44 | Helping leaders to be the most effective, human and impactful they can be.

I really believe, Scott, that the companies who embrace that conversation are going to be the new wave of extraordinary companies that emerge out of those. Those who cling to the old patriarchal system, the old pyramid system, they're doomed because that system is gone and they don't realize it yet.

Welcome to the Inspiring Change Podcast, where we talk to leaders about all things internal communications, engagement, leadership, and change. Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of the Inspiring Change podcast. It's a funny day today because we in Ireland here yesterday got the announcement that we were heading back into more lockdown. The tables were being turned, the clocks were being turned back, and we were going somewhat back to where we've come from, which is unfortunate, I think, for lots of people. And there are going to be huge challenges ahead for people in this country and for organizations in this country. So we're going to talk a little bit about some of that today with my guest, who's Brendan Foley from Sea Change Now. What's really interesting is that when I put a little survey out a couple of months ago on social and I asked people, what kind of guests would you like to talk to? What do you want me to talk to them about? One of the things that came out really strongly was culture and the culture in organizations and how do you build culture. It seems to have become that bit of a buzzword in recent months and years. So it's great to have Brendan on today because Brendan's organization, SeeChangeNOW, is all about inspiring positive change. And for me, a lot of that comes from leaders in an organization. And one of the things that we've talked about a lot on this podcast is the power of leaders and people in organizations in effecting cultural change and building the types of cultures that organizations want and they know are going to make them and their people more successful. So over the next probably 30 minutes or so, we're going to have a little chat about culture, we're going to have a little chat about global health emergency, obviously, because we couldn't possibly talk about anything without touching on that, but the impact that's having on business and on culture. So Brendan, good morning, thanks a million for joining me.

Good morning, great to be here with you and really looking forward to chatting with you for the next 30 minutes or so.

Super job. Well, listen, why don't we just kick straight over to you? I've done my usual talk for more minutes than I should have at the very beginning, so why don't we cut back to you and why don't you tell me a little bit about maybe you, where you've come from and, and SeeChange now and what it is you do.

OK, brilliant. Thank you. Yeah, you know, it's always interesting when I'm asked to tell this story because it's kind of an unusual way to end up in this field of working with people and working with leadership teams and development. I didn't come from the traditional training or HR backgrounds. Mine was very much advertising and marketing. I spent a lot of time in there and loved that world of communications, trying to understand how to mold messages and how to get them out to mass consumer markets. And I suppose the thing that I was most fascinated about in all of that was, you know, why do people do what they do? So it was always the psychology that intrigued me. And I suppose kind of parallel to that, I'd sailed for Ireland for many, many years at world and European level. So I was fascinated by sports psychology and kind of what does it take to create a winning team. And particularly on bigger boats where you've got a large group of people, you could see that sometimes you'd bring a group of people together and the click would be perfect. And not necessarily having a brilliant skill set, but because having the right kind of dynamic or chemistry in the team, you get a brilliant result. Another time you could bring together exceptional sailors in their own right, put them all on a boat together, and it's a disaster because the chemistry is not there. There's too many egos and ultimately probably not a lot of good leadership. So I suppose it's interesting when you look at culture. I suppose my journey has always been towards understanding that, helping companies with that, and ultimately training leaders and executives into how to lead, how to behave. And, you know, it's interesting, you know, what gives me the right to do that? And I suppose a lot of it has come from my own personal challenges of trying to build and grow and lead a business. So, you know, we've 6 people in our business. We're very, very small, but culture is as important to us as it might be to a company with 60,000 employees. And the reality is we're all humans. That's the thing that unites us all. Nobody's perfect. We live in a world of total contradictions where today one thing might work really well in a situation, tomorrow it will be a disastrous approach. So I suppose that's what makes leadership so interesting and fascinating, is that it is not a perfect science. And I think if you look at the volumes and tomes that have been written on it, recorded on it, podcasted on it, there's a reason why so much of this is out there, because it's, it's an art form. It's not a science. It's not exact. It falls into that realm of something that's between a mythopoetic understanding of what did our ancestors do, all the way to the future of AI and technology and how does it help. And we're somewhere bumbling along in in that universe trying to understand, how do I do a good job today? And I think that's what it comes down to for a lot of people. And the reason I found Sea Change now was, you know, I found I wasn't particularly good at working for other people. So, you know, people call me an entrepreneur. I'm not. I'm a guy who had to make a company so I could have a job.

And isn't that what we all do?

Yeah, I think so, Scott. I think we're probably on a similar ilk there. And, you know, that's been fascinating because, you know, leading and managing people is a really, really hard thing to do. And, you know, you will constantly be challenged and put into situations that will stretch you. But I think that's what makes it interesting. And I suppose, you know, it's akin to sport in a way. Why do people love sport? I think it challenges us. It asks us to deliver more maybe than we think we are. It asks us to find ways to cooperate with people. And that's fascinating and interesting. And I suppose My vision for Sea Change Now was always to create a business that would help to inspire people to do great things. And very much along the lines of what you do, Scott, you know, it is about the greater good. It is about actually trying to create a positive impact in this world, no matter how small or big that is. And, you know, that's led me to write various books, to, you know, speak globally, and ultimately run what's been a very successful business for the last 14 years. And it's that singular thought that propels everything. It keeps us energized, it keeps us motivated. It's never been about the money. The money comes when you really put your mind to doing something great and something good. And some people love that, some people don't, and that's okay as well. You learn early in this game, you won't be everybody's cup of tea. Not everybody would be into this, but I think for people who want to try and do great things in the world, we love trying to partner with them and trying to make great things happen.

Brilliant. And I think it's one of those things that, you know, I don't think we set out to work for ourselves and do great work with people that we don't want to work with and people that don't want want to work with us. We want to work with great people that are really cool and want to make a difference.

For sure. Yeah. And like, there is a kind of an attraction, you kind of know, you know, when you walk into a room and you talk to a client and it's kind of like, yeah, this is going to happen. And it's nothing to do with the proposal. It's nothing to do with anything else. It is simply that human connection, that understanding that actually something good can happen here. And that's when we as a team get truly excited about working with businesses, because you just know there's an openness here, there's a humanness here, there's something that's going to happen that's exciting, and none of us know what it is. And that's a really special thing, and something I think I'm very privileged to be able to work somewhere that allows me to express that.

It's exciting, it's exciting. And I think that whole idea of positive change is something that's in the forefront of people's minds at the moment. And despite the fact that I am getting slightly likely sick of talking about coronavirus and COVID-19 and global health emergencies and all that stuff that we've been, that we've been faced with over the past 6 months, I do think it's an incredibly interesting backdrop against which to look at the work, the type of work that, that you do, the type of work that we do in Inspiring Change, and, and what organizations are doing that's working really well and maybe isn't working so well when it comes to people and leadership and culture. So I just wonder, you know, given where we are now, and you're obviously like me out chatting to lots of people and lots of clients all the time, what have you found? How are people responding? How are organizations responding? Who's doing it really well and who's not doing it maybe quite so well? You don't have to name names, we don't want to get sued, okay? Feel free to be vague.

Thank you, and thank you for your wise legal counsel. Yeah, so, okay, This is going to be a bit provocative. Since March, I think I've done over 90 webinars, literally with thousands and thousands of people across mostly very large organizations. And we consistently ask questions about how you are feeling at this moment in time. The truth is most HR directors, chief people officers, will tell me, oh, you know, I think about 20% of people are in a bad place at the moment, but everybody else is going to get on with it. They're doing good work. We run an anonymous survey at the start of each one of those podcasts where, are you feeling fearful, anxious, okay, getting there, positive or optimistic? And we ask people just to select one. Pretty much without fail for the last 6 months, we have had somewhere in the region of 40 to 50% and sometimes 60% of people saying they're not okay or worse. As in they're in fear and anxiety. Now that's huge. And it tells you two things. First of all, the people who are at the top of the businesses don't really get what's going on because people are not telling them, because the culture of the company has to be stand up, shoulder this, carry on, stiff upper lip, make it happen. And while that has to happen, we also need to have a realistic conversation about how people are doing. So what does that tell you? It tells you that most large companies are failing at doing this. Because they're not set up to have those open conversations. Now, a lot of that— and this is where I'm going to take them off the hook— is not their fault. When people are working remotely, they tend to become very functional. So the, the web chats become very much about what do we need to do this week, what customers do we need to look after, what do we need to do with supply chain logistics, etc., etc. And I worked out a little ratio. I reckoned that we are working all off a time ratio of 1 to 3. Previously, what took 1 minute to do takes 3 minutes to do now. So if you look at that, that essentially means that we have had 66% of our time stolen because now we're working remotely, we're doing things online, which means that all the time that would have been there maybe to talk about how we're really feeling, to emotionally understand where we're at, to support each other, to connect with each other, that's gone because everything else is taking up— we're trying to keep the business alive. And what I'm finding is there's two ends of the spectrum. You've got businesses that are fighting to survive because there's nothing going on, and then you've got businesses that are, say, in the food end of things that are overproducing, that are under massive demands to get stuff out to customers, and they're equally stressed and, and struggling to manage in this this different world we're living in. Who's doing it right? The SMEs. And why are they doing it right, Scott? From my perspective, I think they're doing it right because they're feeling it in their pocket. Every SME out there in Ireland today, or all over the world, is feeling it in their pocket. They've taken a hit. You know, we lost 80% of our business overnight when this thing hit. Now thankfully, we've built back the majority of that, so, you know, touch wood, thank God, we're in a reasonably good place, but we have felt it in our pocket. For the majority of my large clients, none of them have had pay cuts, so they haven't felt it in their pocket. And I think empathy is one of those incredibly hard things that, you know, how do you walk a mile in somebody else's shoes? It's a really hard thing to do if you haven't felt it in your pocket. It's not really real. And there's a great book written called Sapiens. I don't know if you've come across it, but fascinating about the evolution of man. And one of the things that kind of revolutionized the world was the idea of money. So money, you know, cut across everything. It cut across religions, across, you know, different countries, different geographies. Money united everything. And we could kind of say, okay, so money became the new god. And that sort of is the way that if you have it, you're not really being awfully affected by this. If you don't have it, suddenly you're hugely affected by it. And That has created then a group of people in companies, especially SMEs, who are really tuned into what's going on with their customers and are working hard to work with that. And then there's the larger organizations that have a massive opportunity, in my view, to actually see that this is their chance to go out there. And say, for example, if we look at the large tech companies, you know, it could be likely that for a large part of the population of schoolgoers, they may not be able to go to school if COVID rolls back around the corner like it Looks like it could. So there will be families all over Ireland who will not be able to afford a laptop or an iPad or whatever device they will need to do their thing.

Mm-hmm.

Will the big companies like Apple, Microsoft, etc. actually say on a means-tested basis, we're going to provide you a device for free? I really hope they do, because if they do, wouldn't that be so amazing to see that distribution of those extraordinary profits that we hear about all the time into doing some social good? And I think that's the opportunities that's there. Large companies as well that have done well over the last few years, what I see is their supply chains are dying. They're being crippled because they're the SMEs. Now, the really responsible big companies are going to support their supply chains so that come round when things get back to whatever the new future of normal looks like, they'll be in a really good place. If they don't, there's going to be nobody to do business with. And I think this is where actually the large corporate organization has to realize that it is part of this world. It is not something that's outside of it. And that's not a criticism. It's an opportunity to actually say, wow, what could you really do? And I know there's people listening to this podcast who are sitting at executive level positions. And what I'd say is, this is not up to anybody else. This is you. Don't look to other companies or the government. This is you. Everybody in this crisis has to take ownership and step forward and do something extraordinary. Because if you do that, you will look back in 20 years and say, wasn't it amazing what we did back then? And I feel so good about myself for doing that. Because at some stage, you'll be another number. You'll be gone out of that company. It will still keep going. But your legacy will be what you decide to do today. And that, of course, is incredible.

And that, of course, and it's an opportunity not only for the brand, not only for that person to feel good about what they do in terms of living the purpose in their tech organization, you know, bringing, you know, bringing information to the world or making the world a better place or whatever it might be, but actually doing something and people in that organization culturally feeling as though we're actually living the thing we say we do. And how powerful is that as a motivator for people in an organization? I guess it leads me quite nicely On to my next question, which is, you know, when you think about right now, this is just a gigantically fundamental change. In fact, it's hundreds of changes within a big gigantic fundamental change. And I just wonder, what part do you think that a company's culture has in responding to that? You know, what part does it play?

Yeah, look, you know, that word culture is so extraordinary, isn't it? You know, like, you know, Everybody at home, as you listen to this, you say the word culture, think of 3 things that you connect with culture. Like, so you got those 3 things. I can guarantee you all thought of something different, right? And I think this is one of the things about culture, is it's nebulous. You can't touch it, you can't feel it, yet we all experience it. So I think your question is really powerful in terms of what is culture today. And Scott, what I'm experiencing particularly with the larger clients we work with, is there is the most extraordinary identity crisis underway. People don't know what their culture is anymore because the kind of things that pin the culture together, a lot of them were rooted in the environment, the geography of the building, where it sat, who you met, who sat on what floor. There was kind of all of these structures and hierarchies. Imagine ants in, in, in an ant hill and it's all organized, you know, and the queen is there and the eggs are there and everybody's got their role and jobs. Well, imagine you take that anthill away and you say to all those ants, we'd like you to remote work now, so we're all going to give you a little access to a Zoom account or whatever it might be, and we'd like you to get on and do your job. Holy moly, chaos, right? Because the ant doesn't know what the ant beside it is doing because we've never done this before in this way. It's chaos. So there's an entire identity crisis going on because the things that kind of pulled it all together were so subtle, people didn't realize how subtle they were. You know, if you think about a company, company doesn't exist. It's a figment of the imagination. People have to believe in it. As soon as people stop believing in a company, it's gone. It disappears. You know, look at political parties that were massive in the past. Like, you know, you look at English politics, The Whigs— where are the Whigs today? They're gone. Yet they were the source of power in the UK for a very long time. So these things exist as a figment of imagination. And I think that's the fascinating thing about culture, is that culture is an imagined thing. It's an imagined set of values. It's an imagined set of behaviors. It's imagined way of working. And of course, religions have been at this for a long, long time. You know, how do we get you to believe in something that's essentially intangible? And we're going to put some rules around it, some practices around, some rituals around it. And by the way, I'm not religion bashing here. I think religion is, is an amazing thing if it works for somebody. But what's fascinating is it's all based on this idea of faith. So people have been asked to have faith in organizations. Faith. Believe in our culture. When that starts to unravel, where do you go? When you don't have those touch points, those artifacts, those touchstones inside of an organization, what does culture become? And so actually what's happening is there's a rebirth happening within organizations at the moment, because culturally what they used to be, they will never be that again. Because if you go back to what culture is really about, which is my personal understanding of how I interact with this imaginary thing called the company I work for— even if I think about my own relationship with Sea Change now, it has changed fundamentally. I used to go into a building that there were 6 people in all the time. There were 2 floors in that building. There's now 1 floor, and there's now no people in the building because everybody's working from home. That's a radically different expression and feeling for what it is now. Now it's become this thing that since March, everything I've done has been through a computer screen. Before that, everything I did had somebody in the room with me or a group of people. So Culture has changed massively. And I think rather than actually pretend that this is not happening and that COVID will all go away and it will always somehow return to normal, I think we need to embrace the conversation actually about what does our culture need to be for the world we're in today. And beautiful things are happening out there, Scott, like the most amazing human stories of kindness, of compassion, of goodness, of are coming out. And in many ways, companies are becoming democratized. They're becoming much more about the individual deciding that it wants to be part of this club rather than the company saying, you're part of this club and here are the rules. And that's frightening for people who are at the top of business because the sense of control may be going. The sense of how you maintain law and order, the sense of trust that actually, we may be moving away from a model which is about hours and actually a model that's about outputs.

Good God. Madness. Madness.

Total madness. So where do we go in all of this? And I think this is why this is such an extraordinary and possibly exciting time, because what if we reframed the COVID crisis and we said this is the COVID opportunity? Which is to rebuild our society, our companies, our, our world in a way that actually is far more constructive, human, compassionate. You look at the companies doing well, they're the ones that are focusing on people, planet, and profit, and they're putting that at the heart of what they do. They're also not being rigid. They're being incredibly flexible and mobile, and that is creating extraordinary new opportunities. I've been doing this for 15 years, and I have more people talking to me about changing their careers at the moment than ever before. And these are people who are not being pushed out of jobs, they're not being offered redundancies, they haven't lost their jobs. These are people who are deciding, I want something different. I believe that there is an enlightenment taking place. There is almost this incredible personal revolution taking place because people have been broken out of the pattern of driving to a job, working in somewhere for 8 hours, driving home again, and that whole sort of ritual that was around it, the habit that was around it, that was broken. So that broke a whole load of psychological chains, if you like, in people's minds, and it's opened up what for some people is very dangerous territory and for other people is very exciting territory, because humans are starting to think for themselves and they're starting to ask the question, what inspires me? What lifts me? What gives me joy? How am I to make a difference in this world? And that's extraordinary. And, and I really believe, Scott, that the companies who harness that, who embrace that conversation, are going to be the new wave of extraordinary companies that emerge out of those. Those who cling to the old patriarchal system, the old pyramid system, they're doomed because that system is gone. Yeah, it's gone, and they don't realize it yet.

Your feedback is important to us, and I'd really appreciate it if you could please take a couple of minutes to rate this episode of the Inspiring Change Podcast and perhaps leave a few words of feedback. Thanks so much. Yeah, one of the things I've spoken about a lot was back in— and it's a very small example, which I think in many ways supports your thinking— is that back in the day, you know, we just said at the very beginning of this, let's treat ourselves to a takeaway every Saturday because we're stuck in the house. Let's just get some food delivered every Saturday. Quite a lot of the restaurants around where I live were doing deliveries, or you could go and collect it and bring it back. And, um, I think the ones that worked really well, there were ones that just took their menu and tried to deliver the menu that they always did. So you would have crispy chips in the restaurant, or you would have a nice, you know, fish and chips with a crispy batter on the fish, and you put that into a box and deliver it to somebody's house, and by the time it gets there, it's all damp and horrible and squishy, which is horrible. The ones that actually— the ones that were really successful were the ones that sat down, looked at their menus, and thought, what's going to work? Yeah, what are the 2 or 3 things that we can do really well that won't damage our brand, because ultimately that was what was going to happen. You know, I know, and Dave won't mind me mentioning this, Wishbone in town on Montague Street, you know, they didn't do home delivery because they couldn't guarantee the quality of the product. And Dave just said, if I can't do that, I'm not doing it. I'm just not doing it. I'm not going to damage the brand because people say Wishbone, oh, rubbish food, when it's actually lovely food. But if you deliver it in a box to somebody and it arrives all sweaty and horrible, then the experience is off. So, those companies that thought, how do we do things differently? I think they're the ones that will absolutely win. And I think that rolls from SMEs and little tiny restaurants near where I live, all the way up to the great big companies. And that whole idea of this being not a COVID pandemic or a COVID emergency, but a COVID opportunity is absolutely right. And I wonder then, so if you take the idea of opportunity, and you think about that from a cultural perspective, what are some of the things that organizations should be looking at and thinking about in order to drive that better culture or to take advantage maybe of that opportunity?

So look, it's a brilliant question, and it starts with actually making that fundamental shift in your consciousness away from crisis. When you're in crisis mentality, you're operating out of your fight-or-flight brain, the reptilian brain. Which is all about survival and it's fight, flight, or freeze. So you see those 3 reactions. You see companies getting really aggressive, you see companies doing absolutely nothing, or you see companies running away. So the first thing you've got to do is you've got to reorientate yourself personally and realize, okay, you're in this, you're a human being. So now you've got to shift your mindset away from crisis to opportunity. So how do you do that? The very first thing that I think needs to happen is it's back to this ratio of 1 to 3. What took 1 minute now takes 3 minutes. You've got to make time and space for conversation within your organization on a regular basis about who are we, who are we, and who do we want to be. And, you know, not to plug you directly, but I am going to plug you directly. They need to be talking to people like you to actually have that conversation, because if you do not have that conversation, I guarantee you 3 things are going to happen. Your talent's going to walk out the door and go to somewhere where they are having that conversation. Secondly, your share price is going to crash because people will stop believing in the idea, in the imagination in their head, that you're good at what you do. It'll suddenly become clear you're not good at what you do. And the third thing that will happen, and this is the really, really scary bit, is that if you don't create the opportunity for that conversation, you're gone too. You're gone too. This is not an existential thing. This is you. So by actually helping people to understand that the first thing you got to do is create space, it's actually create a structure and a framework within your organization to have that conversation in peacetime, if you like to say. People love looking at engagement surveys. They love looking at how might we, you know, organize our culture in a way that we might, you know, get that really good lift that we've proven, seen time and time again in terms of profitability that comes from really positive cultures and really good engagement. Where's all that conversation gone at the moment? It's not happening. You don't have that conversation. It's a little bit like sailing along in the boat and you're trimming your sails, but water's coming in. Well, if you don't stop that leak, it doesn't matter how well you train the sails and how much you pull them in or how much you manage them. Your boat's sinking. Stop the boat sinking. Have that conversation. Because if you don't make the space and stop the boat and say, hang on, we need to fix this thing, and you're never going to go fast. Fix the things that need to be fixed, then create some extraordinary things. I also think that your point there is really important about focus. We've got something called the 5 states of success. One of them is called a state of clarity. Clearly help people understand what they need to do. Take them away from distraction. Tony Robbins talks about this fantastic law called the law of proximity. The 5 people you spend most time around, you become most like. If you're around 5 people who are totally distracted by everything going on with COVID and talking about disaster, disaster, disaster, disaster, that's all that's in your head. Listeners, if you do this for a moment for me, do not imagine an elephant riding a bicycle. And of course, we have all imagined an elephant riding a bicycle.

I just did.

Okay. If you're constantly listening to negativity, negativity, negativity, that's what's going down into your subconscious. And therefore you will regurgitate negativity. So you've got to get yourself around positive conversations, and this is where organizations need to work with professionals to help have a facilitated conversation to help people understand that actually we need to reframe our thinking from COVID crisis to COVID opportunity, and we need to look at where we're going to make the biggest bang. Start with the community. You only exist as a company because of the community of people decide to do business with you. What can you do for them? That should be the only question you're asking at this moment in time. What can you do for them? Not how much money will it make us? How much money will it save us? It's what can we do for them? Because start with that, and I guarantee everything else looks after itself, because that's what purpose is. And if your purpose is client-oriented, customer-oriented, you will survive and thrive. And by the way, your customers will help you innovate, because if you actually talk to them, they'll tell you what they need. If you talk to your staff, they will tell you what they need. The answer is already there, but be brave enough to ask the question. So in terms of what would you do as a business, make the space and time, use some professionals to actually have facilitated conversation with your customers and with your staff about what they really want. And 3, then go and impact the community in a positive way. That's— the time is now. This is what it's about.

And if I think about that whole idea of making space, You know, to have conversations. I mean, certainly that is, that's a construct that comes from the top of the organization down, I guess, from that very top of the hierarchy. You know, we are not going to do this because it's important. But of course, it's not that person that does the do on a daily basis. It's the leaders down through the organization that do the do and are the ones that we go to every day and the ones that are making or not making that space regardless of what the big boss says. Well, Jesus, you know, he or she, you know, it's all well and good for them up there in the ivory tower. Yada, yada, yada. We've got a job to get done. How do we bring those leaders on a journey?

The first thing you've got to realize is they're human beings too. They're scared. They've worked in a system that was about planning and control. There is no control. There is no planning, because this thing is totally unpredictable. You can scenario plan. You can strategize. But really what you want is you want small, agile units that are incredibly effective. And if you look at military history, for example, When it's totally unpredictable, you send in small squads that are highly trained to do specific jobs. When you look at big empire-building stuff, it's just get 300,000 against 400,000 and try and use smarter technology to beat them, right? So it's all that kind of stuff. And the reality is those people are struggling massively. They're also not getting hit in their pocket. So it's not real. So in truth, I do not believe that they are experiencing the pain their customers are. And until that happens, it doesn't become real. So they need to live the life of their customer for a while. They need to immerse themselves in that customer's world and understand what's really happening. And I think if they do, the level of empathy that would be created there is extraordinary, because all of us think we're empathetic. We're not. We're not. Like, empathy is such an overused word. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I empathize with you, which means I might intellectually understand you're having a problem. But I ain't feeling your pain. I'm really not. That's emotionally empathizing, which is a totally different thing. If I emotionally empathize and you think, oh my God, if I was watching my business go under, if I felt, geez, how am I going to pay my VAT next month? If I felt I'm going to lose my 3 biggest clients, if I felt, how am I going to keep my staff employed? What would I want the companies I'm working with to do with me?

Wow.

You as a business would come up with the most extraordinary things. If I was a customer and I'm really suffering and I'm thinking about, you know, how am I going to manage my children through all of this? How am I going to manage my elderly relatives? How am I going to, you know, look at changing my car because it's just about to crap out? I really, really put myself in that place, then as a business, I will come up with some extraordinary and brilliant and innovative and extraordinarily profitable things to do. Hmm.

That people want and will buy.

Is real empathy. And it's a throwaway kind of word. And I don't know, you know, I know you watched Michelle Obama talk about, you know, empathy as part of the DNC speech. And, you know, It really is what's wrong in the world at the moment is we're not practicing empathy. It's, I'm all right, Jack. But you're not all right because we're all connected. And I think this is one of the things that COVID has shown. If one of us gets sick, we all get sick. Right? So actually, if I can help that person over there who's sick or stop that person getting sick, I stay healthy. And, you know, maybe it's taken something like this global pandemic to help us realize that we are all fundamentally interconnected. There is no, I'm all right, Jack. It's, we've got to make sure everybody's all right. And the more of that we do, businesses then will become something that will be part of creating a better society. And they are the ones that will attract the best talent. They will end up in a place where everything that they try to do through all of these spurious corporate programs, they'll achieve just by doing the right thing. And ultimately, that's culture.

Yeah, and the right thing for customers, the right thing for people. I mean, I was chatting to my last podcast guest, and I was saying to them how If you don't live, from a talent pool perspective, if you don't live within the proximity of the office, then the chances are you're not gonna get the job because, look, if you live in Westport, which is on the west coast of Ireland for the people that don't know Ireland, it's a couple of hundred miles and a 4-hour drive away, you're not gonna get the job. You could be the best person in Ireland for the job. Previously, you weren't going to get the job. Now, you might get the job, which is great for you because you're doing what you really want to do and great for organizations because they have an opportunity to get hold of the very, very best people because you might be living in Bermuda or Birmingham or Baltimore or somewhere else with B for a fourth one that I can't think of. It doesn't matter where you live. It shouldn't matter where you live because work is becoming that thing that we do, not a place that we go. So definitely, I think there's a huge opportunity from a talent perspective for organizations to attract. And then by doing all the things that you've talked about, Brendan, retain those amazing people and get them set to doing really amazing purposeful work?

Yeah, and look, you know, I've always believed that in an organization, change starts with the individual, then it goes to the team, then it goes to the organization. Don't start with the organization and try and push it in. Never works, right? You've got to start with the individual, then the team, then the organization. It's person first. And if there's 3 things I could share that, you know, have come up over the last 6 months in particular that people have found incredibly useful on a personal basis, if it would be okay to share that.

Yeah, work away. Absolutely.

Okay. So first thing is, it's you got to choose abundance rather than scarcity. When you look at the world through the eyes of abundance, you see possibility and opportunity, and it's a choice. When you look at the world through the eyes of scarcity, you see problems and you see difficulty, and therefore your brain becomes attuned to looking to find that, and that's all it sees. When our business collapsed overnight in, on March 13th, like, you know, Friday the 13th, talk about an inauspicious date. We lost 80% of our business overnight. And I was really challenged because all I saw was scarcity. All I could see was how the hell are we going to get out of this mess? Like, you know, this just is incredibly difficult. What do we do? And I did something that at the time felt foolhardy and stupid, and I wondered, was I absolutely off my rocker? Put an announcement on LinkedIn to say that we were going to do free webinars and give free coaching to anybody who needed, who was affected by this. And here we are facing financial ruin, giving out free stuff. Well, 2 weeks later, because of that, the amount of people who requested us as a company to go and give webinars to their staff and talk to them about how to manage themselves personally and collectively in their teams. The amount of people who said, you know, that free coaching thing, that's great, but actually a few people here I think who would really need a bit of coaching and a bit of support. And we increased our business massively. And I'm sharing that personal story because I think we all could practice that. And it's actually when you're at your most scared, when you're at your most vulnerable, that's when you need to practice abundance thinking. The second thing is the rule of take 100% responsibility. Wherever you are, you are because of your actions and your inactions. Stop blaming other people. That is an exercise in bitching and moaning and gets you absolutely zero. You can blame the government, you can blame COVID, you can blame Niamh O'Rourke, you can blame Michal Martin, you can blame, blame, blame, blame, blame. All you're doing is using up precious air on this planet Change the tune. I take full responsibility for where I find myself today. You will never be a victim then. You are in control. You take empowerment and you decide what do you want in your life. So whatever is not working in your life, you have the power to change it. So know that, because the system teaches you that you shouldn't take control. You need to take control. You have to be responsible for your own well-being. That's where it starts with. And there's 4 little letters. If you have a pen, write them down. And that is MEPS. M-E-P-S. Mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual. They're the 4 components that make up your personal energy. You are responsible for them. Mentally, do things that stimulate you. If you love music, reading, whatever it is, if you love crossword puzzles, Sudoku, do things that mentally stimulate you every day. Just do 10, 15 minutes of it, right? Emotionally, get yourself around people who are positive. Stop hanging out with people who are really, really negative. The 5 people you spend most time with, you will become most like. So get yourself into a conversation about something that you love. If you've got a friend and they love music as well, talk about your favorite brands, talk about the favorite tracks or, you know, things that you love and enjoy. So relationships are all about emotional well-being. Then we got physical well-being. You got to eat the right stuff. You got to sleep the right stuff. And you got to exercise the right stuff. Okay. Million things out there about that. I don't need to go into it. And finally, spiritual. Do things that feed your soul. Do things that will lift you as an individual. For some people, it's nature. For others, it might be religion. For others, meditation. It doesn't matter what it is. You've got to do stuff that feeds your soul. What just lifts you? Because if you do those things, you are going to be so much more prepared as a human being to be able to deal with what's going on around you. If you don't do those things, this thing will get you. It'll be on top of you. By the way, do those 4 things and your immune system will be higher and you will function at a much higher level. And if there is bad viruses out there, they won't get to you. In Ayurvedic medicine, which is the medicine of India, which is 5,000 years old, they have this very interesting little view on all of the COVID stuff. And what they say is COVID is like a seed. Don't be fertile ground for it. Okay? What's fertile ground for seeds of COVID Stressed-out executives who are not getting the right sleep, eating the wrong stuff, not taking exercises, hanging around people who are really, really negative, not doing things that are stimulating, not feeding their soul. You do all of those things on that MEPS, you're not going to give COVID a chance to set its seed in you. So this is really, really, really important things. So if you do those 3 things, which is abundance rather than scarcity, take 100% responsibility for where you're at, and manage your MEPS, which is your emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being— start that as an individual, then do that with your team, then do that with your organization. This is how it works. It's not the outside in, it's the inside out. Those companies we work with that do that have had phenomenal success. They're busting through this thing. And by the way, they're looking after each other. And that's a wonderful place to be. And everybody's going to have bad days, bad weeks, bad months. The beauty of having a group of people around you is somebody's going to pick you up. Because if you're working from home, it may be really hard to turn around to that person who's also stressed. And maybe you're living with other people and you're, you know, dishing all your hard stuff onto them. You don't want to do that. What if you could talk to a colleague who said, yeah, just tell me how you're feeling, just talk to me about it? And you could lift that person, and the following week they're lifting you. This is what this is about. And so if we can all work together in this, we're going to create cultures for the future which are fundamentally human-based, and they're about looking after each other and respecting that we're all human beings, we're all trying to do our best in a world of contradictions, which means there is no playbook, there is no set of rules around this. We all just need to try and do our best. But what history has taught us is if we do that together, our chances of success are massive. If we fragment, if we all go off in spurious directions trying to do our own thing, it won't work. So if we all stick together and work together on this, you know, this could be an amazing learning for us. And it's not going to be easy, but it's never easy. And a way maybe to think about this is we're in the mucky middle. The mucky middle is the part that it never seems sure where you're going, but you'll find your way. How you find your way? By working with others, because everybody sees different things. Everybody brings different stuff. You listen to Scott, he'll tell you something that's really amazing. You listen to me, I might tell you something useful. Listen to somebody else, but try and get your stuff yourself around stuff that's good for you, stuff that's going to uplift you. Feed that subconscious with things that are going to support you. Not knock you down. And final comment on that: media. Get off the scroll of newsfeed. That is going into your mind and you do not realize the way it's polluting you. You have to manage your media intake because it's a little bit like not thinking about that elephant on the bicycle, you know. Don't think about all the terrible things that are happening in the world. Of course you do. If something's really bad, you're going to be told about it. Don't worry, people are great at spreading bad news. So limit the amount of news exposure. And I think if we could all do that, we're going to create societies, companies, and cultures that will be better. And who knows what that will look like? But maybe that's the exciting bit, is that we now get to choose. And so, you know, for me, while this is hard, it's also a huge opportunity. And if we can take that and embrace that, maybe some good will come of all of this. Difficult and trying experience, you know.

Yeah, and I think, you know, you've summed that up beautifully. I think there is a massive opportunity. I am an eternal optimist. I am somebody that tends to look at the half, the half-full glass, not the half-empty one. And I do think that there is opportunity there for all of us, despite the hardship that many, many of us are going through at the moment, and many people around the planet are going through. But that whole idea of thinking differently, of reframing, of thinking about self, then team, then organization is a really powerful way to think about it. Brendan, we're out of time. We flew through that. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna wrap it up there and I'm gonna say thank you very much for joining me. I've loved the conversation. I love, I love when we have chats. It always gives me something. In fact, lots of things I've scribbled down here to go away and have a think about. I hope the listeners have had the same experience. I think there's tons in there that they can take away and apply themselves in their own lives. So Brendan, thanks so much, and hopefully we'll see you in the real world for a cup of coffee soon.

Thank you, and if anybody wants to virtually connect with us, if you go to www.seachangenow.ie, that would be great. We've loads of video content there that may be helpful and useful, and it's all free. We've also got a free app that will help you kind of manage yourself through this, which is available free on Android. And on Mac, and if you just search 5 States Tracker, we can help you with that. And if I can just put a plug in there for my good man Scott there, you know, all of us, we're all small businesses, we're all trying really hard. We need your help out there, guys. So, you know, we're here, we're here to do great business, but we all need to do it together. And I can guarantee if you take the time to have the conversations that we're talking about having with your people, you will see amazing rewards. So on that note, go vote for Scott.

Thanks, Brendan. Good luck.

Thanks.

Thanks for listening. To hear the views of other leaders in our podcasts, to read our blog, or to find out more about Inspiring Change, please visit our website at inspiringchange.ie.