Challenges of the C-Suite with Paul McCarthy, Episode 27

Hello everybody! So you're surprised to see me at this time? Don't be. You never know when you're gonna see CB Bowman live. Today we're coming into you on purpose but late because I had another engagement, and you know what? I didn't want to cancel because I miss you guys so much when I'm not on the show. So it is 1:47 here in sunny, hot, hot, hot— did I say hot? Colorado. It is like 98 degrees. And you know, when I moved out here from New Jersey, I said no problem with hot weather because it'll be dry, it won't be humid. Well, this year the humidity hit us like Blazing Saddles. But today it's not so bad. It's just when you're this close to the sun, oh my God. You know, when— I'm a gardener. And so, yeah, the Black girl's a gardener. My zucchinis are this big, off the screen big, right? But, you know, in the flowers that we buy and it says full sun, it doesn't mean Colorado full sun. The flowers just burn up. You have to put them in the shade. So I'm learning, girl from Jersey gardening, how to garden Colorado style, and it is a challenge. But you know what? My corn is taller than me, so I'm pretty excited this year. Look, I believe in living off the, the garden, eating off the garden for the winter. It's so much fun. So this year I've got carrots and beets and sugar snaps and Swiss chard and potatoes and corn. Don't you wish you were near me, right? And the peppers that are selling in the market for $1.50, my pepper plants all over the place. So enough about me and gardening. You know, this is CB Bowman Live, Challenges of the C-Suite. And today we have a guest, Paul McCarthy, on. Now, first of all, you remember that this is live, so, you know, I'm liable to get a phone call, I'm liable to talk to my husband, you know, just roll with the punches, right? And so Paul is the CEO of a company called the fired leader. What does that mean? Are we talking Donald Trump? You're fired, or what? What is it we're talking about? And yet he has a wonderful accent, right? I think he's married to one of those girls. Oh, I'm not supposed to say that. That's not politically correct. All right, well, Gary is writing in. Gary is a strategic advisor. He says, hey CB, hey Paul McCarthy, look forward to this exploration. Oh, you're in for a ride. Okay, do you know Gary Paul?

I do, yeah, yeah, he's a very, he's a very good guy. He's a good egg, as we say in the UK.

Who is he? Tell us, who is he?

Well, he, he does a lot of work in the area of vulnerability, and he's, he's really becoming known in the space where he's kind of pushing some, some of the envelopes and, and kind of really challenging us to think differently. And I know him through some of my networks, and Yeah, very forward-thinking, very progressive. And actually, separately to this, he's someone I think you should perhaps have a conversation with because he's, you know, he's quickly becoming an influencer in his own area.

So, yeah, definitely influencers. So, yeah, Gary, ring me up. So, okay, so let's roll. Hold on one second, darling. Can you turn up the air conditioner? So happy. Oh my God. Okay, so—

oh, I'm nervous.

You're nervous? That's good.

I've done so many of these, but I'm nervous. I don't know where you're gonna take this, CB. I have no idea. No idea.

I hear this from everybody. You know, the power goes away when you're on my show. We talk real and live, right? Well, it will go in the direction that we think it should go, maybe, kind of, sort of. Okay, Paul, tell us about yourself. First of all, this accent of yours is charming. Tell us, where do you yield from?

Well, thank you, and I should also just say for anyone listening to this that I've just had my second COVID vaccine, So I'm feeling a little bit spaced out and should be taking the afternoon off. But I know we'd scheduled this for a while and I didn't want to let you down. And I wanted to kind of make sure I could get this into my schedule too. So if you see me not as jovial as I am normally, it's because I've just had a second dose of Moderna put into my arm.

Oh, Lord.

Yeah, so—

I'll give you a pass because I need mine. And, uh, well, first of all, my husband and I had COVID, so we're pretty lucky to be here. But I'm telling you, this long-hauler thing is no joke after COVID.

Mm-hmm.

You're fine. We had it back in November, got cleared, got these shots. Every once in a while, I will feel totally, totally exhausted. To the core, and I just have to stop where I am for like 5 minutes and then it goes away, hopefully, you know.

Yeah.

COVID, I'm telling you, this, this is just really no joke. So I thank you for being on today because the shots are like having a mini version of COVID Um, I can't even believe you're standing here talking.

Right, well, I'm sitting down, so— but, but yeah.

Lie down, do whatever you need.

Yeah, yeah, but yeah, the heavy, the heavy sense of fatigue is, is interesting. But yeah, I, I'm— but I'm gonna plug through. I, I love these kinds of things and I want to have great conversations. So yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm not from the Canadian, uh, or North American shores. I'm from the UK and I've been out here for about 10 years and I really moved over here in 2011 when we were experiencing a recession, 2008 recession. And I was building a consulting practice back in the UK and everything started to implode. And I saw the writing on the wall. I got an opportunity to come out here. I'm in Canada at the moment. And so, I've been here. Yeah. So, I'm a kind of a veteran management consultant and a leadership development guy. And that's what I've been doing for, gosh, almost a quarter of a century now, working with different consulting firms, building their businesses, working with hundreds of different clients, you know, meeting lots of C-suite along the way, lots of aspirational emerging leaders, managers, frontline. So kind of really got into the thick of it and supported a range of clients with transformation, leadership needs, organizational redesign, strategic planning, the whole end-to-end solution of supporting the C-suite through transformation, really.

So, Paul, with this heavy background, you gads, how do you have time to have a life?

Well, yeah, it's a very interesting question. I mean, I'm not going to be all clichéd and corny, but But I really am quite fortunate to really love what I do. And that's opened up so many different opportunities. And it wasn't always like that because I remember when you had one of your other guests, Howard Morgan, on, he was talking about his profile and how he came to be in his first business was at 13, I believe. And I've kind of always been quite different and that's kind of moved me through the life that I've had. And I've always been fascinated with people.

culture.

And so everything I'm doing, whether it be consulting, leadership development, the first of 3 books, developing a thought leadership practice, it all stems around that one passion inquiry that I have, which is I love to understand what motivates people and what keeps them ticking. And so, you know, I often surround myself with people who say, oh, you know, I just can't wait to finish the day. And, you know, we're kind of— we're not enjoying our work too much. But I can honestly say that's never really happened with me. And I am a little bit of a disturber, as we'll get on to understand a little bit more about my story. But I've always been very well-intentioned. And I've always had a very core purpose at the heart of what I do. And it's really to help evolve our organizations, our cultures, our people. And, you know, that's so—

When you say you've been a disturber, you're fairly young, although I see you're approaching the silver fox years. Um, isn't it a lot of fun to be a disturber when you reach a certain age because people look at you like you're a guru instead of a troublemaker? That switch from being a troublemaker to a guru is like really weird how that happens. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. There's so much in what you just said. And, and I'm like, just for anyone listening to this, this is completely unscripted, right? So I, I know I even asked some of your team, could we get some questions to kind of think about what we wanted to say? They didn't respond. So it's like, yeah, so, so, you know, Gary, if Gary's still on, he knows exactly what that's like because he does a similar show where he, he talks about right here, right now, and he just talks about what's on your mind right here, right now.

Oh, wait, wait, Gary, you have to have me on your show.

Well, I know. Well, I see that in the future. Um, but yeah, no, I, I, um, I've always been a bit of a disturber. And when I say disturber, I mean, I've always tried to get people to think beyond what's possible. And I've been doing— I'm 47, so thank you for the compliment. But I am 47, so I've kind of been around the track a little bit with the C-suite.

You're a baby.

I'm a baby. I love it. I love it. Well, I would never ask a woman her age, especially not on live LinkedIn, because that's probably why I'm single. Or, or relatively single. Um, but I, you know, I've, I've, I've never—

You're gonna get into so much trouble tonight. I know.

She knows who she is, and if she sees this, I'm in trouble. Um, so, but I've never, you know, I've, I've never wanted to be that disturber. It's just natural that I always question, you know. I think in my bio, we, we, you know, I put like, I think deep, I question, I ask the questions that no one really wants to ask or they're scared of asking. And unfortunately, or fortunately because of where I am now, it's actually got me into quite a lot of trouble. I've stepped on the organizational politics landmines, the ego-based approach to leadership, the hypocrisy of leadership, leadership dysfunction. But it's almost like I don't play the game. I've never wanted to play the game. I've never wanted to rise that greasy pole and mind my P's and Q's because I believe that our our full potential is not realized that way. So it's interesting you mentioned that, getting to a point now, my age, where it's almost like I'm seen as a, I don't know, a guru or a thought leader. By the way, Gary, and anyone else listening to this, and the way I'm positioning myself is that I really don't like that term guru or thought leader because it implies that I'm more experienced, I'm better than, when really all I'm, I'm a poor boy from Shepherd's Bush in West London who, who who kind of started his first, you know, job at 11 years old. And just when people told me I couldn't do it, I proved them wrong and I did it. So—

I love it. Let me give you my definition of a thought leader in a group. It goes against the grain, but for me, those kinds of people have an incredible thirst for knowledge, number one. Number two, they have the ability to be creative to take that knowledge and look at it like a jigsaw puzzle, take it apart and put it together so that it becomes a new jigsaw puzzle. And they have the interest in sharing that information.

Yeah.

So to me, that's a true guru. It's, it's not somebody that goes around and touts themselves as a guru and has nothing— I mean, fine to say, yeah, I'm a guru once in a while. Um, but many of those that say that have nothing to back it up, you know.

Yeah.

What, what's the latest thing that you've challenged? If it's not real meaty, I'm sorry, you're not a guru.

Yeah.

Because you're not— well, my thinking—

Yeah, no, I like where you're going with this as well because I— and by the way, my journey, I, I never intended to to be the fired leader and taking a new concept of the future of leadership out. I didn't want to. I wanted to be the leader who fitted in, but I couldn't stand by and watch the hypocrisy, the dysfunction, the ineffectiveness. I mean, you want to talk about making a challenge, like, or putting in a— putting a challenge to the world of leadership. You know, I've said this on many podcasts that I've been on, live sessions, but we spend about almost $500 billion a year on leadership development. And yet the majority of people that buy that leadership development do not think it's an effective use of time. And I'm going into that further and I'm questioning that. I'm actually almost— my bigger quest is to reframe the narrative on things like, well, why do we keep continuing a tried and tested approach that's never worked? Why aren't we listening to the the skills, the qualities that are disruptive, rebellious leaders, or those that are agitators or disturbers or troublemakers, they can bring so much to the party in terms of the future of leadership and the way we disrupt and continue to disrupt in the future. So me, I'm kind of— I love what you said around your idea of a guru, because to me, my work is kind of— it's in 3 main tranches. One is I want to create the conditions to have honest-based dialogue about painful subjects. I want to align the conditions so people can actually do, you know, think about how they address this. And I want to embed this in the way that we think about the future of leadership and the future of the way we identify, recruit, onboard, and develop leaders. And I'm not this typical guru in the sense of I want to just make it all about me because I actually want to open source the future of leadership. I want to create an ecosystem where a million people are aware of a new kind of leadership where, you know, let's be honest, we're all capitalists with conscience. We all want to put food on the table and stuff, but I'm someone who really wants to give away the free source, right? And I don't want to do that just because it's a gimmick or because it'll sell books or get me booked in a speaker venue. I'm not interested in that. I mean, that will, that will come, and that is coming. But my idea is to put the— put it in the hands of people, to almost empower them to do this themselves and take this forward. And, and really kind of— that's my— that's my essence, CB, when I think about this. Uh, people tell me, oh, that's not true.

I'm gonna— let's get down to— first of all, Gary wrote us and he says, you're most welcome to join the Right Here Right Now live show, CB. Trouble coming, trouble coming. Paul, love how you're literally changing the game, and it is a game. Next, he writes, 1, thirst for knowledge. 2, creative to reimagine the jigsaw puzzle using that knowledge. 3 willing to share. Oh, he says CBD. That is for McCarthy. And then Kathleen wrote in, it's time to have these difficult conversations. Okay, let's just stop a second here. One, I think the reason is— you asked, you're not sure why this happens. I think it's real simple. It's ego and fear. Mm-hmm.

It's—

and, and then it's fear and ego flip-flop, you know, you get it, right?

Yeah.

So people are afraid, and now we can't just blame the men, it's the women too. Our ego gets in the way. We don't want to be seen as having made a mistake because we haven't gotten it through our heads that mistakes are a journey to success. You cannot get to success without failure.

Hmm.

It's real simple. Because what do you know? You have no— it's no life experience. You have no professional, no business experience. You're like an empty shell if you're somebody who's never made a mistake. I always love that stupid interview question, Tell us about your greatest mistakes. I mean, what do you want? You want my bio, my life history here, right? And then, okay, so that thing, that aside, let's talk about what do you consider to be a painful discussion? Give us an example so we can talk turkey.

Yeah, well, we want to set the bar. We want to, we want to go for the, the, the quantum challenge, the quantum mistakes, the, you know, we want to go straight for the jugular. So here's my biggest mistakes, challenges, or however you want to phrase them, is the fact that I'm doing the work that I'm doing right now. The very fact that you put me on here as Paul McCarthy, the Fired Leader, right? And I've got Fired Leadership going. That's one of my areas of practice. There's 4 others.

But actually, mean, the fired leader? Are we firing leaders? Are you talking about the time that you were fired as a leader? What are we talking about?

Yeah, because the platform for me doing my work actually was born by me being fired from 4 executive leadership roles in North America. And so number one, that is a taboo subject. Nobody wants to talk about it. Like nobody. I've done peer-reviewed research. out the yin-yang. And trust me on this, that nobody is talking about it.

I'm talking about it.

Yeah, but nobody wants to then say the next bit, which is, I'm actually really proud that I was fired as a leader because it's enabled me— like, I've been the guy that's designed, developed, delivered leadership programs, right, to hundreds of people. And I'm coming along and I've been fired for displaying the leadership qualities that here's the thing that ironically are missing from the best practices in terms of leadership development programs, right?

Yeah.

And then we've got this other thing coming. By the way, I was working on all this before COVID 4 years before COVID and I was arguing that we're not preparing our leaders for disruption that they'll face. And I started to realize that I was being fired for 5 qualities that are missing from how we develop future leaders, and those are the qualities that we'll need. So, Fired is a methodology and a framework and a whole set of tools behind the scenes Fresh thinking, inquisitive nature, real and accountable, expressive and challenging, and direct and transparent. Now, when I started this—

Fast, stop. Give it to me again. Fresh thinking.

Fresh thinking, inquisitive nature.

Inquisitive nature. Okay.

Real and accountable.

Real and accountable.

Expressive and challenging.

Expressive and challenging.

And direct and transparent.

Direct and transparent. Okay.

So, you know, in the context of the question around mistakes and challenges, arguably, in the 2-dimensional world that we live in, and we tend to judge people who have been fired, right? We tend to move away from them, or we massage our resume, pretend we didn't work there, gloss it over, go and get a book from the bookshelf that talks about, you'll be okay, you've been fired, it's okay. I did the exact opposite, you know, and people thought I was crazy. And I've said this, and this is no— I'm not saying what I'm about to say to evoke sympathy or pity, but I've had friends, I've had former romantic partners, I've had even family members 4 years ago say to me stuff like, why do you want to push this? Like, why don't you just accept that you were fired? You just didn't fit in. And I was like, because there's something—

How did you push it? How did they feel you were pushing?

So as a leader being fired, so I would be recruited often, you know, 6 to 9 interviews on average, right? So that and the cost of that and the productivity around that, there's a whole other piece that I write about in my first of 3 books on that. But I was recruited for the qualities that would eventually fire me. So I was asked to come in to challenge the status quo. I was asked to come in to provide dissenting perspectives and new ideas to become innovative. I was asked to not play the political game, cut through the crap, and actually say what I mean and mean what I say. So that's my Uncle Tony in Ireland. He has this phraseology, say what you mean, mean what you say, right? That simple. But we play the political game because we want to rise the ranks. Not me, I didn't care. Um, and the way I, I was, you know, you're in a boardroom. In fact, I think it was General Electric or General Motors, uh, one of the— General Motors. Um, in my research for my first book, what I found out was they had, at leadership level, they had a certain, um, stance like this. They were like in, in a meeting room in if they were asked if they were going to make a decision on something or what they were going to do afterwards, they would say yes, nod, and then they would fold their arms. Now, what that meant in the GM culture was that they had no intention of doing anything, right? And so that was a secret leadership culture that was in place. Now, I came into my roles in leadership capacities, and I was told very quickly, we want you for your new opinions, your different insights. We want you to challenge things. We don't want you to defer to the highest senior person in the room. But you know what, CB? As soon as I did, I got my— oh no, you've set a new standard. But as soon as I did, I got my card marked. You know, if I went to the senior leadership or the board-level partners retreat or the, you know, the summer barbecue and I didn't laugh at a joke that wasn't funny but everybody was laughing at it because they wanted to be promoted, come perform Performance Review Time, I was the lone wolf, the black sheep, the— I was the outlier, the shit disturber. Well, you've sworn, so I can swear now. The shit disturber, um, you know, the, the maverick, the, um, you know, the rare breed. There's a bunch of different books that are coming out talking about how disruptors are the future. And here's the thing, you could argue that I made all these mistakes as a leader because I, I turned up as I was asked to turn up. Then I was fired for doing that. Now, rather than saying, yeah, these are mistakes, I started to reflect quite literally in a windowless room, playing ping pong, eating pizza, reviewing hundreds of leadership development programs to see whether they were fit for purpose for the future. And my hypothesis told me— well, it formed actually— what if we're firing the very talent that we need for ongoing disruption? And what if these 5 qualities are not in our current leadership approaches, and, and I've found that they weren't.

And I agree, and I have been there.

Yes, and that's the thing. Everybody's— everybody has an empathetic narrative. Everybody has an understanding of what I've gone through. But here's the thing, nobody wants to talk about it in public. I put a, you know, I put a guide out the other day on how to create non-toxic leadership cultures, and I said in my LinkedIn post It's like, you know, it's the monsters in the closet, right? We think if we put the blanket over our head, the monster will go away, but it won't. It's like Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club: don't talk about Fight Club. But here's the thing: $7 trillion and counting is the cost of not talking about Fight Club every year, right? So I thought, you know what, I've got nothing to lose. Poor boy from Shepherd's Bush, shouldn't have lived this long, should be a statistic. But here's the thing, I'm out there talking about it, and I, I couldn't care less if it manages to, to gain commercial success or not. I'm not doing it for that. I'm doing it to shift the narrative, to get people to talk about these uncomfortable topics. And, um, it's really— I'm loving it, you know. So, so I'm just loving it.

Okay, so how's that going for you? Are people actually giving up their ego, uh, you know, and their fear and talking about it?

Yeah, they're starting to. They're starting. And I'm, and I'm incredibly thankful, humble, like Gary and, and others that might be seeing this live, or others like— what I'm starting to realize, there, there's an appetite for this, and people are creating an ecosystem. Now everybody's got their own distinct, you know, storyline as part of this and, and their own areas of focus, but finally, yeah, people are actually starting to say there are ego-based leadership landmines out there that we step on and we get in trouble and we don't realize we— and, you know, I reviewed like 50 documents and research pieces as part of understanding the game of politics in the workplace and do we need to play it or not, right? And that was, you know, HBR stuff, Ivy League stuff, and all of them started and ended by saying, you know, it's a shame we have to play this game when we have such disdain for it? Well, I've got news for you kids. The fact is the future and the future leader has a very clear role in choosing to play the game or not, right? Millennial leaders and those that are coming after them, they don't want to be involved in political game playing, right? They want to address the elephant in the room. So we, we are having a seismic shift happening anyway.

Time out, time out.

So I get excited by this, can you tell? Yeah, I guess.

Um, but, but I'm on your train. I'm on your train. There's so many things that occurred to me. One is the millennial leaders. I totally agree with you, they don't want any of this crap. Um, is the question, are they replacing it with their own That's number one question. Number 2 is, so I've been fired from so many jobs, I can't even begin to tell you. And finally, I just said, that's it. I'm not putting myself through that trauma anymore, that drama, because I'm a rebel without a cause.

There we go. There we go.

I'm more of a rebel with a cause, right? And so here's my— and the audience probably is going to get sick of me doing this, but okay, I'm sorry. Uh, don't you think it's tougher for people of color to be a rebel with a cause because it automatically goes to, oh, it's that race again, trying to do something that we don't want done, or trying to do something that just doesn't work or that they shouldn't be doing, right?

Mm-hmm.

So there's that. By this happening, especially in the United States, because I'm here, I could see it more. It allows for a greater amount of squashing the disruption that can take place for improvement, right? So we've got— are the millennials replacing it with something? We've got people of color who don't want to contribute their genius. And then we've got the white boys who are saying, okay, we want change. But coming out of COVID it was a huge opportunity for change. And what the hell are we seeing? Same old, same old.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, there's— we're gonna— we, we have— we don't have enough time to fully all go into everything that you've just said there in terms of the deep systemic—

I did that on purpose.

I know.

I wasn't born yesterday.

I don't know when you were born because I can't ask you your age on air, um, but I would, um, you know, so I'm an anthropologist by background, right? My academic background is anthropology, and I've always been fascinated by why people do what they do. And Malinowski, who was the founding father of anthropology, said, you know, if you want to understand a culture, you have to step off the veranda, you have to immerse yourself in the culture, right? And I've always been a big proponent. Now, as an aside, you know, the one doing in Fired Leadership is kind of Maybe I'm naive in this and optimistic and utopic, but that's the world I live in and that's the world I'm creating for the future. But the F.I.R.E.D. methodology and the framework is sexual orientation, it's race, it's gender agnostic, right? These are qualities that leaders need. I don't care if they're from a Chinese background, if they're a female who has one leg, I don't care. what I'm arguing is that these 5 qualities are agnostic of any political, ideological, sociological agenda. Now, does that mean I don't see what's happening around the world, particularly in the United States, with all of these divisions? Of course, you'd have to be— you'd have to be under a rock if you, if you don't see what, what's happening at the institutional systemic level, right? One of the, one of the things I've done recently, and actually this is a a widening of my portfolio to be not just fired leadership-focused. And, you know, relates earlier to you said, you know, how do I get time to do all these things, right? Well, I've added more to my plate because what I really want to do, I said it earlier, right? Create and align. What I mean by that is I want to create the conditions by which we can have the conversations that you've just asked me, right? So that they become normal. commonplace. I want to have the conversations that are difficult to do because that's where I think growth is, growth and the potential is. So do I have all the answers? No. Do I think— I mean, I can show you all the stats. In fact, the first book that I'm writing, you know, I actually show how diversity and inclusion from gender, disability, race actually improves organizational bottom line. It actually improves performance. Not just that though, and this is one of the key challenges that I'm working in, in my different areas of practice, diversity of thought from people of colour, from someone who's got one leg, from a transgender person, from, you know, again, it doesn't, to me, doesn't matter what the uniqueness of the person is because we're all unique, right? It's our brains that I'm fascinated by. And for me, what we lose out on is such rich, deep textual diversity of thought when we discriminate against— and in fact, when we design— in fact, actually, this is a good, interesting way to segue to this because our recruitment processes at leadership level are rife with biases, similarity-attraction biases, Attribution error, the halo effect. Let's just take the similarity-attraction bias. I'm more likely to hire you if you look and sound like me, right?

Absolutely.

And in fact, in my first book, I talk about the 13 unlucky steps to leadership identification and recruitment, and I take it all the way from the first initial meeting at a coffee shop all the way to the person becoming onboarded, right? And again, agnostic in terms of gender, race, disability, But I do talk about the very first meeting with someone where you say, oh, you didn't go to the same school as me, or, um, you, you don't talk like me, right? I mean, I, I myself, I'm a, I'm a white guy, but I've faced inevitable—

Really?

I think so. Um, but I'm actually just a human, I think, really, at the end of the day, with, with no credence to being white as a label. But, um, society puts a label on me. But I've kind of, you know, I've said for a long time, for 25 years, we need to be leveling the playing field, right? We need to actually be looking at a different way to identify and recruit, onboard, and develop leaders, which takes into account their special qualities as a leader, right? Because as it stands now, we're discouraging leaders who might have a different racial background, gender, disability, able-bodied, we're discouraging them in our processes that we have right now. So I mean, I could take this so much deeper if we wanted to and we had the time, but I just kind of feel for me it's about how do we create the conditions to have these conversations because we are missing out on such great talent. Right? And my lifelong work is to actually create those conditions where we put this out in the middle of the room, where we talk about it, and we leave our emotions, our egos out of it, and we try and figure out, well, what is the best thing for the organization? What's the best thing for the individual? And how does their purpose align with the organization's? And can we do that? Without a lens of race, gender, disability? I'd like to think we can. I'm not naive enough to think that perhaps—

I think that the only way that this is going to happen is with a monetary reward, right? You know, I keep reading these books that are starting to make me nauseous. About how people— money is not important to people. It's being seen, it's being heard. And even I've said it time and time again. But now when I listen to you, I might just change my mind. Because let's just— what we're talking about is the art of disruption, right? And it is an art form. It's an art form that needs to be respected as much as a Monet hanging on a wall. When we think about some of the more recent basic inventions and how the inventor was or was not rewarded, they had an incentive to create something. And so the thing that comes to my mind is the 3M sticky paper.

Mm-hmm.

How many years did we exist with paper and no one thought about this? How long did we exist with glue and nobody ever thought about this, right? Now, from my knowledge, the person who invented this does not own that patent because he did it while being employed by 3M.

Hmm.

Now, you can argue that he did it, He was an inventor. He was paid. He, you know, he made money through income. And it's a passion. But you know what? I've got to say, I think that there are a lot more people out there that would create something disruptive. And in its way, that was disruptive, right? Give me the money. You pat me on the head, say nice job, and I get to keep my job, but nobody connects my name to it, is that really incentive for me to come up with something else that's groundbreaking?

Yeah.

If you look at the Ubers, even if I look at Google or Apple in the very beginning, there was an incentive that maybe the incentive was to change the universe. But underlying all that, money. Money. I'm going to do something, and it's going to result in money. Because otherwise, you're doing something for the good of the world. And there are plenty of people out there that do that, and God bless them. I'm not one of them.

Show me the money.

Right. So I really believe that we could get more creativeness, more disruptive genius if we pay people accordingly. Because you're saying to people now— this is going to be a weird segue— you're saying to people now, come back to work now that COVID is over. We want you to work just as hard. Actually, no, we want you to work harder because we lost money during COVID And you need to do this just because you have a job. And we need to increase our profit. We need to get back up to the bottom line that we were before. And you should just want to do this.

I'm pissed.

People are saying, hey, hold on one second. You company, you don't match my values. I don't really give a damn about the product that's being produced. How is it going to benefit me? And so what are you doing to support me should COVID reemerge? I, I don't, I don't have the incentive to come there and say to you, hey, here's a new way of doing business, here's a new way of leadership so that we can all get together and be, you know, buddies again. So this is why I'm seeing you and I have a tough journey.

Yeah.

I'm glad we're seeing change because I'm at the point of I don't know if I have any more hope left. If COVID didn't make a change in an organization, do we stand a chance, Paul, you and I?

Well, again, there's so much in what you've just said. I just took a few scribbles down. Let me just start my attempts at answering this. Again, there's no script here, so I'm just rambling on. No, no, I love it. I was— and I'm the one who's had the second COVID vaccine, so I'm like, you know, I should be rambling all over the place. Um, well, well, and if I— if you permit me to use one more expletive, um, as part of this, um, okay, well, I give a shit. All right, so I, I'm doing this anyway, right? I can't tell you the number of people that I've spoke to, C-suite leaders, um, Can I, can I name drop on this? Can I say a name?

Yeah, go for it.

Um, now I, I don't know this person, um, but they're very achieved, you know, they've, they've achieved a lot in their world, um, and they're a well-known name, but they're also a cantankerous old man. And I'm more than happy to talk to this person in person about this. Tom Peters, right? I have a lot of respect for him, but I posted—

I thought you were gonna go for Warren Buffett, come on.

Yeah, well, I don't know what he's like. drinks Diet Coke every day, so he must know something we don't. But, um, yeah, Tom Pears, excellent, achieved a lot. But here's the thing about Tom Pears, he's, he's quite bold and, and moody, right? And, and nobody has the courage to, to kind of take him on. But I, I've started to kind of chat with him on Twitter. Now, he probably doesn't know who I am from Adam or Eve, right? But I'm making this point for a reason. Um, I put this— I told you I put this guide out the other day about creating non-toxic leadership cultures, right? And I tagged him, I tagged a bunch of other influencers and stuff on Twitter, and he came back. And to be fair, it's very funny. I'd love to have a drink with him to chat about this. He came back and he said, yeah, but you've got to give a shit to make a change, right? And I thought, kudos, kudos to you, brother. But I sent a Twitter back straight away, straight away, and I said, well, Everybody I've tagged, including you, does give a shit, right? So if you give a shit, and then he came back and he's like, he owns igiveshit.com or something like that, which, and it was funny, it was really funny. My whole point of saying that, I love it, I love it, I love it. But my whole point of that point, CB, was that you've got to stand for something, right? You've got to have a purpose when tough times come, and they will, and they have. I mean, I don't think we're out of COVID There's another COVID. There's another— there's something else, right? There'll always be something else. But it's like, you know, an old Irish proverb: every day above ground is a good day, right? So I came into this world with nothing. I came— for those who know Shepherd's Bush in West London growing up in the '70s, I should be dead by now, right? But I'm not, right? So I'm still here. I've got something to say. And those around me that are surrounding me, and I'm moving into new territory, We all stand for something greater than ourselves. So when we get tired and struggle and we don't get recognized for the disruption because we don't get the money or the incentive for it, well, if we don't stand for something that means more than us, then we could cave, we could implode, right? But I've personally, I've always stood for something, right? And I mentioned earlier around purpose, individual purpose and and the organizations. We know, I know from the research that I've done, that as we evolve our organizational structures— by the way, I haven't even talked about this and we probably don't have time for it, but self-managing organizational structures, right, pioneered by the work of Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations. There's a whole wave coming. I mean, you think COVID is a wave? There's a whole wave of a new organizational structure coming. And guess what? It's going to be based on the principle that leaders and staff have a sense of integrity, wholeness, and evolutionary purpose, right? So that means the currency of the future leadership recruitment process needs— anyone listening to this as a practitioner, lean in— it will need to understand what the individual's purpose is and whether it aligns with the organization, because if it doesn't, turnover levels are going to increase And by the way, the average cost to replace a leader who leaves your organization voluntarily is 200% to 400% of their base salary. Multiply that by the number of leaders leaving, that's a lot of money, right? And so I believe that there are pockets of people like us that are driven to rethink, to reimagine, to reinvent, right? We're just driven that way, whether we get Daniel Pink talks about the whole intrinsic versus extrinsic motivators. Personally, I'm not motivated by money. I'm motivated by making a difference in terms of someone's mindset and in terms of whether they then do something with what we've produced for them. Right. So this is a subject that's very close, dear to my heart, because, yeah, the money is important to some people. But how many cemeteries do you pass, right? You call them cemeteries, right? We call them graveyards. But how many cemeteries do you pass on a daily basis where— and if you're anything like me, I start thinking the most expensive real estate and the best ideas for innovation are lying in that cemetery because we are living— we go to work, go to school, we get our qualifications, we're expected to get a job, We're expected to get the corner office, we're expected to fit into a system that we don't question, and then all of a sudden when the system has no need for us anymore, we're relying on a spreadsheet and we're turfed from the organization, right? So anyone that thinks the organization is loyal to the employee and the leader is mistaken. So to your point earlier, right, about disruption and innovation and being incentivized for coming up with new ideas, my hope for everyone who has a brilliant idea is that they, they have the courage to address the fear, to then go out and do that. Whether it fails or not, that's a success, right? And so don't give your idea and the money to the man. Give your idea and your money to yourself and create the conditions to, to truly prosper. And interestingly, one of my first qualities, the fresh thinking in Fired, the Fired methodology— fresh thinking is what comes before a leader's ability to innovate and therefore to disrupt, because fresh thinking is about embedding into the culture of the organization the ability— in fact, no, the mandation— that you will dare to think and act differently, right? So they want your intellectual power, they want your, you know, everything that you're bringing to the organization. If they don't have that, again, leaders are going to go, they're going to vote with their feet, they're going to go somewhere else. So I appreciate I've just kind of gone all around the houses there with that, but it is important because I think our structures are shifting. The way that we attract and retain leaders is going to shift, and it is. Spotify, for instance, they recruit— before they recruit you, they have a cultural immersion interview. And they interview to see if there's a cultural fit with values, with purpose. They don't even talk about a job, right? They then, whether there's a fit, they then get back in touch with you when there is a job. Now, Spotify is a leading organization in its field. It's kind of disrupted the marketplace for music. And it's at the cusp of the leading-edge thinkers in terms of how to recruit staff and leaders that that they can retain in their organization. So, the old way is shifting. If we don't jump onto the new bandwagon and the new train that's leaving the station, then we're not going to have the talent that we need to drive the innovation that we need in the future. And I'll just give you one little stat, and then I'll let you speak about something else. We think that those high performers, those high posts, you know, the high potentials that we tag in organizations, we think they're loyal to us. So we give them lots of training, right? But research has come out recently that says they're just weathering the storm. Once the recession, COVID is over, they're going, they're leaving your organization. They have no loyalty. So what does that say to you, CB, about like what we need to reintroduce to the organization is the ability to be honest? is to rethink, reimagine, and reinvent, because the old ways just don't cut it anymore.

Yeah, I mean, you've said so many spot-on things, starting with the latest. This is not new news. High potentials always take the gravy and then leave. There's very few that stay. And that's our own fault for setting that thinking in place. We're not going to take care of you. They saw this with their parents. So why should we give a damn? We're just going to, you know, take, take the gravy, rob the train, and then go to the next stop. And if you're an organization and you don't realize that, then shame on you. I mean, that's just what was created by— your ancestral leaders, right?

Yeah.

The other thing you talked about, Spotify. So I applaud Spotify for wanting to do something different and, and challenging the norms to do something different. But within that, there is a monster of a red flag. A monster. Because if you're hiring I love this idea of cultural immersion. And you're hiring based upon that as a primary factor and then secondary, the good fit for the job, right? My culture is not going to be the same as the white man's culture.

Mm-hmm.

So we've got a red flag. Wonderful that they're trying something different. Absolutely wonderful. But how is that culture defined? Is it defined by you look like me? Is it defined by the same music? Is it defined by the same country club? Is it defined by the same school system? We have a problem. Houston, we have a problem. Applaud, applaud. applaud for trying something new. And this is where it's complicated. You try— look, here's the story I tell people. I was talking to somebody who was on the board of a company. And she was very proud of the company for wanting to have more diversity. And I'm not talking just race, but yeah, I am right now. In the company. So they were about ready to launch a recruiting campaign. The head of HR said, the only thing that I'm not sure of is that based upon where we're located, there are no Black churches, there are no jazz clubs. It's a cultural question. So they were concerned about trying to recruit people of color because in their image, Black people go to Black churches and they go to jazz clubs. Instead of thinking, here's an opportunity to maybe for the white people to teach the Blacks about their culture and the Blacks to teach the whites about their culture and not the culture that's imagined to be. Right? So we have a problem trying to get to gold that we need to figure out.

Mm-hmm.

We can't be afraid of mixing cultures, because then if you design a program based on a culture, you have a problem.

Yeah, years ago, when I was in the UK, I don't know if you're familiar with this term cultural competence, but cultural competence is— so I was fortunate enough to lead a project that Tony Blair interrupt you, but this, as I said, is not a black-white thing.

It could be a disability. It could be—

yeah, yeah.

If you don't have a synagogue, what does that mean? If you don't have somebody who uses a wheelchair, that's— the view level is going to be different.

Yeah, and I appreciate in the broader context of that, that this is about how do we create the conditions for inclusivity, right? And I actually, I've got a problem with the word inclusive because the opposite implies that you're not part of the mosaic, right? So the lexicon I use is always to try and to equalize because everybody's equal, right? And so I very rarely— That's true.

I'm challenging you, Paul. No way, José. Everyone is not equal. That's like saying I don't see color.

I mean, in the sense of values, right? So actually, let me give you a— let me give you an example. Do you know who Stephen Lawrence is or was? Stephen Lawrence was a Black teenager, and I have to be cautious of what I say here because there's still ongoing investigations, but Stephen Lawrence was a Black teenager killed in 1993 by— everybody thought it was 5 white guys, they were in a gang, and the police, the Metropolitan Police, covered up a bunch of stuff. There was evidence that went missing, there was institute— it showed that there was institutional racism within the Metropolitan Police. There was a whole bunch of other things that came out as well.

Yeah.

I remember with one of my best friends, who's— who we were driving at the time through the area that he, this guy, was killed and we saw a little boy and a little girl, one was Black, one was white, holding hands, walking through when there was the cordoned-off, police cordoned-off area, right? And I remember we— I turned to my friend and I said, that's the world that I live in, that's the world I want to live in. I don't see colour, right? So people have said to me I'm naive. I purposefully don't get involved in many of these conversations in the public environment or indeed any because I'm actually someone who— I don't see colour when I talk to people, right? Again, I'm Irish, right? So I've also— this is the other thing that's controversial, and I am a bit of a disturber, so I will disturb, because you look at me and you think I'm just a white guy that's privileged. Not so, not so at all. Anyone that knows me well enough knows that I've come through, you know, I've got gravel marks that show how I was brought up. But I'm Irish, right? And in the '70s, growing up in London, being an Irish guy to an Irish and Scottish family, there were bars that said, no Irish come in, right? So I don't want—

You are not comparing being a white Irish guy to being a Black man.

No, I'm not. But what I am saying is that we all experience discrimination. We all experience different perceptions of us, right? But I don't— I don't get involved in those discussions. Well, ironically, I am now, but I don't get involved in those discussions because I don't interact with people that way. I don't see— when I see you, I don't see a Black woman. I see a woman. I see a human. When I see people that are disabled, I don't see someone's disability. I see what's beyond that. So maybe I'm being naive. Maybe I'm being—

but the So, so I would be upset if you didn't see me as a Black woman, and here's the reason why. I want you to have an awareness of what I have been through in life.

Mm-hmm.

That makes me not equal to a white woman, and by not seeing my color, you're disrespecting— not you personally, but we're talking theory and stuff. I love you, Paul, don't get me wrong. But you're not respecting the racism that I had to go through that made me who I am, right?

Mm-hmm.

So I understand what you're trying to say. And to a Black person, when you say, I don't see color— and I love this conversation.

Oh, yeah, no, me too.

It's very important for our listeners. When you say you don't see color, I understand what you're trying to say. You're trying to say that you see people for what they are, the value that they bring, their values, their morals, their sense of being, which is wonderful. But part of that sense of being is the color that they are or the disability that they have or, or whatever it is, because then you start to see more than the visual, if that makes sense, right?

Oh yeah, yeah. And as, as we've gone down this path, um, I, I'm too far down this path to come out of this path, so let's go where we need to go. So I'm gonna challenge you actually, because I would bet you anyone looking at me would think I'm a privileged white guy who's English, right?

I don't disagree with that, totally agree with that.

But let me now introduce something else.

Yes.

Anyone that sees me and thinks that is disrespecting me and my heritage because I'm Irish. So yeah, so let me—

That's the issue. We have, but trying to put people—

Yeah.

Yeah, we're not— I'm guilty of it. I am not seeing it with each person that I meet. Here's a real good example. Uh, somebody approaches me and they're in a lousy mood, and I'm like, what the hell, right? I didn't do anything wrong. I'm seeing them as a person that's addressing me. I might not see, and I can't see, that perhaps their child was just killed the night before. I have no way of knowing that, but I'm evaluating them based upon what I visually see, which is what you're saying. And I totally agree, I don't have the answer.

Well, the, the interesting thing though, and this is, this is a controversial taboo subject, A, to discuss, but B, the way I'm gonna— where I'm gonna go with it next. Because we live in a world, right or wrong, where, um, if, if I say in a public setting like this, which I am, that I am the victim of discrimination as well, that's going to be controversial in the current climate.

Absolutely.

Because, because I'm white, And had people been discriminated against or not. Now, yeah, yeah, now let me introduce the Black and Tans to you. The Black and Tans were a militia who were hired by the English in the early 20th century to round up Irish women, Scottish women, take them to football soccer fields. Because they were Irish Catholic, they then shot them to death. They were all white people, but they shot them. But I can guarantee you that nobody knows that, or very few people know that in North America. When they see me, they see a white English guy. They don't know the colonial historic institutionalization of trauma that my parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents went through. They could have been—

Tell me this story. So the people that rounded up the women, the white women, were white themselves?

Yeah, yeah. So this is the sub— this is the taboo part of the subject that nobody likes to converse about because, because it's always, you know, we— let's be honest, we use race, gender, disability as unique identifiers, as difference, as here you're different from me because of this. But when you see someone of the same skin colour, you— your bias automatically says, well, we lump them in the same group.

Yeah.

Yeah, Welsh, English, Irish, Scottish. And then let me tell you, within the Irish there's Protestants, there's Catholics. Within the Protestants there's subdivisions, right? And so you could be in a pub in Ireland in the north talking to someone who has a certain accent but looks like you, right? White guy looks like you but has a different accent. Based on where that person's from, their whole cultural profile has been determined by their upbringing. So now they don't like you because you live in somewhere else, right? But they're the same colour as you. So to North Americans, they see us as the same.

Right.

So I guess what I'm saying is, you know, I grew up in that environment where, you know, it was quite literal going into a pub or a bar or a shop, no Irish need apply. Like, but we're all white. So to the outside, to the non-white, people in the world, there's no race. Well, we can't be racist because the Irish aren't a race, but there's definitely discrimination. And I, I'm going to circle back to why I do what I do in the first place.

I just want to tell you, I totally agree, because, yeah, when I— upon the killing of Floyd, I was talking to a colleague from Canada, and, uh, somehow I made the comment, well, you don't have racism in Canada. And he said, time out, CB.

Yeah, yeah, time out.

No, yeah, indigenous population. I said, I couldn't believe I was so stupid, uh, naive, um, ignorant, whatever you want to call it. I said, well, wait a second, is the indigenous population white? He said, yeah. I said, well, how do you tell each other? from one. And I had this whole education.

Oh yeah.

And why is it— why? But if you're both white, you know, and I wasn't even thinking, although I know about the Scottish, the Irish, the English, but on this side of the continent, I'm like, upstairs? What are you talking about, Canada? You've got a problem?

Well, yeah, but let me, let me, let me add some— and no pun intended— let me add a little bit more color to this. in terms of the— because I've done a lot of work with the Indigenous communities.

Yeah.

Traditionally, there's First Nations, there's Métis, and there's Inuit, and within them there's again subcultures. Now, I've done economic development, community engagement, and leadership development with very far north, northern communities. So in the Northwest Territories of Canada, that's a whole— that's a whole— that's the top part of the country. Not many people go there. It's really cold. It's isolated and it's very unique as landscape goes. But I've done work when I've gone into certain First Nations to understand— there's a whole thing we, again, we don't have time to go into, but residential schooling and the trauma around that and the way that white Canada basically did similar to what the English did to the Irish. White Canada actually systematically took under the name of Christianity, took indigenous communities away, separated children, took them and put them in these concepts called residential schools where they indoctrinated them with a new way of being. Now, it's been brought to light recently, in fact a few years ago, that they found—

Yeah, yeah.

Well, not just that, but, but there's, there's— Canada is a beautiful country. I love it. It's an amazing place, and it will always be that way for me. and yet it's almost like the Switzerland of Europe because it never takes a side in anything. But now, unfortunately, the turmoils of racism, prejudice, bias, and discrimination have been coming out, right?

Yeah.

So it's a real embarrassment, but also not just embarrassment, it's— for me, I circle back to why I do what I do, because I want to create the conditions to have open, honest conversations. Now, they'll be painful, but we can do that in a way where we level the playing field and get all of the things out onto the table. Now, I sat with— I won't name who it was, but I sat with, um, one of these, um, First Nations where we, we basically talked about the trauma that had happened. Now, we're talking about communities there, they've got alcoholics, they've got drug addicts, they've got domestic abuse. These are all the things that are the products of social disaffection, which are the products of the way that the Canadian government interacted with Indigenous communities. And it goes on.

I've never heard of this before.

So yeah, it goes, it goes on and on and on. And it's called social disaffection. So, so when you have socially disaffected communities, and that You know, I was, I was working with these communities to help them develop their economies, but we couldn't develop their economies until we dealt with the issue, the elephant in the room, right? Which was what happened as part of residential schooling was very traumatic, divisive, and continues to this day, 100 years later or so. And so, but again, to the average American or the average person coming into Canada, seeing people from these 3 kinds— First Nations, Inuit, Métis— you wouldn't on the surface be able to tell the difference.

Yes.

And so I think there's a bigger thing here, which is around this conversation we're having, this segment, which is how do we bring our own unique sense of being, our identities, our values, our cultures to the table where we can coexist? In fact, no, scrap that, not coexist, so we can celebrate and embrace every different part of humanity? And how can we create an organization that's built on that as well? And so, your point about Spotify is well taken because, yes, you're right. It's their culture that they're defining, that they want people to feel that they belong to. But the future of leadership, the future of work for me as well as I see it, is we're going to have people coming to the table and saying, how do we want to interact with each other? How do we want to work together? How can we create the conditions to talk about the untalkable? You know, you said in my—

How do we create a unified new culture in this scenario?

Yeah, yeah. And I, and I, I don't know the answer.

You know, blending these cultures and taking the best but respecting the worst.

Yeah, well, I think it's about, you know, I think we should— the lexicon we need to get rid of about everything in terms of this subject, but in general with leadership and work, I think we need to get rid of, you know, when we talk about boundaries, when we talk about, you know, kind of tolerate— the word tolerate, what does that suggest to you? What does it actually suggest? It says, well, if I had a choice, I wouldn't. I'm not interested in you, but I have to. Yeah, what about just creating that? You know, Amy Edmondson talks about it in her work on psychological safety, right? Creating the conditions with the fertile soil so that we can cultivate the conditions where everybody doesn't have to walk into a room and worry the fact that, Oh, I'm a new leader. I'm Black and I'm a new leader, or I'm a woman and I'm a new leader. Why don't we— why can't we just walk into the environment and say, I'm here and this is what I've got to say?

I love it.

Right? And, and, and I'm— I've been— I've been told many times I'm optimistic and utopic and naive, but, you know, somebody has to do what we're doing.

Somebody has to be up there because, you know, we're not going to get anyplace. You and I, we can talk about the negatives, the downsides, the issue while we're talking about— that's why I love this conversation— while we're talking about innovation, while we're talking about disruptive, while we're talking about creative, we're not ignoring the elephant in the room. We're saying, we're using the word and.

And, yeah. I'm not a practicing Buddhist, but I have some principles in my life that are Buddhist-related. And one of the key things about that philosophy is to actually talk about the things that make us sad, that anger us, that we keep hidden. And I see a situation like— I've said this, what I'm about to say, I've said this to leadership teams and they laugh at me. 5 years from now, you're going to be sitting around with your co-leaders and you'll be setting each other's remuneration, right? You'll actually be saying, right, CB, you earn this much money, I think you need to earn this much, and vice versa. When I talk about this at the moment in the current organization that we're in and the structures, people think I'm smoking some crazy stuff.

Yeah.

But again, it's all part of that shift in terms of the way we evolve our organizations. So So in the same way, I foresee a world where we actually are bringing the best of everyone and the worst out into the middle of the room to co-create. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine a co-creation of a culture?

Yes, that's exactly what I was talking about.

Yeah. And that's— it's not rocket science. And yet we continue to say, like COVID, for instance, everybody said We can't have this, this, this massive global experiment, right? It's forced us to work remotely, right? Now, I've been working with C-suite for 25 years where they said to me categorically, if I don't see my person in front of me, I don't trust them, they're not productive. But the biggest experiment in human capital history forced us to work remotely, and guess what? We became more productive.

Yes.

Now, there's been mental health challenges, of course, and We've both probably experienced some trauma along the way. Everybody has in one way or another. But ultimately, the stats speak for themselves. We have been more productive as a workforce. Now, whether we want to continue that is another conversation. But now what is the excuse? Because 25 years of excuses— well, if you're not in front of me, I don't trust you— because that's really what it comes down to.

Yeah.

I don't trust you to do your job and you need to be babysat. Well, we took all that away with COVID and people not like hit it out of the park. Yeah, right. So I could talk about this stuff all day. This, this, this is fascinating to me. It's, it's precious.

Our conversation. Okay, so Gary wrote in.

Oh, he's still there. Gary's still there.

Yeah. Um, okay, so Gary writes, is shame a barrier on Shame comes on top of fear and ego. Never thought about it in these terms of conversation, linked to fear but also different. Shame. I think the ego hits before shame, but that's an interesting question. And Gary, I don't have the answer.

Mm-hmm.

You know, certainly, um, if you fail, you know, I'm almost wanting to say shame and ego, you know, are, are the same. There's a handshake there. Because if you fail and you want to go and hide under a rock, is it your ego that's driving you to hide under the rock, or is it Shame that's driving you to hide under the rock. Now, you, Paul?

Yeah, I mean, I'm— so caveat here, I'm not a therapist or any— I'm not psychologically trained in any of this, but I've done a lot of reading in this kind of world. I know Brené Brown's work, I, you know, Pema Chödrön's attachment-related trauma. I mean, you know, they are kind of, in my opinion, two sides of the same coin, like shame and ego. But, but for me, I'm someone who wants to— I want to learn from what I failed at. So in order to do that, I have to recognize when my ego is coming in. There's a great book by, I think it's Chris Carson, Rick Carson, Taming the Gremlins, right? So in one of his suggestions, he says, just simply notice your gremlin, right? So it's another word for ego, right? Simply notice your ego, simply notice this, right? What's it doing? When does it come up? When does it surface? And typically, if we're talking about from a leadership perspective, the ego surfaces when we're trying to retain power, when we're trying to control turf, when we don't want to, you know, Fred has got the budget that I need, and I don't want to talk to Fred because I need the budget. So now I'm going to, you know, I'm going to react from an ego perspective. We see it manifest in everyday life, but the shame and the ego for me when I look at those leaders is that they're not addressing something deeper, right? Some deeper insecurity, some deeper need to feel validated, to feel like they belong. And so our ego is the other side of the coin because it protects us, or we think it protects us. Michael Singer wrote a brilliant book called The Untethered Soul, and chapter 1 is The Inner Roommate. And it's this— the voice that we all have in our heads that we think is protecting us. All right, now I have no doubt that, that this voice kind of keeps— thinks that it's keeping us on the straight and narrow, but sometimes we have to actually— we have to swim in the soup of shame. We have to go into that place because that's where the growth is. The ego is a way for me just to protect us from, from going fully in there. I think our best learnings from failures, when we feel the shame of failing— and by the way, shame goes a lot deeper than just surface-level failure, right? But when we feel shame for failing, most of us just want to suppress, deny, or move on from it. The real goal is when you go deeper into it. And that, I think, Gary, you asked that question also from a place of vulnerability, because to go into that soup, we need to be open to being vulnerable. And to be vulnerable, We have to recognize the ego's power on us. So we say, thank you, I notice it, but I'm going to leave it over there. And now I'm going to go deep into the vortex. Because that's why I think— I think that's where our growth comes from. But I don't— again, I've reviewed hundreds of leadership development programs. Very few of them actually talk about this stuff. They put it under the moniker of self-awareness.

Yeah.

Self-awareness is just a line on a t-shirt.

Right?

There's a lot more work beneath the surface to actually be a self-aware leader. And I know Gary's coming from this as well, from a perspective of a human-based leader, heart-centered, and very much kind of aligned to the values of a human and that having them manifest in the leadership capacity. But I think it's a great question. I don't suppose that I've got the right answer. I think this is all about discovery and Yeah, I kind of—

I'm processing it, and I think that ego can lead you down the road of shame, right? But I am coming out that ego is the top liner.

It's the headline.

And, you know, you go in to see the film, and that's where the shame comes in, right?

Yeah. And my whole work in the leadership and in that space that we talked about earlier, and part of my work is to put that in the middle of the room, is to talk about the ego and actually not be ashamed of it, ironically, because it does have a function.

Right, right. Yeah, yeah. But I guess I'm thinking like in certain situations where you have a culture that's allowed your ego to be a certain thing, and then you try to move from that, you can feel a sense of shame. Yeah, you know, I mean, it's a great question.

Can I give you an example? Uh, it might be, it might be a little too much for the Western ear, but I'm going to caveat it by saying My background's anthropology academically. In order to understand cultures or your culture, you have to understand other cultures, right? And it's all about we're making sense of rituals, values, norms, and behaviours because they drive and in fact they inform what our cultures become. I remember early on, now again I'm 47, thank you, I know I'm a baby, but I remember years ago when I studied anthropology and one of the first case studies we studied was, um, and I, I can't remember where it was in, in, um, Africa, but it was, it was, it was about the ritualized homosexuality of young boys. Now, what does that mean? Well, boys in this culture, in this township, were taken at the age of about 10 or 11 away from their family, and they were put into huts for the next 10 years, and they were sodomized daily by their family, by their men, by the uncles, by the dads, stuff, right? Now, just the reaction on your face just then, CB, because we're looking at it through the lens of a Western review, right? Horror, shock. This is pedophilia. This should be abominable. This is, you know, all that stuff. Now, we'd be right because that's our cultural lens. Now let me give you another thing. Let me, let me shift the narrative and the lens.

Make them more of a man.

Well, the ironic thing was, yes, in that 10 years that they were being ritually sodomized, what was happening was those same people were getting them farmland prepared, they were getting their future wife identified, and they were getting them their wealth ready and their cattle for their farms. And they came out at the age of 21, and now they were considered a man. Their gender was, was all— they were forming their sense of what it was like to be a man, male gender. in this, in these extreme acts. Now, to that culture, it wasn't extreme. It was all part of— Now, in the Western world, we would look at that as shameful. To Gary's point, we would feel shame. We would go through years of therapy, numerous failed relationships, numerous addictions, residential schooling, right? It's testament to this. But in that culture, It made them stronger. They came out, they knew their place in society, and they were considered to be powerful, confident people. Now, I don't make a judgment either way on which was right or wrong. I just put it to you and whoever's listening and watching this to say that sometimes when, when we've, we've tried a certain approach for so long, we convince ourselves that it's the right approach, that it's worked. We call this the normalisation of deviance. It's a scientific term. Adam Grant talks about it in Think Again, and I can apply it directly to the world of leadership because basically we think it's natural and normal to have silos in our leadership teams, to have politics, to have turf wars, to not talk about certain conversations, to have the meeting before the meeting, to have the post-debrief to the meeting, but leave you out of it because Because you were the problem. We think these things are normal, CB, but they're not. And I mentioned earlier the $7 trillion figure of disengagement that Gallup did. I may not have mentioned it was Gallup at that point. That's all part of why we have this toxic, disengaged culture that's costing us quite a lot of money because we've normalized certain things that have become our truths. Timothy Kluft Dr. Timothy Clark. I'm just going to say this, Dr. Timothy Clark from LeaderFactor, I went on one of his webinars recently about toxicity, another great guy, would encourage you to talk to him.

I did an interview with him.

Oh, you did? Oh, fantastic. Well, on this webinar, there were 7,000 people and 90% of the 7,000 had experienced toxic-related cultures, right? They coined this phrase that toxicity is in the walls. Right now, it doesn't need to be, but we've accepted it as normal. So what I'm saying is, if we reframe the narrative through slightly adjusting our lenses, we can see things very differently. So I know I've gone around the houses there again with Gary's comment, but it's all about how we see this concept. And I'm convinced that the future of leadership is going, and it is taking a very different lens to looking at these subjects. And we're in for— like, we think COVID's been a tragic pandemic. We haven't even started this future of leadership pandemic that's happening. Like, it's— yeah. And that's why I'm so fortunate to have such people like Gary and others that are creating this ecosystem where we are raising consciousness and we are awakening and we are reawakening people who've just got their head in the sand.

Yeah. So I go back to my question of before, which is, you know, the reaction that I had when talking about this tribe.

Mm-hmm.

How do we, just in the United States, much less than other countries, how do we normalize our reactions to understand? And I don't know if we can get to accept, but at least to understand rituals from various cultures that make us different. How do we normalize that so that we can all benefit becomes the great question.

And I believe firmly that it's rooted in our education. It starts in the education at that level where young kids learn, you know, they learn from role models, their parents, their church, you know, other things, but the education sector has a responsibility as a key way of shaping future citizens. But I, again, I'm not sure, I know, I'm not sure what I'm saying is complete in terms of the picture, but it's my initial thinking.

I think it's complete. I think there is another elephant in the room, which is that in schools today, they aren't teaching the complete history. You know?

No, you're right.

History has gotten to be too long, too burdensome. We have to do the Cliff Notes. And unfortunately, those Cliff Notes are from somebody's interpretation, as all history is. But it even makes it harder to get to the true meaning of what's taken place. I mean, the complaint is, well, there's too many books now. History is so long. It's a weight on children's books. Come on, put it on the damn computer, right? You know?

Yeah.

Got a couple of other comments I want to be sure to get in. Kathleen writes, the boardroom needs to change. A whole new set of skills will be needed. The, the we've always, don't do it this way, we've always done it, don't do it this way days are over, I think, is what she's saying. You know, yeah, when you're trying to do something like this. So for sure, for sure. And I might say, as more women come into the boardroom.

Yeah, I mean, I can't remember whether it was a conference board that I leveraged some research when I was talking earlier about the diverse diversity and inclusion. I think having women of colour on boards actually creates performance and productivity of organisations by, what, between 18% and 21% compared to those organisations that don't have diversity of membership. But I was just gonna say something about education, and this might take us back in time a little bit, but— and it's around sexual orientation and I, my master's degree, I studied social policy, and I studied it in the mid-'90s where I was— I used the internet for the first time ever to do some social science research. And my study was actually trying to find out whether, whether gay couples had a higher level of domestic inequality based on whether one person earned more than the other. Now, the reason I did that was because it It was assumed at that point that heterosexual couples, if you earn more, then you had a higher level of power and control in the household.

Yes, I remember that.

So my work came along and it did—

What was the result of your work?

Well, it did several things. It did several unintended things. One, it blew up this whole concept of what a household was, because up until that point, a household was a man and a woman. I said it could be 2 male male people, it could be 2 females, right? It then paved the way for social policy to reformulate, to integrate different definitions of what a household was. But, and then I revealed that at that point, up until that point, all social policy in the UK had been based on what they call heterosexist principles. So assuming it was a man and woman as a recipient of social policy. But the thing I wanted to say in relation to one of the other points we made was, as part of my peer-reviewed research, I found some really distressing research that in schools, to take it back to the school, we were teaching our kids in schools, and it was under Margaret Thatcher's government that we were in the Conservative Party, we were teaching schools that, that homosexuality was not a pretended family relationship. So that was what they call Section 28 of a certain legislation. So in a nutshell, simplistically, What that meant was you were not legally allowed to teach children that there was any other nuclear family other than a man and a woman, right? This was in the '90s. This came in the '80s, and it had a lot of impact from a discrimination perspective on gay and lesbian couples and families. The reason I mention it is because if we are to reeducate, then we have to have that conversation. Conversation about being open to, to, at that systemic level, to talk about these things, because that ideology was in place for 25 years. And, and if we relate it to race, it's the same thing. If we relate it to, to transgender, um, children, right? If we relate it to, to disabled children, it's the same concept that we have to, we have to address the elephant in the room, and we have to be open to having the conversation. Doesn't mean it's not going to be painful.

Totally. Okay, yeah, 2 more questions, 2 more statements, and we are so over time.

I've lost track of time. Oh my God, I forgot I've had a COVID vaccine.

Come on now. Um, we'll break this up into a couple of sessions here.

Okay.

Um, so Gary writes in at 2 o'clock an hour ago. I love this point, CB. I think Paul's fired has huge uppercase potential to drive embedded and meaningful DEI. Way to go. Totally agree. And then he writes, love this conversation as part of HEART, and that is critical crazy to think Caring is disruptive. Love it.

Yeah, he's right. I think there's another author called Heather Younger who has written a book called The Art of Caring Leadership, I think it's called. And again, there's a whole movement out there around bringing more heart and human-centered philosophies into the way we lead. And they're agnostic of the things we've been talking about— gender, race, ability, sexual orientation. It's the principle underpinning it. That, that a lot of those guys and girls are talking about.

Yeah, Dr. Richard Boyatzis does a lot of discussion about it. I also interviewed him.

Oh, cool.

You know, take a listen. Hey, I, I need to end our conversation. You know, you, you did say to me that my team didn't respond to your question about what questions will you be asked, and now you know why. Yeah, thank you. It doesn't work like a show. Yeah.

It just takes off, you know. And I love the format. I love going wherever it goes and having some, you know, controversial, challenging, and, you know, learning-focused, and just things that make people perhaps question things differently or see things in a different way. You know, I and you, we don't have all the answers. We, we're just, you know, I like to think that I'm someone, I've got broad shoulders, right? So if someone wants to shoot the messenger, in fact, that's chapter, that's the first chapter of my book. That's the name of the first book chapter. Someone wants to shoot the messenger, then fine. But there's enough of us now that are growing in, in this way of thinking that, that we can't be ignored any longer.

No. And I just, you know, I'm from the days of You're being not from the United States, New York, might not know about the Greenwich Village coffee shops where—

No, I don't know about that.

Yeah, it was lower New York in Greenwich Village, and it spawned people like Andy Warhol. We used to just sit over a cup of espresso, coffee, or tea and have conversations like this. The goal was not to agree with anybody. The goal was to learn and listen to different perspectives. And the art of— how can I say— the art of dissecting what they said and then reassembling it and coming out with maybe a new thought for yourself. But it was always very argumentative, but in a— very academic, you know, perspective. You know, Andy Warhol's movie about the Campbell Soup Can where you just sit there and look at the Campbell Soup Can for hours. That was our time. And so the conversation was very much like this.

Yeah.

Rapid fire. Yeah, let me hear what you think about it. No, I don't agree with that. And you walked away So energized and so excited.

And I love the jigsaw. You know, we talked earlier when you talked about, you know, what we do as thought leaders or gurus, we take something and we put all these pieces there, we put them together and we disassemble and we come up with something new. What I like about that is what I'm doing in my work is I'm taking the jigsaw and I'm throwing it up in the air and I'm seeing how it lands. And you know what? There is no playbook for how we design this going forward, so why don't we all get involved and do it together, right? So, you know, it could, it could be this, it could be that, who knows. But yeah, it's, uh, it's exciting, it's unpredictable, and yeah, uh, I'm in it. I've, I've strapped in.

Good. Okay, we're tagging each other from now on. We're creating a new Greenwich Village. Let's go for it. Hey, audience, I've got to run. Paul has to run. Listen, check out Paul, The Fired Leader, all of his books. Tag him, tag me. Let's go for creating disruption in the best possible way. Let's start taking the best and the worst, examining it, and creating a new dynamic, a new culture. With that, I'm going to say that's That's the secret for today. Let's create it new. This is CB Bowman, brought to you live with Paul McCartney, and what a show. Yeah, I do warn you, find me, track me. I won't think that you're just like, uh, what's the term when people track you all over the place?

Stalking?

Yeah, I won't think you're stalking me. I'm thinking you're going to be part of the clan for change and transition. So go for it.

Great.

I'll see you guys on Tuesday with another guest. Bye now. Paul, thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you.