Challenges of the C-Suite with Dr. Guila Clara Kessous, Episode 29

Hello everybody. This is CB Bowman Live, Challenges of the C-Suite. And I could see today my voice is not in sync with my lips. So, you know, as I say, life goes on. It's just a technical challenge. Ride with it, right? Hey, how's everybody doing? You know, I miss you during the week. I really do. I, I kind of— I wish I had the energy to do this every single day and have the most amazing guests that I always have on, but I think my husband might kill me, right? Because you know how these guys are, they love attention. And we love giving it to them, right? So today— oh, I'm getting a note saying we're having trouble streaming to LinkedIn. This may be an issue on LinkedIn. Okay, well, as I said, LinkedIn, that's probably why we're getting this delayed response. Let's see if we can roll with it and see what happens. If worst comes to worst, we'll publish this on LinkedIn separately, or we'll provide a link to YouTube and you'll be able to see it— YouTube and Facebook— because it is streaming in real time on those other channels. Sorry, LinkedIn, you snooze, you lose. So, okay, let's talk to our guest today. And you know, I always have amazing people. But Dr. Gila is knocking it out the ballpark. Oh my God, I'm nervous talking to her. Can we talk? She is so accomplished and she's making us look like peanut butter. What could I say?

Like, come on, CB.

And then she's got the French accent to rock it all together. Okay, here we go. Doc, introduce yourself. Welcome.

Welcome. Thank you so much, CB, for such an introduction and getting me on your wonderful broadcast show. So hi everybody, it's a pleasure to be with you today. So excuse my French first, of course, because— yeah, because being French, I will not remove my French accent, but I will not try to make it too heavy for you to fully understand me. My name is Gila Clara Quezuz, and I'm a certified coach. I got certification and I would say some major in negotiation, in positive psychology, and in emotional intelligence. I had the chance to work with Harvard professors such as Tal Ben-Shahar in positive psychology, William Ury in the negotiation, and also Paul Ekman for the emotional intelligence. My first, first job, my first work, my first love, my first career is theater. Okay? So basically, as a dramatic performer, I'm using in my coaching all games that are using theater games, such as role games and communication games, in order to reinforce the impact you may have as a C-suite challenger. And after doing my conservatory, you know, in France you have a conservatory when you want to become an artist. So after doing the conservatory, I wonder, okay, but what is performing art do? Just put actors on stage, making them say words that are not theirs, making them move following the director rules. So what is the freedom here? What is the nobility here? And I was A little bit disappointed. And I decided to use theater method to help people's life. I was obsessed at the beginning with humanitarian work. I helped a lot of survivors, like genocide survivors, Rwanda, Shoah. I helped victims of excision, women in Congo, for example, using theater to help them Wait, wait, wait.

Victims of what?

Victims of excision. You know what is excision? This is terrible sexual violence that women may have. You know, it's difficult to even mention it because it's touching women, especially in African countries such as Congo. And so excision is really something difficult to fight. And women who have been victims of excision usually are losing all type of self-confidence. And I've been there to help them also with theater in order to help them to get back on track. So I don't know if you knew that, CB, but I'm happy to tell you this.

Let's, let's stop and tell us what happens during this time.

So basically, I had the chance to work with a wonderful playwright. See, we are still doing theater here. So this playwright, his name, Eve Ensler. Have you heard of Eve Ensler before? Eve Ensler is the famous playwright who wrote The Vagina Monologue. And this woman decided to create a town in Congo that is called City of Joy. And in City of Joy, lots of victims of excision, women there benefit from theater workshops, lyrical workshops with singing, all type of art therapy. And I was completely amazed by this work, and I decided to use the theater that I learned in the conservatory to help women victims of excision following Eve Ensler's example. to help them reinforce this self-confidence. And this will be the same, CB, this will be the same techniques that I'm going to use for the C-suite. So ladies and gentlemen, don't think that we are not following our theme here. On the contrary. Go ahead. Sorry.

But no, this is good. So we circle back, but can you describe what takes place in incision? Why is it that the women lose their Self-confidence.

Oh, okay. So I will not explain fully what is excision because I think it could be a little bit violent here, but you can Google it and you will see. Um, this is something that is basically hurt women with something that is a cutting directly in genitals of women. And this is a tradition that has been made out mostly in African countries, and this tradition is preserved by people, and most of the people are women. So it's also something that women among them recommend for their little girls. And this, yeah, this is very shocking knowing it. So that's why to go against this tradition, it's not only, I would say, a question of conviction and that would be political, but also a question of helping those women to understand that they are not, I would say, they are not wrong not doing this type of tradition. But at the City of Joy, Eve Ensler is working with women who are victims of excision, and by doing this, they are creating a little community who is fighting excision. So it's a mutilation, CB, if you want, that is made at a very young age.

Um, uh, hold on one second. Um, I think there's some noise in my background that might come through. Um, can that noise stop, please? Thank you. Um, so, so So what is it that the City of Joy does to help these, uh, women?

So most, um, of it is art therapy. So as I was saying that theater can help people, art therapy is offering not only theater, it's offering dance, it's offering singing, it's offering a way to get what we are calling the catharsis. I don't know if some of you have heard of this, but the catharsis to really, I would say, spit off what happened to you in order to have people understand it and not having it burning inside of you.

And, uh, yeah, I, I do know art therapy because my background was art, um, and so I understand what you're saying. And one of our colleagues, of my colleagues, who's part of MG100, who I interviewed— actually, he was the last person I interviewed, um, Johannes. And Johannes does therapy through song. He helps people create songs to express their upset, their disappointment, their anger, uh, to get it all out. And he works with executive coaches, and a lot of men Because men in the United States are raised to keep any of their emotion inside, right?

True.

And so it bottles up. And this is, I believe, why we see a higher rate of heart attacks amongst men in the United States. You have no place to, to take that emotion, to let it come through you and leave you, right? Yeah. So I think that, um, I remember back in the '60s, '70s, maybe art therapy was used a lot. And I don't know why it seems to have gone away, but I love Johannes bringing this back through music. So I'm— I understand what you're saying here.

So it's really the same thing that we're doing, that what Johannes is doing, but using theater. And what is wonderful with music is that there is this inner voice that you can go That can help you to really spit out what is inside of you. What is great with theater is really switching roles.

Yes.

Yeah. And here we get to an entire, I would say, game that would be extremely interesting for, of course, the executive side, for the personal side, and for the humanitarian side.

Yeah.

But I really, at the beginning of my career, I really worked on this notion of how theater could help survivors. And I saw wonderful, wonderful things. I was talking about victims of excisions. Depending on their characters, women would say, I'm too shy to perform, so I would like to just do some small exercise with the 5 pillars, the 5 pillars being the posture, the gesture, the voice. Exactly, posture, gesture, voice, eye contact, and silence. All of these, which are the 5 pillars of communication. So they just wanted to work the presentation of themselves. Others, I would say, would be less shy and say, I want to make an entire play about my life.

Yes.

And they were doing some, some, you know, little plays about what happened to them and how they overcome. Because it's always a question of resilience. It's always a question how— what is my storytelling? What is the story and how I went through it? What is my own mythology? This is really what the question is in order to go through it and realize that what doesn't kill you Makes you stronger.

Thank you.

Yep, for sure.

One of my favorite songs.

Sure.

Yeah, it's, it's— I love what you're doing. I love what you're talking about. You know, um, one of the things in Myers-Briggs that they say is, uh, the— I mean, I want to make sure I get it right— most of the CEOs in the United states are introverts. And so you wonder, how is it that they get the strength to lead an organization? Well, it's like you get on the stage and you become somebody else, right? And when you get off the stage, you can go back into your introversion.

Exactly. Yeah, lots of CEOs that are coming are really revealing the big secrets, saying that I need to put my costume of superhero in order to go and become a manager because I'm not born a manager. I'm born to be an expert. And here I am, I have to go and tell others what to do where I don't even know what to do myself.

Exactly.

And you are completely right. There is a role game, a transformation. that happened. And this is very interesting to understand it, I would say, from the inner point of view. Um, just for you to understand how I did the big jump between this humanitarian side to a more corporate side, Harvard University invited me to teach a class, Theater and Human Rights.

Lovely.

Wonderful, huh? And when I came to Harvard, I was almost on a burnout. I heard so many stories. I've done a PhD with Elie Wiesel, who is this Nobel Peace Prize, that's a great survivor of the Shoah. And so I heard so many testimonies that when Harvard invited me, I was ruined inside. Because when I was on stage helping others, I found I found the goal of my life. But when I closed the door and get to my own green room, I was empty. There was no taste.

Yeah.

And even when I had some, you know, moment of desperation or sadness with boyfriends or other, I was like, Gila, how dare you cry? How dare you feeling sad? You heard people who had so much decency telling you that they lost everything and you're crying for this little bad girl. And so—

When you stop and think about the atrocities that people have been through and then you sit and you whine because you don't have a job or you don't have this or you don't have that. I mean, it's mind-boggling how spoiled the generations people have become.

I know.

When, when COVID hit the United States and people— I remember my trip to Cuba and going into the pharmacy and seeing the lines of people to get an aspirin even. And you walk into a pharmacy and the shelves are bare. You walk into the groceries, it's bare. And we here in the United States are whining and carrying on. When the shelves were bare here in the United States, it was like somebody took me and shook me and said, remember Cuba?

Mm-hmm.

Bad experience. But how many people in the United States have experienced Cuba? How many people have experienced Panama? Early in the day. And this is nothing compared to the atrocities of concentration camps of Yugoslavia. This is child's play in comparison. I know.

This is—

You almost want to say in the United States, it's a good thing we had COVID. Now we're starting to understand the world's problems. We've been so isolated being across the water. And I'm not saying that people should die so that we recognize it. What I am saying is we need to take the time to understand what's going on and even experience it if you can afford to go there and see what's going on in other parts Yes.

And I, with your permission, I will share the interview I made of Eve Ensler, this famous playwright, because she is saying the same thing. She's saying that COVID was a way to wake us up regarding a society that thinks that, that I would say has the habits of the old world.

Yes.

easiness, something that, you know, is brought very easy into their life, whereas each little thing is in fact something that really requests a lot of work to do.

Yes.

But the problem is, in my case, I was forcing myself not to get any type of emotion. So I was completely burned inside. And so, um, at Harvard University, when you are teaching a class, you can take any class for free, which is great. And so I took a class on happiness, and this class would change my life.

No way! At Harvard, a class on happiness?

Yes, that was the class of positive psychology by Professor Tal Ben-Shahar. That was the most popular class at that time. And that was really about scientific research about what is happiness and how happiness could be not only something that is making you feel better, but that making you feel of the most of your performance. So by being happy, you're helping the society feel happy too. And that was extremely moving for me because I realized that in the transmission chain that I was trying to have because I was helping a victim. If the transmitter doesn't take care of him or her, and this is something we see a lot in the coaching community or in the CEOs, in the C-suite, we are seeing people who sacrifice themselves all for the other, giving all. If you're not taking care about yourself also, taking care about your own happiness, you are not fulfilling this role you love so much, which is giving to others. And I really like that. And, and when I came to this professor, Tal Ben-Shahar, at the end of the class, and I told him, you know, thank you so much, that positive psychology was not known for me, but I— can I tell you something? I think this is still very intellectual. And as a performance person, as a theater girl, I think this should be coming more into the body. And Tal Ben-Shahar said, okay, I give you carte blanche for you to imagine theater games about positive psychology. And he said, little by little, girl, you will realize that your big ambition to change the world by giving the chance, the opportunity to victims to talk, Is beautiful, but you don't need to look for atrocity. You don't need to look for terrible suffering. Look around, look in the institution, look in the companies, and become a coach, because you will see that the techniques you're using will be very useful to help the pain of those people. And that's how I became coach.

It takes a lot to make me speechless. But there was so much that flooded through my head when I was listening to you— fragments of conversations, fragments of experiences. And you're so right. If you can't get to a place of happiness inside You are no good to anyone. Anyone. And so in this coaching world that you and I are in, we have to be so focused on taking care of, of ourselves. And I don't mean in, um, And, uh, what's the words that I want? I don't mean in a selfish way. I mean, if we expect to be able to help others and we lack the energy and lack the positive, we're depleted. If we deplete, if we allow ourselves to become depleted, We can't help others, and our jobs rely on us helping others. You know, I just said to my husband the other day, I'm tired. And then I realized, I said, you know, I'm not— I'm not tired of the work that I do. I'm tired of working.

Mm.

This is a big difference, right? I, I love seeing other people change, develop, expand something I might have said or encouraged it. It's so exciting, but we have to be so careful that we're not trying to help people that don't want to be helped. Because that's depleting us. And so part of our strength is to identify those people and separate them out and get them out of our space, right? So we can continue to nourish ourselves and those who would celebrate, those that respect. You know, I remember when I was much earlier in my career and there was a woman that Um, said that she needed help and support, and I tried every way in my little brain to help her, and she got angry at me. And I said to myself, what are you doing? This happened to me twice. It wasn't going to happen a third time. I said, what are you doing? Are you insane? You're trying to help somebody who doesn't want to be helped and you're getting your feelings hurt. I'm like, what the hell? So I understand exactly what you're saying, but in the work that you did in the humanitarian space, tell us about the work that you did in the humanitarian space.

Okay, so I will tell you all about that. But first, I would like to share a little idea you gave me regarding how coach needs to be coached, need to be supervised, need to be happy in order to give. Because I saw a lot of coaches who are desperate to help, who are feeling like nurses, and who are babysitting their coachee. And this is something that is no good. Just to come back to this notion, and I will tell you, of course, in a second what I was doing as a humanitarian, I would say, activist. A lot of C-suite managers are coming to me and they want to be a leader. And I answer them, if you don't know to be a follower, You will not be a good leader.

Oh my God, that is so powerful! Whoa, I am writing this down. If you don't know how to be a good follower, How can you be a good leader? Okay, I am giving you full credit for that one.

Haha, copyrighted.

Okay, that is very, very powerful.

It is because everybody wants to be a leader. No one wants to be a follower. Well, you know this philosophical dialectic between the master and the slave. Do you remember this by Hegel? Who is making the master? The master himself or the slave? The slave is the one who makes the master master. If the slave decides to leave, the master is the master of No one, nothing. So you want to be a good leader? Be a good follower. Know who you want to follow. Even if you're a top CEO, try to understand what type of inspiration, what type of follower you would like to be in order to really follow exactly your intuitions. And this is the way I'm opening usually my coaching for C-suite challengers. Because this is something that will immediately have them react, and they will know if yes or no, they are in a good place in terms of coaching. Another thing that I want to say, and especially to this type of population, is that one challenge of the C-suite is that sometimes coaching for C-suite is forced, forced by human resources or N+1 who are saying, excuse me, I think you need a little coaching. As you said, I think You need a little time to lay down on the red sofa and talk to someone because you have a problem. So when it's like that, I remember one CEO coming to me and say, so if I understand correctly, you will tell everything I'm telling you to my managers? I tell them, well, I will tell you a secret, sir. If I see that you are suffering in your job position, I will make everything in order for you to be dismissed, to be put away, to choose to leave the company, and the company would have paid for it. Because my job is to secure your mental and physical integrity more than anything else as a coach. So you need to understand confidentiality. And it's, I would say, a secret agreement that I will do anything in order for you to get out of this coaching a better self than when you came into my office. And people, this is that you still have today CEOs and C-suite who are afraid of coaching. And this is why I love so much this type of conversation, because they need, thanks to you, CB, to see that You have people who are here to help, to serve them. And so this is something—

The problem in the United States has been that coaching— first of all, the first problem is the confusion around different types of coaching, right? What are the responsibilities of that particular type of Coach, don't— as we say in my race, don't get it twisted, sister.

Okay, okay, sis, you ready?

Okay, let's go. So, okay, yes, let's go. So, you know, it— and then on top of that, because it was so twisted, you get people confusing behavioral modification with coaching, right? Because we have used coaching punitively.

I know, this is so true.

And so therefore, people do not have a clear understanding of what coaching is. Yes, there's punitive coaching, but there's also leadership and success coaching, right? Which is a completely different framework. I'd rather leave the behavior modification to the shrinks. Sorry, guys. I know it's just such trouble on this show. And leave the leadership and success coaching to the executive coach. Right now you're talking about life successes. That's a life coach. That's a psychologist. Can we just please understand the roles and responsibilities for each of these professionals?

Excellent. Executive coaching is giving tools specific in order to enhance professional environment. Tools such as communication, tools such as strategy and vision, tools such as I would say things that would be used like sociogram in order to better understand, like assessments. It's still executive coaching, could be used for life coaching, but assessment needs to come out with an action, personal action plan in order for the executive coaching being successful. And executive coaching should always begin with objectives and, and ways to measure you obtain your objectives, because everybody have objectives, but less people have clear indicators of coaching.

Hold on now, because we've got some problems here, right? Um, so here what's happening is coaches are going out and saying, I can give you an ROI, and so therefore hire me. And I just— the fumes come out of my head when I hear this, because I come from classical marketing. If you're going to measure an ROI, the research, the data has to be pure. You cannot measure ROI With coaching alone. Now, you can say— the coachee can say, my ROI was met. This is what I wanted to measurably get out of the engagement.

Excellent.

You cannot say that you're, as a coach, you improve the entire organization.

There is no such a thing, and there is no need, and I would say no interest for that.

But now, with my association, the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches, we do believe that coaches, if you're an executive coach, if you're a corporate executive coach, then the definition for that needs to be that you are an enterprise-wide business partner. This has several layers to it. It means not only your confidence in your capacity to go toe-to-toe with any executive that's out there, not backing down, Right. It's understanding their triggers. It's understanding the competitive frame by which they sit. That is maybe 50% of being a corporate executive coach. So anything below that, you're not even in the ballpark. Right? If you don't understand an ROI from the business perspective, how you're measuring success from a business perspective, which is looking at your SOM, then hell, what are you doing? Right? If you don't even know who the competitors are, that are triggering this C-suite person to make certain decisions or part of the decision-making process, what the heck are you calling yourself an executive? What are you delivering here?

I would say for me, the hardest thing, because I'm working with a lot of companies, is really the learning of the untold codes, untold cultural codes. And what is— this is what is wonderful. It's almost learning a different language, different values, different—

It is.

And you need to make this transformation and this fine analysis as a coach in order to understand that when you are with L'Oréal, for example, you know, L'Oréal, okay, you need to speak about glocal. What is glocal? That's the global and local at the same time. So if everybody comes up and say to you, we need to go global, and you're like, do you have a problem with the way you're talking? You have a problem with— you know what I mean?

I know exactly.

So it's really learning a new language, learning new path, learning new behavior. And this is your job as a coach. For me, it's like rehearsing a new character.

I love it.

It's like Marlon Brando acting.

Okay.

You just go and dig. Okay, what's my character? What's my new environment? What is the situational intelligence? Yes, situational intelligence.

I love this. I love this. And this, you know, I have to go so far as to say this is what we should be coaching for, is situational intelligence. Because if you open the book, you read the book, and you go line by line, this is the blah blah blah blah blah blah, what are you offering? Your client can open the book and read it line by line. That's not what they're looking for. It's like, now I don't want to denounce methodologies, but to me, once you reach a certain level as an executive coach, if you are doing appreciative inquiry alone, You're in the wrong business.

This is true. This is true. And I will tell you something as an improv actor that my professor used to say. He is a wonderful person named Jack Walzer. You will see he's one of the giants of method acting. And he trained, you know, we were talking about Marlon Brando. He trained all of the famous actors and he He used to say, don't prepare, just show up.

Oh.

So what does it mean to show up as a coach is having the power to remove everything, learning exactly what my aim— so what is this new landscape that I'm going into it, and be dedicated. Because maybe one word of your coachee can change an entire thing that you plan to do for this workshop session. So don't prepare, just show up, be there, have this presence. You know, we speak about charisma, aura, this presence to the other. And then of course, as an executive, you will be good.

Know your tools. I have to admit, when my guests come for this show, they want to prepare. What do I And I remember one guy who was just very well known, he kept saying, CB, what should I read? What should I say? What, you know, do you have any script for me? Do you have samples? I said, stop. This is— just show up. I'll take care of the rest. And he couldn't get past that because, well, what's the theme? I said, the theme is to have a conversation. I said, don't worry about the rest, because if I tell you this is what we're going to discuss and you say something that's different, then I'm going to switch the entire conversation. So whatever you prepared is not going to be right. So just relax. No, I've got your back. And let's just chat it up. It drove him insane. And this is a guy who, when he starts talking, you can't get in a word edgewise. And I wasn't expecting this. It was just— it's, it's so funny. We all, we have this instinct that we don't want to be wrong. It's really bad to be wrong.

Well, this is the biggest challenge of the C-suite I ever know, the syndrome of the good student. You know that syndrome of the good student? I need to do well. I need to be loved by my professors. I need to be recognized. I need to be good. I need to be the first in class and to learn my thing by heart. and say it without having the other interrupt me. Well, of course, of course, you will never be a good manager doing this. You will do maybe cooperation, but never collaboration, 'cause collaboration, and this is how you see a good CEO, is when the CEO speaks less than the others in team. That's it.

Why is it that you think Here, I'm going to say here in the United States because, well, I've traveled to France. I don't know the culture well enough to answer this question. Why is it that we have a need to be perfect versus a need to try? And either we have a need to be perfect It's either we're perfect or we don't give a shit. It's— there's no middle ground here. Why is that? What is driving us?

I would say that it's all about, um, internal belief regarding the archetype of Americans. As American, you need to prove the others that you know more and you're perfect and you're bringing something to the world. Don't, don't forget that for us in France, you are still the big winner of World War II. You are heroes. You are the one who delivered us from this terrible thing that was Nazism. So I think that In America, you still have unconsciously this notion of being superhero, and you need always to demonstrate it to the world. And that's why sometimes you have people who are fighting until burnout, because they feel that they have this mission to do and that they have to sacrifice themselves in the mission without remembering what I said. If you're not happy, And if you're not in good shape, you will never help others. You will never be efficient in the help you're giving, like the mask you need to put first on yourself in the plane, and then after, after to your kids. This is terrible. As a mother, this is terrible to think that I'm going to have to put myself, think before my— but this is how the rules are if you want to be efficient. So, you know, there is something beautiful that Tal Ben-Shahar is saying at Harvard, permission to be human. Give me the permission to be human.

Hmm. That's it.

Give me the permission to fail and understand how failure is part of my success. Because if a baby doesn't fall, he's not able to learn how to walk.

But that— and we, and we have a question from Michael, uh, Ehrlich, which I want to, uh, address. Do you think that Americans— oh, this is going to get you in trouble— don't know the definition of being human?

Hmm, well, I think Americans know what is a definition of being superhuman, being surhuman. This is said through an eye of a French person, of a French coach, but Americans that I'm training, that I'm coaching, I see have this very strict education of never crying, never show emotions, and just go, and being extremely strict. with others because they're strict with themselves. And what is to be human is to accept not only failure, which could be a weakness, but simply to accept to need others. When you tell others that you need them, of course you should not say that as a CEO every single day, but when you accept to say that, the others realize That they have a role to play. They have a space to take. You are not doing everything because you are learning also. Even if you're such an expert, you have others who could really be useful. Let the other take their place, even if it's not as well as what you have— you would have done it, or as quickly as the way you would have done it. But just, that's what I would say. What is a good leader? What is a good CEO? Is someone in meetings who knows how to be facilitator more than leader. Someone who knows how to make the other talk than simply to give solutions to others. And I know you will tell me, I'm going to lose my time. Let me give them solutions. Let me give them orders. So you do this, you do this. But We are done with the pyramidal management. That's it. You really need to work this, especially in COVID times. You have to take in account the suffering of others and make them think that they have a place because they for real have a place to take, and you have a lot to learn from them, even if they don't know as much as. what you do. This is something that you really need to take into account.

I think you're right. But I think that— and I think that the other side of the picture, I mean, I can— a lot of conversations flooded through my head, even the one that I had yesterday with an executive coach. And I was coaching this person on speaking on podcasts. And I said, you know, you're smart. You won't— she's incredibly smart. And I said, one of the things you want to work on is your ability to communicate through podcasts and speaking engagements. And the person was a speaker. I said, but here's what I observed. When you're speaking directly in a conversation, the words flow. When you're speaking in front of the public, there's hesitancy. And the response was— because I'm trying to remember the question and I'm trying to think about the next question, or I've gotten 2 questions and I want to be sure I answer them.

all.

And I said, you know what? It's okay to say, I've forgotten your question. It's okay to say, can you repeat the question? It's okay to say, let me think about the answer. We don't have to be superhuman in having conversations or anything else. And, and yet we have the flip side. Of people who— and I'm remembering somebody I was talking to recently— who has to have all the answers. And what I've realized in this person is they have to have the answers so bad that they are not listening to the question. That's kind of scary.

Yeah.

Because if you think of this person as, as a leader, then you're thinking, you're leading me down the garden path. That's not what I was talking about at all.

This is a phenomenon that is called happy hearing. Have you heard of this expression before? The happy— I'm telling you, this is a— this exists. A happy hearing is when someone is thinking so much that the other will speak about something that the answer that the person will give will include things that the other did not say, but that exist only in the mind of the person who is talking. And I'm going to tell you something, most of the leaders listen not to understand, but to answer. And this is something that needs to be fight— I mean, to be fought, especially with what we're calling the active listening. You need to be able to listen, to simply understand without anticipating any type of answer, but be with the other, exactly like an improv when suddenly someone will say a word. I was not expecting this word. What am I doing with this word? And being extremely adaptive in order to just play, like tennis. We don't know where the ball is coming, but has to be a way to welcome the otherness of the other. And for a manager, this should be a rule.

I love what you said. Most of the leaders listen To answer versus to understand. That is another powerful statement. Wow. Hang on, let me see what, um, I think it's Michael Earlett. KBI are visionary ways to manage as we are humans. KPI are for robots. Thanks for this new perspective. Could you share feedback from people that you KBI. Thanks, ladies, for this amazing moment.

That's very sweet. So, um, in fact, people, and especially, um, an entire company strategy who is using KBIs— and again, KBIs are key behavioral indicators versus key PIs that we all know the key performance indicators or key FIs, key financial indicators. So KPIs are not a way to force everybody to have the same behavior. On the contrary, it's really ways to well-behaved and find a way to be equal. So it could be in communication, it could be on, I would say, way to handle obstructive behavior such as manipulation, passivity, aggressivity. All those need to be known by the leader in order for him to know that there are techniques, and you don't have to be aggressive with someone aggressive or passive with someone passive. Those come from very, I would say, fear and anxiety, and especially within the environment right now, COVID is increasing the level of aggressivity. We all know that. Aggressivity and passivity. So for a manager, for a CEO, for the C-suite people, this is a time where they need to have the tools in order to really get through aggressivity and passivity, not with Shall I say a bad word? Bullshitting. Okay, not with bad way to do it, but simply by understanding where the aggressivity comes from, why the passivity is here, and what to do with manipulation. I quoted William Ury, who wrote a beautiful book that is called The Positive No. I recommend this book in order for people to understand how to be clear about when I'm saying a yes, what am I saying a no to? And when I'm saying a no, what am I saying a yes to? Giving you an example, very simple, an example of dating. Let's say that you are invited to a movie by a very nice gentleman. If you say yes, maybe this nice gentleman will understand that you want to have to A restaurant after, where in fact, maybe you are married and you don't want to have this moment at a restaurant. So when you say yes, try to understand what you say no to. And we see that William Ury is the master of negotiation. He's the one who created the win-win negotiation technique. And as a coach, we are working a lot with this technique in order to have people understand not only from a result of the negotiation, but more on the needs of the negotiation. And so he is the one who created the PON, Program on Negotiation at Harvard University. And I strongly advise you to know the work of William Ury and Roger Fisher, the book called Getting to Yes. So again, those things that involve psychology, yes, that involve coaching tools are very necessary today in order for KPIs to become, I would say, vivid in a company and to become really useful.

Do we have— we have another question. Well, Terry Emile says hi.

Hi, Terry.

Do we have— An example of an organization who uses this as a best-in-case model?

Yeah, so right now a lot of supply chain companies are using KBIs a lot. A lot of finances companies are using KBIs also, and I'm gonna give some examples such as 3M, for example, which is a very important firm that is working B2B and that included the KPIs into their, their rules as a way to have an annual review to An employee, for example.

And I heard specifically what they're doing.

So basically, they included communication tools, our KPIs, into the annual review. So for example, when you are an employee, at the end of the year, you will have a one-to-one interview with your N+1, and include to the KPIs, you will also have KPIs in order to know how to situate yourself in terms of communications, in terms of strategy. And basically, if you feel that you have not performed well, you would have offered some trainings, some coaching also. So this is the type of thing that exists. I heard that Johnson Johnson also is creating some KBIs. So what we see is that some very international and B2B firms begin to use it. Right now, what I can say in the market, we have less B2C firms using it, but it begins slowly to change. In Europe, we have some B2C coming. So it's all coming from some companies who want to really emphasize this notion of putting away the pyramidal management that I quoted before. Very inspired by what we're calling the new management, you know, the holacracy. Maybe you have heard, all of you, this term before. Holacracy is this notion of how to manage without a boss and how to allow the boss to become an expert again, not only having him doing babysitting with the management that is most of the time A way to manage egos and not why he has been hired for. He came for a nice position as an expert. He or she has been working a lot, universities, diploma, and he arrives and he's put in front of a management task. And he's like, what? I have to deal with people who are sending emails, CC everybody, and being sure that some others are not against that. the poor person is coming for conflict management more than expertise that he should have been hired for. So that's why we're trying to really answer this type of needs with the KPIs.

So we have, uh, Voltaire is asking, she says— I'm not sure if it's a he or she— I am reading Marshall Marshall B. Rosenberg. Yeah, communicating better. Do you recommend him?

Ha! Well, Marshall Rosenberg, you know him, CB. He is really the master of nonviolent communication with this very famous book on nonviolent communication. So of course I recommend him. He is, I would say, the basic that everybody should be able to read, I remind people that Marshall Rosenberg found out that in fact, 90% of the conflict of a company was not about the health, financial health of the company, but was coming from internal conflict. So that's why it's all about knowing how to communicate among each other, and especially because we are losing so much of our life in an office or sometimes virtually because of COVID So indeed, the way to behave and the way to interact should become something that people get a little survivor guide somewhere in order to be sure to do what the person has been hired for, which Do you feel like this whole, um, the new normal of working from home is going to hinder our ability to communicate?

Because I have to tell you, I'm a high introvert, and I am just as happy as a pig in mud working from home. I would never want to go back to working in an office again.

I know.

Does that mean we need to up our game and our ability to communicate?

Well, there is a way to know how to well communicate virtually, digitally. The way I spoke to you about the 5 pillars, you remember earlier? So posture and gesture and eye contact and voice and and silence. All this has to be understood to be adapted, virtually speaking. You're doing it beautifully. But for C-suite Challenge, every single CEO should have included that, how to virtually communicate, because it's only very specific tricks that once you learn them, you will learn it forever. For example, let me give you a little riddle.

Okay. Give us the 5 pillars again so people know.

Of course. So we have posture, framing, yeah, digitally, gestures. So of course, if you're doing a lot of gestures wrong or well, or, um, you have the eye contact and you have the voice and the silence. So how to Include silence in your communication. And one thing, this riddle will be about the eye contact. In virtual communication, if you want people to think you're looking at them, don't look at them.

I have heard that. Yes. Okay.

You got it?

Yes.

How many CEOs I saw doing a talk like this? And usually, because the CEO male is completely bald, you have a big zoom on the cranes. Excuse me? Because they really think that we are behind the little videos, you know, at the bottom of the screen. We are here, guys. We are in the camera. So you need to have an arrow Or a sticker. You don't have— if a lot of CEOs are telling me, well, you know, the little green dot is very annoying me, and I tell them, and it really, it's a big revolution in their life, you can put a sticker on the green light. The green light is not where the camera is.

You're cracking me up.

Yeah, that's me. And this is something very simple, but you need to learn that if you want to have a good digital communication. After, of course, if you have to do long meetings, for example, you have a lot of games. I don't know if you heard of Mentimeter, you know, Mentimeter or any type of— when I'm doing my trainings, you know, as a coach, I love to use the magic wheel. You know, sometimes I'm asking people, I'm doing training for 12 or 20 people, and I say, okay, who wants to go first? And everybody's like, no one want to go.

Not me.

Not me. Don't pick me. So I'm appearing a magic wheel. Okay, you can go on Google, and I already prepared all the names on the magic wheel, and I click, and everybody like that. And suddenly people see the name with lots of confetti, and they And they're like, I want to be second. And they are so excited. This is my only way to make training funny. If we have to go digital, make that a game, make that fun, make them laugh. I totally agree.

As you remember, in our conference, we had a magician at one point. We had my husband cooking Italian food. We said, you know, we had a singer, you know, we just mixed it up. Hey, we got a couple more questions. Questions, and we're running over time. Darn it. Uh, Voltaire says, could you recommend me other writers, please?

Okay, so I recommend 3 writers that I quoted before. Tal Ben-Shahar and his bestseller, that would be The Happiness of Leaders.

Can you see if you can put it in the chat?

I'm gonna put it in comments, maybe.

In comments. Okay, that's good.

So Tal is T-A-L-B-E-N Shahar. Tell me if you see it.

I don't see it yet. But you know what we will do is if you send me the list, I will put it out on LinkedIn.

Excellent. So again, the book is on YouTube. The book is called The Joy of Leadership: How Positive Psychology Can Maximize Leadership, and this book has been written by Tal Ben-Shahar, and I really like it, really. So this is a book that has been published by Wiley, and you will find it online very easily. So The Joy of Leadership has been written by Tal Ben-Shahar and the businessman Angus Ridgeway. So this is one book that I strongly recommend. The other is The Positive Note by William Ury that I strongly advise you to discover. Another thing that I would love you to discover is a free atlas of emotional intelligence. It's an atlas of emotion that is for free, so you Google atlas, and this has been created by Paul Ekman together with the Dalai Lama, and this is extremely interesting because it It's really helping you defining the finest emotions. And if you are interested by the work of Marshall Rosenberg, you will see how nonviolent communication is connected with this notion of emotional intelligence. So Paul Ekman, E-K-M-A-N, who is also very well known because he was the one to inspire the famous Netflix series Lie to Me. He is one of the best lying detectors that we ever met because he worked so much with this notion of emotional intelligence that he worked a lot on facial expressions. And he's a fantastic person to get to know. And yes, definitely, CB, I will send you a list in order for people to get— I will send you some interviews that I made also with those people because I had the chance to work with all of them. And so you will find on CB's material some really unique material that I'm giving to her and only to her.

Perfect. Hey, we didn't even have a chance to talk about the first part of your life, and oh my gosh, okay, I am definitely going to book you again so we could talk more. And I am so excited that you are interested in being part of the CB Bowman Women's Power Group.

I'd love that.

I can't wait. Hey, we have to say goodbye. We are already 8 minutes over. I'm so sorry, audience, but that's what happens when you tune in to CB Bowman Live. We talk, right? Thank you, Gaila, for being part of us.

Thank you, CB. Thank you, everybody.

Okay, listen, tune in next Tuesday. All right, we'll see you then.