Embracing Modern Leadership with Andrew White

Welcome to the Happiness Squad Podcast. Your weekly dose of practical tips and inspiration to help you operate at your fullest potential, integrating the science of flourishing into how you live, work and lead. I'm your host, Ashish Kothari, the founder and CEO of Happiness Squad and author of the best selling book Hardwired for Happiness. I will be your personal guide on your journey to explore the many facets of happiness, well being and flourishing, from personal growth to building more positive environments at work. In each episode we will share powerful insight, tips and stories from our guests who are leading experts, company executives and flourishing solution providers that you can implement right away to make happiness your competitive edge. Whether you're looking to overcome life's challenges, to go from good to great, or to enhance your team's performance through flourishing, this podcast is the place for you to find more joy, health, love and meaning in everything you do. Join us every week as we rewire for Happiness together. Welcome to the Happiness Squad Podcast, dear friends, where we gather every week to explore the dynamics of thriving at work. Today we are honored to have Dr. Andrew White join us. Andrew brings a wealth of experience from his role as a faculty member at Syed Business School, University of Oxford, where he directs the Advanced Management and Leadership program. Andrew specializes in coaching CEOs and their senior teams, focusing on leadership and transformation to ensure sustainable high performance. Andrew is also the CEO of Transcend Space, a company that offers coaching and executive retreats and to support CEOs and senior leaders on their transformational journeys. Andrew has dedicated his career to understanding how leadership is changing in response to global challenges such as climate change, digitization and the quest for diversity and inclusion. In this episode he shares his research and suggests that we are witnessing the emergence of a new leadership archetype, one that embraces continuous change and prioritizes human centric approaches to organizational transformation. In this episode, we delve into the importance of listening, humility and the cultivation of a flourishing work environment in order to meet the scale and pace of the disruption we are experiencing. Whether you're leading a team or a company, or just seeking to enhance your own work experience, this conversation promises to offer valuable perspectives on flourishing in today's fast paced world, including the importance of practices such as mindfulness, the power of nature in fostering personal well being, and the necessity of creating spaces where leaders can develop their inner stillness needed to navigate the storms of change. Stay till the end to hear a beautiful poem written by Andrew called Transcendence that captures the insights from the whole episode. I know it will touch your hearts and send your spirit sowing. So come join me in welcoming Andrew to the Happiness Squad podcast. So lovely to see you, Andrew. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. It's almost been a year and three months since we last saw each other at Next Practice Institute.

That's right. It was a wonderful time we had in Boston.

Oh my God. Friends, for those who are tuning in, Andrew and Sophie were leading a one week mindfulness at work effort, which was absolutely amazing. And so I'm really excited that Andrew is joining us. Andrew, you have been researching extensively on the unique challenges that leading in the 21st century really poses for leaders. Like it's not like any other time. So would love to have you share a little bit around what's unique about some of these challenges that you're experiencing, that you're seeing leaders experience.

Thank you. Can I say a massive thank you, Ashish, for having me on the podcast. It's wonderful to reconnect, wonderful to be here, and wonderful to have this conversation. So, as you said, I focus on really two big topics in my research. One is how is leadership changing today? And secondly, how does transformation happen? And when you think about the last decade or so, or really since the financial crisis, we've had wave after wave of changes coming through, climate change, digitization, all the issues around people at work and flourishing, which I think is something that you're very interested in, diversity and inclusion. And, and so this is challenging the way people lead. And really I think there is a new archetype of leadership emerging. So there's a number of components of that. I explore that in my podcast, Leadership 2050. And in a sense, what I'm seeing is probably a couple of. Well, I'm going to go through just three or points just to kick us off. The first is I think we are in an age of disruption. And so even the language of transformation I'm not sure works. And why is that? That language has come out of, let's say, the last century. It's come out of the Industrial revolution, periods of stability and then periods of change and back to stability. And I actually think we're in a period of just ongoing change. And in many ways that's coming back to who we are as people. We are not used to periods of stability and then periods of change. If you look at our own bodies, if you look at the nature that we're part of, trees, seasons, oceans, they don't talk about transformation, they just evolve. And they go through these patterns of life and death and growing and declining with A level of ease about that. So I think there's something about disruption, there's something about change and how change is changing the way we have to lead. I also think things are being asked of leaders that they weren't being asked of before. Let's think about yourself. If you a leader and you're in an organization, well, first of all, the outside world is asking for more of you. So you have to think about what is our role in society, what and who are we serving? And yes, profits are important, but it's so much more than that. And we've seen countless case studies of companies where they just felt, you know, focused on profit and actually they've undermined that profit and that growth. So the big question of who are we? What do we serve, what do we contribute, what are we making better, what are we improving? I think is there that's looking kind of upwards and then looking inwards. This comes to my research on transformation. What we now have is a whole body of evidence through our work that if you put people at the heart of any transformation effort, you get over a two times increase in the likelihood of success. And we're also looking at what happens when you hit what we call a turning point. And if leaders do the right things again, there's a big multiplication factor in the likelihood of success. So this isn't soft stuff. You know, I think that language for me doesn't work. This if you really put a human centric approach into an organization, you actually build something that's better for people, is better for the planet, it's better for the world that you're serving. And all of that requires leaders who, if I'm honest, are different. Most leaders who've got to the top of organizations today have been very good at delivering the status quo. That's what's got them promoted. And let's say that their left hand and that left hand is really important. It's got them somewhere, it's enabled them to perform, enabled them to deliver. Now they're being asked to use their right hand, which is a different set of skills. And many of them haven't been brought up, trained, developed with those things. We're seeing some people out there who are really good at it, but more by nature than by training and development. And I think that's where the world of leadership development is shifting. And it's what we're seeing change in our world in Oxford, what we're seeing in the world of Mobius, where you and I both work as well. So that's you know, a lot of different things, but it gives a bit of a summary that can hopefully kick us off.

Yeah, I love that. And it's so in sync, you know, Andrew, from my work at McKinsey when I was leading, you know, as part of our leadership service line and our adaptability work and especially come to fruit in the last year and a half, Right. As we've kind of launched into this space of flourishing. And so, you know, several of these points really are worth echoing. You know, one is you're also talking about both the speed of change and also, you know, how many factors are changing at the same time. Right. So even if we think about, you know, and I'll talk a little bit on the pace that really, as you were saying, like, comes to me, if we thought about the Industrial Revolution, you know, it was like, you know, it was over decades that improvements happen. Then we saw the Internet age, right, where, you know, in 20 years, the world today looks so different than the world led 20 years ago. When I first started, you know, I discovered the Internet, I was at IBM, I still remember in 97, and this www. This, you know, Netscape came out.

Yes.

Yeah, right. You know, look at the world today. It's completely different in terms of the speed of processing, et cetera, et cetera. But about, I would say, 10, 20 years of diffusion of that innovation. Look at AI. I mean, in the last year, I mean, the. It's been a 98, 99% improvement in efficiency around, you know, so much of the work that marketers and others are doing. And so, you know, being able to kind of navigate that rapid of a change versus the slow, gradual change that we are used to seeing is a very, very unique challenge. You know, control doesn't work in this. Like, there is so much changing. There is no way you can mobilize an organization at that level. And then the second one, which you also highlighted is, you know, people always every. There is no board, there is no leadership team. There is no leader I have ever engaged with who has not said people is at the heart of our transformation. It's throughout. People is our competitive strategy. People is our competitive edge. And that's a big part of kind of the challenge that I'm posing back to them saying, I think those are great words. I don't think you believe it, because if you believed it, you would measure the state of your people the same way, I'm sorry to say, manage the state of your physical assets. You'll continuously look at how they're performing. Are they Stressed out? Are they burnt out? Are they operating in the best way? And you would continuously make the changes if you're not in every team measuring performance and health at the same time, at the same frequency? I'm sorry, I don't think people is at the heart of your strategy.

And it requires, I think, a, you know, I often describe it. I use that kind of sense of, you've learned to use your left hand, now we're asking you to use your right hand. I also think, you know, you've been looking through your left eye, now you're looking through your right eye as well, and you see things differently. And I think more and more people are going to work not just for a paycheck, but they're looking for it to be a place where they can develop, where they can grow, where they can be part of something bigger than themselves. And how, if you're running a company with 50,000 or 100,000 employees, do you put in place a culture that can do that? How do you listen to them? And that's a deeply personal skill, but also you can use tech now to do that. And so that whole process of listening is so, so powerful. We've asked hundreds of executives what the most important skill is when it comes to transformation. They all come back to listening. And someone came up to me and said, andrew, if it's so simple as listening, which I'll come back to, because I don't think it's simple as listening, why are we finding it so difficult? And there is something in that, that the word listening almost has been reduced. And I actually think it's more complicated if I'm really listening to you, I'm hearing you, I'm giving you feedback, there's a dialogue between us, and how do I do that at scale? But that concept of listening is so, so powerful.

Andrew, can we. You know, I have a list of questions here that we put together, I put together for you that I want to delve into, but I'm with you around how important listening is. So let's stay with it for a minute because. Absolutely. I mean, you know, I had. I was having a conversation with the dean at the university here, and they asked for, you know, our help to say, hey, listen, before we can change, we really need to listen to all the stakeholders and understand what's at the heart of the challenges. So I'm really curious, can we dig into why is listening difficult? And what are some ways that you advise leaders to really listen?

Well, so. And I think this is probably why it's hard if you think about one of the other things that's going on today. Our minds have always been a bit of a challenge to us. You know, you go back thousands of years, our minds have always been busy. And if you go back into practices that have developed, it's been about quieting the mind and bringing the mind back to the breath or to a candle or to a mantra. These things have been around for thousands of years. So we know that's a challenge we face. But then we plugged in electronic devices. So the drama that feeds my fear and my what I'm attracted to has just become multiplied probably by 10. It's no longer in my home or just in my home. It's no longer just in my village. I plug in parts of the entire world. Yeah. So first of all, we've got that going on. There's also a sense of in a leadership role, you're expected to have the answers, you're expected to know. Now if you just take both of those things and we can probably play in another one there as well, which is trauma. You put that mix in. I've got trauma going on inside and that could be very light trauma. Just the trauma of the day to day and the stress and complex situations and conflict in the organization play in the busyness of my mind, play in the fact I need to be right. Well, I can't listen because I'm so full of myself and so full of that. I have to have the answer. So I guess to answer your question, practices that cultivate a sense of quietness and stillness and being comfortable with the fact that I don't know, I don't have answers. Practices that bring compassion and I start to be able to see other people. You know, I think one of the most powerful phrases I've heard is that I don't have to agree with you to respect you. And particularly in today's polarized world, that's so important, we begin to get to understand why listening is so difficult. And I think primarily it's an inner state that we have to cultivate within ourselves to really listen and that leaders need to cultivate within themselves. I think there is a complexity too around how do you do this across large organizations. But unless that inner state is there, you can get all the data that you want, you won't hear it. And when you walk the corridors, when you're on the town hall meetings, when you're fielding questions, when you're meeting people on Zoom or on teams, you're not going to listen and so there's a deep inner state of whether we call it presence or stillness that I think you need to find in order to truly listen.

You know, as I hear you, Andrew, I'm reminded of this beautiful Zen story, you know, about this really learned teacher, really well known, who wanted to kind of find the answer, you know, to. I mean, he had studied it, but he was still, you know, all. He could never get there. And so he found this. He heard about this Zen teacher who emanates happiness, who's kind of really perfected this, and he's pure joy. And so we went to him, and so the teacher invited him to sit down, and he said, would you like a cup of tea? And he put the teacup. And I'm sure you've heard the story, and he started pouring tea. And, you know, he was pouring the tea and the teacup filled, and he kept pouring it and kept out, you know, pouring and outflowing from the teacup. And this guy says, wait, wait, wait, stop. The tea is already full. Why are you pouring? He said, well, I'm trying to show you that your cup is also so full before you empty your cup. How can I fill it with anything? And it's this notion of what you're saying, which is, you know, because of all the story and the dramas going in our head, as well as, you know, traumas that we might be carrying even from our childhood. We had a guest earlier this week where we talked to them about this notion of childhood traumas and how they can come and play all year long in your life as an adult leader. So your point of we are so full of whatever that we are not listening. We have to empty our cup. And, you know, this notion of presence and mindfulness and really listening with curiosity becomes such a powerful capacity to cultivate. Right. Just listen, listen. Without being an expert, knowing the answers.

Exactly. And I think, you know, some of the practices that I'm seeing some leadership teams put in place is when they meet, they'll have two or three minutes of silence because they recognize they've all come from busy agendas. They're all carrying a lot of energy in their bodies. Their minds are busy, and to simply jump straight into perhaps making a big decision about investing money or M and A, they're just not going to be in the right place. So they need to settle and come to a place of stillness and at the very least, just gain some awareness of what's going on in their body. And in a sense, you know, if I'm able to do that then it becomes more like my servant or it becomes less dominant. I recognize that I'm, I feel, but I also observe. I'm feeling. I have sensations, but I also observe the sensations and it creates some spaciousness in me and in us.

So Andrew, so that's wonderful for one on one listening or even group one of eight, let's say, you know, we were doing a focus group and I wanted to get in there very, very powerful. If you're a Fortune 500 CEO or a senior leader, how do you listen at scale around what's really going on in the organization? I mean, for that matter, how do you listen at scale to what's happening around you to your customers and your suppliers and the whole ecosystem? What tips do you have?

Well, I think this is where we have to look to technology because you know, what I'm starting to see is some really, really interesting tech around listening tech that identifies who are the real change makers in an organization. And it's not by hierarchy tech that really captures data. And so we're starting to think about what are the indicators that you could look at to see whether people are engaged. Well, you could look at how many people have their cameras on on internal meetings. You wouldn't have to identify anybody around that, but you could look at patterns. And if our base is that 70% of people have their cameras on, but now only 20% do, then something might be happening that people don't want to engage or they're withdrawing. Well, there's other bits of technology that again, without identifying anybody can look at who's speaking up in meetings. And so, for example, if it was just me and you, what percentage of time did I speak? What percentage of time did you speak so far, Ashish? I think it's about 50. 50. But you know, if you were the CEO and there was a team of like 10 people and you were talking for 90% of the time and perhaps only two other people spoke. Again, you don't need to identify people in that, but you can start to see some patterns. Are people speaking up? Do people feel comfortable talking? You can measure emotional energy in an organization. Do people feel up? Do they feel down? How's that correlating or relating to progress? Because if people feel down and projects are not moving forward, we know we have a problem. So we're starting to be able, I think there's tech that can start to help some of these things. And AI can also come in here and look for pattern recognitions in certain things or at the beginning of really creating What I think would be will be very interesting assistants and you know, copilots, as Microsoft calls their technology that work alongside leaders and are really listening and interpreting as well.

Super helpful. And maybe Andrew, if you have some suggestions for your top three technology tools that can allow people to listen, maybe we include it in the show notes for folks to be able to go out and explore it. So let's come back. We kind of really dug deep into this notion of one area of listening because I do think it is at the heart of change. If we can't listen to the science, the world is moving way too fast, we'll be too slow to respond. And when we respond, we'll be responding to what's happening now. And by the time our change shows up, the fifth thing already has changed. So we'll always be playing catch up. So let's come back to this notion. At the top of the world is changing too fast. Transformation is key, right? And leadership has some very distinct challenges. And at the heart of it is how do you make sure you get the best out of your people, right. And prepare them and lead them. So a question I have for you is from all of your research and all of your fractally practical work that you've been doing, you know, you just launched your own company. You meant transcend space. Transformation is not just what you study, but transformation is what you help leaders do. So in the context of a transformation, Andrew, how can leaders ensure that their people are performing at their best and they're doing it not by while burning out, but truly doing it in a way that also allows them to flourish? Right. So we are actually elevating people planet profits rather than sacrificing people towards profits or the planet towards profit.

I'm going to start by answering this question perhaps by going outside the organization because I think that creates the context. And I'm going to talk about three leaders that I've interviewed that I think embody something which is really of the archetype of this century that we're in. The first is David Katz. David runs something called the Plastic Bank. Most of us look at poverty in the world and plastic in the oceans and fills us understandably with a sense of angst. David doesn't do this. He sees this as an opportunity. So he's taken money from consumer goods companies. He pays people in low income parts of the world, coastal parts of the world, where plastic is washing up, and he then gets them to collect that. That money then goes back into their communities, into health care, into their household Incomes and the plastic then goes back into the supply chain as plastic for good. There's something beautifully transcendent about that. The second is Audet Excel Audet it runs something called the Adara Group. Now the Adara Group is an investment bank as and looks like every other investment bank that you would look at except for the second half of its operation is a development agency that's the world expert at neonatal care in off grid locations. This isn't a foundation that sits on the side. This is an integral part of and what Odette is doing is that she says I don't see a difference between an investment banker and a nurse. And I could ask an investment banker for $1 million or I could get them to come and work on a deal. Now the investment bankers that she uses have already made a lot of money. They don't get paid for their work. They help them probably generate let's say $25 million in in fee income. That money goes into the work around neonatal care. The investment banker gets like a pay slip. But it's what they've helped fund totally. Transformation takes, you know, what we might consider oil and water, but mixes them transcends a paradox. The same thing David's doing and the final one is Jack Sim. And Jack is in Singapore. He runs something called the World Toilet Organization. Jack has been responsible for changing the policies of India, China, several other countries. About 1 billion toilets have been put in place in the world because of Jack. Jack and six other people. What Jack shows is you don't need a large organization to have impact. So if I take those three individuals they're creating worlds in which people can flourish. People are attracted to that. They want to be part of that. There's something incredibly beautiful about those worlds that people see a they not everybody, but some people see a connection with their own purpose. So there's something very motivating about that answer to your question. Secondly, those leaders really know how to get the best out of people. So they're finding what are their skills? How can they put them to best place in the organization? But what have they not? What do those people not realize they're good at? Where could they develop? Where could they grow? David talks about when I recruit somebody it's like I'm bringing them into a temple. There's something sacred about an individual and their work. Now that language doesn't work for anybody. But the essence of what he's saying is that an individual has incredible skills. And how many people are in jobs where they're only really contributing less than 50% of what they could actually do because of the hierarchy structure, the pay structure, the job title structure keeps them in a bit of a box. So those leaders, by really creating something which is transcendent, I think, you know, that spills over into the culture of the organization and that does something for people who are working there. And so, you know, that's something very powerful in that.

We hope you're enjoying this episode. If you'd like to start building habits and integrating the Hardwired for happiness practices into your life, come check out Rewire our program on the Happiness Squad website. Rewired contains 35 minute micro practices that can help you truly build habits for a happier, healthier life filled with more love and meaning. The program uses the science of habit formation and the power of community to support you in moving from knowing to doing to being. Now back to the episode. There is something indeed so, so powerful because what your effect are talking around is one having a bigger why beyond just making money for the shareholders. You know, earlier last year I had a chance to work with a company that makes metal cans and you know, we did a purpose journey for them and we literally had their leaders engage to your point around listening all the way down through the organization with the simple question of what should we stand for beyond making money for shareholders? Truly listen. Just listen. Your job is to just listen, right? And how can we do more of that in your day to day? So what drives you? Was the second question and I love it. So like defining a bigger noble purpose for the company to exist, you know, can be such a powerful motivator. And then the second piece that you're talking is there is so much focus on what people are not good at versus what people are good at, right? Celebrating their strengths. And you know, you've just, you know, you've given me. It's such a beautiful notion. I'm just thinking about what Adhera is doing with investment bankers. Friends, if you're listening to this, think about this. You know, we are at a point in our journey as humanity where in most developed countries more people are going to be 65 plus right in the coming years than ever before. We are graying and often with age people think you've retired and hence you're irrelevant. When we know that meaning and connection is so much needed. Many of these folks don't need to work. They have the money, but they have skills that they can contribute. So my invitation and call for action is if this is possible for you, I'LL be thinking about, about it in my own context. But let's go bring them back. Let's have folks donate their expertise and let's really, you know, use it where we can to make a positive difference in the world and redirect the funds. So almost this 2x impact, you know, that we are able to drive the companies and people who can benefit from their expertise, benefit from that. And then you redirect the dollars towards other underprivileged, you know, are big issues that people care about. I love that, Andrew, and thank you for sharing that. I think beautiful, beautiful provocation and ideas. So I want to go next to, you know, a little bit to your origin story, Andrew. Right. I mean, you've had and, you know, I know a little bit. And I want you to be able to share this with the listeners because you've had such a beautiful journey through your own life and share your journey of how mindfulness and that transformational change really began. Because that's not what you were when you were in your 20s.

The seeds were there.

The seeds were there and how, you know, it's really influenced because you really bring these two kind of things beautifully together because I do think those qualities are so needed today. So what's been your origin story and journey that's gotten you to where you are now?

Yeah, I'm going to weave two threads together, which started at different points and were separate really before they came together. So the first is I grew up in the evangelical Christian world and I was a naughty boy up until about 16, had a conversion experience, went headlong into it, was going to become a priest and, you know, was preaching and talking to large groups of people. And then at about 21, had a crashing breakdown. In essence, I'm somebody who's comfortable with questions and that world. I had to be comfortable with a very tightly defined set of answers. And I think there was a. There was an. Yeah, there was an inner thing in me that just couldn't fit. But I never lost the sense of something greater than ourselves. And right now I don't have to define that. Anything more than mystery and wonder and awe. And as a practice. Then I discovered meditation and I discovered the ability to not calm my mind, although that's an outcome, but just recognize that my mind was wandering and bring my mind back to my breath. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. The second thread was I started to get interested when I was at university in the whole subject of disruption and discontinuous change. So if you cast your mind back, I think you and I are of a similar vintage. When we started our careers, if you got involved in a, in a disruption at work, you're unlucky. You know, you had to be in a certain business that, you know, that just got into difficulties or was hit by a new technology that had come from outside. And so often when I would talk about this stuff, people would say, oh, this is great and interesting, but it doesn't apply to us because we're in kind of steady state. I can remember quite a few businesses where people told me this and then they went on to have real problems. So I was fascinated in this whole area of disruption and radical change and radical innovation. And that topic, I think, has just become more and more prevalent for reasons that we talked about at the start of the podcast and that your viewers, will. Listeners, sorry. Will be very familiar with. And so when you weave those two things together when you're going through a storm of disruption, of transformation of change, it can be very disturbing to the psyche because it disrupts our identity, our ego, what our ego clings to. And therefore what I've noticed with leaders who are in these worlds of that are transforming and going through disruption, there's a need to come back to a place of stillness. And that's on a daily basis and sometimes through an, on an hourly basis through a practice. It's also to retreat, which is what my company is offering. It's that space every six months or every year just to spend four or five days in, in quietness, in stillness, in reflection with other people, in conversation with some, some gentle facilitation to really understand, where am I? Where's my organization? Are we focusing on the right things to re. Energize myself? So these things are important. So in a sense, you've got the stillness in the storm. And ultimately I think what we're going towards is being able to ride the waves of this with greater ease. Because I say I think this is more of a natural state to be in, or certainly a state we're going to be in for the next few decades.

Andrew, I heard your Stillness in the Storm and I'll tell you my three word mantra for 2024 for me, you know, in 2023, I actually was in Jamaica towards the end of 2023 and I wanted to go take part in a psychedelic retreat, recognizing the effect of psychedelics, right? Especially around elevating consciousness and kind of really helping heal trauma. And in that week I walked away with these three words. I was looking for inspiration and insight and direction around where. How should I think about 2024? As you know, we're in a startup, we're scaling up. There is lots of motion, there is lots of storms. And the three words that define 2024 for me are stillness in motion. You talked about stillness and storm. And the image that had come to me, which was so beautiful. If you've seen two birds, two eagles, right, just circling on the currents, not a single flutter of a wing, but covering mile, right? So there is this notion of truly being still when you're moving a lot. But there's also this notion of how do you find to your point, when you're in the midst of turbulent seas, you don't have a choice, say, hey, I'm gonna take five days off and just go out through regular practice. When you're not in storms, how do you create that capacity to find that stillness to get out of that fight flight freak mode that we can find ourselves in so we can be more choiceful around the actions?

And I'm a sailor, and as a sailor I know at some point we try to avoid storms, but we may end up in a storm. You don't learn how to deal with a storm in the storm. It's too late. You have got to have done the training. You've got to go out with somebody else who's experienced, being mentored. And yes, you learn things through going through a storm for the first time. But that's not the time to suddenly realize you've got to deal with things, you know, and how do you adjust the boat and how do you look after people and all of those things in that kind of situation?

So, Andrew, when you're taking folks on retreat as part of transcendental, are you doing it as whole leadership teams and is that a practice you're asking them to do, or are they individual leaders who are going through it?

We're doing it through both. And so we have a corporate offering which is for whole leadership teams, and then we have another offering which is for people from multiple leadership teams. And we find actually there's something different about that. Some people prefer to be with people from other parts of other organizations and some people prefer to be in an intact team. In some ways it's easier to get psychological safety in a team with multiple people. But you could also say if you get a team, an intact team, really motoring, you're going to get more impact. So we're offering both.

So I want to switch gears for a bit and I Want to talk about this property that in all of your published. You recently published in the Harvard Business Review, you talk a lot about this, and it's this importance for leaders to cultivate humility. So talk to me a little bit, Andrew, around why it is so important and how can leaders do that, especially in environments that traditionally reward the opposite.

Yes. And, you know, so humility really is an inner state of consciousness whereby I'm aware that I don't have all the answers. And on the one hand, and on the other hand, where any form of status or power I have, I recognize is not for me, but it's in service of something greater. So if we take just those two anchor concepts that I'm holding, a sense that I don't know, and the power that I have is in service of something greater. So at a practical level, a leader walks into a room of people, and if they're not aware of the shadow that they cast of the power that they have, people are unlikely to speak up because of fear. And if they project that they have all the answers, people are unlikely to speak up. One of the previous deans that I worked with really understood this. So if there was ever a complex decision he brought to the executive team that I was part of, he made absolutely sure he never declared his hand until everybody had spoken. So he'd get everybody's opinions because he knew as soon as he said his opinion, you might get one or two people that disagree, but you wouldn't get a good conversation. There's also recognizing that, why have you been put in the position that you've been put. And I think we can all tell the difference between being led by people who are in service of something and others who demand our loyalty, who demand our, you know, our resources. And. And that creates a different type of structure. And so, you know, these things are kind of key ingredients to whether I can bring more of myself, whether I. When I show up in front of this person, I feel like I'm getting fuller, I'm getting energized, I'm getting guidance, I want to touch on something as well, which is when, as a senior leader, do you say, I don't know. And that requires great wisdom because you might not do that to your shareholder meeting. You might not do that on a hall to all employees. So there needs to be people around you where you can say, I don't know. Is this project going to work? We've just spent $200 million, and I'm having real doubts about this. If you said that to A large group of people who are implementing it. You would just put a lot of, you know, you'd create uncertainty. That would, I think, probably be a bit dysfunctional. But having people that you can talk to around you, who you can really go into this, and that can be a coach, it can be a mentor. I coach a number of CEOs, and that's what we're often talking about. You know, I'm giving them space for that, but also I think they need that within executive teams. But that requires trust and it requires the type of culture where the uncertainty of the outside world can be brought into the organization. We've all seen what happens when organizations get stuck in a version of the truth that's dysfunctional. We're seeing it in the UK at the moment with the post office. This is our national postal system, who prosecuted a whole load of postmasters and mistresses who are running small post office. These are mail to mail service. And it transpires that the IT system that was behind this, which was producing the data, was incorrect. So they were being told that they were stealing money when actually it was a error in the IT system. And you can see how the organization has got stuck, got stuck behind lawyers, stuck behind worries about liability, speaking up. And it's a form of arrogance that starts to build in. And that's a very public example at the moment.

I love that the two polarities. One, I have all the power and yet I'm showing up. And I might even have a perspective on what I think the answer is. And I know that if I state it, I'm going to sway the room. You know, we get that the classic follow the sun effect, right? Everybody's going to move towards kind of what the leader says. And yet in the right context, this is super important, what you said in the right context and with the right group being able to say, I don't know, and really listen to all opinions before showing your hand, truly, I can imagine how hard it is and how much of a skill you need to develop. Because also you have to think about. What goes to my mind, Andrew, is you also have to think about there is so much that you have to do. If I only had to do one thing in the day, right, I can have all the time and I can listen, but I also have 25, 30 things that I need to get done and I only have time to do 12. And that's the other piece that at least for me, often has gotten in the way because I'm like, I think this is a 10 minute thing, I think we need to just go and I'm going to state it, we're going to agree. If I'm wrong, well, I'm going to get the perspective and move. But in complex issues, to your point, the post office story is also reminding me how much damage can you actually do. You know, that 10 minutes you thought or 40 minutes you thought you could save might save you 40 days or 40 months of damage that you just did in the system. So, you know, Andrew, as we come towards a close here, just keeping an eye on time, I have two questions for you. One is a question of. Talk to me a little bit about the importance you see of flourishing and happiness of a leader. Right. We talk about flourishing as an organization, but talk to me about the importance you've seen in that capability in the actual leaders who are leading these organizations. How important do you think is that? Can you actually create a flourishing organization if you're not flourishing?

I don't think so. And I think let's go back to some of the things we've already spoken about. This sense that I have power, but I'm not power. I have thoughts, but I'm not thoughts. I have feelings, but I'm not feelings. I'm able to step into a place of awareness. And out of that place of awareness I find stillness, I find compassion for others. I'm not kind of running towards attraction and away from fear in the same way. And I think we cultivate happiness in there. The things around us matter less. And this is hard when you're in a big organization because the power structures are so addictive, they are so all consuming energetically. But the organizations in the grand scheme of things don't matter that much. The job that you hold perhaps doesn't matter that much. And you gain some spaciousness from this. And now it's important because it's a vehicle for service. But it doesn't become overwhelming in its importance and kind of the focus of your ego energy, that ability to gain some separation in a world of terms of separation. I think it's important that leaders have practices that engage, that enable that separation. It's important that they have activities outside of work that create that separation. And that's for me, the space in which happiness is cultivated and particularly going into nature. You know, nature is full of so much wonderful happiness and joy in terms of, particularly as we're about to go into spring in the northern hemisphere and seeing all that life come to fruition.

Beautiful practices for cultivating your own flourishing. Fill your cup before you go, create a flourishing organization out there. You know, in particular, the nature one also ties it so beautifully, Andrew, from what we started with, which is recognizing right for me, recognizing that it doesn't matter if you're in a leadership role or not. Every human being right now is in a highly activated fight, flight, freeze, nervous system because of just the level of disruption, the level of changes, the level of things that are coming at us.

And what we've plugged into our phones.

And what we've plugged into ourselves. Yeah, in our phones, what we put into our. Into our bodies. Right, all of that. And so, friends, if there is nothing else that you take away, you know, like there's. I have no space. Do the last one that Andrew said this weekend. Go out in nature. Forest bathing is one of the most powerful ways. You know, leave your phone behind, leave your devices, go spend two hours and come back and notice just being in nature, the slower pace, the effect of that on just allowing your parasympathetic to come back online and find that calmness really, really powerful. Andrew. So when we were at Next Practice Institute about a year and a half ago, you were so kind to give me a copy of the poem collection that you had been writing. And there were so many poems in there that really, really touched my heart. And I would love it if you could share one of those poems for our listeners.

Thank you. And as she said, it's very kind feedback and I have chosen one called Transcendence. Transcendence. Ever changing and evolving, flowing, moving. Through these cycles of life and death and life and death, Nature flows and grows, transcending with descending air and moving water and consuming fire and grounding earth, transcending today into tomorrow. How do I hold space? When do I hold space for this transcendence?

Wow. Just beautiful. What an apt. Apt poem for our conversation.

Exactly.

Oh my God, Andrew, this has been so amazing. Thank you for taking time and sharing your insights. We'll of course share links to all of your articles, also a little bit around your new company and the retreats that you're creating. For leaders to be able to cultivate that capacity for stillness so that they can navigate the storms that they need to navigate. They will have to navigate. It's not a choice in this world that we are living in, with more grace, with all of their cognitive capacities and with a truly open heart and with humility of not knowing what they don't know so that they can motivate, engage an organization to create the solutions together. Thank you.

Thank you, Ashish. It's been a real pleasure talking with you today, and I want to wish you all the very best for everything you're trying to do with your organization too.

Thank you, thank you. That wraps up another episode of the Happiness Squad podcast. We hope you found the insights accurate, actionable to enhance your journey towards happiness and fill your life with more joy, health, love and meaning. Please consider leaving us. Review and share the podcast with anyone in your professional or personal life who you feel will benefit from some of these very insights. It's a really simple way to extend support and spread positivity. Take care and remember happiness. This is a choice that's available to you moment to moment in the here and now. Take care and see you next week.