Karen Pflug Recap: Why diversity matters

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book, Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there. Why does diversity matter? Well, you really need to think about that in your life. Diversity is so crucial to develop a richer life, to really thrive with communities. Look, I spoke with Karen Flug last week. She's the Chief Sustainability Officer at Inka Group. Inca Group is the largest Ikea retailer and represents about 90% of IKEA retail sales. Look, Karen was super open and honest about a lot of these roles that she stepped into. She said, look, I wasn't fully prepared for those, but I stepped on in anyway. So we talked about imposter syndrome and I want to just share some of the key takeaways that I really hope will serve you in your life. And hey, I just got one request today. If you want to support lead on purpose, please just share the show with a couple of friends. Copy that link. Share it with them whether it's on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to the show, I'd sincerely appreciate it. First things first, it's about fostering a sense of togetherness and having a vision. Right? That was Karen's words. It's all about fostering a sense of togetherness. When you look at great high performing teams, and I've been really fortunate to work with some of the world's greatest teams, the B word comes to mind. Belonging. There's a sense of belonging and we might call that togetherness. But you feel like I belong. We're in this together. You know, I really witnessed this firsthand in Christchurch. Here in New Zealand, when the earthquakes happened in 2010, 2011, there was a deep sense of togetherness. We are in this together. We will fight the fight, we will get out the other side and it will be a better city and we will be much better people at the end of it. So in your team, in your family, your organization, are you fostering a sense of togetherness? How do you bring that about? Great leaders and, you know, great mums and dads and grandparents, like, they have a way of fostering this sense. And then second aspect of that was having a vision. If we don't have a vision, we tend to be demotivated. We tend to get off and distracted in different things. When you have a clear vision, you don't get off track. You stay absolutely monomaniacally focused on what's most important. So, second question for you today, and I know I'm pulling some big punches here, asking you all these questions, but at the end of the day, the better the questions we ask ourselves, the better the quality of life that we experience. So second question is, you know, what is your vision? How clear are you on your vision for your life? And when I say life, your career is part of your life. We're all about, hey, that's a professional bit of development over there, and that's a personal growth plan over there. Hey, it's all one thing. It's your one life. There happens to be different elements of it, but it all works together. And again, it comes back to that sense of togetherness. Another great thing that I loved with Karen was she said, don't take yourself too seriously. And this comes from a woman who is just incredible as being at the top of her game. She was in Nike. She obviously does incredible things with Ink Group and ikea, but she's operated at some of the top roles you could imagine. But she says the most key, important thing, do not take yourself too seriously. Do you ever do that? Do you ever kind of protect your ego? Do you ever take offense to things that actually you could just let it roll off? You know, is there things that you could laugh off as opposed to get worked up about? My challenge to you is where could you this week just take yourself a little less seriously? Now, another great takeaway, don't surround yourself with a team that think just like you. So crucial. And your team could be your organization, could be your senior leadership, could be people who report to you, could be your family, could be other athletes on your team. Depends what kind of team you're on. But don't surround yourself with a team that think just like you. Now I'm going to explain why, when we have everyone around us that's exactly the same, you know, same age, same stage, maybe same gender, same background.

Same ethnicity, same education, same neighborhood. Well, what happens is we are in an echo chamber and we start to just reverberate and we don't get challenged in our thinking, the danger there is, we don't get to see our blind spots, those mental blind spots, sometimes known as scotoma. They are there and we don't know they're there because there are blind spots. Who can help us? Well, people that are a different stage of life. I've got an incredible mentor. He's in his late 70s. Wow. He helps me see things I never even knew existed in my beliefs and in my values. But vice versa. I help him see things too, because I'm at a much different age and stage and connected in a different way to society and the world. So I'm going to ask you to think about your circle, both on field, so we call that work and off field at home. Do you surround yourself with the same types of people or is there diversity? That's what I want to leave you with. And look, I just want to say thank you for taking the time out today to listen to these takeaways from the incredible Karen Flug. But please get out there and lead your life on purpose. Thanks for tuning in today and investing in your own personal leadership. Please hit that subscribe button and I'd love if you'd leave me a rating and review. I've got some amazing guests lined up for you in the coming weeks and leaders, it's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.