Ep. 389 Nikola Ilic, CEO of ChangeLab Global

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What up? Hello, Bonjour. And hola, Real Leaders. This is Kevin Edwards, your host here and I am so excited you're tuning in to one of our amazing experiences. What you're about to hear is going to be fresh, real and loaded with inspiration guaranteed to support your impact journey. So sit back, enjoy the listen folks, share a review afterward and always keep it real. 4, 3, 2 and 1. Welcome everyone to this episode of the Real Leaders podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Edwards and joining us today folks is the CEO of Change Lab Global. Please give a Warm welcome to Mr. Nicola Ilitch. Nicola, how you doing today?

I'm great. Great pronunciation. My last name. Thank you for that.

Thank you. Practice makes perfect, my friend. And you know, before the show, Nicole, you Were telling me, hey, let's just start at the beginning. I think I got a story I want to share with your audience today. So let's just start there. The founder story, changelab Global. What comes to mind when I ask you how did it all begin?

Yeah, and I, you know, I start most of my programs and sessions with this story. Listeners will, or viewers will hear an accent. I'm originally actually from Serbia, which is Southeast Europe. At the time the country was called Yugoslavia. And I remember I was around eight years old when the, the war started in Yugoslavia. Today's countries, Serbia, Bosnia, creation further. And I remember I was around eight and everyone, everyone was all the grown ups myself were at my grandparents apartment and it was this very old school apartment with heavy carpeting, a lot of old school brown wooden furniture. It was always cold inside. And I remember all the grownups looked very grim and worried and I had no idea what's happening, right. I'm eight years old. And then I learned soon enough that my, my cousins from Bosnia are coming and that they were, they became refugees because you see my family is, my family comes from Serbia, Bosnia, parts of Croatia. My mother was born in Bosnia actually. And I remember my grandmother telling us then that our family house in Bosnia was destroyed. And this is literally the house where my mother was born. My grandmother never made it to the hospital, so she was, she gave birth in that house. This is the house where I would spend every summer, a few months. You know, I'm from Belgrade, we go to Bosnia, spend a few months there. And, and I remember, and it was a happy childhood, right? You know, spending some time in this village in Bosnia. And I remember my grandmother, Nana saying that they took everything from the house. They even took Nicola's toys. And these are, and this is kind of naive but like this is the first time I'm, I'm understanding what it means for a kid to lose something. You know, these are the toys that I would bring every summer as I was going to spend some time there with my grandparents and family. And this, and you know, this started this question in my head, well, you know, who took my toys? And this naive question soon evolved into well, who took my, who made my cousins and so many others refugees? Who took my childhood? Who you know, created all these, all this suffering. And many people had way worse than I did, who took all these lives? And I felt very scared and really confused. But few words after that. When I was around 14, I remember, long story short, a friend of mine introduced me to this new movement in Serbia called otpor, the resistance. And this was the movement that was fighting back against the dictatorship that was really ruining my country and the whole region that was driving all these injustices. And my question started evolving into like, who are the people with power who have no leadership, who are destroying so many lives? And I joined the movement. I became an activist at the age of 14, 15, something like that. And I was just a kid running around doing a lot of protests, posters, stickers and all of that. And a few years after that, the dictatorship in my country of origin fell and I was forever changed. I was. Even though my contribution to revolution was like tiny, tiny, tiny, it forever changed me and set me on this path of community organizing, of trying to understand power, authority. What does it mean to have leadership? How do you deal with the power? And set me on the journey to start co found my own NGO in Serbia with friends to work on a deep democracy. We started working with the committee, organizing many campaigns, a lot of activism and many other movements that we founded in Europe, in Serbia, supported in the United States. That at the end led me to this whole idea of creating a Change Lab as an organization with a mission to make leadership development more, more accessible, to make pro democracy tools more accessible. Because there are many, many people who are going through a lot who are like me in the 90s, are scared. They don't know what to do. And they know that they see the injustices around themselves, but they don't know how to put their values into action. So Change Lab on one side is trying to enable big systems, big companies to learn new ways of leadership. That's on empowering. But also we work a lot with the movement and activists pro bono basis to enable these fantastic tools. You know, maybe I'll tell you another story about how I got exposed to some of these fantastic tools, but you know, how to make them more accessible to people who need them the most because they can afford these things the least usually.

It's a powerful story, Nicole, so thank you first and foremost for sharing that. I guess what, like where my mind's going in this is just like, like what is the formula for change? And I think about them like, you know, someone along the way must have inspired you because I know that the losing the toy and losing something that did something to you, but something someone along the way probably got you out with stickers, handed something to you, inspired you, sent you a message where you went from helpless to now, you know, a change maker, you know, help me understand what your experience has been like in terms of how and why people get inspired to take action.

That's a really good question. It's hard for me to pinpoint to a person I would say, you know, my parents obviously influenced me a lot. My father and my mother are very social. You know, it brings me back to another story when I was. It got me really confused, and it happened a bit after this story. I was about 10, and again, it was in my hometown of Belgrade. And I remember I was going back from my school to my. You know, to see my parents, into my father's office, actually. And on my way, I heard this noise. And then I. I turned around, I saw 50, 60 people surrounding some. Something that's happening. And my curiosity led me to see what is happening. And I saw three, four guys in their 20s maybe, beating up this definitely younger Roma kid. Roma is the minority population in the Balkans, and they're particularly noticeable because they have a bit darker skin color. So there's a lot of racism around that. And I was thinking, and I was scared. I didn't know what to do. And I remember thinking, going back and, you know, to that event of like, me knowing that this is really wrong, but that was scared. And I didn't know. I didn't do anything. I always ask my students and myself, you know, when I was reflecting this, well, how many others or 50, 60 people who were just observing this event, how many of them knew that this. What they were observing was wrong so they had the right values right there. This like, okay, this is wrong. And people usually say 50, 60%, probably 80, 90%, thought, well, this is wrong that someone is beating someone else up, especially if it's on the base of race, right? But then I remember no one did anything. No one didn't do anything, you know, and then, you know, why? Why people don't act upon their values. And then I remember, well, the outcome of the story was that a few younger guys who joined that, you know, who were observ. Start yelling, shouting, hey, stop, stop. And then as the more voices were heard, more people started shouting. And then as more people were shouting, few people started walking towards these. Well, these skinheads, really, these neo fascists, I guess, were beating up this boy. And then they chased them away. And that got me thinking, huh, look at that. You know, a bit of a collective action, bit of a leadership that started with the. A few voices turn out to. Well, hopefully at the end, they save this boy of getting really hurt. But I go back to these moments where I saw people taking a bit of risk to act upon their values. I know my grandfather took a big risk when he moved from a small village in Bosnia to a big city of Belgrade. I know my other grandfather moved from a small village in South Serbia to move to big city of Belgrade. I guess, you know, knowing these stories of these immigrations, big changes, enormous changes at the time from village to city. And then just to provide more, a better school, better life for their kids, my parents, I felt like I was always in that narrative of like, well, if you want to do something, if you want to make things better, you gotta act. You gotta make a leap, you gotta act upon your values. Otherwise you just talk. So I guess I find a lot of inspiration in my family and today also a lot of inspiration in my wife. My wife is very action oriented. She's another person. And my kids, they teach you a lot.

There you go. Save some face there now. I'm kidding. So, Nicola, what comes to my mind actually is this clear image and video that it's in my head of this guy crazy dancing at this festival, right? This is going to sound bizarre, but he's crazy dancing at this festival. He's the only one by himself. And then another person comes and starts crazy dancing next time. And then before you know, the three minutes are over, there's a whole festival, people just crazy dancing, getting after. It took one person to do that, and then it took another person to buy into that vision, that vision of crazy dance. And everyone should be crazy dancing. And it's just like this interesting notion of leadership is often caught. It's not taught, but it can be taught and caught maybe at the same time. Tell me a little bit more about change lab and kind of your philosophy on how to build and empower other leaders who are taking action.

I love that question. I know this, this is, I know the, the, the, the metaphor. You use this common metaphor, right? Yeah. You know, I don't know, Kevin, if you have kids, but like, you know, for all these folks who are listening, think about, like, this is what I usually, you know, sometimes ask my participants, especially if you have a kid, remember the first time you, you held your baby for the first time, or the first time you fell in love with your current partner. And then ask them, okay, remember really well that, okay, go to that place and then ask them, okay, can you teach me that? And they all get confused. How do I teach that? I'm like, well, you know, it turns out it's very hard to teach that moment. You gotta relive, you gotta live it right. You gotta Go through it. So that's my approach to leadership. It's really focused on actual learning. I like to use metaphor that my, my mentor and I like to say intellectual father Marshall Gantz, uses the bike metaphor. You know, everyone here listening us probably learn how to ride a bike. And to ride a bike, you know, maybe you can watch a video or maybe you can read a book. Maybe I'll give you a bit of a help, right? And, you know, I love watching, you know, educational videos and doing trainings and watching and reading books. But at the end, there's no one else who can get on the bike by yourself. You got to get on the bike. And then there's this embodied experience they have to go through, knowing that 100 you will fall. And once you fall down, there's going to be both emotional and physical pain. And that's the moment of truth, is to decide, well, I'm going to get up now. It helps that you don't do this alone, right? So leadership is not a lowly task. It's very relational. But it's really, you know, and this is said so many times really, about learning by doing. It's action learning. And I just had the session with the activists from Romania, literally just before this, and I told them at the beginning, like, I can't teach you leadership and this. And then they look like shock. Well, I can, I can tell you things that you can try. I can give you a new lens to look at, I can give you new frameworks and tools, but you got to get on the bike. And once you get on the. But that's how you learn. And once you get on the bike, these lenses, these tools might help you understand and navigate, but at the end, you will fall for sure at one point. And then what matters is what you learn, how you learn from it. So big part is not only taking action, learning for action, but also reflecting in a meaningful way to extract the learning. So this is, this is a new way of learning called tacit learning. It's again more similar to the way even toddlers will learn how to walk. Because, you know, I have two toddler girls and I couldn't teach them how to walk. They had to. They don't speak at that point. And they cannot read books, so they had to learn by observing. So there's a lot of apprenticeship, but also by trial and error, action. So that's what we do in changelab a lot. All of our sessions are experience focused. There's a minimalist approach to a theoretical part, just enough to Give you a new lens, a new framework. But then we do a lot of simulations and exercises that, that. That engage both cognitive and emotional aspects of yourself, your full self. And then we do debrief, and then we make it extremely practical. You know, you're. You're using yourself as a case. We don't do. We rarely do case studies. We do. Like you're. Your. You know, Kevin, you have a challenge that you're going through right now. Okay, let's talk about that. How do we. How do we use these new lenses that I'm proposing to you onto your current challenge? Because that's urgent. That's real for you, and it's useful for you, and this is how you learn. So, yeah, there's a. Yeah, that's the focus. Learning by doing action is the highest level of learning, right?

Absolutely. And I, I love the approach. Approach. And I'm glad, like, you realize that, too, because, you know, there's a lot of people that maybe come on the show or just I speak with in general, who teach, try and teach leadership, and it's. It's incredibly difficult to do. You know, I don't know if it's been done right. It is about taking action. And so I love how you've taken a different approach and own that and are encouraging people to take action. I think what might be valuable. Well, two things I want to clear up. Tacit leadership. When I think of tacit, I think of like, okay, we've tacitly agreed that, you know, this is a dollar bill and that, you know, I'm going to live in a society where I take care of my own property and I'm not going to kill anybody. Like, this is a tacit agreement that I bought into. What do you talk. What do you mean by tacit solution?

Yeah, now you're getting into the subject that I may start geeking out here because, you know, look at the books behind me. There's a lot of cognitive science. Um, so there, there. It's literally different type of learning our brain has. You know, it's very complicated system, of course, but has two major ways of learning. One is very common way of learning, which is representational learning. Like, if I tell you, Kevin, I'm from Serbia originally, you can repeat that. Right. I'm from Serbia. So you'll learn that this is how we learn history. And this type of learning is enabled through language and through symbols and numbers. Right. But it turns out that part of learning is actually quite new to us, because even if you think. If you look at the way that our brain is structured that you know, prefrontal cortex and intensive part of the brain that enables us to speak is new and it's quite small. There's other part of brain that's, that's more involved in tacit or procedural learning. This is type of learning that is not associated with any kind of symbols or language. This is how you learn how to walk or balance or this type of learning has emotional aspects to it because we were able to learn even before as look at the human evolution. We were able to learn before we were able to speak. This is older parts of the brain. The same way as I mentioned before, the kids are able to learn even before they become verbal. And this is tacit. This is something that cannot be fully represented by language or a symbol of writing or a number. Right. This is type of learning that has to come from experience. It involves a lot of emotional learning. It involves things that you know, how many times you're trying to find the right word, how many times. Let me try to rephrase it. Which means like you have some knowledge in you that now you're trying to fit in into much narrower, narrower context of language. So you're trying to translate tacit into the verbal into representational. So that's briefly and there are bigger experts on this, but this is what I mean by a tacit knowledge. Something that really has to come from action and full body experience.

That makes a lot of sense. And thinking about your workshops, I think that'd be very valuable for someone just to kind of listen. Hey, what's like a workshop look and feel like? I really enjoyed how it's, you know, ad hoc. It's like it's in the moment. Kevin, what are you currently dealing with right now and how can we address it? Help me understand like walk me through maybe like what a workshop might, might look like.

Yeah, so. So first of all, I always say that, you know, personal change takes time. So I, I always propose to my partners to do three to nine months long programs with various workshops in between. It takes time to take in new tools, to try them out in the real life and then reflect back. That's the learning. That's one thing. The second thing is the frameworks that we're using, I like to call them their battle tested frameworks. Commit organizing, adaptive leadership systems, thinking, adult development. We'll use a lot of coaching as well. Are some of the main frames storytelling, public narrative. We created this new unique mix of these frameworks, but the way we deployed them in let's go now to the level of actual workshop which is usually about two hours long in person or online, but it's always live is you have a bit of a reading at the beginning so that you get, get a theory so that we can focus more on practicing our time together when we're alive. Then at the beginning usually, you know, we do a bit of a reminder of the, of the, of that theoretical part, three minutes. But then we immediately jump into some kind of a model like you know, if we are doing a storytelling training, will show you a video of a good, of an example of a story or I'll share my story usually. And once you see that with the brief and then you get to do your work on your own challenge or, or in this case on your own story, then it's a workshop, right? You're. And then you go get. And then you share it with your other participants so you can learn from each other. There's peer to peer connection. And then we debrief. So that's the structure theory model, debrief, practice debrief and the end of each, each session. And by the way, I also do this. I'm also teaching leadership and also teach ethics and democratic leadership. Two classes at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. I do this also with my students. The task at the end or homework or practical work is always okay. This is how you can apply it in your own context. So your, your homework is not to write like a long paper, but like to apply it and reflect on how you applied it in your real, you know, if it's with a, a client, with a company or you know, government on your, on the, you know, your challenge there or maybe it's your personal challenge if you're my student. But it has to be applied in the real world. And the next, next class, next session, we spend a bit of a time on reflecting how was it? Because I really want my participants and students and people I work with, I want them to export this knowledge from, from workshop to, to the real world.

Yeah. The translation is so key and it's really, are you going to take action? You know, and those are the things. And you know, there's a big difference between success and leadership. You know, there's a lot of great leaders out there who you know, don't have results. Right. You know, they may not, they may be taking actions, but the results aren't, are really there to show. And there's a lot of great like successful people out there, but maybe they're like terrible leaders. I mean what's been your experience with this correlation of success and leadership? Nicole?

That's a good question. Just before I just want to supplement the previous. I want to also say that whatever I'm teaching others, I tried in practice. I think just very important to say there's a lot of conversation about. There's a bit of a shift in the whole leadership world and we're shifting from this typical old school military look of leadership. So a lot of leadership comes through management. That came from the way Roman army was structured way back in Europe. We were talking about western hemisphere mostly. But even in the east, which is very top down, do as you told. And the leadership is equated, is exactly the same as authority and power. So leaders are those who have titles. If you're a CEO, president, director, chief of staff, whatever is your title, you are automatically a leader. I don't subscribe to that the way and there are many, I'm just part of the bigger movement, many other colleagues who do really good work as well, and I collaborate with many of them. We see leadership as action. So it's not really about that title that you have, it's about what you do. And I like to define leadership, kind of modified version of between what two people who influence the way I think about leadership. Professor Gantz, Professor Heifetz would put it, leadership is. Leadership is really action. Leadership is taking responsibility to enable others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty. So it's really about, or you can even say leadership is practice. So something. You're not born as a leader. You can become one or you can exercise. You don't have to have a title to become a, to exercise leadership. Look at the examples of Greta Thunberg, the famous now climate justice activist. She was a high school, she was a school, elementary school student when she started her protest. She didn't have any power at that time or fancy title, but her act was active leadership. So I would say there are many people with power and authority, but there are not many people who access leadership.

Powerful.

Yeah.

And I couldn't agree more because I think that the impact companies we feature here, like they're companies that are actually taking action on issues that are larger than themselves, larger than the companies, and that's leadership. You know, it's actually, you know, taking on these big issues that we face as a whole and creating change in the world. Big theme of the episode today.

Yeah. Nicole, one thing I wanted to add is it's really about, you know, leadership is not about having all the answers. It's about enabling all the talents because at the end I believe everyone has power within, but not everyone knows it, so they don't exercise it. And everyone can exercise leadership, but also they don't know it. So I think good leaders, people who access leadership, create more leaders.

It is a difficult balance to do, my friend. I'm glad that you're helping other leaders get it right and improve and learn and take action to find out maybe what their zone of genius is. So Nicole, I appreciate you coming on this program today in all of this. What is your definition of a real leader.

Really? I've kind of like yeah, I would go, go to what I said. You know, everyone can be a leader and real leaders create more leaders. Real leaders share power. They understand that they're playing, they're breaking down the zero sum games. Zero sum games are dangerous. Often real leaders enable others to face uncertainty. Real leaders identify the real challenges and then enable not only themselves but the whole systems to face the challenge. So that's what I believe, you know, it's a practice at the end of enabling others. Right. And I really believe that.

Powerful words here shared on the podcast today. Nicole, appreciate your time. For Nicola Elitch, I'm Kevin Edwards asking you to go out there, face uncertainty, practice leadership and always keep it real. Thanks Nicole.

Thank you Kevin so much.

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