The Healthy Leader – Grounded and conscious tactics for 2021 | with Bob Rosen

Sam.

Welcome. It's the shortlist. It is Wednesday, 27th of January, 2021. It's the last shortlist of January. We've almost gotten through what is arguably the hardest month that any of us have ever lived through. The pandemic is at its worst. It's January. For those in the Northern hemisphere, that probably means it's cold for you. You probably have had the longest period if you're paid monthly between paychecks, you are a bit depressed, a bit sad. You maybe haven't been seeing your family or friends. But we're here for you and it's nearly done. We're nearly there. Well, the last time we broadcast, we we were probably 30 minutes or 45 minutes away from welcoming in a new leader in the US So it's appropriate that since then and since Joe Biden has been brought in and inaugurated as president, United States, that we're joining you today to talk about leadership. And I think it's a really good time, you know, on the dawn of a new presidency in the United States, a year nearly into a pandemic, when we've really seen such major shifts in the role or certainly the asks of leaders that we get into this topic. That topic today is the healthy leader, the leader that is grounded and conscious and talking about some of those tactics for 2021. And this is kind of hopefully something that affects all of you, whether you are in employment and you're talking about your own leaders or if you're a leader or if you are just looking to the leaders in your community or society or our government to see are they doing their right job. We're all quite conscious of the right leadership and the wrong leadership right now, which is probably appropriate then, that our guest this week and joining us from Virginia in the US Is somebody who has spent his career thinking about leadership, researching leadership and most importantly, spending time with leaders and particular CEOs of large organizations to really get a handle on what leadership looks like, how it works well, et cetera. Bob Rosen is the founder of Healthy Companies International. He's a trusted CEO advisor. He's an organizational psychologist, best selling author, great speaker and just an interesting guy. And we're privileged to have you on the show. Bob, tell us a little bit about what makes you, I guess, credible to talk about this and more importantly, what makes you passionate about the topic of leadership.

Well, I have been a student of leadership for a good 35 years. I started out in the Department of Psychiatry. I have a PhD in clinical organizational psychology. And I was treating Executive families and the fathers didn't show up for treatment. And I became very interested in the impact of these detached as sometimes stressed out men on their families. And I wrote a little monograph on leadership and got picked up by the MacArthur Foundation, a large foundation in the United States. And they were interested in was it possible for people to get what they need and want from work at the same time that organizations could get what they need and want from people. And I started working with the Business Roundtable, which is a group of CEOs in this country in the United States. And I began to notice in our research on CEOs that the very best ones had a deep self awareness and a commitment to their own development. And that's what enabled them to see their organizations as human communities and that their job was to bring out and unleash the leadership inside everyone. And that really led to my career. And over the past 30 plus years we've been studying and advising leaders from all walks of life. We've interviewed about 500 CEOs in about 55 countries around the world. The Toyotas and Cannons and Deutsche Banks and the Boeings and Pepsicos and Ericsson's and the like. And, and then we've turned that into a consulting and education business, teaching people how to be healthy leaders.

I'm sure our audience will be dying to ask you questions. And just a reminder to those of you listening live, we do obviously broadcast live on LinkedIn and YouTube every week. If you're listening to the podcast, you can always join us live. For those of you are fortunate to join us live today, we'd love to hear your questions and comments from Bob. Have you ever wondered about what can what insights you can get from 500 leaders around the world? I'm sure Bob can share with you and give you that insight today. So please join us in the chat and share your comments with Bob. Bob, I love your analogy around the kind of coaching thing. It struck me that last couple of years I'm not a big sports person. I'm going to put that out there as in I'm not terribly sporty. But I look at, let's say Olympic teams and you look at the coaches of Olympics teams and I look at the role that they take, which is very much around how do I first of all, of course select the right people to be on the team, but make sure my team shine. They win gold medals, the coach never gets the gold medal, never gets the accolades. And the coach is really quite happy with that as long as their team are Performing. And it kind of struck me as an analogy for leadership in business, that that really is what a leader should be doing. She should be making sure that she's picked the right team, she supported them and they're winning gold medals. It's about them and not about the leader. That seems to be aligned with what you're saying and your research has led you to believe, Bob.

Yes, I think that's true. I've always felt that the job of a leader is to create other leaders. And, and that takes an entirely different kind of relationship than just barking orders at somebody. And if you look at just the current reality today, you've got the expansion of remote work. You've got diversity inclusion and the need for belongingness. You've got incredible partisanship. You have the focus on health and well being and Covid and the technology sort of entering people's lives in their own homes. And so there's a desire for more human connection between leaders and the people who work for them. There's also a lot of movement from hierarchy to networks and teams. And so the work is done in teams. So it requires better relationships, deeper relationships, more honorable relationships between leaders and others. Just going back to the Olympic metaphor, Michael Phelps, the great swimmer from the United States, presents a very interesting case study because he was so committed to excellence and being competitive and very focused on being the best in the world. And he became that, but at the expense of himself. He basically, after he left swimming, he had a couple DDIs, was arrested for drinking and for drug use. He had some very bumpy relationships with his family. And he actually was institution. I mean, he was actually put in a mental hospital to really look at his inner self. And he discovered that you can be great at what you do, but if you don't do the work inside yourself and to be more gentle, to accept his imperfections, you basically can burn out very quickly. And that's what he did. And it's a real good example of somebody who was so committed to work and success at the expense of themselves.

Yeah, I think, you know, taking the sports analogy to its, to its end degree, we can also look at, for many of us, a show we watched an early lockdown feels like an eternity go the last dance for anyone who watched on Netflix and Michael Jordan and talking about obviously the work he did with the team there and then obviously how he had to change his style and work towards more of a team style as not necessarily the coach, but the leader in the team and how he showed leadership. But I could go on that topic forever. I do want to come back to one of your earlier points because I think it's timely because everyone's talking about it. As you said, it's a hot topic right now. There's a lot going on, which means I think we need to explore this. And I'd love to, if you don't mind, Bob, jump into a couple of news articles that are really current to get your thoughts on them. So now I'm asking you to roll our first article there.

The first one.

I get into appeared in a website called digiday digiday.com news site. And this is actually a summary of the weekly newsletter they send out to their subscribers. But it talks Bob, about the role of the CEO is expanding as people turn to business leaders for stability in times of social uncertainty. We'll put a link in the show notes on the podcast, and we'll put a link out on YouTube and LinkedIn for those of you listening live who want to check it out. But Bobby, you've had a chance to read this, I believe. What are your thoughts on some of the author Tony Case's comments around the role of the CEO and generally leaders in a post Covid world from this article?

Well, you can look at the word CEO at any level, because every leader is the CEO of her own team or their own department. But we'll talk about the CEO of enterprises for a second. I think there's been a recognition that the CEO needs to be the moral center or the architect of the moral fabric in an organization. So people are looking for trusting relationships. They're looking for what is right and wrong. They're looking for leaders who are ethical, who embrace integrity. And there's a lot of discussion inside companies around the power of purpose and that leaders have to be the master of the purpose of the organization. And everybody has a personal purpose in life. It took me 45 years to discover that. I want to leave people a little bigger, a little better than I found them. And everybody has a purpose if they look deeply inside themselves. And the job of a great leader is to link everybody's personal purpose to the corporate purpose, to the business purpose. And so it's all requiring a more human centric, moral centric leadership. Another thing that's happening is that the world is becoming so uncertain. In fact, uncertainty is reality and stability is really an illusion because every time we breathe, we breathe into uncertainty. So we need leaders to create a safe, psychologically safe space for people to take risks, to innovate, to stretch themselves. And that requires A kind of a more comfortable environment for people to work in. And then the last thing is flexibility. One of the things that's clear is that agility and flexibility become very, very important and the leader has to support that. So for example, if you have a work in family policy, you've got to support that with the right culture and the right messages and the right behavior by leaders. So they actually support people working at home rather than just say, go work at home. But I'm going to zap you if I don't feel like I can trust you. So more trust, more accountability.

Yeah, I know. Dan Pink nearly two decades ago wrote about drive and the power of motivation and brought the idea of purpose and the support pieces to the probably HR community. And I most recently just finished Amy Edmondson's book on the fearless organization, talking about psychological safety, which was mentioned in the article. And you've mentioned again there. Can you tease that one out for me? Because not everyone might be familiar with perhaps that principle of psychological safety, the importance of it, and maybe even link it back to the Google kind of publication, the famous kind of data they released a few years ago on their, their unexpected kind of stumbling into the role of psychological safety in teams and, and driven by obviously the right leaders. Talk to me about that and how important, how important you've seen that being as a contributing factor to successful teams and productivity.

Well, so much of human behavior inside institutions has been developed in a defensive posture to protect people from feeling hurt or by for making mistakes and the like. And people get defensive and the like. And the job of a leader today is to help people become comfortable being uncomfortable and to be able to have more courageous conversations in organizations so they can sift through the morass and get to the main point that people can make full contributions on the team that may disagree with the boss or disagree with a core peer. So having that environment that allows people to fall down and get up, having an environment that allows people to speak their mind and to speak the truth. There is a difference between facts and assumptions and alternative facts. And a leader's job is to stay very clear about the importance of the difference between facts and assumptions. So I think that that safety piece becomes more important than ever. But that's about the leader and being generous, being forgiving, being clear about where he or she is taking the organization, setting expectations, supporting and recognizing people. All of the human elements that oftentimes go by the wayside in the pace of speed and uncertainty.

I'm going to call out a couple of comments and questions here for you. Very quickly, Bob, as a pertinent perhaps to this topic, just a quick comment first of all from Rushi Majumdar, who's saying very well said to your last comment. We need to be able to map people aspirations to organizational goals and constantly look for opportunities to find the common link and grow people. So it's very much talking about that purpose piece. Bob, I think that Rushi's backing up a question from Kathy related to obviously kind of more I guess the post Covid world leadership while working remotely has proved to be a challenge. I'd love to hear recommendations about leading remote teams and working with employees who need development. So on that the last question there from Kathy. What is your advice being or what are you seeing as the traits of good leadership, particularly in the challenging remote working environment we find most of us find ourselves in at the moment?

Well, first off is that leaders have to be a lot more visible than they've been in the past. So the more distant we become from each other, the more visible we have to be and the deeper the connections have to become. It's sort of a paradox, but it's true. Secondly is clarity of expectations becomes very important. So the team has to be much clearer about what are the goals, what are the priorities, when and how do we work together, how do we make decisions, those kinds of things. So clarity of purpose and clarity of expectations becomes really important. And then people are hungry for more intimate relationships with their boss, taking the time to try to understand what is their life like, if they're working remotely and can they support them. And I'm seeing a number of organizations we do ourselves at healthy companies. We come together once a week and we meet as a team and we can't talk about work. We only talk about our personal lives or politics or movies or whatever. And so it gives a sense of connection to. That isn't always about work. I think the other thing is that being on Zoom and Microsoft Teams all day is exhausting. And it's surprisingly exhausting. And so giving people some time to sort of flexibly manage their own time at the same time meeting goals of the company become very important.

Yeah, the article, it's a great question. I think the article touched on some of those topics as well around, you know, you know, being more asynchronous in some of the communications and meetings that, you know, respecting the fact that people might have other obligations and you don't have to have a meeting at that time and be more flexible is really important. I think it all comes back to a leader being more empathetic and showing that empathy and understanding for her team, but also be more transparent. You know, when you help with communication, it's really. But the transparency piece, something that I've seen pop up time and time again. Increased transparency, more empathy. But what about when. Because you mentioned, obviously people have to be more intimate, and I've heard the word love and other words, you know, pop into conversations about leadership, which other people. People may have never used in the concept context of work before, but I think some people find that uncomfortable because they're going, well, I got to be, you know, hypersensitive about diversity and inclusion. But then you're asking me to bring, you know, to talk about love and. And blur the lines. And how do you basically reconcile what some people might perceive as being two different ends of the spectrum? I got to be all in and know everything about their personal lives and get involved, but I got to be super respectful and careful not to do the wrong thing here. Is there a dilemma there? And how do you see people overcoming that?

That's a very good question. Well, traditionally, we've completely compartmentalized our work lives and our personal lives, and we were one person going to work and one person at home. And over the last 15 or 20 years, with the focus on diversity and inclusion and the focus on employee resource groups, there has been work and family issues. There's been much more of a blending of our work lives and our personal lives. Some people believe very strongly that they shouldn't share themselves in an authentic kind of way, in a transparent kind of way. But people say that they really want their leaders to be more authentic, to talk about what's going on inside themselves. They don't have to bare their souls and tell them about every imperfection that they've got. But people want to be led by a human being, and they find that that kind of relationship becomes more important than ever. Now, here's the challenge is that we, as individuals, our goal is, in a sense, to know ourselves, to be our full selves and to love ourselves. And I don't mean in an overly narcissistic way, but it's important that we love ourselves as human beings. And if you don't have leaders who know themselves, who are comfortable being their full selves and who don't love themselves, you're going to get a leader who is more rigid, more inauthentic, and less comfortable interacting with people. So we have to help leaders do that. All of our work centers around the healthy leader and we've taken 35 years of research and looked at what is included in being a healthy leader. And there are two aspects that are critical. One is being grounded, which is the foundation that helps us withstand change. And the second one is being conscious, which is putting awareness in action, being aware of yourself, others and your environment. And that becomes the accelerant because the more aware you are, the faster you adapt and the higher performing you are. So we need healthy leaders who are grounded and conscious more than ever.

I'm going to draw on our second news article this week which, which talks about seven bad leadership behaviors to quit in 2021. This comes from Real Leaders by Edward Hess. And and this is kind of coming rather than the perspective of what to do, they're coming from this perspective of what not to do. And I'll call out the seven behaviors and get your thoughts on these, Bob. So stop telling people what to do. Stop scaring people into submission. Stop thinking you're so smart. Stop pushing so hard, stop making snap decisions, stop pitting employees against each other, and stop discouraging messy emotions. So you talk about leadership behaviors and this is a kind of does this look like the right not, not, not list to do if you like what you shouldn't be doing anymore? The New Year's resolution to stop doing these seven things. Do they feel familiar to you?

I think those are all good things to not do. I'll just focus on one of them, which is stop thinking you're so smart. I think we overestimate how smart we are. And in fact, being smart is a non negotiable. It's table stakes. It gets you in the room, it gets you a job. The new quality is being conscious, being aware. And that takes precedence over being smart. You have to be both. Secondly is that I'm a big fan of affirmation and aspiration rather than telling people what not to do. Because I think people bring more positive energy to the table when they're looking at what their better self looks like rather than what they shouldn't do. And, and a lot of people psychopathologize their behavior and sometimes it deserves psychopathology. But a lot of times it's just we're trying to do the best work we can and we just trip over ourselves or we say something the wrong way or whatever. And so I like to focus on affirmations about, you know, what you could be doing and what you could be doing better. I think all of those are fine. I mean, you could take any one of them and Stop telling people what to do is another great one. You know, it's so interesting. Leaders have four boxes that they can use for making decisions. The first box is the leader comes into the room and she tells the group what to do. The second box is she comes into the room and she participates in the conversation. And then the groom looks, the group looks to her for making a final decision. The third box is the leader comes into the room and she is an equal participant in the conversation and the team makes the decision. And then the fourth box is that the leader lets the team make a decision and she accepts whatever decision the team worked. In the past 20 years, we've moved from the first one to the fourth one. We're moving towards self managing teams. But the leader has to set the boundaries for those conversations. How far can you go in making the decision? And the leader wants to put the decisions in the hands of the lowest level person. But that requires that the leaders down below the leader have to be more mature, they have to be more accountable, they have to take more responsibility, they have to stretch themselves with new kinds of skills. And so we're moving from left to right toward more self managing teams. And people are different on this. So we need to continue to have the conversation about what's the right decision making required for the right problem at the right time.

A couple of years ago I read Erin Meyer's the Culture Map where she took that kind of those leadership styles, some of those leadership styles around decision making, et cetera, and she mapped them on different cultures and looked at the kind of, the meaning of different cultures. And my take on that would be that because I've heard this anecdotally from leaders I know is that a leadership style that works, let's say generally in the US May not work as well in Korea or as well in Germany. I know one leader who shared with me how she came from the US went to, went to Europe, a part of Europe, and found her collaborative style from the US which works so well, came across as weak to the team she was trying to lead. When she moved to, I think it was Germany. And she had to kind of really adapt that and realize that the expectations are just different. There isn't one level. And while we might speak to generalisms, you have to layer culture on that as well. Our cultural norms in certain parts of the world, where they are on these, on these scales, working with global CEOs as you have over the years, Bob, what's your perspective on that kind of internationalization piece of that where you might have a different approach depending on who the audience is or what their culture is.

Well, I wrote a book in 2000, 2000, it was called Global Literacies and it was exactly on this topic. And I was looking for are there universal leadership traits that cut across leaders all around the world? And there are, having said that, every country has its own commercial ethos, it has its own national character. And leaders emerge from those countries with certain norms and certain prescribed behaviors. And not everybody's the same and there's lots of individual differences. But you find for example, that the Brazilians are affable humanists, they love building relationships. And Americans are real problem solving entrepreneurs. And you go around the world and the Japanese are sort of contextual harmonizers. Not all people in Japan, but each country has its own national inclination. And great global CEOs do a couple things really important. One is that they are proud ancestors of their own country. For example, they understand that they're from Ireland and Ireland has a rich culture and it influences how they show up in the world. The second thing is that they have to be inquisitive internationalists. They have to be hungry to learn and listen from people from other countries, employees, suppliers, customers, their, their own communities that they work in. Then they have to bring that information back into their company. And I like to call them the respectful modernizers. They modernize their company by bringing ideas from around the world. Then they can build great cultures and bridge cultures and finally being good global stewards of their company. And so that's really all about creating a global mindset. And increasingly more and more people at more and more levels have to be global. They interact with people all over the world. And in our country, for example, we're a diverse melting pot. And you know, every team is a microcosm of the world. And so this becomes a really, really important skill in the future.

Yeah, I think as you were talking about CEOs, it was occurring to me that really this is maybe the question more question for you is that, is that a leadership lesson for any level of leader, you know, in that her team is probably increasingly going to be international with more remote working. One of the articles there pointed out something 60 or 70% of organizations staying there going to have some level of virtual work continue forever post pandemic, that you're probably more likely going to be in a team that isn't just represented by the people who live in your community. It is more represented by the world because it's virtual. And you can have that. So that's probably a trait that, that all leaders certainly in international businesses will begin. Sorry, actually I paused. Not even international businesses, because you could be domestic business, but your team are international, are represented by international people. It's. Is that becoming more of a prerequisite? You just have to be able to work with more international teams and cultures than to be an effective leader these days.

Right. I mean my, my sister is a program manager for some of the large technology companies and she can't survive without interacting with Vietnamese and Israelis and Chinese programmers and because every team is an international team and she's in the middle of the organization. So I think increasingly. Having said that, having said that, just look at my country and see how hard it is. We are a rich, diverse country, but look at the problems that we're grappling with now around partisanship and polarization and race and Black Lives Matter. So these problems don't go away. People hold deep convictions inside themselves and the only way to get past this is, is to have honest and courageous conversations with each other with mutual respect. Now some things that people who are different do, things that are wrong, like invade the Capitol in our country, that was fundamentally wrong. So we also have to be really good at deciphering what are facts and what are assumptions or alternative reality as well.

We got a great comment from a listener on LinkedIn live at the moment saying. Couldn't agree more with you, Bob. Great leaders connect people and purpose and motivation break silos and shape organizations better, which can create greater value. Achieving goals and figures are important for sure. But if people are not happy working in the environment, they don't bring high performance. Also, good leaders tend to have smart right hands, which also helps to grow next leaders. On that last point, I remember reading years ago was a point made about different types of individuals and leaders. Again, the whole there's a two types of leaders, right? There's always two types, isn't there? And it spoke about the example I thought was, was really pertinent was Martin Luther King. And it talked about how Martin Luther King had the ability as an orator to really inspire people and motivate them. But he had a right hand person who got people on the buses, made sure the buses were there to drive them to Washington to March, etc. And that there, you know, usually is, you know, always that operationalizer, if you like, which makes. Which is often forgotten about in leadership. You think about the person who's the great orator, who can speak well, which is important. But also great leadership is usually backed up by someone who's a get things done person. That style of leadership is less talked about. Bob, tell me about your kind of experience with that style of a leader. The person who maybe isn't as good an orator, doesn't speak as well, maybe not as strong as a communicator, but is a real brilliant person at getting things done.

Well, I think that that is a very, very important job of a leader, is execution and getting things done on time and hopefully under budget and on schedule. So I think that that is an important skill. Now, what that requires is somebody who is comfortable with his or her own power. They're confident they can see or imagine the future and then execute toward that vision of the future. It also requires a skill that I like to call constructive impatience. You got to create a constructive environment for people, but you also have to always be raising the bar on people. One of the great qualities of leaders is that their image of you is bigger than your image of yourself. And so they're stretching you to be a bigger and better person every day. And if a leader can step back from that job and actually pull it off and actually help you to stretch into that future reality, they're doing a great job. But it is a very important skill and it's more important than ever before because there is more bureaucracy in life. Large organizations, the world is more complex. And you have to sort of navigate through all of that and get things done. And so it's not just being a nice guy, it's also being a strong leader that actually facilitates things getting done.

We spoke at the top of the show, Bob, about conscious leadership, but I haven't ask you to explore that word for me. It's really important. Can you talk to me about what is conscious leadership in your definition?

Well, conscious leadership is really about awareness in action. When we meditate, we slow down and we try to become more aware. But conscious leadership is about putting awareness into action. Aware of yourself, aware of others, aware of, aware of your environment and surroundings. Now, we organize that into four practices that we teach. The first one is to get real, and we've talked a little bit about that. Getting real is about getting comfortable, being uncomfortable, separating facts from assumptions, and seeing change happening for you versus to you. A lot of times people see change and they see it imposed on them versus showing up for. For you, to give you an opportunity to do something. The second one is to go deep. And going deep means understanding the impact of change on you. It means being able to experience the full range of your human Emotions, both your positive and your less positive emotions. And to course correct quickly if you move into anger or shame or fear or anxiety, into your positive emotions around empathy, love and compassion and forgiveness and generosity. And it also means really looking at your belief systems about which ones are liberating and which ones are self defeating. The third category, the third practice, is to think big, and that's really to imagine possibilities and to also live in paradox. You know, the world isn't caught or cold anymore, it's both. And you got to cut costs and generate revenue at the same time. A complex world requires a complex mind, and we need to think much bigger. And then lastly is to step up. And step up, first and foremost requires that we live and lead with just enough anxiety, not too much, which is the face of chaos, and not too little, which is the face of complacency, but just enough that creates that psychologically safe environment that stretches people to be bigger and better tomorrow than they are today. So those practices are really important.

Yeah, I love those four. Massey, to remind me again you just call it the four at a high level, because I think they're worth reiterating for our audience.

They're get real, go deep, think big, and step up.

So go deep, think big and step up.

Yep. And we wrote a book called Conscious, and we also wrote a book called Grounded. And as I said, Grounded and Conscious make up this idea of a healthy leader. And Grounded is rooted in six disciplines. And the first one is your physical roots, your emotional roots, your intellectual roots, your social roots, your vocational roots, and yes, your spiritual roots. And that forms the foundation, it grounds the tree so when the winds of change come at you, you don't fall over. And so we got to get those six roots and the four practices of conscious right in order to survive and thrive in the world. That's showing up for all of us.

Before we kicked off the show, Bob, I'd asked you your thoughts on something Ben Horowitz of Andresen Horowitz wrote about a decade ago after last recess, which was the comparison of a wartime leader and a peacetime leader. And he particularly talked about Google and Eric Schmidt versus I can't remember who was his predecessor and the differences and how. And I read this again going into this pandemic, thinking, right, what attributes of a wartime leader are necessary here versus peacetime leader? But I think what you're saying is there's a lot more gray and maybe those paradigms where we used to say there's a this or there's a that, there's a nay that as a B. I'm getting the sense you're saying that it's not that simple. Is that correct?

It's definitely not that simple. I mean, we leaders today are at war with a number of things. They're at war with chaos. They're at war with COVID 19. They're at war with partisanship and polarization. They're at war with cynicism and disenfranchisement among people. And at the same time, leaders have to create positive, energizing environments that are constructive and productive environment. So I think that those categories are blurring more and both for government people as well as business people. And we've talked around that, we've talked about both sides of the paradox during the course of this hour. And so I think that things are much blurrier than they've ever been before. Are we shooting guns? No. But in some ways we have to be at war with the virus.

But a lot of people I've spoken to this year in particular have said to me that when it comes to leadership, the pandemic and, and the pandemic plus the remote working element has really shone a spotlight on leadership. And it's highlighted a lot of cracks and highlighted a lot of leaders that just weren't actually capable of the job at all. And many have come to say, oh, the new leader requires xyz. But I found that there's. The new leader requires what the old leader had, except they just have to actually do it. They can't get away with not doing it. Is there anything different about the leadership qualities we need in 2021 than we needed in 2019? Bob and if not, maybe what do you think the core things that the modern leader needs to think about? What does she need to focus on to be successful?

Yeah, it's a great question, Johnny. I don't think there's really a difference. It's just that the intensification of the connectedness that we all feel is bringing leaders vulnerabilities and shortcomings and frailties to life. And people are hungrier for more connection and more authenticity. So we see the problem clearer than we've ever seen before. I think the other thing that we're learning too is that the word leadership is like a status, it's a noun versus leading, which is an activity. And we need leading at every level of the organization. That's why when we talk about healthy leaders, one of our clients is Cigna. And I'm sure they would be comfortable with me talking and they really are committed to building a grounded and conscious workforce with healthy leaders at every level of the organization from CEO all the way down to individual contributor. And increasingly we see companies that are educating people face to face. Now it's more virtual instructor led learning and self paced learning through technology and portals and platforms. And the technology enables us to do that to engage people in these kinds of conversations at all levels of business.

Yeah, we have a comment from a user earlier who commented that just today they commented on LinkedIn post saying we should have leadership training at every seniority level and that backing up your comments it isn't just for a certain cohort in the organization, it's definitely for everyone. Bob, I'm going to kind of bring this more to a close as you're probably as surprised as myself to hear that we've rattled through our time very, very quickly. I think it's an endless topic but I think you've given a real insight in terms of the core leadership behaviors. I think the four you mentioned earlier as well. Fantastic. In terms of just kind of key points, I know that Niall might have a graphic to share with us on screen. For those of you watching this is benefit and this is just a map. We'll put a link to the in the show notes for those who listen to the podcast for this talking about the Grounded Leader and the Conscious Leader, the two books that were you mentioned earlier Bob and just you know, on the six points of the Grounded Leaders what you meant around physical health, emotional health, intellectual health, social health, vocational health and spiritual health as the foundation and then the Conscious Leader being the accelerator. The four points, just to reiterate them, get real, go deep, think big and step up. I think that framework is really helpful. We're going to have a link to that back to Bob's site if anyone wants to get it from the show notes. I will push that on LinkedIn and YouTube as well. I think that's a really nice framework. Looking at the six points and the four levers as such is really nice work. Bob, I do gotta get to a final question with you. One last thing please. If I can pick your brain for one more item, it will be to add to our shortlist. We ask every guest on the show every week to leave their contribution to our shortlist of tips. I'll ask you Bob, what would be the piece of advice you give to leaders of all kinds and levels who might be listening in today or watching this show? What's the one piece of advice you can leave them with today?

I believe that the most important piece of advice that I follow personally and I try to share with other people is to practice what we call the serenity prayer. And a lot of people know it. It's to grant me this serenity. And here are the main points. To accept the things I cannot change, accept the things I cannot change. And this is very hard for people because they want to control things that they can't change. And so to accept the things that you cannot change, the courage to do the things that you can change, the courage to change, which is really about being confident and humble and to know, yes, I can step up and make a difference. And and then finally is the wisdom to know the difference. And this is really the whole concept of committed detachment. Make a commitment to the goal, but be detached from the outcome. This is a very hard thing to do. But so many people become so attached to the outcome that it creates so much stress and ill will inside of them. So grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. And the more that you recite and practice that every day, the easier it is to basically navigate through all the disruption and change.

I think that applies to both politics, business, pretty much anywhere.

It's personal lives, everything.

It's a fantastic motto, I think whether you're a religious person or not, as a chant, as a recantation, as a statement, it's a powerful one. And I think it takes many people their entire career to really appreciate that and learn that. Bob, thanks so much for sharing with us today. You've been very generous with your time, with your ideas, with your passions. I really hope we can have you back again and dig deep on some of those other topics that we only got to touch on in our 45 minutes here today. But I really wish you well. Thanks for sharing your insights. We will have you on again. And thanks for joining us and leaving your contribution to our shortlist.

Thank you, Johnny. It's been a pleasure. And if anybody wants to find out about us, we're at our website, which.

Is HealthyCompanies.com and Bob's catalog of fantastic leadership books can be found where all good books are found online and offline as well. I'd encourage you to dig them out. Thanks, Bob, for joining us. For those of you who are looking to check out what we have coming next, I'll tell you more about next week's show in a second, but you can always find out our back catalog of recordings you want to get back and watch this show again or any previous shows@socialtalent.com the shortlist, where we also have our upcoming guests for the next few weeks. Speaking of which, we have another guest coming next week. Our first guest of February is going to be someone I got to know only towards the end of last year. A fantastic woman. You need to know as well, particularly if you're in recruiting and particularly if you're in the tech world. Alison Daly has built an organization called Recruiting Innovation based out of the US which is really focused, laser focused on doing what she did for her whole career, which is teaching others on how to basically do tech recruiting really, really well. Alison's going to be joining the social talent platform from mid March. We're really excited about that. But she's going to be joining you live on LinkedIn and YouTube. YouTube next week and on our podcast as well. If you subscribe to our podcast on Spotify, Apple or wherever you find your podcast to talk about how to diversify tech which is she claims is starting with the recruiters. I think that's a really good point. So coming out that diversity lens, something she's really passionate with about what the role recruiters can play is in that I know many of you have questions often afraid to ask. Alison's great fun, super knowledgeable, very entertaining. Join us next week. That's going to be next Wednesday at 34pm UK time. That's 11am in the U.S. on the East coast and 8am on the west coast. Or check out our podcast usually goes live Wednesday evening UK Ireland time. You can collect that next episode. Until then, I'll leave you and remind you with Bob's Bob's Chant around the Serenity Prayer. I think if all of us could only learn those three things and make, make, make, make, make ourselves at peace with those we'd make for better leaders. I've been trying for 20 years. I hope I'm improving but I hope I will continue to prove over the next 20 years and you will too. We'll see you next week.