Policy People Podcast: Universal Leadership with Nikola Ilic

In this conversation, I discuss the digital disruption of leadership training with Nikola Illich. We discuss how he got addicted to activism as a young rebel in Yugoslavia, his vision to make leadership training universally accessible, how power changes people, the moral risks of public persuasion, training, the tensions between chosen and given identities, tribalism as a tool of political control, and many more topics. I'd like to personally thank those listeners who shared our last episode on social media. So thank you to Niha Singh, Arpit Chadweddi and KM Suleka. If you enjoy this conversation and would like to help the show, sharing this episode's LinkedIn post is the easiest way to do so. I will personally thank you for sharing at the start of the next episode. And now a little about my guest. Nikola Illich is the co founder and CEO of changelab, a consultancy that plans to deliver leadership development and coaching at scale to millions around the world. He is also the founder of Serbia on the Move, a grassroots citizen engagement NGO based in Serbia. Formerly, Nicola was an international development consultant at the World Bank Group and a teaching fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, where he taught the course Organizing People, Power and Change. You can discover his consultancy and its work at Changelab Global. You can also connect with Nicola on LinkedIn. Follow him on Twitter at the handle ikolai Lich7 that's N I K O L A I L I C7 or you can also follow him on Clubhouse at Nikolai Lich777 and now I bring you Nikola Illich.

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Universal Leadership.

I'm here with Nikola Illich. Nicola, welcome to the Policy People podcast.

Thank you Liam. Great to be here in the virtual space together with you.

It is what a magical time we live in where we can just connect like this on two sides of the of the world. You yourself are in dc, is that correct? That's right, that's right. And I'm in Taiwan. So there we are. We're very far apart, but we are in this space so near and so I so dearly Hope we can explore your career, your unique story, Nicola, and what your organization is all about, because I think it's something very special. And I think the crux of this whole idea of scaling leadership is something that looks very promising and something that people in think tanks really ought to get a grip on, because these are the kinds of values that can really lead to change, hence Change Labs. But before we get into the organization, I would like to dig into your backstory a little bit, Nicola, because you have a very unique origin story. You know, you grew up in war torn Yugoslavia, where at age 15, you joined Otpor, a political movement that used nonviolent methods to resist the Serbian authorities under Slobodan Milosevic. Can you share with our listeners exactly what was it like to be on the front lines fighting against that dictatorship as a teenager? And how did this torturous experience shape your perspective of politics and come to form your personal philosophy?

That's a great question, and there's so many ways I can answer that. But I'll just start with saying that while it sounds like a unique experience, there, unfortunately millions of people in that region who had even worse because of the same reasons, though. So let me share a quick story. When I was seven, I was just, I think it was 1991, 92, something like that. I had this event that really shaped a lot how I think I come from a family that's connected to all the ex Yugoslavian countries in many ways, to Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and so forth. And I was seven or eight, I don't remember exactly. And I was at my grandma's place, all the grown ups were there and everybody seemed very worried. And I had no idea what's happening. And then somebody knocked on the door and those were our cousins from Bosnia. It was Bogdan and two of my other cousins and his wife. And I had no idea what are they doing in Belgrade. It was so weird because at the time, you know, I was born and raised in Belgrade. They came all the way from Bosnia and they came in and they looked exhausted. And I remember this particular thing where my grandma was talking to cousin Bogdan and he would say, they sacked your family house, which is the house where my mother was born in Bosnia. Right. And he said they took everything. They even took Nicola's toys. Now that would be the house where I would spend my summers between, you know, I was spending my summer between Bosnia and Croatia with the family. Mixed family, I might as well say. And that's when it became real to me. This is, you know, seven, eight, Years old, Nicola trying to understand the war and suddenly it becomes personal because who stole your toys? And that question evolved through time. Well, who really stole my childhood? Or who stole our childhoods and many lives? Because we all went from this quite imperfect but peaceful and safe environment of Yugoslavia to completely different unsafe environment of civil war, where protests, police on the streets, violence, horrible things. And trying to make sense out of that was not easy at that age. But this is where I come to Otpor, where about age when I was 14, when I had a bit more sense making power, this organization came along and I just joined. I was a kid and suddenly I had some power in my hands to do something about what was happening around me. And it was not much. I just want to be clear that I was a kid, I was 14, 15 years old, who was doing all bunch of stuff, being chased by police because we put up posters or stickers or all of that. But it gave me hope and it also gave me understanding of who was responsible for what's happening around me. Were the people with power who didn't know how to lead, who misused it. I lost values of freedom, connection and safety at early age. And today, you know, OTPOR was there to kind of give me some tools to fight for that again. Because, you know, when there's a war, you can't see your cousins across the country, you can't move much around because there were sanctions. The safety is definitely an issue. So you kind of become in a way obsessed with not losing that ever again because you felt it, you felt it deeply in your body. You didn't just read a book about it, watch a movie, but you learned it hard way how it feels to lose these things. So OTPOR gave me hope, gave me some tools, and this is where how I was hooked on activism because I saw I was just a kid and some grownups were trusting me with something and it felt empowering. And I felt, well, this is something maybe worthwhile exploring further. And through that lenses that set me on, on the journey of many other activists, capacity building, empowerment and today to the changelab Global, which is trying to basically which kind of extension of that experience of trying to bring certain frameworks of leadership development or I met was say personal development and team development, organizational development, to empower people, to use power with responsibility responsibly.

Well, I think that sheds a lot of light on, on exactly what you're up to, but it also points to some pretty profound ideas there. You have spoken about what you observed at that time as how power Changes people, especially those within power. And I'm sure you can speak to that. I also feel, though, what your story conveys is how disempowerment changes people. The fact that you were disempowered completely changed your worldview, made it come through to you on a very deep level how critical it is to be able to have the freedoms to defend your own values. Could you speak to that idea of not only how power changes people, but also how that very visceral experience of disempowering changes people?

Yeah, that's another great question.

Take it wherever you like.

It's a bit off the script, but.

I feel that's fine. That's a very important question. What I believe is that going back to the point I made about feeling disempowered and losing something in real life becomes your unique, authentic experience, because you know how it feels. You don't know, just intellectually. Again, going back to this idea of, you know, we have empathy and we can understand suffering, but once it happens to you, you really embody it. And deep down at the beast's belly is also the answer. Right? This is. You go deep, you're disempowered, and now what happens? What I understand is you either find the hope and you make your struggle. Your. Your biggest challenge becomes your biggest source of strength, because you know how it is to be in the beast's belly, and you find your way out, and then you can share that with the world, or you don't find hope, which some people don't, and that can make you even repeat what happened to you, which we often see. People who are oppressed sometimes tend to oppress others too. And then there are those who are oppressed, and they become freedom fighters. And then the question is, well, what is the difference between these two? What happens? I think what happens is some of these found hope, and there's, you know, whole. We can probably do a whole podcast just about what it means and how to find the hope. But what Odport did at that time was he caught me in the beast belly and gave me some way up. I guess that's part of. Also what I'm trying to do today is there are challenges and people are struggling, and that's normal. And some people are struggling more, and some people are even more disempowered than others. By giving them some pathway out of it will give meaning to the challenge. Because there's nothing worse than meaningless suffering or meaningless disempowerment. That's the worst. And when you give it, the meaning, then it becomes powerful tool. It becomes your unique, authentic place to even lead from, to share the knowledge of how it is to be deep into something and then get out of it. That's valuable.

It's very profound, Nicola. I can sense how that was such a formative experience for you in shaping your personal journey and where you would find meaning for your work and your life. I think it may have probably. And you can tell me, did it take some time though for you to crystallize how you would enact that change in the world? Because you've done a wide range of work across advocacy, policy areas. You have been a leader in various grassroots political movements including a Volt Europa Serbia on the Move, among others. So you've been a consultant for the World bank and the U.S. government Accountability Office. All of these organizations have the potential to enable you to make profound changes various ways. So with all of these various things going on, what was it that prompted you to start changelab Global? How did you come to the realization that this is the best way to make the impact that you want to make on the world?

The biggest question I guess is why people decide, and this is at least what I'm trying to understand is why people decide to take a lead or engage power and authority. Where does that come from? Does come from the place of responsibility and the values something that is connected to your then purpose? Or does it come from some other place of ego, power seduction, power grabbing or compensation? Why am I saying this? Because this is what I've seen growing up in Yugoslavia, how people raise to power and do other stuff. And I thought about this a lot, but what I learned is that thinking is kind of easy and productive certain extent. But what's really the way to learn these things is when you go into the action and you have your thoughts and you have ideas and you maybe thought this through and then you kind of like act out your beliefs and your ideas and then the tremendous complexity of the world hits you back because you're never 100% right, you have some assumptions. And that experience that came from action is the richest form of information we can gather as human beings. It's beyond reading a book, watching a movie, doing a lecture, which is all valuable. But when the complexity of the world hits you in the face as you're acting things out, that's when you learn the most that there's so much information there. Just think about any experiences you had. They were so profound that you had to debrief for, for life. Sometimes it takes you to extract everything that happened to you, it can be overwhelming, it can be dangerous. That's why people are not so prone to action. They like to think because thoughts are safer than acting out. Because who knows what's going to come out? Why am I saying this and how is this connected? Because I was kind of, in a way, when you're a teenager, you're mindless. So you just kind of like when I joined otpor, I just kind of acted out things without thinking too much about the risks and so forth. But that actually really produced a lot of stuff. And I'm still debriefing what happens to me that period in many ways and learning from it. But I learned that the best way to really understand power, leadership, authority, growth, transformation, change, is through engaging in it. So that's what happened when you mentioned Serbian and move vault and all of the other things. And I always keep myself busy with something that's on the ground. I do consulting, I do coaching, I do many other things that are more thinking side, but they also do a lot of the action. That brings me to the changelab global. I think that there's a new way to teach these things, to teach people how to exercise leadership. And it's really through empowering them. And what does it mean to empower a lot of people talk about this. Well, empowerment, in my opinion, means letting people have experience and then make sense of it. Because if you think about authoritarian leaders, people common in business and in many spheres of our life, we have people who just call them control freaks or micromanagers. They steal all of your experiences. And experience is how you learn. So the way to develop people is to give them a chance to experience something and make it safe for them to fail. And then not only that, but then create space for them to learn from it and then try again. I know we both have kids and if you look at them, they can't talk, they can't conceptualize things yet they learn constantly. So they don't use language to learn, they really use action to constantly learn. And they try to fail. They get up and they look at you. So they're also using some modeling. So there's a lot of learning happening that's nonverbal. So all of this can be brought into this leadership development world where I think there's too much of over intellectualizing, not enough action. And changelab is really a collective of, for now, 15 people who I met on my journey that you just kind of mentioned who I've seen in action. They learned the different concepts of leadership. But they acted them out, they tried them out. They can talk about values, but I've also seen them sacrificing something to defend those values, their time, their energy, their many things. And I thought, well, who are the best people to teach you how to become a good leader? Well, those who let those who actually exercise these things, who experienced it, who embodied it, and now they can teach you how to do the same. So that's the goal of the Change Lab. Use the new way of, I like to call it, full body workout approach to leadership development to help people develop through experience and learning by doing and scale it up. Because those who need these kind of skills the most are those who can't afford it the most at the same time.

Okay, well that's very pertinent point because what I was just going to ask is what exactly do you mean when you say you want to scale up high quality leadership coaching and make it available to millions worldwide? That sounds like a very inspiring vision to have there. Nicola, can you tell us what you mean by that exactly? Like how does that actually work and why is it an important goal for you and your organization?

Thanks for saying that. This is very important to me because, well, you know, I was in a way lucky that I went onto this journey. There are many people who went through experiences that are much worse in my country or ex country, I don't know, Yugoslavia that didn't make it. And on that journey I encountered first in 2000, I think eight, Professor Marshall Gantz, professor of committee organizing, who soon became my mentor. And I started teaching with him and doing a lot of commit organizing, not only in Serbia but around the globe. So that's one framework, commit organizing. And then I was lucky enough to be doing my master's at Harvard, where I was further exposed, well through Marshall, even before that to some other frameworks. And then I realized, well, these are very powerful frameworks like community organizing, public narrative, which is storytelling, like adaptive leadership, like systems thinking, like adult development. They managed to change, but not many. I live in my own bubble at that point. People know about it but around me and they're powerful and they work. But not everybody gets to go to Harvard and not everybody gets to pay online few thousand dollars to get one of these online courses with Harvard because I was an organizer in Serbia and I remember when we had to pay $3,000 to do the course, this online course in commit organizing. We thought that that's a huge amount of money in Serbia and Serbia is a European country, even though Serbia is Not doing great. But there are much worse off countries in the world where $3,000 is even more than. It's like a lifetime.

It's completely out of the question.

Yeah, yeah. And you're in Taiwan and Taiwan is doing well. But I know you've traveled around and you've seen how it can be very tough for people. So I realized, well, I was there, I was lucky that we got some funding to pay this two and a half thousand dollars at the time to do this course that changed my life in so many. It helped me power myself, but also a lot of people around because then I shared and we shared and I was not alone in this. There were many other people and I thought, well, what if we make that even more accessible? What are the possibilities? Because many people said this talent is quite equally distributed. There's talent everywhere, but opportunity is not. So what if we give people tools to use their own minds and bodies in a way that they never did before, to empower themselves to others.

To.

Fight for the change, whatever they think the change should be, hopefully for the better. Because also I want to be mindful that many tools can be used for other things. You know, the first time somebody invent a knife to cut a mango, you know. Yes. Tomorrow somebody kill a person with a knife.

I guess that makes me wonder though, what kinds of concepts could possibly be twisted around and used for malign purposes in this kind of leadership training world? I've never conceived of it quite like that, although I'm sure it could be. I'm sure persuasion could easily turn itself around. To be persuasive for a negative kind of a cause is. You'd have a better insight into that. How have you seen that happen before in these kinds of things like public narrative systems, thinking, etc. Have you seen bad actors turn those into something malign?

Yeah, it can be. Absolutely. I mean, commute organizing is a very robust framework they used a lot and taught a lot, which starts with a public narrative as a storytelling technique which connects you to your purpose and enables you to articulate your purpose to others in order to able to share your values, inspire tempting way and call people to action to join you in action. Now you can imagine that joining an action can be many things. I feel we're getting into the philosophical discussion because then we can talk about, well, what is a good change? Well, it depends what you think is good and then you can go back to the values. But overall, I think there's a. If you teach people how to connect to their purpose and the values and how to share that with others and how to connect with the other people, which is also be part of community organizing, relationship building, how to connect with other people in a meaningful way. It becomes hard to be a bad person because you won't be able to connect with many people if you're trying to do something that's just not good. So while you still probably could, and there's many ways you can misuse the narrative, and we've seen so many times narrative being misused, but I guess there's no guarantee that you're going to use this for good other than you, or in my case, me and people that I work with, helping people to connect with the values that enable people empower, enable them to reach and realize and reach their full potential and collaborate. And I think if you just take that as a core, I guess, value, then you might be on a good path.

Yeah, I often think it's about authenticity. I think deep down most people, if they really want to make a change in the world, if they're being truly honest with themselves, it is a positive one. I think it's often only if people are being inauthentic with themselves or they have ulterior motives, be it for financial gain or others, that that's when they attempted to veer off the path that they had originally set themselves out on. So if it is connected to their core and their, and their identity and what they really value and their authentic self, then I think it is less likely that it can manifest some sort of a negative external impact. But I just am really curious about the scale, like that word. It's something we hear so often in Silicon Valley.

We don't hear it so much coming out of dc. So that's what's sort of piqued my.

Curiosity about it, Nicola. How are you going to get it to millions of people? Like, how's that? What's your game plan for that to happen? Is it cost down?

What is it?

Yeah, so that's the question I'm still trying to answer fully. So I'm experimenting a lot with the, with the people I work with. Cost is very high on one side because to train people in the trainer, trainers are expensive. So part of it is how do you scale trainings with the humans? And the other part is, well, how do you remove humans for some part of the equation so that you reduce the cost or not remove. That sounds a bit harsh, but reduce their involvement in a way that with one hour of work you can have a bigger impact. So leveraging technology for good. Because technology today is used to measure and gather data and schedule. Even those technologies that are sold to us as connecting people ended up being just advertising platforms. We're in the middle of realizing all of that. But there's a power in technology to connect people in a certain way that's more empowering, less micromanaging, let me put it that way. So scale really can come from these two paths. One is enabling people to scale their own work and then using technology to scale trainings teach also those who are trying to learn how to self facilitate and how to use their immediate environment to learn. Because I can just ask you this. Just before we started, you shared briefly your experience traveling Asia and China and you mentioned you, you had some difficulties. And I can always ask you, well, while they were difficult, how much did you learn?

A ton.

Yeah. And if you had on top of that someone to help you further facilitate that what you did, you probably extract even more. Or maybe you would extract same amount, but faster.

Sure.

So there's, you know, there's opportunity to learn and act all around you and maybe sometimes you don't need to over design things. You can just let people try things and then help them extract learning.

You're providing a framework. Yeah. Those people, the students in their own environments, are going to be able to apply that framework to gleam more from their immediate environment wherever they are in the world. So I would say given the state of the world right now, especially in developing countries and countries that are under significant stress from the economic downturn, the pandemic, etc. There's going to be so many experiences out there that people are having that they can draw upon to create the formational experiences for them, to galvanize their, their leadership vision and what the change, you know, in that, start enacting the change that they want to see. So it would be more effective if you can get the power of that training in the hands of people who, whose lives are in turmoil and in very tough circumstances, if it's possible for them to actually absorb the lessons that you're offering them and give them the space and the framework through which to reflect on their experiences and turn those experiences into something more valuable for them.

Over the long term.

That's what I'm getting from you. That seems to be where it's going. Is that what you're hoping for?

Yeah, absolutely. And just briefly, we use this, especially in committee organizing, we use this metaphor of a bike because the only way to learn leadership is to try it, to actually act it out and it's because there's learning that's non verbal, that's involved in learning how to access leadership. So you need to get on the bike. And what happens when you try to learn how to ride a bike? You fall and then this is the moment of truth. Well, do you get back, do you try to learn from it? And so forth. So that's a bike metaphor. But also you also realize that you don't really have to get people on the bike because very often almost everybody's on some kind of a bike already. They're already doing something that matters most of the people. And there are some people who are like, I want to say, ride a really extreme bike. The people in the core of some big change or struggle. You can find these people who are already on the bike and provide them with more tools to make sense of what's happening to them.

And so at this stage are you planning for it to be an online course through a web portal or what exactly is the medium through which you're going to deliver this?

Still experimenting? Yeah, this is why it's changed.

Experimenting at this point.

Online, Absolutely. I've been doing online since 2009 app.

Using artificial intelligence horrendous technologies. And so you've got quite a team of collaborators with you there. I can see there are many people who come from the think tank space. So Nicola, I'd like to ask, what do you think traditional think tanks can learn from changelab? Global institutes have become aware of the need to do more than just think per se. So we hear a lot about so called think and do tanks these days that have an emphasis on action as well as research. So being based in D.C. yourself, I'm sure you've had a lot of interactions with tanks. So what do you see as the barriers to tanks becoming more innovative in terms of their organizational culture or leadership? And how do you think they can become more proactive in causing the change that the policy research recommends?

Yeah, I love that question. First thing that comes to my mind is we're in a world where we can gather a lot of data. And that made us a bit arrogant thinking that, well, all these data now is the ultimate truth. And then especially the policy people and working with Volt Europa as a big political party that is very policy minded and very often left leaning people will be extremely policy minded. They fail to see that there is a side that we can't measure yet. So there's a lot of data. Data is important and I'm very glad we're using Data to inform our decision making and policies. Yet there's a lot of knowledge that comes from things that we can't measure yet. Qualitative data narratives. So I guess what I'm getting at is hey, policy people, get your data. Absolutely. And that's going to give you a part of the story. But, but go deeper, talk to people, understand the underlying narratives. Because people make sense of the world through what they value. They make sense of the world through the stories they've been told and they tell themselves. While your policies. Data driven. Fantastic. We are not humans are not purely data driven. We're narrative driven and meaning making driven. And there is some data in that involved for sure. But there's a whole another aspect and I would just say, hey, get out there. Action will hit you with all the complexity and part of the complexity will be the data that you will never be able to measure or at least not now. And that might enable you to create even better policy.

Right? No, I love that. Exactly. We are not run on data. We're very emotional beings.

That's how we're wired.

Right. So we really resonate with stories. Exactly. So I think it is a fusion of those two because there is a tendency we have to get so excited about the new toys.

Right.

And at the moment that is big data. That is everything that the digital revolution is unlocking, which is fantastic. But if you cannot make sense of it, it is rather meaningless. And showing people a whole bunch of numbers is not going to inspire them. It's not going to get them up on their feet and making changes in their communities, which is really what you need. This is what policy makers need to inspire is actual, not just acceptance or agreement, but actual some sort of buy in on the part of the community, getting them to really invest themselves emotionally in the policies that the leaders are trying to enact. That's how you get that sort of synergy between the two. And so I think if people in think tanks can really think or do either or something to really connect their research and their data points with that more human side of the spectrum, you know, we could be seeing some, some different results there. So Nicola, on the whole, you've had such a varied career and you've got such a fascinating backstory there. I just always love to put this to my guests. As we sort of wind towards the end here, what would you say are the main lessons you've learned over the years that people in policy should really learn from? We may have just covered one just there.

Sorry to take the wind out of your sails.

We covered the big one, which is safety of conversation and thinking versus uncertainty of action. This is the big one we covered.

That's just great, the way you put it there so succinctly. Safety of thinking versus uncertainty of action, right?

Yes, yes.

But the uncertainty in the action is what makes it gives it greater value in terms of the learning potential that it offers.

That's right. Uncertainty means unknown. And unknown is where you know, where you find the new things. And that's learning. That's why it's so powerful.

I like that.

But it's also a bit scary, right? Because it's uncertain. You know, questions, how do we have Donald Trump's and Victor Orban's and Milosevic and other type in the world rise? It's to certain theater to understand the power of identity and narratives and values over what would be considered the rational thinking. And I know you have a lot of probably policy minded people in this podcast. I'm just going to say I have a lot of friends who keep thinking, oh my God, look at all these people who voted for Trump. They voted against their interests, which is very arrogant things to say because maybe you don't know what their interest is and their interest is actually more tied to identity, less to what you would consider data driven. Your economy will be better. You'll have a bigger paycheck. Well, they have something that's more important to them that maybe you don't understand. I'm not saying that they were right to choose Trump as their champion. They were wrong. But where I'm going with this is that it's really important to understand how identity plays the role. And I'm not talking about identity politics, but let me put it this way. In the 90s in Yugoslavia, what happened is that a lot of people lost sense of purpose and it was easy to prey on people who don't have sense of purpose because then a lot of them found the sense of purpose in the group and they just outsource the purpose to the group. That's communism very often. Right. You do everything for me, all the thinking. Now what happens is you kind of become a slave to the group thing, which is a problematic thing. Right. I'm not talking about this difference between individualism and collectivism. I think they have to work together. But this is where you export your purpose and therefore you're not connected to the values. Somebody else articulates that for you and often uses you to fulfill their own purpose. And usually one person's purpose, which is dictatorship. And, and what happened in Yugoslavia, and this happens very often in the world, is leaders. Understand that there are certain leaders, people with power, I wouldn't call them leaders, understand that there are certain inherited identities that are really easy to export your purpose to. So that's like, you know, when you were born, Liam, you were born as if, I remember, Irish, Australian, probably Christian, and you have your last name. So these are given the identities to you.

Sure.

And the interesting thing with these identities is that they're given so you don't really get to choose. And you're also white. So these are. You're also defined from others as that you can say whatever you want. It's going to be hard for you not to say that you're Australian, you're not Irish, that you're not white, that you're not from Christian culture. Even if you change your religion, even though you don't act out these identities, maybe every day. But when people with power start playing with these identities, and we've seen that very often, it's a different ball game because whatever you do, you still belong to that group. You can be a good or bad person, but you're a Serbian, you're a good or bad person, but you're Croat, so you're with us. So there's the safety of belonging to that, regardless of who you are. And they play on that by default.

Right. There's no choice involved in that. It's simply a given. Exactly. You can leave, you can come back, you can be rich or poor, you can be good or bad, but at the end of the day, you are what you were born into this world as. And they know that.

Yeah. And it's easily identifiable because you see, okay, your last name, your name, your something will give out. This, usually this identity problem with this is that you usually don't act out this identity so often because, you know, at the same time, you're a father, you like rock music, for example, or, you know, you're a leadership developer and professional. You love sports, you're a football fan. So all these identities. You love art, or you love these kind of movies. You like Star Wars. I love Star Wars. So they're all these complex identities that really make you human that you chose or kind of like you were driven to. Now, what politicians do, often they prey on these given identities because they're so easy to understand, to see and to belong to, because again, they're given, and whatever you do, you're with us. But they reduce people to these single identities. You lose the complexity of a person. Suddenly I don't see Liam, who is a father of two daughters and adventurer and a journalist. And I just see, in case of Yugoslavia, I just see a crot or a Serb. And then it becomes really easy to antagonize because all you need to do is take that one identity. That's the lens that you give people to look through. Everybody sees everybody else through these lenses. Religion or nationality, in the case of Serbia and Croatia and Bosnia and Kosovo as well, and Albania and all of this conflict that happened in 90s, and you simplify everything and it's easy to dehumanize. And what happens, what I've seen, and I have a friend who in 2000 was running this. This is going to sound maybe like a far story, but actually he. He organized the youth games for ex Yugoslavian people from different countries of ex Yugoslavia. We were talking and some of my friends were saying, well, that's useless. Who cares about, you know, that doesn't make any sense. But then the stories this friend of mine, Dushan, was telling me was, man, these people were meeting for the first time after the war a Croat or a Serb or a Bosnian or Macedonian or Slovenian. And what happens when you meet somebody in person, whatever the inherited identity you had, lens for the nationality of religion, it doesn't come through anymore because we don't act them out every day. Because how does a SERP or a Croat or, you know, a Slovenian act in a party? Doesn't act as a Slovenian, Kraut or Serb. It acts as a young person who has preference for music, for dressing, for drink, for conversations, and suddenly, boom, the complexity of person is in front of you and you're like, well, we're kind of actually. And because there's a cultural similarity, especially in Yugoslavia, you suddenly start connecting with people. This is a very long story to go back to. Hey, oversimplification, especially in identity, can really drive to a wrong place. Meeting people and working with people in person or going back to the action can really enable you to see all the complexity and understand the impact of whatever you're working on, especially policy, can have on multiple layers of society, not only on the ones that we usually like to play with, especially politicians, which are given identities. And you can translate this into this America, current racial identity and so forth.

There's so much to unpack in that. Nicola, thank you for sharing such deep insights. I think that this political polarization, racial tensions and identity politics and all the rest of it, this is something that is playing out the world over, right now east and west, and yet Yugoslavia, or what was formerly Yugoslavia and what happened there at the end of the last century was really the start of that all. You know, many historians will point to this so called Balkanization as sort of the modern resurfacing of all these old nationalisms and what we're now dealing with today. So I think it's perfect that someone with your experience can shed some light on it being where you are now and seeing everything else playing out in modern politics today, especially with the rise of populism and all of that. So I think that there is really a lot to get to. What I can sort of hear is that when we allow autocrats, or whatever you want to call them, those in power who are undeserving of leadership, when we allow them to, as you say, oversimplify identities to the point where manipulation of the population is so easy, we're sort of reversing self agency of the individual, but also the communities, because communities are also by their very nature complex and overlapping. And so we're reversing the self agency and self realization that economic empowerment and liberal political values should enhance and enable. So we can attest to the fact that I guess those in policy who are trying to find their way back to policies that safeguard and strengthen societies that enhances those complexities need to realize the convenience with which simplifying our identities is such an easy go to tactic for those empowering. It's a simple divide and rule kind of strategy. But I think what's really distinct about what you put it there is that because given identities are inescapable and unchangeable, there is something. They're a safe haven because. Thank you. They're a safe haven because you cannot do anything about them. You can choose and add so much else to your character of your lifetime. But if you were born a Serb, you were born a Croat, that is the tribe you were born into. So there is something almost. It's almost like a very. It's a very cheap play, isn't it? It's almost like you're going for a really low blow when you're appealing to only that simple identity in someone and trying to push them into that group because they cannot deny that they are a part of that group. But it's so much harder to fight back and say, yes, I'm part of this group, but I'm so much more. Because if you're in a political discourse that denies that complexity, there's nothing else to say. That complexity is muted. It's it's so I think, I think what I really got from that is there is an inevitability to being lumped into a default group simply because it was, was never something you chose. It was something that was given to you by, by default, by nature or whatever fate.

Interesting thing is that these identities are hard to change, but they can be changed. Like myself, I was born in Yugoslavia, so I was Yugoslavia and I was raised Yugoslavia and then that country ceased.

To exist, so I had to change.

What does that do for you?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Well, that's when I learned, oh my God, look, identities are fluid. Today even we learned that there are many identities. But like, you know, you have, you know, Michael Jackson became pretty much white. I'm not making any normative judgment of like, what is good or bad. To have like plastic surgery to change your skin color or to change your gender, that's, you know, personal choice. These things are hard, especially these humanly created identities like nationality. And they're innate because they're like praying. I like to say leaders who are people with authority who focus on these given identities are really focusing on our. To introduce some neuroscience to our limbic system thinking, tribal thinking, where like, you know, everything within my tribe is safe, everything else outside is potential threat. And this is the core of nationalism very often, right. It can be. Or far right nationalism, I guess, when everybody who is not me is a threat. And that's true when we were, you know, who knows, thousands of millions of years before, that was the truth. Not anymore. But our brain still has that part that we can trigger. And suddenly, you know, people become animals because if you see what people did in certain, you know, wars, especially in the war in Yugoslavia, you wouldn't believe, you would say, well, this is an animalistic behavior. This is. You would not consider it human, but well, guess what, it is human and you're capable of it. On the other side, there are people like, I would say like Obama, who has his flaws, but who appeal to integrated neurochemistry, let's call it, in order to integrate what we call reptilian brain or limbic system together with our super advanced frontal cortex that makes us such an amazing different beings than other animals. And once you integrate them, which is emotional ratio, then you're integrated, strong person. And this is what I think Lincoln said, appealing to better angels.

It's so funny, I was going to bring up earlier in the interview that so many of our recent guests have brought up the importance of psychology in enacting change within the policy landscape. And I actually almost let it slip by because I felt that Nicola was more of a. A doer rather than a thinker. And perhaps you were emphasizing action a little more than perhaps psychology per se. But in the end, I think what you revealed to us is you went another layer deeper. You went to neuroscience. So I think this is only confirming my hunch. Is that really the key to unlocking all of this is to try to understand the human psyche and how we respond to things?

Yeah. Neuroscience and psychology are a big part of what we are working on. What I'm working on. I am not psychologist and I'm not. There are people who need, and probably everybody needs to an extent, therapy. I don't do that. But some concepts are very useful and important and crucial for developing leadership capacities. Huge fan of Jung and Piaget and, you know, Freud. There's so much learning from psychology, definitely. And understanding how do we make sense of things?

Make sense of things. Well, I think you're really helping us make sense of a lot today, Nicola. Thank you so much for sharing your insights. And let us hope that your courses and your content that you're creating through changelab Global helps other people around the world, especially those who are trapped in turmoil and are in really dire straits out there, that they can also use your platform to make sense of their surroundings and make sense of what they want to do into the future and.

Help empower their communities to make some real change. Because we really need it right now.

Right now, going forth into the 21st century, it looks like our world is in greater need of leadership more than ever before. So I really want to thank you for coming on the show.

Thank you, Liam. I really enjoyed. Thank you for the opportunity. And I couldn't agree more on the fact that finding your purpose and finding your full potential can be more needed than today.

On that note, I'm sure many of.

Our listeners would love to go and.

Find out more about changelab Global. So where can they go to find out more about your work, Nicola?

So the website is changelab Global, but I think more fun that we just started doing something on the clubhouse, the new app.

Oh, okay, cool.

Okay, fantastic.

Every Wednesday you can find this. We have a club, we just started a club called Leadership Dojo. You'll find the Leadership Dojo by Jinxlab Club. And every Wednesday, 4:00pm Eastern Time, like today actually at 4:00pm Eastern Time, which is Washington D.C. time and new York time, we have about hour, hour and a half conversation about leadership with a group of people from the Change Lab. And today we're going to talk about democratizing leadership. For example, last two weeks ago, we talked about how to be a good leader in the complex world. So join us in the conversation and we always look to the audience and get more perspectives.

Great.

You're the first guest on this show to have a clubhouse event. So I'm so happy to plug that. I'll link to that in the show notes. Any other places your LinkedIn or Twitter as well?

Yeah, I have unfortunate name. Nikola Illich is extremely common.

I see, I see.

So if you find me on LinkedIn. If you type it Nikola Illich, you might find like 1,000 people. I guess so. But yeah, Change Lab, you can find me through changelab global and leadershipdojo by changelab club on clubhouse twitter nicola ilh777.

At numbers number seven. It's a lucky number. There you go. The luckiest Nicola Ilic. That's your new title. Thank you so much, Nicola. It's been a pleasure. And we'll do it again sometime soon.

I would love to. Absolutely.

Okay. Look forward to it. Thank you.