The Power of Vision and Laughter in Leadership with Des Hague

Welcome to Super Connections. I am your host, Jennifer K. Hill, helping you with the Golden Triangle of Connection, where you will super connect to yourself, others, and your purpose. Join me each week as I will share from some of my favorite tips and tools for super connecting, and I'll bring in some of my favorite friends and thought leaders To help support you on your journey to super connecting to the life of your dreams. Hello friends, and welcome back to the Super Connections Podcast, episode 8. We have lucky number 8 here, none other than Des Haig, who is an incredible new friend I recently connected with. Bestselling author and incredible thought leader, CEO, has been CEO of 9 major companies, including companies like IHOP, Safeway, Has the Think Your Way to the Top Method book. I recently joined his organization as a Thought Sherpa, which we can talk about more on the show and the beautiful synchronicities and resonance you're creating around that, Dez. And I'm so grateful, shout out to our friend Ambreen who introduced us here, who's an incredible LinkedIn influencer herself. And Dez, I would love to hear from you a little bit about your journey. You do not get to be CEO of 9 major companies without in some way or another super connecting to yourself, others, and your purpose. Take us through that journey for you.

Thank you, Jennifer. It's great to be on. And yet, Ambreen, yourself, and many others have been superstars and super connectors as well. It's been an honor to get to know you over very recently with you, but years and sometimes decades to some of my other networked friends. So I think with anybody, everybody's got their own story. Everybody's going to have their own adversity. Everybody's going to have their own successes and failures. My journey, I don't think it was easy. But I also know other people have had it much worse. There's a great quote from Viktor Frankl. If you have a why, you can cope with almost any how. And that's how I think about my earlier years, Jennifer. I went from having a loving home to my mother dying of breast ovarian cancer when I was very young at 8. My father remarried to a, an outrageously drunk, aggressive, abusive Woman put me and my brothers through 6 years of physical and mental torture, which I don't say lightly. And I think you have to look at every silver lining. You have to look at what God— there's a statement that God will only give you what you're capable of handling. I'd like to revisit that statement because I don't think I needed to do some of the things and feel some of the— awful abuse in those early years. But I think what it did give me, Jennifer, was an unbelievable ability to do whatever it takes to survive. Mm-hmm. And also a confidence that I never doubted myself that things were gonna be better. So I went through those early traumatic, distressful years and it powered me. I left home at 15 and without qualifications. I went back and Got my MBA. It was important to me, but I always wanted to, from a young age, to be a business guy. I really wanted to be a professional soccer or football player. Candidly, I have to admit now in my 50s that I just was never talented enough. And it hurts me. It hurts me to say that a lot. From those earliest moments to getting out there, being homeless several times.

You were homeless then?

Absolutely. At 15 and then again at 17, I slept in parks. Didn't have a cent. I used to walk hours and hours to get anywhere. But I always thought, no, this is not going to be my lot in life. And so through that, I went to work at a family friend's fish and chip shop. I then became the manager of that fish and chip shop with a grocery store, with the first video shop in the north of England that I was the manager of. I did the books when I was 16, and I just made my own way. And so To me, it's about having the ability to never ever doubt yourself. I think there's a great quote from Steve Maraboli where he says, your fear is 100% dependent on you for your survival. So if you fear, I think it's about adversity. You're gonna face it and you're gonna succeed or fail. So choose wisely if you think you can or you can't. It's gonna be very important to what you are gonna be in the future. So it's just battle through, do whatever it takes, but do it with some humor and class and move forward with some courage. And that got me to lead these 9 organizations. And it's been an honor to do that. Talented people, working with them, not to be confused with, we, I love kindness, but I also love results. And I don't wanna conflate the two. I was like, you have to get results. You can be kind, but it doesn't mean you lower your standards. And I think those are all important things that I think is lost in today's rage machine on social media. Oh, my boss is terrible because he asked me to go to work and do my job. That's not a problem. That should be the given. And then you move from there. Yes, with kindness, you don't want to wake up at 9 o'clock and say, hey, it's time to be unkind. It's time to screw up. It's 10 o'clock. Give people a chance to succeed and they usually will.

Yeah. So how do we do that? This is such a great point. So many of us are disconnected from our purpose. That's the top part of what we call the Golden Triangle of Connection. And sounds to me like, Des, you epically won at fulfilling your purpose. You knew you were meant to be a leader even when you were sleeping on those park benches. You still had this certainty beyond logic. that there was something driving, that you were destined for something better. And so for somebody out there who maybe they're a leader, I just was talking to a CEO I know the other day about this. He was so frustrated with his team 'cause team members are sometimes working 5 jobs at once and they have these gig things and then they show up half exhausted to work. How do you, number one, do it if you're the leader who's in that position who has a team member? How do you lead with kindness and not from a place of being punitive? And then on the flip side, if you're the employee and maybe you hate your boss, and I'm sure you had to go through your share of promotions to get to be CEO of 9 different big companies.

Absolutely.

How do you handle it from both perspectives, from the employee and from the CEO perspective?

No, it's a great— I wish I had the answers to that 100% because I think that's asking the cure for cancer. Maybe not as severe as that. Yeah, it comes back to Alignment. So to me, I think the number one role of a CEO is how do you, first of all, connect and lay out a narrative that is compelling for people to want you to join their mission? So first of all, you gotta be a great storyteller. If you can't actually get people to sign on and think about how to be, you know, what I wanna be, it's not like I want to I want a Mercedes. No, I need that car. I need to be part of this mission. It fulfills me at a different level. So I think it's about how you connect on the vision. And then I think the other piece is you've always got to be thinking about how do you attract, retain, advance, motivate, stimulate, encourage, empower your team? And so I always go back to, if I'm facing a team that's not bought into my mission, the first thing I do is I look in the mirror. Is it me? Is my body language not right? Am I not sending off the right signals? And I think that what I've developed, Jennifer, is, and I, it's in my book that I'll plug just awfully now.

Go right ahead.

Think Your Way to the Top. It's a journal for getting ahead and staying ahead for people. But I think one of the important chapters that are thought lessons that I have in there is lead with laughter. We are such a serious breed. I've had bosses that you think a heart attack was less severe than the situation of, you know, a certain moment in the business life. It's like, Nobody wants to work with these uptight, ridiculously serious players. We're not in the— yeah, we're not a fighting machine in the military. And I'd still encourage them to have some fun in the barracks, which I'm sure they do. But the reality is we take ourselves way too serious. We don't lead with laughter. There's so many compelling reasons why we should lead with laughter. First of all, Harvard studies 27% get bigger salaries, bigger bonuses. So it stimulates differently. Who wants to work for more than almost half their life in misery? Now, I'm not saying let's go and do a Saturday night skip. Let's go and be— let's fail and laugh. No. But if we can build a rapport, if you can laugh together, you can win together. You will go into wars together because you are connected. And that if you, so first of all, if you are not into the lead with laughter kind of mandate, I don't think people are gonna be there with you as well as they could be otherwise.

I, I love that, Des. I remember you just brought me flashback to building my first company years ago. I was running a legal recruiting company and we had a team of, we had up to teams of like 10 people. And at one point we had like 7 or 8 of us. And you're in this pressurized job, you're trying to get CEOs and all different types of people to roles and jobs. And you take yourself so damn seriously.

Right.

So we had instruments and we would sometimes like literally pull out the maraca, like the thing that you shake, and like the tambourine. And we'd start just like, if we were having a particularly stressful day, everybody in the office would grab an instrument and we'd make the worst music you've ever heard. And we'd all just sit around laughing. And our team was very successful. And to your point, it brings people together. So let's flip it on its side now and look at it from the employee perspective. You've been that guy where some days, You just don't like your boss and you might not like the way they're doing things, or you might not feel like showing up. How do you still show up as an employee in order to be able to fulfill your dreams and not just get sidetracked by that one moment where you feel angry, frustrated, tired, lonely, whatever it is?

And I tell you what a great question, Jennifer. And I will tell you the, and again, it's a chapter in the book about You gotta win no matter what you're confronted with. And I will tell you, my biggest learning experiences haven't come from success because success is great and everybody loves you and everybody's an author of success. But you ask anybody if they're the author of failure, and that's an orphan. Failure is an orphan. Nobody wants to cough up and say, I created a mistake. And I think that's the best thing you can do. You can say, hey, I made a mistake and I'm gonna learn from this. Because if you don't, you're not evolving. But back to your specific question, Arn, I personally, looking back at my career, got a fire lit under me when I was told, when I was the manager of the year for Pizza Hut, which I was very proud of, I was very proud of, I went on to help set up computer systems. And anybody who knows me, that's almost like an oxymoron. But at that point, my boss then told me, sat me down and said, Des, you are not gonna be anything other than a manager. And I've got nothing. And by the way, all the managers, if listen, great job. I love that role. It was one of my favorite roles. But the reality is you can advance your career and again, never let anybody stop you. So, The way that I chose to turn up for that situation is, okay, I'll show you. So again, it was like it lit a flame underneath me. But also, I think that I've had some awful experiences when you go back and they are massively transformational learning programs that you can then use to say, you know what, I'm never gonna do that in that situation. I'm never gonna be treating my folks like I was treated in this certain situation. And I think they advance you and they better you. So you can choose to get frustrated or you can just choose to let that fuel your future path.

I totally get it. I remember clear as a bell does, I had worked at the only real job I had straight out of college before I started becoming an entrepreneur and building my own companies. And as I went to leave, I was like kicking butt, taking names, bringing in well over 7 figures a year in revenue for this company I was working for. And I went to the president, I said, I'm gonna go build my own company. I'm gonna go be successful, et cetera. It wasn't even in their industry. My first company, by the way, was a complete failure. So taking ownership of that, I was like, I thought I was a hot piece of shit. And I was like, oh, I can do no wrong. I'm like, I'm so smart. I'm gonna go out and make millions of dollars. 'Cause I was bringing in millions of dollars for this company. But I did go to that president and I said, oh, I'm gonna give you guys 2 weeks notice. I'll introduce you to all my clients. I wanna be sure you're taken care of. And he looks at me and he says, you like to travel? I said, yes, I love to travel. He said, you'll never be able to travel as a CEO or entrepreneur. You're always tied to your business. And I said, watch me. And I made a deal with myself in that moment, Des. And that deal with myself was I will go and build companies till the day I die. However, I will go on one trip every month. Somewhere tropical every year, and somewhere I've never been every year. And since I made that promise to myself close to 20 years ago now, I've averaged 24 trips a year for joy.

Okay, so that's a mic drop in my mind, Jennifer. It's just that's the other thing. Have a plan, execute the plan. Many people don't have a plan. We think, they think about more, what am I going to go for this weekend? Or what's for, where do I want to have some fun? My view is Your career is the most important thing. It's your code red. What is your vision? What are the deliverables? You laid it out. I want to be a CEO, but I want to travel. I want to do this. I want to see a new country every year. That's a part of your ink, if you like, Jennifer ink. This is what I stand for, what I want to be doing. And then you follow through because you had a plan and then you said, I've got a vision. I'm going to put this into place. That's another missing element. It all goes back to never stop learning or never give up or do whatever it takes. Yeah, they could be clichéd bumper sticker slogans, but if you put them to life with meaning, my God, transformational.

And that's the invitation is for all of us to ask ourselves. I was just sharing this on somebody else's show I was on yesterday or the day before. If you want to know what you're committed to, look at what you have. And in your case, Des, you were committed despite being homeless and having nothing, being a manager at Pizza Hut. You knew you were committed to greater things and to moving forward. So that commitment pulled you forward. And sometimes in life, we are committed to being victims of our circumstances, of our past. And you hear stories like yours of homelessness and despair and poverty. And yet some of us are able to pull ourselves out of that and some of us aren't. So the only difference is Our perspective and our actions. It is our intention multiplied by our action that equals our results in life. We cannot sit around on a mountain and intend with zero action, and vice versa. We cannot take action every day without any intention or plan on the back of it. Those 2 things married together equals our ability to drive towards what we are talking about today in this golden triangle of connection, which is our purpose. Right. So, Dez, I would love to hear from you. Are there any closing thoughts before we tell people where to connect with you and find your information? Any closing thoughts for you, my friend, on how people can drive towards that purpose that lights them up, even if maybe they don't know what that is in this moment that they're listening to our episode?

I think a critical piece, Jennifer, is you're not a victim of your circumstances. You are an outcome of your choices. So even in the most difficult times, you're not a victim. Victim mentality is not a winning formula. It's a slippery slope to nothing. It just, it destroys and deconstructs who you are as a person. So never be a victim. You can be a survivor of any situation, but you are not a victim. And that's a victim mentality is a losing proposition. Then it's about manage, manage with a belief that you will overcome any adversity because in life, in business, you're gonna have them. And then the final thing, And I've been signing off my memos for 25 years with this. It's onwards. You're moving onwards. You're thinking onwards. You are delivering onwards. You are not a fixed position, a fixed post. Move forward in the confidence that you are gonna be better, bolder, bigger, differentiated, and more successful. And you will be. Most times.

Beautiful, Des. Thank you so much, my friend, for bringing your wonderful wisdom, Think Your Way to the Top, here to today's Super Connections episode. If people want to get Think Your Way to the Top or any of the other work that you've done, where's the best place to connect with you, Des?

DesHagueBooks.com is for the books. If you're on LinkedIn, it's Des Haig, and you'll get the Thinking Academy, which will be coming live with a new website in the next few days. So there'll be lots of ways for you to connect, and I hope you do. And I hope you let me and my Thought Shapers the Thought Shapers who have joined me on this journey of really helping everybody get ahead with their careers and maximizing their life. Thank you, Jennifer. It's been a beautiful little podcast here.

Thank you, my friend. I know I will definitely be sharing this with anybody I meet who wants to think their way to the top because it's such an important message, Dez, that sometimes we just feel like we can't, right? We feel like it's not fair. Life's not fair. Politics aren't fair. Humanity's not fair. And guess what? If you say that, you're right. Yeah. And if you think that you can, just like Dez said earlier, you're also right. If you think that you're unstoppable, unmessable with, you'll also be right. The world is the way you see it and the way you say it. I am Jennifer K. Hill, and thank you for joining us.