1785 – Talking about Natural Intelligence with Rosie Tomkins of N-Stinctive

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0:58with us right now rosie tompkins rosie you're the author of the book instinctive the power of natural intelligence and you are the founder of instinctive and the website you probably to our list or our friend right here probably just want to going to want to click on the show notes I'm going to describe it for you. It's N-stinctive, which again, kind of looks like instinctive, but again, a little funny spelling on that. Rosie, thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure. All right. Well, do give us an overview of the work that you do in the world. Okay. Just to say that my second book has just come out last week, and that's a little easier on the title.

1:39It's called Let Nature Be Your Compass, and that's on Amazon. So if anybody wants to kind of pick up from there, that's probably slightly easier. Terrific. Okay, good. And again, that's also, you've got that linked on your website. Again, it's Let Nature Be Your Compass, Introducing the Power of Natural Intelligence. Well, Rosie, what's natural intelligence? Okay, so it's a positive use of insights, instincts, and perception, which allow you to make decisions at speed from a place of deep knowing. But to really explain that, and what it's all about is, you know, in leadership areas in business generally, we all know about IQ.

2:17Some of us know about EQ, emotional intelligence. Some know about spiritual intelligence, SQ. But not many people know about NQ. And that's what I'm pioneering here today. And that NQ stands for natural intelligence, as I've just described. So for me, in leadership circles, we are like a three-legged stool and I'm trying to make it a four-legged chair. What's the differentiation between that and emotional and, as you say, spiritual intelligence? So you probably know David Goldman was the man who brought emotional intelligence into the business world. He was extremely successful at it. He was talking about self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, social skills.

3:01Well, I feel that there's something else missing here. And that's what I do in my leadership development training. And we look at self-leadership. we look at energetic transfer we look at connection we look at courage and we look at ownership and around the area of internal and external validation so when you're a leader and I've led four companies so I've got a little bit of experience in this area you know it's not about just legitimacy it's about actually having faith in your own judgment literally all the time and some of the time you waver. So occasionally we actually are slightly concerned about our own direction in leadership.

3:43And I started this company to look at how we could really support leaders and give them the confidence in their own ability to lead in times of difficulty. Okay. Essentially, again, we're talking about a leader's instincts, I guess. And so I'm still not sure I understand the delineation between that and maybe what might fall under the emotional intelligence bucket or kind of that spiritual knowingness or whatever. Because I think a lot of people would say, well, that's the same thing. Okay. So I'm sure you remember the film about a pilot called Sully Sullenberger who landed on the Hudson River.

4:20I'm sure your listeners will remember that. Now he was in a pilot with extreme, you know, had a lot of experience, a lot of skill. At the time he was being told to turn the aircraft around and land back at the LaGuardia. And he decided in that moment, he uses what I call his natural intelligence to make a decision at speed and to actually land the plane on the Hudson River. So it's that combination of the four different intelligences, the NQ, IQ, SQ and EQ that gave him that decision making ability. Another example of natural intelligence is, for example, in a friend of mine who's a consultant in hospital, had a patient who was quite unwell and upset, and they couldn't control them.

5:06And then suddenly the door opened, a nurse came in, and the nurse used their natural intelligence to sing a song and calm the patient down. It was a mental health issue. That's not written in any books. She was using her natural intelligence to actually apply to a situation at speed. So does that make it clearer? Yeah. So, you know, kind of, again, we've done the thing, we've gotten really good. And so just kind of trusting in that. Do you think that that's a problem? Do you think that, because I, especially I'd say at the smaller, more of the SMB side, I think oftentimes I hear critiques from fractional CFOs that say, well, I think far too many founders are leveraging, you know, kind of their founder magic, and they're not basing enough decisions based on data.

5:54Or, you know, a fractional COO might say that maybe the founder is doing too much in a vacuum when they should really be seeking consensus. Okay, so I don't agree with that. I think that there's a political correctness that's come into making decisions and that we're terrified of judgment. So, you know, sometimes we don't act because we know that, you know, we will have judgment. And that is quite a hard thing to continue to do as a leader, without any support over the years. As I say, I've run three different businesses. And at times, you know, you do secretly doubt your own ability to lead in certain situations.

6:36So the whole of the training program that I've put together is to really to support these people who are making decisions on a regular basis, and shouldering a huge responsibility in companies to give them that power at their elbow to be who they are. And it's the difference really between internal and external validation. For me, we're in a world where everything is about external validation. How many hits have I got? How many people are watching me on YouTube, et cetera, et cetera. And at the end of the day, it's got to be about your own internal validation that makes you feel and be a great leader.

7:14Mm-hmm. So as a founder, obviously being a visionary, particularly if that's our personality style, I agree. I mean, that's probably where we need to be and surround ourself with really good people, kind of the who, not how mindset. So what are the consequences of not making more, I guess one way we could say it is just like, listen, as a founder, you're not making enough executive decisions here. You're, I don't know, you're pandering to your people. You're, I don't know what the problem may be, but what are the consequences here? Well, it's very much a lack of an awareness, isn't it? You can't be continually aware of everything that's going on as a leader, but it's, for me, it's learning to detach yourself enough from the kind of workplace in order to kind of sit above it so that you can actually make non-emotional decisions from a place of, of getting away from it so you know we talk about don't we there in forest you know looking at a leading from the what it's called the treetops and getting above the situation in order to see what's actually going on and I call that a detached observer and if you don't do that you haven't got the time and the energy to research it properly and I think when we're in this you know we're cutting through complexity all the time in business and we're overlooking the fact that we actually need time out occasionally to reassess ourselves and our own ability and what how we're coming across which is rare we can't always see how we come across to others and that's really really important and that natural intelligence learning that from the world around us so I use all my my work is all connected to the natural world so I use examples metaphors anecdotes It's about how nature survives in the wild, how it adapts, how it uses its strength, how it, you know, all these different factors are brought into the kind of boardroom and into the business.

9:11So it's another way of looking at leadership and development within an organization. And the thing that a lot of people, you know, know in business, they hear about dog eat dog and they hear about, you know, being thrown to the wolves. But actually in the world around us, in nature, most of nature is quite collaborative. and we've forgotten that and how we how they use and support each other when times get hard so it's a very unusual way of i say developing people in a different way and i call it again it's natural intelligence but in a rotational style so that we don't always have the pressure and to answer your question you know what happens if we don't listen to this of course we go into overwhelm and then from overwhelm then you get exhausted and then obviously burn out right so So then as I understand it, because again, you're also talking about how teams work in harmony together, but I'm still trying to balance that versus kind of this instinctive leadership style where it feels like it might be a little bit more kind of an executive style decision-making for that.

10:18So help me make sure I got this right, right? So we want to gather all the information, but at the end of the day, obviously we can't freeze when it comes to decisions, things that need to be made. So that's ultimately if the executive is doing their job well, they're gathering all the information and then they're not afraid to say, this is what we're going to do. Is that, am I off or? No, absolutely. But just to include that natural intelligence. So as well as all the data, as you say, and all the analytics and all of that kind of cognitive side to actually bring in the body as well as the mind.

10:55So, you know, that's important. And as I say, some things like, as I say, when I was describing the differences, you know, energetic transfer is hugely important in business. And people don't understand that. How you act, how you become, how you enter a room, all of those things are really critically important for gaining trust and bringing the whole of the team together. Yeah, no, I believe it. Your new book, Let Nature Be Your Compass. Tell me a little bit more about that and how that's related to what we've been talking about. so you know for a long time I've been doing this work for 15 years and I say my background and pedigree is in business but trying to explain this concept to people is quite difficult so I was told to write the book it has models in there and case studies of the work I do I work a lot what I call elite athletes pharmaceutical companies corporates and they're really embracing this work because it gives you a chance to switch off the as I said the analytical mind for a minute and actually come into a different form of leadership.

11:56And so the book describes my work, why I came into it, got anecdotes from different businesses, lots of models, lots of, it's to shake up your thinking. It's really to, it's a kind of pioneering book to say, you know, when you have reached a certain point in your journey, to think about things in maybe a different way, change paradigms, change perspectives, look outside. And that's what it's about really to challenge and to support it with lots of evidence from the world of wildlife and nature. So I think that we've been talking philosophically for most of this conversation here. What is something that our friend that's been listening to our conversation that they can do something very tactical and actionable that they can do so they can start to employ what you're advocating for?

12:43Okay. So, you know, again, it's the simplest things. It's the things that we miss every day, you know, the thought that you see a spider's web in a doorway and you brush it away without even thinking. If you give it a second thought, you realise that that spider is actually incredibly, it comes back again and again and again. It has huge resilience. It builds a web again. It retries. It goes back. It reinvents. It tries again. It puts it in a different place. And these simple ideas from nature can challenge our thinking to explore in a different way, basically. So anything from the natural world.

13:18A really good example in my book is about elephants in the wild. Some very keen entrepreneurs built a lovely hotel, a five-star hotel in Kenya, and they didn't check out the natural kind of world around them before they built it. And in the autumn after the hotel was built, a tribe of elephants were on track to the mango swamps. And they literally came across this hotel, a five-star hotel in their journey and walked through the hotel. They didn't do any damage, but they walked through because it was en route to their mango swamps. And that power of intention in business is so important that you're not going to be stopped by anything in your way.

13:59And now, of course, that hotel uses the elephant's journey as a kind of ecotourism. So people go there to watch these elephants. So again, the power that nature has to be on track, to stay on track, to not be knocked off, carry on regardless when you believe that you're, you know, you have everything that's right and you feel that is your passion and your purpose. Okay. So, and then tactically, what could we be doing? Yeah. So again, looking at nature and seeing how, when we are concerned about tactically, I mean, there's models in the book that I could share with you now, but we have. Yes, please, please please please okay okay so here we go so we've got a prey and predator model in the book and again it looks at four different quadrants we would do this in leadership all the time I mean this is what we do you know there's nothing as we say nothing's ever new it's just marketed in a different way so I use these quadrants to describe the different leadership styles in nature so everyone knows about a predator but they don't really understand the qualities of a prey animal so where a predator is you know courageous focused um it's got strength stealth and control a prey animal can be very very good at peripheral vision agility speed flow and then again on the other axis people have heard of kind of freeze but they always think it's a negative well animals in the wild use freeze to survive and so did we in covid so we use covid you know we're all in a free state.

15:28We were all caged. And for some people, that freedom was great because it gave us a chance to nourish, to recharge, to take time to process, take stock. But on the shadow side, for people in, some people in lockdown, obviously, it was a time when they felt powerless, you know, shut down and not functioning. On the other access to freeze, we've got flock. So flock is obviously symbolized by birds. Birds flock together in order to survive. And we know that, you know, we've heard the stories of the geese, how they rotate to support each other. But again, you know, in your business right now, do you need to be in the flock side of the business, which is all about collaboration, being unlimited, taking risks, you know, being open?

16:15Or where is it that you think your business should be right now? Or where are you trying to take it to? So I use those kinds of ideas to take people on a journey and for them to plot their course and to decide you know whether it's a culture of an organization or whether it's recruiting other people on the other axis which bring them different values and of course again understanding that with different as I say like a predator there are great positives of being a predator but also there are incredible shadow side to being a predator and as we've seen with politicians etc once you go down into the shadow area, without knowing it, you become quite self-obsessed.

16:57You know, you can be very controlling. You can become quite aggressive with that predatory style. So the awareness as a leader to know who you are, what you are, and how people see you, and where you want to take your business, and to clarify that. As I say, I use a different way of doing that by looking at the world around us. Okay. Rosie Tompkins, again, you're the author of the new book, Let Nature Be Your Compass, Of course, your original book, The Power of Natural Intelligence. And you're the founder of Instinctive, found on the web at n-stinctive.com. And Rosie, for someone that's been listening to us and they've resonated with metaphor and what you've shared, what would you recommend they do next?

17:39Well, please connect with me on LinkedIn. Obviously, Rosie Tompkins. I'm in the UK. Please read my book. It gives you a really very, it's a business book, but I wrote it specifically to take on an aircraft with you. easy reading, quick to pick up, some fundamentally different thought processes to challenge the status quo. Easy reading, very quick, and hopefully that will give you an idea of what I do. And then I'd love to hear from anybody who would like to learn more about what I do, who's maybe an early adopter, who wants to kind of challenge the status quo too, who's a game changer, maybe a fellow pioneer.

18:18If there's anyone out there who wants to explore how we can get NQ out into the world as David Coleman did with emotional intelligence. I'd love to hear from you. Awesome. Rosie Tompkins, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.

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