No Bullsh!t Leadership: Filling The Gap In Leadership With Martin Moore

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress, and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Markel and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become— Change-proof.

Oh, you're gonna love my guest today on the Change Proof Podcast. Martin Moore is a leadership performance expert. He is a guy who wrote a book called No Bullshit Leadership. I'm not bullshitting you when I say, no, his title is No Bullshit Leadership. And more importantly than that, he has been sharing this message with leaders for many, many years all around the globe. He has an amazing podcast by that same name that has more than 2 million downloads in 100 companies. Martin Moore is up next on the Change Proof Podcast. So Martin, I'm going to ask you something. You are a seasoned business leader and an author, and we're going to talk a lot about your new book today. And you have an extensive history and bio, CV, and all that good stuff. What's one thing that's not a part of your typical introduction or bio that you would love for people to know about you?

Well, that's a really good question, Adam. I think the key thing is that I'm actually a university dropout. Now, I don't purport to be as famous a university dropout as Bill Gates or some of the others, But I did drop out of law school when I was a young lad. And what happened after that was most interesting because I bounced around the cocktail bars of Sydney for about 2 years, not doing anything much in particular to move my brain. But I learned so much about people and about human nature and about relationship interactions in that context. And that's when you see people both at their best and their worst. So I think that 2 years that I actually didn't study was probably one of the best educational segments of my adult life, really.

You know, I just feel like I would be— I'd be kicking myself if I didn't follow the thread on that one. Yeah.

Keep going, mate. I'm—

Oh, no, no. We're going to dig into the belly of the beast just a little bit. I spent a semester in York, England, and studying while I was at the University of Massachusetts. And I got to tend bar there, which was a pretty unusual thing actually, to have a Yank behind bar. I think I was just a novelty at first. And I don't know if they wanted somebody that could be a punching bag for the rugby guys. But I managed to sort of, I don't know, dig myself in under the skin there just a bit and became quite tight with not just the innkeepers, but the other folks that were regulars as well. I loved it. And now have actually have a funny enough daughter, our youngest daughter who's in London, just getting her first pub experience. So I want to go back to what you just said that you spent— Yeah. You know, 2 years, I almost said 10 years, 2 years bouncing around in that scene and learned a lot about human nature and the like. I'd love to get a sense of, Maybe some of the things that you did learn, even one thing from that time and how it translates to the— either to the work you do today or the things that you speak about in this brand new book, which by the way, I have right here. It's an awesome book called No Bullshit Leadership. And Martin, I would love to get your take on it from the pub perspective to start.

Well, there's a couple of things that strike me immediately. I think most important from my personal perspective was that I'd led a very sheltered life. I'd been brought up in a very stable, very favorable environment in a middle-class family in Sydney, Australia. I'd been to one of the top schools in Sydney. My parents weren't wealthy, but they really believed in the power of education. So my brother and I attended one of the top all-boys schools in Sydney, and it just happened to be a full boarding school. So when I came out of that, I was incredibly advanced intellectually and academically. And incredibly stunted socially. I was like a 13-year-old in an 18-year-old's body.

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And so I spent those couple of years learning about what was going on in the world. And it never occurred to me that people didn't follow rules, weren't polite, that all of these things that you see when people are at their worst at 2 o'clock on a Saturday morning in a nightclub. And so I got to observe that firsthand. Now, what that taught me was, number one, I was shocked into thinking, hang on, not everyone's like me or the people that I've been growing up with. Number two, how do I know how to handle these things? How can I read people better to see what they're going to be like? Are they going to be fun? Are they going to be happy? Are they going to be angry? Are they going to be a problem? And to be able to read that in people just by the way they walk, their body language, the expression on their face. was incredibly important in me developing my emotional intelligence, my ability to see people for how they were feeling, as opposed to just look at them and look through them. So I think that was an incredibly important part of my growth for both human relationships and of course my leadership career.

It develops your instincts on some level. I mean, I grew up in the city. I was a kid from Queens, which is— I don't know if you know Queens, but it's a little suburb of Manhattan. And I had to learn pretty early on to be able to assess The danger, I'll say, in this situation fairly quickly. You know, you walk into the wrong— on the wrong block, you give somebody the wrong look. I mean, it could just be any number of things that could trigger— could trigger a threat, let's say.

Yeah.

Yeah, interesting. So you grew up in Sydney and obviously you got rid of the accent a while ago, right? 'Cause you now live on the East Coast of the United States.

I know, I sound like a true Bostonian, don't

I? Yeah, you do. Pack the car.

It's not made in— Fortunately, the Australian isn't too far from that. We drop our Rs as well. So we say park. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's not too far off.

No, not too far off. So I want to maybe get a little bit of history for people before we dive into the current body of work. And so where was your sort of first pivotal change? You obviously came out of school a little green with a lot of knowledge and information, as you said, but not quite worldly at that point. So you took these 2 years And you did develop emotional intelligence, your instincts around about people and the like. And where did that ultimately, or when did it, where did that lead you to at that point?

Well, I think at that point, Adam, I realized that even though I was having a lot of fun doing what I was doing, my brain was turning to porridge. And so I had to really think about what I was going to do with my life because I knew what I was doing was dead end. So funnily enough, I got into the burgeoning field of computer science. And I became a software developer. Now, this was in the days long before coding and tech were cool. This is when it was still a geeky thing. And so I got into that. I was very good at maths. The logic of programming I used to enjoy. And I went to work for one of the big banks because in those days, the employers were the very big banks and companies like American Express and so forth that had very large mainframe systems that required heavy processing. So I was one of those programmers back in the mid-'80s. And from there, I got into consulting work. I learned to move between a lot of different organizations through this consulting work. And because my probably superpower is being able to see patterns and to see how patterns affect different circumstances, I very quickly worked out the problems were common between these different organizations I was working for. They were the same everywhere, even though everyone says we're different. No one's different. The problems are pretty much the same. And if you can see the patterns and recognize them and bring forward solutions that aren't necessarily the solutions that are inherent or systemic in that industry, you can actually make a big difference. And so I really enjoyed that work. So I was really working as a project manager mainly in the software industry. And it wasn't until about 20 years ago in the early 2000s that I got serious about actually having a career. Once again, I was sort of bouncing around doing interesting work, but no real career path.

So interesting, because I think some, to some degree, and you and I talked about this just briefly right before we hit record, the people that have, among the people that have really leaned into your work are mid-career folks, professionals that are— I'd love to, because I think that's a big, big audience these days, people in transition. Maybe we can determine a little bit about what it is that, you know, that sort of hits a person at a certain point in their career that Because I had a similar transition out of 18 years in the practice of law and then complete pivot and change in my direction. I didn't feel terribly empowered at that point in time. And I was a little embarrassed if I'm being really honest about it.

Yeah.

A bit ashamed that I didn't know what the next part of the journey might look like for me. And I'll never forget at a family gathering, sharing what I was planning to do with somebody like my wife's cousin. I'll never forget this. And he just looked at me like, you know, and he's a kid from, from New York as well. And he just said, are you out of your mind? Like, you're gonna give back the ticket? You know, he literally says, you have a license to make money. Yeah. Or he might have said steal money, frankly, at the time. But he says, you're gonna give back the ticket? What are you thinking, man? You know?

Yeah. So For sure. I think that comes with the maturity of just having worked and bounced around for a few years in any sort of industry or profession, Adam, because when you think about it, it's not until you start getting a few setbacks and disappointments, you know, aware of your work on resilience, it's not until you start to see those things and respond to them that you really know what you're made of and you start to work out what you really want. And so the reason we're sort of targeting that mid-career leader is because they've been in the game long enough to know that not everyone becomes a millionaire before 30. Life is harder than it looks. Leading other people is much harder than it sounds. And when you have to worry about people other than yourself, it's not just your own individual brilliance that takes you to where you want to go. Then you've got some soul searching to do. Do I really want to do this?

Yeah.

Do I, do I even like what I'm doing? And what everyone else tells me is success, which is go up that ladder and make more money in bigger roles, get the prestige and status and rewards of a large corporate career. Am I prepared to do that? And what am I going to sacrifice to do that? And so all of these questions start to arise. As much as anything else, the content that we put out there through our business, Your CEO Mentor, and certainly through the No Bullshit Leadership Series is all about testing people and giving them a line in the sand to think about what they're doing. Do you Do you really want to be a leader? Like, if you want to be a leader, here's what it takes. Here's the obligations you have, and here's what it takes to be great. And if you want to do that, awesome, get into it. But if you don't, well, don't kid yourself you're a great leader because you're not.

So the concept of— I mean, you know, I think it's a good time to just dive into it. So what is no bullshit leadership? We don't have to bullshit each other, right?

Let's

go

right at it. No, we certainly don't, Adam. Well, look, let's start with what actually drove me in this purpose. What I see is a dearth of strong, capable leadership. And in the last, I don't know, I don't know how long ago it started happening, but it's evolved over the last 10+ years where the role and function of leadership has been almost completely disconnected from the need to get results. It's become about virtue signaling. Great leaders are humble. Great leaders are transparent. Great leaders are fallible. Great leaders have integrity. All of which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that at all. And in fact, some of these attributes are absolutely essential in a great leader. But there's no instruction book. It's just about aspiring to these noble virtues. And so we listen and we absorb the content, and we identify with it and we become motivated and inspired, and then we do absolutely nothing. And so leadership was not improving patently. And so I saw this disconnect between leadership thinking, leadership education, and leadership content and the results that weren't being achieved. So this is a reconnection of saying, okay guys, if you want to be leaders, let's just face one fact. The number one job you have is to deliver value for all your stakeholders, deliver value. I'm not just talking about the narrow financial value sense. You can create value from great environmental products that up your sustainability index. You can create value through having better competitor and customer intelligence. You can create a safer environment for your employees. It's a whole range of ways to create value, but you need to know what it is and you need to go after it. A lot of organizations have just fallen into the trap of activity for its own sake. We do what we did last year and the year before. It's the rusted-on activity of the business that we just go through the motions on. And the opportunity for value capture is almost completely lost.

Martin, what do you think that the— you know, I'm going to skip to something right now that I think it's implied by what you're saying, but I want to dig into it a bit more. What blind spots do you think leaders have today? Or Are they different? The blind spot is— would you say that the blind spot that a typical leader has today is similar to the blind spot they had 20 years ago?

I don't think the blind spot has changed because I don't think our fundamental nature has changed. And I think this is the core thing about leadership. We convince ourselves that we're good leaders in our heads because we look at our intent. We don't look at our actions and our choices and our behaviors, we look at our intent. And so internally I'm saying, okay, I'm trying to do the right thing, therefore I'm a good leader. I'm aspiring to be humble, I'm aspiring to be transparent, or whatever the case may be. But the experience of the people around me and the people in my team that I'm leading is sometimes wildly different from that. And so we give ourselves the benefit of the doubt and we have the human power of rationalization. And that can blind us to so many things. Now let's just talk quickly about resilience as an example here, because a lot of people think they're good under pressure. But how many really are? When I say good under pressure, I don't mean they've mastered game face and they can put their game face on so they don't collapse in front of their teams. I'm talking about that deep, consistent grace under pressure.

Hmm.

That you'd be aware of, Adam, the complete consistency between what you say, what you think, how you feel, what's in your heart. It's like watching— and I hate to bring up the New England Patriots at this time of the interview, but you look at a guy like Tom Brady there. He runs out for his first offensive set in the Super Bowl last year playing for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I reckon his pulse rate wasn't above 55.

Yep.

That guy, he just went out there. He could have been playing a pickup game in his backyard with his son. You know what I mean? He was just so relaxed and so in control and so in command of that situation. And that's grace under pressure because you don't get overawed or hassled or thrown off by the circumstances that you find yourself in. Now, having said that, a lot of people feel as though they're very resilient, but they're not. And we can Observe that. It's like anything. It's Dunning-Kruger effect, unskilled and unaware of it. So if you do a survey of people about their driving skills, how do you rate yourself as a driver?

Oh, everybody thinks they're a great driver, just like everybody thinks they have a sense of humor.

They've done these surveys, right? So Allstate did a survey a number of years ago on drivers for their own self-perceptions. And almost 2/3 of drivers rated themselves as being either excellent or very good. Yet when they were asked that same question about their peer group, what do you think your friends and family are like as drivers, that dropped to under 30% that thought their peer group were good or excellent drivers. So it's the I'm okay, you're not okay concept that we have. And this really drives a lot of the thinking in all people, but it's most obvious in leaders. So this is a really, really long and roundabout way to get back to your question about blind spots and say, rationalization and self-deception is the blind spot of the leader.

Yeah. So I wrote down my answer to that question and it was 3 letters. It was E-G-O. And, you know, we all have egos. We need them. They're important to us. Leaders have to have them. Anyone that has the audacity to say, listen to me, look at me, follow me. You know, I have the plan and all that requires an element of confidence and esteem. And ego for sure. But I think the things that you're describing for me, when it comes to that blind spot, really have to do with this lack of humility. So I want to use that as a way to just sort of leg into the Great Resignation. I want to come back to resilience in a moment, but at a sort of a— to widen the lens just a bit, we're talking about corporate resilience in a variety of ways today, not just because of the disruption, supply chain issues and COVID and tech disruptions and every other imaginable kind of thing that are colliding at the same time. But the greater existential threat that is presented by people, workers, leaders themselves deciding, I'm out of here. Just saying it's as Gary Ridge is the CEO of WD-40, was on the show a couple of weeks ago. He calls it the great escape. So the great resignation he's referring to as the great escape. Yeah. So I want to talk about the fact that people are leaving in no— I would say we can connect their leaving to the quality of the leadership within those organizations. And it's not one. We're not talking about a single bad apple, one bad company. We're not pointing to WorldCom or Andersen or whoever and saying, well, this is the reason why. This is collectively across the board, this exodus. So I'd like to get your take on that and specifically whether ego in the highest levels of leadership right now, do you see that as an issue? Or what in leadership at those levels is the issue that's creating this exodus?

I think ego certainly plays a very big part in that. And I think that's a very succinct description of what I took a number of minutes to actually tell you about, Adam. So that's cool. When it comes to the Great Resignation, there's a bit more going on. So there's the disruption of the personal changes that came through with the pandemic, the hybrid working and working from home. It's changed people's perception of what's possible in terms of their life management. Now, I hate the expression work-life balance. There's just life and you deal with it. You prioritize different things at different times and you make your choices, but you've just got a bunch of competing demands on you like we all have at any given point in time. I think people haven't experienced that, that's given them some window into how their lives might be different. Now, if the resignation comes as a result of a complete change of heart, I don't want to do this type of work anymore in this type of company anymore, I want to do something completely different, awesome. Go off and do your own thing, whatever that happens to be. If it's a case of, I think the grass might be greener on the other side, I think there are going to be a hell of a lot of disappointed people by the end of 2022. If, as you said, this is widespread, Adam, if people are expecting that they can leave a company that has poor leadership or a bad boss or too many constraints around how they do their work to make them happy or satisfy them, then they'll find that they could be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, or they could at least be getting a similar representation in a different industry or a different company. And so I don't think the alternatives of doing another job of the same type in a different company is actually going to pan out that well. Like I said, you jump and you want to do a sea change or a tree change or a complete life change, sensational. Good luck to you. And I hope that works. But when we look at the employment, we'll see this over time. If it's shifting from employment by large organizations through to more entrepreneurial ventures,

Well,

I don't know, but I don't see the percentage numbers changing about how many of those entrepreneurial ventures as startups are going to be successful. I think there's a percentage there of businesses that are going to thrive, businesses are going to grow, businesses are going to sort of bump along the bottom and survive, and plenty of them are going to go out of business. So I think like anything else, the markets haven't changed substantially. I think the markets are still going to be very similar despite the supply chain disruptions that we've seen. And I think a lot of people are going to come back with their tails between their legs within 12 months.

I want to go back to the moment that I asked you that first question. You brought us to this 2-year period, you know, between the end of your formal education and then moving on with your career and your life as a point where you were learning about people, learning about life. You were a bit green and this was a part of your maturation. Do you think that leaders, I mean, I'm talking about companies these days that are new in the marketplace, startup tech and others. And I'm going to use a company, obviously was in the headlines recently, Better, the Better.com group. You know where I'm going with this, right?

Totally.

Yeah. So are leaders green? Do you see that part of the issue here is that you think about a company that has an idea and incubates something, gets funding, and I mean massive amounts of funding, And then all of a sudden, within months or just a few years, they're being valued at numbers in the— with B, that starts with a B. And you've got leaders who've never led any— they've never led a Boy Scout troop before, but now they're leading hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people. Is that an issue, do you see?

It's a massive issue. I mean, the transition from being an individual contributor to being even just a frontline leader is a big transition. And I talk in my book about the transitions between the different layers of leadership and what you need to do to prepare yourself at any given level. And it's the speed of this growth in these companies where the founder could be just a tech head with an awesome idea and a bunch of smarts and talent. And they go and get some funding. And before they know it, they're leading large groups of people, as you say. And so their preparedness for that and the tools that they have to equip themselves for that are virtually nonexistent. And so we've seen a number of these founders who've grown big businesses, and we're talking things like Uber and so forth, that have just literally fallen out because they've never grown themselves at the same pace they've grown the business. And I believe there is a real need to grow yourself as a leader to handle the demands of leading that many people.

Yeah. And I'm curious, do you feel that your book also bridges that gap a bit as well, would help a young leader or a green leader to develop a bit more of the insight or awareness or a sense of what their blind spot might be. I mean, it's easy to just say ego because it conveys a lot of things, but we know it's the smallest of things within that frame of reference that we're talking about. How do you see compassion? What's the place for compassion? Or is there a place for compassion in your leadership? How it is that you give and receive feedback. How do you— who holds you accountable? I mean, there's so many, so many nuance. It's a nuanced conversation. Does your book meet some of that or bridge some of that gap for leaders?

I don't think I've got a simple answer to that. Of course, the obvious answer would be to say, Adam, of course, go buy this book. It's the best thing that's ever written. But it's not actually the way it works. I think what I've done is to provide a framework that is a very practical, hands-on implementable set of tools that say, as a leader at any level, if you do these things this way, and of course you adapt them for your own style because we all have a unique leadership fingerprint, but you adapt these tools to your style, you will become a better leader. Anyone can become a better leader. Some people find it easier than others and have more natural aptitude, but you can pick this up and go start to finish across this book and you can make a difference to how you lead and the people you lead.

Okay. So let's say for argument's sake that people have left the workplace because of too much bullshit in the workplace, working for a jerk, or they feel like the jerk somehow can succeed in this environment, but a good person, a nice person, a kind person, or a team player is less likely to succeed. Whatever those stories amount to, I'm going to put that all in the, this is bullshit. I'm out of here. Right? So I want to, I want to understand, or I want the people listening to this now to understand, what does no bullshit leadership look like?

No bullshit leadership is doing the things that make a difference. It's about habits and disciplines and doing what needs to be done when it needs to be done because it's right. It's about overcoming your fear of not being liked. It's about focusing on things that are potentially going to make you unpopular. It's about not following the path of least resistance, but doing what's in the best interest of the organization first, then team, then you as the individual leader. And so it's about subordinating yourself to higher-order objectives. And then it's about developing the habits and doing the things repeatedly that go against your very nature as a human being. It's so ingrained in us. To seek affiliation and approval. It's part of who we are. It's in our DNA.

Wow, the pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about, and it's the reason why my team and I created the Resilience Assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free Resilient Leader Assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other Free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are.

And when, when you look at our fight-or-flight responses that we're all programmed with, being able to overcome those, to be calm and rational and level, to be a leader who can actually do what needs to be done when it needs to be done with strength but also with empathy, that's the key to it. The no bullshit leader doesn't make excuses about why they're not doing things. The older I got in my corporate career, I've got to tell you, Adam, every excuse that ever came across my desk just started to sound like the dog ate my homework. That's all it sounded like. Didn't matter what was coming out of their mouth. All was going through my head was, yeah, the dog ate your homework, dude. I'm with you. So, you know, it's about not compromising. It's about taking accountability for what you do. And fortunately, one of the things about my very early upbringing was that was instilled in me very deeply. And so that wasn't a huge leap for me to make. But the 7 pillars of the framework I have in No Bullshit Leadership are all about doing the things, taking the actions that make a difference to the people around you and a difference to the organization that's paying your way.

Yeah. I want to go back to resilience for a moment because, you know, everybody makes mistakes and we're living I'm going to try to connect these things. You let me know if I'm really off base here. When you were saying at the very beginning that one of the issues that you see in leadership today is that people are more interested in virtue signaling than they are in genuine leading. To me, in my role, having been a leader for a number of years, CEO and in other roles that impacted people directly, I find that my biggest mistakes were sometimes just not owning my biggest mistakes. And owning them more quickly, honestly, being more transparent about the mistakes. And at the time I thought I was being transparent and in hindsight, not so much, or not as much as could have been. So humility is a big component of what I think successful leadership looks like. And that is sometimes saying, hey, you know what? We've done it, not gotten it right, but we're going to get it right. And here's how we're going to get it right. And all that kind of thing. That is a To me, the mark of a resilient leader is one that grows from everything, that everything is net growth. Everything is net positive. Even the worst of things, the things that you would never in a million years invite into your life or into your workplace or what have you, are still opportunities for growth. And I guess I want to understand how you have been resilient and how you define it. And if it's similar or not, I'm really open to just kind of learning from your example as well. Everybody has a different definition. It's funny enough. So I really want to get yours.

Yeah. Okay. Well, let me— you might need to redirect me here a little bit. Let me just start with how I define resilience. And for me, it's that ability to handle whatever life throws at you in any context and to do it calmly and without panic and with grace. So the more you can acquire this state of grace under pressure, and probably one of the key realizations for me over the years was that There are very few things that are fatal. Almost everything turns out okay in the end. And so knowing deep down in my heart of hearts that whatever we're going through now, that's okay. In a month, this is going to look like a blip on the radar. I won't remember this in a month, let alone worry about it. So for me, the ability to preemptively do that perspective assessment is really important. I can stand in the face of an absolute crisis when it's going on, And just go, okay guys, we know that in a month's time, this is not going to be an issue for us. There's going to be no material impact on our financial situation. There'll be no reputational damage. I've got a team of incredibly smart and capable people here. And I trust you guys to sort this out. And when those words would come out of my mouth, Adam, people looked in my eyes and they knew I meant it. They knew that I genuinely was relaxed because I trusted them because I had spent a lot of time selecting and grooming And mentoring and trusting and pushing and stretching these guys who worked for me that I had confidence. I knew what their limits were. I knew what the extent of their capabilities were. And I knew that they would solve that problem. I didn't have to lose one minute of sleep over it. And so that knowledge of the fact that everything is going to be okay because I've done the work already, that gives you an incredible amount of confidence. And for me, built an enormous amount of resilience.

You know, it's interesting because the future will always teach us something. If we ask the future for wisdom, the wisdom is always that, as you said, the present is going to be a blessing in some way. The present will provide an opportunity for growth, and we will ultimately be better, even if it doesn't feel that way in the moment. And so many people, I think now in particular, are struggling with the uncertainty, the ever-present uncertainty. Our book Change Proof is a book about how do you work with and leverage and embrace uncertainty as a powerful tool. Yeah. You have to see what's happening in a certain way without judgment so that it can be accepted. Not that you give up working on making changes to things that are happening, but that you're not operating from a place of fear of those things. And I think so often it is that we operate from that place of fear about becoming an annihilation, like you said, that it'd wipe us out, that we miss the wisdom that the future would share with us. So I want to find out before I ask this This other question, I want to get to your— how it is that you have dealt with change. Do you have a process for working with change?

I think from my perspective, I'm extremely change tolerant. And in fact, I welcome change. I love being in a state of constant challenge. I love the excitement and opportunity that change brings. So when we see a very uncertain and ambiguous and complex environment, I look at that and I go, oh, wow, that is laden with opportunity. It doesn't occur to me to be afraid of it. And I think the reason for that is because over many, many years, I've just had the opportunity to push those barriers a little bit at a time in a safe way where I go, okay, well, that actually worked out all right. I know that a few months ago, I was really afraid about what might happen in this outcome. I was really uncertain. I was really nervous and anxious about it. And it all worked out okay. Now, if you can actually do that enough times, as I said before, you just get this sense of it's all going to be fine. And I guess without wanting to be fatalistic about stuff, they say that everything happens for a reason. And I've developed this belief too, that whatever happens by definition is the right thing because it happened. And so this is sort of a A weird head spinner in a way. But I remember a deal that we'd spent a number of years working on when I was in corporate life a number of years ago. We'd spent a number of years working on this massive acquisition transaction. And at the 11th hour, it fell over. And the team I was leading was absolutely distraught that this deal had fallen over and that we weren't going to be able to do the deal. And I just smiled and said, we've just dodged a bullet. And they said, what do you mean? And I said, well, if the deal was right for us, it would've actually consummated. It would've gone ahead. The fact that it didn't go ahead means by definition that it wasn't the right deal for us. There was something in there that we hadn't seen yet or some circumstance that hadn't cropped up that would've cropped up further down the track that would've hurt us. And that's why it didn't happen. And so that belief that whatever happened was the right thing, Is sort of weirdly comforting.

It is. I mean, it's powerful to adopt the philosophy. I think it is in many ways mindset. It's a philosophy that everything that's happening is required, and therefore you can be comfortable. Comfort not in the sense of not acting or being paralyzed or something, but being calm, as you said, being easeful, being able to be on grace instead of being on guard. Yeah. Which is an interesting, you know, just energetic shift. How do you exist in ambiguity? How do you be comfortable with ambiguity? I mean, because that's, you know, if you're going to interview somebody today for almost any position, but certainly one of high leadership, that might be the first question I'd ask them. How comfortable are you with ambiguity?

Because that's the world we're living

in.

Totally is. And this is why one of my 7 pillars of leadership is about ambiguity, mastering ambiguity. The higher up you go, the less certainty there is. And I've said for a number of years that the older I get, the less certain I am about practically everything. 10 or 15 years ago—

Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Martin, I want you to just repeat that. I really want people to hear that because—

The older I get, the less certain I am about practically everything. Yeah. 10 or 15 years ago, you'd ask me a question, I'd go, I'll tell you what, Adam, here's the answer. Bang. And I'm convinced about it and I know it. But these days, I just get to see all of these nuances and shades of gray and I just go, well, you know, yeah, I believe this, but then there's this thing over here and I can really see their perspective and I can understand why people think like that and I might be missing something over here. So all of a sudden, I've just become grossly indecisive. Yeah. No, you don't need it to mess with your decisiveness, but still recognizing how much gray there is in the world and always maintaining that curiosity, the ability to question everything and to question your most fundamental beliefs, which is where I've managed to get myself to. And funnily enough, I feel much better as a person in not having really stringent views about anything and not being strident in my beliefs, but by always looking at the possibility that something else might be true.

Yes. Iger recently announced he's leaving. And the reason, which I thought was really very much what you're talking about, his stating an inability to listen, or has sort of stopped really accepting other people's ideas as possible, meaning that he just stopped kind of acknowledging that he might not have the answer or that he might not be the most knowledgeable person in the room about something. And to have the self-awareness to recognize, hey, I'm not listening anymore, I'm not listening the way I used to listen, is quite a remarkable example of what self-leadership and self-awareness and emotional intelligence actually looks like. But yeah, I agree so wholeheartedly that the longer you live, sometimes the less definite you are about things, the less certain you are. But I don't feel like that— just as you said, I don't feel indecisive as a result of it. I feel like there's just more humility and perhaps a greater willingness to listen. That's a skill I have to— I'm still working on, frankly.

Well, listening is a skill we'll all challenge ourselves with forever, hopefully. until the day we die because we're driven to absorb, affirm, and reprocess what comes into our sphere of vision. And so because we're doing that process all the time, it's very difficult to listen to someone completely and intently in every single way, not just the words, but to watch every single nuance in the facial expression and so forth, and to not be doing your own processing to incorporate that and integrate it with your own belief system at the same time. That takes incredible discipline. It's incredibly difficult to do. And like you, it's a journey for me. I could be a much better listener than I am. There's absolutely no doubt about it.

All right, brother, we're in the club.

Totally.

We join this.

This is why, in my view, we lose a huge amount with virtual communication and not having this face-to-face stuff because as a senior leader, I used to rely on being able to see the smallest changes in facial expression when I was having serious conversations with the people who worked for me to be able to say, oh, hang on, Adam, that looks like that hit a raw nerve for you. Can you tell me what's going on for you?

Yeah.

Or, you know, hey, you seem really proud about that achievement. You know, hey, tell me about it because you seem really proud about that. So to be able to see those little nuances in body language and facial expression I think are incredibly valuable in the communication quality that we have.

I agree. I mean, the nonverbal communication's a big deal and, and there's so many things that are being lost as well as gained. I mean, it's, it's really a mixed bag when it comes to

the,

to the remote work or hybrid work environment. You know, it's a broad question, but I ask you anyway, what do you see? How do you answer the question, what is the future of work?

The future of work? Well, Look, I think work itself will change naturally just through technology. And it's been changing since the Industrial Revolution quite rapidly. The acceleration probably in the last 10 to 15 years has been unbelievable in terms of what's now possible. In my iPhone now, I have more processing power and storage capacity than I had on the mainframes I used to program in the mid-'80s for a bank. Yeah. And so that in itself is mind-blowing. And I don't think that's going to stop anytime soon. Now, when we talk about artificial intelligence, the process of automation has caused a lot of change in the types of jobs that we do and how we do them. And that's only going to continue and potentially accelerate. Now, I'm no futurist, but I do hear quotes like, you know, 2/3 of the jobs that will be available in the next 10 years haven't even been invented yet. things like that. And I shake my head at that and I go, yeah, but the human capacity for thinking, for abstract reasoning, for processing isn't changing as fast as the technology enablers. So are we going to see a left-behind underclass of people who just are outstripped by the need for them to do the sorts of jobs they're doing now? Now, I hope that's not the case. And historically, we have seen that people have been able to retrain and re-equip themselves for different types of roles. But this is one of those places where there's going to be massive opportunity and also massive disruption. And I think there's going to be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth between now and when we see this play itself out.

Indeed. And I would say, I think there'll be even greater need for collaboration, but we're going to collaborate differently.

For sure.

And maybe it is in that, in Greater collaboration, that this retraining or retooling of large groups of people that have not, maybe haven't had the kind of training thus far that would enable them to succeed in the world that is ahead of us. That's where that shows up. I mean, clearly, well, I know I say clearly, it's too absolute.

Nothing is clear.

Yeah, right. Public education has just, I think, failed in so many ways. Not because teachers are doing a poor job. Just so I want to be clear about that. My wife was a teacher. for 17 years and my mother-in-law for 35. And, you know, most public school teachers or private and public school teachers are doing a phenomenal job with what they've got. I don't— I just think that the training of teachers, as well as what the curriculum is, has not changed nearly—

No.

Nearly with the times. So—

That's right.

Totally different topic, of course. I have so enjoyed this conversation, Martin. I would love, as just sort of a final question, our show notes will include information about how people can find out more about No Bullshit Leadership. I'm going to make the assumption that as a follow-on to the book, there are other resources for people as well. Is that true?

Oh, absolutely. And I think for anyone who wants more of what you've heard today, the No Bullshit Leadership Podcast is probably the way to go because whatever your favorite podcast player is, short, sharp episodes, 15, 20 minutes max, just how to actually do the practical things that make a difference as a leader. We don't worry about the virtues. We talk about what you need to do differently to make a difference to the people you lead. That's it.

Fantastic. So my last question for you, at least for the moment, Martin, is share a ritual. Our book Change Proof has a lot to do with ritualizing resilience and how we do that moment to moment really in our lives. And I'm— my life is very much a product of rituals. I'm guessing yours is not a lot different in that respect. What's something that you have ritualized or habitualized, let's say, to create greater resilience for yourself?

What I got into the habit of a long time ago was finding a way to keep myself honest and to hold myself to account for the things I did as a leader. And I think my early days as a leader, I was as bad as any of you could have been and probably worse than most, but I did have enough self-awareness to realize I was bad at it. And so I held myself to account for doing those things on a daily basis that I knew needed to be done. Now, I've always been fortunate enough to live within a relatively close commute from where I've worked. And so driving home 20 minutes or half an hour, I'd sit in my car and I would reflect about my day. And the key question was, what did I avoid today that I know I should have done? That was the key question. And then everything else flowed from that. But just the willingness to ask myself that question every day and hold myself to account and say, yeah, I avoided that conversation. Why did I avoid it? What was at stake for me? What were the things that forced me to get myself busy with other stuff that are completely justifiable, but I know I used as tools to avoid what I needed to be really doing? And when's the next opportunity I have to do it? Who suffered because I didn't do it? All of those sorts of questions that enable me to keep myself honest and to grow as a leader.

Oh, just so love your answer to that, Martin. It just really resonates with me. To me, questions are so powerful. In fact, the 3-part process to our Change Proof model is about pause, ask, and choose. And the ask part is really in so many ways the most powerful. I don't think we ask enough questions. I think we've been trained from the time going back to early childhood for me, early school days. If I didn't have the right answer, I was sort of made fun of. If you ask a question you should, quote, should know the answer to, it's a silly question. It's a, you know, intelligent question, whatever it might be, you were quickly shown how hazardous that was. And so I just stopped asking those kinds of questions. I think many of us have been trained out of questioning, out of questioning and making and asking really deep, incisive questions. That question is one I'm going to remember. That's a question I'm going to share with other folks and give you credit, of course, Martin. What do I avoid today? And why did I do that? I mean, that's a Powerful inquiry right there. It really is. I thank you for that.

Yeah. No, it's a pleasure. Do that for enough years, it will shape the way you are.

Yeah, indeed. Well, I'm committed to being a no-bullshit leader, brother.

Fantastic, Adam. I love it. Thanks, mate. And thank you so much for having me on. I've really enjoyed it.

Fantastic. Okay. Ciao for now. As always, everybody, check out our show notes to find out more about Martin and his amazing work. And if you love this episode, please feel free. In fact, we'd invite you to share it with a friend, subscribe, and let us know your thoughts. Your comments are really valuable, and I am the one that answers those, just in case you wanted to know. I so loved my conversation with Martin Moore. I hope you did as well. I mean, anybody that writes a book called No Bullshit Leadership, it's definitely somebody I'm interested in chatting with. And this conversation was not predictable, and it was enjoyable on so many levels. One of the things that I absolutely loved was the question that he asks himself. So my final question to him was, what's one thing that you do to build your resilience each day? What's one ritual or habit that you have to build your resilience each day? And he said that he sits in his car for 30 minutes before he reenters the house. He goes out to work and then comes back and sits in his car to just consider how the day went, consider some things that he might even want to learn from. And he asks himself a specific question. That question is, what did I avoid today? What did I avoid today? And why did I do that? Why did I choose to avoid that thing? Whatever that might've been. It could have been a difficult conversation that was supposed to be had. It might've been in other communication, an email or something to be written, or, or some other action that he wanted to take or that was to be taken, but he avoided it. I think this is one of these powerful questions that reveals, in many ways can reveal our blind spots. He and I, during the conversation, we did talk about what is the single biggest blind spot for leaders today and even 20 years ago. Is it the same? Is it different? And I loved our discussion of that and how a leader's ego in many ways is that blind spot. And that humility in many respects, I believe, is the solution to that. But humility without losing confidence in one's ability, to lead, in one's ability to make decisions and one's ability to be decisive. And yet humility is this superpower when it comes to dismantling, at least in the moment, the ego and the ego's desire to be right, the ego's desire to get exactly what it wants in the moment, et cetera. So this question is very much a question I think that Plays the string of humility. It's the theme of humility that's resonant in this question. What did I avoid today? Because that word avoid, it's an indictment. It says something about our intention. Not what didn't I do today, but what did I avoid today? What did I avoid doing today, saying today, and why? So the inquiry is twofold. It's a what and it's a why. I absolutely love that. I love the conversation that we had about the future of work. I thought that Martin's answer to that question also was quite incisive in talking about how important it is that as leaders, we are able to embrace the unknown, embrace ambiguity. Yeah. There's no question right now that the world is so uncertain. There's so much massive uncertainty. that's creating anxiety in people's lives that we have to be able to develop our own process to be okay with that. And not just to tolerate it, but to utilize it, to leverage it. That's really what Change Proof, this brand new book of ours, is all about. How it is that we are leveraging the power of uncertainty to build our long-term resilience, our long-term growth. And in so many ways, it is developing a comfortability I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to a free 30-day access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy. Today. So our capacity to accept change without judging it as good or bad, right or wrong, fair or unfair— these are our made-up concepts that, that we have come up with. Inherently, nothing is good or bad or right or wrong or true or false. It just is. And so if we're able to see the lack of certainty as something that isn't necessarily harmful to us, it gives us access to greater resources. It gives us the opportunity to potentially seize the creative opportunity in that uncertainty or that ambiguity. So absolutely just loved again, having Martin on the show today, looking forward to many more guests talking about what it means to be change-proof, what it means to Be resilient in a world of great uncertainty and adversity even. And we'd love to get your comments. If you've got guests that you suggest that we invite onto the show, we'd love to hear from you. If you have comments, suggestions, feedback, again, it's all welcome and we love you for doing it. Please, if you have questions for us, let us know. If you'd like to share what you've experienced here, our content, this particular show with others, People, please do that. That's our invitation and even our request. Okay. I'll just say ciao for now, everybody. And we'll see you on the next episode of Change Proof.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change-proof. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/ Podcast. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com/becomechangeproof.