106 | Raw Leadership Principles; Curiosity, Authenticity & Vulnerability | Colleen Bashar

Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast, where I talk to leaders about how internal communications, engagement, and leadership all play a key role in creating amazing and successful cultures.

I feel like the person that I was talking to maybe heard me for the first time because he felt acknowledged. He felt heard first. And then the second, like, magic that I was blown away by was how different it was when I wasn't in my head trying to be right. And it's a really hard thing to do.

Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. Before my usual first, which is to thank Workvivo, we'll get to that in a second. Just a little apology because I've been away for a while, probably, oh gosh, I don't know, maybe 6 weeks, which is like 3 episodes normally. So for those of you that are regular listeners, I do apologize. I know there's a few of you out there. It's just been mad between work and family and holidays and lots of other things. It's been mental. Should I have been better at planning my time, got a few episodes in the can, and then used those while I was away and busy? Yes, I should have, but I didn't. So all I will do is apologize and throw myself on your mercy. But we're back, which is great, and we've got a fantastic guest today. More on her in a second, but first of all, to Workvivo, to say thank you to them. They've been our supporter and friend for many, many episodes now. So if you are looking for a platform to use to engage your people, to, to build a connection with people, particularly when they are out and about or working remotely or in hybrid, then their platform is well worth a look. You'll hear a little bit more about them later, as usual. But for now, if you want to pop along and look at workvivo.com, you will find more there. So on with today's guest. So, you know, having listened that sometimes we have subject matter experts, sometimes we have consultants and authors and people have written books and, and very clever people, much cleverer than me, the types of people that I love having. I love all those types of people, but the one type of person that really love having on is people leaders, people who are actually in the business day to day doing the stuff that me and all the experts talk about, all the stuff that me and all the experts say, well, this is best practice and this is exactly what everyone should be doing. And actually, it's really nice to speak to somebody who's actually in there in the trenches doing the job with the troops and really living that day to day and bringing that reality back to the podcast and bringing some advice and some hints and tips and all that great stuff as well. So today I'm delighted to welcome Colleen Basher. Who's the Senior Vice President of Sales in Guidewire Software. Colleen, hello there.

Hi, how are you? Thank you for having me.

My pleasure. Listen, rather than me make a complete hames of telling all the listeners about you and the company you work for, why don't I hand over to you and as we normally do, let you do that.

Sure. So, I am working currently for Guidewire Software. They are an insurance software provider for property and casualty. I have been there for almost 16 years. Yes, it has been quite an adventure. It's an amazing company. I would say that, get to know me a little. I went to college, so I actually struggled to figure out where to go to college because I needed two things in this, the university that I was going to choose. They had to have biomedical engineering and a ski team, which those two things, it's a unique blend to try to find.

That must have narrowed your choice down ever so slightly, I imagine.

Especially back then. Yes, it wasn't easy. I did find one. I went to Boston University and completed in biomedical engineering, which has nothing to do with what I do today. And when I graduated, I did what every engineering graduate does, and I became a professional ski bum.

Excellent.

Yes.

Your parents must have been so proud.

They were. They were not. It was an awful phone call. Um, and as you can imagine, the income was, you know, almost non-existent with that, with that decision. So that's when I got into the software space, technology, enterprise technology with Oracle. Amazing company. I really didn't even think I was going to leave. Um, they have so many resources for professional growth. They supported me going back to school for my MBA at Duke University. But then I became part of the statistic that you don't leave a company, you leave a manager. After having so many amazing managers at Oracle, I got one that took the joy out of working there. So that's when I got super lucky and I joined what I was calling back then a successful startup, trying to make myself feel better. Because they were— Guidewire was really small when I joined, but I joined as an individual contributor in pre-sales. And as the company grew, I grew into leadership positions. And now I'm managing a global team of about 150 people that has 5 different organizations, and it's focused on the pre-sales and prospects and customers.

Brilliant, brilliant. Thanks for that. That That move, I always think, from kind of contributor, sole contributor, or subject matter expert, call it whatever you will, to people leader, I think is one of the hardest moves that somebody can make in an organization. I think particularly when it's within your own team, to go from being one of the team to being the boss of the team. I don't think many people do it very well. I think people leaders get into people leadership positions because they're very good at their job. They're, they're a senior engineer or a senior salesperson, suddenly they have a team. I don't think that necessarily makes them a really good people leader. Maybe tell me a little bit about your experience of that.

So, I agree with everything you said. I think that's a mistake a lot of people make, is promoting someone into a people leader role just because they're great at the individual contributor role. Leadership for me, I think, was in my blood from the very beginning. But based on the experiences that I had at Oracle and seeing the impact that a people leader can have on you as an individual, I wanted to do that. I wanted to inspire people. So I actually took a risk. And in my interview for Guidewire to the hiring manager, even though I was hiring, I was applying for this individual contributor role, I told her that what I was really passionate about was leadership and that, you know, I will be the first to say that I will prove to you over the next few years that I am the right person for the role you're hiring me for. But as the company grows, I really want to be considered for leadership. And she later told me, years later, that in that conversation she was a little thrown off because our company was really small. So basically I was saying to her, I want your job. Which is not what I intended. Um, but that in the end, it was really helpful because as she created growth strategies for the team, she knew exactly where I wanted to go. So, you know, being your own voice, I think, is hard, but it's so worth it because otherwise they just don't know.

And I do think you have to have that passion for people leadership. I do believe it's a skill set that you have to learn and hone and sharpen every single day of the week. I do think that some people are born with it, but I think most have to work at it really, really hard.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah, interesting. So, one of the big things that we always talk about on the pod, obviously, building better cultures is culture. And I'm interested from your perspective and your experience and what you've been through over the past decade and a half in Guidewire, what do you believe is the role of a leader? What do you believe is your role, I guess, in creating really, really strong cultures and organizations?

I think it's just that it is the leader's role to create amazing cultures. Even if the company has a great culture, it is the leader's responsibility to create a culture within a culture. Because especially as a company gets bigger and bigger, people need to feel a part of something and close to something that's meaningful, and the leader can do that. You know, I believe that you do this through techniques that I've created with authenticity, vulnerability, and curiosity. But I just think it is the general understanding that you have so much influence over, over an individual's life as a leader, and creating that culture is your role.

Yeah, and I know that with lots of our clients that we work with, we tell them that you people like you in your role, your peer group in all organizations actually are, and people who've listened to the pod a lot have heard me say this many times, are absolutely critical to the success of any change program, whether that be cultural change, organizational change, whatever it is. It's a key part of your role to be able to translate and contextualize that overall overarching message down into what does that mean for us as a team? What does it mean for you, Jim, Jack, and Sarah as individuals? And create that connection. But again, it's not a natural thing that people have the skill set to do.

Right.

Yeah, interesting. Tell me a little bit about your leadership style and how it's changed through your career. So obviously, you started in Guidewire 16 years ago. You've obviously been on that journey. What have you, what have you learned about yourself? And how is that, how has that morphed and changed over the years?

So I think I started taking notes on really great leaders versus leaders that maybe were not so great way back before I was even a manager. As I mentioned, at Oracle, I had some amazing people, and that's really how I got motivated into this. As someone in leadership now, I have become so much more passionate about it because I can see the impact that it has on people, and that's what drives me to constantly work on it. I also think that when you're in that leadership position and you have passion about it, it can drive the company to achieve their goals because of the culture within a culture that you have for your team, motivating, creating retention, and, you know, seeing people succeed. So I've been investing myself in myself over the years with a number of workshops and trainings to bring out my authentic self, to improve as a leader, and to improve as a contributor to the business.

Yeah, it's interesting. And you're absolutely right. I think if leaders at your level and through an organization don't get it right, then the impact on organizational success and performance is massive, isn't it?

It really is. It's unbelievable how much power— I don't want to use that in the wrong word, in the wrong way, but how much power you have to motivate people to be exceptional, or the opposite.

Yeah, absolutely. And when you think about it, you've seen both sides of that coin, right? Because you've had really good leaders, and then you had a really bad leader, and that really bad leader just kind of tipped you over the edge and said, well, you know what, this isn't for me anymore, I'm done. Yeah, yeah, interesting, interesting. You, you touched there very briefly on these three areas that you feel are really important and, and core to, to somebody's leadership style, certainly to your leadership style of authenticity, of vulnerability and of curiosity that you've kind of termed raw leadership. Tell me a little bit about that.

So it is something that I just came about with more experience and seeing the impact that you can have on people, like I mentioned. And those three values are really dear to me because I have worked on them really hard and I've seen the impact that they can have on people. To sum it up, really, the power of being raw, which I'll explain more as we get into it with vulnerability, but it creates this culture that results in really high performers, but more importantly, loyalty and retention and a sense of safety and a feeling that you're part of a team. And seeing everybody in that situation enjoying the journey while being successful is really a win-win in every— in everybody's perspective.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's, and it's powerful. I think it's kind of that whole flywheel effect thing that Bezos talks about in Amazon. As bits start to spin faster, that starts to spin the machine faster, which starts to, and it becomes self-prophesying nearly. And I guess that's what you're doing, right?

Yeah. Hi, I'm Klyna from Workvivo. When working away from the office, it's easy for your people to feel isolated and disconnected from your culture and each other. That's where we come in with our quick-to-deploy employee communications platform. It's all about ensuring that your people feel informed, engaged, and connected to your company culture, values, goals, and each other wherever they work from. For more, see workvivo.com.

Let me ask you about authenticity, because I suspect that when you said it and now that I've said it, there'll be lots of people out there listening going, oh, God, not that again.

I know.

If one more person tells me that a leader has to be authentic, I swear to God I'll scream. And it has become a little bit like that. I think that a little like employee engagement, I think has become a bit of a dirty word. I think culture will become a bit of a dirty word. I think authenticity, being leaders being authentic, has become the same. Tell me why you believe it's so important and people should stop rolling their eyes to the heavens.

Yeah, I totally agree with you. I've thought many times maybe I shouldn't use that word, but as I dug into it, it changed me as a leader, and that's why I can't let it go. So in general, right, it's a behavior that reveals your own personality. But what does that really mean? It means that you're removing these perceptions and personas that you've created over the years that you believe are true, and they're not. So if you can imagine me as a 2-year-old, right? I'm dancing around in the living room, not caring at all about what people think. And a 2-year-old is being their true authentic self because they don't know anything else. It's just who they are. They don't care what people think of them, right? But as you get older and you go through certain experiences, you create personas with these rules like it shouldn't be that way, or I can't do this, I don't want to look stupid, or I'm not enough. Like there's a million of them out there, right? It's just a perception that you created, and the persona that you created around it is for protection. And you don't even realize you're doing this. This is completely a subconscious move. So as I started digging into this and, and trying to understand how it— how that relates to me, I started to put two and two together. So over the past few years, I was getting feedback from C-levels, mentors of mine, that I needed to speak up in meetings and I needed to add more value if I was going to attend C-level meetings. The same time with my leadership team and the 150 people, I feel like I speak up too much, constantly interrupting and driving the conversations, etc. And so I had to figure out what was going on. Once I learned about how your personality can change based on these false beliefs that you've created years and years ago, I was able to figure out what was happening and put words around it for the first time. I discovered that I was showing up in C-suite meetings completely different than I would show up in my own meetings or in, you know, my leadership or the entire group. And now I had to figure out why I was— why I was showing up differently. So I did a ton of research and workshops on this.. And I learned what it was that was triggering that behavior. And so then you can start to unwind it and start to learn how to separate that perception that I had created from reality. And as you learn more about yourself and quickly learn what triggers you into these false personas, then you can practice skills to shift back into your authentic power.

And what was it that was triggering you in that situation in C-suite meetings?

Oh, you're going to get personal with me now. I'm just kidding. So it was created a long, long, long time ago, and it was that I was very sensitive to those that I look up to or that have authority, of those people not recognizing my value. And I'm sure it spun from, I was a child of divorced parents and trying to get attention and, and respect from my father as being the girl. You know, it goes very deep when you really dig into this. But because of something like that that you don't even think about, it's actually changed my behavior in business meetings, which I would have never believed to be true until I did the work to figure that out.

Incredible. Thanks for sharing. That's, uh, that's powerful stuff. And it does— these things do run deep, don't they? It's, it's, it's really, really— our psyche and our subconscious is really, really powerful. I always say to guests that come on, let's try and make this as practical as possible. What are one or two things that listeners can do when they're thinking about, you know, bringing out their authentic selves?

So I think I would say two things. One is really accepting who you are and celebrating that and having the self-confidence to share that with whatever world you create. But if there were an exercise you could do, you could look at You could list out all of these things that you would do if— I would do this if I had money, or if I were smarter, if I had more time, I had more confidence, if I was skinnier, right? There's a million ifs as to why you are not living your best life. Write that down as an exercise and then give yourself the advice that you would give your best friend if they handed you those excuses. Because I guarantee you would tell your best friend that they're crazy. Start to see things, see the areas where you're limiting yourself because of a perception that you've created that you believe to be true. It's just the beginning of like diving into it, but it's becoming aware of some of those behaviors.

Brilliant. Before we move on, I want to talk about self-awareness because I think that self-awareness actually comes into all three of these facets of leadership. And I think that self-awareness is sorely, sorely lacking. I think that people don't think, don't stop and think. And a line that I've been using recently with clients is, we need to stop to go faster. So if people can stop, if leaders can stop, me, my parents, my kids can just stop and say to ourselves, actually, was that the best way to do that? But actually, we don't often have the awareness of self to realize that perhaps there's a better or a different way to do something. Is that something that you've seen that's core to being a successful leader?

I have for sure. And like you said, I think it falls into all three of these pillars. Without self-awareness, you're not gonna be able to be authentic. Every person out there has created these personas, right? And as basic as this sounds, if people could just start with starting to notice what they are feeling, like your heart rate, right? What you are feeling will help you determine when you are in your most authentic self persona versus not, because you are going to get triggered. Your heart rate will start increasing and you're going to be in your head. And those are the times that you will probably sit back and say, I could have done that differently. When you are out of your head and feeling authentic, being your best self, and you finish whatever tough conversation that was, you don't feel that way. You feel proud of where you got, even if it wasn't, even if you didn't get the answer you wanted, you still feel very proud about that conversation.

Brilliant. So a matter of using that physiology, that feeling. To help trigger the thing in your brain to say, okay, pause, stop. That's my red flag.

Yeah.

That, so I've gotta now stop and think about was there a better way to do that? And I think we've, you know what, we've all written emails in haste and in probably anger and then hit send and gone, oh bugger, I shouldn't have hit send there, but just half a second too late. And I think again—

I know Outlook actually has There's a setting for that now where when you hit send, it actually won't send it for 30 seconds or 1 minute or 5 minutes, whatever you set. Oh. Yes. So there's a tip for you.

I'm perfect. It's not that I need it, but I might just go and look for that and turn it on immediately.

Yeah.

That's a good shout. Thank you. Let's talk about vulnerability 'cause I think that after authenticity, that's another one that potentially is gonna make people roll their eyes, you know, oh, vulnerable. But I'm with you. I think it's really important. And you started to talk about it a second ago, so maybe give us a little bit more.

Okay. So vulnerability is really how I pulled the word raw into this whole story, because I feel like, based on my experiences, it's extremely powerful. And it contradicts the career advice that women get of act more like a man, be tough, don't show any emotion, right? Vulnerability doesn't necessarily mean cry. It is a combination of courage and vulnerability. So courage is the key ingredient for strong leaders because you need to have courage to take a risk. You need to have courage to push for a vision without knowing how on earth you are going to get there. You have to have the courage to be wrong.. It doesn't mean that you're fearless, right? Fearless actually doesn't mean that there's a lack of fear, but to have courage, you need to be vulnerable. Vulnerable, vulnerable is actually how you express courage. So I really became obsessed with researching leadership and vulnerability because I took a risk years ago. I was the leader of a smaller team, about 40 people of subject matter experts, but we were part of a larger sales team. And our sales team at the time, the leadership was the best of the best, but they did not mix personal with business. They didn't encourage vulnerability, but they were fantastic at what they did. So at our sales kickoff, I took my team off into a room by ourselves for a day to outline our team's fiscal year strategy. And my kickoff presentation, I decided to throw it on out there and get vulnerable. So over the last few months that I— right before I made this kickoff speech, I had been going through a really difficult time with my 1-year-old son. He had open heart surgery. It had complications. There was a lot going on. So I shared this story with my entire team and I highlighted some of the lessons that I learned from it while going through that experience. That having an environment where people feel safe raising their hand when they're dealing with personal chaos was extremely important to me. And that to know your team members are gonna jump in and help you is going to allow you to prioritize your personal chaos for the time being and not feel like your job is at risk. So knowing that your team has your back. And that, you know, I went into, you know, we've all chosen this career. It's hard. It requires travel, it requires being away from home, et cetera. But that I was committed to providing a space for every single person in the room to feel safe and, you know, provide that courageous need if you need to raise your hand for personal chaos. And then I shifted it into like what our strategic initiatives were for the year. So after that, I expected— I honestly expected some women that had children to come up and say, oh my gosh, I can't imagine what you went through. What happened was later that day at dinner, um, in the hallways, the people that came up to me were men. Multiple men came up to thank me for what I shared and almost thank me for giving them permission to talk about their personal chaos. And then they would start telling me about it. You know, some would start shedding a tear. And I was just floored that they didn't feel comfortable bringing this up before. And so that's when I realized the impact of if I share my chaos, it's going to help others feel like they can raise their hand when they're having chaos. So allowing for your team to see inside of you, understand what you're going through, it's almost contagious, right? It's a trickle effect for everybody. And it creates that safe environment that I mentioned that really creates performance and loyalty all at the same time.

Yeah, and I think it's a really interesting lens on the culture in that organization too, that, you know, it was very hard-nosed and no personal stuff, yet suddenly when you broke Juddham, suddenly everybody was, "Thank you very much for doing that," because actually that's probably where they'd always wanted to go. But back to your courageousness point, none of them were perhaps courageous enough to do it themselves.

And it's too hard today to separate business and personal life. Back in the day, it was easier because you weren't carrying around your work life when you go out to dinner with your family because we didn't have the phones, the technology, the connection, It's too hard to separate 'em. And so you have to let people bring that to work if it's impacting their performance. And when you're struggling with something that is, you know, in my term, I call it personal chaos, but it's hard to balance the two.

Do you think, as a little aside, a bit of a tangent, as I am wont to do sometimes, do you think that the COVID pandemic, the lockdowns and everything else, and the stories that we've seen of people with babies on their knees, and dads feeding their babies and kids coming up and, you know, mums and dads having to leave to go and get food, or the dog jumping on the table. Do you think that's kind of normalized that? Because if you remember back pre-COVID, I don't know how big it was in the US, but there was a diplomat or somebody, um, on BBC News and his kids came in the background and the nanny or the mother, I can't remember which one it was, crawled in on her hands and knees trying to retrieve the children. But of course these days that's become completely normalized. So do you think has that helped? If there is, I think there are a few silver linings from COVID I think there are lots of horrible ones as well, but I think there are some silver linings. And I wonder, is that one of them, that it's kind of blurred that line between professional and personal in a good way?

I want to say and believe that the answer to that question is yes, because I think it has brought awareness, using that word again, to everybody that everybody's balancing life and work. What I haven't seen is a consistent change in behavior with companies. And I'm not just talking about Guidewire. I mean, Guidewire was amazing through COVID. In fact, I was blown away by what they did to make people feel safe and a part of something. But you hear on the news all the time of people that are forcing everybody to go back to work for 5 days I haven't seen a consistent change, as much of a consistent change, I should say, as I would've liked. Hmm.

Okay. Interesting. My favorite one, I think that came out in the media today, if you're listening in the future, it is currently the 9th of August, 2022, was that TikTok has decided that they are going to now mandate people to go back to the office a minimum of 2 days a week. And in order to drive people back to the office, they're going to take away some of the benefits that they gave them in COVID, like having a contribution towards your wifi, like having a gym pass, membership, like having travel, those kinds of things. And I just think it's insane.

Yeah.

At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website at www.inspiringchange.ie for more. Probably your third one is my favorite one, um, because it's one that I'm constantly harping on at my kids about, is to be curious and curiosity. And I think it's interesting— oh, who was it, um, the really famous painter who said, everybody's born creative, the challenge as they become adults is to keep them creative.

Yeah.

And I think creativity sits really nicely with curiosity. I think they're, they're really, really tightly, tightly tied together. Um, tell me a little bit about, tell me a little about curiosity and why you believe that's so important.

Okay. So the, yeah, this is the third pillar and it has been the hardest one for me personally, first to accept and then to adopt. But I think it has had maybe the most profound impact on me. So this started years ago when I was in a workshop that was business related, but they threw a phrase on the board that said, you can be right or you can be in a relationship. And I struggled with that one. I mean, in the simple example of a common argument that I think many people have of how to load the dishwasher, it is really hard for me to go into that conversation thinking I am not right. But when you believe you are right, you stop listening to the conversation and you only focus on the items that are going to prove that you're right. And you ignore pieces that might prove that you're wrong, but could also just make your view of the situation that much better. And that behavior, it's not deliberate. It's how our brains work. You could, you know, you have to almost train yourself not to do that. So thinking about listening to understand, not to respond, means getting curious. And I think the thing that threw me over in terms of accepting this was because of this language that I was learning, I all of a sudden started seeing this behavior against me. You know, they didn't know, but we'd be in this conversation, I would finish my point and the person I was talking to would jump right in with a point, their point of view that had nothing to do with what I just said.

So they hadn't been listening.

They hadn't been listening. And it's so frustrating, but I had never been able to put words around that. And so that's when this formula of curiosity plus acknowledgment equals the ability to influence sort of came into my life. So the first thing is you have to listen to understand, which means you've got to go in not thinking you're right and you got to ask questions. The second step is acknowledging the other person with their words, because when somebody feels heard, it is just human nature that they are going to feel like they matter, that they're important, that they exist, right? So I I tested this out. For those of you that have ever walked into a conversation that you knew was going to be difficult based on the individual maybe not being known for cooperative skills or whatever. So I knew I was walking into a heated conversation, but I needed to convince this person of this new offering that I wanted to build out for our customers, which required an investment in headcount. And this person was already against it. This was our fourth call about this topic. And I decided to use this approach. I also used a trick that somebody told me, which is very, very unique. But as you listen to someone's opinion or point of view and you acknowledge them, watch them after that acknowledgement. And if they feel heard, they will swallow.

Really?

Yes. So I think that this is a technique that they've used in horse training, believe it or not.

I'm going to try that this evening when I, when I do the dishwasher wrong. I'm going to try that this evening and just see what happens.

Yeah. So I decided to just go for this first. I just wanted to see if this swallow thing was real, but I wanted to use the technique of going in and being willing to be wrong and then acknowledging So it's exactly what I did. Went into the conversation, I gave, you know, my pitch of, here's what I need, here's the business problem I'm solving, blah, blah, blah. And they went right in with their point of view, their opinions. I let them speak. I acknowledged them using their words. So you have to repeat exactly how they're wording it. And say, I completely understand why your perspective of this is blah, blah, blah. I asked if there was anything else that they wanted to bring up on this topic. They said no and then swallowed. Wow. I know. And so when you feel heard, I think you just relax, right? I mean, it might even not be a swallow sometimes. It might be Like a breath.

A nod, a shoulder drop.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So once that happened, I said, can I offer you a different perspective? Now this is what's so interesting, and this ties back to authenticity. I prepped for this call like you wouldn't believe. I had a PowerPoint presentation. I had the executive structure that you're supposed to put in place when you're asking for something and my reasonings for it. But because I was in listening mode and not in my head trying to prove that I was right, I actually came up with a completely different perspective on how to pitch this in real time. And so I gave my point of view, which was not the point of view that I had so craftily created in my PowerPoint, and it got approved. I feel like the person that I was talking to maybe heard me for the first time because he felt acknowledged. He felt heard first. And then the second, like, magic that I was blown away by was how different it was when I wasn't in my head trying to be right. And that's a really hard thing to do.

Brilliant. But again, back to that self-awareness piece that we spoke about earlier on. It's being aware that that's an issue that I have to unlearn, that I want to kind of make my— it's so easy to just well, I'll just go in and do it the way that I always do it and we'll just keep bashing heads. But if nothing ever changes, nothing ever changes. So actually to come at it from a slightly different angle is plainly successful as you proved. Although it does smart somewhat, and I'm watching all the Star Wars at the moment, it does smart slightly of a Jedi mind trick.

Yeah.

It does sound a little Jedi, but that's okay. If you're a Jedi, we've never had one on before, so that's it.

Yes.

Tell me of all those three, I know that the best things come in threes. Oh, actually, sorry, before I go to that, it was Picasso that said that quote. I just remembered that everyone's born creative. The key thing is to keep them creative when they become adults. And now back to my— I'm all over the place today. I'm so excited to be back. The three parts of this raw leadership model, is there any one in particular that you think is more useful, more powerful? Than the other two? And if so, which one is it and why?

I want to just say the short answer is no, because I do think that they build on each other, like I had mentioned earlier, right? It's really hard to be vulnerable if you're not authentic. Authenticity requires you to get out of your head, which means you have to be willing to be wrong, right? You can just keep playing that over and over. But I do think some are easier than others to start. So if I had to pick one to start, I think I would pick curiosity and just try to listen to understand, but not to respond. So the next conversation you have, don't respond, ask questions, and just see what happens with the sort of progress of that conversation when you do that.

Brilliant. Well, I am going to take a note and I am going to start doing that because as I said to my 12-year-old only an hour ago, nothing changes if nothing changes. So, I will change. I will become more curious and I will ask more questions. Listen, we're out of time. Colleen, it's been great having you on. I've really enjoyed. I think you're a brilliant storyteller. I think a lot of the stories you've told have really backed up a lot of the points you were making. And it's fantastic to hear those. I'm only talking to a couple of clients about storytelling at the moment. And it's brilliant to have something to point them to, to say, here's a great storyteller. So, thank you very much for doing that. It's been brilliant having you on.

Thank you. I'm so excited to be here, so I really appreciate it.

Great stuff. Listen, you take care and have a good day.

Thanks, you too.

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