133 | Empathy: The Missing Ingredient in Leadership | Keith Barry

I'm telling you now that 99.9999% of leaders around this country are leaving 50% of their communication skills on the table because they know nothing about nonverbal communication skills. They literally know nothing about it because I do polls everywhere.

At Inspiring Change, we're here to help build work cultures that bring out the best in people. We created this podcast to share real stories and insights from people shaping better workplaces every day. So grab a cuppa or pop in your earbuds wherever you are. Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast. We're excited to have you with us. Something a little bit different for you today. After 130+ episodes behind a mic talking to people on Riverside or on Teams, we decided it was about time to get out and about. So we recorded 2 episodes this series with a real live audience of about 35 people at our offices in Dublin. You'll hear from this episode and the other one, the energy, the laughs, the questions, the interaction from the audience made it all worthwhile. Enjoy. So delighted to be sitting here with Keith Barry and our live studio audience. That was louder than the first time, so it must be— it must have been wine. There must have been wine at the interval. Um, Keith, for those of us who don't know who you are, why don't you tell us a little bit about you, where you've come from, and what you do now?

Yes, so I'll try and give you the elevator pitch or the shortened version. So I started off as a magician when I was 5. I got a Paul Daniels magic set, and, and with this demographic, you know who Paul Daniels is. The young girls at the back, no idea. But, uh, yeah, grew up in Waterford, uh, you know, up to Asia. So ultimately, yeah, when I was 14, started studying hypnosis from a little pamphlet that I got on hypnosis. Then went to college in Galway. I know one of your daughters is in Galway, and we studied the, the same thing. I studied science in Galway, uh, but my girlfriend at the time was my wife now. She was studying psychology, so I started to read her psychology books and started to develop that into my act. And then, uh, when I was— I, I'm a cosmetic scientist by trade, and then I jumped out of that when I was 23 into being a full-time entertainer, really, at the time. Now I was doing a lot of one-to-one hypnosis work at that time as well. And then all the way up to now, I suppose, at this moment in time, the umbrella term that I like to use is brain hacker. But I suppose I do a lot of different things which sometimes confuses people. But as a brand, I'm very aligned in my own mind as to what I do, which is 50% brain hacking for entertainment and 50% brain hacking to create meaningful, sustainable change for people.

Brilliant.

So that's the short version.

And it's like you've done this before, because that—

no, I haven't been on a podcast in ages, actually, so I can't remember what I was doing yesterday.

It leads me beautifully into my next question. Which is you've talked about yourself as a brain hacker, as a magician, as a mentalist, as a cosmetic scientist. More about that later.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It—

people might think listening that it's a bit funny now that you're on here talking about leadership and culture and change. So build that, build that bridge for me.

Yeah, you know, I, I, it's interesting, right? People would probably look at somebody like me and go, what, what does he even know about leadership? But I suppose if you take a step back for a moment and you look Just as a quick example, the theater shows that I do, if I go to a theater, like, there's literally probably anywhere from maybe 30 up to 100 people that ultimately are responsible to me. And I've got to lead those people to make sure a show runs smoothly. And I've got to make sure that, you know, everybody has a great time, not just the audience, but also the people backstage and stuff like that. So I realized a long time ago that actually culturally I was positioned to talk about leadership, and leadership really for me is a mindset as opposed to positioning within a company. And what's really fascinating, I think, and you kind of, I suppose, leaned into it a little bit earlier, is the fact that I find a lot of leaders say one thing and do another thing. And, you know, a quick example, right? Uh, I was working with an organization recently, and sometimes an organization will bring me in to talk to the employees, and then they know that they've got that psychological safety, as Catherine said, to talk to me, and then I'll report back up to the leadership team afterwards. And what's really fascinating is I was with an organization not that long ago, and ultimately, you know, they're ticking all the boxes, all the well-being boxes are being ticked, all the, you know, you can go have your smoothie, you can do this, you do that, and the, you know, the cultural boxes are being ticked. But ultimately, when I got in there, It's all fear factor. Everybody's so frightened because what actually happens is, even though all the boxes are being ticked, every couple of months the head honchos come in and literally out of nowhere just go, you're fired, you're fired, you're fired, you're fired, you're fired. And then they step back out. And ultimately there's just a massive level of fear in that particular organization. And I identified that. I spoke with the, the leaders, but you know, I have a keynote. So very often I go in, I might do a keynote, I might do a full day with a team, but ultimately I have a keynote that I'm doing a lot lately, which is called The Leadership Illusion. My job is to kind of break down the barriers and shatter the illusion that it is an illusion. It's not the biggest voice in the room, it's not the loudest voice in the room. And I truly believe that everybody within an organization should be allowed lead because everybody's working together.

Yeah, for sure. And I think one of the things that we touched on earlier on, and you touched on it there, was that whole idea of stories, storytelling. And obviously You're a brain guy. That's what you do for a job. And I wonder, what's the neuroscience behind storytelling? What does that look like? And what practical tips— we spoke earlier about finding it hard often to find stories and to unearth stories. How can leaders go about doing that?

So it's like a packed and loaded question, right? What's the neuroscience behind it? But ultimately, for me, I think So I'll loop around a little bit here and don't let me go off track because sometimes I do, right? And I ramble. But I want to come back to something Catherine said earlier. She said she likes Simon Sinek's work. And I've studied Simon's work and I've studied red train, blue train, Myers-Briggs. I've studied it all, right? But for me, it comes back to, with storytelling, subconscious behavior. And that's my specialty, I suppose. That's why I'm brought into organizations. All of our habits are driven subconsciously. If you're a smoker, it's subconscious. When When you're driving the car, it's subconscious. If you're going to the gym or running as you are, it's subconscious. So we're driven by our subconscious behaviors. What's fascinating to me is most organizations know nothing whatsoever about subconscious, the subconscious mind, know very little about neuroscience. And I suppose that's a good thing for somebody like me because I'm brought in for that very reason. But we're defined first and foremost, I think, by the stories that we tell ourself, and that's not identified enough. So what stories are your employees telling themselves when they wake up in the morning before they go into their position, their role, their job, if it's in the workplace or at home, or maybe they're still working at home, whatever. But ultimately, what stories are they telling themselves first and foremost? And then what is that shared vision story going through the culture? And the reason I mentioned Catherine is with Simon Sinek, like, big fan as well. Love Simon's work. But the why is important.. But I always say to people, what's your subconscious why? Now that's a very different proposition because very often when people define their own internal purpose, that could be, for example, in an organization, well, I'm here and I'm working for my family to provide. And that's a very common answer you'll get, right? And if I bounce around this room and I won't do it now, I very often do this, by the way. My job is to shake things up when I go into an organization, but really shake it up, right? And very often I'll jump around with a microphone and I'll say to this the— and I don't know who the people are, right? So I might not have met the CEO or the COO, and it could be them that I put a microphone in front of unknowingly from my perspective. And I would just go, go, what's your purpose? What's your why? Now, when you put somebody on the spot like that, I'm telling you now, out of this room and most people, 90% of people either don't know— they've really spoken about it, we've studied Simon Sinek, but we haven't actually defined it— or you'll get one of kind of 4 answers. So it's, I'm doing it for my family, The younger generation, like the girls at the back there, I'm doing it for the money, Keith. You know what I mean? Some people are doing it for the journey, the adventure. But you'll get like 1 of 5 answers. They're very relevant answers. I'm not against those answers. But my job is to get people to drill down into their subconscious why. Because neurologically, back to your point, is we are driven by our subconscious behaviors. And you have to understand your own personal story first and foremost. Before you can bring a group on a shared vision. So for me, here's the crazy thing. I'll give you my subconscious why, and it's a whole technique that I have that I do within organizations, how to define your subconscious why. We don't have time to describe it now, but ultimately my subconscious why, people might sit there and go, I'm nuts. I want to shut down all 32 raw sewage pipes pumping shite into the Irish Sea right now. I don't— I, I've defined that very clearly, and everyone has told me on an organizational level that's impossible because it's such a— it's a multi-billion euro problem. It just can't be done, you know. And what's very interesting, fascinating about that is anybody who tells me something's impossible, I immediately know I'm the person to do that, because impossible again is just a mindset. And I get that, and it sounds cliché, right? But I come from a place where I hang myself upside down outside of RTE Studios, 150 foot in the air, with my body in a straitjacket and my head wrapped in cling film, and I've got to escape before I suffocate. Like, I, I do underwater escapes all the time. So like, the impossible mindset is not a mindset that I have. So that's my defined subconscious. Why? Like, I worked with Keith Earls a number of years ago, and the first thing— and people forget, there's a number of years ago, Keith wasn't playing that well. There was a season where he wasn't playing well. He came to me and he said, I need your help. I went, sure. And he said I'm not playing that well. And I said, well, why? And then I went into my technique that I use with him and drilled down into his subconscious why. And ultimately the revelation came. And here's my point, everybody will have a revelation and then you'll tell yourself a different story. And that revelation for him wasn't to win the World Cup, it wasn't to win the Six Nations, it wasn't to captain Ireland, which they're the things we would all think of. It was actually to just have the acclaim of other players. For whatever reason, he didn't think that he had the respect or acclaim of other players. So I worked with him over the course of a year, and from a time when he wasn't playing that well, a year later he won Players' Player of the Year. So that's just an interesting story of how we're driven by our subconscious behaviors. Because look, it's been said many times, it's not my line, but, you know, neurons that wire together fire together, and neurons that fire together wire together. You're all creating new neural pathways right now. So where your focus goes, that's where you're creating those new neural pathways. Um, and then back to the shared vision. Like, we all have a shared vision for a company. We shared vision for our teams. And my take on it is kind of twofold. So one is, I think, a skill still lacking in a lot of leaders— not all leaders, but a lot of leaders— is empathy. I think it's really lacking, and I think it's lacking more now than it was during COVID times. I think we've lost the empathy again.

Why?

I mean, why have we? The world is so volatile right now, and everybody's just ready to attack all of the time, and everybody's ready for conflict. And we're ready for conflict. Everybody's on edge, and that edginess comes into the organizations, and we feel like we should be empathetic, but we're not, and we're ready to snap, and we don't take that moment. So there's two different types of empathy, I feel, which is tactical empathy and lived empathy. They're two different things. So tactical empathy can be used within organizations. It's not disingenuous, but it's my version of identifying how somebody is feeling without them saying a single word. So Here's what's fast— like, interrupt me if I go on too long, but here's the fascinating thing for me as somebody who studied body language extensively. You know, years ago it was called the 55-38-7 theory, which is 55% of all languages, you know, through your body, um, 38% is through the tonality of your voice, and then only 7% there, thereabouts, is through whatever it is that you say, your words that you speak. That's wrong, right? That was Professor Mehrabian in UCLA all those years ago. But we still know neuroscience-wise, back to your point, and I'm a scientists— and that's what I love about this, is I, like, I can speak from a scientific background on it. So the current neuroscience says that somewhere between 30 and 50% of all communication is non-verbal, and the rest is a mixed bag of the words that we say and the tonality of our voice. Here's what's fascinating: I'm telling you now that 99.99999% of leaders around this country are leaving 50% of their communication skills on the table because they know nothing about non-verbal communication skills. They literally know nothing about it because I do polls everywhere and I just go, hands up if you ever studied it. I know, what have we got, 40 people in here, is it? Yep. Yeah, stop banging the door back there.

That's a—

I'll say it for you, Scott McInnes, I read your body language.

I think it was, I think so, I think it was my angry face that gave me away.

Yeah, but I find it fascinating, like what have we got here, 30 people, I don't know, 40 people. Like, how many people have actually studied neurolinguistic programming, uh, nonverbal communication techniques, body language tells? Put your hand in the air if you have. See, I knew it. Like, yeah, 3 maybe, and then 4 or 5 might have just seen a bit of it, right? But most people don't even know a lot on the table. So when I say tactical empathy, tactical empathy is really observing microexpressions and knowing how that person's feeling without them saying a single word. What I mean by that is we're all shielding. Everyone's shielding. And then lived empathy is living with empathy. So I tell a story, and in my keynotes, I tell a story about a time I was late in Birmingham Airport. Flight was 3 hours late. It was late at night, and I was sitting there and I was bored, and I was cranky with myself. I was on my own, wasn't cranky. I was sitting there, and there's a kid with her mom, and I could see that the mom recognized me, but she didn't want to disturb me, didn't want to come over. And I just thought, like, she's here late at night with her young child and she's having a hard time. So I just walked over to her and said, hi, nice to meet you. And she, oh my God, thanks for going over. And I said, well, what's your daughter's name? Rachel. And I happen to have a deck of cards with me. And I, I, everybody thinks I walk around with a deck of cards. I, I, I haven't— no, I haven't done magic in years, you know, but it's still a hobby of mine. I still like magic even though I don't do it in my work. And but I had a deck of cards and I did a magic trick for the girl and her mum started crying and welling up. And I was like, oh, why are you so emotional. And she said, you don't understand, this is one of the first things she's ever seen. I thought, wow, that's kind of powerful. I said, well, what do you mean? She'd been— this girl, the girl's name is Rachel, and she'd been over and back many, many times to the hospital in Birmingham because she had eye cancer, and she just got the all clear. And it was the most beautiful moment that we had there. But in my mind, I was like, that's lived empathy. And I get it wrong sometimes, uh, I don't live by my empathy. But if you come from that mind space that you're going to do your best every day, as opposed to being the person who's pretending that they're doing it. That's a very different thing. And then finally, when it comes to storytelling, sometimes I'll take something. So I wasn't even prepared, but let's say, for example, okay, I'll do something with these in a minute, but I'll just say, okay, I'll tell a story. And this is just as an example. Okay. Inside this envelope— this is a true statement— inside this envelope is something that has never existed in history before. It has never been seen by anybody before. It is as unique as a thumbprint. Now, what were you going to say?

I want to know what's in the envelope.

Exactly. Everybody now wants to know what is in the envelope, right? But that's the anchor. So that's the hook in, right? Sorry, I sort of rattle. That's the hook. The hook and the anchor to me are the same thing. So I always say to people, storytelling is interesting, right? The hero's journey. People get really complicated though about storytelling, and they forget the hero's journey and they're trying to incorporate that in. I just say to people, 3 things, 3 things when you're telling stories to your teams, when you're there and you're presenting. And here's the interesting thing. A lot of leaders in Ireland, they need a lot of help with their public speaking capabilities. I mean, um, yeah, right. Well, it's interesting, right? So when I ping-pong a little bit, but when it comes to public speaking, you know, I always say the power of an effective pause, it just changes things. And slowing things down and speeding things up when you need to and so on. I know I was ping-ponging there, but for me, uh, first of all, the hook or the anchor, then tension. You need tension in a story and the payoff. That's it. If you just remember those three things, because we overcomplicate things. My job is to take the re— I can sit here and talk to you about the amygdala the parasympathetic nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system. I could bore you to death with it. I'm a nerd, right? I love this stuff. But my job is to take the complex and bring it down into something tangible that people can then use to create either organizational change or change within themselves. And when it comes to storytelling, which is so powerful in, you know, changing people's mindset and bringing people on that shared vision, I just say remember 3 things. Just remember the anchor— what's going to pull people in, what's going to anchor them down into the moment. And that was just an example that I gave there. Everybody wants know what's inside the envelope, right? And then, uh, the tension. You have to have tension in the story, and you've got to build that tension in. And then the payoff. What's the learning? What's the statistic? What is it that they're— so very often we're bored with statistics and we're given those first and foremost. No, no. Like, give me the anchor first, give me some tension next, and then give me the payoff. Get people to buy in, you know.

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. One big thing for me is that I think when you think about influence, storytelling is a really big part of influencing people and what you're hoping they'll do. And in one of your keynotes, you say that influence isn't magic, it's science. So tell me about that.

Yeah, I've studied it for so long now, and I have so much in my brain about it, I suppose. Where to start? So I suppose I'll loop it back to the body language, right? The first thing that I did when I sat down here was mirror you. Our legs are crossed. Like this for a reason. I sat down first, but I was sitting just like in what I would call like a basic position. So I just sat like this and then I waited for you to sit down and watched how you sat. And then I crossed my legs and then I sat back. And for a while I had my hand up to my chin because your pen is to your mouth, you've got your book on your— and you have your hand palm up, but I purposely have it palm down. So what I'm doing here is create an instant rapport with you. That instant rapport creates trust. That trust that allows people to move in a certain direction together, right? So mirror neurons, not to bore you too much, but were discovered in 1996 in Parma, Italy, as a side effect of an experiment that they were doing on monkeys at the time. And ultimately, we all have mirror neurons, like, they're real. So what you want to do to influence people is to gain their trust. To gain their trust, start by mimicking them, okay? Not in a disingenuous way, okay? So you don't want to mimic exactly. So if I was mimicking you now, I'd have my lips pursed like this, right? I'd be just playing be weird, and people would notice that. What you want to do is mimic somebody or mirror somebody so it goes beneath their cognitive level of awareness. So what you're doing is becoming like that person. You're becoming like a mirror to them. Now, that's the basic foundation. You got to get the basic— the, I suppose, the foundation right first. But for me, then I go real deep into this. So rhythm, speed, volume, and pitch of their voice. I'll match the rhythm, the speed, the volume, and the pitch of their voice. So I'm in America, I will slow down even more than I'm talking here. So that they can comprehend and understand me. In the UK, I'll go halfway between kind of here and the US, so I'll change the tonality, I'll change the, the rhythm of my voice, the speed, and so on and so on. Um, but then, then if you want to get into the real, like, nitty-gritty of it with influence—

nerdy stuff—

and then you change your legs. I have to change my legs now. To give an example how powerful this stuff is, like, you know, I, I remember I did a deal for the Now You See Me movies, so they're big Hollywood magic movies, and I did the deal for that. It was a big big deal. There was— I was up against David Blaine and, and David Copperfield to be the lead consultant on those movies. And I, I knew that David Blaine had gone in and done tricks. I knew that Copperfield had gone in and done tricks to try and impress the executives. I didn't. I went in, put the script back in front of them. I remember it exactly. I told them they had 3 spelling mistakes in the script. It was only a rough script, right? So like, there was no need for me to tell them that it's 3 spelling mistakes. But the reason I did that was very, very focused on my behalf. I made a decision not to do any tricks. I did that as a pattern interrupt. I wanted to interrupt their pattern. They expected me to do tricks, so I told them there's 3 spelling mistakes in their script. They told me it was a rough script. I said it's not good enough. So now they know I'm a man of detail, right? Then I mirrored— I don't want to mention the name, but I mirrored one of the most powerful people in Hollywood in the room, settle his limbic system down, because that's what happens when you mimic somebody. Their limbic system settles down, cortisol relaxes down, and then ultimately, 10 minutes into that meeting, whereas others have been in there for hours, I got the and I signed the deal. And it was just— I literally just— okay, he's got the deal, let's move on, next. Like, it's— and it's, it's as cutthroat as that, but in a good way at that moment for me, right? Um, but then also how to read somebody's body language. So what an asymmetrical shoulder shrug might mean in the course of a conversation, what to do with that, how to understand the language patterns of people. So all this stuff combined comes down to then influence. And influence is a scary proposition when it comes to me because people are thinking like Does he do it for ill gain? And all that? No, no, no. It's always influenced morally and ethically and from a genuine standpoint of bringing that person to a place where you can both either have a shared vision, or if it's in a negotiation, just trying to learn to understand that person a bit better is really what you're doing. And then using that to influence the course of the conversation.

I don't know why I've got a sudden compulsion to hand over my wallet Yeah, yeah, I'll take it. I'll take it.

But you watch him after. You watch him after.

Let me bring us back. I want to talk a little bit about decision making. Yeah. Because I think that a lot of us make decisions and then we have that kind of nagging feeling that, oh, I'm not quite sure this is the right decision or not. Gut feel, right? And that whole idea— and I think, you know, there's, there's a million or a billion neurons in our guts.

Yeah.

Which are the same things that are in our brain. So we often ignore that nagging feeling of gut feel. What's that doing? What's the challenge of us doing that? What's that going to cost us?

Well, it's a good question, right? So I don't have any regrets by living by gut instinct. I am one of those people. We're not all the same, though. So a lot of people aren't built for living by their gut instinct because they will regret that. I do, however, believe people should have more of a trust in their gut instinct. From the research that I've done with the gut-brain biome, like, you know, uh, anybody who follows me on Instagram— if you're not following me, follow me there as well as LinkedIn. It is really me.

Who are you at?

Just @KeithBarry on LinkedIn and Instagram. Uh, LinkedIn, it's fully me and only me. And then on Instagram, I do all the posting, all the responses, except my daughter helps a little bit. She's 16, so she understands the platform right better than I. But up there, the reason I mentioned that is up there I talk a lot about the gut-brain biome. I've done a lot of posting about that. So for example, you know, a lot of people in the age that we're in now, because of the ultra-processed foods and so on, our guts are in bits. Do you know what I mean? And for me, like, I'm really mindful of— my gut's not a great gut, and because of that I take more care of it now than I ever did. So, you know, I talk about everything from all the natural remedies like kombucha, kimchi, fermented foods all the way through to really good solid probiotics and stuff like that. And I think we need to really understand that a lot of our decision-making is based in our gut. And it's not just a feeling. It's not like— gut feeling is one thing, but it's connected directly up to your brain. And that axis is a direct connection. And the science is only catching up now on how important that is. So to loop back to the question, I guess, is You know, I think we should just have more trust. You don't have to have full trust in it, but if you go for it, then don't live with regrets. Like, life is too short, you know. My dad— somebody mentioned my dad passed away in January this year, and, you know, he was real kind of vivacious, kind of outrageous character in some ways, but he lived by his gut instinct. And I suppose I probably learned that from him. So even now when I'm decision-making and I'm trying to figure things out, and like, life can get complex for all of us, right? And And life is messy. I always say this, life is messy, right? And when life gets messy, I think more than ever then, rather than just going with intellect, which will eat you up if you overthink and overprocrastinate, just go with your gut. But if you do that though, you have to be okay with failing sometimes from that gut instinct perspective. Not everybody is. I am. I'm okay with failure. I always say this as well from my own work. Work, push to failure. And when you fail, it's a good thing. Yeah. Now, in my world, sometimes it's not a good thing because, you know, if I was to list off my injuries to you of all of the crazy escapology stunts I've done over the years— like, what, we met on Zoom a few days ago and you were in off a cycle, and like, no offense, but you look broke up, right?

Well, who knew that was going to happen?

But you remember you were saying, "Oh, I'm stiff and I'm sore and I'm just back from the physio and whatever." But like, I've got detached cartilage from my rib cage that never healed properly. I've got impingements under both shoulders. I've got tendonitis in both elbows. I've got a tear and a cyst in that wrist. I've got a 7-inch plate, 13 screws down there. I've got a degenerative disc in my lower back, but I'm okay with all that.

If you were a horse, if you were a horse, we'd have shot you ages ago.

I know, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So, but it's from failing. From failing. And the one thing I'm mindful of when I'm doing those escapes, there's always like 3 escape routes, so I hopefully know I'm not going to get too injured or worse. And unfortunately, there's been many accidents in the world that I'm in. A good friend of mine, Jonathan Goodwin, he was doing a stunt for America's Got Talent: The Extreme Edition, and it went horribly wrong. And unfortunately, Jonathan's in a wheelchair now in the UK. So that just shows you how these things can go wrong. But here's the interesting thing, the reason I mentioned Jonathan is If you asked him, he'd be a great person for you to interview on this. If you asked him, he's okay with that decision. Do you know what I mean? And I'm sure, I haven't talked to him extensively about it, but I'm sure a lot of it was based, a lot of his decisions, he was specifically a stunt escapologist. He mainly did that and some hypnosis as well. But ultimately, a lot of his decisions would've been made from a gut instinct perspective. As well. Yeah.

Like you just said there a minute ago, life is messy. And I think the world, we spoke about this earlier on as well, that empathy is kind of lacking. People are primed nearly kind of attack. And my sense is that people are really struggling with their resilience.

Oh, big time. Yeah.

And you talk about this idea of bouncing back and bouncing forward.

Yeah.

Talk to me about that.

But I call it the unbreakable mind. And it doesn't mean that we're unbreakable, but it's to try and get ourselves to a space where our minds can at least, I suppose, cope with whatever comes our way unexpectedly. So I've got a kind of a strategy for that. I've got multiple strategies, but I think for the purposes of today, just to keep it short, I've got a twofold strategy. And my twofold strategy is basically acceptance. And then magnifying the positive, as I call it. I'll give you an example, right? So the 7-inch plate and the 13 screws in my leg is actually from a car accident. So I was driving back from, uh, Jim Aiken's funeral of Aiken Promotions back in 2000. I get years mixed up, I'm telling you. I can barely remember what happened yesterday, but it was 2007, and I was driving back and, uh, a car came from the other side of the road and hit me head It's a head-on car collision. I was doing about 60 miles an hour. The other guy was doing about 60 miles an hour. No brakes involved. It happened too fast. So I went into a spin, hit a wall, and I looked down and my leg was like mangled, right? Knee was broken. Tibia and fibula were disintegrated. My left foot was wrapped up around my shin going the wrong way. And I remember in that moment, now this is gonna sound wild. I remember in that moment looking down at my leg and accepting that moment there and then, like literally in the moment accepting it and being grateful for the fact that I was alive. Now, I had to be cut out of the car and I was brought to Daisy Hill Hospital and then the Royal Vic Hospital up in Belfast. And then the doctors came in after 3 and a half weeks and surgery, and they sat me down and they said, you're going to have a limp for the rest of your life. And I said, no. And they thought I was nuts, right? And so what do you mean? And they said my left leg would be slightly longer than my right leg, which sounds strange, but it's whatever way they rebuilt it that it was going to be slightly longer than my right leg because of the metal that they put in. And I was going to have a limp for the rest of my life. The ankle wouldn't rotate and stuff as it should because it was damaged so much. So I went, no. And they started laughing at me. And then I picked up the phone there and then and I rang Peter Aiken and I said, Peter, book me into Vicar Street 5 months from now. And he said, Keith, I know you're in hospital. No, book me into Vicar Street 5 months from now. I'm going to walk on with no limp. And they were laughing at me and stuff. And then it started. And what started was magnifying the positive. Positive. So I accepted what happened to my leg because it was outside of my control, what had actually happened. And now I take control and magnify the positive. And in the moment I go, well, what's positive? Well, if you look at statistics, I should be dead 100%. There's no way I should have survived that car accident. I'm still alive. What's the positive? I still have my leg. I, I was actually 5 minutes from amputation. I remember the guy, he's passed away since. Patrick Highland McGuire was the trauma surgeon who put my foot back in its cut in Daisy Hill. And it, like, it was a big problem because the foot kept popping back out. And ultimately he stopped and he said, you're 5 minutes from amputation. If you can't get yourself into headspace to calm your body down, I'm gonna have to amputate your foot. Like, that's how bad it was. So I was grateful for the fact that I still had my foot, my leg. Anyway, the upshot of it is, 5 months later, I walked on stage at Vicar Street with no limp. Now, was it hard? By God, it was hard. I feel sorry when I look at people with limps because what happens is they got caught in their own mindset. They accept what's outside their control, but then they accept the negativity and they accept the fact that their own mindset's telling them that they're going to have a limp and they accept. So you accept what's outside of your control, but then magnify the positive and take control. I went through crazy levels of pain to get on that stage and I was still icing it, was still limping. I still have like arthritis, but I have no limp, right? Um, but then a year— life is messy. A year later, my, um, our daughter was born. I was talking to Catherine about it earlier, and it was a horrible birth, and she had, um, Erb's palsy, which is paralyzed arm, and then intermittent extrotopia in her eyes. And that's just like— like, and that's supposed to be the most beautiful moment in your life. But then I just magnified the positive. She's alive. I, and then I was like, now I take control. So I accepted, magnified the positive, and then luckily all these years later she's healthy and happy and we fixed everything. And then look, a year later my grandfather was killed in a botched burglary down in Waterford. 3 guys broke his door down, beat him up, and he died, uh, 5 days later I think it was. But again, I accepted it because it's done. But then I magnified the positive. Now in that moment it was hard, right? It's really hard. And these years later, I can talk about it, but the magnification of the positive there was the memories that I had with them, and that was all I could latch on to. But at least I could latch on to that. So I think it's important, especially in the world that we're in now, that we learn to accept but then magnify. Accept, magnify. You've got to latch on to hope. You've got to latch on to something. And for me, I think a lot of it comes down to— okay, so here's a lighthearted moment for you. I know I got deep there quick, but ultimately it's lighthearted, but it's not. I think a large part of the issue that we're having in society today is the overconsumption of the news. Like, a large problem. And we all are aware of it, but we're not doing anything about it. So I say to people this, if you're listening or here now, we won't do it in this exact moment because it'll take a few minutes. Decide today on an app a news app that you're willing to bin off of your phone for at least a month that you know you're getting sucked down every day. So, and I can see somebody back there horrified, like, oh, I couldn't do it. Yeah, no, no, but I understand that. But then, but here's what I want to say though, and not, not directed at the person's like horrified at binning it off. When you're getting anxiety on a Saturday morning and you think it's about just trying to get the kids out the door to the sports field, that's most likely not the reason that you have anxiety. It's most likely that you've seen an image or something on a Wednesday night that's gone in subconsciously It's in there subconsciously. And what you see cannot be unseen, what you hear cannot be unheard. And that's a really important thing to sit with. What you see can never be unseen, what you hear can never be unheard. It's all stored subconsciously. And unless you know how to unpack that, it comes out in different mannerisms, different traits, and it loops back to why we're all on attack all of the time. So for me, I binned off a year ago or longer Sky News off my phone. I have X or Twitter, whatever you would call it. I haven't posted there. I would say if I looked, I haven't posted there in 6 months because I binned it off of my phone, right? And I'd probably deactivate the account, truth be told. But ultimately my mindset has— I can see it in myself. My mindset has completely shifted. And I fully understand that people in this room are listening, need to know what's going on in the world. I'm not silly enough to think that you don't, but you don't need to be sitting down getting caught up in a rabbit hole on— let's leave the news aside for a moment— getting caught in a TikTok rabbit hole or an Instagram rabbit hole or YouTube rabbit hole or whatever it is. So where you're spending too much time, bin it off and commit to yourself for at least a month and watch the difference in your mindset. Because I have hundreds of emails from people who've done this one thing. And literally the most beautiful one I got, I'll try and pull it up later if I can just to show you, and not here, but show you privately. It's the most beautiful thing. It's just a woman who said, I'm more productive as a mother. I'm more productive as a business person. And I can't believe the shift in my mindset from just binning off— I can't remember what the app was, but it was Instagram or YouTube or whatever it was. And she couldn't believe the difference in her mindset. So again, it wires back to, do we need to be seeing all these horrific images every day? Because if so, well, what are we doing about it as individuals? And we're only looking at where the lens is being put. And people might go, well, it's being put in very important places. I could name a million things that the lens should be on. Yeah. So why am I focused on that one thing if I can't do something about it? And I always say to this first, be intelligently selfish. Be intelligently selfish with your mindset. So in other words, make sure that your own mind is okay first, then make sure your family's mindset is okay, then make sure your friend's mindsets are okay, and then look inside the organization and make sure they're okay. But start with home, like home first, and your own mindset first. And because you can only be solid for people in an organization person if you're solid yourself. And very often what I do, I do some one-to-one mind coaching, uh, quite a bit, and with high net worth individuals. And when I close the door, they're all the same. They're all the same. And what I mean by all the same is like, we're all far more alike than we are different. We all have the same problems, we all have the same issues, but that person has to shield from their organization. But when I close the door, they break down. They tell me they're having anything from marital problems all the way through to problems in the organization And then, you know, very often they're on, you know, anti-anxiety pills and pro-medication if need medication. But some— sometimes these people are just overwhelmed and perhaps they need a different outlet, you know. Yeah.

So we started with leadership, and I want to finish with leadership.

Yeah.

Because you've done a lot of work in the space and you've spoke to a lot of organizations. What is the most important thing? And maybe it's something we've spoken about over the past 40 minutes or so. What's the most important thing that a leader really needs to harness, in your opinion, and how can they do it?

One word: authenticity. Authenticity. Because I'll tell you why that is important, though, is because many leaders— not all leaders, I know some really amazing leaders. Like, I've done a lot of work with Broadridge, their fintech firm out of the US, and they've got one of the greatest leaders I've ever met because he just leads with authenticity. Chris. And Chris is one of the most authentic individuals, and people can feel it. And that's what everybody needs to understand is I've got the title of a leader. Yeah. And I come in and I'm powerful. I've got my body language all set and I'm rock and roll. And maybe I'm funny and maybe I'm not funny, but do you know what I mean? But people know whether that's real or not. People know. And don't insult your employees' intelligence. Don't insult your colleagues' intelligence. So whatever authenticity is to you, find that authentic DNA because 99.99% of our DNA is the same. It's only the 0.1% that makes us unique. But find that 1.1%. You don't need to be like I am, like I'm an outgoing person, as you can see, right? But you don't need to be an extroverted leader all the time. You can be that 0.1% of a leader who's an introvert. But if you speak eloquently and with authenticity and you're your audience, your colleagues feel that because we should lead based on emotion. And that's how you bring people on that shared vision. It's not with the statistics. It's not with— we talked about wellness. It's very important, wellness, but it has to come from that authentic standpoint of actually caring for your people. Like, Richard Branson talks about it a lot, looking at your people as your family, your second family. To do that, you have to do it authentically. So I think the one thing that I've looked at more in recent years, like I would say to you, back in COVID, at the start of COVID it needed to be empathy, right? Um, then kind of during COVID it was about resilience. Post-COVID's gonna be a mixed bag. Now I loop back to authenticity because very often I feel that these leaders, and I'm sorry to say it, are not authentic. And that's the sad part that I feel like. I know a number of people, a number of leaders actually, who just lost their jobs. And it's so intriguing how quickly when something happens and they might have lost their job, we'll just say for a financial reason or something, or a change in an organization. But it's really strange to me how the other leaders immediately throw that person to the wolves. Like they were their best friend yesterday. Like, you can relate, right? They were their best friend yesterday, and now all of a sudden, oh no, no, I'm not, I'm not talking to Human Resources about you getting your package. No, no, I'm not backing you up. And that's really weird to me, do you know what I mean? And that just tells me that that authenticity is lacking these days. So, you know, for me, yeah, it's just finding that part of you that makes you unique and leading authentically with people. And that's, that's where I would really kind of leave it.

It's been an absolute pleasure having you on. We've covered loads of ground. I feel like we could do a whole bleeding podcast series together covering hundreds of hours of ground. But for now, thanks a million.

Thank you, Keith. Thanks so much.

Thanks for listening. To hear from other leaders in our podcasts, to read our blogs, or to find out more about the work that we do at Inspiring Change, please visit inspiringchange.ie.