You're at the Coaching Inn, 3D Coaching's virtual pub where we enjoy conversations with people who engage in the world of coaching. Welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn. I'm your host, Claire Pedrick. And today my guest has written a book about being human. Guess what? That's why she's here. It's gala. Yeah. Thank you, Philippa. I'm going to introduce you in a moment. First of all, lovely listeners.
And you're going to get bored with me saying this, but if you haven't subscribed or followed, it would make a really big difference to us if you did. And that would be lovely and human and great. Thank you very much. So, Philippa. Philippa White, you've written a book called Return on Humility. Welcome to The Coaching Inn. Well, it is such a pleasure to be here. You honestly have been so lovely and contacted me as soon as you heard the book came out. my goodness, we need to speak.
So thank you for your enthusiasm and thank you for having me here. It's just great to talk to other people who are like-minded and get it. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? I don't know whether once you've written a book with human in the title, you just noticed human written everywhere. It's possible actually because it is something that I've sort of noticed as well, yes. Interesting. So, Philippa, tell us a bit about the journey that got you to write the book, your human journey.
The human journey to write the book, gosh, that's a really nice question. I guess it's really related to the work that I do, but that also happened as I think many people who have started businesses can relate to, they're sort of the founders. catalyst, the thing that kind of happened in their life that inspired the direction that they went in. And I would say that without question, I know what the catalyst was. And it was in 2004. So it was a long time ago.
And I at the time was working in advertising in London. Obviously, my accent is not from London. So my accent is Canadian. I grew up in Canada, but I was actually born in South Africa. And my family on my dad's side is partly from South Africa. So I still have family there. And going to South Africa was always super inspirational to me because having grown up in Winnipeg and Winnipeg is in Manitoba, Canada. it's the license plates in Canada all have sort of a phrase that explains that province.
the province of Manitoba is friendly Manitoba. And it is, it's a very friendly, safe, nice place to grow up. And my family in South Africa was really involved in the anti-apartheid movement. And the stories that I heard growing up from my uncle and aunt couldn't have been more different, but also more inspirational than many of the... exposure that I had growing up in Canada.
Canada was great, Winnipeg was great, but you know, really fighting for something that you believe in, really living out a purpose, seeing injustice and doing something about it. Growing up and you hear about that and you hear the stories, it's pretty extraordinary. So my uncle, because of his involvement in the anti-apartheid movement, he was a physician, but he was also Nelson Mandela's doctor when Nelson Mandela came out of prison and started negotiations with the apartheid government.
And so those stories as well were just really, my God. So in 2004, my uncle passed away and I was at his funeral. And that was the catalyst to all of this. And why is that? Well, I remember very clearly looking around the room at this celebration of life celebration. And there was this sea of faces and there were all these different people from so many different backgrounds. So there were ministers from the government, there were family members, were comrades, fought comrades from the struggle.
There were friends, obviously, and then there were people from the communities. And so there was just this extraordinary mix of so many different people from so many different backgrounds. And I thought, my God, you I found my uncle to be so inspirational, but my goodness, like he obviously inspired so many people. And then two people put up their hands. They were two people who were not on the list to speak. One of them did come from a community.
The other one was involved in the anti-apartheid struggle. This gentleman went to the front and he said, in our community, Neil was the only doctor to speak our language, the rest of the doctors treated us like animals and they were vets. Wow. And not being able, right? And I remember hearing that and thinking, okay, God, having grown up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, I didn't even realize that that would even be a thing, you know?
Like, so then this other woman, she put up her hand and she was this large African lady and she walked to the stroad. like captured everyone's attention. Like she was this had this incredible presence and she just strode to the front. And she said, I was in jail for a portion of apartheid, me being black. I was in a black jail, which was obviously in a black part of town. And, and this is nothing like just to be very clear, this is nothing like white savior, anything.
is Neil and this woman being on the same, you know, they were comrades in a struggle against apartheid and she was in this jail and he he went to visit her like she was his friend and she said it was a very dark time in my life but you Neil risked his life by going to a black part of town during apartheid into a black jail and giving me information of what was happening on the outside but also just you know being that light at a very dark time in my life.
And these two conversations were everything for me, because I thought, my goodness, know, what, you know, he obviously impacted so many different people. Wow. He was obviously so inspirational. And, know, how, how was that possible? Well, basically he, he bridge divides. He used his, his privilege to challenge broken systems.
He, he stepped out of what could have been a very comfortable bubble and, you know, expanded his horizons and which then helped him see himself in a completely different way, but also see the world in a completely different way. And as I'm reflecting on all of this, I'm realizing, you know, he impacted those people. Yes, but actually it's not just one sided. All of those people made him the leader he was. And that's the reason Nelson Mandela wanted to work with him. That's the reason.
So what was it? Well, he obviously had a real inner compass. had that perspective. He had these human competencies of cultural intelligence and purpose and vulnerability and drive and sort of like resilience. and are willing to push boundaries. And at the time, as I mentioned, I was working in advertising in London and I started to look at my life. You know, we work with a lot of the same sorts of people. We then go to the pub and hang out with the same sorts of people.
You then have dinner parties, kind of with the same sorts of people. But yet you're expected to give nuanced advice. You're expected to think differently. You're expected to push the envelope. You're expected to be resilient. You're expected to have all of these traits. But the question is, if you're not doing things differently, and if you're not forcing yourself to see the world differently, to talk to different people, to be pushed in different ways, then how is that possible?
And so that's why I do what I do with my company, Tied Leadership. And my book is basically lifting the lid on this special sauce of how all of this works and why it's so important. So I'm sorry, that was a long answer, but that gives you an idea as to where it all comes from. That was a beautiful answer. I'm quite emotional, actually. Because the legacy is enormous. Yeah. Isn't it?
it's, you know, what was really amazing is, so I launched my book a couple of weeks ago in London and his son was there. wow. His son's wife was there who Neil obviously wouldn't have met. Justine, his mom, so his wife, Justine, she helped. She pulled so much of the information because there's parts where I talk about South Africa in the book and she helped pull that together.
But as I was looking around, my mom was there, my sister, my brother came from Canada, my cousin came from New York, I had another cousin come from Milan, and I had tons of clients and colleagues from over the years. And I stood up and I said, I don't know if I should be saying this, but I'm going to. I never officially got married. I've got two kids, I have partner, but I never did the white wedding. And I don't know if this will ever happen again, but I'm looking around here.
And for me, this feels like my wedding. Amazing! sure where this was going to go because I said, you know, well, I never got married. And it was like, what, where is this going? Well, this feels to me like my wedding. And everyone's like, ha ha ha, this is amazing. And everyone's used that actually as examples since that evening, just saying it felt a real privilege to be there. But also it was a very human environment.
It was very, the name tags even I had rather than saying, you know, whatever the person's name is in their job title. I put their relation to me. So it was, you know, you're a Thai advisor or you're a Thai supporter or you're my cousin or you're my mom or Philippa's sister, Philippa's brother. So it very quickly, Philippa's friend.
So it just very quickly kind of, it just broke down all the barriers and everyone could just start networking quite quickly and just having nice human conversations with one another. But I did look around and I just thought, you know, Just think like this, inspiration that somebody can have can create something like this. Yeah. And 20 years on, you're spreading his legacy in a different way.
And you know, I think if you reflect as well on leaders, people, I don't even want to say leaders, people, people in your life over the years that have had an impact on you. So, I mean, even for the listeners, you know, just think about teachers or family members or, you know, bosses or team members or, I don't know, like whoever that has touched you.
If you just take a moment to think about it, I'm sure a couple of people come up and then you actually think about the competencies of those people. What are they? They are. They are brave. They are empathetic. They actively listen. They understand. They are usually quite inspirational. They have a purpose. They're resilient. They push boundaries. They do things differently. And again, it's tapping into those human competencies. They're flexible. They give you space to grow.
They know how to empower you. And that's what Neil was. And they're real. They're authentic. Wow. And his impact continues. Yeah. Yeah. And there's great stories in the book. So with lots of references, mean, Justine, his wife, was very careful about making sure that my memories were correct, because memories are funny that way sometimes. I'm like, so this happened. And she's like, yeah, that wasn't what happened. I was like, really? But I'm sure that that happened.
No, that wasn't a conversation that happened. I'm like, OK. And so, I mean, it was a lot of work. And she made it. crystal, like absolutely perfect, the whole thing. And then there's a part where, I mean, his work was extraordinary. And I talk a little bit about the history of apartheid as well and where that comes from. And it has everything to do with return on investment, 100%. And it's fascinating. And so there's a lot of references as well in the book. It's amazing.
The work he did was pretty cool. So tell me about your work. Yeah, so kind of... The tagline of my company, Thai Leadership, is better leaders, better companies, better world. And not surprisingly, my book is also separated into three sections where I'm talking about the individual, I'm talking about the company, and then I'm talking about the world, leadership, company, and then the world.
And kind of back to... just very quickly, the book, you know, I'm a great believer that before we're leaders, we are human beings that have families and, you know, passions and interests and children. And so it's interesting when you look at just how life works when you tap into these human competencies and how much better it is, then if you then transfer that into leadership, why does it need to be different?
Why do you suddenly when you get into business, you're some psychopath that's making crazy decisions. It's like, and treating people in some psychopathic way, like you probably wouldn't treat your kids like that. So it's just sort of thinking, you know, let's, let's transfer. And let's just look at how life is better than business is better when we tap into these human competencies.
And, you know, I'm a great believer that better leaders, i.e. leaders that are able to tap into those human competencies, do create better companies. And when I say better, I mean better culturally, more human, but it is proven that more human culture companies are more profitable, they're more successful, happier employees are 400 % more innovative and creative.
And again, I'm not just saying this if you put yourself into that position, if you're in an un-psychologically safe environment where you feel judged and not able to step into space and shine, you're probably not going to be super creative and innovative. You know you're your best self when you're in a place that is safe and amazing and you feel good inside your skin. And so I help develop these leaders to be able to tap into their human company. The thing is, is I do it in a different way.
Having this global, I live in Brazil, so for the listeners, I'm in Brazil, my business is based in England, I grew up in Canada, obviously born in South Africa, I have a bit of a global perspective. And I'm a great believer that to be more human, there's sort of three pillars of that. And one is self-awareness. So it's understanding yourself and being able to... Truly understand yourself so that you can live your life with intention. You can step into that vulnerability.
You're able to say, don't know. You're able to fight for the things that you believe in. But all of that comes from inner development and self self-worth. Then it's interdependence. it's understanding the power of we need other people. I can't make a decision in a vacuum. Collaboration, unlikely partnerships. We need others. And then it's interconnected.
So it's understanding the importance of that wider world, those macro perspectives, and it's understanding that, well, a decision made here can impact people there. And so that's the of the basis, if you like, of what I believe to be more human. And in order for that to be possible, we need to create opportunities that really get people in the same way that... you know, my experience at Neil's funeral, it was those stories and it was that perspective that was that sudden aha moment.
We need to create opportunities that get people to see themselves and the world differently to be able to create change. And so in my kind of, I like to say that what I do is I take people to the edge of their mental maps and I gently nudge them off, forcing an evolution and that evolution. creates individual change, behavior change and team change.
And so I do it in a number of different ways, but it's always using the power of different cultures and people to be able to provide the leadership opportunities. And so there's always an element of that with all of our programs. And so I work with people in 26 countries around the world.
and it can be influences from Syria and Iraq or Tanzania or Malawi or Brazil or whatever it is, but there's so many learnings that so many people have from all over the place and we can bring so much of that learning into leadership, our lives and business. And so I can do it for individuals, I do it for cohorts and I do it at scale. You lost! I love the connection between changing the world and the developing every human to be a more connected human.
Yeah, and it's fundamental, Like if we start to have those perspectives of how the world works outside of our little bubbles, it's very easy to be a psychopath if you're only focusing on your own little world and your own little bubble in that little, like that closed perspective. And actually it's possibly even a safety mechanism many times, because if you don't see the faces or you don't even start, if you stop to think about the impact, of many decisions being made.
mean, I don't know how people sleep at night. So therefore we know that sensibilizing people to, and it's not just, it's not sensitizing people, sensitizing people. It's not about even just, you know, watching the news. It's understanding that common humanity. It's fascinating how it takes certain experiences for people to realize that common humanity and common humanity is a powerful force.
Because if you suddenly realize, my gosh, you know, and sometimes it just takes a conversation or a similar story or a realization of what life is like in another part of the world, but then providing those opportunities for people to then see themselves differently. And again, the way that I do this is in a number of different ways.
So it can be something that's, as I say, scalable and something that's not as kind of immersive, but the immersive experiences or even the cohort experiences where people are running things with different people in different ways, that behavior change and those realizations are pretty extraordinary. And it's driven by many of these interactions. in a very short amount of time.
So I also like to play with obstacles and I like to play with constraints because obstacles and constraints and I talk a lot about that in my book because there's the it's the enablers to creating human competency. So as we know, if you have just always lived in a very comfortable situation and haven't had much challenge in your life, one, it's difficult to empathize and empathy is a very important competency.
But actually sometimes you need to be in situations that force you to feel something different that's sometimes uncomfortable. And that's an enabler. And so it's these constraints or it's these difficult moments or it's these uncomfortable conversations that we might have that don't feel great at the time, but it's helping us grow to become more human individuals and more human leaders and to develop those competencies. And we need those enablers.
And sometimes those enablers come in the form of constraints. And they're powerful forces and they're important and we need them to become more resilient and more empathetic and to understand the importance of vulnerability and saying that you don't know. And what happens when you pretend you know something and don't and you're trying to find a solution to something and you're working with people.
I mean, it's all those dynamics and that's our alert, like the leadership programs that we create, it's all experiential. It's, and I feel, I guess it's a big question. There's two big questions actually for the listeners. One, I don't believe maybe, and I'm curious to know if someone else can argue, you know, maybe they have another opinion, but I don't think it's possible to, you know, how do you train for resilience or how do you train to be more empathetic in a classroom?
Like, I just don't, I think you need to experience stuff to be able to do that. And then the other big question that I have, which I have already posed to my university, because in my book, I talk about, I went to business school and I do question the business. I don't question that business school. I just question business schools in general.
And I thought they might hate me for talking about it, but actually they've been very supportive and I'm now having me on keynotes, like I'm now doing keynote speeches for them, which is great, but I do question business schools. You know, the big question is if we know that these competencies, I would say are the most important competencies to drive business forward and to be able to respond to everything that the world is facing, but also how to take business into the future.
If we know that these competencies are what are needed, who's teaching them? And why, like, why is that, you know, why are not my courses or other courses, like in business schools, a sort of core curriculum because they should be. It's interesting because I I'm cooking up something for coaches which isn't going to have any knowledge in it at all and it's going to be entirely experiential. Great. So somebody said to me the other day, know, how do I learn courage?
And I said, you don't learn in a classroom. No, you jump out of a plane, you fall off a paddleboard, you. go somewhere you haven't been before. There are a thousand ways you can learn courage, but the classroom is not any of them. Yeah, totally. And you need to, I mean, this is where, you know, also failure comes in. This is where, you know, what is success, but it's sort of, it's when you realize it's not that bad when maybe it doesn't go the way that you hope it does.
Or, well, how did you, how did you learn from that? Whatever it is. How do you get stronger? And again, it's setbacks. A lot of it is setbacks. And you develop that resilience. You develop that and you think, okay, No, all right, that wasn't so bad. All right, let's do that again, you know? Or I managed it, whatever the goal was, you know? my goodness, I didn't think that that was possible.
And I think with companies, it's really difficult because obviously to create that space for people to step into is sometimes hard because you need to have the silos, you need to have the different roles for people. You can't have too much room for risk, which is where these types of opportunities that you're talking about are so important because it provides.
It provides that space for people to do things in a way that they wouldn't normally, but obviously we provide the safety net to ensure the success of it, right? And don't destroy somebody's confidence by trying something and be like, I don't. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So you've leapt from 2004 to 2024. This is where you are now. You had that... inspiration, vision. It feels like the light was lit on that day. Just give us a little bit of a sense of how you got from there to here. Yes, okay.
So the catalyst was that, of course. I mean, gosh, I had to create the business plan and all that kind of stuff. But then in 2000, the end of 2005, I moved to Brazil. And I set up my company. My company became a company in 2006. Because I was born in South Africa, thought that I knew that I wanted to start by doing, I mean, there's obviously in any company, there's so many iterations, right? But it started with immersive experiences.
And I felt that I needed to give people the opportunity that I had to have these immersive experiences talking to people like my uncle. I felt that the business world needed to have so many more people who had those experiences because the moment that they do, it's game changing, it's just life changing. And it's just, it's so powerful and I just needed to provide those opportunities. So I wasn't sure where I would start that.
I thought it could be South Africa, but because I worked in advertising and a lot of people went to South Africa on shoots, it particularly Cape Town, I just felt a lot of people go to Cape Town. No, I need the Wild West. I need total craziness. And anyway, I met the father of my children. We moved to Brazil. He wanted to go home anyway. He's Brazilian. basically started in 2000. Ty became a company in 2006. We had our first program in 2007. And Leo Burnett was our first client.
still working with Leo Burnett now. Leo Burnett actually has a program happening as I speak. There's one happening. And the way that I did it until COVID was these immersive experiences. It started in Brazil, but then all over the world, places that needed to be safe, of course. So we were quite restricted by the types of places we could send people to. But the experience would be six months. but the actual six months, not out of the business, as in sort of the program was six months.
So there's an element of coaching. So we do work with coaches, understanding sort of how you want to use this experience to be able to really kind of guide you and your work and what, you why are you doing it on a personal level and a business level and then a sort of a corporate, sort of a leadership level and then a corporate level. And then we'd have international development training and my gosh, I mean, preparation stuff, so all of that would happen. And then it's 30 days out of the office.
And so 30 days immersive experience focusing on a goal. And the goal would be a very specific objective that the organization faces. And that individual would have to work in a country they've never been to before, sometimes a language that they didn't have a clue how to speak it with people they've obviously never worked with before in a sector they don't know anything about. And they need to find a solution with constraints at the core.
they have little, very limited financial resources, very limited human resources and limited time. And they need to find the solution in 30 days and go. And that's basically how it is. And so imagine, know, suitcases don't arrive in time. There's, mean, everything you can imagine the first week is so overwhelming because the organizations are like, my God, this is the only opportunity in our entire existence that we're going to have.
a person to help us with this issue, throw literally every single possible thing at them and say, you need to help us with everything. And they're not wanting to let them down, but having to kind of wade through this information and find a solid thing that they can actually do and then make it happen in 30 days. So it's, is life-changing. What's interesting is at the book launch, I invited people who happen to be in London and who are Thai alums and they still feel part of a family.
mean, it's people who are, it fundamentally changes how they see themselves. Many of them are now running massive businesses, which is very cool. And then when COVID happened, we needed to reinvent, of course, and that was hugely traumatic from the point of view of just keeping everything going. but also quite amazing because we had to drink our Kool-Aid and constraints were at the core and we had to tap into what we know and we had to respond.
And so we developed a program called TeamTie, Virtual TeamTie. So it is, and I'm super happy that it came about because it would not have happened had COVID not happened. But basically it's a way to get a team, a cohort. up to six people from around a company. Now it can be divisions, it can be seniority, so it can be up to six people, very junior until very senior.
It can be very senior across like a global network, so different countries, or in the case of Leo Burnett, for example, different departments from around a business. You know, I'm talking to a battery company here in Brazil. And for example, they need, you know, engineers to be talking to marketing people, to be talking to the head office, to be, and it's very difficult to find opportunities for that type of cohesion.
But this is great because you've got six people again, over six weeks, around two hours a day. There's two weeks of preparation and then it's four weeks of go for it. You've got six people working together to find the solution to whatever it is. And there's a presentation at the end. where they sort of summarize everything that they've come up with.
And it's a wonderful way to get people to understand the power of active listening, know, asking questions, saying that you don't know, trying to talk to people, being able to navigate these difficult experiences of getting under the skin of a different culture and getting to people from different departments or even different regions or different sectors to trust you and to be able to develop those nuanced relationships to be able to realize a final objective.
But at the same time, it's all rooted in purpose. And so people feel really excited about the cause because they know that whatever it is that they're creating is going to be helping another community or a group of people or an organization, another part of the world.
you don't often have training programs where people get up at three o'clock in the morning and put on lipstick and sort of a... a t-shirt over their pajamas to sort of have a conversation with the minister of, I don't know, in Malawi to just try and understand more about a local reality or whatever. So yeah, it's amazing. So we work in 26 countries around the world, as I mentioned, and so we have a number of different opportunities. And so you asked what happens in between 2004.
Obviously, we now have that and we're now also rolling out another one, which is a scalable option, which is something that works a little bit differently. That's up to 500 people. But the answer to question was that you got it rolling really quickly. Yeah, actually, I did. So it was the end of 2005 that I moved here and it would have been in September 2007 that we had our first programme. That's amazing. Chris Jackson. Cool. Do you know, I could sit here and listen to you all day.
just love the immersion thing. So I was a volunteer for two and a half years in my early 20s, which in Kenya. Why that not surprise me? Yeah, amazing. Yeah. And did you do that with? I did it with the Church Mission Society. And I was a teacher in a rural secondary school. And as you were talking about what forms us, I remembered the night I spent in a brothel. But that's another story. That's not for now. That's good story.
The night I accidentally stayed in a brothel because I'll tell you because it's funny. So I was with a student who lived in Mathare Valley, which is a shanty in Nairobi, and he said, come and stay with me. But somebody else had said, come and stay with me, who had a big house. And I got seduced by the big house. But so the driver picked me up. I left my student, my friend in Mathare Valley, I left him at the somewhere and we arranged to meet in the morning.
The driver picked me up and then the driver on the way said, you can't go to the house because something's happened. We're going to put you up in a hotel. So they took me to a hotel in the middle of the back of Nairobi somewhere, which I was used to being in because that's where the buses used to go to where I lived. but I'd not slept overnight there. And I went in, everyone looked a bit surprised when I checked in.
And I shut the door to the bedroom and on the back of the door, it said two hours, 20 shillings all night. I was like, right, well you're here for the night. So. Those things form you, right? And in the morning... Yeah, in the morning comes that... In the morning, I've made my way back to Lucas and he said, I told you not to trust people with money. And I said, you're right. You're right. I should have come with you. Sorry. He laughed at me. story. Now you're telling the story on a podcast.
wouldn't have been to tell that story on the podcast had you not. Yeah. No, exactly. He laughed at me so much, but there's something levelling about that, isn't there? So, Philippa, let's promote your book shamelessly. Philippa White. Yes, thank you. Return on Humanity. There you are. Return on Humanity by Philippa White, published by the beautiful people at Practical Inspiration. I'll put a link in the show notes.
How do people contact you if they want to pick up the conversation for their organization, Philippa? Yeah, great. Well, they can, I mean, you can email me at Philippa at thaileadership.com or you can go to our website, thaileadership.com and you can, you know, there's a book page there. There's a link to the podcast if you want to listen to the podcast that I have, which is Thai Unearthed. And then of course, if you're interested in leadership programs, then it's all there.
So I would love to hear from anyone that's interested. And thank you, Claire. mean, really amazing to speak to you. You remind me of my aunt, actually. It's amazing. She's a very soft spoken, very focused and just warm individual. as I'm talking to you, I just was thinking of Justine. So that's a huge compliment. thank you. Wow. I'll take that one. Thank you. So, Philippa, thank you for coming to the coaching and everyone. Thank you for listening. Bye bye.
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