust your gut feeling. It's there for a reason. Tap into your superpower that are your feelings. And just join me and to give into all of your muchness of who you are. You're beautiful.

Tim 54:04

Yeah. Be Your muchness and then you can find your enoughness.

Hanne 54:05

Now, I’m crying. Great, you've done it. I've done so well for the past hour.

Tim 54:15

Oh, no tears are always welcome with me. So, thank you so much.

Hanne 54:17

Thank you, Tim. This was beautiful.

Tim 54:19

Can't wait till we can do it again.

Hanne 54:21

 Me neither.

Tim 54:30

Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If like us, you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership. Please give us positive rating and review on Apple podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders. And you can spread the word too, by sharing this with your friends, teams and colleagues. Thanks again for listening and be sure to tune in, in two weeks' time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host, Tim Sweet, encouraging you to keep on leading.