Leadership Lessons From The Great Books - (Bonus) - A Conversation with Peter Ainley

Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast. Bonus. There's no book reading on these bonus episodes. These are interviews, rants, raves, insights, and other gentle and sometimes not so gentle audio musings and interesting conversations with interesting people about leadership.

Because listening to me and an interesting guest talk about leadership for at least a couple of hours is better than reading and trying to understand yet another business book, even that business book that I wrote. As founder and CEO of Los Global and creator of the Los Academy, Our guest today is passionate about creating dynamic organizations and partnering with leaders to lead in a way that improves impact and agility with less stress.

His unique leadership disruptor approach improves personal performance while increasing leadership effectiveness, focus and clarity. This opens facilitation for alignment between leader and employees. The results create healthier, more agile companies, positively influencing culture and business impact while solving some of the current talent retentions and attraction challenges many organizations are facing in the business world today. And as a side note, I initially met this guest

through my work with the World Ethics Organization. You should go back and listen to our interview with, Richard Messing, of the World Economics, Organization or World Economic Forum. I'm sorry. Not World Economic Forum, not WEF. Sorry. World Ethics Organization. Not the WEF. We're not interviewing Klaus Schwab on this on this show today. But I initially met my guest through working with Richard, and you should go back and listen to that, listen to that podcast episode. And we

connected offline as a result of that. And, he gave me some interesting insights about this podcast and talking about this podcast. And I thought, you know, hey, it might be really interesting to bring him on as a guest and introduce him to you as my audience today. And so I'd like to welcome to the podcast, Peter Ainley. How are you doing today, Peter? Hey, Jesan. Thanks very

much. I am doing excellent. Thank you. And as you can see, or as you can hear, you'll be able to see it on the video, the video version of this podcast later on. But as you can hear, Peter has a rich British accent, so that makes him sound smarter than me, which is great. So he's going to elevate the intellect of this podcast just by talking. It's gonna be great. So let's just let's just correct something out of there. Shall we? Go ahead. Yeah. The accent

is they're actually originally South African. But there you go. That's even better, though, actually. That's even better. Like, even makes you sound even smarter. Thank you. It does. Like, this is a Americans fall for the act that we do. We anything that sounds vaguely, you know, accented and then you put some interesting conversation inside of that, People are like, oh, oh, that guy's smart. Okay. It's it's great. Whereas the basic American accent, you

gotta really struggle with that with other Americans. You really do. You have to struggle with that because they don't they don't trust it. They're like, well, how smart could he be? He sounds like he's from name your state here. So Got it. You know? Okay. So, yeah, we'll open up with that. And now first question of the day, you know, I read through your book, and I talked a little bit about our background and how we got connected. But for our listeners, what is it that you do exactly, Peter?

Besides having a few jokes here and there on on a podcast? Yeah. Besides that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Besides that. Yeah. Well, I work with executives to make their lives just that little bit easier. Mhmm. So if you frame it another way, let's get a little more technical here. Specializing in closing the leadership skills gaps. Okay. Creating greater clarity, cohesion, alignment for the executive Tom specifically. So that they can better navigate the global uncertainty.

A little less stress is always useful, less anxiety. A lot of them deal with impostor syndrome. So let's try and, you know, navigate around that one and get that out of the way so that they can better balance demands for stakeholders, shareholders, and employees. Employees can be pretty demanding too. Yeah. So that all sounds awesome. Let's delve a little bit more into that. So how did you go from No, I'll frame

it this way. Every time I talk to someone who's in the leadership development space, I kind of ask a variation of this question and I preface it by saying this. No one wakes up in the morning when they're 7 and goes, hey, I wanna be a leadership development consultant, coach, trainer, facilitator, whatever. Nobody nobody does that at the age of 7. So how did you how did you start in South Africa and and wind up in this spot? Walk us through a little bit of

your a little bit of your history. Well, that's a it's a bit of an interesting journey. I will give you a caveat quickly on this one. Mhmm. I am writing a book with a bunch of other people, and a story will appear in that book. Oh. Dot dot dot. Alright. Yeah. We're previewing the book. This is good. So the book should be coming out in June or July sometime. So k. Cool. You can read a bit more about that. But covering that

book, so no, you're right. I didn't think about leadership in any which way, shape, or form at the age of 7. In fact, I don't think I thought of anything other than how much more fun I can have with doing whatever it was at the time of the day. Right. But towards the end, I'll just set it up. Towards the end of my high school career, the one thing I wanted to do was be a pilot. Okay. Wanted to fly. And how that came about is a is an interesting story. So I spent a lot of my time

traveling. My parents kept traveling back and forth to Europe. So, you know, I've been in a plane since I was at Ye High. And so I always wanted the idea of being a pilot just gave just sort of gave me the sense of a certain degree of freedom. Something I wanted to enjoy doing. Couple of challenges in pursuing that career at the time in South Africa. I won't go into those details. So I figured, well, I've gotta get something else. I've gotta get at least a degree

under my belt. So when all else fails, I have something to fall back on. That landed up being engineering, got a degree and a master's degree then in engineering, that being potentially the springboard to get me into Europe That would allow something like becoming a pilot, joining the airlines, whatever, to become more of a reality. Well by the time that was done, the need for making money that seemed to have grown a little bit more on the importance scale.

So went into the engineering world into corporate, started at the Tom, and systematically over the next 2 decades worked myself up to, you know, director and running engineering departments. Figuring I knew how to do all of that based on everything I observed, and therein lies a key. And you're not always feeling, hey, man. You know, this is fun and exciting. I am empowered to to be this great engineer, manager, leader, whatever you care to call it. But I always

landed up having run ins with bosses I had. Mhmm. Always had a different view of things, a different opinion, a different idea, whatever it was. But it always created a little bit of tension. Some were more amicable to that that tension, shall we call it, and were willing to discuss it. Others maybe not so much. And, eventually this underlying desire for independence, for readers, broke me out. I went out on my own with a business partner, and we went into the realms of consulting in the

engineering space, project management space. And that was probably where the biggest wake up call to what leadership really is, what it's all about, and the importance of doing it right. So you begin to land. You know, when you're dealing with your own employees, there's a different dynamic to dealing with employees when you're part of a bigger mechanism and just another cog in that mechanism. Even if you're a bigger cog in that mechanism, there's a different

dynamic. Because now you're responsible for people in a way that, well, their livelihood depends on what you do and how successful as an organization you are. And then leaders, when you go to not only lead your own own people, but lead much bigger Tom, how do you get things done when these people are just contracted to work with you? How do you get things done when you've got a client who's got a number of stakeholders in a in a given project? How do you get them all on

board? How do you get everybody working in a synergistic way to affect an outcome. And that really is where I started cutting my teeth as it were on on the whole notion of leadership and understanding what was wrong. The mistakes I was making and the lessons I was learning. And then just going through the course and going doing other ventures and all of that, I began to see sort of almost like a began to see sort of almost like a common theme, a common problem. In that

well this isn't leadership. And what that person is doing is not real leadership. Look how they're treating their people. Look look what they're doing there. Look what they're doing here. So there's this whole thing. No. But leadership is so much more than that. You can actually get people on your side who are willing to play ball with you, who want to work with you, who want to follow you. Mhmm. But, you know, the more I looked at it, everybody was going to a

job. And as the expression goes, doing the bare essays minimum to get a paycheck at the end of the month. Right? Mhmm. You know, no more. So what was the level of commitment? What what was the you know, there there had to be something more to it. Mhmm. People just having to go to work just to carve out a living and exist. Yeah. It seemed like that's the way society was structured, but it didn't add Tom me it didn't add up. And I I've always had if I can make somebody else's life better I'm

gonna try and do that. That's my what I sort of I guess grew up learning. If you're gonna do something do it well and help people in the process. And over time I had a through some of the moving around the globe that I did, I'll end up taking a part time position with a non profit organization just to re establish myself back here in Canada at the time. And there was a classic example of

what I would define as poor leadership. Mhmm. Being told I have to control everything That is my duty as the leader of this organization. No. That's not your duty. Your duty is Tom inspire people to really wanna be here. And the more people I spoke to who were in that organization, the bigger the problem I saw. That was probably the trigger. And then the final nail or the push over the edge was 2020

and watching how things transpired in that year. And we won't dive into that but that was a highlight for me to see. Man, people don't know how to lead. It's yeah. So I've got to do something about it. And that's then what got me more into the leadership development space and more into working with more senior leaders going after that market because that's where change begins to happen in any organization. So that's a a a fourth

version of the longer story you might find in the book. Yeah. It's coming out in, July or June or yes. We'll sometime. We'll talk more about the book, later on or or even as we go. Okay. So I was taking several notes while you were talking, writing down several things, because there's there's several pieces of that that I wanna pull apart and I wanna I wanna play off of a little bit. So.

I guess the first thing is this idea. You you said you wanted to be a pilot, initially in high school, but then that that sort of readers, you sort of redirected your your your focus into the space of engineering. Now here's what I know about engineers. And I love engineers, by the way. I don't have a problem with them. We need engineers. We need people who could build the bridges. We need both engineers and construction workers. We need people who could build the

bridges and who could put them up, right? The theory and the practice, right? We need them both together. We need the people who can come up with the idea of the internet and then the people who can actually develop that thing and, and kind of make Tom, make that work. I was recently listening to a podcast interview with a guy named Ian McGillchrist. Fascinating guy in the, in the neuroscience, excuse me, philosophy and and book writing space.

And he made a point that I think is relevant to our conversation here. He said the current society that we live in, our current ethic is built around a fourth of left brain engineering ethic. Writers. And this relates to leadership by the way. It also relates to ethics, which I want to talk about today as well, because of your work with, with WEO. But in a in a in a in a society, particularly a Writers society where we've

sort of reached this pinnacle of and I call it the idea of utility. That's not the word that he used, but where every idea has to have utility in order to particularly market utility in order to be valued. We are throwing away and this was his concern. We are throwing away all of the right brain stuff, or we're saying that that doesn't matter. Now when I now oh, here's where that idea ties together. When I run

into folks with an engineering background Mhmm. They tend to be some of the hardest folks to sell on the idea of leadership because they're convinced that because and I this is how I sort of frame it for them. I know you're convinced by data. I get that. But you're surrounded by a bunch of people who aren't, and you have to lead them sort of differently. Leaders that been something that you've seen in your experience or am I totally off the mark there?

I'm gonna start off by saying, I engineers, yes, definitely left brained, technically orientated, 1 plus one has to equal 2. Fourth. Something majorly wrong. The challenge from a leadership point of view is a lot of those people are promoted into position of leadership without actually understanding what leadership is. Thinking that, oh, well, I'll just do 2+2 and I'll get 4 out of it. Right. And my from my own personal experience, data's great if you're wanting to build a bridge.

Right. Okay. But I have not found 2 the same people. Right. Okay. So 2 plus 2 ain't gonna equal 4 at this point. So you got the human behavioral factor to take the human psychology factor to take in. And maybe my brother used to jibe me out, this is going back a few years, he said, you know, Peter, you shouldn't have done engineering. You should have been a psychologist. You should have studied psychology.

And, well, maybe there's an element of truth to that because I find human behavior rather interesting and the psychology behind some of this lot and why people do what they do and what impacts people not only mindset but the behavioral aspect of how does your how does your teenage years, your younger years impact how you lead later in life? Mhmm. Now that thought is I I mean, working on developing that fourth, does that become a PhD in leadership? I don't know, but time will tell.

So right brain being the more creative side, but also more the people side of things, is something that is important to develop. Not everybody has it. Some people are slower at getting it. But without that aspect of it, without understanding how you think. So you referring to any given leader who's turning. How you think, when you understand how you think, you've crossed a lot of that bridge of the right brain side of things. So you can start balancing between left and right brain.

So, I've said this before on this podcast. I'm a humanities major. I'm one of those annoying humanities major people. Right? You know, I went to school for art. I've never used my art degree in any practical way Tom, like, draw or print, make, or paint and make money from that. Instead, I took all of the ways of seeing. That's how I frame it. And I went into I went into the very, at least in comparison to what I came out of, the very left brain business world.

Writers? And I can read an Excel spreadsheet and, you know, and actually have taught Excel, which is interesting. I find that to be amusing. I've taught at business schools. I know how to do a pivot table. I know all that, right? But I always thought that the biggest challenge that we have and we sort of sort of see this with the with the rise of what we euphemistically call artificial intelligence. I just call it large language

algorithms, which is the next great frontier. We could talk a little bit about that today, but I find it interesting that. Or at least the biggest challenge I've had is dealing with people who are leaders, who are very technically proficient at what they do and tend to look at all of the human psychological stuff as a bug that needs to be erased rather than a feature that's inbuilt to

to the human experience. And in my experience, getting them to cross over from, oh, this is a bug, and if I just put enough resources behind it, it'll be fixed fixed Tom this is a feature. Now I have to navigate around it because it's not going away, for myself anyway, and my consultancy, that was the biggest Rubicon that I had to cross. Does that make sense? Yeah. And I think it is the biggest Rubicon. Many leaders who come from the

technical background have to cross. Right. So the others, I think maybe I'm maybe one of the essays soer ones. By the way, I think. But it it is a challenge for a lot of people, a lot of technical people Tom become effective at the human element of business, leading people effectively. Well, and that becomes because you mentioned, you know, having commitment. You mentioned, the importance of doing, doing the thing correctly, writers? Doing

the thing right. And you and I, there were, there were sort of 3 sort of, prompting. Right. Tom use artificial intelligence terms. There were 3 prompting questions for you, which were, you know, how do you get things done? How do you get people on board and what is real? And I put it in air quotes, but what is real leadership? So those are all fascinating to me, and I love to be able to pull some of those apart today. Maybe starting with this idea of how do you get

things done. So if I'm a leader listening to this, how do you get things done? Like, if you're talking to that leader, like, you know, what do you what do you say to them? Like, how do they get things done? Because if I'm a new leader let's let's look at a new leader, not not an experienced one, not with some life on them. But if I'm a new leader, if I've been newly promoted into a position, typically, I might be in a corporate bureaucracy.

Typically, I'm going to be given people that I would not have selected, necessarily to work with. I won't even real I don't even really wanna have these people over to my house for a barbecue on a nice Saturday. And, yes, by the way, I'd like to continue to get paid because I've got a mortgage. So, you know, I've

got bigger concerns than whether or not these people feel good. I gotta keep the money flowing in because, you know, inflation's all over the place and, you know, hey, the baby needs a new pair of shoes. Right? So for me as a new leader, this is very practical. This isn't like pie in the sky theory. This is very practical. So how do I get people to get things done? How do I do that as a new leader? And not screw up so your boss doesn't complain? Or fire me fourth my tech

gets cut or right. Or get demoted or you know? Because I like to I like to say this because I also have I also have ideas about status in my head, which I've not fully acknowledged, but I do have ideas about status and my place in the in the social hierarchy, not only of the bureaucracy, but also of my neighborhood, my community, blah blah blah blah blah blah. I like

my neighborhood, my community, blah blah blah blah blah blah. I like saying that I'm the VP of x, y, z thing and that I lead a, b, c number of people. I enjoy saying that when I go to church or when I volunteer at a local community or or whatever. Yeah. And that because that just gives me this perception of status and prestige and hey, people Yeah. We like that. I mean that's the human nature. That's the ego. We're speaking to the ego at that point. Correct.

So to answer your question, that is the probably the biggest Rubicon that that people need to cross is that initial position of now you've got these people that while you've been told they report to you, you're very good at what you're doing. And I'm going to use the term technical here. It doesn't matter what the vocational aspect of it is, but it's doing, you know, be it an accountant, dealing with numbers, or being an engineer, fourth or a research scientist, whatever. That's your

technical work. They're good at that and they get promoted into some form of position, a leadership position. They now have a bunch of people. The very first thing that I work with people on, who are you? As your as a leaders, you got you got this position that's great. It's all wonderful and all of that. But who are you? Do you know who you are? Do you know what trips you up? Do you know what excites you? Do you know what really gets you going within the technical space or

anywhere else for that matter? Mhmm. But it's un beginning to understand who you are as a Jesan. Because there's everybody's got something that trips them up. Every everybody's got some saboteur that's going to come and, hey, I wanna do this great job. Get the right metrics for my boss. Hey, you know, I gotta I gotta prove that I can do this. And something's gonna happen that's gonna screw up. And now your stress level's just gone through the roof and then something.

So but are you aware of that, what that is? Are you aware of that trigger that's gotten you there? So now you're in firefighting mode. On the moment people go into firefighting mode, it's sort of tunnel vision and everything else gets blurred and doesn't feature anymore. That's the biggest challenge. So the more you become self aware, the better you're able to now lead. Now what do I mean by that?

When you understand yourself, when you understand the things that trip you up, when you understand things that motivate you, when you understand where your strength lie, You begin to realize that other people have the same thing. They have their saboteurs, the triggers that trip them up. They have their strength. They have their motivators. Oh, well, that means they're not that

different from me. Mhmm. Interesting. That creates an awareness that you've got a bunch of other people, not a bunch of robots. Because I think too many people in that first and I and I I experienced that in some of my own leadership in the corporate space. Oh, well, now you report to me. Now you must go do do do do do. Right. You're not robots. You can't people do not operate as robots. I had I had bosses who basically said, well, just go and do this and get that done and

do this and do that. You know, all technical stuff. Well, that's great. But I if I slipped up, then what? And, you know, then you got the royal the look, the the speaking to, the threat, the, you know, everybody has their own story on that one as you did to me, I'm sure.

But that's I found is the biggest turning. When I can recognize that the people who are reporting to me now, be they the chosen ones or the ones given to me, which in as to your point, is invariably when we are promoted within a corporate structure, we inherit those people. Mhmm. Mhmm. But when we can recognize that they're human beings with the same desires well, with with desires, needs, saboteurs, triggers just like I do. Now I can have a different perspective on how I can go

about getting them to do what they're doing. Now this doesn't happen overnight. So how do I get people to do to come back to your question, try and bring this full circle, getting people to do things. Well, one, they're technically, for the most part, have an idea of what they should be doing. Writers? 1+1 is going to equal 2. So just go through the steps that make

it equal 2. But it comes down to how do I then, and this we're delving into the depth, starting into some of the depth stuff here is how can I influence them to make sure that they want to do 1 +1 equals 2? That you use the word inspire, a duty to inspire. Right? But I like that the other I word influence a little bit better because I think a lot of new leaders and quite frankly, a lot of seasoned leaders, actually don't understand the word inspiration.

I think that comes loaded with a lot of Yep. Ideas about charisma and I'm not a leadership theories guy. I mean, I know what they are, but I'm not a leadership theories guy. I think that a lot of that's, well, much of that is noise. And it's an attempt Tom, by the left brain, to just structure, a lot of the right

brain chaos that that is seen in in in the leadership space. This is why there's over 400,000 books on leadership just on Amazon.com alone, just in the United States search for Get Global, because almost everybody. And I said this in my book on leadership, almost everybody knows leadership is like pornography. Almost everybody knows what it is when they see it and they know what it is when they don't see it. Jesan. And so there's 315,000,000 people in, in, in the United States, roughly, And

that's 315,000,000 different versions of what leadership is. Sorry. It just it just is. And so theories are an attempt to sort of pull all that together and and sort of systematize that. And that's why many of them fail at the individual level. But I say that to say this, I think people hear the word inspiration and they think that that means that you have to have charisma as a leader. Whereas influence means you actually have a skill set there. And I take that influence and I

take the definition of influence from Robert Cialdini. You know, this idea that, okay, influence is part of persuasion and influence is a skill set, whereas persuasion is the ability. Right? And if I could merge those two things together, anyone can get a skill set. Anyone can learn how to ride a bike. Some people will ride it well. Some people will ride it poorly, but anyone can ride a bike

within their own physical capabilities, right, to ride a bike. Right. So, the same thing with leadership, same thing with this idea of influence versus inspiration. But you put the word duty next to that. Why do people have a duty to influence or a duty to, as you said, inspire? When so the the the reason why I use the word duty because we're when we get promoted into a position of leadership, there is an out well, there's responsibility.

And depending on where you are, there's authority that comes with it and all of that. But that renders you and using the word duty is you have you have a a a group of people who now in the corporate structure report Tom you. Mhmm. There's a group of people who are looking up to you for guidance and fourth, quote, leadership. They wanting direction. They wanting to feel significant. They're wanting to experience something of value and have a sense

of importance. Mhmm. No different to you in that position of leadership coming from above you. So there is an inherent duty when you have been given the responsibility to guide people, to guide them well. Yes, we spoke about inspiration. You're right with the word influence. Influence, I mean ultimately leadership is about influence. Influence can happen in 2 essays, though. 1 is inspiring, the other one is not. One is positive the other one has a negative impact. It does,

one you can get people to rise to the occasion as it were. You get people behind you, behind the cause, whatever it is. And the other one they'll do, I mentioned earlier, the bare minimum just to get paid at the end of the month. Mhmm. And that is that is the effect of influence. Inspiration leaves people feeling excited about what they do. And that, I believe, is also falls under the banner of

influence, getting into the detail of it. Influence you as a as an influencer, as a leaders, influencing people, your goal is to inspire them to do what they're doing, to do what they're doing technically well. Now does that mean I have to entertain people? No. Like, am I required to be like Taylor Swift, who I didn't know who I did not know who that person was until literally a year ago? Like I had no clue who that person was. And I was happy in my life. I was fine. Like I was I

was continuing to exist. I continued to eat 3, 3 meals a day, roughly. I continue to breathe. I continue to live at my house. I continue to love my kids. Like everything was fine. And then all of a sudden, this person popped up and now I'm like, I've gotta know who this person is. Do I have to entertain? Because I think a lot of leaders confuse that idea of of in of of being of influencing or being an influencer. Because, you know, social media is filled with people

who are quote unquote influencers. Writers? And really they're just they're just Glorified entertainers? They're lower they're low rent versions of Taylor Swift. Do I need to be a low rent version of Taylor Swift for my team? Do I really need to do that? No. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Thank you for freeing me from that. No. I don't believe you're a mint. I some people's personality might lend itself to being a little bit more entertaining. Right. But not necessitating being an

entertainer. Entertainer. Right. Yeah. Okay. Well, I but I do. I think a lot of leaders because of the and this gets to sort of how our leadership culture has disintegrated, I think, is probably the best term over the or atomized. Maybe let's be more a little more friendly has atomized over the last, you essays 20 years. I think it's atomized over the last 25 years. And I think that part of that, or my theory on that, and let me kind of run this by you a

little bit. My theory is that when the commercial internet got turned on in 1989 and the Berlin wall came down, those were 2 events kind of like, similar to Woodstock and Apollo happening in 1968 that that were that were what I call thunder clap events, except one we recognize as a thunder clap event, the fall of the Berlin wall. But one the other one, we didn't. We didn't hear the thunderclap go off because it's boom, took a while Tom to hit us. Right?

Yep. But both of those events began the heralding of the decline of what I call mass leadership. So the if you look at the leaders of the 20th century, they led big things. They led big bureaucracies, big company big companies, big civic organizations. Big was the thing. Mass was the thing. Get as many people and think of IBM, right? Get as many people as you can working at IBM. Get as many people as you can working

at Lockheed Martin. Get as many people as you can working at any of the great 20th century brands, Pepsi, Coke, whatever, right? Fourth so Books than Pepsi, probably. But get them turning. You know, people will will follow because they're a generation that came out of World War II. So they're going to follow. They're going to say, yes, sir. They're going to salute and they're going to be dutiful little readers. They're going to go, and they're going to be happy with 3 hots and

a cot in their neighborhood. And it's going to take a while for all this to kind of fall apart. And it did begin to it did begin to atomize. It began to disintegrate, in the late sixties and going into the seventies and the eighties, but there was still enough power underneath of that idea of mass leadership to push it through even into the early

2000. But as the Internet became more powerful, this is my theory, as the Internet became more powerful and as the ability for me to connect with Peter or Peter to connect with somebody in India or somebody in India to be able to connect with someone in Russia. As that individual connection became more powerful, Now we moved from mass leadership being the thing that was being prioritized to the space where we are at now, which is where I

believe individualized leadership is the thing that everybody's looking for. And that's really hard if you're still working in a corporate bureaucratic structure Tom understand. Understand. I think it's hard to understand. I think it's hard to accept. So when I talk to not new leaders and not veteran leaders, but leaders who are sort of on their path

to being veteran leaders are kind of in the middle. One of their biggest frustrations is, well, I've got all these people and they want to bring their whole selves to work. And let's say I got a team of 20 people. Does that mean that I need to be a different person for all 20 of these people? And I say, yes. That's what it means because their phones are set up with social media that caters to them. And their dopa, their dopaminergically being goosed to want things individually their

way. Just like if you show me the front of your iPhone leader, mister and missus leader, your phone doesn't look like mine. You're being dopaminergically goosed in the things that you like, but you don't have that. I love to how you framed it as self awareness. You don't have that self awareness, that hardheaded empathy. Instead, you want the math thing because it's easier for you. Not easier for the people you're leading. This is my theory.

Yeah. And and and you you've got a valid point there in terms of the mass leadership thing being something that came out of the world wars back in the, you know, forties. Yep. That came to an end. Corporate took off, especially when you look at North America. Europe had to rebuild. It there was that sense, I am the leader. Do as you're told. You know, yes, sir. And off you go and do it. Mhmm. I think that's also a remnant of the industrial age when

it took off back in sixties whenever. Mhmm. And you got because at the beginning of 19th century, the whole idea of automations and and production line efficiencies really took off. I mean, that was Ford's Henry Ford's, doing Big idea. Yeah. Big idea. Yeah. Bringing that to fruition. And there is a sense whenever something big and new comes along, while it may it needs some mass leadership, it needs somebody very powerful, very strong to push it through, to

pull it through. Distinction between push and pull. Yep. And then, you know, when you essays the Internet came along, you gave people a lot more access to the masses that made communicate intercommunication between individuals a lot easier than doing the old snail mail turning, and you only knew a handful of people. You wrote a letter to me anyway. Right. So we now get exposed to a lot more information. Did that drive the individualization aspect of

people? I'm gonna say I don't think it did. I think what it did is it brought it to the surface. Okay. Okay. I think we've all had the individualization turning, but Sorrells norms dictated. No, you do as you're told, because this is a corporate structure and you go to work and every, that's just the way it is. And if fourth already accepted that, But it's interesting to observe from about the 19 sixties onwards that began to bit by

bit break down. Right. And the Internet was almost where a momentum took off Mhmm. Because of of what it what it ushered in. So I don't think it's necessarily new. I just brought to the surface something that is inherently there. And then the generation, so the millennials, Gen z, gen z's now, well, they've grown up with these things in their hand the whole time. That's what they used to, you know. Social media feeds. Right? But now they have a very different awareness to what

we had when we were teenagers. Mhmm. Well, and you you well, and you mentioned the generational differences. I wanna talk a little bit about that too because I do think well, I think a couple of things. So we're having a massive generational turnover. Right? So the baby boomers Yeah. Are are are dragging themselves, kicking and screaming out the door. There is a lot of kicking and screaming going on, but Yes. They are they are they are dragging themselves

out the door. Now they're not leaving succession plans because they don't trust Gen Xers, and there just aren't enough Gen Xers as a generational cohort globally or in America. They just start the numbers just start there. You know, the 13 I'm part of that generation that was fourth between 1960 1980. There's only, like, I think, 25,000,000 of us. That's tiny. But I do know with the Gen X's though, they're part of the challenge with the gen x's is they're looking after those

baby boomers extracting themselves out of the workforce. Correct. Right. They're not only are they looking after the baby boomers, but we're also raising gen Z. And, and we had to do, we didn't do battle with the millennials because we were just like, all right. Let's have to accept the message. Writers. Well, and there's just so many of them. There's 80 there's 80 some odd million. Like, what are you gonna do? You're really gonna go into a street war

with 80,000,000 people? Like, give me a break. Come on. It's just easier to just shrug and go whatever. Okay. But I think that in that generational turnover, I do think that, we are in the midst of and this is a larger idea that I explore on this podcast. We're in the middle of in the United States anyway. And also I think in Canada Tom, although I think it's a little bit harder to see in Canada. We're in the middle of a or we're at the end of a historical

cycle. We're at the end of a historical seculum cycle, an 80 year cycle. Yep. And at the end of an 80 year cycle, there's always chaos in the last 20 to 25 years at the end of a at the end of a cycle. But then on the other side of that is a new cycle that starts sort of like winter going into turning, right? And this is from the ideas of William Strauss and Neil Howe, The fourth

Turning. I really bought into that sort of idea because I think it explains a lot of this generational the generational differences narrowly in leadership, but also communication and a whole lot of other places. Because and this is why I bring this up because I think. Gen Xers who in general are in their mid forties to touching on their early sixties now. Are people who are going to have to lead in that in the

next spring. But unfortunately, a lot of us, because we've just been surviving the last 25 years and adapting to chaos that has basically just been going on since, at least in my life, chaos has been going on since 2,001, since September 11th happened. Like, bagged. That was the beginning of chaos, and it's just been chaos year on year on year on year on year on year. You get into a certain sense of adaptability as a leader. Yep. And there's

always another brick, not shoe. There's always other brick that's dropping. And so when spring comes, you don't believe it. And you're the cynical old, Sorrells, ladies, but you're the cynical old guy leader who no one wants to listen to because now there's spring and there's hopefulness. And I think millennials sense that something else is coming as a generational cohort, but they don't have the words

to describe it. And then you've got Gen Zers, or, yes, Gen Zers, who are, number 1, scare the hell out of millennials, which I find to be amusing. But then number 2 right. I just laugh. That's just Tom makes me giggle. That makes me giggle. But but then number 2, in Gen Z, you see a split between folks who they don't want to return to mass leadership, but they don't know how to describe their need for leadership. And then you've got the people who are just very just very individualistic, and

they're just gonna they're just gonna run on the thing they're gonna run on. And they have no time for the other the the mass folks. They just don't and so they just don't talk because they understand how the Internet works because they were born in it. And they understand how social media works, so they just they just don't engage. They used to go in for their own silos. There's an individual thing, and they're just gonna drive. They're just gonna drive. They're just gonna drive. They're just

gonna drive. I've been I've met a lot of Gen z ers who are very, very strong workers and very, very good team players, who do who refuse to make any on a Tom, they refuse to give pushback to other Gen Zers who are engaging badly or who are behaving badly. And then you've got Gen Xers who are trying to lead these teams fourth older millennials who are trying to lead these Tom. And they're like, I

don't know what's happening here. And we see this sort of in the split between, folks who I'm just gonna use the the public example. Folks who are very loudly, promoters of DEI in various organizations and cultures and the and everybody else who just sort sits quietly by and just kinda hangs out. Yeah. I think that is definitely something that is appearing to be very prevalent. Where you've got this divide

between those that are vocal. They're pushed. They're more engaged, they're dynamic, versus those who are more complacent, quiet, get down, they do their thing. And it's not that they don't work or anything. But there's that divide. But I do wonder though Tom your point about the internet. Did the internet create this distinction more definedly? Did it really bring it to the surface? Something that has always been there generation to generation to generation? Because it speaks partly to

people's personality. Some people are quieter, withdrawn people. Mhmm. Others are more loud in your face. It's their fundamental personality. Yeah. Okay. Some people argue you can change your personality. However, is that any different to what the the baby boomers were when they were the age of the mania. But it wasn't societally, the the perception was different. Right. Yeah. I I think that's the thing. Writers? So so history doesn't

repeat. It just echoes. Right? And so boomers have now taken on the role that the World War 2 generation, the couple of World War 2 generations, both the silent generation and the generation that fought in World War 2 because there's a split there. But, you know, they've now taken on the role that those folks took. But because I think of the Internet and the applications built on the Internet,

I think you're correct. The the The cultural disintegration that took place around those structures has allowed those structures to be the institutions, Tom be the new that's what everybody, I think, is trying to figure out. Right. And I don't think there's a good that's what everybody, I think, is trying to figure out. Right. And I don't think there's a good answer for this. I think we're all kind of grasping for what

the answer is. And I I I'm and I think this is where leadership comes in because I think fundamentally at the end of the day, and this is how I run my consultancy leadership toolbox, and this is how I do, you know, you know, not only this podcast, but also coaching and book writing and all that. I fundamentally believe that, and you talked about self aware, I frame it as the intentional application

of effective leadership practices. Things that have worked as human beings haven't changed in 10000 years or 6000 years, depending upon what your number is that you'd like to use. Human beings still need the same things they needed back when we were rubbing 2 sticks together turning to make a fire. Correct. None of that's changed. Yep. The the circumstances of the environment may have shifted around, but the basic needs are the same.

And that's why we do this podcast in the way we do it because you could find out some of that stuff in old books versus the brand new shiny business book. And that aspect, you know, so coming back to the whole leadership thing in the context of this, nothing has changed. Human beings are still human beings. They still have their fundamental needs. And whatever those are, but we all have them. What I think has shifted is the rate of change of technology

Mhmm. Is something that a lot of people might be struggling to stay on top of, keep up with. Mhmm. Right? You've got a lot of baby boomers who quite frankly are struggling to wrap their head around anything and everything Internet related email and forget social media on top of that. That's just another headache to learn. The the millennials and the gen, gen z's, well, that's natural

for them. They just get it. But when they are 20, 30, 40 years from now, what technology that they are having to deal with and its rate of change Right. Are they going to be experiencing the similar sort of struggle to what the baby boomers today are? And and you can look through every generation. It has its Sorrells to deal with the change that is being experienced in society at large.

So let's talk a little bit about artificial intelligence because this, every leadership consultant who I've ever talked to leadership, author performance leadership, project management, whatever. Right. Coaching everybody's holding their breath. Yes. Trying to see, just like Peter just held his breath there, trying to see how these how these algorithms, a, are going to go to scale, and, b, disintermediate what we do.

Now I fundamentally am not holding my breath, and maybe that's just my level of ignorance of the science and the engineering behind it as a humanities major, but I look at all these algorithms in their current state, and I think I don't really have anything to worry about. Well, then and then you get those people who look at movies

like Terminator and go, crap. What are we in for? You're right. Yeah. Like, if like, you know, Boston Dynamics, I wish they'd Tom making the robots and then making the videos that show us the robots that can stand up once they've been knocked over. Stop it. Has anybody ever stop it, you people. It's this is what I'm talking. This gets back to my idea about, oh, it's just a bug, not a feature. Quit with the engineering. Like, stop it. Stop it. Getting humanoid robots

is not an engineering problem. Stop. It's actually a leadership problem. It's actually a leadership problem. No. And are there those people at the engineer level, at the doer level, and at the leadership level who want to develop, oh, we want the greatest AI thing there is. You know, there there is a race, and you read through all the the literature out there

talking about gen AI and all of that. There is a race to who can who can create the next best language algorithm, who can create the next best feature set, who can oh, yeah. You know, ChatGPT came out in November of 22. Mhmm. And now we're looking at well, ChatGPT is advanced with version 4. Now you can create sound or a person's voice blank, and you wouldn't know the difference. You can create video. You can create images. Well, we couldn't do that. What's that? Year and a half

ago, but we came down. So what is the next iteration? Where is that going? The older generation, I think it does freak out a little bit. Where can it go? And how, well, you know, what what's it mean? The younger generation, I think, is split in terms of its embracing of that. Mhmm. Oh, yeah. No. This is great. Let's do it. Yeah. Well, hang on. You know? I mean, I don't know. I'm I'm not so sure. But is that a feature of this generation, or is it just a technology

that has got two sides to it? So I take the posture that or I take the position. Versus a humorous one. I always think of Marty McFly in Book to the Future when he goes back to, when he goes in Back to the Future 2, when he when he's in Hill Valley And, he's standing there in front of the movie theater, and the 3 d jaws shark comes out, and he freaks out and he, like, books. And, like, the shark, like, bites and then because it's the ad for the it's the ad for, like, jaws in

3 d or whatever. Yeah. And it, like, bites him and then it shrinks back into the into the movie theater. Then he stands up and looks around, and, of course, nobody else is looking around. They're all like, but when you do it, you idiot, like, it's in 3 d thing. And he goes he shakes his head a little bit, and Michael j Fox goes, Shark still looks fake. He Sorrells walks away.

Yes. So, you know, because I'm a cinema guy. Like, I'm a movie guy, so I'm like, oh, that's that's so that's the first thing I think of in relation to all of this. Like, I long I long ago wrote a a series of blog posts about how I thought, and and and nobody read them at the time, and maybe I should republish them, about how Google as a search engine was going to leap, was going to be the 1st internet company that was going to escape the internet into the real.

I firmly believe that the I still firmly believe that that's the path they're on. They're trying to get out of the box. They're trying to get out of the box of the Internet. They're trying to get out of the box of your computer or your mobile device because their stated goal is to collect all the data in the world. That's their stated goal. Well, there's a whole bunch of data that's outside of the Internet that they need to get to if that's their stated goal. And so if

you just look around. Everything that I am surrounded by that you're surrounded by, you have a bookshelf in your office. I got a bookshelf in my office. You've got computers, You've got your your biometrics. You've got your your book fourth bio your your actual biology of your body. That's all data. Right? These are all data points. Yep. We don't think of the world in that kind of Tom. But if you're

Google, that's how you think about the world. And so you gotta get out of you gotta get outside of the box you're trapped in. And I think the large language algorithms, that's the next step. You talk about voice, you talk about video, you talk about images. I think the next step is try to get that out of the Internet and get it into the real world, kind of like a reverse sort of matrix kind of idea. Do I think that that will be a good thing or a bad thing? We're

going to talk about ethics here in a minute. We can have that conversation, but I do think at a practical level, it is being looked at as a engine engineering problem to be solved. Yep. Versus a versus something that probably should be left alone. And I do think that's the next step. I do. I do with those large English. I think they're going to escape the Internet. I do. I think they're going

to escape the Internet. They're going to be walking around the real world with us, which is going to create all other kinds of complications, that we, in our postmodern conception of reality, don't have the words or the ideas to wrap our arms around, but I think a lot of pre modern societies had the words and the language to wrap their arms around.

I sometimes frame it as postmodern problems have pre modern solutions, but we don't wanna learn any of the pre modern solutions because we're too sophisticated for that. Partly because we are stuck in when we were that age and wrapped our minds around what was then postmodern. Writers, exactly. Yeah. These are just thoughts I have in my head about about artificial intelligence. I'm open to being I'm open to being wrong. You know, maybe it will all be

paradisiacal and and awesome. And, you know, the algorithm will give me everything that I desire. We'll build our own gods Tom paraphrase from Google Gemini. Yeah. And I think you what you've just said there, I think, is the key thing from a leadership standpoint Mhmm. Remember is that well, there's still you and I around. There's still all of our employees around. The

human factor. Mhmm. If we take the human factor out of this from a leadership as a leader in embracing AI, doesn't matter what you're doing with Tom. Mhmm. You're just embracing it. Leadership is fourth humans. You don't need to lead an AI model. You do not need to lead a robot. You just give it defined instructions, and it does because it has no emotion. Instructions, and it does because it has no emotion. Right. Human beings have emotion. They have reason they have the ability to

reason. That's where leadership is key. And you cannot you cannot take leadership and the human factor and separate it and bring AI into a place. Right. Right. Yeah. I often think of Star Trek. I mean, the next generation, like data. Data was an Android. And when data was driving the ship, the ship was driven by artificial intelligence. Correct. So it's a machine driving another machine. But you still had human beings walking around inside of that machine dealing with each other.

Exactly. And that's the thing we mustn't forget is there's always a human factor in everything that we do. Right. And leadership will always deal with the humans. Okay. So let's talk about dealing with the humans. Let's let's move fourth maybe this fourth of technical sort of algorithmic conversation to to more maybe more of a human one. All things I struggle with as a leadership guy. And maybe you can help me out with some of this. You can help me walk through some of these areas,

because maybe you're seeing the same thing. So I am on a mission to make people competent. Okay. Because I think that the decline in competency you talked about 2020, I think a lot of things happened in 2020. A lot of people were given and I'm going to use the broad term people, but I actually think it was leadership teams and organizations and cultures were given permission. They were granted permission to let competency slide because we had a public emergency fourth perceived public emergency.

And so when it perceived public emergency, every, the discipline kind of falls apart because people are in panic mode. Writers. And the longer that emergency was allowed to continue, rightly or wrongly, the fourth the discipline around competency loosened up and loosened up and loosened up. And now we're in a situation where we can see incompetency all around us. But to stand up and say that is looked at as

being disagreeable or being the dirty end of the stick. And I'm actually I've I've recently had a had a. Business interaction around this space, which is kind of why I'm thinking about it. So importantly, right now, I recently had a business interaction around this space with a third party client that we do some work with without

going into names or the specific situation. But but basically, we've decided to end our relationship with that third party client because of incompetencies on their part that were not in evidence before 2020. I don't think that we're alone in seeing this as a firm. I think this is everywhere. I think people can see this everywhere. I think we can see this most notably in the decline of customer service when we go into retail. Like we can see this. So how do we as leaders

ensure competency? By the way, another example of this, when the bridge in Baltimore, was hit by the cargo ship, tragic accident, took a lot of people's lives, you know, essays all the caveats. Right. And I read a story because this drove me crazy. This drove me over a cliff where the engineers were estimating that it would take 10 years to rebuild that bridge.

And I thought, is that because we don't have competent enough people to put up that bridge Or is that because and I kind of went on a little bit of a rip on this on LinkedIn? Or is this because we we have people who have overemphasized empathy and underemphasized being disagreeable? Because sometimes you gotta be disagreeable to put up a bridge really fast so that commerce can continue. Right. And so this, this idea of competency versus empathy, or maybe if it's, maybe

it's even competency versus agreeableness. I think this is something else that we're struggling with on the human end. And I think that leaders are struggling with this most most importantly right now. Or of wanting to avoid some form of conflict disagreement. And instead of utilizing conflict to come up with a better solution, everybody just apathetically says Right. Want fourth doesn't get involved fourth, you know, there's various ways that apathy can manifest itself.

Which leads to more incompetency because iron sharpens iron. To paraphrase Tom to phrase phrase that, a horary old book of the bible. You know, iron sharpens iron. Right? And so how do I get better? How do I become more competent? Well, it isn't through avoiding the conflict, and and maybe it's because I'm a conflict management guy too. Like, I don't avoid conflict. Like, it's fine. Like, let's let's have an argument. Let's figure it out.

We can disagree without being disagreeable. Exactly. I think that's one of the challenges that exist is people are not willing to to put their view on the table for the fear of creating an argument. Well, I've got other things to do. I'm not gonna say anything. I mean, the reasoning can be can be a myriad of things. I think you're right that 2020 was a divide, a threshold in in some ways where competency was allowed to slip. Mhmm. Because, oh, you know, well, they,

this, they, that, whatever. Does that mean as leaders we should be less competent leaders? Does that mean we should just allow people just to sink back Tom sit back, to withdraw from becoming the best they can be? Because that's one of the things a leader should be doing, is working with it their employees to be the best they can be. How else do you get a successful organization? How do you how else do you get the

best product on the market? Well AI might seem to be the antithesis of this where there is but it's the newest thing on the block. So everyone's dung ho about it. Everybody, oh, this is thing. You know, let's go go go go go. I mean, we thought of the Internet, you know, 2020.com Tom all of that lot was a class at 20 2000, sorry, not 2020, you know, the whole Tom era. Mhmm. Are we seeing that again? And everything else is being allowed to be to

slip in terms of its competency Libby? My question is, who's slipping on its competency at that point? Is it the worker, or is it the leader? Always and it always one contingent not an easy contingent, but as a result of the other. Well, if leadership is fundamentally relationally based, which I do believe it is, only remember exchange theory tells us that, but also just the practical ways in which we see leadership developing, but in our own lives tells us that this is a

relational act. And so I think the the the team member or worker or employee, or however you want to frame it, gets emotional cues from the leader and the leader gets emotional cues from the team member. And now we're in this now they're they're book they're all in this hot house, right, of emotional turning. And to your point earlier, if the leader isn't self aware enough, they could easily be drawn into, I think they could be drawn by the siren song of

becoming undisciplined in certain areas. Yep. Very much so. How is how do I as a leader I'm going to ask you this fourth a conflict management guy, because I think I know what the answer is, but I want Tom, let's see what your answer is. So how do I, as a leader manage conflict effectively, in particular, I'm on a diverse I'm leading a team of diverse people, a team of always

people have always been diverse. But I'm leading a I'm leading a team of diverse people post 2020, post I'm gonna go here, post George Floyd,

writers? Post all of that. Writers. And now we're into a space where particularly in the United States, I don't know how it is in in Canada, but particularly in the United States where, diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts are being pulled back, by major corporations, but pulled back in the sense that they are being repackaged and put in different spots to avoid government regulators and to avoid law the law looking at them.

But on the ground, and I'm hearing this from real people working in real corporations on real teams, this kind of stuff is still happening. You know? And and by the way, this kind of stuff, meaning the trainings that divide and fragment people based on identity. Right? The the ways in which people are labeled and put into their own little boxes based on their sexual orientation or their

racial designation or their ethnic background. We're also seeing in the culture in the United States increasing pressure being placed on organizations and corporations from the outside around geopolitical moments that are occurring, as in the Ukraine, Israel versus Hamas, da da da da da. Right? These these external social and political pressures are being paced on leaders and on Tom. Well, on organizations first,

and then it filters down into leaders and teams. And then we throw into, then we throw ESG into there where corporations are being. What's the word I'm looking for? They're being no. Yeah. I coerced. Okay. Yeah. No. That's the hard word, but it's probably the right one, are being coerced into following along with with mandates from governmental entities that in very many cases don't match what's going on in the real world that they

could really see. Okay. So you've got these you've got these these things that are pushing on on organizations, which then in turn push on leadership, which then in turn push on teams. And at a at a very practical level, leaders are looking at their diverse teams, and they're asking the question, how can I have a conflict here to grow in competency when there's all

these to paraphrase an overused word fourth to use an overused word? There's all these triggers all around, and I feel like I'm walking into a landmine every time I talk to, you know, my 14 people. How can I have an honest conversation with them? I'm just trying to not hit any landmines. What do we say what do you say to leaders like that? Because I I have an idea what the answer is, but what do you say to leaders like that who who may who may be asking those kinds of

questions? Maybe I look at things slightly a little bit differently. Sure. Yeah. Maybe. Conflict. I will put I will put it that. Conflict isn't a bad thing. I mean, I I think society has placed this, oh, conflict is bad. Oh, you got to avoid it. Yes. You got the Jesan. They are People have the personality trait that are conflict avoidant. Mhmm. Conflict. I mean, when book at the root word of conflict, I mean, it goes back to we had the conflict between this

nation and that nation. That's where it was armed conflict. Somebody had to die. Somebody had to there had to be a winner and there had to be a loser. That is our presumption as to what conflict constitutes. So leader has conflict with team team there. Somebody's got to lose. Somebody's got to win. That's just the way it is. Whereas if you look at conflict, and maybe conflict is the wrong word to use, maybe we need to create a new word. That just a thought

that popped into my head right now. But, you know, it's a points of view. You you have a different point of view to I, and Mary has a different point of view yet again. Does Tom mean everybody's point of view other than mine is wrong? Well no. Now you're potentially creating conflict. However, can I learn something from your point of view and Mary's point of view and John's point of view if we were to share our points of view so that we understand why you have that point of view and you

have that point of view? We have a much better understanding of everybody around the table and can therefore come up with a much better solution to the challenges that we are facing. As opposed to viewing it as conflict between on a Tom. It's conflict on a team between leader and employees or and their team or if I wonder, looking at the origins of the word conflict, if we're using the wrong word.

Maybe we're using the wrong word. I I'd be open to the idea we could use a different word, like disputes or disagreements, maybe. Disagree. Differences of opinion. Yeah. Yeah. I'd be, I'd be open to using a different word. I think there's also, so we, we demand, we are increasingly demanding of our leaders, without really getting a response by the way, from them, which I also think is driving average people nuts. And they don't really know why, but we are asking our

leaders. And increasingly, I think the term is demanding of our leaders that they have epistemic, they possess epistemic humanities. Doctor. Yes. Doctor. In a way that we weren't demanding of them, as we were previously talking about a few minutes ago, we weren't demanding that of them during the mass leadership of the 20th century, because there was just trust there. Right. Yeah. We just trusted Henry Ford to, you know, create a business. And if he had epistemic humility

or if he didn't have it, that wasn't what we were looking for. We were trusting in his competency to build Ford Motor Company fourth we were trusting in Steve Jobs to build Apple, or we were trusting in whoever, you know, even our presidents. We were trusting our presidents to lead the country. Mhmm. With the breakup of trust and the United States is still a high trust society, more so than most societies in the world, even though that trust has

declined. With the with the decline of trust in leadership, we are asking our leaders to be more epistemically humble, and our leaders don't know how to ask, and this is this is where where the and the disagreements really begin to occur, I think. I don't think leaders understand how to ask their teams to exhibit more epistemic humility. Right. And you I think you've got a valid point there. And I I wanna bring around from a different tact to this is what we

mentioned earlier on. When you understand who you are. When you understand who you are, other people on your team have needs, have desires enough are fundamentally human beings like you. Is that where we're coming at from the need for this level of humility and understanding that leaders we demanding of leaders to have. Because it's not just the humanities. It's an understanding. But you cannot gain an understanding without seeking information in order to understand.

Right. So all we're asking our leaders without actually saying it, oh, you gotta be more humble and blah blah, all of that lot, Find out more about the people on your team. When you look at this great resignation that 2020 kicked into high gear Mhmm. It brought what was brewing underneath to the surface. And that and what that fundamentally simplistically phrased was, I'm an individual. I have needs

and I want to feel valued. What are you gonna do to what what contribution do I make to this organization other than to be a number on a leaders, and I get paid basically on to do to put 2 nuts and bolts together. You know, very simplistically. But it it it serves a point. People wanna feel valued. And our leaders, what is being demanded of leaders is to see their people as human beings. This comes back to the human factor I mentioned. Is that what we're demanding?

Maybe we're phrasing it again wrong and just using the word humility. What else is there? Being human. What is human what is a humanity perspective in the context of this? Well, I think so if I'm sitting the essence of what leadership is, you mentioned a moment ago, it's relational. Right. Relational can only exist between 2 human beings. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

So if I'm sitting around let me make this very practical. So if I'm sitting around a table with fourth members of my team, right, I, as a leader of that small Tom, am resuming, for lack of a better word, that the people who are coming to this table with their opinions and their ideas, are the best people to be sitting at that table. I'm presuming that even before I start having a conversation about a, about a problem that we need to solve or a project we need to start. Writers?

I think where the frustration for leaders comes in and which is probably why they they're not evincing the humility necessary in all Tom. And by the way, I think it I think it's easier to evince that humility the smaller and smaller the team is. Right? So True. If if you got 4 to 6 people, there's nowhere to hide. There's nowhere to hide with your ego. There's nowhere to hide with being incompetent. There's nowhere to hide with having with having the ability to not face conflict. There's nowhere

to hide with a lack of self awareness because everybody can see that. Now, but now when you go to scale, when you go above Dunbar's number, writers, when you go above that number of folks, now there's plenty of places for the leader to hide. There's also plenty of places for the team member to hide. Don't get me wrong. But there's plenty of places for the leader to hide their own incompetency, their own fear, their own lack of of humility. So I think that if I'm on a small team, I

have to trust that those people are the right people. But as the team gets bigger, the trust level falls. Yes. That is that is invariably the perception of what happens. Not that it doesn't actually happen. But trust all because, well, I'm just 1 or 20, now 30, now 4 whatever number of people. Right. You don't because the leaders in at that junction not able to interact with the individual. He's now interact or she is interacting with a a mass. The

mass. Yeah. Right. So there's that mass concept. Again, therein lies the problem. So how do you deal with conflict at that point? How do you deal with all of this? The bigger the team, the harder it is to find fourth get agreement across the board and the commitment to to whatever is agreed. Mhmm. Absolutely. Does that mean that the team is too big? And I'm gonna I'm gonna challenge it and say that the answer is yes. It is too big. Yeah. Because reality is how many people can you lead?

Oh, you can't go above double digits. I I think you can. I think I think your ratio is 1 to 8. 1 to 8? 1 to 8. And I think you're really and I think you're really pushed it at that point too. Absolutely. So, you know, if you get 10, you're you I've gotta be really, really, really, really good. Right. And that's another conversation. But, you're right. Tom might be it's it's about where when you look at all the literature and you look at the almost anecdotal evidence.

Mhmm. You know, my own anecdotal evidence suggests I can't leave more than 8 people. Right. I well, there's enough examples going back that you can see that. I mean, even biblical examples, you can't more than about 8 people. Really, it's a small number of people. So how do you structure? Because at that point, when you've got a small group of people, you can deal with the notion of conflict fourth the word using the word

conflict and what that means. Because you don't have as many diverse opinions and you don't have people rallying behind and and creating, factions. That's the problem with larger teams. You create factions. Mhmm. And And then they start in then you get the infighting that goes on, and you'll never reach a resolution. So how do we so if I'm if I'm beating a large corporation, or even just a small a small one. Right? Like, 5,000 employees. Right?

What is the best way to construct a leadership ecosystem? Well, the first is creating the the high level, the executive team leadership ecosystem. That's the first one that needs to exist because from everything else flows. Mhmm. So embrace now I'm gonna use the word conflict again, but embrace that within utilize it to get understanding and get agreement and then commitment. So you're cohesive around that. Everybody

agrees to it because everybody understands it. That example of leading and creating that alignment within that executive Tom, is what each one of those leaders then takes to their immediate Tom. And it fosters the same process. That's the I mean, this is ideal. Absolutely. I get it. Mhmm. But you gotta start somewhere. So you start with that executive team and let that flow through. Now there's a concept known as customer driven leadership. Mhmm.

And that's and and the premise there is is that the CEO is serving his executive team. The executive team is serving the next level team that exists and so on and so forth till you get to the frontline team that is serving the the customer, the clients. Mhmm. And that service. So you're taking the traditional pyramid and you're inverting it. You're inverting it. Yep. Okay. So

you're serving, serving up. And if you really wanna take that Tom any degree, you're serving fourth clients to serve their clients and so on. But but when when you look at that model, I am here as CEO, I'm to serve my executive team. How do I do that best? How do I create the alignments, the cohesion? How do I get them all to commit? Now there's a number of different elements you've got to deal with on all

of that. There's trust factors you've got to know. You really want to know who the individual is, what motivates them, what drives them, why they, what trips them up, what sabotages them, all of these things. The more you know about them, you understand. Oh, now I understand why Shazan did that. Mhmm. Because of that, because this factor, that factor, what it is. Now I have understanding, I can give you some empathy. The moment that is, now you suddenly feel more inclusive. Now you feel,

okay. Now I I don't feel like the enemy. I'm trying to do things. Now you know why I'm doing whatever. But now there's understanding. Hey. How can I support you? Now you get other people on the executive team that can support you too, and that goes all the way around the table. Yep. People then have a different perspective of, oh, this is what leadership is. If I don't do that, wow. Aren't that? Okay. Now can I do that with my team? Because that's what I want

on my team. So that the executives are taking it one level lower. And so that goes down throughout the organization. Yes, the bigger the organization, the heck of a lot more work it is, but you gotta start somewhere. Right. Right. And and and what else are you gonna do with your with your life? Like, really, like, what else are you gonna do? Okay. Let's turn and talk a little bit about ethics, because you mentioned the word

alignment, and I love that word. That was a, that was a key word, in our consultancy for many, many years was we are going to help managers and supervisors, the much put upon middle managers, get alignment writers with their teams, with themselves, with the culture. Because what we were seeing, what I was seeing was misalignment all over the place. And misalignment of course leaders to fourth maybe misunderstandings lead to misalignment. I don't know.

Which invariably leads to miscommunication, which invariably leads to the the word we keep using, but we need to find a better one for, what I call false conflict or fake conflict, conflict that doesn't need to doesn't need to happen.

And by the way, I think a lot of this misalignment in organizations and cultures post 2020, has occurred because of that that loss of that loss of of the of the tightening of the discipline, the the more fourth apathy, right, in the system, which has allowed space for misalignment to to to be all over the place, and in

general has allowed false or fake conflict. And I, and I do think fundamentally that most of the conflicts that we have around identity inside of our cultures or inside of organizations are not real conflicts. That's not that's not real. That's not what

it's really about. It's about wanting to be seen fourth it's about wanting to be recognized fourth honestly, and I think this is a lot of it, it's wanting to redress grievances that are individualized to that organization, to that team, to that culture that were never addressed previously. Absolutely. To an individual's satisfaction. Might have been addressed to the organization or the corporate culture satisfaction, but not to the individual's satisfaction. Because the

individual is never seen. Well, and and because and because this goes back to the tension that I said about having our cell phones, We live now. This is the thing that's happening on the other end as it when I go to work, I'm part of a mass. Right. But when I look at my phone, I'm not. There's a tension there. Writers. And no organization right now, not even a government, is not anywhere on the globe that I'm aware of. Maybe Canada, it's

different. Writers? Maybe in Europe, it's different, but no organization, no government I've heard of is addressing that tension and is seeking to solve that. No. Because it's there in lies the biggest one of the biggest problems with leadership, and that's your ego. Right. Well, and it works for me, right, to have that tension. No. There you go. Now you now you hit on something there. Yes. It does work. Because it keeps people in line. Right? It keeps them you know, they're gonna keep

coming to work. It's it's like a fish with a it's like a fish with a hook in it. Right? Like, you're gonna you're gonna keep turning on it. Eventually, it's gonna become your your meal. Yeah. It keeps working as long as everything else falls in line with it. Right. Except the problem except one of the problems is as misalignment then occurs between the individual and the organization, the individual feels comfortable becoming more apathetic and less

competent at their work. And now the domino falls into incompetency. And now we're gonna talk about unethical and unethical behavior. Now the door opens to unethical behavior. And I think a lot of this false conflict falls underneath the realm of unethical behavior. I'm not saying the grievance isn't genuine. I wanna be very clear on that. But I think the behavior around the grievance is unethical. I don't think it's ethical for you to do a a sit in like what recently happened Tom Google.

I'll just use this as a big public example. I don't think it's ethical for you to do a sit in in your boss's office because of some political thing that's happening that has nothing. You could talk all day you want about Google doing research for the Israeli Defense Forces. If you're a developer in some other part of Google and you're not working on that project, it has nothing to do with you.

Right? Right. Hey. So why am I sitting in the office of some vice president protesting to free Palestine? My short answer is gonna be, and probably not the most popular answer, is that your ego Tom satisfy you says I can do that because I have a right to do that. Well that's nothing but

an ego talking. Right. Right. You have an opinion and you believe your opinion is right and they should and others, whoever others are, should not be doing that because I said so. 1 of the biggest problems we have post 2020. Well, and and Google has now respond not responded. Google. Well, yeah, Google reacted or responded. But by turning those 20 people. Yep. And I think that that's probably the correct move for

Google. I'd fire those people. Those, those people you, you want to protest if it were, if if if I'm the VP and you're in my office and you have nothing to do with this and you don't work over here, or even if you do and you haven't brought this grievance to me directly, instead, you staged a protest and you've put a flag out and you're chanting, you are fired. Pack your box up and get out. There is the

you're at I I I don't disagree with the move. I will say this though, and this is a caveat to that to me saying I don't disagree with the move, is that did and and this comes back to the size of teams that we mentioned earlier. Did relevant leaders, were they aware of those individuals, those 20 individuals motivation, what would trigger them? Maybe completely

separate from a work issue as to why they did it. Sure. But you have to ask from a leadership perspective, you have to ask the question, what did leaders do or not do that precipitated that action, those actions of those 20 people? Well, and I'm going to and by the way, before I before I fire you, I'm going to sit down every single one of those individual 20. I'm going to sit them down individually, and I'm going to say I'm not firing you for protesting. That's not

why I'm firing you. I'm not firing you for executing on free speech. Not doing that either. I'm firing you because I failed. To recognize what your motivations were in the internal Google chat, the internal version of Google Slack, basically, that's running around and fomenting all of this. And because I failed and my boss isn't going to fire me, but I have the capability to fire you. The consequence of my failure falls on you.

You have a good day. Pack up your boxes. You're gone. Interesting ethical question. Right. This becomes an ethical question right now. The only way, the only way that conversation actually works though, because I'm fairly sure that VP or those VPs that fired those 20 people didn't have that kind of conversation with those folks. I'm fairly sure that's not how it went. I would agree. The only way that works is if myself is the VP doing the firing goes to my president and my books, and

I say to them, Jesan. The fact of the matter is we have this Google internal Slack channel that's proven to be a real problem, and it's been a real problem for a while. We thought it would allow people to blow off Tom, around their their political progressive activist tendencies. And that has not proven to be what this tool has done as a result of this tool, not turning, which we did put in for ethical reasons, at least initially, it has failed to work. And this is what I'm saying to my boss

because it's failed to book. Now we have to fire these people. But that failure is actually on us. So what are we going to do to fix this? A, so it doesn't happen again, but also B, what are we going to do? So that I don't have to be placed in a position of leadership failure? And I have to go fire another subsequent 20 people for showing up for something else tomorrow. Oh, and by the way, because I'm an ethical leader, I'm gonna take a 10% pay

cut on this this year. Just gonna put that on the table. Tom my boss is, of course, gonna go, oh, no. No. You don't have to do that, like, 10%. There has to be some book. There has to be some skin in the game as Nicholas Nassim Tyler would say, from all of us on this. And by the way, me voluntarily putting that 10% on the table, that puts pressure on you. And I know that's what it does because this is the chess game we're in. And now you look like a fool if you don't take that

Tom right. So this is the chess game we're gonna play. So I'm gonna push you into a position where you have to address this, number 1. But also number 2, you have to look like you've got skin in the game in an ethical way. I'm going to guarantee you that that did not happen. I would guarantee that too. Yep.

How do we get ethical leaders to be right to engage around this to to engage in these spaces ethically and to to have those kinds of conversations, not necessarily with their teams, which is interesting, but with their bosses ethically. Because ethics rolls uphill and the fish such as it were rots from the head down. Yeah. And that's it's one of the I'm gonna go so

far as to say it's it is a systemic issue. Mhmm. In that as you climb the ranks in a corporation, especially the larger ones, you get sucked into the politic the political shenanigans and maneuvering that goes on because it is the only way to maneuver. Mhmm. And and that kind of then necessitates that you put ethics on the back burner Mhmm. If you don't dismiss it altogether. Because your ambition, driven by your ego, is to climb the rank and not to be held responsible

for that. There's an interesting book, Jako Wilnick, Extreme Ownership. And it's about the Navy SEALs. And I the to me, this is the quintessential example of what what does need to happen. Mhmm. Leaders need to take ownership for everything that goes wrong even if they're not the ones who did it. Mhmm. But it is their team who failed at something. They, as a leaders, needs to take ownership fourth. What does that mean? It doesn't mean you take and everything falls on your head and, you know,

oh, book. You know, I'll take the pay cut. I'll take this. I'll get fired. All my team stays untouched. Now that's not what that means. Mm-mm. No. It means you take the responsibility for what happens, and you work with your team to find a solution. What failed? How do we correct it? What do we need to change? What is the system, the process, Whatever that needs to happen. So that this does not happen again. That's taking extreme ownership on the leaders part to initiate that

action. It's not to be the one to, to beat yourself up because of it. No. That's not what it means. And I think a lot of leaders miss that component of leadership because it's it's very interesting. When when a leader were to do that, the influence they have over their team Mhmm. Is completely unspoken, but is so powerful that in fact is more powerful than the spoken at that point. I'm glad you brought up Extreme Ownership because we've talked about that book on this

podcast. We've actually added a conversation. We'll be releasing that, later on this year, with another gentleman around Jocko Willock's book. We facilitated that book in our consultancy, and information from that book combined with another book called, the Oz Principle, which is about how you how you scale up accountability. Because Jocko does an excellent job of describing what ownership looks like, at a at an

individual and at a small team level. There are challenges when you go to scale with that, though, and his book doesn't address any of those, but the Oz Principle, does. It addresses it very, very well. And so we've actually combined those 2 books together and gotten some really interesting insights out of it, particularly around alignment, because. The, the misalignment around ownership is this. So again, I'm leading 6 people, writers? Cause I can't lead more than that. Can't lead

more than 6 to 8. Writers? Those people are loyal to me because I'm exhibiting ownership, in every single sphere of influence that I touch, which of those 6 people are, fourth 6 to 8 people are working for me. They're all in my sphere of influence. Thus to your point, I'm responsible for everything they do, and I'm responsible for everything they don't do. Now I'm effectively aligned. And by the way, I tell them this. I don't hide it from them. I don't, I don't I don't I don't,

obvious skate on it. Right? I I actually tell them this is I say it out loud. I'm I'm I'm in I'm not in charge of saying I'm taking ownership over the whole team. I'm taking ownership over these projects. Now what that means is when you fail and eventually at a certain point, you will on something, I'm going to take ownership of your failure because it will be something that I didn't do that allowed you to fail. But it also remember I talked about that epistemic humility that has to be

on the part of both leaders and followers. I also need you to take ownership of everything in your sphere of influence if I'm gonna do this. And and that's the absolute key thing because if I as a leader take leadership, you as my direct report, I'm gonna put it that way. Mhmm. You take ownership for what you are doing with equally your Tom. Or even if it's only just you, you need to take ownership for you. Right.

Okay. So now we're doing this. And I'm one team of 4 to 6 people, 6 to 8 people in a much larger organization of 25,000 people. But my team is rocking and rolling. My team is clicking. We're getting stuff out. We're behaving competently. We're having disputes, but they're not driven by ego. Our part of whatever the process is that we own

is humming. And because it's humming other teams where it's not humming, where there's misalignment on all those other teams and fake conflict and done it and all the Jesan and that organization of 25,000 people, all those other teams are jealous of us and are angry. A resentful, claim that I've got some Svengali mind control over my 68 people that makes them loyal to me. I've heard this, right? And really, it comes down to human jealousy. Absolutely. You know, and we

don't talk a lot about that because we think that we're podcast. And again, this is one of those postmodern problems that require pre modern language to actually describe. And so and so let's let's call jealousy what it is. It's it's jealousy. Right? It's envy. Right? It's the green dragon. Okay. Well, as a result of me being good with my 6 to 8 people,

I am then offered another position. I am given now 2 teams of 6 to 8 people, because if I could do a well with 1, of course I could do it well with 2, And then I could do it well with 3, and then I can remake the whole culture. This is the ego now getting involved in this. Right? Yep. How does a leadership me wrap this idea up with a question. How does a leader check their own ego? Because Jocko talks about this in his book, Check Your Ego, right?

If I've got my 6 to 8 people humming along, how do I check my ego and just stay with those 6 to 8 people? Check my ambition and just and just stay with those 6 to 8 people ethically? How do I do that? That is a very interesting and a very difficult question. It's it comes back to your humility factor for 1. Mhmm. But it requires that understanding of self. Mhmm. Now could you take on, for the sake of the example, another team of 6 people? Mhmm. You could do that. And ego doesn't really step into

it. Maybe it says, well if I can do that, I could probably do it with them. Let's give it a go. Reasonable response. The question is, do you have enough insight into yourself when you begin to see I am struggling to do this with team number 2. I need help. Mhmm. Whatever that means. Mhmm. Right? And that is that level of self awareness because, yes, my ego can take off. Yeah. Can do it with 2. I can do it with 3. I can do it with whatever number. Bring them

on. Right? Because we feel invincible. Look at this. We've got this. This team is running perfectly. I'm not overly stressed. It's easy. I can add more to it. That's the ego talking. There's no two ways about it. I'm not saying you can't do 2 Tom of sex. The question is, are you aware enough to know that you are doing the same with team number 2 that you did with number 1 and are not sacrificing team number 1 for the sake of team number 2. Yeah. Mhmm. Yep. And that it does take self

awareness. That's not you know, do you can I train that into somebody in 6 months? Probably not. Right. That takes a lot of self initiative as well. I can give you the foundation, but it does take you doing a lot of the work. Yeah. And being able to objectively evaluate, there might be that so your boss in that sense then. Mhmm. What's their involvement in all of us? So that brings the the question of going up the tree, going up the ladder as to how do we put the checks and balances in.

So how do how does my boss's boss and so on take ownership of what's going on? How do we go to scale with this? How do we go to scale at that point? Because it does require just because there's this pocket in an organization that's doing really well. It's thriving. It's it's going gangbusters, and is the envy of everybody else. The question is why? Mhmm. And are other people book in the in the horizontal, but as well as the vertical structure in the in the organization at that point.

So the pyramid above it. How open are they and how willing are they to learn? And you know, now you turning in a whole lot of other dynamics into that. Do we want to replicate this? And there's the question of how do you scale? How do you scale that? And that is always the challenge but it requires self awareness to begin with. Otherwise,

you're not going to get there. One of the solutions that I've had to give folks at a practical level is, and I, a very occasionally when I'm working with bureaucracies, whether they're governmental or corporate, it doesn't matter. You'll get the leader in there, who is that leader who's got their team aligned correctly. Right. And they've got ownership and they're exhibiting these traits. And it's a small team,

usually no more than 10 people. And they're, you know, and they're, and they've got even, they've even had talk to people cycle in that they've been able to turn around. Right. And the other leaders who are who are pair not parallel, but who are vertical, who are on the same vertical, the peer group Tom them. Had this recently happened as it called as just as just as recently leaders about 9 months ago with a group I was working with that they will say, okay, well, x y z Jesan.

Let's just give her a name, Victoria. Of course, Victoria's team is working well. Like they're hyper loyal to her. Like we can never replicate that on my team. Fourth we'll get the question, which I love. Well, Jesan, you talk about alignment and accountability and ownership, and that's all well and book. But you don't understand that team over there led by that person is gonna send me someone Tom, and then I'm gonna have to deal with them.

And the answer I always give, and let me tell, tell, let me, let me find out what you think about this. The answer I always give when that question comes up is this. I say, Okay, well, there's a very simple solution to solve this problem. And you're not going to like it. It's simple, but it's not going to be it's not gonna make you happy. Do you wanna know what it is? Everybody goes,

grumble grumble grumble. Okay. This is not gonna make them happy. Like I I tell you, it's not gonna make you happy when I tell you what the solution is, but it is simple. I said, here's what you do. You do an invite only meeting. Of everybody who's at the same peer group. There's, like, 25 of you in this room, invite only meeting. Not fourth boss doesn't get to show up and your subordinates don't get to show up. It's the 25

of you on a Saturday morning. You lock yourselves in a room in person for 3 hours and everybody figures out how to get aligned. And everybody cries and you get to an agreement, you figure out how to get aligned and how you're going to lead your teams and nobody gets to leave the room until everybody's aligned. One Saturday, you could figure it out. And committed. And committed. That's right. One Saturday for, like, 4 hours. You could figure it out. And everybody all of a sudden has nothing to

say. Yeah. And because because the challenge is getting you all as peers aligned because what you've done, and you don't wanna say this out loud, is you've carved out little kingdoms where you like your toxicity and you like your unethical behavior and you like

being jealous of this thing that's working well. And by the way, even the person who's turning extreme ownership in the Jocko Willock fashion over there, 4 to 6, 6 to 8, whatever number of people they've carved out their own little sinecure. And, yeah, I am. You see that up and down every organization, right? And so you want Tom you want to you want to fix that problem of misalignment. You all have to get aligned. So that when subordinate a goes to Tom B, They already know what the deal

is. They're not escaping. They're going to the same deal over here. But the 25 of you won't spend a Saturday getting together because you're too busy fourth I don't wanna spend my Saturday or I'm not getting paid for this, or at the bottom of it, I'd like to just have this chip to complain about, which I really think is a lot of it. Absolutely. A lot of it is, well, if I've got something to beef about and put somebody else down, it makes me feel better about myself. Right.

Because I don't wanna deal with me. Who why would I wanna deal with me? Heck no. Me, I'm the I'm the worst person to deal with. It's me. You know? No. People don't wanna do that. And that but and and to your example, get together on Saturday morning, all that level, nobody else above below. Oh, do I'm supposed to go there? I'm gonna put my stuff on the

table? Yeah, it's it. Yeah. It puts you on the spot and people don't like being put on the spot, but they will pull up very quickly, but they don't do anything. Right. It's the sad box. So pushing that fourth idea is brilliant. It works, but it has to be pushed through. Right. Yep. Yep. Alright. So we're rounded the corner here. We've had a good conversation. This has been this has been an excellent conversation. We're rounding the corner here. I wanna ask you a couple

of other questions. Talk a little bit actually, just talk a little bit about, your work with, World Ethics Organization and sort of how you came to be involved with those folks and what do they do, and how do they impact how does ethics overall is a maybe a not even a philosophy, but a practical level. How does that get inserted into, into organizations and into cultures through leadership?

Well, how I got involved with, Richard and the WEO came about through another conversation I had with somebody else who was involved with Richard and Jesan the ethics, and in general. Mhmm. And, we just got a conversation about it was leadership related. And I said, you know, one of the biggest things that's missing in in in in leadership, but universally what we're seeing in the world is

is is an act of ethics. People are not, either not aware, and the younger generation has that problem as aware as awareness turning, but the middle generation, say fourth your gen x's and partly your millennials, ethics means, oh, well, I have to sacrifice something. And, well, I can't do what I want and whatever else. You know, they're they're all in that vein. But he but this person said to me, you need to

meet Richard. So Richard and I had a conversation and Richard then shared with me the change agent program. Mhmm. Went through that with him. And I said to him, Richard, you need an organization that takes ethics on at a global level much like now we mentioned the WEF at the writers at the beginning. I'm just gonna throw it out here to finish it off and essays, well, you gotta compete with that because we've gotta put ethics on the table. And he said, yeah. We started that last month.

So oh. Oh. Hey. Well, they you know, I said Sometimes I'm behind the curve. Yeah. I said, see, Paul, do you wanna come and join us? I said, sure. Well, let's let's see this. You know, maybe I can give my 2¢ and help you guys get off the ground and whatnot else. And that's what I spent a year and a half doing as sort of in a more of an advisory capacity. And yeah, I've got yeah. I mean, it it's ethics is one of those missing ingredients now more than ever that leaders need.

Because we understand the fundamental dilemma of human nature. Mhmm. We are so driven, you know, we've used the word ego. It's about me. Mhmm. What can I get? What what doesn't matter who suffers, but it's about me. What Me. Mhmm. And and I'll I'll leave it there. But ethics essays, it's not about me. It's about how is what I want to do going to impact others. If it's going to be a positive impact. If it's gonna be any an uplifting impact. Well then potentially it is good. It is

ethical. But if it's gonna have a negative impact and and really hurt people in whatever which way, then is it really a good idea? And that in a nutshell is the problem with ethics today. It has become so many leaders. And, you know, I'll I'll I'll I'll call the elephant in the room on this one then and essays, yeah, just look at government. It's very classic. Mhmm. The ethics isn't there because it's driven by my ego because what I can get. Right.

And we all know what the I can get is. Right. So do we need more of that? Do we need examples of leaders exhibiting ethical behavior? Yes. And that's the goal of the WEO. To get those conversations ethics going so that we instill the awareness. Oh, my ego can be detrimental to to you and to the people on my team. Oh, is that a good idea? Yes. I might get this in the moment, but I might pay for it tomorrow. Consequences of unethical behavior. You know,

people don't look at this anymore. They don't see the the the the notion the the not the notion, the, the cycle of action, reaction, consequence. There's always for every action there's a reaction. It doesn't matter which way shape or form you look at it. So an ethical action is going to yield potentially success. An unethical action. I might get a moment to re satisfaction out of it, but the long Tom, yeah, you're gonna pay for it. It's just a question of when, not if.

So can can we instill in leaders? I turning this in through, I weave it into my academy, is the ethical obligation duty, coming back to that word, that leaders have that their actions are measured against an ethical standard. Now everybody's got their own ethical standard, and the WAs are looking at addressing some

other. How do we bring, you know, this group's standards and this group and this group, the diversity of these groups into 1 and and figure out, you know, there is a standard of ethics and establishing that. So when we're not Yeah. Yeah. And a standard of ethics that because I took Richard's change agent course as well, and I've I've I've had some engagement with the w e o. Probably needs to be more significant. I'll admit to that.

I think we, we, we have to say fundamentally that an objective standard outside of our subjective experience does exist. And that we can know that objective standard. It's not cloudy. It's not unknowable. It's not

mysterious. And I think we can say, we know what the standard is, primarily because we're not primarily, but we know what the standard is because evidentially to make up a word, in the material world that we built in the 20th century, the results Tom your point about choices have consequences, the results of choosing to behave at an unethical standard can be seen in the deaths of a 100,000,000 people in the 20th century. Mhmm. They can be seen in the results of world wars, 2 of them.

There were just massively catastrophic events outside of the other 100,000,000

deaths. We can also see in real time the decline of, and this is something we've talked about on this podcast a lot, particularly last year, decline of meaning, particularly meaning among you talked about younger generations, particularly meaning among younger generations, particularly young males, the decline of meaning in the amongst young males in the West, which is to my mind, more of a catastrophic event overall for civilization than anything having to do with the changing climate, quite

frankly. Because if we can solve for the turning crisis, which I do think ties back to ethics, we can solve for all of these other things. Agreed. But we have to admit, not agree, just admit that there's an objective standard outside of our subjective experience. And unfortunately, we have 150 years of people convinced through education and entertainment and other means that there is

no objective standard, or even if there is, we can't know it. And so once you say there's no objective standard, or even worse, once you say we can't know an objective standard, now you've, you've pulled up all of the gates and you've opened up all the fourth.

And unfortunately for us, it's the gatekeepers of education, the gatekeepers of government, the gatekeepers of entertainment, who are the ones busiest pulling up the gates and saying that there is no standard fourth that we can't know it for 150 years. Correct. And so this is a massive problem that is of our own making as human beings, particularly human beings in the West, But it is one that we can solve because we created it.

We can solve this problem. Any problem that we've created, we can solve. It's just what do we do to solve it? And I see the World Ethics Organization as part of that solution. I definitely agree with you. It is part of the solution. And, yeah, I mean, Richard, keep going. I'm in support of his work, what he's doing. And, yeah. And that's why that's one of the reasons why I bring ethics into the to the whole notion of what leadership actually is. Yep. Yep. It's almost like it's

one of the 3 legs of the 3 legged stool. Yep. Okay. So to wrap up here, we're a podcast that obviously believes in the power of great books of the past to teach us lessons, and to lay the foundation for the future fourth us. So what are some great book? Not necessarily business books, but what are some great books? And we talked about extreme ownership and talked about a couple of other books on the podcast today. But what are some great books that have led to

where that have led you to where you are right now? You have a bookshelf there. You're a literary guy. I see Never Split the Difference there. I see Chris Voss hanging out over there. So I know that book cover. I know that one. But, of course, some and I suspect you probably also have some Nicholas Nassim Taleb on there and maybe some Daniel Kahneman, who just recently just

recently passed away. But there were some books that were some great books of the can of the Writers canon that which is kinda what we focused on in this podcast that have led you to where you're at now with, with LOS Global? I I you can't go without mentioning some of John Maxwell's stuff. I he's got a ton of books out there. He's got some valuable insight. It needs, in my opinion, it needs to be mixed with a few other things to really round it out. He's

very good in in what he's got. And then Ken Blanchard, and he's got a couple of books that focuses more on servant and situational leisure, which is an important aspect of it. And it it brings depth to some of John's material as well. You know, just looking at some of the books. An interesting book, you know, we spoke about influence and inspiration earlier. In influence, there's a book called Growing Influence. Okay. It was

a as a as a novel. Mhmm. You know, interaction between, a senior retired CEO and a young aspiring, leader in an organization keeps getting overlooked. Yes. She's female and he's male. And so it brings some of those dynamics, the sexual the gender dynamics into the, Internet. But it's I think it's very well written as a structure. How can you build your influence? So especially the younger leaders, newer leaders, how can they establish some level

of influence? That's a very good book. There is a book, lead when you when you're not in charge fourth know, because you can be a manager, but you're still not in charge. Mhmm. You know, you you can have a position within an other than the work of be in an organizational chart, but you still are not in charge of anything. You still so how can you lead in that? Because a lot of people there say, well, I'm I'm not a

leader. I'm just manager Joe. No. Well, you're a leader because you you are in a position where you're required to lead yourself first. That's the first one. And the second one is you do have a few people that you are to that you influence. Mhmm. However that so how do you do that? Yeah. So there's that one I found very useful. Yeah. Looking at some of the other books, Brene Brown has got some good stuff on leadership, but she gets very into the the philosophy, the psychology

of it all. Useful anecdotes. I mean, there there's some she's got some good stuff. But I'd I'd say that's more for the more the more experienced leader. Mhmm. Okay. So that that'd be more for them. I mean, it's leadership. What's it called? Developing the leaders within 2.0. That's John Maxwell. That's a good book. Oh, from an executive perspective, The Advantage is a good book, Patrick Lancione.

Mhmm. Okay. Yeah. Of the team. Those are all some of the good you know, it's the whole reason why you got podcast is because, you know, I can read all of these books, but it's gonna take me a long time. And, you know, a lot of the stuff that I've shared with you and you shared is the culmination of a lot of reading we've

done. Right. So, you know, those are just a handful of books. But the reading that I've done, and I've done reading beyond that, you know, books about I'm gonna I'm gonna go into the realms of even abuse when you understand how easily people can verbally and emotionally abuse someone else. Mhmm. Powerful book on leadership to understand how it happens because gaslighting is a big issue in leadership. Mhmm. That how you know?

Now you're aware of it. Now you can put a stop to it. You can help somebody who's doing it to do it less. Mhmm. Aware of it in turn. You know, those sort of things. So I think there's more It's you you said not just business books, but that's that's another realm. It's how do you communication styles. Mhmm. Heck, what does that do to impact your communication with your spouse? Your kids, your friends that you never act with in work because they don't work in the same company as you

do. How do you interact with that and how does that impact your leadership? So how do you communicate? Understanding your communication stuff. Things like that. And I I some of the things that I do with with, people that I work with with leaders is something called bank, b a n k. Okay. Crack you crack the code or you and understand how you communicate. Mhmm. What your style of communication is. Understand that other people

have different ones. Now you know how to communicate with them. Yeah. That goes into the books of, you know, Robert Cialdini. You mentioned that about influence and all of that. There's so many books on communication. What else? No. What about good what about good fiction? Because we do we do we we do a lot of classical fiction on this. Like, we just came off a month of, we just came off a month of the Russian writers, right? So we read Turgenev and we read Tolstoy, and we read, we didn't

read Dostoevsky. We're still trying. I'm still trying to wrap my arms around the writers carom resolve enough to be able to pull. And there's stuff in there. Just you gotta. You're you're you're a bigger man than me. Are you? You well well, War and Peace is 1400 pages. We just got through part 1 of it. And where are we where we where we where myself and my cohost, and this is the most one of the most recent episodes we dropped this month. I think it was episode 104, I think.

But, we, we determined that one of the big things you can learn from the beginning of war and peace, because it opens with a party, is how to communicate and what and how Tom engage in appropriate

networking etiquette when you're a business leader. Oh, and how to evolve, and you use this word, how to evolve the drunken shenanigans, you call political shenanigans, but the drunken shenanigans of organizations and cultures so that you don't get, you know, well, so you don't have to go off to war and fight Napoleon in, like, 18/12 because that sucks. Yeah. It does. Well, I mean, fiction books, I haven't read in in recent times, I haven't read a lot of

fiction books. I'll be honest with you on that one. I sort of Sure. I've gotten lost on that. But to your point of fiction, because of the depth of research that is done to create a book of fiction. There's a lot of anecdotal type lessons we can learn from them, I think. How, oh this happened, this happened. Oh that gives me an awareness of a certain situation. Mhmm. That in a business book I may not have got again because it was never mentioned. Right.

Yeah. I read, I've read, the one book that's that's sort of coming to mind is, Barnhofer. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yep. You know, and it's yes, it's a biography. But it's interesting to see how he led himself, granted through the eyes of Eric. Eric Metaxo wrote the book, but it is interesting to see how he led himself and how he chose to interact with other people. The humility, the grace, things like that, powerful lessons for leaders.

So yes. Bonhoeffer was one of the probably top fourth theologians of the was produced in the 20th century, along with, GK Chesterton, CS Lewis, and Francis Schaeffer. Those are probably your big four of the 20th century. At least that came out of both the Protestant and a Catholic ethic, writers Should she get GK, Chester, Tennessee as Lewis were, were in that we're in that space. And so, okay. By the way, we'll be covering Bonhoeffer on the podcast in, I believe August or September.

I'm going to be looking at some of his writings. I'm personally fascinated by him, just as a person. I don't know because of the level of the level of commitment he had. To talk about leading yourself, the level of commitment he had to continuing to engage in no continuing to walk down a path where the clearing and what was going to fundamentally be at the end of that path. I think he understood better even than the people around him better than his friends.

And there's a lesson in there for the leaders in Bonhoeffer's life, in understanding human nature, understanding the knock on effects of patterns that have repeated throughout history. That way you're not surprised when you wind up in the place where you were going to wind up that. I think Bonhoeffer was the least surprised that he was executed by the Nazis.

I think probably the the even the Nazis were surprised they executed him, but he wasn't because he understood the nature of the thing he was fighting against.

He understood the fundamental nature of human evil, and that is something I think that the postmodern mind, which has banished evil, even the concept of talking about it, other than in a political context, of course, which is the only place we can ever have any kinds of theological conversations is in a political context, which is really too bad because it's way too narrow a context for such conversations to happen. The postmodern mind struggles when it when it faces evil.

And we're seeing that currently in our geopolitical moment that we're in right now in the west, vis a vis Israel and Hamas, but we're also seeing it in our own individual lives. And when evil does show up, the postmodern secular materialistic mindset has nothing for that. Mhmm. Bonhoeffer had a solution for that because he understood other things about human nature. Yeah. And so was unsurprised when human nature showed up. So he's a fascinating character.

Just quickly, you mentioned CS Lewis. Yes. You're talking about fiction for a moment. The other book that Sorrells that I found rather interesting and maybe it needs a couple of reads to really get it out is the Lord turning Sorrells, which is Tolkien, who was a contemporary of CS Lewis and was actually very strongly influenced by CS Lewis, which is interesting. But he's been as a result of that influence and where that

led is when he wrote the Lord of the Rings series. And you see leadership and the challenges of leadership. And it's a small group of people. Right. The interesting part, right, like we said earlier, and being able to lead and how the different people led different aspects of that journey in that story. The most interesting part of the Lord of the Rings is in the beginning of return of the king. The 3rd book and Gandalf shows up, at,

at, gosh, it's not fourth door. It's, Boromir's father, the king who was looking through the, the, the looking glass and could see basically had basically, he saw evil. He saw the face of evil. He saw the face. Yeah. And he and he lost his mind. Right? And Gandalf was unable to save him. Right? And at the same time, you have his son Faramir, who he does not honor, who's trying to lead the people and trying to mount a defense against the forces of Mordor

and is getting no help whatsoever from his father. Who's supposed to be the steward of Gondor. Right. Who's supposed to be that king. And so, and even the name, the steward of Gondor. I mean, come on. So you've got, you know, you've got the steward of Gondor. You've got turning Theoden. Those are 2 different leadership examples there. And you're right. I I had a conversation recently with somebody about Tolkien, CS Lewis, and and sort of their

how they came Tom. How they came to having how they came to writing the way that they writers, And, you know, they were both heavily influenced, obviously, as their entire generation was by the impact of World War 1 and and just the killing fields of Europe and and just the Psalm and just all the things that they saw. But with Tolkien, interestingly enough, Tolkien and Lewis had the same experience, but pulled slightly different lessons from that that you can see in their writing if you're

sensitive to that. So, yeah, we, we've covered abolition of man, by CS Lewis on this podcast. And we've also covered, all 3 of the Lord of the Rings books that we've covered The Hobbit, it will be going back to them, again, not this year, but next year, we'll be going back to them again, and diving in with a, with a guest co host who I think is going to bring a certain level of passion to that conversation because he's deeply engaged with those books, at at

multiple levels. So, yeah, there's so much you can learn from leadership. I one of the things I'll say to folks is, you can learn more about emotional intelligence from Sense and Sensibility than you can from Daniel Goleman's emotional intelligence. But read them both together. Read Goleman and then read Jane Austen, and now you've got it. You've got emotional intelligence. Now you understand it. Pretty much. That's that's a good way of describing it. Yeah. So, well,

let's let's close with this question. I I was I ask everybody when they when they come on Tom podcast, what would you like to promote today, if anything? Well, thanks fourth that, Janssen. And we host as LOS Global, we host VIP, so invitation on the executive leadership fourth. Nominally once a month, every 5 books, depending on, on schedules and that. And we cover, insights that are relevant to leaders today.

And I'll often have either some of my team on that and we discuss it and bring the audience in, or I bring in other experts to to talk about a particular topic that's current on that. So I'd invite people to that. The website is a simple, you know, Sorrells global.com/home. Come along, you know, it's an it is invitation only. So go to the website, fill in the form, you know, submit your your your invitation request. Not your application, your invitation request.

And you know if it's a fit, you know, well yeah, you're welcome to to join us and join the conversation. So I'll leave that as my phone number for the, for the podcast. Thank you. Awesome. And we will have a link to that site so you could fill out that invitation request, and maybe you can join, this, this global fourth, put on by Ellis Global and Peter Aimeli and his team once every 5 weeks, once every 4 weeks or so. But we'll have that link right there in the show notes below the player

that you are listening to. And, of course, watching this podcast on. We'll also have links to all the places where you could find Peter Angley, and LOS Global LOS Academy, in the show notes as well. We'd encourage you to connect with him on LinkedIn. He is on LinkedIn. He's pushing out content on there as well. And so like and share if you liked what we were talking about today. Once again, I would like to thank Peter Ainley of

LOS Global for coming on the podcast today. And with that, well, we're out.