Today we're going to cover a book that I could cover for the next 18 weeks. There are 18 chapters in Grant Upbeat Bosnick's latest book, all masterfully designed to help us to become self-aware in our journey of self-discovery, connecting the most current neuroscience research to each lesson with actionable steps for us to take on our journey. Another example that shows us that failure is not an option.
Here's what Scott Friedman, the author of Celebrate, lessons learned from the world's most admired organizations, has to say about the book that we're going to cover today. He said, wow, what a read. This book is full of great ideas and tools to keep you performing and living at your very best. If you're ready to change your beliefs and transform your life, this book is a must. Get ready to become more self-aware as you become engaged in your own journey of self-discovery and mastery.
Enjoy the ride from Scott Friedman. Today's episode really is going to be a journey of the mind. Music.
Welcome back to season 11 of the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning podcast, where we connect the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning and emotional intelligence training for improved well-being, achievement, productivity, and results using what I saw as the missing link, since we weren't taught this when we were growing up in School, The Application of Practical Neuroscience.
I'm Andrea Samadi, an author and an educator with a passion for learning, and I launched this podcast five years ago with the goal of bringing all the leading experts together in one place to help us to apply this research in our daily lives. On today's episode number 321, we'll be speaking with Grant Upbeat-Bosnick, the Managing Director of Yes, Your Empowering Solutions.
He's an author, consultant, keynote speaker, and executive coach, and developed leaders to transform their behavior to lead themselves, others, and perform at a higher level. Originally from Toronto, where I grew up, and now based in Singapore, he's lived in Asia Pacific for over 20 years. When Grant reached out to me earlier this month, it was not what he said to me that caught my eye, but how he said it.
Maybe because I was in the middle of thinking about the final part of our Science of Getting Rich book study that's all about thinking and acting in this certain way. And Grant said to me that he uses psychology and neuroscience and works with leaders and teams in great organizations to go from human to superhuman by tapping into the more resource efficient parts of their brains, achieving more and being happier.
And this sounds exactly like what I'm trying to do for our listeners on this podcast, helping us to build stronger 2.0 versions of ourselves. And if Grant has some knowledge about how to do this, I want to know what he he suggests, especially after all the high-level companies that he's been working with over the past 20 years.
I kept on reading what he'd written in an email to me, and next I learned about his award-winning book, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership, that was published last year with a foreword by Marshall Goldsmith. Then I'm thinking Marshall Goldsmith wrote the foreword to his book, and I'm reading with a different lens now. I don't know anyone in the field of leadership and coaching who doesn't know Marshall Goldsmith.
He's known as the world's number one leadership thinker with an unusual ability to help other people succeed. His mission in life is to help successful leaders to get even better. So now I know the level that Grant upbeat Bosnick has attained even before I've read his book.
Let's meet the author of Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership and see if we can learn how to use this book as our guide in 2024 to apply neuroscience and psychology in a whole new way, taking us to higher levels of achievement expected by those who work with him and those who work with those who've learned from people like Marshall Goldsmith and the late Dr. Covey. Let's meet Grant Upbeat Bosnick.
Welcome, Grant Upbeat Bosnick. I am so looking forward to speaking with you today and learning about your book, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Great to be here, Andrea. Absolutely. And we're both from Toronto, Toronto, right? Yeah, yeah. I was born in that area and grew up there to about, you know, about almost half my life, I guess. And the other half I spent out in Asia now, 20, 25 years here I've been in Asia.
And so you're over there right now in Singapore, are you? Yeah, I'm in Singapore here. I had spent 17 years based in Japan and then the last eight years based in Singapore. Well, I'm excited to talk to you here. When you sent me the email and I saw that here we've got a book on leadership, and then I saw the foreword written by Marshall Goldsmith.
So before I even got to reading anything about you and your book, I kind of had an idea about who we'd be dealing with when the world's number one leadership thinker wrote the foreword. Can we start by just Just you telling me how you know Marshall and how did he write the foreword for this awesome book that you're going to talk about? Thank you. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much for that. I appreciate it.
I guess I first read What Got You Here Won't Get You There in 2008, so 15, 16 years ago or so. I guess maybe 16 years ago. And for sure, they're heavily influenced because what I liked about it was it was like the subtitle, How Successful People Become Even More Successful. And it's working, focusing on the top leaders in the world and how they can then go from where they are to the next level for them, helping successful people become more successful.
So I was quite fascinated by that. And that's where I spent all of my life, helping successful people become more successful. Well, when I was living in Japan about 20 years ago now, or so, no, about 10 years ago, 2014, my mentor, Aki Sumitomo, he introduced me to Marshall. And we were all working at the American Management Association at that time. And he introduced me then. And then 2016, a couple of years after that, in Singapore at the Suntec Convention
Center, we were both presenting there at the HR Summit. it. So I met him there again and affiliated with a few other speaking associations that they were all members of. And then I asked him to write the forward and he said, yes, that's nice. That came about. Very cool. Well, then I went on to read that you had some other influencers like Dr. Stephen Covey, who we had one of his his co-workers, Greg Link, the co-founder of Covey Link on one of of our episodes about 100 ago.
So can you share how Dr. Covey and others you've mentioned have influenced this work that you're doing? Yeah, I probably the same time I was reading What Got You Here Won't Get You There, Marshall Goldsmith's book, just a few years before that, Seven Habits was I was reading. So it's now 20 years ago, the first time I read Seven Habits. And then I attended the Seven Habits workshop twice.
And the reason it was twice was because then I was in the process and now have become, several years ago, become certified to deliver Seven Habits, as well as several other Franklin Covey leadership offerings, actually all the whole suite for them. So quite heavily influenced by Dr. Covey. And I think this timeless principles is what he talked about in Seven Habits. And so I think that's one of the reasons that was heavily influencing me as I was quite fascinated by this concept.
And my book is like that, too. I believe that it's around timeless principles, that it's not something that's just flavor of the month, but this is something that we needed yesterday, we needed today, we're going to need it tomorrow. I think I'll give a shout out to also Ken Blanchard. Those are the three people that I had dedicated this book to that heavily influenced me. So Ken Blanchard wrote One Minute Manager.
And I think that these are some of the things that as managers that one minute to make an apology, one minute to thank somebody for something they did. And I think that this is time well spent. And I think that managers don't do that enough of that. The other thing I liked about Blanchard as well, too, was around situational leadership, too, that is really focusing around when we're leading our direct reports, we want to match their skill level.
And that's going to determine the kind of support or coaching that we would give them. So those are the two shadows there besides Marshall. Love it. Love these leaders that you've mentioned. We talk about them often on the podcast. Now, let's go to your book here. There's 18 chapters, and each one explores a different theme related to self-leadership. And they're written in a way that we could jump around and learn them in any order. Can you explain how you picked these 18 leadership principles?
I can just imagine like 50 of them all over your walls how did you pick these 18 so so first of all i in in in several years ago i i worked in in in business school i was teaching logical thinking in business school for for four years and we were based in the the the course was based on the the kind of models that consulting companies would would be using with their clients so one thing one of the things they talk about is on having MEC frameworks, M-E-C-E.
Some of you who are consultants may know what that is. Others may not. So M-E-C-E, it's an acronym, which means mutually exclusive. Collectively exhaustive. And it's describing the kinds of logical frameworks people would use to solve problems and create solutions like a SWOT analysis. You got your strengths, weakness, opportunity, threats. The categories are mutually exclusive. They're separate and they're They're collectively exhaustive that it covers
everything. So I wanted to base this on a MISI framework. And there's lots of them out there that people use. So it could be around, you know, a portals by forces or strategy ones around pest analysis or a fishbone or lots of them. And so having this background, four years in business school, teaching logical thinking, I got very used to thinking in these MISI frameworks. So that's what I was thinking of when I wanted to create this framework for self-leadership.
And I think that of these 18 chapters that they are mutually exclusive and they, I think, cover everything in terms of what the areas from themes we would want to focus around for leadership. Self-leadership. I also believe, I kind of was thinking that it's like a gym metaphor. So when we go to the gym to lift weights, we might do some bench pressing to work our back and our lats. We might do some arm curls in to work our biceps and some leg presses to work our quads.
And so we use a different exercise to develop a different muscle in our body. And I think that these 18 18 chapters in the book or like 18 strategies, each with different practical exercises and to then build the mental muscle that we need to lead ourselves most effectively. And I can see it now how you pick the framework. And I love frameworks. I'm all about frameworks, especially like seven habits, right?
Once we've read the seven habits of highly effective people, we kind of know what they're about. And then there's this eighth habit that we learn about. and then we can go to a book like The Power of Now that has no framework and we're like, what was that about? We forget when there's no framework. So I love the framework idea.
And then how did you now figure out how we're going to create change from the inside out using neuroscience, how our brain works, and then the outside in, how others see us? This is a different part that I haven't seen in other books. Well, there's a big part in the neuroscience in here. My background was in psychology and philosophy in university and then later neuroscience and applying this to helping leaders to grow and become more effective.
And I think that there's a lot of exercises within the book to help people to develop their mindsets, because I believe that if we've got more effective mindsets, that'll lead to more effective behavior and ultimately then more effective results and so everything is very practical in the book how we can apply what the way that our brain works and also the from that's from the inside out how our brain works the outside in pieces around that self-leadership is not leadership
in a bubble but we still have other people around us that we we interact with and so So it's within that context there, that's the outside in pieces that we are in a world that exists with other people. I think, though, that one of the things I think that I've tried to create in this book with the practical exercises in it is that on average, they say it takes 66 days to form a habit. I'm trying to shorten that so that people diligently go through the exercise.
It's just like going to the gym regularly that you can then develop yourself once, because the exercises are intentionally designed to help us to use our brains in more effective ways and therefore help us to fast track in this growth to developing new habits. Got it. So now, how did you create the map? Did you just kind of think that people will check off because we can go anywhere we want? I'm going to get to the self-assessment part in a minute, but where does the map come in?
How do I use the map or how do you want us to use the map? When I first created this book, and then I'll give my kudos out there to Tim Hammons, who is the amazing illustrator that I worked with for this map. So it is a downloadable map. I'm not sure if I got some handy right here. It can be actually, I don't know if we're recording the video or not for this, but we're recording video now to it. And this is what the map looks like.
I'm opening this up. It gives you a follow the map to choose your own self-leadership adventure. And what it really is about is that you are at the center of your own adventure of self-leadership. And as we said, Andrea said earlier, and that you can read the book in any order that you want. There's 18 chapters. This map has the six pathways on there, which we'll talk more about later with the assessment. And then based on which chapters you want to read, this is as meant as a visual.
So you can track where you are in your journey. You can be inspired by this. And it also then helps us to then focus in on where we want to go. There is also a video series that I'm started filming it now. So the 18-module video series is based on the chapters as well, too. And then, like the book, when you're reading it, it gives a journey that you can take. And then there's a companion workbook that goes with this, too, that you can then keep all your answers and your thoughts there together.
And it's just a fun adventure that people have. The reason it's called tailored approaches to self-leadership is because it's not one size fits all. So the approach will be tailored for you. You can read these in any order that you want and use the map there to then guide you and inspire you along that journey. So I loved it. So I took the assessment and I got my results for the six pathways.
And it was kind of neat because the two pathways that stuck out as ones that were high that I should work on were ones that I know that I'm focused on. One of them was pathway two, inspiration and motivation.
And that's what I'm trying to do with this podcast, bring all these inspiring leaders like you and share it out to the world and help people in this way and then pathway six was about relationships and authenticity because it it really matters how we're interacting interacting with people in the world and then what I thought was neat was some of the pathways like goals I feel like I've got them under control and so they they came in really low oh, but when I started reading your book,
I thought I had them under control until I started to realize how in-depth it was. And I thought, oh no, I need to work on all of these. But tell me how your pathway looks. Is this normal? You think you're going one way and then you start reading and you think, oh no, I'm not doing my goals like that. And there was so much depth to goals that But I kind of want to bring it into the end with the research you brought in there.
Tell me about yours. What does yours look like? Do you have any aha moments like I just shared? Yeah, and I wanted to give a tip of the hat, which in the back of the book, it does give a tip of the hat to the game book genre, which is really a series of novels that were written for, I guess, young people in their... 10s to early teens or mid teens or something. And it was where you would read the adventure and you can choose your own pathway through that.
There was a very famous series which had a brand name on that. And I was quite heavily influenced by these books. You would read about 10 pages, you'd make a choice. If you choose A, continue reading to the next page. If you choose B, skip ahead to page 20. And then you would then make the story for yourself.
And I was quite quite heavily influenced by that. And I kind of, after I wrote these 18 chapters in this MISI framework, I had envisioned it to be like this choose your own self-leadership adventure. And in fact, it does say that at the bottom of the map there, it's like to use this map to inspire you and plan and explore your journey and choose your own self-leadership venture.
So I kind of of envision that once people take the assessment and then the areas that are most relevant and important to you right now are the ones that are going to come up in in green and then the ones that come up in orange the the mid-level ones are the ones that may be second most important and then the ones that come up in red are the ones that as you said earlier we said these are the ones you've got a handle on right now maybe people have already spent time doing it maybe
they've already worked on that topic but that's I mean the other ones are more salient or important for them right now. And so then you can turn to those chapters of the book or the video series and look at those particular modules or exercises to apply this. That's how it's designed to be used.
And I found it fascinating when you said that you might've started with chapter three or something around inspiration, if that was the one that was one of the higher as high as for you, but then chapter two was on a goal. Chapter one is the introduction and chapter two then is on goals. And if you go back to that one and say, oh, well, this, I'm not doing my goals, but there's some value in this also to apply for us.
You know, I think that if we go to the gym too, there may be certain muscles in our body that we might feel are stronger and we want to work on the other ones too. You know, do we neglect the ones that are the stronger ones? And I think probably the answer should be no. Yeah. We should still pay attention to them and maybe refresh ourselves if it's a muscle that we've been using for a long time and maybe it's time for a refresh. Maybe we try a different exercise for that.
Just like you said that when you read that chapter then on goals and maybe I tried to write something that maybe I think is fresh anyway that it's ideas that might be new for people or kind of breathing new life into something that they might have seen before but now it's like smart. We see smart goals over and over again. But I got to bring out what I saw because it was with Kurt Lewin's field theory. And I just covered the science of getting rich.
And I talk in the science of getting rich that, you know, whatever you want, it's not going to go by you. You're never going to miss the boat. What you want is coming towards you. And I've always been looking for science to back up some of these old books that we used to read from the 1900s that worked. And this backs up that force that's pulling you towards your goals. And I thought, this is brilliant. How did I not get this as my number one thing to work on?
Can you explain that force, maybe, and some of the science that you brought into the book? Yeah, I think that the Kurt Lewin's force, I was like imagining when you said that it's that the closer we get to the goal, the more that we feel that the pull of that goal.
And i i think that you know they're even i guess talk about the the the analogy of a runner in a in a race that you start off a marathon i'm not a marathon runner i do other sports i do dragon boat racing but you know that's more of a shorter sprinting sport but we use a you know running more of a longer distance as a metaphor instead that when you start off you want to keep your pace and then as you're getting
closer to the goal you feel that energy that adrenaline that yes we're we're almost there. We're almost there. That's what that, that field, that field is, is about that, that pull towards that goal as we get closer to it. And I think maybe we can also have felt that before when we, we feel that we are approaching the deadline of something. We're almost finished the presentation. We've got the last slide to design. Okay, now we're done.
We made it right. And you feel that pull as you're getting closer to, to achieving the goal itself. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and. And once we have achieved it, hopefully we can carry that feeling for a little bit, take a break, then move on to the next goal.
I think that goals are extremely motivating for us on multiple levels, that it not only gives us an end point of where we're going, but then it gives us motivation because we feel the progress towards it. And we should be celebrating that progress, too. We don't need to wait until we achieve that milestone and then celebrate, celebrate the progress towards, especially if it's bigger stretch goals that we're aiming for, for ourselves here.
I think that, that, that, that also, I mean, I talk about this in the same chapter on goals as well, too, is that if we understand that, and this, you know, logically our goals form a larger connection so that there's different levels within our, our goal. So I might have a goal, say just the one I said of making, finishing the presentation slides for, for the deck, for the client. That's one of the goals, but then on a higher level of that, why am I doing that?
And then we get into a higher level goal that that could be, for example, to create my professional brand for, for clients. And that's a higher one. Why do I want to do that? And that's probably getting up to the top level. Then it's around, you know, our ideal self image, right? So at the top, we've got our ideal self image. I also talk in the same chapter later around creating a mission statement for ourselves. Dr. Covey's done a lot around mission statements in The Seven Habits as well.
And I think that if we can craft for ourselves a bigger picture of what is our ideal self and what is our ideal purpose or mission that we are here on this planet here. And then cascading down from that, we've got, you know, that bigger level goals for professional image, for, you know, to create innovative products and services, for example, and then cascading down that into more of the project goals that we might be working on.
And, uh, in this case, you know, creating a presentation deck for, for the client or, or, or something like that. And so I think that if what, if we can feel, see how all of these fit together, it's going to be. Helps us to achieve probably multiple goals to reach that same higher level goal. So we can do those simultaneously, and that's then going to help us to reach the higher level goal.
Okay. So if I was one of your clients working with you and you saw my assessment with Pathway 2 at 100%, it was like, this is the most, I got to work on this one, inspiration, motivation, motivation persuaded influence and presence what would you do with me you would tell me sit down and work and work through the exercises and the video series that's coming out how would you work with me on mastering this number one area that's that's been pinpointed for me yeah so there's multiple ways
that we can use this assessment so one of them would be if for self-study if people or to take the assessment themselves and then realize around, say, pathway two is most important, which are the units then and the chapters on, then persuade, influence, inspiration, motivation, and presence then. So that's one way to do it. You can do it as a self-study and then read those chapters. There's exercises you can do yourself.
The video series would be similar. You watch the videos of me presenting all of this and telling the stories that back it all up, and then there's the exercises in the workbook to do for that. So that's one way that can be done. And this can be done, an individual can do it themselves if they want, and it can also then be done within an entire company.
So it could be licensed across an entire company for a thousand, 2000 employees or whatever, and then they all would have access to be able to do this themselves. So that's one approach. It could also be.
Depending on on on the needs of the clients then and what they would like to accomplish then it could also then be designed in workshops for clients as well too so based on the results of the assessment if it's for a group of people design workshops based on them if it's for higher level leaders in the organization and they want me to do executive coaching with them then it could be used then to interpret that so if it were at that level for the executive coaching
then we'd be looking at you know not just reading the chapters in the book but then actually having having conversations and around specifically how does that apply to them and what the ideas in the book then become tools for them to then specifically apply in their own lives. Then as a coach, I would help them to guide them and embed it into what they're doing. Got it. And I like how in Pathway six, the topics, you've got relationships and authenticity.
You've got biases that are important to understand. Trust, we talked about that on the podcast with Greg Link and his book, The Speed of Trust, Covey covers, and then empathy. Can you just tell me if I'm, because that's my next highest area, is there anything important that I should know before I go into to that pathway. Yeah, I think that, you know, I did say originally that we could read the book in any order.
There are certain sections in the book where, and I would, if people want to focus on those sections that are relevant to them, if those are the ones that are most relevant, to read those particular sections in that order. So there is one section in the book around change, agility, and then resilience. And those are three different chapters. And I would recommend people to read them in that order because they do kind of build on each other in the change
process that we're going through. And we do go through change. And I would say, you know, not necessarily the, at least the read that the last four of Patrick before the conclusion are the four that you just mentioned there. And one of them's on relationships and authenticity. So I would recommend people to read that one first. And then the other three that follow that around around trust, bias, or empathy, right?
Empathy, right, around trust, bias, and empathy. And there's a chapter then on each one of those. There's not necessarily any one best order to read those, and you could read whichever ones you feel might be most resonating with you at that moment.
I believe that, you know, I remember when I was in university studying English literature at one point, and that it was like around, does the story exist within the words, within the the author's vision or within the interaction of the reader in the words. And I believe that the latter, the third one that is in the interaction with the reader or, or if it's the video series with the viewer of that and. And with them and the words that are there, it's that interaction.
So, you know, reading the chapters in different orders would give you different ideas because you read chapter, you know, 17 first, then you read 16 versus reading 16 first, for example, right? And so it's fascinating, I think, the order that we read them. So choose the order that you want it to influence you in. So for that last group there, definitely I'd say start with the one on relationships and authenticity and then biases, trust, and empathy. The other ones.
And I think one of the other things that I was very intentional about is that because this book is on self leadership. So these latter chapters in the book, which would have interactions with other people, namely around relationships, authenticity, trust, empathy. It was really specifically around through the lens of self-leadership, what is it that we need to do? So it's not, definitely it's not covering everything that exists on trust, empathy, relationships.
There's certainly a lot more that's out there that is in that kind of that we space of groups and relationships. And whereas this is again, through the lens of self-leadership, So it's, you know, from my perspective to others, how would I need to think and behave to be myself, be authentic? And what is it in the chapter on trust? What is it that I would need to do to be trustworthy, first of all? And I love that word trustworthy, that I am worthy of trust.
Because if I'm not being that person that is worthy of trust, how can I expect to have a trusting environment with my team or a trusting culture within the organization if I am not trustworthy?
Worthy so starting then from ourselves and then going outwards to the people we're with and then teams and organizations after that so that's what i would say is that because it's through the lens of self-leadership and through my eyes and through not my the author but through ourself as the journey person on this self-leadership journey as that person on this journey it's through your lens.
So, yeah, because I mean, I spent a lot of my career actually working with leaders and teams in that space of people leadership and how we build trust within the team and how we build an environment where people really want to be there and how we create a motivational workplace and then, you know, the inspiration behind this book was that my client said, Grant, can you write something for everybody?
So I said, okay, well, what's that? So if this is people leadership, I kind of had these three concentric circles. The center one is self-leadership, then people leadership, then thought leadership. And so I thought, okay, self-leadership is the heartbeat of all leadership. That was the inspiration behind writing this book then on self-leadership. And I think that it helps us as leaders to take a step back to lead ourselves first and then others.
And for for those of us that are not leaders out there, for our own life, personal life as well, to everything in the book you can apply with your work life and your personal life equally. And so, you know, using that with your own personal life and from the insight out of who you are to have better trust, empathy, and better authenticity in your relationships. Now, what about some of those areas where people score zero? Like, I thought it was interesting on on change and agility and resilience.
I had zero. Is that because I'm not interested? And I feel like I'm a resilient person. I did a brain test through Amen Clinics, and I got on the higher end of resilience. So maybe I feel like I've got this, and I ignored those questions. What do you think? If you were to see someone with zero, are they just trying to ignore those categories and not work on them? Or what would you say?
Yeah, I guess for the sake of your listeners out there, I mean, if the listeners out there, if you want to check the assessment, there are links, I guess, below in the podcast as well. So it is selfleadershipassessment.com is a pretty easy one to remember, selfleadershipassessment.com.
And when you take the assessment, there's nine statements that are going to repeat in different orders and combinations over 15 15 questions it takes on average two and a half minutes to do it it's very simple assessment to do and then basically by answering and choosing the one of those statements that's most important to you it's going to essentially rank those nine statements which is then cross-referenced with the chapters in the book
to then match up the areas that are most relevant or important to you right now with what's in the book now it also does give you this 18 page report even if you you don't buy the book, that's fine, or the videos, gives this 18-page report that does give you some ideas and strategies and approaches where you might want to focus your attention. So even if you want to go do your own research after that based on it, that's fine too. And.
I felt that when people come up with a lower score, so basically you're just, it just means that at this point in life, these other areas are more important or relevant to you right now at this moment. If you were to do the assessment, you know, possibly if somebody had a major change just happened to them the day before that, that might be what's on their mind at that moment. And possibly the results would be different at that moment.
So when somebody gets a zero it doesn't mean that you you should ignore this it basically means that there's other areas more relevant to you right now to focus on at this moment and then later go back to this i mean you'd said it yourself and it's saying that basically you probably have spent some time in this area already which is why it's not so important relative to the other statements that are there and therefore it's kind of ranked lower compared to to some of these other
ones which might be more important right now for you. Now, I do believe that all of these chapters do have value in it. And so that, I mean, I think it was amazing. Two people have now told me that they read my book twice. And I thought, you know, that to me was one of the greatest endorsements that I've ever heard before. It was like, what, you read my book twice? I was trying to think, which books have I read twice?
And probably the only ones I've read twice I can And think of the ones I mentioned earlier about, you know, Marshall Goldsmith and Dr. Covey, for example. And it was like two people told me they read my book twice. It's like, that's amazing. Thank you so much. They said that, you know, you can read it a few chapters, put it on the shelf for three or four months, bring it back up, read a few more chapters. And I think that.
These chapters on change, resilience, change, agility, and resilience, and I think that, again, these are timeless principles. And I wanted to create something that at least every chapter's got one, two, or three new ideas for people. I wasn't aiming to write something that people already knew.
New so hopefully that even if people have maybe not going through change right now at this moment but i think that agility resiliences are are not just what's the word um strategies that we use after we've gone through something i think we can use them in a more proactive way as well too rather than a reactor that was the word i was thinking rather than a reactive way more in a proactive way that we can look at using agility and resilience.
And then for the sake of people listening, I mean, because I've got three chapters on it, one's on change, which is really focused around the change that we're going through and how we can assess our feelings, psychological feelings that we've got or psychological needs that we've got through that, how we respond to the different changes around us, what's the impact on us in terms of the way our brain functions.
Agility then around in the moment right then when that change happens, how do we pivot and how do we then look for the opportunity on the other side? And resilience is more of a longer term strategy for us to sustain high levels of performance, regardless of whatever change or changes we may go through. And I think that when we look at these as reactive strategies, if we went through something traumatic and we need to deal with it, yes.
I think that we can also look at them in a proactive way that, you know, looking at what agility is doing for our mind in the moment and how we can develop that and then resilience, some of the longer term strategies about, you know, mental self-talk and helping us to then compartmentalize our ideas and looking at how we can build more resilience within our team as well from ourselves outwards.
And I think that these are proactive strategies that we can then, even when things are going well for us in the moment, you know, looking at ways that we can then still make that even better for us as well too. So I think, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't suggest people ignore any of the chapters in the book, just maybe if other chapters are more relevant for you right now, that can help you in your journey at this moment, I would say focus on those.
And then later come back to it, you know, for example. Yeah. Yeah. So when I was doing the backstory and recording what I wrote before even coming on the interview, I felt like this book could be read in 18 weeks, studying each chapter once a week, because it's that in-depth to understand and apply the new information that you give. So in each chapter, you did provide something new when I got to goals and I thought, Oh, I better not miss this.
And then how it connected to what I had just recorded. And there's more. It goes on in each chapter. There's something new that relates to the science of learning. So I'm getting it from the brain in. But now I need to apply it. And so I have to read it. I have to write it down. I have to understand. And then I have to take action. And that's not done just by sitting here reading it once. So it has to be read more than once so that we know we've got each
chapter and then have we applied it, right? Right. Yeah, I mean, because my background is in. Workshops for leaders to grow and fully embed what they're learning in in their roles and their functions, that everything in the book itself, there is the theoretical background and some science behind and some experiments that were quoted in there. But the bulk of it then is around real examples of applying it and exercise for people to really embed it for them.
And I think that, you know, I created a companion workbook for people as well, too, that has all the exercises in one place as well that people can use. And I would recommend also, you know, use that as a resource for future, too. So if you want to go through this in 18 weeks, once a week for each of the chapters, and then the review piece later, you can go back to the workbook itself where you made the notes of what you learned specifically for your own situation that you are in.
You can then use that as a document that you go back to. And it might've been, you know, 18 weeks ago or 15 weeks ago that you're in a particular section and you go back and you read the notes that you made at that moment, you know, which is, you know, 15 weeks ago or so, almost three, three and a half, four months ago or so. And then new ideas are going to come into you based on where, where you're at right there, three, three or four months, months later.
And so you can use this then as a, you know, a document that we go back to. Further notes again in that, you know, and really it's designed to help people to embed this in what they're doing, apply it immediately for themselves and get practical and consistent results is the aim of it.
Well, I love it. I'm going to get to work on my two areas and I do plan on doing all chapters and I'll probably do a follow-up to this when I've completely finished and understand all all the science in each 18 chapters. And what I'll do is I'll use the map as a guide and I'll just direct, you know, people back to whatever you do next, your videos, when they come back, just connect whatever aha moments of learning I get from doing a complete study of all 18 chapters.
Because, you know, when I come on an interview with somebody, you can tell I haven't read all Because it's your book. I'm not living it yet. But you should be able to see a difference in me when I've read it and I can talk the language a little bit more. So I'll send you that one when I've gone through it. And that'll keep me busy. 18 chapters of learning some neuroscience this year will be a couple of months. And I would love to hear your thoughts on how you are applying this.
I think, I mean, when I did the book launch for it, I had six leaders from different companies come in and each of them had a basically five minute slot to tell a story about, each of them chose a different chapter from the book and they told a story about related to their life and that chapter.
Now, the story probably happened first before they read the chapter, but then they looked looked at the ideas and applied it to the story that they were telling because it was about how we can actually live and apply what it is that's in this book itself here.
So I thought that was an interesting way to have the book launch itself was having six leaders come in and tell stories about themselves and lessons that they've learned from leadership and incidents that have happened it to them and then relate that to to the chapter in the book and i'd be curious here also from yourself as well to andrea that you know how you are applying this in in your life as well.
Yeah i'd love to hear that because i mean this is i think it's a journey that people are on and you know i found it fascinating when when people are telling me they've even read it twice before to say great you know and i find that you know completely fascinating that uh and people are taking away one person told me it's like grant i wish you added this into this as well so oh oh yeah, you know, it's like, it's like, cause I got that in the work. Cause he took my workshop, right.
On the same topic. And it was like, you did that in the workshop, but it's not in the book. It's like, yeah, I kind of added that afterwards. So it's like, okay. So, uh, and it's fun because to me, there's still room to, to, you know, grow in the, in this journey as well, too. I think that.
You know, if there's particular areas that people feel might connect more with them, then I'm always grateful to people to share that with me and, you know, that whether it's going to be, because we apply the content here as well too, into workshops for clients. I'm also a keynote speaker for offsites, for clients that they're senior leader offsites.
So blending in some of of this content in there with, you know, the concepts around leading a team, building trust under pressure, creating a workplace, the ideal workplace and the future of the organization. And so I embed this into that as well too, for the, for the off sites. And I think it's just fascinating to, to see how people can grow and learn from this.
So over time, you know, spread out over 18 weeks, something like that, like that, maybe it's an 18 week course for people out there as well too and if they want to make pods and circles to to share you know i recommend you know if you if people also with your friend you know each buy a copy of the book or the video series and then it'll learn together you know decide which order you want to read them in or which order you want to do the videos in and you know have
a buddy with you as well too it's you know social learning is a fun way as well and and i talked earlier about doing this by yourself but but you can do this with a friend or a partner or someone else, and you can all grow from it together. So some social learning might be fun with this as well too. I think this is brilliant. When I saw it, I'm like, this is the journey of the mind that was never created. That's how I see it. Wonderful. I like that description of it.
I like that. It's a journey of the mind. Yeah. I mean, it's written on the back cover, and it's written elsewhere in different things I've got as well too, to...
Develop from the inside out and develop from the outside in and i'm sure other people have used similar things or in similar or different ways that you know because um that you know you said the journey of the mind and and i think that that is what it's like in the the different chapters are you know kind of envision this you know if you imagine your brain there's like 18 different spaces in there maybe it kind of looks like a golf course now to me it's like there's 18 holes in there
that you got this 18 chapters in the book and they're kind of these different. Muscles of your brain and i do use that metaphor in the book and i said it earlier as well too about going to the gym to work your physical muscles in there our brain is this i i did the same thing when i was you know when i said i used to teach logical thinking in business school for four years and i it took me you know because i just found logical thinking for me came quite.
Natural to me i i was quite strong in mathematics as a kid and i just logical thinking that how things joined together and how things made sense and arguments just kind of kind of came natural to me and and then that's why i got a job teaching logical thinking for others so it took me a while i had to figure out what is it that's not quite you know not why doesn't everybody get this so so easily, right?
And so once I broke it down into my own brain about how, first of all, why not everybody is seeing the logic so easily as other people do? And secondly, what can we do to help them to do that? And I still had that same metaphor of going to the gym with different muscles, but it was with logical thinking exercises and different frameworks.
And I think that you know the more that we do of this with logical frameworks with uh logical exercises that it is building those muscles in our brain to then be able to to think this and i say eventually my brain was just thinking in misi frameworks all the time i was just inventing them rather than going to the standard classical or classic ones uh just inventing my own misi frameworks and that's you know where the 18 chapters of the book came from it's
like let's create a misi framework where We've got different categories and they're all separate and we cover everything in there. So, yeah. So, I mean, hopefully people enjoy the journey they're on through this and get more out of it and more out of it, you know. So if people want to learn more, is the best place, your website, grantbosnick.com, is that the best place for them to go and see all your programs and services that you offer?
Yeah, that would be the best place to go, grantbosnick.com. There is my profiles out there. The show reel is up there. I also, another thing I do, I combine the neuroscience of drumming. We don't have time to talk about this one.
Maybe it'll be the next one in the future. the neuroscience of drumming and team effectiveness so i've got a whole other thing that i call upbeat and upbeat with i got a registered trademark for it now too is a with upbeat it's about using the neuroscience of drumming to have more team effectiveness and quite you know high level rhythms that i created designed to do specific things in the brain too so it's a lot of fun stuff there as well too so yeah so um
all the stuff about me you can find on my my website Say grantbosnick.com. Yes. Well, Grant, upbeat Bosnick. I want to thank you so much for taking the time to walk me through this very thorough, tailored approaches to self-leadership that you've created. So I'm going to actually put this into practice and implement the chapters first that were highlighted in the self-assessment and then work on all the rest.
And I'll definitely let you know when I've released that and finished so you can see how I applied these and what I think of the science, because that's what I'm most interested in each chapter, to understand the science that you picked out. So I just want to thank you so much for this opportunity to speak and learn from you today. Thank you.
Thank you. I also wanted to say one thing, because when you arranged this podcast for this one, and it was number 321, the podcast number, and I just wanted to say I love that number, and I wanted to say to everybody everybody out there on your own self-leadership journey, it's like three, two, one, go. You know, now is the time to start. You know, that's why this podcast, three, two, one, I think it's a countdown for you to start. So three, two, one, go.
I just wanted to say that. Thanks, Andrea. Love it. Thanks so much. If you're enjoying the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll stay up to date with our new episode. While you're there, please feel free to give us a review or a five-star rating as it helps others find us. For more information on our programs, books and tools for schools and the workplace, visit us at www.achieveit360.com.