Jean Oelwang Recap: Partnering the Virgin Way

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As always, I'd like to take a moment to just share some of the recaps from our full feature length episodes with our special guests. Look, our last special guest was the one and only Gene Owang. Gene is the founder and CEO of Virgin Unite. That's Richard Branson's Virgin company. It's his foundation that's run the philanthropy side of it. And that foundation is an entrepreneurial foundation that builds collectives, incubates ideas and reinvents systems for a better world. Over the last 15 years, Gene has worked with partners to lead the incubation and startup of several global initiatives including the Elders. And that one really excites me because that was some of the founding members of that was Nelson Mandela, his wife Gresham and Desmond Tutu. And the Elders play a really important part in helping us navigate to a more joyful and connected world. She also helped in incubating the B Team, the Carbon War Room, Ocean Unite, and the Virgin Unite constellation. As part of her work over the last three decades, Jean has helped corporations put the well being of people and the planet at their core, including working over with 25 businesses across the Virgin brand across 15 industries to help embed purpose in all that they do. Jean has also recently wrote an incredibly, I think just thought provoking, challenging, stimulating, inspiring book called Partnering. Please go and buy it. It's phenomenal. If you are committed to having a life of abundance, a life of connection, a life of giving back and contributing, this book is a must read. It's simply incredible. And Gene is the person to write this book. It's just phenomenal. So let me get into it, let me share a few takeaways and I hope that one or two of these may really serve you in your life, in your family, in your health. But there's so much gold. I'll just share a few of them. There were so many. So Gene said leadership is often mistaken as a solo endeavor, but it's actually all about partnership. Leadership is about the collective leaders realize they don't have all the skills and they find people to help them with the areas they don't have the skills in. Let's take Virgin for example. There's no way that Richard Branson could run all of his businesses and know the most about all of them. In fact, I recently heard him talking about profit and loss and gross margin and net and he said he was at a governance like a board meeting and someone said you don't know what we're talking about. You don't know what that means. And he said, you're right, I don't. This is Richard Branson. How amazing. And he said, then someone came out and drew a picture of it and it all came to life and it made sense. So as a leader, we don't need to have all the answers. And in fact, it's better that we don't. It's great to empower others, and it's great to employ others who can get out and do their thing and add to that journey towards our outcome.

Another thing that was really interesting was that Jean said that I won't forget. She said, partnering is the path to a meaningful and purposeful life. I'm going to repeat that. Please think about that in your life. Partnering is the path to a meaningful and purposeful life. And isn't it so true when we do things alone, there's a sense of achievement, sense of joy, but actually, when we partner with others and collaborate and do things in teams or in pairs, there's so much more to be gained, there's so much more to celebrate, so much more learning. Where are you partnering in your life? Do you have an intimate partner? Are you partnering with colleagues on projects? Are you partnering with people in your community to make a difference? Perhaps this year, the year ahead, I want you to focus on where could I partner? Where could I double down on the partnering side of things?

Gene said, learn to listen well as a leader, but also learn to listen to the right people. I think that's crucial, right? We can listen to lots of things. We can watch every Instagram feed and every little piece of advice that goes out there. But actually, it's not about listening to everyone. It's listening to the right people. How do we know if people are the right people? Well, to me, they've got to pass the believability test. What's the believability test? Well, it's when you've done something extraordinary that's created some level of impact and result, and you've been able to repeat it more than once, preferably several times, and you've been able to pass that piece of knowledge, that skill of that behavior onto others who've also been able to get the same outcome. To me, that's believability.

And I only like to consult people and listen to people who have walked the walk. Everyone has an opinion, and that's great and they're entitled to it. But when it comes to making big decisions, when it comes to business, when it comes to relationships, how about we listen to the people that actually have done the doing? You know, to do the doing means you've got to be in the battlefield doing the thing, learning, and then developing strategies.

One last little piece I want to share with you.

Be careful about who you surround yourself with and invest your time in. And that was something that came up again and again in our conversation. So this year, who are you going to be surrounding yourself with? Who are you going to invest your time in? Because it's the most crucial thing. And Gene said we need to start moving away from I and move towards we. It's all about the collective. So I just want to say a huge thank you to you. Thank you for listening. Whether this is your first episode of mine that you've listened to or it's your hundredth, I'm so grateful that you gifted me your time and that you continue to do so. I really appreciate it. Please do share the podcast with a friend. Share with five friends. I want to try and make the greatest difference by sharing great messages from great leaders. And I truly believe we can transform teams and organizations and cultures one leader at a time. So please get out there and lead your life on purpose.

Sam.