175 - Courage to Leap & Lead with with Dr Neryl East. part 2

You've got courage to leap, courage to lead. Be brave and be bold. Whoa, let it roar. Welcome to the Courage to Leap and Lead podcast, where each of our guests share the stories of courage that helped them become powerful leaders. Before we start today's show, please remember to visit courage-consulting.com. Where you can find all the episodes and other excellent resources, all at courage-consulting.com. Now, here's your host, Leadership Courage Coach CB Bowman.

Hi everyone, this is CB Bowman with part 2 of my discussion with Dr. Nural, right?

Yes.

East. And we're talking about her work in, in working with people in the C-suite on how to communicate. And I don't want to use the word authentically, but how to communicate with heart in order to keep you out of trouble in the world of cancel culture. So I'll let you continue. You were saying about telephone, uh, we don't even answer the telephone these days because we're concerned about things that we could say, what is said to us. Tell us more.

Yeah, look, I think, I think it's definitely, you know, your reference to the cancel culture, I definitely think has made people, uh, more, uh, reticent to speak to people they don't know. But also, I, I think just the whole cybersecurity and people are not keen on interacting with people they don't know. So it's actually made our circles smaller. So it's a very strange dynamic. And now of course we've got the whole generative AI layer on top of that. And so that removes another layer of humanness from our communication. So somewhere in there as leaders and as humans, whether you're a middle manager, a CEO, or a person just starting out, we've still got to almost like guerrilla warfare. We've got to inject our humanness into our communication. And I think we're going to have to do that more and more deliberately. We're going to actually have to make it our mission to be human in the way we communicate because everything else is stacked against that. In this very strange time that we're in.

How do we deal with spam callers? I received an email the other day that I had to contact my tech person, and I said, did we sign up for this? Because they've gotten so clever. The email said, thank you for signing up with our program. We'd love to know how you're doing and support your next steps. And I looked at the company and I said, I don't recognize this company. What did you sign up for? And I felt really nervous. So I contacted my tech person, Carla, who we've known for— we've known each other for years. She's like my sister. And I said, Carla, did you sign up for this for us, for our company? And she said, no, I don't know anything about it. I said, Well, it's saying that we signed up, and it was for this email tracking system, and it said, please contact us so that we can support your onboarding. And I, I looked at the price, and I said, okay, I just need to watch my American Express bill for this. But they're making it sound like we're friends.

Yes.

I'm getting, oh, CB, I just want to bring this to the top of your email. Uh, we, we want to talk about such and such. Like, I don't know this person. Um, so not only are you bombarded with you can't say this or that, you're bombarded with people pretending to be In your circle, in your inner circle. And so you don't know which way— I feel like I'm constricted. I don't know which way to move.

Yes, it's crazy, isn't it? You don't know who to trust. I know the level of sophistication has become extraordinary. And with AI, we're going down a particular rabbit hole here, aren't we? But the world of deepfakes and voice cloning and all of that, It really does your head in thinking about, okay, if we get a phone call from somebody who sounds like someone in your family and they're not. So all of these things remove and reduce trust. But I think the upside of that is that levels of trust in people we do know is going to increase because who else can we trust? The research here in Australia has shown In the last 12 months. Trust in government has never been lower. Trust in all forms of media has never been lower. But actually, people trust their employers because they don't know who else to trust.

No way.

Yeah. Interesting, isn't it?

Yes. Who did this survey?

So that is from a platform called the Edelman Trust Barometer. It's a global piece of research that's been done every year for a very long time all around trust and credibility. And I found that fascinating. That was certainly the result in Australia. It would be very interesting to see the results for other parts of the world as they currently stand. But it's all relative. I think it's more that we don't know who else to trust. So at least when we're at work, we're trusting people at work more than we used to. Because what alternative have we got? What alternative have we got?

I find this fascinating because I'd love to see this report. Yeah. Remember to send it to me.

Yeah, absolutely.

Um, there— it's so wrong on so many levels. Yeah.

And, and think of the, then the added responsibility, the pressure on employers, in, on leaders and managers. And this is why—

We all know that corporate America is a kill-what-you-eat environment. So to say that you're gonna trust people in that environment who are vying to be promoted like you're vying to be promoted and who actually can be rather concerning. The fact that this is the place that you have to go to for trust is scary.

Yes. Which is why we need more leaders who are genuine, who are caring, and who are credible.

You know, I spoke—

But it's challenging.

I spoke to somebody I interviewed last week about this whole concept of authentic, which I'm so tired of hearing this word. It's— yeah, I want to scream when I hear it.

Mm-hmm.

What, what's the deal here? Um, we're— leaders are being told to be authentic. What does that really mean? Does that mean spilling your guts, spilling every part of your body to, to your employees? What— can you define this? And because I'm so tired of hearing it. And he started laughing and he said, you know what? No, it's not actually. It's, it's based more on what you say being truthful, not on how much you say. And I thought that was a really good explanation about— Yes.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. Because in, in my world, you know, in the past we did a lot of spin doctoring. So if something was going wrong in a business or an organization, we would literally sit in a room and work out, okay, what's our line? What's our spin? How are we going to portray this? And then all of the work pretty much was around how do we not say this, the bad stuff?

Yes.

What techniques can we use to make sure that under no circumstances we talk about the bad stuff? And sometimes that's deflecting, it's blaming others, it's using all the tricks. So for me, authentic, and yes, I take your point, it is overused, is about being prepared to tell it warts and all, being prepared. Now, it doesn't mean you've got to air every part of the dirty laundry, but certainly if something's gone wrong, if there's been a mistake made, it's about owning that. It's taking responsibility and not trying to dance around it and to blame others. So to me, that's what authentic leadership looks like. It's about, there's a vulnerability there. It's about being prepared to admit to mistakes. And obviously it's not just admitting the mistake, it's how you do it and what you're going to do next that really counts. That's what I think has been missing and is still missing in a lot of organizations. some of the leaders I've worked with who've really embraced that, the outcome has been astounding when they've had the courage to actually stand up and be transparent and communicate about that with credibility. Even though their reputation has temporarily taken a hit, long term, it's been better for everybody than if they tried to cover that up.

I totally agree with you. You know, your work is so incredibly important because with the restrictions on what we could say, both from a legal perspective and a social perspective, we're all suffering from fear of foot in mouth.

Yes.

Yet at the same time, we have to address various situations. So what do you say? How do you say it? When do you say it? I mean, I think about the things that set off the pandemics, the various pandemics that we're experiencing here, the social pandemic of Floyd, the health pandemic of COVID So many leaders went down with not knowing how to address these areas. Hmm. And it's, it's, uh, all I could say is, if you're a leader and you're listening to this, please reach out to Nero. So with that, I'm going to say thank you so much for being on the show. I loved hearing your personal story, how you, uh, worked at making a change in your life. the things that you went through to own your life and the things that you're doing to help other people be authentic.

It's been my absolute pleasure, and I hope that, uh, any— something I've said has just had a little spark for somebody listening. Uh, you know, please believe in what you're doing. We can all make just slow incremental changes. If I can go from that shy kid listening to music to some of the things I've done, just imagine what you can do. Anything's possible. And, uh, I wish everybody every success in doing that.

Anything is possible. And just make sure that you have the right people around you at the right time.

Yes.

And with that, thank you so much. And audience, I look forward to seeing you next Tuesday. Bye now.

Bye.