Finding Brave 135: 5 Shifts In Agility That Will Help You Lead In Times of Disruption, Henna Inam

Hello, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Finding Brave. Once again, here I am back interviewing someone who has been such an inspiration to me. So much wisdom, so much insight coming out of this beautiful individual, Hannah Enam. Thank you for being here, Hannah. And I want to tell you, I have the softest spot in my heart for you. And because you were the one who said, yeah, sure, we can have you as part of our TEDx Centennial Park Women event, which was, I can't even say it without, I'm always choking up here on this podcast. But that was October 2016. Doesn't that feel like about 20 years ago already?

It feels like a century ago, doesn't it?

And that event was so, so beautiful. And you were the, do we call it, organizer?

Is that license holder and organizer for TEDx Centennial Park Women.

And when I went, I saw what that really means. It's such a massive project of love. You know, we don't get paid for that. Right? It's, you know, it's really. And what an experience it was. I will never forget it.

Well, I remember, Kathy, you were just talking about Finding Brave and that was kind of your debut in some ways, and you were saying, this is something I'm really inspired to talk about. And so lovely to see this four years later that you've had this wonderful podcast and you're, you know, just continue to blaze trails.

Thank you.

And to you, mutual fan club going.

Yeah, total mutual appreciation. All right, everybody, I'm so excited. We're going to be talking about disruption and perhaps we're going to get into, I hope we are, five shifts in agility to lead in times of disruption. This is so important now, isn't it? And we're going to talk about how you wrote Wired for Dis. Is that the name of it? Wired for Disruption.

Oh.

So let me tell everyone a little bit about Hannah. Hannah is an executive coach, global speaker, and the author of the new book Wired for Disruption, which you wrote in. It just came flowing out of you, didn't it? It did during COVID but obviously during COVID Yeah, you know, years and years of information that just went so we all have to pick up a copy. A 20 year veteran of Fortune 500 companies, she has seen firsthand the pressures of leading in times of disruption. Her book details the 5 shifts in agility and 15 agility accelerators, tools and practices that we're going to hear about to help activate our innate agility and be a force for good in times of disruption. So needed. Her neuroscience based research shows that agility is already built into our DNA. In the book, Hannah shares how these shifts are within our control and promote well being to help us thrive in the future of work. So welcome, welcome. Let's dig in. Hannah. First, I know that a lot of us are hearing these terms agility and disruption, but I've yet to see, and I've looked a really solid definition of both of those. Can you tell us, and you're going to be speaking from the perspective of leaders, but I know that this trickles down to all of us who are individual contributors, right?

Yeah. And by the way, let's start with a definition of leaders, because I think that there is an old definition of what leaders are that is still in our head that is way past its time. We think of leaders as people in a hierarchy that have people reporting to them and that they are leaders. In fact, my sense is that we need 8 billion of us to be leaders, all of us that are on this planet to be leaders, because there is so many collective problems that we face that need to be solved. And leaders are simply people who are willing to take the ownership to lead themselves to influence and drive change with others and a change that simply inspires them for the better. And so that's how I think about leaders. It's not, you know, where are you in the hierarchy? Because more and more, you know, we're working in a world where we're interdependent on each other and how can we be leaders regardless of where we are in the hierarchy? In fact, our world needs us to be leaders regardless of where we are in a hierarchy.

Oh, I love every part of that. Can I just amplify that for a minute? I think that hierarchical view is shifting so fast in this new gig economy that we have, right. That where many of us are going to be entrepreneurs and consultants and we're going to have to lead our own lives and our own business endeavors a different way. So would you agree with this idea that I feel that you really can't lead anyone else or anything else if you don't lead your own life in a powerful way? Would you agree with that?

I am 100% with you. I think all leadership starts from within and connecting deeply to who we are as individuals. My first book was Wired for Authenticity and it was about the seven practices of being an authentic leader and really connecting deeply with your own sense of mission and purpose so that you can make the, you know, the fullest expression. I call authenticity the fullest expression of me for the benefit of we. And this Next book, Wired for Disruption, is really about how we can each be a force for good in times of disruption.

Oh, wow. I love every word. So help us define agility and disruption. What? And to be a disruptor. I just commented on immediate opportunity, on, you know, how to be a disruptor in your own work. What is your mind?

Yeah, So a disruption is a significant change, right? It's a pretty significant change. It's a shift that happens. And it can be external. Like the pandemic was an external disruption that happened. The economic fallout of the pandemic is an external disruption. People losing their jobs and getting furloughed are external disruptions. And then I think there is also this sense of disrupting from within who you are, which is a part of this, is disrupting yourself. So that, you know, how do I create a step change in something in my capacity to make a contribution in this world, in my capacity to lead, in my capacity to influence? And so those are also. Those are sort of inner driven disruptions that I think is. That I think is also a description of disruption. Oftentimes disruptions have a negative connotation. Right.

Like so disruptive, like children screaming.

Yes, exactly. Right. And yet I feel that this disruption in particular that we're faced with is an enormous opportunity for each of us to step into a very powerful mission that inspires us so that we can be a force for good. And in fact, that is actually the key to help us thrive.

Oh, I love it. So let me ask this. I mean, in a way, disruption, it's like the breakdown moment that leads to the breakthrough, isn't it?

Absolutely. Sometimes that's your book.

That's my book. But sometimes the everything has to be thrown up in the air. And we don't tend to do that in calm, safe times. We tend to do it when we have to do it. But you know, I was reading as well that a common definition of disruption in the business world, and I would love your thoughts on this, is when an organization or an entrepreneurial venture, whatever, disrupts industry. So, for instance, Uber, right. Where the whole thing. And this definition talked about when you look at a need in the marketplace, but current thinking shows you that you can't fulfill that need in an economically viable way, and then something comes in and turns the whole thing, like Airbnb or whatever. So you're not actually limiting your definition to something like that, are you? You're talking about a broader disposition.

I think it's the broader definition of disruption, which is significant change and shift and. Absolutely. You Know, Uber and Airbnb are great examples of that. And it's also shaped by external forces, right? So they came in and, like, who would ever think about getting into a stranger's car, Right? Like, you know, you'd be like, what? And yet they've transformed this industry. And so there was the technology that enabled that. That enabled us to be able to sort of have an app right in our hands and fingertips that allowed us to, for example, be able to say, well, how is this person rated? There's also this shift in terms of trust of the public good. Right. That happened that I'm willing to now look at the ratings from people who I don't even know about this driver and how good is this driver or how good is this? So I think there's all these. Absolutely. I think these disruptions are done by companies, and then there are external disruptions that happen. And our job as leaders, as a community of 8 billion human beings, is to figure out what's my role in this disruption? How can I not just be a victim of it, but how can I use this energy of disruption to really create positive change, a change that I care about?

I so love it. You know, I. I'm even thinking about my own business and my own career, how certain things. And you point to kind of the universe. That's a spiritual term, but the universe delivering a readiness for these changes. It doesn't happen in a vacuum. Right. For instance, we have the technology now. We're comfortable looking at readings. We all do it every minute of the day. I love it. I love it. Now tell us about agility. How would you define that?

Yeah. So my book is about the five shifts in agility, and I'll put it up here for your viewers.

It is wired for disruption.

There it is, guys. So as I thought about during the time of the pandemic, what are some forces that are happening in the future of work, and what are some challenges associated with disruption? I thought about, really, five key challenges and then the relevant shifts in agility that we need as leaders. The first challenge that I talked about is what happens to human neurobiology when a disruption happens. So our bodies, brain bodies and nervous systems get into a place of threat, and what gets activated is our fight, Flight and freeze system. And so what we need is we need what I call neuro emotional agility, which is the ability to proactively shift ourselves from this Fight flight to a much more safe, curious, creative, and collaborative place. Because if we're stuck over here in fight and Flight, we Get into micromanaging behaviors. We don't share information. Now so many people are working from home, right. And they're having to deal with the emotional turmoil that is associated with trying to work from home, going virtual for the first time, dealing with trying to get their kids educated from a virtual perspective. So there's a lot of emotion that happens and also the fear of either losing your job or your health. And so I'm hearing a lot from my executive coaching clients about how exhausted they are. And all of this emotional turmoil is actually sort of kills and saps our creativity. It saps our ability to collaborate. And so neuro emotional agility, which is at the core, as I talk about in the model, is the ability to proactively shift ourselves.

You see that in your coaching. So when people come to you beleaguered, exhausted, afraid, resentful, we love our children, but it's a lot. Right. When they're not leaving home, they're not going to school. Is that something that you coach through about how to build that? Did you call it neurobiological?

Neuro emotional agility? Yeah. Yeah.

Is that your term? Is that, have you coined that term?

Yeah, neuro emotional. So it's our nervous system and that creates impacts and emotions within us. Right. And they all kind of work together to have us feel very discombobulated and exhausted.

Right. You know, I'm sure you would agree with this sentence, which I love, her statement, greater awareness equals greater choice, Right?

Absolutely.

You can't choose differently if you're not aware. Right. So I'm sure your coaching goes into depth about that. What are the other challenges to leading, you know, through disruption? What else do we. What else? Fighting us.

The second challenge that I talk about is this challenge of the fact that we're living in a much more ambiguous world. Right. Things are a lot less predictable than they used to be. And so we don't know when the vaccine will come. We don't know whether we're going to have a U shaped recovery or an L shaped recovery. From an economic perspective, there is so much that is up in the air and we don't even know whether or not when we go out in a week or so, whether we're going to get the virus and what will happen. So we're living in an increasingly unpredictable world. And this unpredictable world requires what I call learning agility. Learning agility is the ability to learn unlearn, most importantly, unlearn and then relearn. And what do I mean by that? What I mean by that? Is that we have these mindsets, right, that our brain makes all kinds of shortcuts in terms of how we operate. And so in the past, when we have problems to solve, what we've been doing is we said, okay, well, where are the experts and where is the best practice? And, you know, let me go, you know, figure that out. Well, in this unpredictable world, we're dealing with novel situations, then there are no experts and best practices. So the whole unlearning is to get out of the mindsets of how we've been operating in the old rules of working, and very quickly, as you said, get into the present moment and become aware of what's happening here right now, and what are the new rules that I can create. And the way of operating is very different. It's by doing experiments. It's by listening to voices and gathering data in a much different way. And that way of leadership is what I call learning agility.

Oh, I keep thinking about when you're speaking. It's not just leadership in an organization, but what you just described, I think, is what every human being, let's say, in this country, is trying to do. In other words, yes, we have experts, scientific experts, who can help us maybe look at what's possible to come with the pandemic. But as we said, no one really knows to the extent that we wish they did. So I think every one of us is determining how we are going to cope with this new paradigm, which is. I can't really look to them for everything. So how am I going to handle, like you mentioned, your. Your really wise way of not getting bombarded by the news. You're incredibly careful what you read. You know, I feel like I'm living that model, that I am going to look at the data that that speaks to me. I'm going to make decisions, I'm going to understand what voices I want to follow.

It's.

It's really happening at a very personal level, too, isn't it?

Yes, yes. And it needs to be. Right, Right. It needs to be, because we need to be shifting ourselves from sort of being a victim of our circumstances to taking some agency and accountability for ourselves and our impact and our reactions.

That's it. Oh, all right. There are three more challenges to disruption around us. What are they?

So the third is increasingly we're going to see the future of work being done in gig, like teams. Right. So we've discovered that we have been able to come together, whether it's pandemic planning teams. So I sit on the board of A publicly traded company. And we have a fantastic, it's called Engro. And we have a fantastic pandemic team that came together to solve how are we going to make sure that our people are safe? It's a manufacturing company. How are we going to make sure that continues to provide essential services? How do we make sure that our people remain safe? How do we manage the economic impacts of this? So pandemic teams have come together, whether they are dealing with virus situations, how do we come together? You hear more and more companies are actually coming together. Pfizer along with their competitors are coming together to solve for this vaccine issues. People are sharing data. So more and more I think the future of work will have these gig like teams that come together that are very fluid as organizations scramble to create business models that are agile. And so these teams will need to establish trust very quickly. And so the challenge is how do I get these teams to be really productive and creative and fluid? The key solution I think is trust agility. So, so how do you create trust on fluid gig like teams so that these teams can be really productive and solve for the essential problems that need to be solved for. And that's trust agility. And there's some great tools and accelerators I talk about in the book related to that.

And just to define this, when we talk the gig economy or gig teams, it means coming together for a particular situation or time or problem. Correct?

Correct. Yeah, correct. And what I'm seeing more and more is that these gig while we think about gig work as, you know, hey, I'm an uber driver or, you know, I have a side gig on freelance design or whatever. Yes, yes. I think what's more and more I'm also seeing in very progressive organizations is that they're organizing their organization structures within an organization around these teams that come together to solve an issue. Because more and more AI and robots are going to be doing the work that is repetitive. The stuff that the accountant might be trying to balance the books. All this stuff is being done more and more in a automated and digital way. What the good news here is for human beings is that we get to exercise our imagination, our creativity, work that is much more meaningful to us than the repetitive tasks that increasingly AI and robots are going to be able to do.

How fascinating. Hannah, can you give us one tip for building trust agility? I'm really dying to know what you've seen.

So this is a tip that actually is backed by neuroscience and the tool. There's 15 tools that I talk about in the book 15 accelerators. So one of the tools is called the Trust first accelerator. And the Trust first accelerator, like oftentimes in relationships we're waiting for the other person to establish trust, or if there has been a break in the trust, we're waiting for the other person to apologize and fix it. And the Trust first accelerator is all about what happens when we take ownership of establishing trust with somebody. So me, the individual, I have control. And the way to do that is actually that the neuroscience behind it is when there's research that says when we actually trust somebody first. So Kathy, I trust you first. There's these social science experiments that have been done. It actually releases oxytocin in my body, which is a neurochemical transmitter. And it actually is good for the well being of my own body. And it, it actually creates desire to be more trustworthy in the other person. And so there's been, you know, the science, the scientist who did some work around, his name is Dr. Paul Zakaria. And he actually literally took, that's great, he literally took blood samples and was able to find that higher levels of oxytocin. Oxytocin is a collaboration behavior. It's basically a hormone.

Wait, I need to learn more about this. How would you define trust then? What is trust?

So trust is to me a willingness to have the well being of another person. And that to me is a what I call vulnerability based trust. It's like creating a really safe environment where you and I can have this conversation. And I know that you have my best, you know, my well being at heart. And we have, we, I mean as human beings, by the way, through our evolution, we have a very good unconscious awareness, right of who is somebody that I can trust and who is somebody that I have to just be a little careful around. In fact, the first thing that our brain, a safety absolutely is in fact the best are one of the, as our brains evolved within the first 5, 10 seconds of when I first meet somebody, my brain unconsciously scans for is this person trustworthy? That's the first thing. And then the second thing is okay, are they useful? And that's what creates. But you know, the usefulness is actually secondary to is this person trustworthy. And that goes back to our evolutionary desire to procreate and you know, survival instinct. Right? And so, so trust is, there's two elements of it. There's vulnerability based trust, like is this a safe person for me to let my guard down. And then the second piece is like trust related to, from a professional perspective. There's also a sense of, is this person going to make and keep their promises or is this somebody who's credible, that I can, you know, that knows their stuff. And so there's a couple of different definitions, I guess, of trust.

Your book is so important, Hannah. Holy cow. And to me, you're getting at it. I love the neuroscience, I love the research based. We need data, we need information to inform a lot of our leadership principles, I think, rather than just making them up. And boy, is this grounded in science. I love it. Now there are two more.

Yeah, yeah. Can you go through them quickly? So the, the fourth one is what I call stakeholder agility. And the challenge that it addresses is increasingly we as human beings are faced with collective problems that we have to solve that are beyond my control or your control, Kathy. Problems like the pandemic. You know, our pandemic is actually telling us that we are so interconnected on this planet. And it's kind of waking us up to that. Like, I think we were all interconnected, but this is really waking us up and raising our awareness around that area, whether it's climate change, whether it's the pandemic, whether it's our global economies. You know, these are. We live in times where we have collective problems to solve that no one individual government organization can solve for. So we need to figure out as human beings how to manage stakeholders, meaning how to solve collective issues in an ecosystem. So if I happen to be in the healthcare space, there's a collective ecosystem issue in the US around cost of healthcare and access to healthcare. How do we solve for that? And so stakeholder agility is the ability that each individual can have to listen deeply, establish trust, and co create with other human beings around a common mission or purpose or a problem worth solving for. And so that's obviously a critical need in these times for us.

Fantastic. And the fifth, last but not least.

The fifth is growth agility. So we need to grow 8 billion human beings at scale so that it's not just the leaders at the top that are making these decisions. All of us, as you said earlier, we're getting into gig economies and these gig fluid teams need to be making decisions and power needs to be increasingly dispersed across these frontline decision makers. And so how do you equip every single leader and with their kinds of skills to grow themselves and grow others around them?

I also am thinking everything you say pertains to socially and culturally what we're going through. I mean, you look at the movements we're seeing, you know, Black Lives Matter. People, people saying enough and doing something about it. That is shaping power, I think. Right.

So true.

I mean, we're in a disruptive moment in history in so many ways. I think all of your principles relate. Oh, I love them. Can we, can we share? You deal with a lot of leaders, Fortune 500 managers, leaders who have a lot of power. Can you talk about maybe the flip side? You know, I've written a lot about narcissism, the things that hold leaders and managers back. And I've even written why there are so many terrible managers. And, you know, I outline it. Can you share with us what you see in your coaching that may be the top two things in an individual that prevents them from establishing these growth oriented agility practices? What holds, what do we need to be aware of if we're managing and leading?

I think there's only one thing that we need to be aware of, and that is fear.

And what are we afraid of? What do you see people afraid of? Loss of power, loss of control, all of that.

So the first and foremost is it's this survival instinct, you know, that we get into. And even though our physical survival is no longer, you know, at risk, we're not in the jungle, there's no lion or tiger chasing us, but it's the survival of the ego that we're trying to preserve. Right. And it's so fever. It's the fear that a lot of us have around. We need to look good, you know, to others. We need to have control. As you said, Kathy, we need to. We're afraid for losing our jobs. We're afraid of losing power. So there's. Yeah, I think there is. You know, there's a lot of fear right now that is happening that I think needs to be processed and become. We need to become aware of our fears. And I know you and I both are fans of mindfulness. And in fact, you know, my course, I have a course on LinkedIn, learning on mindfulness. It's been taken by 350,000 people.

What?

Yes. And it's all about, you know, who am I being right now? How can I shift myself? Becoming aware, first and foremost of whatever emotion is present, becoming aware of it, working with yourself and others with compassion and acceptance, and then moving on to, how can I be more purposeful in this time?

Oh, my gosh, I can't wait to watch your LinkedIn course. We'll link. We will link to it below. And you know, everyone who's listening to this podcast has probably heard me say, and one Thing I talk about in my book is you are what your childhood taught you to be. Unless you unlearned it or addressed it.

Yeah.

And for so many people, you know, I'm grateful for the years I was a therapist because it becomes very clear when you're working with someone who's resistant to change. A lot of it came from their childhood. What they didn't get or what was harmful or how speaking authoritatively or challenging status quo was damaging or they got punished for it. You know, in very emotionally manipulative situations, which a lot of people had, you'd be amazed. So I do think if, if you are listening to this and I, I think everyone who listens to this has some self awareness. Otherwise I don't think they'd like this show. But if you do feel like when Hannah is speaking that I'm not sure that I even know how to be a trustworthy person or, or the flip side, a lot of people don't have the boundaries to assess word trustworthiness in someone else and they trust the wrong people. Have that mechanism you're talking about in a solid way. I hope you will take a minute and look at what might prevent me from these five ways to become more agile. Could it be something I've learned a long time ago that I need to let go of? Any other tips for people who struggle with what you're talking about?

Yeah. So the first tip I'll say is there is an agility quiz that they can take and it's a five minute quiz and we can link to it in the show notes, but it's off of, off of my website and it's on www.transformleaderswiredfordisruption. and you can take this free quiz and it'll pop out, you know, how are you doing on each of these five levels of agility? Shifts in agility and it'll give you a personalized score and then it'll give you some tips about how you can grow in that area. Yeah, it's great.

I learned so much from my guests. You know, we're all a work in progress and I think, I think that any, in any given moment we can be rating a little higher on some of these things. And then we have a down day where we're hunkering down and feeling more afraid or lacking of trust. And then we, but you know, and then we can say, all right, wait a minute, I don't even feel whole in this moment. I need to do something to restore myself so that I can be a person who is trustworthy? I can't wait to take your quiz. What's the one? Number one, where are we going to find everything about you? Number two. And we'll link to that. Any final words for. I mean to me this is all so uplifting. It makes me feel that we can take the reins on our life on the way we're leading, on the way we're managing, on the way we're viewing what's around us so we don't feel out of control. But any final words to folks listening about how to be wired for disruption in a way that will help you thrive?

Yeah, the only way for us to thrive is to connect with the empathic neural networks in our brain, which is the parts of us that are feel more connected, curious and creative. And we have the power to shift ourselves from a state of fear to a state of trust, safety, collaboration, creativity. And the book will teach you the 15 accelerators to do that.

I love it. All right, and where do we learn everything about you and find the book? Tell us where.

So the book is on Amazon and I guess Get Abstract just actually reached out and so it's going to be summarized by Get Abstract. It was a number one Amazon release and they can find out about me just by googling me. And you can find my website, it's www.transformleaders TV. And really I'm on a mission, Kathy. There's a whole backstory to it that we don't have time for there a little bit. I'm on a mission to impact a million people and help them really be a force for good in times of disruption because boy, we need it. We need each of us to step into our most powerful, purpose filled selves so that we can solve these collective issues that we're called to.

Oh, I love it. I think you're more than halfway there to a million, aren't you? With 350,000 watching your course. I love it. I have to ask, do you think another TEDX event is in your future as an organizer or was one enough?

No, we, you know, so We've been doing TEDx events for the last seven years.

You have? Yes, as an organizer at Centennial Park Window.

Yeah, yeah. For seven years we've been doing TEDx events and so it's really. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this time around we're actually, because we can't gather together physically, we've switched to a salon format and our next salon is actually going to be about race and allyship and what it takes to be a great ally to really shift the conversation in your workplace. So I'm really looking forward to that.

When is that?

That is going to be August 6th.

Oh, we need to share that link.

Yes.

With everyone.

Yes.

I can't thank you enough for being here, honey. You're so inspiring. I could listen to you for hours. So will you come back again? How many books have you written at this point now?

So there is the Wired for Disruption, and there is Wired for Authenticity, which is fantastic.

All right. I'm sure we're going to have five more of those. If you can write a book in four months. I really bow down to you. It took me a lot longer than that for mine. Thank you so much for being here and sharing your wisdom.

Thank you, Kathy. It's always a pleasure to be with you.

Thank you, my dear. Come back again, everybody. You know that we love to hear from you and we love you all to go deep. So I hope you will look at the links in the show notes, take the quiz, you know, understand these ways we can accelerate agility in our own lives and in the work we do. And if you have any challenges or questions around that, wherever you see this posted, I hope you'll share it on LinkedIn. You know, I post them all there. Hannah I know, will jump on and answer as she can, and so will I. So thank you for listening, everyone, and have a wonderful week. Bye.

Thank you. Bye.