Live Q&A with Simon

I think we. There we go. We. Hello, everyone. We are live. Gonna turn on the old live thing over here. Checking connection. Going live on the Instagram. Welcome, welcome, welcome, everyone. Hello, Instagram. How are you all? Welcome.

Knocked over my phone there. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I'm excited to do this live Q and A. I haven't done one of these since we had book club and I noticed a lot of people signing in. Oh, my goodness. The Dakota Potato Peel Pie and Literary Society Book Club. Good to see you back. Haven't seen you in a while. It's like reconnecting with old friends.

Love that. There's so many people from book club who showed up today. So hello. Good to see you all. And just an amazing array of countries. We've got India, Pakistan. Why aren't you guys sleeping? You should be asleep right now. Brazil, Morocco, Spain, Indonesia, Switzerland, Germany, uk. All across the United States. Wales, Florida, Portugal, Miami. I love this. This is so amazing. Everybody's coming together and my favorite part is Saudi Arabia. This is fantastic. Mississippi. I love how everyone is saying hi to each other in the chat. I love that, too. We truly are a community of people brought together by common cause. I love this. We are live on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, all the places we're going to do some Q and A and we can just jump right in. Notice my new hoodie. Got this new hoodie that we made. We have a drop today as well. Look, check it out. What? It says we took it. Can you see it? Probably it's all. There we go. Do the re. There you go. It says the goal is not to be perfect by the end. The goal is to be better today. Super, super comfy. We just had these made because I think they're nice. And if you want one, we're having a drop today, so we'll put that link in the. In the chat. If you want this, we only have one option. We're just doing one because I think it's cool. Okay, let's jump right into the Q and A.

Let's jump right in. Hello, Germany. Hello, Chile. Denmark. This is amazing. Sweden, Amsterdam, Illinois. I want to make sure now I go to all these places. That's even more from Edinburgh. Love it. Others to overcome their fears during periods of change and transition. Such a good question. I love the desire to serve there. So one of the things that we're always so tempted to do when people are going through change and transition is we want to tell them what they should do. We constantly want to give them advice and push them and Encourage them and tell them. And though it's well intentioned, it's not always the helpful thing to do. And so really what we need to do is create a safe space for people to just let it out. And so we have to get become. Actually, the strange thing is beyond better listeners than speakers. Yes, we will have our chance to speak, but you'll find that most people actually know what to do. They just need to sort it out in their head themselves. And so what we want to do is ask questions like, what are you going through? How does it feel? Tell me more. What do you think you should do? Does that feel right? What do you think you should do? Tell me more. Go on. And what you're doing is creating a safe space for them to get all of the stuff that they're uncomfortable and insecure about out on the table. And that's how you help someone go through a period of change or transition. Become a good listener. Okay. Apparently my focus is out of focus, so I'm going to put my hand in front of the camera and it should refocus because it's autofocus. Okay, there we go. Another question. Should we take one from the side of the thing here? From all. From one of the chats? Hello, Geneva. Here's one that's just came in. Thank you. Can you come a little closer? What was the most impressive real story you have witnessed regarding leadership change for the better and why was it a success? Oh, that's a really good. That's a really good question. The most impressive real story. So I don't know if it's the most impressive, but there's a bunch of impressive stories that I've heard very often. You don't have to be born a great leader. A lot of the really inspiring leaders that I've met are people who sometimes screwed it up for decades and they had some sort of epiphany or realization that something has to change. Whether it was like. I've written about Bob Chapman, Bob Chapman, who's the CEO of Barry Wehmiller, one of the companies that I love. It's a manufacturing company and they lead with a. What they called truly human leadership, which I absolutely adore. Bob was one of those accountants who, who just saw people as a number. And he was actually at a wedding and he had this epiphany where he watched the ceremony play out in front of him where a father ceremonially walked his daughter down the aisle, gives her away. That's the ceremony, the giving away of the. Of the daughter. And then goes and sits down. And traditionally, that young woman will give up the name of her family and take the new name of her husband. This is the tradition, as if you're moving from one tribe to another, as if the protection that was guaranteed by the father must now be guaranteed by the new husband. This is the tradition of a wedding. And Bob is sitting there in the audience, in the pews, and he has the sudden realization that every. That this father is giving away his precious treasure to somebody else to look after. And he realized that everyone who works in his company is someone's treasure, is someone's son or someone's daughter, and they're giving their children to him to look after. And he realized that's not how he's been treating his people for decades. And so he had this sudden change of how he should start leading, and he went on the journey of becoming a student of leadership. I was just talking to a young entrepreneur a couple days ago who's 25 years old, and he's so inculcated in the traditional way of leading, he was pushing back on me. He's like, well, investors this and Wall street that. And. And what I'm realizing is that once you go through transition, it really takes a tremendous amount of courage, because the system as people think it is, the system is us, does apply a lot of pressure on us to do the wrong thing. So that's one of my favorite stories, is the one about Chapman. Here's another one from Molnar. Edlaud. How do you start to motivate the people around you towards a goal when you're not the CEO? Great question. So remember, leadership has nothing to do with rank or position. Just because someone has a position of leadership does not make them the leader. Leadership is the awesome responsibility to take care of those around us. So your question, Molnar, is how do you be a leader if you're not the CEO? You don't need the rank to be the leader. You have to study what it takes to be a good leader, and you take care of those around them so you can share vision. Whether it's the companies that you believe in or whether it's yours. You can share vision with the people around you. Even if it's your boss, somebody who is. Who works for you, or even your peers, it doesn't matter. You can lead all around, and you can do all the things that a good leader is supposed to do. In other words, be the leader you wish you had. And you'll find that strange things start to happen in your Little community and your little group. I've seen it happen multiple times in organizations where these mid ranking leaders take it upon themselves to be the leaders they wish they had. And, and those teams become the highest performing teams and those teams become super, super tight knit and before you know it, that starts to spread. So be the leader you wish you had.

Hello, Ontario, Canada. Here. Here's a question from Elena. Oh, I just lost it. Elena Postowa, where are you? I lost you.

We can pull it up.

Oh, here it is. What are the most important things for a leader to do when starting a new company or team? Great question. So this is such a common mistake that a lot of young, young leaders do when they're starting a team or a company is, is they start talking about how different their product is. Yes, that's important. But what's the context for that different product? What's the origin story? Why was the organization started in the first place? I see this happen so often where especially with young startups, they're so driven by their investments and their revenues and all of these things that even when they're successful they forget all the team building. Start early, right?

Start talking about the vision immediately. Start talking about why the company was formed, what challenge was faced. Say what your ambitions are for the team, what you promised to do for the team. I will be there for you, give you the resources you need, offer you top cover and also push you and encourage you to push yourselves. And here's what I expect in return. I expect honesty. I expect you ask for help when you need it. Do not expect you to solve all the problems yourself. We're rooting for you. We're all rooting for each other. We want to see each other succeed. So you can talk about what you promise and what you expect back from your team. Start to create the community immediately and then talk about it obsessively. You can still talk about the product and all those things, but now they have context.

Drew Barker. How are you, Drew? What are you most proud of?

That's a good question.

I'm proud of the fact that this community exists. To be honest, I love the fact that.

I really feel a part of something bigger than myself. That we, everyone who's on here, we are the army who believes desperately in this vision of the world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are, and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do. And we've taken upon ourselves to be accountable. And we are building the help others industry. You've heard me say it many times before. There's an entire section in the bookshop called self help and there is no section in the bookshop called Help Others. We're building the help Others industry. We're teaching people the skills to take care of others, to consider others points of view. And by the way, if they learn those skills, they'll take care of us. It's much more of a circle. I'm really proud that these ideas, because of our army are taking hold. The fact that the concept of why is now in our vernacular, where you hear people and companies asking the question and talking about what's your why? You should learn your why. And many of them have no idea that it, that where it all where. Where it originated. I'm really proud of that. I love having an impact in the world where people actually don't know where it comes from. And I can just sit back and watch it grow. Because at the end of the day, this has to be bigger than all of us and it has to survive all of us. It has to go on well beyond our own lifetime. So I'm super proud of the fact that we have momentum for a real, real movement and we're changing the course of business.

I love this one from Tim Liu.

Go ahead, Tim. Tim.

Lou, if you've ever watched the TED Lasso show, I feel a lot of the leadership skills you teach could be seen in the show.

So, Ted Lieu, have I ever watched TED Lasso? What do I think of TED Lasso? Because a lot of the skills in TED Lasso seem to be the stuff we're talking about. I love Ted Lasso. And yes.

He does embody a lot of the skills we talk about. He thinks about his people more than winning, and turns out the team wants to win. He encourages people to take on their own problems and if they have a problem with each other, to address it. He doesn't act like an overbearing parent.

He replaces judgment with curiosity. We're all trying to do that. I really am trying to do that on a daily basis to replace judgment with curiosity. He asks questions and at the end of the day, he's a good guy and he believes in forgiveness. Yes. I love, love, love Ted Lasso. What's not to love?

What else do we have here? Ben Nguyen, how does a sense of humor play into leadership? Well, it's like, how does a sense of humor play into making friends? How does a sense of humor play into meeting people or dating? Like, a sense of humor is the most wonderful thing in the world because it makes you human. But there's a more, even more valuable thing about a sense of humor, which is you cannot laugh and be sad at the same time. You cannot laugh and be scared at the exact same time. And so I think maintaining a sense of humor, especially in difficult times, is essential because when we're under huge amounts of stress at work and somebody cracks a good joke, it actually puts us in a great frame of mind to, to come together and attack that problem, to overcome that challenge. So believe it or not, I actually think a good sense of humor is essential to great leadership. It actually helps us come together and make it through adversity. So, yeah, love a sense of humor.

Yes. Tracy Buckley, can you talk a little.

Bit about when leadership styles clash among a group of leaders as appears to create chaos at times?

Okay, that's a great question. What a high quality group of questions. Today the question was, what happens, what do we do when leadership styles clash when two leaders have completely different styles? Well, remember when I talk about leadership and what does it mean to be a leader? Why do we call someone leader? Like they lead means they go first. They go first into the difficulty, first into the unknown, first into the uncomfortable. And so if you have two leaders who are clashing in style, it only takes one of them to want to be curious about the other one. Usually what happens when you have two leaders clashing in style is they're both trying to be a little bit overbearing. They both try and impose. They both try to explain to the other person what my point of view is matters without actually making the other person feel heard. The irony is when you have leaders clashing is one of them has to actually be a little bit more of a leader, which means to back off a second and say, tell me more. I want to understand and create that safe space. And the minute they feel heard, then they will be much more open to your point of view. And so all of that stuff that you're really good at doing as a student of leadership, with anyone where there's any conflict, you apply all of that stuff in here. I had a, I did a podcast. I recorded a podcast with the wonderful William Ury, who wrote Getting to Yes. It hasn't aired yet. It'll come out in a few weeks. But one of the things we talked about was conflict. And here's a world famous peace negotiator and he said, there's nothing wrong with conflict. He said, in fact, we need more conflict. The thing we have to learn to do is to transform Conflict. So it's not about aggression or violence or trying to be right, but it's about communication and openness and curiosity. The conflict is fine. It's the matter in the manner in which we deal with conflict, where we can do better. Okay.

Here'S a good question from Moksh Satyanji.

Moksh Satyanji? Yes.

How do I lead people in my organization who are much older than me? How do I make them respect someone who's younger and make them take me seriously?

Okay, so this is a classic question he asks. How do I lead people who are older than me and get them to respect me? Okay, so you can't force people to respect you, but you can be really honest. Right now, people who are older than you, they have more experience than you. So a little difference goes a long way. And it's really great to simply show up to a team and simply say.

You basically say what it is, which is, I just want everybody to know. I'm fully aware that I am younger than many of you. I am also fully aware that you have more experience than me. My job is to create a path and make sure you have all the resources you need to take care of you and make sure that you can be the best versions of yourselves and that you can have the most success that you can possibly have. My job is to help you do that. And I will come to you as often as possible to ask you questions and get your point of view, because at the end of the day, you know a lot more than than I do. You may even know more about this industry than I do because you've been doing it for longer. So if as long as you show that difference, because that, by the way, is their narrative. Who does he think he is? I'm smarter than he is. I've been doing this longer than just show deference. Some of that's true. So make clear what your role is as their leader. You're not there to tell them how to do it better. And even if you do have challenges and conflicts where maybe they're a little bit outdated, once you've earned their trust, once you've shown the difference and recognized that there are advantages in building that relationship, they'll be much more open to your ideas, too.

So that works really well, I think, just being totally honest. Look, I know that a lot of you are older, more experienced than me, and so I'm going to have to rely on you and ask you lots of questions so I can learn. So anyway, try that. It works really well.

Someone's asking your most. Who inspired you? Which teacher? Teacher, who inspired you?

So the question was, which teacher inspired me? I guess you mean going back, back to my school days.

There were a few. I had, we just talked about one this morning, actually. I had a teacher named Mr. D' Ambra in high school. And what I learned from him was concise is good. You wouldn't know it based on my long winded answers, but when I write, I try and be concise. We. We would walk into class and you. And on the, on the blackboard you'd see a sentence, just a huge long sentence, and it came from one of our papers and you always knew it was yours. I had mine on there a couple of times, needless to say. And he would say, this sentence has 17 words. It doesn't need to have 17 words. What words don't we need? And we'd all scream out and edit it and take things out and reword it. And then at the end he goes, now it has nine words. If you can say it in nine words, please don't say it in 17. So I learned, I learned to write concisely from him. And I had another professor in college named Professor Jacobson, who, basically what he instilled in us is it doesn't matter if you don't have a degree, it doesn't matter if you don't have a formal education, it doesn't matter if someone else has more letters at the end of the name than you do. You have the right to challenge their thinking as long as you can do it in a respectful and constructive way. So if I could form a good argument, it didn't matter if someone had 12 PhDs and I had none, I could still challenge their ideas. So I learned about the importance and the confidence to challenge the ideas of people who are way more educated and way more experienced than me. So, yeah, those two people had a significant impact in my life.

Okay, someone, what is. Preetha says, I flew to New York in 2017 from Paris to hear you speak. My goodness. Thank you so much. And you have an amazing and captivating stage presence. It's very nice of you. Thank you. I was always wondering how you spoke softly but make a huge impact with your words. The funny thing about speaking is that it's not just about speaking softly. It's about knowing when to speak softly. Our voice is, is an instrument, it's a tool. And if I spoke at the same thing, if I only spoke softly all the time, it would actually become really boring. And if I only spoke loudly all the time. It would become really boring, too. It's about knowing about inflection and using at the right time. I always get a kick out of people who, like, have speaking voice. And they go, in these difficult times, it is really important for us because somebody told them they needed inflection, except it's the same inflection. So all over these years, I've learned a bunch of things, things that have made me a better speaker. And one of them is about using my voice, my hands, my body, all of these things to communicate. So if I'm talking about something big, I'm going to raise my voice. But if I want people to really listen in, I'm going to sometimes talk softly, softer, and slower so they'll lean in and wait for the important thing that I'm trying to communicate. And we got so many of these questions. We actually, it's funny that Preetha asked and sort of Good segue. We just released. I think we're just releasing it. Oh, that's a coincidence. We just released today.

On our website a speaking class.

Presenting class. So how to be a better presenter that I recorded and we. And we edited it. And so it's all the tips and tricks that I've learned over the years. So if you want to learn how to be a better presenter, you can head over and take our class and we can do a 20% coupon, right?

Yeah, I think.

Okay, so let's make it up right now. So if you're watching now. Yeah, we'll make it up. Somebody will figure it out. If you're watching now and you want to go take the class. In fact, you know what? Let's go crazy. If you want to get the hoodie. If you want to get the hoodie and you want to get the class, we'll do. This is where. This is where I get in trouble. Let's do live 20. Okay. If you type in code live 20, because we're live and you can get 20 off, you can go take my power presentation course. I don't remember what we called it. The art of presenting. You can go take the art of presenting or get a cool hoodie for 20 off. And the code will work. Live 20. That will go. Okay. Live 20. Okay. It's in the chat. Okay. It'll work. There you go.

Yes. Osmani Lopez.

Simon, what do you think about the actual labor shortage? Is it because we got it wrong to come back to work instead of creating an environment where they would want to work?

Great question. So Somebody asked about the labor shortage that's going. That's happening right now. It's a big deal in the United States. I think it's affecting other countries in the world as well. And the reason for what sometime is called the great resignation. The main reasons that are being talked about, I think are a little bit right, but I think there's a big part that's not being talked about. People are talking about the fact that there's government subsidies in some places and people are just taking that money and leaving their jobs. That's true in some cases. I think those numbers are smaller and that money runs out, let's be honest. And also the people sort of following their dreams. And I think that's a small percentage as well. I think there's something bigger that we're not talking about. And it's not something that happened because of COVID I think Covid and the lockdown was a catalyst. But I think this has been a steady build for many years. And I think it's an indictment on most corporate cultures. I think too many companies have been taking advantage of employees for too long. And if you ask people, how's your job? For too many years people have said, it's fine, it's fine. It's never great. It's not that I'm having fun, it's not, I'm learning a lot, it's fine. And you ask people who have a job that's fine, well, why don't you quit and find another job? And the problem is the unknown is much scarier than what they have. So they settle for fine. Because the unknown future or the unknown, what I'm going to do next is just too scary. And what happened during COVID is some people were furloughed or we went through a lot of stress and strain. A lot of people had their incomes shaken and we got through it like we survived. And all of a sudden the complications or difficulty or the story we tell ourselves about the unknown all of a sudden aren't so scary anymore. And so now when we compare fine to the unknown, all of a sudden I think a lot of people are a lot less scared of the unknown. And traditionally, you know, some of your lowest level employees or your frontline employees that clung onto their jobs and were mistreated the most that are now looking at the unknown and saying it's not so crazy anymore. And I think I. So I think part of what we're dealing with is actually the culmination or a breaking point of years and years and years and years and years and years of companies getting away with being able to just create mediocre corporate cultures, and it's coming home to roost. So it's a period of complete upheaval. We don't know how it's going to settle. But I think, and I hope that a lot of companies take it upon themselves to realize that they can do a better job. The companies with the best cultures, by the way, though, they're losing some employees, are not losing employees nearly in the same numbers as some of the mediocre ones. So it's not even bad or toxic. It's just mediocre. So the great companies are not struggling as much because it's fun place to go to work. Okay.

What else do we have here?

Anna Wu asks, how can I really make someone feel seen and supported, Seen, heard, and supported, when I can only speak to them by phone? Here's the thing. In person is a very special thing. Oh, my paper. I'll get it in a minute. In person is always great, but I actually think phone is actually pretty good. Believe it or not, I actually think phone is better than zoom. You know, when we're doing zoomy things, you know, we fake eye contact. You know, I'm staring down the barrel of a camera right now. To you, it feels like I'm looking right at you. To me, it's sort of weird and personal. And so often when we attempt to make eye contact with the screen, with their picture, you know, the alignment of the camera and the screen are not always the same. So we're making direct eye contact, but what they see is this. And so now we're having a conversation where we feel really connected to them, but, you know, they can't feel connected to us. And so. Or you just look at yourself.

So I actually think picking up the phone is actually pretty great. I think we're actually more present on the phone. You know, when someone's not present on. On a computer, you know, when they're checking their email, it actually feels rude to say to them, are you listening to me? But when we're on the phone, we can hear that they're distracted. We can say, are you there? Are you with me here? It's actually okay. So I think lots of phone conversations are actually really good. I think you can actually do a really good job of hearing tone of voice and listening to somebody, and you can hear when someone's really present and you can be really close with them. So I'm a huge fan of the telephone, and I think a Lot of people started making more phone calls during COVID which I love. Plus, you don't have zoom fatigue staring at the screen the whole time. You can pace. I'm a pacer. I can't pace when I'm. I'm on zoom. My best thing happens when I'm pacing, so that's really good. Have to get my notes. Be right back.

Okay, I'm back. All right, let's take some questions. Do we have any questions on. On. On the Instagram here.

Scrolling down. What do we have here?

Oh, here we go.

Oh. Oh, it's Syed. Syed Moyen, 25. How are you?

I love your work, Simon. Thank you very much. You inspire us with your wisdom. Very generous. Thank you. From where do you. Oh, God, this thing's bouncing all over the place.

From where do you from? I heard a recent podcast, you know, okay, I can't. I think I'm basically getting where. Where does it all come from?

I'm insatiably curious, and like a little kid, I'm generally not satisfied with most of the answers we're given. And so, for example, when somebody says, you know, trust matters, we all agree trust matters, and we need to trust each other and be on trusting teams. But my question was, well, why does trust matter? And the best answers people gave me was, I don't know. It just. Does things just work better? I'm like, yeah, but why do they work better? Like, what is trust? What does it mean to trust? Can you fake trust? And nobody could give me a good answer that they were just generic answers. True. Just generic. And so that was the impetus for me writing Leaders Eat Last. I actually tried to. And it wasn't supposed to be a book. It was just me trying to understand where trust comes from or start with why. For example, people. You know, when I was going through a hard time, I would ask people for advice, and they'd tell me things like, you know, do what you're passionate about, or follow your. Find your bliss or live your purpose. It's all 100% true. It's just. I didn't know what to do. Like, it's just not actionable. Like, do what you love. I'm doing the same thing, and I don't love it anymore. You know, it just was just not actionable. And so it was that. That curiosity as to. As to why things work and why that advice is true. And so I consider myself sort of more of an anthropologist. I go digging a lot of my work if, you know, goes backwards, I go look at history or Biology or where we come from or all that kind of stuff to try and uncover some basic truths. And then I can. Then it reveals a lot of things. So any ideas that I have are born out of insatiable curiosity and generally a dissatisfaction with the answers that exist or that I'm given. And so I have to go find new ones.

Okay, here's one that just came in.

That wants to know how you get your eyebrows so perfect.

Well, thank you very much. Genetics.

How do you manage. Oh, this is a good one, Vitalius.

How do you manage a manager with a finite mindset and blocking all culture change that is desperately needed and many people want in the manufacturing sector? Okay, I get this question unfortunately, more often than any other question on the planet, which is, how do you. If I'm in middle management and somebody above me has a finite mindset, how do I change their mindset? And the answer is, you don't. You cannot change someone. They have to go on that discovery themselves. And no number of anonymously sent books will change their mind. The best you can do is take control of the things that you can control. Number one, being yourself. And so be the leader you wish you had. Very often people who maintain a finite mindset, it's because it's worked for them for years. And so why change now? It's made me very successful. Or they don't know an alternative. And if we criticize them or challenge them, all they're going to do is dig in. Like, if somebody yelled at you and said that you're wrong, you're stupid, you don't understand, you're not very open minded to what they have to say. And so again, you can lead up the chain of command as much as you can lead in any other direction. So go be curious, try and understand more. Are they toxic and difficult or are they just misdirected? You know, if they're toxic or difficult, then you know, keep us. Keep a safe distance and go protect your team from them. Again, be the leader you wish you had. But if they're good people, they just, they just have the wrong mindset. Then try and understand, and then you get to share your ideas. It becomes conversation. But again, it goes back to the similar answers I've given before, which is you have to create the safe space for them to feel heard first. And even though you may have an agenda, you have to be. You have to start with real curiosity, genuine curiosity. You can't just be biting your time, going through the steps, waiting for your turn to speak. That doesn't work and people can tell the difference. Go and genuinely try and understand where, what they think, how they think, why they think that, what the pressures are. And then, then, then take it from there. But yeah, it's, it's frustrating, but it takes time. And if you have an infinite mindset, you understand that it may not be one conversation that solves it. It might be 5, 10, or 15 conversations, because you have to earn trust along the way that they would be open to your ideas. And you're talking about manufacturing, go, go. If you want to read Bob Chapman's book because he's from manufacturing, I wrote about him in Leaders Eat Last. I wrote extensively about him. But you can also read his book called Everybody Matters. And he goes through it in manufacturing. So everybody matters.

Here's one from Cynthia Strathole. What advice do you give yourself and your staff around burnout?

Okay. Cynthia is asking a great question, like, what advice do we give our staff regarding burnout? Oh, and myself. So. So the most important thing for me when regarding burnout is I have to be honest with my team. So when I'm feeling burnt out or when I'm feeling overwhelmed or stressed, I say that out loud. Because if, if I'm always putting on like, I got everything under control and I'm, you know, everything's fine, I never burn out, then everyone will feel intimidated or feel like they can't be honest about their. About how they feel. I learned this lesson many, many years ago.

I used to work for an ad agency back millions of years ago. And I had one direct report. Her name was Cynthia, Cynthia Caraballo. And she made me look good every single day. And I had a habit of letting Cynthia sit in on more senior meetings and phone calls just so she could learn, because I like that. And we had a very senior client conference call, and Cynthia sat just on the side listening in. And the call went very, very badly. And at the end of the call, after we hung up, I vented and I vented to my peers, which, fine. And I vented to my boss, who I had a good relationship with, and I vented to this table of people about how frustrated and angry I was about to this client and the way they treated us. And then I turned to Cynthia and I got, oh, my goodness, she just heard me do that. I felt how unprofessional of me. And as we were walking out of the conference room, I turned to her and I said, I am so sorry. You shouldn't have seen that. That was totally inappropriate. And she looked at Me and said, no, no, no. I'm so glad I saw it. She said. She goes, I've been so frustrated with this client, but you're always, you know, optimistic and happy and you're always strong and you have all the answers. And so I started to think it was me. And because I was creating a false impression of how I actually felt, she started to blame herself and be harder on herself. So when it goes to burnout, if I'm honest with my team, that I also have bad days or down days, or I also need a day off just for my own mental health, what that does is it creates a tone, it creates an environment. They are more likely to raise their hand and saying, I'm having a hard day, I'm struggling. I need a day off. I'm burnt out. If our leaders lead with authenticity, so that's number one.

We do a thing called duvet days, where any employee. I don't remember how many we have, but it's like vacation days. But I think we do four a year where if you wake up in the morning, it's like vacation. You sort of, like, plan ahead and, like, everybody knows you're taking vacation. You know, stuff like that. Sick days, you're home sick, even if they're spontaneous, you don't know you're going to, but you're actually sick in bed. But we all have days where we wake up in the morning and we just don't feel like going to work. We're just not in the mood, or quite frankly, it's a beautiful day, and I would just rather go to the beach than I would rather than go to work. We all have those days. And what most people do is pretend they call them. They go, hey, I have a stomach bug, you know, 24 hour bug, and they take the day off. I'd rather people just tell the truth instead of pretending or lying that they're sick. And so we have these things called duvet days. You feel like you need a day off, you just. You need to rest, you want to go hang out, you want to go play hooky, Just call up that morning, say, hey, I'm taking a duvet day, and off you go. So, yeah, so it starts by me being, setting a tone and then creating little systems that people can have moments. Plus, we work really, really hard to avoid anybody having to work on weekends at night. It happens occasionally if there's a lot of stress, but we work really hard to prevent, to protect that time for people. Okay, that was a long answer to a simple question.

Let's see what else we have. Oh, here we go. Samoyed Kassir. Sorry if I'm butchering names.

How do. How to remain positive when you feel that things are falling apart and creativity is. Creativity is nowhere to be seen. Great question.

So I went through this. I go through this now and then. I mean, I'm human, but I went through this in a major way during COVID where I felt like my positivity had disappeared, things were falling apart, and I definitely wasn't creative. And the most. The best advice I can offer sumed is tell somebody the worst thing we can do is keep that to ourselves.

Pick up the phone, call a friend who you love and who loves you and say, I'm struggling. I'm not positive. I don't feel creative. Just say it out loud.

If you want to look on YouTube. I did a video with my friend Andrea Garfield, who's a brilliant coach. And as I was going through this really dark period, I called her and asked her for advice, and I decided to record it and put it online in case it would help anybody else. You can actually go watch me going through it in real time. And what her advice was. But what I've learned is that by ourselves, we are not very good at solving these problems. And if we attempt to solve these problems by ourselves, we can actually make them worse, because we sit and we stew and our narratives roll over in our head over and over, and we can find all the evidence for the way we feel because we kind of go looking for it. And simply having a friend that says, I got you. Don't worry about it, who's not trying to fix anything, they just hold space for us. I find that we can manage those difficult times much better. And all of those things, positivity and creativity are much more likely to come back. Please, if you feel that way, reach out to ask somebody and say, I'm struggling. Can I just talk to you for five minutes? That's the best thing you can do. Include others. Remember, this is the help others industry, and we don't build trust by offering our help to people. We build trust by asking for help. So it actually will make the relationship even closer if you do that.

All right, what else do we have? I need a drink. Yeah.

How can millennials establish better relationships with Gen Z? Individuals who don't see the importance of life without technology.

Oh, the irony is thick. What's her name? Courtney. Courtney asked, how can millennials create better relationships with Gen Z.

And try to impart on them that technology Is not the end all be all. The irony is thick. I love it.

One is to put them in situations, if possible, where they feel what it feels like to have genuine connection. I had a, let's call it debate with a 16 year old recently where I maybe complained that her generation doesn't know how to have conversations. And she pushed back very hard and said yes we do. We have conversations all the time. I said, you rely on your cell phones and social media to talk to each other. She goes, no we don't. I send voice memos to friends and I wait and I sort of had to pause. I'm like, wait a minute. You send a voice memo to someone, they send a voice memo back to you. You send a voice memo back to them, they send a voice memo back to you and you think this is a conversation. And she said yes, because how do we define conversation? We're talking with each other so they think that talking, like making recordings and listening to them in real time is a conversation. I find it to be very avoidant, right, where a. You can't read body language, you can't, the tone of voice is missed, you can't interrupt. Great conversations are interruptive. You know, it's not one then the other, then one then the other. That's like a formal debate. Conversations are messy. Like people are messy and that, that's what makes them fun. It's not talking at people, it's talking with people. And so I think the best thing we can do is just keep doing the things that we think are important. The good news is Gen Z are younger so we can put them in situations, you know, we can make them take their phones away, we can go out for dinner with them and ask them to put their phones away or take, you know, I do this with my friends where we all trade phones when we go out for dinner. So when you go to the bathroom you don't have your phone, you have somebody else's and you just have to like and like when you're the one waiting, you know, you can't check your phone. You have to sort of enjoy the surroundings. But the point is try find opportunities where you can put each other where you can put them in situations where they can enjoy good old fashioned human contact talking and let them experience the difference and talk to them about their friends. This is one thing that I've had great success with where I don't talk about them and what's wrong with them and I don't complain about them, I ask them about their friends. Do Your friends feel this. Do your friends struggle? Tell me about how your friends deal with stress. And a lot more honesty comes out about their friends. And I say, how are you helping your friends? And then I talk about how being present for your friends matters and they start to realize that putting their phone away is an act of service. So don't make it about them, make it about their friends and how they're taking care of their friends. And you're much more likely to connect and get through to them. Okay.

What else? You're welcome, Courtney.

Sheila. Sheila asks, how do you create excellent corporate culture in remote environments?

How do you create excellent corporate culture in remote environments, which is what most of us are still working in? Okay, so corporate culture, like any interpersonal relationship.

Is a combination of lots and lots and lots of little innocuous things, right? So think about friendships or romantic relationships. You don't fall in love with someone because they bought you flowers on Valentine's Day and remembered your birthday, though those things may be important. It's lots and lots of little things like when they come in the front door from being out and you get up and greet them at the front door, or you go and get yourself a drink from the fridge and you get one for them without even asking, or you make yourself a cup of tea in the morning, you make one for them. Or all these little innocuous things that by themselves do nothing but done consistently and over time they really start to build trust and love. It's the same at work. It's no one thing. It's not the great speech you gave in the meeting, though those are important. It's the bumping into people in the hallway going, oh, how are you? Or the conversation you have going into the meeting or out of the meeting or having lunch with somebody or grabbing a coffee. That builds the trust. And in a virtual distributed workplace, those things are completely missing. And so what we have to do is we have to do them prescriptively. We actually have to force those little interactions, those interpersonal non work related interactions to happen. So one of the things we do, we have Monday morning huddle where on Monday mornings as many team members as possible will come on to zoom. And we basically go around the room and we say what's on our heart and mind? And we answer either a funny or poignant question that the leader of the of the huddle that week will pose to the group. And there's one simple rule. We're not here to talk about work. There's no numbers discussed. There's no Goals discussed. There's no. We have other phone calls for that. This is just about connecting as human beings. And we learn all kinds of things about each other. We learned what people did on the weekends. We learned who their families are if they have kids. We learn about their stresses. Sometimes people share happy things, Sometimes people.

Share sad things. But it's all kind of out in the open and we connect as human beings and they become really, really valuable parts of building the culture.

Not just work. We also encourage people to work together over zoom, even if they're not actually working on the same project. Just to turn zoom on and have somebody on the screen and just go do your work, and you just have somebody there. Also zoom lunches, zoom dinners. We encourage those things. We encourage phone calls. We try to use as few emails as possible. We try to limit emails.

As a primary mean of communication. So we do lots of little things. But these things have to be forced, and they have to be.

Prescriptive is basically what it is. Nothing replaces in person, but you have to. And this is what most people realize. If you're going to go to a distributed workforce, you actually have to work harder. Okay, moving on.

Here's one from Sarah Kinney. How do you feel about mentorship programs for ninth grade through early career addressing our concerns? Awesome today. Thank you. Oh, you're welcome, Sarah. I'm glad you're having fun. So am I. How do I feel about mentorship programs from ninth graders? I think mentorship program is important for all graders.

And again, it's not just the advice we give. It's creating a safe space for them to talk it all through and for us to block and tackle. In other words, to ask probing questions and to ask questions that will help them see things differently. And I think ninth grade is a great age for kids to start learning how to solve their own problems and think critically. You know, we can't spoon feed them everything. So I think a good mentor is not somebody who just gives good advice. A good mentor is somebody who probably answers fewer questions than they ask. What do you think about that? You know, it's good leadership stuff. So, yes, huge fan of mentorship programs for kids and addressing concerns, and you can talk through themes. And again, what I encourage you to do when you talk to them is instead of talking about themselves, have them talk about their friends. They're way more honest and they're more. Way more.

Able to reveal some of the dangers and challenges when they're talking about their friends, because you're asking them to be observers and part of the solution, rather than triggering them or getting, you know, touching any nerves that they, that the, that they may have if you say something. So. Yes, yes, yes, yes. What else do we have?

A seal.

A seal, yes.

How do you handle criticism and stay positive?

Well, I think there's two types of criticism. There's constructive criticism and there's deconstructive criticism.

I've learned over the years that deconstructive criticism, or it's basically not very helpful. My goal is always to grow. Grow as a person, to grow as a thinker, to, you know, that I want my work to be better. And so if somebody gives me constructive advice to make my work better, oh my God, even if it hurts, I'm all ears because I know it's for growth. But if somebody just says this sucks, I mean, like, it might be true, my work product might suck, but that doesn't actually help me make it better. And so I'm going to say, okay, what specifically sucks? Or what can I do to make it better? The writing's terrible. Okay, well that's not helpful either. You know, like, tell me specifically what makes you. And I can quickly discern, are they being objective? Is it just not their style? Are they onto something? They just, and sometimes people are bad communicators. So I don't hold everybody to the high standard that they have to be perfect at being able to give me criticism. It's my job to get it out of them. So if they give me criticism, I can pull it out of them. And try not to get triggered. That's the hard part. Remember, replace judgment with curiosity. I assume, I try to assume that they're actually trying to help me and they want my work product to grow. They just may be bad at giving criticism. But if somebody like, and I get this sometimes just people say, you're stupid, you're a Neanderthal. I've had that. It doesn't bother me because what am I supposed to do with that? Like, it's literally, what am I supposed to do with that? But constructive prism is the best. I crave it. I love asking people, what can I do better? What sucked? What sucked less? Because I'm on the path of growth and the only way I'm going to grow is when I have things revealed to me that are broken or wrong or I can be better. And so I've learned to be really, really appreciative and open minded to criticisms. Even if I don't agree with it, I can still receive it and then I can Be like, man, I don't agree with that. And I can move on. I can brush it. I don't have to challenge them in the moment. Say, no, you don't understand. And no, you're wrong. I don't have to be right. I just have to receive the criticism and be curious about what it is and see if there's opportunities for growth. So, yeah, ask for it. I think the best way to get good at is to ask for it. Anytime somebody. You do anything, ask somebody, how can I make it better? And you start getting used to it and you start enjoying it. Here's one from Kay Meadows. Hi, Simon. How I lost it. Hi, Simon. How do you create a learning culture when the executive leadership team are the finished article and don't see the value in learning and development activities for employees.

Thank you. You're a star. I love the picture behind you. Thank you. The picture behind me is by a wonderful artist named Karen Gerard, and I think her website or Instagram is Karan Gerard art. I think that's what it is. Anyway. She does beautiful paintings like this. She's wonderful. So, okay, a lot of executives, it's true. It's true. They think everything's golden. They think they're perfect. So they don't understand when everybody else needs it. They think it's a waste of money sometimes. How do you create a learning culture? You do it informally. You do it on the side. I'm a huge proponent, as many of you know, of book clubs. You don't need to bring in outside consultants. You don't need a budget. You don't need any of these things. You simply say to the people you work with, hey, what do you think if we start a book club where we'll choose a book that we think will help us personally, professionally grow, and we'll read a chapter or two every week. And then at lunch or after work or whatever it is, we can jump on Zoom or however we meet and for an hour talk about the book and voluntary. And what you find is three people will show up, then six people show up, then eight people will show up. And basically what you're doing is you're creating an organic leadership development program. And you can ask different people to choose the books. And they all have to be, you're not reading fiction. They will have to be somewhat related to leadership or the growth or learning new things. You can pick your favorite authors, whatever it is, and sometimes what comes out of those is, somebody says, this is really good. I bet I could teach this. And then A leadership class is born out of it. So you can absolutely build it organically. Start with a book club, super easy, under the radar. And ultimately sometimes your bosses are actually more open minded than you think once it gets going. But don't worry about whether they think it's necessary or not. Just do it.

Tala, how do you get rid of instant gratification?

Tala asks, how do you get rid of instant gratification? Okay.

The question's really good today. Okay. Instant gratification is not by itself a problem.

It's the imbalance and the fact that we're addicted to instant gratification over delayed gratification. And the main reason is because we live in a developed technological world.

And we live in a developed technological world and everything is about instant gratification. You post something, you start getting the likes immediately. You can count your followers, you can swipe right to go on a date. There's very little delay for anything. It's instantaneous feedback all the time. And one of the benefits and the curses of the interwebs and technology is we can measure everything and so we can get all the feedback immediately. And it is very, very, very addictive. The instant gratification is addictive because we get those shots of dopamine each time that make us feel good, so we crave them more. And so one of the ways we can refine balance, not about eliminating instant gratification, but it's about finding the balance. Is one a admit we have a problem, right? Isn't that the first step of the 12 step program? I think I'm addicted to instant gratification. Number two is to turn off some of the things. Turn off likes. I know we can turn off likes on Instagram these days. Turn them off. In other words, take away the addiction, the addictive thing. Practice. Like for me, I have all my notifications turned off on my phone. Absolutely every single one of them, except for texts and except for phone calls, everything is turned off. So I don't know if anybody's commenting on anything unless I go look for it. And what I find is that I'm not so reactive. I go check, I get it, and I leave. So try turning off all those notifications which are unfortunately hijacking that dopamine instant gratification system. Turn off all those notifications most of the time. Try charging your phone in a different room than you sleep in. So you wake up in the morning and you don't immediately go for the instant gratification of the telephone with all the texts coming in. You'll actually go brush your teeth before you check your phone in the morning. Things like this wean ourselves off of it. I've shared some of the ones when we're with friends. You know, when you go out with friends, bring one phone as opposed to everybody's phone or trade phones. Like everybody take somebody else's phone while you're out. And it removes the temptation and that's a large part of it. And do a couple things where there are delayed gratifications, set some long term goals and measure progress rather than immediate results. That should help. It's definitely helped me.

Okay, what else do we have?

Here's one from rank.

How do you need employees that aren't connected to your mission statement or why?

How do you lead employees that aren't connected to your mission statement or why? Obviously you didn't hire them, so we'll go with that.

You know.

They'Re still, first of all, if you did hire them, shame on you. Because the minimum standards, they should feel connected. But if you didn't hire them, now you have to work with them and you have to lead them. You still want to find out what their ambitions are. If you can still be curious about why they took the job, you can be curious. You, you can be declarative about what the organization stands for and why it's exciting. And start with things like here's why I love what we do. And believe it or not, you can inculcate people. A lot of times people may come into a job and they think it's hooey. They think it's cheesy or they don't believe in it, but they see it working for so many other people. And they see the camaraderie of the group and they see the people who believe, how much they take care of each other and slowly but surely they actually join the fold. The ones who are absolutely resistant, who are truly, truly, truly.

Obstructionist even, they may be so finite minded and care only about their own personal.

Promotability. For example, they don't care about anybody else. The group will organically keep them on the side for their own safety, but you still have to try and get to them. You know, like I said, lead with curiosity doesn't mean you can convert everybody. But lead with curiosity and you can be honest. Sometimes you can deliver honesty in a nice way. Honesty doesn't have to be brutal, but you can say to somebody over time, when you've tried everything else, hey, you know, I have to believe that you're not loving this company or you're struggling with the team because you know, like, you know, I sometimes struggle to connect with you and I know it can't be one sided. So I'm struggling to connect with you. I have to believe you're struggling to connect with me. So can we just address it and put it all out on the table? Because we're more likely to succeed if you and I can get through this. So sometimes being honest about those conversations where you just simply point to and address the tension in a constructive way and that's worked for me, which is I don't think you're enjoying your job because I know we're struggling with, with you and I struggle with you, which I can't believe it's one sided. I'm sure you're struggling too. Can we work through this? Because I really want you to be happy and I really want you to enjoy it here and I really want you to feel connected with the team. So can we just sit down and talk it through? Believe it or not, that works very often. And if they're completely disconnected then, and toxic, then protect yourself and the team from them. Okay, I think we have time for like maybe one or two more questions. We have five more minutes, so we'll do two more questions. Here's one from Craig Engels. Hi, Craig. If my age group of 8 to 18 go through a rigged system, how do I give others the heads up on how to face the challenges of today's world?

Craig, you are thinking ahead. So let me try and interpret what you're saying, which is basically what you're saying is the system isn't setting you up for reality. The system is setting you up to succeed in grades or wherever it is in that system. It's not teaching you grit, it's not teaching you cooperation. It's not teaching you teamwork. It's teaching you put yourself first and look how well you do. If you put yourself first, how do you then communicate to your friends of today's world? Okay, number one, you have to be doing it yourself.

This is such a good question. So how do you do it with others? I think you need to adopt all the things we talked about. I think you need to be a student of leadership. Number one, put yourself like you can practice these things first. And I think having conversations with people, I mean, believe it or not, saying, and don't make it about them, make it about us. If you'll notice, when I talk about things, I very, very, very rarely talk about you this and you that. I talk about us and we include yourself. It's not. It's less aggressive. Say to a friend, I don't think you're. Instead of saying, I don't think you're prepared for the future, I say, I don't think we're prepared for the future. The future. Make it inclusive. And if you can make it a we conversation where you put yourself in that bucket, they're more likely to include themselves in that conversation and be a part of the solution. So try that. I don't think we're prepared for what the future holds. I'm worried that we're going through this and we're being told that we're number one, or we're being told that it's all about us, or we can have anything we want in the world, and when we get to the real world, we won't be prepared. You know, can you help me?

Ask advice. Can you help me? Oh, that's a great one. I'll just tell a little quick story. So I have a friend who was going through a really hard time. Career and personal. And she knows what I do for a living. And so she called me up and said, will you help me? And I said, of course. And so we put aside 90 minutes every single week where we got together, and I basically coached her, and she told me what she was going through. I held space for her. I gave some advice, and. And she'd feel amazing for a day or two, and then she'd go back to feeling bad again. And we get together and she'd feel amazing for a day or two, and she'd go back to feeling the same. And this was just a repeating pattern for weeks. And I felt like, my goodness, I wasn't making any progress and I wasn't really helping her. And then I went back to my own work. I remembered service. I remembered that from Leaders Eat last, that the 12th step of the 12th step program is to help somebody else who's struggling with the thing you're struggling with. And about asking for help rather than offering help. And so I called her up and said, listen, we get together every week. I trust you more than anybody. You trust me more than anybody. I have a favor to ask. And it was a genuine favor. It wasn't a trick. It was a genuine favor. I said, can we use some of the time for me to tell you what I'm going through? Because I welcome your advice, too. And that's what we started to do. I started telling her all of my challenges and all the things that I was struggling with and all of my stresses. And she became the advice giver. And within a very few weeks, all of a sudden, her personal life turned around, her professional life turned around. When she was helping me fix many of the problems that she was dealing with, she was better able and better equipped to solve the problems herself. I found that wonderful and amazing. And so go back and the struggles and fears that you have about what you're unprepared for in the future, go ask your friends to help you get through that. And amazingly, by helping you, they're actually helping themselves. Okay, so I think we're winding down now. People have been asking. I just got a note. People have been asking about the hoodie and the course. Okay, so here's the hoodie. It says on it. I'll read it to you. What does it say? It says the goal is not to be perfect by the end. The goal is to be better today. And you can see what it looks like. I'll back up. I love it. It's nice and soft. If you want to get a hoodie, I think there's a link in the.

Chat to do that. That special coupon for them for 24.

Okay. And we did, look at this. We turned on the special coupon for 24 hours. Only for 24 hours. Okay. So they turned on the live 20. Live 20 because we're live and it's 20 off if you want to get a hoodie. And then we can match and we can twin and all that stuff. And if you we. Somebody asked about the speaking course, if you go to SimonCinic.com somewhere on there in the on demand courses, you'll see the course for my speaking class. And if you put the code in live20, you'll get 20% off that also for the next 24 hours. So I think that's where we are. I absolutely love doing these Q and A's. One day we'll get to do them in person again and we can look at each other and I can hear your voices because that would be amazing. But until then, everybody, thank you so much for showing up. Thank you for coming from all over the world. For those of you, it's the middle of the night. Please, please go to sleep now. It's way too late for you to be on YouTube and social media doing this. Go to bed.

And I. And I think if you want to refer back to any of this, I think we're going to put it online, which we usually do. We'll put it on. We'll put it on our channel on YouTube if you want to go back and revisit any of the answers. Thank you so much, everyone. Until I see you next time, Take care of yourself. Take care of each other. This is one of my favorite, favorite, favorite things to do is to engage and chat and hang out. And again, I hope we get to do it in person. See you all soon again. Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.