S2E2 Corey-osity Unleashed with Thomas Erikson

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So, welcome back to the next episode of Curiosity Unleashed, and this is actually part 2 with the wonderful Thomas Eriksson, who is a Swedish behaviorist and best-selling author of the Surrounded by Books, which are a series that are about human behaviors and communication. And the books, including Surrounded by Idiots, has sold over 10 million copies in 70 languages. Amazing. And then, our last episode, and I encourage you to go back, we talked a lot about colors. We talked a lot about your book, Surrounded by Idiots. We now know why we have a new one coming out, which we're all very excited about. In this particular one though, Thomas, we wanted to talk a little bit about your book, Surrounded by Bad Bosses. It has a nice synergy with a lot of the work that we do. So, I guess just sort of jumping into it, what was your reason for writing this one? And where does it fit in your series? Because you've got 7 books. Remind me where this fits in and the reason for this one, if you don't mind, Thomas.

Of course. Well, firstly, I wrote Surrounded by Idiots about the disc profile dressed in colors. My wife said because of some events we were going through when we met each other, we met late in life. 10 years ago, 11 years ago, she said, you should write about manipulation. That became Surrounded by Psychopaths, which we at home call The Black Book. That's a manual that I'm afraid is going to get in the wrong hands one day. It's the most borrowed book in Swedish prisons, by the way, if you didn't know.

Oh my goodness.

Yes, I know how it sounds. It's also a huge success here. I don't know what happened there, but anyways. Then I started to think, okay, I am a management consultant. I have been training leaders since early 2000s, 2001, 2002, something like that. I started relatively young doing that. So I was thinking, I have some things to say about leadership and management. I actually have. Why not write a book about that, about leadership, how to lead people, how to manage people? In a work environment. So I wrote a book that I called Surrounded by Lazy Employees because of course, I have to provoke people a little bit because that's in my nature. So I just had to make people a little bit annoyed. So Surrounded by Lazy Employees. So I wrote that about this is how you lead people and do this and do that. And there's a number of systems in there. Then I actually, interestingly enough, this is actually a beautiful story. I saw a documentary on TV about Margaret Thatcher. The Iron Lady, one of the previous prime ministers of England, United Kingdom. And it was about her, she wanted to run for a second period there. I think they do it for 5 years in a row there. You know this better because you live there, better than I think it's 5 plus 5 plus and so on. So she went to this political advisor guy and he said, well, for this campaign, 'You shouldn't forget the unemployed. You did that the last time, the previous time you forgot about those. It's 10% of the population, you know, so you shouldn't forget about the unemployed.' And she said, 'Okay, good advice, thank you.' Then she went to another person who gave her a sort of a second opinion. And he said, 'The rest of them are 90%. Forget about the unemployed,' which she did. I'm not defending it. I'm only reporting it. Okay. So, and she brought the win home. And that got me thinking, okay, now I've written a book about management for 10% of the workforce, meaning the managers. What if I actually wrote about leadership for everybody else? So then I wrote Surrounded by Bad Bosses, and then I put together, and then I had a really long book, too many pages. So you can read it from two sides. And the book is about, this is what your manager is trying to do with you or to you or make you do, or this is how hard it is and how of a struggle it is to actually lead people in a proper way in these modern times, because, you know, this planet is a cruel place sometimes. No, your boss is not an idiot. He or she might struggle a little bit. And if you understand their preferences and why they act the way they do, now you can have a conversation because now you understand the dynamics and the psychology in a proper leadership way, so to speak. So you get two books for the price of one, really. And I have tested this in a number of organizations here in Sweden. When you hand it out and you have the staff to read the first half of the book and the management to read the second half of the book, and when they sit together in a huge room, everyone is smiling. And they say, wow, now I get it. That makes perfect sense. Why hasn't anyone told me? This is just great. So for me, that was, it felt, I was pretty happy about that book. I'm bragging a little bit. I'm going to stop doing that because we can't brag in Sweden. That's not beautiful. We can't show our egos too much. Sorry. They do it better in the US. So, but anyways, uh, oh, they do. They do. Uh, have you heard about that? So that was the whole idea and it's gone really, really well. I can use this in my business, of course. So we hand them out in big boxes. It's about gathering an understanding. Sorry, it's about making everybody understand what is the process here? What is actually going on? Why do you ask me for these things? You know, why do you give me feedback or why don't you give me feedback or why are you treating me differently on a Monday than on a Friday? Why is that? Because there are systems that can be explained everywhere. So Yeah.

Yeah, and it's interesting because when our book came out, The Bad Bosses Ruin Lives, we had a couple of people who interviewed us who wanted us to look at it from the other side. So, how do you work with a boss who's a micromanager? How do you work with boss avoider? And I think that's brilliant because it just shows that to some extent, we all have to take responsibility. We all need to be able to understand how to work. It's not just one way. So, I love the two sides of the book. I think it's, you're right, two for the price of one. Absolutely.

Just imagine that. No, but I think it's a good thing. And I think that's a part of— if I have a mission or some sort of— I don't know, let's say I have a mission here. Let's call it a mission for the lack of a better word. That is to increase the understanding between human beings. And where the friction occurs is obviously in the workplace. Of course, as within families, of course. But what happens at the workplace, that is my specialty. That is what I'm trained at to do, what I'm trained at sort of dealing with. I'm not a psychologist. I'm a behaviorist, very different thing. I'm not a therapist. I'm a mentor. And I understand how tricky this is. So, but if people only talk to each other, I say, you know, just, just to, and you've seen this 100 times, I'm pretty sure. Someone hands out an order. I want you to do this or that on a Tuesday by noon, back on my table, you know. And you get just a, a silent nod in response. And Tuesday when you go home, you realize, wow, I didn't get that report. Where, where's the bloody report? So you go back to your employee and you, you give them a, you know, you, you know, you just tell them, you know, you're a, you're a, you're a, you're an incompetent person. I'm gonna, I'm gonna I'm going to lower your salary if you do that ever again, and you don't challenge me, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Instead, I say, okay, what happened here, John? Something happened. I understand. What happened? Was I unclear? Did I treat you unfairly, or is your workload too much? Something happened because we had an agreement, you and I. I asked you and you politely said yes. You agreed. So we have this. Not in writing, but we have a verbal agreement, which is fine. So what happened? Tell me, walk me through the story. What happened last week? Because you didn't deliver. And then John comes with a story. So, you know, I don't need some weird— I need the truth. What happened? Just talk to me and we'll sort it out. Just imagine doing that. They don't.

It's really a beautiful concept of being able to talk and being able to be open and honest. Most of the offices I've worked in, they don't have that option. So, when the boss comes in and says, you know, that report, just tell me what's happened. The boss is not really looking for the root cause. It's not really looking for what's going on. The boss is generally looking for a way to cover their own butts. So, when they go to their boss, they can say, "Well, you know, so-and-so didn't give me the report." But I don't want to dwell too much on that one. One of the other parts that really stuck out for me is that in your book, you say that most bad bosses aren't evil. They're just unaware. So, we agree with that. We have the 3 A's in our model: awareness, acceptance, and then action. And we say that that's the path to being a great boss. So what is the trick about this? What is the power in this awareness and how can leaders and employees develop it?

Well, there's a couple of things in there. Firstly, a lot of studies has been made on self-awareness. We can start there. Self-awareness is one of the best predictors of whether this manager is going to be a great leader, because self-awareness leads to social competence or people skills, if you like. And social competence slash people skills leads to great communication skills, because if you understand how you are affecting everybody around you, now you can work on how you present yourself or how you delegate or how you give feedback or whatever. But it starts self-awareness, if you don't understand, it's like saying, okay, I'll call my travel agency up. We don't do that anymore, but for the sake of argument, and I say, hey, get me a ticket to London. I want to fly to London. They will say, no problem. And then they will say, sir, from where would you like to go? Just imagine I said, never mind that. Don't be so problem-focused. Give me the bloody ticket. How will they solve it? Answer, they won't solve it. You need two dots on the map to connect the journey, so to speak. And I will always be the starting point. And people tend to forget about this. This is the way in how to be maybe not a perfect manager, but at least a better one instead of being stuck in your own head all the time, which some people are. That's a human thing. We are all flawed in that perspective, I guess. I know that I am. But the thing is this, if you always use yourself as some sort of role model for how it's supposed to be, I understand it sounds— no one does that. Yes, they do. I think like this, therefore it has to be right. Oh Lord, you know, where to even begin? Just because you're right, you think you're right, doesn't necessarily mean that you are right or that I am wrong, by the way, because, you know, and the thing is, a lot of managers, they aren't even aware they are not aware. They're not self-aware about their lack of self-awareness because they have never considered the whole issue. What are you talking about? I am who I am. Well, describe yourself in 10 words. They can't. Ambitious, working really hard. Okay. And then what? I don't know. I never got that question. I usually ask CEOs this question. What's your best traits? Describe yourself. Use any language. Most people can't do it because they haven't thought of it. I think that's the main problem. The best leaders I have met, and I have met thousands, the best ones, they are really, really self-aware. They understand with some staff members they need to speed up to not bore them to death. Let's say we talked about the four colors last time. I'm going to use this language. You can edit it out if it's too complicated. If you have someone with a pace of, let's say, 80, and you're at 60, okay, and then you have to speed up in order to just make them stay focused in the conversation. But if your pace is 60 and the other one's is 30, I'm not saying one pace is better than the other. I'm only saying it's a difference here in how you do things, how you go about doing, you know, it is up to you to increase the speed or to to decrease the speed, to speed up or to sort of slow down. And if you don't know your own speed, it's like saying, are we following the speed limit on this motorway? I don't know. I don't have a speedometer in the car. It says 90 over there. There it says 70. What are we doing? No idea. It's not going to work. You need to understand from where you're coming. And a lot of managers haven't ever thought of it. So they go to their next manager on the next level and they don't even know because do your job and just be quiet. I don't want to hear all of this. And it's a big problem. It's a big problem.

Yeah. And do you know what? I think that's why the colors are so helpful from a leadership perspective. And actually, we use them quite a bit in our workshops when we talk about the different building blocks because in your book, you're very honest and you share a story about you being a bad boss. And we share stories. Ken and I both share stories about when we've gotten it wrong. And I have to say, all of my mistakes, hands up, it was either me being not self-aware or me not being aware of my people's colors and what they needed. And trying to like, I'm a yellow-red and trying to communicate to my people as a yellow-red when they're a blue-green. So maybe you can talk a little bit more about like, how can leaders not just do it their colors, but be more aware and adapt based off of the needs of their people?

Right now we're talking about how we talk to each other, how we communicate, sometimes a little bit what we're interested in, how we think, how we want it to be, not necessarily why we are there. The sort of What are the reasons? Well, the why. You don't have to go all Simon Sinek all over your ear, but you know, why it matters. But if you only talk about communication style, it's a bit of a paradox actually, because the best teams have a huge, they have a lot of colors in there. They have extroverts, introverts, task orientation, people orientation. They have a, I mean, this kind of diversity is good, I think. That's my personal view. And those teams work the best because now you can solve problems from every angle at the same time. And people look at things from different perspectives and say, oh, have you thought about that? No, damn, you're right. I never thought about that. Good, you're on the team too. But the challenge here is, of course, you need a team leader who can deal with all the colors at the same time, constantly, regardless of where she or he is in the color wheel, him or herself, which is actually quite a challenge. And that is one of the reasons why so many people say, my boss is just completely, he's just out. I don't want to see him anymore because he is somewhere in the chart and everybody else is somewhere else. And he, if he doesn't know where he is and we just feel he's not with us, at least that's for sure. The best solution to this is to, and I guess you do this, I just assume you do analysis on everybody, you put them in the wheel. So you have the same group the whole group in the same slide, so to speak, and you see where you are in relation to each other. So you can say, oh, you're up there and we're down there. Uh-huh. Interesting. That makes sense. That explains a couple of things, really. So then you can work as a strategist. When you ask me for another Excel sheet and I will basically throw up on the carpet, now you know why that is. Sorry about that. But you get my point. Oh, but Excel is fantastic. No, it isn't. It's absolutely horrible. It's a horrible, horrible tool for some people. I use PowerPoint. Oh, PowerPoint, that's not serious. And off you go. The thing is, the more we talk to each other about how we talk to each other, the better it's going to get. But the manager, the leader, has to sort of be, take the lead, really, in this process, if you want to call it that. And I know that you know, but people who are listening maybe should consider their role here. Why do I? I mean, one thing, there's an interesting notion which is quite modern. I mentioned Simon Sinek now. I heard that. I heard it slip through my mouth, Simon Sinek. He's a brilliant guy, by the way. I like a lot of things, but what I don't agree with him on is that the leader should be some sort of service facility person going at the back or something and listening to everybody else and sort of, I don't get that. Leaders lead. They go first. He says leaders eat last. That might be the case. I don't know. But leaders lead. They take responsibility. They are sort of the door opener. They are the one who takes the conflicts and protects the team. It's not a service, service, person. I don't think so. I said, you should listen to people, yes, but someone has to make the decisions, and that would be the leader. Okay, I listened to all you 10 people. No one is actually agreeing on anything, so here's my decision. Boom, and there it is. That's what people need. And people will actually get aligned with this if they trust you and they can trust you to your word. You said A, B, and C, and you gave us A, B, and C. You didn't give us M, Z, and P, you know. You gave us A, B, and C. Perfect. Now we trust you. We don't love everything you did. We don't adore every decision, but we trust you. You did what you said you should do. And that's trustworthy. That's really, really good. Most leaders are not like that. The majority are not like that. They are like something in the wind that's just blowing by some, I don't know, some flag on a pole. And that's just sad. I think it's really sad.

They go whichever way the wind blows. Yeah. I would go along with you on this one, Thomas, that sometimes the leader has to step up and go, guys, we've talked enough. This is now the direction we're going to be going. I'm going to make this decision. But I would like to have that conversation in the first place. To see if the people can have a chance to chime in, can say, hey, I'd like to go this way because of these reasons. I don't want to be the leader that comes in and 5 minutes into the meeting says, you know what, we're just going to go do this. Never mind. Let's go back to our desks.

Throw away every note from the last meeting. I changed my mind. No, no, no. Of course.

Of course not.

Of course not.

Yeah.

And because trust is one thing that I think trust is, you know, my latest publication, if I call It is Surrounded by Liars, which was published in English. When was that? This spring, perhaps? Oh, I should know this. But anyways, maybe last fall, maybe last autumn. But anyways, and then I looked into this. Maybe so. But I looked into this trust thing and it goes, I mean, this interpersonal friction that we have between each other all the time, between us. That is the way it is. And when you feel you can't trust people, everything just falls to pieces. You don't have to be a liar or a manipulator, but if you say one thing, you have to stand by your word. God damn it. You cannot say, oh, sorry, I changed my mind. I'm going to give this to Mary now, or John over there or whatever. No, no, no. You stand by work. That's why some people who are too spontaneous are not great leaders because they think and they act simultaneously. That could be good in the middle of a war situation, but we are usually not at war, thankfully. So sometimes you just need to say, okay, let me get back to you. Just the ability to say, as a leader to say, I don't know. I don't have the answer to that question. Let me sleep on it. Honestly, I don't know. I'll call you tomorrow morning. And then you call them tomorrow morning.

Earlier in the conversation, you said, what do you think? You were talking, and then you had made a statement, and then you said, what do you think? I found out, for me, that being able to admit that I don't know in front of my whole team in front of other teams is a superpower, which I'm a technologist in my background. I'm a software engineer by training. And admitting that you don't know something was tantamount to career suicide, or at least so I thought until I realized that's what was holding me back. So being able to say, I don't know, it was a superpower. As long as I could follow it up with, give me a little while and I'll find the answer, or what do you think? And getting more than one measly little brain working on a problem.

Exactly. Completely agree. 100%. So good. And it took me, I don't know, what, a decade to learn this skill, this fantastic bravery to say, I don't know. But you're the boss, you should know. Maybe, but I don't. I can look it up. These days I don't answer those questions at all. When my team comes to me, do you know what I say? I say, if you couldn't ask me, then what would you do? And then they just look at me and go, oh, oh, then I would do this and that. What's keeping you? You know, what are you standing here for? And then they smile and say, yeah, right. Didn't see that one. Yeah, you're right. That's true. That's okay. Got it. Next time. I do it 10 times per individual and then they figure it out. Sometimes they don't know and they say, I actually don't know. Okay, let's have a conversation. But 90% of the time they know what to do. They know exactly what to do. Whether they know, they are in the vicinity of the perfect solution at least. I would probably do something like this. Good idea. Let's elaborate on this a little bit. See, wait, wait, wait, wait, take it. But being a leader is quite simple. It's not easy, but it's simple. You can just fold your arms in front of you and lean back in your leather chair and say, okay, if I wasn't around, what would happen then? Would everything just come to a complete halt? No, it wouldn't. No, we would continue the business. Good. Now you go away and do that. Continue the business. People say, you can't do that. You have to answer the questions. No, I don't. I actually don't. I am not the expert. I am not the specialist. I'm the leader. You're the expert. You get paid. You're the engineer, Ken. You solve the tech, whatever it is. I don't know. I know how to lead engineers, but I don't know how to engineer.

No, I'm just smiling because when I was at, well, one of the jobs I was at, we were in that kind of situation where each of us had our own specialty. And I was the team lead and somebody came to me and says, well, what about this? Well, I don't know. What do you think? You know, which direction are you going to go with this? I don't have the answer for you and I'm not going to give you the answer because it would be wrong. You tell me. No, I absolutely love that. In our work, we say that a good boss to one person is not necessarily a good boss to another person. From your perspective, especially with your experience with the colors, how does this dynamic play out in the real world?

It plays out in some occasions in complete confusion. I mean, statistics claim that every second person who leaves their job is because of bad management. Is it true? I suspect it's true. Uh, I don't, I don't, it would mean that half of every manager everywhere is lousy. I don't think that's true. I would say we have 10% excellent natural born leaders who are absolutely superheroes, men and women, so good. Then you have 70% who are sort of, yeah, I don't know. And then you have 20% who shouldn't be allowed over the threshold ever again. They should be, you know, lock them in, throw away the key kind of people. But most people are decent people. Most people want to do a good job. No one enters the office— well, some do, but that's very rare— most people don't enter the office and say, today I'm going to mess everything up as badly as possible. I hope they will hate me by 5 o'clock. No, I don't think that's the truth. I think they tried their best, but they are not experienced. They are not trained. No one has told them what skills to develop. And as we talked about just now, self-awareness is one of those skills. I think it's a skill. It's not an attitude or an opinion. It's a skill set to understand who you really are and why John sees you in this light and Sarah sees you in a different light, but you were the same all the time. So the communication styles is one thing, but it's also another thing because people If you have a new hire, some young person comes in and they're super enthusiastic and, hey, whoa, I'm going to do this. I'm going to change the world in here and give me 2 weeks. And you say, yeah, yeah, well, you sit down and here's your password and take it easy, buddy. But they are full of energy. You want to just aim the energy, but you have to control them. You have to feed back and say, don't do this. You have to sort of delimit them quite a lot in the beginning because they are beginners. That's what we call them, beginners. They had just begun. That's why we do that.

That.

So you have to instruct them thoroughly, but they are full of energy. So you point with your full hand, you say, do this, don't do that. And they're going to hate it because they are full of brilliant ideas and they feel like they're on the top of the world. A good leader understands this dynamic. A bad leader says, yeah, this guy is a super recruitment. Wow. Just give him the full scope and just send him off. And he will crash and burn within 3 months. And then you will look surprised in the mirror and say, what happened? He said he knew what he did, but look, just the cost. This cost me like £100,000. What is going on? I'm going to throw me out. And then he ends in the ditch in a minefield of problems and challenges that he has no idea on how to get out of it. So you have to change your management style. That you're following through. This is based on Hershey Blanchard's research from actually the early '70s. And they say, well, people go through a number of phases. And if you treat people the same way in every phase, you're going to mess it up. And most leaders do exactly that. Most leaders treat people like they know everything or they know nothing. The micromanagers think everybody's a beginner. Everybody needs 100% control, you know, 24/7, 365. And lazy man just said, yeah, he said he had it, so he knew how to go about. So I just let him do it. Don't ask me, I'm playing golf here. So, you know, and sometimes it's right, sometimes it's wrong. It's like a broken clock. Twice per day, it shows the correct time. But you can't work like that. You can't have that system. You need to be smarter than that, right?

So what advice do you give to somebody who's just starting out as a leader?

Well, as a leader or a manager? Sorry for pointing out words here, but I'm a bit keen on the language here. Let's say—

In this case, I'm talking about a leader, but what most people think of is as a manager. But I'm talking about a leader here because we can be leaders at all levels.

True, true. Very true. Totally agree. Well, again, build your self-awareness. I'm sounding like a broken record, I understand that. You know when you say a broken record, my kids, they look at me like, a broken record?

What's a record?

And I go, where to begin? You know, well, is this a vinyl? Is it black? Never mind. You're repeating yourself. That's what I'm talking about. Why didn't you say so? Anyways, young people these days, you know. 30-year-olds. No, seriously, you have to look at yourself. You need to understand what you're missing. You need to understand what kind of skills you don't have, what is lacking here. Ambition is good. Motivation in a new position, fantastic. But it's only going to get you started because most days as a leader will not be very motivating. You need to find a reason. You need— here you need your why. You need to understand why am I taking on this responsibility? Responsibility because this is going to be a bumpy ride. Because you've seen your boss and you've seen your manager and you saw your mother who was the CEO or your father was some sort of team leader and you heard their language around the dinner table because everybody was stupid. Probably not. No, no, no. So you can see it's kind of a struggle. Why take on this responsibility voluntarily? Don't give me, I don't know why I'm here. I love the perks. Don't give me all those things. Don't give me, I didn't get away in time when the question popped. I don't want to hear that. You need a purpose. Why take on this post? Now you're responsible for like 10 people or 25 people or 3 people. It doesn't really matter. You have more people on your responsibility list besides you and your video game or your kids or your husband or whatever. You need to pay attention. You need to really sit this one through. You have to think it over, really. Sit down. I, why did I take on a management position when I was 24? Well, I moved 1,000 kilometers to a woman I had met. Why not combine this brave career move into complete oblivion? I could have moved to the moon just as well. I didn't understand anything about what I was doing, but I pretended because I was young and stupid. Now I'm old and a little bit stupid still, probably. But I didn't have a good reason. I didn't do this because I wanted to help people. I wanted to make people fantastic or to build an organization. I did it because I got a raise. That's not a good enough reason. It's a stupid reason.

But that's why most people do it. Unfortunately, that's why a lot of people do it. And being in HR, You know, I've been really, really adamant at companies trying to create dual career paths so that people aren't forced into the only way to make more money is to be a leader, a manager, whatever, for the wrong reasons. So yeah, no, I think that's absolutely paramount.

And hierarchy is very— I mean, we have this pyramid anyway, that's always going to look like that. Well, always, I don't know. I don't think I'm going to see another solid organizational model in my lifetime. That's not going to look like some kind of pyramid. Maybe it's a bit wider at the top, could be 3 people, but still it's going to be a hierarchy, right? So if that's the only way to go, no. But I really admire people who say, no, I'm not ready yet. I meet those too. Women are better at this, I would say. They are smarter in this, but men think. They can. Men think things. Men's self-confidence is sometimes not very helpful for the organization. Like, I saw a study saying, what was it, 82% of all men think they can land a Boeing 747.

What percentage of women said it?

82%, I think. I could be wrong. It could be like 77%. I'm with the other 18%. I say, don't let me near this. I would crash the whole thing. No, no, the majority of men think they could land a plane. Where do people get those ideas? It's crazy. Of course I can take on this organization. I could be a CEO. I can be a team leader. I can, I can guide, I can supervise this 13, as in my case, 13 ladies. I was a young man, 24, 13 women. To this day, I cannot describe how I was thinking, what I was thinking.

Well, you were thrown in the deep end. That, I mean, yeah, I mean, a 24-year-old man thrown in to manage 13 women, I mean, that probably was a bit much for your first role.

13, the oldest was 21, the oldest was 61. It was a complete disaster. There is no way around it. There is no, no I can't say anything else, but it was a totally, you know, I saw a lady, I think 10 years ago, I left this place. It was a bank in Sweden, a bank office. I left this place. It was 25 years after I had left that place. And I saw her, she had a very special profile. So I saw her coming up from behind on a street in central parts of Stockholm. And I recognized, I just looked away. You know, just, I couldn't face her because I was still quite ashamed 25 years later. That's not a good track record, but I learned. I think what I was getting at here is women is better to say, actually, I don't know, or I don't know how. Give me something. I'm not sure I'm ready for this. I'm very flattered by the proposal. Thank you so much. I'm not sure I can do it. I think that's a beautiful trait. I think more people should consider this, is this the right aim for me? Should I go in this direction? Some people should, some people shouldn't. That's just the way it is. Some people will manage, some people will not manage. Some do, some don't. That's, I don't know.

I wonder if that's just a, it's not like a personal thing, it's more of a cultural thing because men are expected, or at least we think we are expected, to have the answer, to know which direction it's going to be going. To be the authoritative figure.

Yeah, in this day and age, Ken, I'm pretty sure it's just us left who thinks that way.

Yeah, yeah, it could be.

I'm afraid to say, but no, but yes, it's a bit of a not very, let's say, how should I say it? What would you say? It's not a well thought-through self-confidence matter. It's sort of the self-confidence is probably based on what I said. We see ourselves as a beginner again, like saying new at the job. Wow. A lot of energy, motivation, commitment, but no competence whatsoever. But it feels fantastic. Of course I can land that plane too. Have you been in a plane? No, but it looks quite easy on TV, right? It's the same story. It feels like, what could possibly go wrong here? So I'll be the team leader here. And some people mess it up.

Yeah, I think it goes back to, and it happened to me when I was in many organizations where it's an expectation of leaders. You're expected to have all the answers. You're expected to know how to do things. So even when you don't know, you pretend you do. Man, woman, whatever. That's just unfortunately I've been in cultures. And so I'm really pleased to hear that you feel and we feel really strongly about this. You know, as a leader, you don't have to have all the answers. You have to admit that you're making mistakes. And then hopefully for the next generations, that's just what you do. You know, that's just part and parcel of being a human being and being a leader.

I think what needs to be done here, Deborah, is you have to change the system. You have to turn the system upside down. This is going to sound like some sort of a dystopian future vision. But I think we will never solve it as long as people get trained in special skills, like it could be economics. I have a degree in economics. I'm not a psychologist. I'm a bank guy originally. Then I studied behaviors after that. But originally, I come from finance, which made me a specialist when it comes to counting money, basically, but it was a bank. Why would that make me a great leader? There is absolutely no connection whatsoever. Or a lawyer or whatever, a plumber, an engineer, what, it doesn't really matter. It's not connected to leader capabilities, leadership skills. The universities do not teach young kids leadership skills. And if they do, it's based on stupid theories that don't work and never has worked. It's about psychologists telling people, oh, you should do this, you should do that, you should always listen to people. But no, you are not the therapist. That's not your job. You're the leader. You cannot listen to everybody all the time. There's going to be a Polish governance so that everyone can say, no, I don't want to do it. Well, just put the business to sleep and just take some job in the public sector. No, don't do that, please. No, that's a joke. That's a joke. I'm just kidding. No, but seriously, they don't train people in leadership. And some leadership trainings are also really, really lousy. They're just bad. My first leadership program that I went through, they taught me how to write business plans. It's nothing to do with leadership. It's a specialist skill. Most leaders, no, sorry, most managers are usually the best specialist. Could be the best car mechanic. It could be the best engineer for that matter. Again, I'm not saying you can't do it, but I'm only saying there's no connection to be the best sales guy, gets to be the sales team leader, gets to be the sales director, and gets to be the CEO has nothing to do with leadership. And as long as we cannot solve this—

No, I do need to jump in here because you've been incredibly gracious with your time, but we are at the end. We need to wrap this up. Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I really hope at some point we get a chance. I'd love to go and buy you a beer or a coffee or a tea or whatever your favorite tipple is and have a really good conversation. Unfortunately, we have to finish and I'm always disappointed at this part.

That's why I made Ken do it.

Now, for the benefit of the listeners to this episode who didn't get a chance to hear us on the last one, how can people contact you or find out about all the great things you're doing?

They find me on most of the social media platforms. And of course, you can find the basics on surroundedbyidiots.com. You can file for a newsletter, so then you can see what I'm up to on a weekly basis. Everyone is welcome.

Thomas, I want to say thank you so much for your time, but also thank you because now I have at least 3 more books I might have to put at the end of my to-read list. So thank you so very much.

Thank you. It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Thanks.

What an honor. You take care, Thomas. Bye-bye.

Welcome to Curiosity Unleashed, where we turn bold ideas into action and help businesses and leaders step it up.

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