Cindy Wigglesworth is best selling author of SQ21: The Twenty-One Skills of Spiritual Intelligence. Her work has had an enormous impact on my own perspective of leadership. The need to develop wise and compassionate leaders is needed more than ever. This is one of the most important interviews for leadership I have done so far. A must listen for those aspiring to make a bigger difference.
We discuss:
How the experience of divorce and raising a daughter was a profound stimulus for reflection and the impetus to explore better leadership
Why ego-driven leadership and its poorest forms of narcissism and self absorption is exhausting to be around
How leadership from the more expanded point of view the Higher Self attracts people willingly to follow you
The work of advanced spiritual intelligence as a continual practice
The calling “to be a light onto the world” is within us all, and the work we do can be the candle that lights the way for others
Why Cindy is grateful for President Trump as he has been a catalyst for Americans to examine the profound truth of how much racial divide is still systemic, and why there is still much racial and political healing to do in the USA
How Obama created the conditions that brought Trump forward
How we are all called to growth
The lotus flower blooms in mud, just as we can bloom through the muck and mess of our own lives
The role of a new thought Church to foster Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha
Why you need to have your BS challenges (belief system, as well as the other B.S.)
How emotional intelligence is the first thing to address as leaders: name the emotion, identify what triggered, and practice inserting a PAUSE between stimulus and response
***
Read MoreScience journalist David Robson, author of the brilliant The Intelligence Trap - Why smart people make dumb mistakes, takes us on a wild ride through the stupid things smart people do, and why.
We explore:
Why real life human vampires are more deserving of compassion than scorn
How the ancient study of wisdom (and how to live our best life) is having a resurgence and renewal through the lens of Evidence Based Wisdom
How intellectual intelligence is different to rationality intelligence, and how this can be measured
The frightening condition of DYSRATIONALIA - when smart people think and do dumb things
How mindfulness is a step towards diminishing this trap
Why we need to get analytical about intuition
The importance of developing an emotional compass - this includes emotional awareness, differentiation, and regulation of emotions
How Brexit is the perfect example of motivated reasoning by smart people that drives greater polarisation
Benjamin Franklin’s moral algebra and its ability to immunise a little bit against motivated reasoning
How finding common ground and assessing the quality of the evidence in someone’s argument is the best method to avoid being polarising
If you are susceptible to “Pseudo-Profound Bullshit” (statements that sound profound but are really vacuous), you might need to take the cognitive reflection test
Emotional intelligence can be a bridge between intelligence and avoiding some major biases
Key tips to help avoiding the intelligence traps: curiosity, humility, considering the opposite viewpoint through the lens of evidence
Maintain a child-like curiosity, wonder and awe at the world.
***
Read MoreDo you struggle with perfectionism? Procrastination? These are some of the blockers to doing good work. Our very desire to do good work stops us from doing so! Lynne Cazaly is an author, international speaker, and master facilitator. She has published six books, including her latest Ish - The Problem with our Pursuit for Perfection and the Life-Changing Practice of Good Enough.
We talk about:
How leaders get in the way of good results by trying to censor the inputs and control the outcomes
High performing teams work intensely within constraints, and celebrate small wins
Defining the standard you are working towards, and why that is important is the critical first move away from perfectionism paralysis
The next move of identifying the high value tasks, the 20% of tasks that give you 80% of results, is your next best move
How using a pressure on/ pressure off method works for both introverts and extroverts in an iterative agile-ish process
Improvisation techniques help us release the hold of perfectionism and embrace ish, knowing it will be ok
The game-changing paradigm of the Pratfall effect (stuffing up and appearing more likable as a result)
The spotlight effect - people are not noticing your faults as much as you think they are
Wabi sabi - how the Japanese philosophy of embracing the beauty of imperfection can apply at work
How we can get distracted by things that don’t really matter, like grooming eyebrows for 18 hours per week!
Check yourself - if you feel overwhelmed, chances are you have a ‘P’ problem - perfectionism and its twin, procrastination
***
Read MoreHe helps smart people be people smart. As the co-author of Forever Skills along with Kieran Flanagan, Dan Gregory is a leading thinker on what leaders can do to move people to sensible action.
We explore how the real test of leadership is what we do when things go wrong, how the gaps in skills we need as leaders vary from industry to industry and culture to culture, how corporate Aussies are strong in risk-taking, why making values-based decisions is important for long-term vision, why we need to use a value lens to avoid short-term reactive decisions, how to consume 200-300 books per year, how to challenge your own perspective with Socratic questioning, why thinking in questions is the best strategy to avoid the traps of default thinking, what Dan’s shadow flaw is.
***
Read MoreWe are wired to belong. Contemporary workplaces are modern-day tribes, and yet so many leaders treat them as transactional places of misery. In fact, 82% of leaders have been found to be lacking in the required skills to lead effectively. There is a serious deficit in the soft skills.
Author, consultant and tech startup leader, Shawn Murphy talks with me about the key principles of belonging in his latest book, Work Tribes:The Surprising Secret to Breakthrough Performance, Astonishing Results, and Keeping Teams Together. These are to be valued, welcomed, and wanted.
We discuss the ins and outs of belonging, how it’s an outcome, not a program, how you can’t operationalise belonging but you can develop programs to develop leadership skills that foster belonging, how any behaviour change expected from a training program needs to be backed up by accountable tracking afterwards, why ‘hiring for culture fit’ is a fast-track to building a country club and not a successful business, why hiring for ‘how you can contribute to the culture’ is a better approach, how we need to have better conversations - ones about the playbook and values and purpose of an organisation - so we can avoid catty bitchiness in workplaces, and how we don’t need to wait for permission or a program to create positive work experience. We can get started right now with self awareness.
***
Read MoreWhat do you do when your social drinking becomes a crippling habit in a downward spiral of destruction? We can admit defeat, we can surrender, we can ignore it, or we can own it. Rachel Hind chose complete responsibility. Her journey to sobriety is one of personal honesty, radical self healing, and personal transformation shows great courage.
We talk about how drinking for middle aged women has increased 85% in the last ten years, the warning signs for the start of liver cirrhosis, how the first stage of healing begins with honesty with oneself, why pain and suffering can be the biggest opportunity for self empowerment, is alcoholism an addiction or not, the two very different paths for recovery, Jack Canfield’s model of E + R = O (event plus response equals outcomes), the switch from success based on external markers to success based on living according to one’s values, and how one’s quality of life is directly related to how much uncertainty one can deal with.
***
Read MoreWhat does it take to be a real man? Life Coach for Men, Greg Gillies, knows that it’s not what we usually think. It’s not about material success, business goal achievement, or a facebook narrative. He believes we need to clear the programming from our past so we can embrace the best of who we can be.
Greg shares his own downward spiral from successful executive and business owner to numbed out alcohol abuser through to renewed and liberated healthy male leader. He reveals how kinesiology and quantum matrix therapy helped clear his unconscious past beliefs so he could choose more powerful ones.
We take a deep dive into sympathetic nervous system dominance, the body’s natural healing system, releasing negative emotions and beliefs from our past, resolving conflicts in our brain.
***
Read MoreHow do we make sense of chaos and lead through it? What can we expect from Generation Z / Generation Alpha as leaders? What is the antidote to the pessimism we experience through post-modernism? These are some of the robust questions James and I explore in our conversation about his book, Metamodern Leadership - A history of seven values that will change the world.
We travel through the historical periods of modernism, post-modernism, and metamodernism to look at how we see and operate in the world. We look at developmental models of human experience. We consider the 4 generational archetypes and how they have affected our leadership over the ages. We ask, Trump vs Obama, nationalism vs globalism - what will empower people and nations? How can we lead from behind in chaos? A very full and engaging conversation for those interested in leadership needed for our complex world.
***
Read MoreImagine in the lift at the end of the day, being asked for the 8th time, ‘so, what happened to YOU?’ People with disabilities are confronted daily with intrusive questions about the intimate details of their physical condition. Something we would not dare ask others. This is but one of the challenges people with disabilities endure every day. Disability leader and advocate Christina Ryan wants us to get beyond the discomfort of visible difference and get on with the job of talking leadership: how difference offers more viewpoints.
We explored disability as identity, disability disadvantage in employment, vertical developmental leadership through the lens of disability, the core attributes of disability at the leadership table (inclusion, collaboration, resilience, and innovation), how acknowledging the whole self including disability is fundamental component of spreading perspective and inclusion in workplaces and community.
***
Read MoreKhaysan grew up watching her parents work hard to set up a caravan park from the ground up. This sparked the courage to start her own business at the age of 24, which she grew successfully before a tumultuous exit some years later. Discovering she is not a great long-term employee, (she gets bored), Khaysan dove into a new business venture called Project Athlete which blends mindset, nutrition, and health for personal transformation.
We explore what she learned from her parents (all business takes time, you gotta love it to make it through hard times, and no bad times last forever); what she learned after rising and falling quickly in business for herself (comfortable breeds complacency and laziness); how she bucked social programming to embrace the entrepreneurial life; mindset secrets from professional athletes (passion fuels everything, stay coachable, and things happen for a reason - get back on the horse after a fall); how her definition of success changed from being all about the money, to money being just a byproduct of doing something that sets your soul on fire; three mindset principles for success (awareness of habits, what triggers good and bad habits, and time for being patient).
***
Read More“You can be excellent, but not have excellence in your life.” Four time Olympian Dan Collins says his biggest failure was his proudest moment - it allowed him to become the man he is. Competing at the highest level in sports teaches us a thing or two about performance. But Dan discovered something more than that. He discovered that elevation of consciousness is the highest end game for any human, that mastery of emotions is pivotal for any endeavour, and that physical health is the foundation for all things. In this intimate and open conversation, Dan shares his nightly journaling habit, his ‘mindless’ exercise practice, meditation for mindful stillness, how mastery of big moments comes down to breathwork, how practicing stepping into big moments helps us prepare for even bigger moments, what exactly is a ‘big moment’ (it’s the goal driven commitment we make to ourselves, our family, and the people we serve), how big moments are the threshold of what you are striving for and who you are aiming to become, how at the ‘edge of limits is where life happens’.
Dan also shares his three cornerstone principles: developing consciousness and personal accountability, embracing excellence as a never ending journey, and LOVE - be vulnerable enough to give and receive love and savour love of life itself. Dan believes we need both a FIXED mindset (concrete goals to strive for) and a GROWTH mindset (practicing excellence as a never ending habit). What is he most proud of? Longevity of his excellence journey - the tests get bigger as you get bigger as a human.
***
Read MoreHow does Aussie tech giant superhero, Atlassian, run its teams? Bernie Ferguson is an R & D Team Coach who makes a living helping teams become high performers. We talk about human dynamics as key to effective process, how to define and measure success in team performance, the Atlassian Team Health Monitor as the starting point for building team performance, the fact that lack of team clarity is a chief derailer, currency of coaching is questions not opinions, the responsibility for getting meaningful feedback from people other than your boss, asking ‘how easy are you to do business with as a team?’, and Atlassian’s approach to culture through living real values.
***
Read MoreYenn Purkis is a non-binary gender person with Asperger’s syndrome. They are an author of 6 books, a TED X speaker, and a passionate advocate for autistic people and their families. From an early age, Yenn knew they weren’t like other folks, and was bullied mercilessly for being different. Academically brilliant, they were dux of the school, but not fitting in and being ostracised for it led to several early adulthood years spent in self destruction. Yenn emerged from this determined to be successful and fulfil professional ambition. With a published book in hand, they applied to many jobs and was successful to land one. This is the origin story of a remarkable individual who overcame being singled out for difference to becoming a public champion for inclusion.
In this interview we explore what it means to be non binary gender, how to be aware of privilege as a generator of bias, how reading books is an excellent way to expand perspective and understanding of others, how becoming comfortable and aware of who we are drops anxiety about status, why diversity is a noun and inclusion is the verb or responsibility in leadership, how the intersection of elements of difference (like being non binary gender AND autistic) multiplies the challenge effect for inclusion, and how it is PRIVILEGE and not ‘norm’ that measures distance from center and influence. Reason to listen: learn about life from a different lens.
***
Read MoreDiversity and inclusion are hot topics right now. The research says it is good for business. Common sense says it’s good for humans. But how do we do it? What are some considerations? Should we have targets? How do we measure success with it? In this interview with Sydney manager, Rory Waddell, an engineering people person at global consulting firm GHD, we explore what it means in practical terms with staff. We look at questions like how do you discover your blindspots? How do you surface and deal with your bias? How do people respond to diversity programs? What signs should we put on toilets?
***
Read MoreHow do you see the world? What’s your point of you? How we see the world, how we see ourselves, is terribly important. Perspective is powerful: how we see ourselves and how we see the world determines the action we take and therefore the results we get. So it makes sense that we pay a lot more attention to a point of view. This podcast series is about exploring points of view. We will be interviewing a number of different leaders in various industries to explore how they see the world, and how they see themselves.
As a good starting point though it’s important to see how we author ourselves, how we develop stories about who we are and how we operate. In this podcast episode we go through some typical negative stories and how we can turn those around and to create better narratives, or points of view, that make us powerful agents in creating our own reality.
***
Read MoreComplexity and the rapid rate of change demands a new kind of leadership - a next level leadership. Next level is about shifting perspective to be an Amplifier - someone focused on impact and not just results. When we expand our perspective we can have greater positive contribution. There are common blocks to this kind of boundless leadership:
Limited awareness about the future, trends, and our own internal operating systems - our beliefs. We need to develop this awareness for the core reason that visionaries attract people.
Taking culture for granted. Many leaders smugly think their culture is doing great (because they of course are leading it). Culture runs companies. It is the operating system for people, and you need to program it well.
Procrastination around new technologies. Technology drives change and many leaders hesitate to implement.
***
Read MoreHow do you convince someone to change their perspective? If you want to move hearts and minds for a cause that is deeply meaningful to you, how do you do that? Sometimes the most passionate advocates end up doing more harm than good.
Don't be fooled: passion is the worst form of persuasion
Pressure does nothing for changing opinions. All it does is push people farther in to their own perspective.
Curiosity and compassionate inquiry leads to persuasion.
***
Read MoreLeadership can be a volatile experience. There are some seriously difficult situations - and people - to contend with.
Cockups are what we fear most: failing and letting people down. Mistakes that are costly. Hurting people inadvertently. Perspective is the gateway to compassion: just because you cock things up, doesn’t make you a c*ck - at least not permanently!
Crackpots are a bigger concern. The biggest challenges is dealing with PSYCHOPATHS. Not all psychopaths are violent! Many are successful players in the corporate world. We need to know how to spot them, and how to deal with them.
Conniptions are a surprise when they happen. When a crackpot pushes our buttons and all of a sudden we lose the plot, and default to behaviour that is out of the norm. Conniptions are rare occurrences, and yet we can learn from them.
#boundlessleadership
***
Read More‘You don’t know how good you have it until it changes’. This was a CEO talking about his culture after a new Chairman is on the scene. A change at the top can certainly spell doom (or boom!) for culture. There are other aspects at play too: systems and shadow. We go through two recent articles - one on Facebook and how its culture is slipping, and one from the Navy SEALs - a Special Operations Chief is arrested for war crimes.
Culture is your operating system for people. Know and set the code.
Systems drive behaviour - review yours.
Every strength has a shadow - are you aware of your own culture shadow?
#boundlessleadership
***
Read MoreWARNING: This solocast is a bit of a rant. A call to action. To do more. To do better. To have a bigger impact. There’s a lot going on. There’s more work to do than ever before. There are more problems to solve. We need to work BETTER. We also need to avoid the traps of Achiever: achiever disease and overwork, goal sickness and sacrificing our values at the altar of results.
Signs and symptoms of Achiever Disease
As an Amplifier we can amplify message, motivation, and results
How perspective is the key to empathy, and how empathy expands perspective
#boundlessleadership
***
Read More