How to become an extraordinary marketing leader - John Amaechi

0:06Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Uncensored CMO. One subject I'm so passionate about is seeing more marketers in leadership positions. Now, the skill set required to be a great leader is quite different from being a great marketer. And that's why I think marketers don't often succeed in those leadership positions. But I want to see more of them do so. Now, my next guest is perfect for this conversation. John Amici has got a fascinating background. He was originally an MBA star over in America, and he's now become a psychologist, a business coach and has written many, many books on the subject of leadership.

0:38He also has a new book out called It's Not Magic, which looks at the ordinary skills of extraordinary leaders. And actually, John has a beautiful way of describing what great leadership looks like, how it sounds, how leaders behave, and some of the ordinary skills that you and I can acquire to become extraordinary leaders. This is an amazing conversation. John is genuinely one of the most inspiring people I've ever had the pleasure to meet. And I know you'll get a lot out of it. Here it is. John Amici, welcome to Uncensored CMO. It's really good to see you again. Thank you. And we met, didn't we, quite recently at the Creative Equals Conference, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

1:15In a nice private space on stage. On stage in front of only a few hundred people listening into our conversation. But I thoroughly enjoyed it. I mean, it was great to talk about masculinity, you know, very important topic at the moment and, you know, really important to kind of have those dialogues which don't seem to happen as often as maybe they should these days. And not in as nuanced a way as they should either. And not increasingly not assigning, it's not blame, but assigning a responsibility responsibly. And it's such an interesting thing. We can acknowledge that there's a crisis around masculinity, for example, and it's doing real harm to men without suggesting it's the fault of women, which I feel is creeping into the dialogue a little bit.

2:00the idea um there's a lot of people i respect a lot um scott galloway really like him i did a response piece to his stuff on masculinity because he was talking about the fact that men have to swipe i've not been on an app in a while is it oh yeah right they have to swipe right so many more times like you know 500 times in order to get one thing and it's like the inter the implication is that women are too picky or women are something else. But really, like all people, it's not the picture. We know from the research that women, you know, images of men, a little bit of extra weight, you know, a kind of corny mustache, whatever it is, that's not the stuff that's going to make women go away.

2:46It's what you write in there that's making them swipe left at lightning speed. So it's your fault. it's the man who needs to think about and rethink about it i just wish i was talking to a young person about this the other day i just wish people could realize that masculinity can be personalized and flexible it doesn't you don't have to pick now and keep to it but it can also you don't have to pick somebody else's idea if it can be yours and work for you yeah and that's a great valuable conversation and and definitely more to come actually inspired me to do so because at System One, where I work, we kind of measure emotional response to advertising.

3:23And we spent a lot of time looking at how people are portrayed in different segments of society. But we haven't really thought much about men and how they see themselves and what role model we are setting for men in the kind of creative that we produce. So yeah, a lot more to come on that, I think. Yeah, I hope so. Yeah, be really good to talk about. Well, listen, we're here today because you've got a new book coming out, which I would love to quiz you about. I want to start with the title and the premise of the book, because it's not magic. And it's the, I've got the book here, The Ordinary Skills of Exceptional Leaders.

3:58And what intrigued me straight away was the framing of ordinary. Because of course, you know, we see leaders on stage, don't we, doing these inspiring speeches, or we listen to people, watch people negotiate a difficult situation, and it feels out of reach, it feels kind of somehow, you know, magical and so on. But you position all that really as ordinary and that we can all achieve it. So I'm just intrigued to know what inspired this positioning of ordinary skills. I suppose there's a couple of things to this. And literally, I've not talked about it this way. It's just occurred to me because you said this.

4:34The elemental makeup of most interesting things is quite mundane, right? diamonds these things we value so much broadly whether it be for commercial purposes mining rocks or whatever or whether it be for beautiful rings and necklaces they are made up of of just like carbon assembled in an interesting way and maybe some other things to make them slightly different shifts in color and that's what i'm talking about here these leaders that we see that appear so polished and amazing the relatively few that there are by the way that are so polished and amazing what they do is just small things stacked in the right order and consistently right because nobody's impressed by a diamond that looks good and then forced to pieces right afterwards it's the endurance of that object that makes it truly special and desirable and the same thing with leaders it's these basic construction elements that on their own you look at them you're like boring, dull, uninteresting, how can that be anything?

5:40And you pull them all together and the shape that it creates is one that is alluring and draws people to it, and that's leadership. I mean, what I love about that framing is it then feels attainable, doesn't it? Other than, because often when we see very successful people, it's just the gap between us and an elite athlete or an elite speaker or whatever, it just feels too big to bridge, doesn't it? And I think bringing that back and breaking that down just suddenly gives you that confidence that actually maybe I could step into that, you know. Because I think a lot of this, I mean, you started at the beginning about kind of self-assurance as well, isn't it?

6:17It's often a big deal, isn't it, for a lot of people. They don't think they could ever do something like this. Yeah, and I don't make this feel attainable because I want to kind of pander to people. It is attainable, right? Not everybody will be the same magnitude of storyteller as their favorite leader. Not everybody will have that same kind of seeming person of the people type of approach. And not everybody will be as comfortable on stage. And not everybody will be as technical in front of their stakeholders. But in terms of helping people to see that you're a person they can follow safely, we can all do that.

6:58And I think it's important that we recognize, especially now, we live in a time where I think part of the narrative that exists as a low hum in society broadly is one that tells everybody that you're not very powerful. There's very little you can do. And so this book, in part, is to help people to realize that maybe your sphere of influence is small. Maybe your sphere of control is even smaller. Maybe it's your family. Maybe it's a bit of your extended family. Maybe it's you and the person who sits next to you in that cubicle in your office. If you use some of these skills, if you build them compound over time, you will be the kind of person who will be a magnetic influence on the people around you without having to kind of have a title that goes along with it.

7:41And maybe if you can build those skills, good conscientious workplaces will see them and you'll earn that title as well as those skills. Yeah. You mentioned something there about, you know, finding, you know, not everyone necessarily will be the great speaker or the great writer or whatever. And something that comes up later in the book, I thought I maybe start at because it just struck me as a good place to start. You talk about finding your value proposition. And I thought that was quite powerful because we sometimes don't spend enough time thinking about what our skill set is and thinking about what the organization we work for needs and finding that overlap between the two.

8:17And it reminded me of a period in my career where I was a bit lost and really kind of not sure what to do next. And I kind of got to the point where I thought I'd been at the company like 13 years, quite a long time. and I thought I probably if nothing changes I'm going to go and I did this um off-site for a few days and they put this really simple thing up on the board it was so simple it just said write down all the things that you're passionate about that you believe you're you know in your skill set and then write down all the things that the company are struggling to do or have a have a challenge with and overlap and just look for the little thing in the middle and it just it just put this spark in my head i went oh yes i love this i can contribute yeah exactly and i thought the company's not doing that i remember um i was so excited i phoned up a couple of the directors on the board and said can i breakfast with you on monday and i took all my flip charts in it felt you know it's funny on friday it felt all very clear and straightforward then on monday i'm like yeah it doesn't look quite as like obvious isn't that always the way it slips the context exactly you know exactly but i remember on the monday saying right this is the big gap for the organization i I think I'm the person to do it.

9:21And it was probably one of the most transformational parts of my career. And the reason it links to this actually is it was the point at which I went from being probably a good functional manager. You know, I was good at doing elements of marketing to a new role where I was leading a big team. And man, that jump is huge because the things that kind of made you good are no longer the things that make you good in the next stage. And I think that you must find this a lot with the people you coach, that jump from being I'm the expert to then I'm the leader that people are looking to. Yeah, I just talked about this in one of the social media posts.

9:59I did this exact thing, this transition from I am valued for my direct technical expertise to I am valued as a person who can enable other people's direct technical expertise. And the relationships of trust you have to build and the delegation communication skills you have to have, the conflict management skills you need to negotiate. the the ways you have to be able to set boundaries clearly and set expectations even more clearly and to me that's it's a it's such a different skill set but also the fact that many people who are technical experts that's exactly the stage where they start to lament because what happens is you go from being expert expert expert you get your promotion and you're an idiot yeah it's like i mean i was an expert yesterday and now i feel stupid and very few adults like to go from feeling I don't know if this data this research has been done with people who are legitimately you know not that sharp or not interested in being sharp but certainly people who are interested in being sharp the experience of feeling dumb is one they have to get used to academia good academia does that regularly right because you you you buy into and endorse and and study an area of study and then over time it develops and you you have to catch up and so You get dumb and then you get clever again.

11:18But, yeah, it's a big part of that transition. But the other piece I think is important in that transition is that you disconnect people. Their technical expertise is almost like a transactional relationship with an organization. I'm just really good. I get paid for being good. And then it's disconnected when all of a sudden your job is slightly different. You have to reconnect people. And that's by the look of excitement on your face when you talked about that. That was the thing that seems to be. It's like, oh, I've got some real purpose and value and it's specific and it's not just that I'm clever and can do this job technically.

11:50It's that I can also have a bit of a vision and see things that other people have missed. It's an amazing opportunity, this transition, but it's often handled transactionally. That's why it goes poorly. It's very, very hard, isn't it? I remember because also the other thing with it is when you're doing a functional role, your value is on output, right? So it's tangible, right? So I delivered this thing. We produced that much. You know, I spent this in a responsible way. But with leaders, it's intangible. You know, it's have you empowered people? You know, is the team morale high? Have you collectively achieved, not have you individually achieved?

12:25It's a different set of kind of success measures, isn't it? I would encourage us. It is a different success measure, for sure. But I would encourage us to think of it this way. It is not that it's intangible. We just don't measure that. And when we do measure it, we measure it poorly. I am a nerd. I think I've had this conversation with you before, but the idea that it frustrates the hell out of me how we do surveys, for example. You know, because your work is about building, at least in part, the robustness of what you do is important. And you look at some of these surveys where they're going to measure morale.

12:56And you ask them, what do you mean by morale? And I ask five people and I get five different answers. And that's going to be a terrible question if you don't have a unified idea. Measuring collaboration, what do you mean by collaboration? One bloke over here who's very senior thinks it's people sitting and nodding while he talks to them. And another person thinks, a younger person perhaps thinks, it's my ability to contribute and disagree and whatever else. And you've got to choose what your definition is before you even ask the question. And then you ask questions and they ask them, this is my, this is so dull, but it's my bugbear, right?

13:30It's the idea of people asking five-point questions, you know, strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree. and I don't understand it. How can you, if I asked you, how do you like your job at the moment? And you said, neutral. It's like somebody sliding over a plate of food at you, you taking a bite. How do you feel about it? Who's attributing that to neutral? Yeah. And there's no neutral where it comes to culture and leadership. There is off the fence either way. I just, I look at this and that's why we struggle in part, right? Because we just don't measure it accurately. or well yeah so it's funny actually talking about the one that always makes me like cut that whole section out surveys are funny the classic one in marketing is is you'll have the five point scale like would you buy this definitely would you buy this maybe would you buy this not sure would you buy this definitely not uh five point scale everyone always adds the maybes to the definite maybe he's just being polite that's just people going i probably wouldn't but i'll you know i'll just be polite yeah that's a classic one yeah it just and it doesn't help you it muddies your data and it means you head off in a direction ill-informed.

14:43To me, those things, it's like adding, it's like having a compass that can tell you the direction, it can tell you north, right? But what you do to make somebody else happy is you bring in another tiny magnet next to it. And so you're heading off in north-ish, but it's not exactly north because you've got this factor in here that's just messing up your data. And that's what those questions do. Yeah, yeah, I can see that. um we talked about kind of the some of the surprise that you get when you go from being functional leader to a leader you train a lot of people on leadership what do you commonly see as the misconceptions of leadership or what people are surprised about when they have to make that kind of jump into leadership some of it is about as we talked about with masculinity this idea that there is a leadership style and this is born actually it's not really people's fault it's born of the idea that many many men who are leaders have an idea that leadership is strength and by strength they mean certainty in the face of absolute refuting evidence it means always knowing the answer it means never being vulnerable it means being the loudest person in the room it means being charismatic and you'll know from the book that it's not a word I I think again there are a thousand different definitions of it and all of those things works really well if you might be some combination of middle class traditionally educated russell group or other country equivalent and on and on and on and male if you add all those things together maybe that's a natural choice but there's a vast swathe of people who come from different backgrounds countries which are not so focused on on independence in leadership but are more collaborative in nature and there's a space for all of these flexible different types and it prevents people from going to leadership because they look at other people and say oh i can't lead that way and it's like don't then because i'm telling you right now there are tons of people if you led a different way who would breathe a sigh of relief whose performance would rise and even those people who had tolerated and maybe even thrived in the crucible of toxic leadership imagine what they could do if a percentage of their energy wasn't always there as a firewall to keep them from burning up imagine what they'd be capable of if they realized they could say i don't know and not be have their ear tune off yeah i think that's the thing we need more people who lead in different ways but responsibly that's a lovely framing actually um it's interesting i've got a whatsapp group of cmos and we often have chats before i interview people i i dropped uh this conversation to chat and said but there was one question that came through about three different people all similar question which is an unusual one but do you think trump's re-election is what impact is that having on our perception of leadership because there's a very very different style you know a very sort of aggressive hard negotiator extreme kind of in language and body you know everything right do you think that's having an effect on how we see leadership in terms of what's it was a tricky question really isn't it it is because i've got no 1a visa and that's why it's a tricky question um no no so a i would refute refute some of the premise right so is he a hard negotiator just based on the facts i'm not sure that's true or clear i think it's hard for any person who's the principal of a country to just be a hard negotiator because it's well certainly a country that's normally a democracy because there are checks and balances that will prevent you from just saying i'm doing this for the most part is he he himself part of the problem the world and people broadly love a model excuse character right and he's a model excuse character you can yell in the middle of your meeting and instead of feeling bad about it and other people saying that's not normal that's not how leaders behave you can go leader of the most powerful man in the world is what people call the president right right there and it gives you this immediate sense of oh i can be so much more terrible before there isn't somebody out there who's more extreme than me and it's a wonderful excuse for people i would suggest that i'm a massive bloke i am six foot nine and twenty many stone and i know for a fact that intimidation and anxiety and fear are terrible motivational motivators they work sharply in the extreme short term and what i mean by that is they create a reflex so the first time you terrify somebody they will respond but their response will be amygdala based it will not be prefrontal and frontal cortex smart person based it'll just be oh my god what do i do so i never get shouted at again and some of that is i'll bury the bad news i'll make other people tell the bad news i will keep my head down and not you know i mean it's not pro performance stuff that happens and so don't be that don't fall into this trap of thinking that because it's easier and it's always easier to be a bad leader than good just because it's easier if you really are interested in winning in this world that we live in right now with the the kind of diverse cognitively diverse interesting people who are going to perform and win with us then your approach has got to be how can i create an environment where individual people can thrive where they know the rules of engagement with each other and with me as a leader they know what what good looks like to me they know what high performance looks like to me they know their um their scope of authority and power and they know that i'll back them with the use of that these are the things that make people like sit down and think i'm just gonna kill it for this person people who are terrified they're the ones who run away when the shooting starts yeah you're you're so right i was just doing a mental checklist actually as you were talking about good bosses and bad bosses i've had and you're absolutely right the the bad bosses i had to jump when you know when they said jump and you know i had i had to you know follow the orders you know because they were terrifying whatever um but i was working out my exit plan from day two you know what i mean right whereas the good leaders which were empathetic empowering understanding you know delegating responsibility all the kind of stuff will come and talk about they're the ones that today i'll still be loyal to go out of my way to help talk about in the rooms where they're not in all that kind of stuff you know but it is important for us to say here that this is not about soft leaders with no ambition because i'm incredibly robust right i I am interested only in helping people win.

21:51I want them to thrive, but I want people to thrive in organizations that win in terms of their objectives. And if you think of the leaders that you're thinking of, it's not that they were just like, yeah, whatever, don't care about standards or anything else. They did all that with the behaviors that made interpersonally, that made it easier for you to want to perform. The other thing about being scared or using fear as a tactic is that it stops working over time because in America they do these. I remember when I went to high school there for one year, I went to haunted houses, and they aren't like the ones I'd seen, you know, just somebody putting up a scary skeleton.

22:30These are things, these are proper productions, like theater standard. And you go in, and the first time there's a jump scare, you lose your stuff, you pee a little. And then the next time it's a bit frightening. And the third time, and then what you realize is these things are winding productions through a house and by the time you come to the end of it somebody's jumping out with a bloody knife and you're like can we go for food and that's the thing leaders need to remember your tactic of fear anxiety all of that it'll give you one good jump and maybe a second and not only will they be looking for the exit they'll be like i'm bored of this yeah so right let's talk about some of the stuff in the book um getting on to great leaders i thought i'd start with self-awareness and this this that jumped out a lot and uh i smiled at this that 95 of people believe they're self-aware and yet the research would suggest that perhaps the reality is more like 10 or 15 yes that's a big gap isn't it yeah yeah this this work uh is not mine this is tasha yurik and she's amazing but to me it's so telling right because the gap i'm a humanistic psychologist by training and as a as a kind of as a as a group of psychologists we're interested in in incongruence the gap between what is and what what is said and here's another example of that a gap between what you think in terms of how you know yourself and how you actually know yourself and in that space pain lives right pain for you because you're unaware of your impact on others pain for others because you're unaware of your impact on others and to me it's one of those remarkable consistent things i meet leaders and i taught them and i'm like they tell me about how they handle the situation and i said well can you see how that might be interpreted a different way and it's like no well what if i told you this might make someone feel this it's like oh my god i never would have and that's that lack of and i in the book i talk about the idea of reflection right on your experiences that's not just a lack of self-awareness it's a lack of reflection on the experiences you have that could be informative what what tips would you give someone to help overcome that in congress because because i bet that must be a very common scenario and i mean i recognize that in myself i recognize that in some of the people i've led and you have to kind of bridge that gap and it can be quite scary because you're telling people things you know they might not like as well how what's the best way of getting over that so and becoming more self-aware yeah so there's two things for you as an individual just acknowledge the fact that however self-aware you think you are pick a percentage number and then take 25 off just to be that's being generous right so if you think you're 95 you just take 25 right off that and know that you've got work to do and most of us would probably not you know especially after listening to this they would not say 95 so but whatever number you pick if it's 50 just take 25 off and realize that there is likely scenarios where you've no idea about stuff about you or the impact you have and then you start thinking about the moments that really agitate you or excite you and this can be bad or good right there are things that make you feel greatly I cry at a lot of films it's just a thing but examining what kinds of things make you cry and what kind of things might be equally sad but not make you cry is informative about who you are the fact that you cry at films is informative about who you are examine the things that irritate you many people have um triggers and i use that in a non-scientific way but things that really get to them for me i have a number of them i'm quite pedantic but i have a special pattern and code for my diary and i went through today and placed colons where colon should be because they were missing and it really made my ears hot it made me mad that it wasn't right because it's such a small thing and it's making me mad to think about it right now i can see this but it's ridiculous yeah and but it's important for me because the fact that i'm a pedant about details will have an impact on the people have to work with me closely all right the person i don't have any here at the moment but we're looking into that and when that happens kind of a crucial piece of information right that missing not knowing the formula for my diary is going to create friction and i just think we don't examine these moments that's one thing when telling other people people love to say feedback's a gift it's not how it's interpreted by most people but there is a way you can do it and i i think and again when i talk about this i don't remember everything that i even wrote in the book at this stage but um one of the things you can do is permission yourself even if you and almost especially if you're a senior person talking to a junior person but definitely if you're talking to a peer or you're managing up you're talking to somebody else more senior permission yourself say look i know that you want to be the best possible kind of leader i spotted something that's getting in the way could i tell you about it and that's it and they may say no in the moment because it's not the right time they may say no in the moment because they're irritated by it but the beautiful thing of that approach and it's there's research that talks about this is when you permission yourself people are far more likely to want to hear what you have to say or be willing to hear what you say even if they don't want to and then far more likely to take action on it because you permissioned yourself and that i think really works well and then you've got to do them the courtesy and this is another place we all fall down if you're trying to tell people stuff to help them be more self-aware don't be woolly about it don't be like oh you know you know your tea the way you do your tea is a bit a bit weird um by the way if anyone can't see most people listening won't be able to see my tea So I've just drunk the milkiest tea I think there's ever been.

28:20We've just had this. Dom Dwight is going to be furious when he listens to this, by the way. Listen, you could be murdered for that kind of tea. I'm not safe when I leave this building or go anywhere. That was put on the table before you arrived. And when I saw it, I thought somebody hated you. They want me dead. That is not how tea should be. It is. That's it, right? It's bronze nectar. Indeed. That's what tea is. And if it's not bronze, it's not right. Anyway, but doing the woolly stuff about that doesn't help you because then you might be saying, what do you think is wrong with it? Is it not hot enough?

28:51Is it not cold? What is it? Me telling you specifically what I've spotted that would give you an insight to yourself is the key, and it's far less irritating. The specific thing is really powerful because I think most people tend to worry about the reaction and therefore they put it in general terms or they try and, you know, reduce it down a bit to being less specific so it's kind of more acceptable. That makes a lot of sense. But doing that, you know, when you talk to people about trying to advance their insight, you put it in a context that matters to them. So I know you want to be the best kind of leader.

29:22I know you're really interested in that internal promotion. It's in that context that I'm telling you I think this is getting in the way of that. And it's this specific thing. And if you stop doing that or you started doing that or you did it more or less, then that helps you in the thing that you want rather than I prefer it if. Yeah. And I like the framing of that in the context of a shared goal, where you're going together. So it's like, help us go in the same book together, rather than I'm distancing myself from you by telling you what you're not very good at. Yeah. You know, or making it about me, making it about us.

29:57That makes a lot of sense. And one thing that, a quote in the book that surprised me about self-assurance. My assumption, before reading your book, would have been self-assurance is something all great leaders have. They're naturally self-assured. And you said this, that you've noted in the remarkable diversity of people that you've coached and mentored. A lack of self-assurance present in highly competent and accomplished people. I was curious to know why that was. Because I think the assumption would be that, of course, they're all self-assured and they're successful people. Yeah. I suppose helpful if I say that don't conflate self-assurance with confidence.

30:31Self-assurance is the actual, tangible, and accurate assessment of your own skills and deficits, right? It's the idea that it's linked to self-awareness, but it's really about your skills in the context of your role, which includes the leadership skills as well as the management skills as well as the technical skills. And what I'm amazed by is the incongruence between people I meet. I'm like, you're bloody remarkable. They talk in ways. there's one woman I spoke to the other day and her job is is is fintech and crypto stuff inside a very large bank so already I am underwater and the way she talked about in a way that I could understand I was like this is remarkable what you're doing she says yeah I know a little bit about crypto and it's like that's not right she's like well you know I don't know because that's not right and the way I characterize it is that when you when you do that thing in the name of what is it humility perhaps what you're doing is lying to me and that's confusing because now I'm wondering are you trying to manipulate me by telling me you're not good at something I've just spent 15 minutes listening to you be brilliant at instead of just telling me that you're in a granular way and an objective way not just saying I'm really clever because that's annoying to everybody But in this specific area, I really have built up great knowledge.

31:56And I'm really good at explaining this and understanding this and using that. That's all we're asking for with this. And I'm amazed by the number of leaders who don't have it. I think leadership builds insecurity in people over time. I think they recognize that the world is moving faster. And their roles are so busy that they often find themselves behind the curve. when it came to the pandemic, leaders were behind the curve on how to interact with people and manage people who weren't right next to them in an office or down a corridor or on a different floor of the same building. And they never considered it after the pandemic, this idea that balance of life and well-being, which are not things that, you know, should shock people, leaders that people want.

32:43But they were like, I don't know how to have a conversation about somebody's mental health. I've never considered that my people are people outside of their role. And so it builds these small anxieties. Plus, we all watch great leaders and think, oh, my God, I'm terrible compared to, insert name here. Yeah. One thing, because this podcast gets to speak to lots of the best marketers on the planet, chief marketing officers of big organizations, a couple of things I notice really consistently is one is they all have this appetite for learning. it's almost like the more senior they get the more they realize they still have to learn it's it's a bit like i mean leadership is like a never-ending lifelong kind of lesson isn't it you never you never quite get there it's not like mastering you know one sort of functional thing it's like a constant thing and i noticed the appetite for learning and the second thing i noticed is a vulnerability and i mean because we talk about vulnerability in the book which is really powerful but also vulnerability of their position because when you are a leader i mean i I'll tell you one emotion I felt, going back to my moment I told you about, where I did this pivot from functional expert to leading this new division.

33:49I felt, for the first time in my career, a massive sense of loneliness. It was really interesting. And what I realized was no one else was doing what I was doing and no one was telling me how to do it. Because before it would be like, John, can you go and, you know, put this promotion in Tesco or, you know, can you go and launch this new flavor of drink or something? And it's like, well, there's a manual for that. I know what I'm doing. And then suddenly it's like nothing happens unless I lead. And that felt really – it made me feel very vulnerable. But it also made me feel quite lonely and isolated.

34:20So suddenly I – and I recognise this in a lot of people I interview – is this desire to learn and coupled with this sort of anxiety and vulnerability about the position. Yeah. Those kind of two things. It is. So the desire to learn part, I love this. I remember the exact moment I realised I could never be a finished product. and it was when I was going to do to see if I could teach a couple of classes at a university up north and I went with this stuff and I was talking about uh Goldman Daniel Goldman who's kind of the father of emotional literacy and I was talking about his theories and the room the three other scholars or better scholars proper academics who were talking to me they're like oh yeah that's really been superseded by the four branch model and I didn't know because they were in university it was only just happening i had no idea and i was just like oh my god that's true i was so invested in it too i knew everything every wrinkle of this other theory and now there's this new thing that was more elegant i researched it afterwards it was more elegant it was more appropriate it was more applicable and i was like damn it oh no and and that's when i realized it's always going to evolve and you know some things are going to be consistent gravity is real you know the earth is a globe these things aren't necessarily going to evolve but when it comes to to the this kind of stuff that we're doing in workplaces and dealing with human beings there's always going to be a new wrinkle and it's meant now that i'm so interested in finding lots of different ways to get insights yeah you mentioned rory uh sutherland yes so i i watched him on tiktok and and there's so many other people in the book there's this bloke who's a random linguist who i follow and has been incredibly informative and interesting for me working with lots of different types of people.

36:02So on the one side, we just need to recognize that learning new stuff is not about our ignorance. It's about our appetite for more intellect, right? That's what it is. It's not ignorance. It's an appetite. And I have a huge appetite for learning more stuff. It's exciting to me when I watch a TikTok and I'm like, I have never thought of that. and then I must I've got to follow it I've got to put a block in on my Saturday or Sunday and I've got to follow the rabbit and I think it's so incredibly exciting it's amazing that that learning part is really key and I and I and I want people to recognize that that there's no there's no negative about you from being excited about this and it's not a statement about how much you already know because we're our brains do not have a storage limit in that way but that does touch on one of the challenges of leadership isn't it that that people feel like as a leader you have to have all the answers and i know one of the chats in the book that really struck me because it kind of resonated with part of my career as well was the power of vulnerability and i remember in this one kind of chapter in my career where i was i was struggling with the team because they we were losing trust with each other and i was like why aren't they doing what i'm telling them to do you know and sort of thing and they were kind of you know all up in arms and i remember the HR director said to me, look, John, have you ever been open with them about how they're making you feel?

37:26I was like, well, no, because I'm the boss, because I don't do that. And it was really, it was one of those powerful meetings I ever had with them is I sat down and said, I'm actually feeling quite exposed. I'm feeling upset. I'm feeling challenged. I'm in this sort of thing. And I remember there was one person who couldn't make the meeting. And I got this constant missed call after which goes, what just happened? The entire team would be on the phone saying, John just opened up. And it was like this transformational moments with the team because i'd shown some vulnerability and i remember you know hr director who's kind of coached me in this point she said john the thing with you is you appear very slick every time you turn up you're confident you know the answer you've got the right you sound good you know you position things brilliantly you've got the answers and we just want to see that vulnerability come through and and then it will just you just you know you just create permission for people then to of course give it back you know people help people they don't help concepts yeah they help people this idea of a label they don't help labels they help people and and they've got to know that they can contribute because if you are presenting this idea of a slick i know everything which many leaders feel absolutely beholden to do like they have to there's no space for anybody to add their stuff i had a thought i had an idea but you seem so certain I won't bring it up but also that speaks to the sense of loneliness that engenders the sense of loneliness because you were talking about loneliness and isolation one of the things I think men broadly need to do as most women have a better and more accurate emotional vocabulary it's some of it socialized at the very least but most men are trained not to So everything is funneled into a couple of emotions.

39:13Sadness is rage. Disappointment is rage. Embarrassment is rage. Everything gets funneled into rage or one other thing that they're allowed to have. Stoicism, perhaps. I don't know if that's not an appropriate emotion. But if you can label it and look at isolation and loneliness as two very different things. Isolation is a fact. Loneliness is an option, right? So isolation, you being there and looked at for answers and perhaps not having peers in a very real sense, doesn't mean you have to be lonely because there's a whole group of people there who, whilst they won't be your friends because you're their boss, can at least be authentically connected, can recognize their channels for contribution and recognize when you need to be replaced contextually in a leadership role.

40:06You know those meetings where you go, I have them with some of our psychologists who know more stuff, right, because they are newer graduates and they know more stuff, more technical stuff. And the meeting will just be like, all right, I'm going to hand this over and Gina's going to take it from here because she's the one with the expertise. And I've loaned some of my credibility, but that person is the person leading. And it's not just that it's a relief for me to be able to listen in a different capacity. it also is less lonely because we're actually peers here in this context it brings on to another element of vulnerability which really struck me and i've seen this play out really well it is when you give credits to people uh because you know rather than take credit and also where you give away knowledge rather than protect knowledge because the assumption is in the kind of old model it would be is that power is the knowledge right and being the smartest person in the room all that kind of thing and i remember weird kind of comparison with this podcast but i mean when i started this thinking why don't you know why don't i be giving all this information away why people come on and like literally share everything they know because they're experts they should be charging for this and of course actually what i realized is by giving it giving it away you create credibility because you know you're you're back to self-assurance you're comfortable enough to be able to do that and actually it has power in crediting other people for success and sharing the the secret to what you know what you've done as well hoarding credit creates misery hoarding credit creates misery people who are sad anxious fearful who feel unrecognized do not do their best work you do not have to be a psychologist to know this right is there anybody who's not aware what it feels like to be sad anxious fearful or or feel unrecognized you're just not doing your best work and so it is a smart tactical if not strategic move for leaders to recognize that micro affirmation is a really important thing this is not in america the the kind of attaboy phenomena i think it happens way too much here as well though so somebody does something you say yeah well done it's like that's not praise and it's not feedback because feedback is actionable it is saying you know what made you think it's questioning curiously what made you think to do that that i don't know that we would have the same result if you hadn't done that thing you added that one link to this and suggested that we looked at it what made you think to do that that's proper affirmation that's a way to say to everybody i'm saying that thing that seems tiny and you might have ignored it is a difference maker that's that's i i realize because the other the thing about that that strikes me is when you say well done you're sort of going thank you for doing what i asked it's about you isn't it whereas doing that you're actually recognizing the skill and you're encouraging the learning in in the moment as well to build on it yeah both those things and even the the build on you know the thing that lots of people say in meetings i do not say this but in meetings i hear a lot of people and again it is mostly men say to build on yes and what they really mean is they said the same thing i'm going to say but i'm going to say it better and i'm going to say it afterwards and recency will mean that you only remember what i say and i think there's such a better way of doing it to say i would not have thought of this had it not been for muriel's idea here but here's an additional thing and then make it actually an additional thing or another thing is a way of giving praise and affirmation is the idea of does anybody else have anything and saying not saying no and then speaking for 10 minutes which is also a thing that people do but rather saying i was actually going to say something but i can't be what's just been said i couldn't say it better than it's just been right yeah and then you're done yeah don't say no i couldn't say it better and then do five minutes on trying to say it better just know what this individual and use their name has said has really captured the essence of what i was talking about yeah it's praise affirmation all of these things and it's easy and you don't you don't lose and that's the amazing part about you don't lose by doing it everybody can see what you're doing that's the thing isn't it it's it's exactly it's a win-win yeah you become better as a leader the person feels recognized you know and you build them up um one one bit in the book as well that uh i think is a this is something i personally uh you know find a real challenge with you talk about i've never heard this expression by the way about the library of your experiences a lovely phrase that actually because all of us as leaders we we have to tap into our experiences don't we and in different contexts use it and so on and and a feeling that i'm sure everyone listening has had many times is when you're in the room and you think why didn't i think of that when we were in the room i mean i i get it doing this job a lot podcast i had one the other day where i was like literally i was kicking myself going there were so many things i could have said in that moment or could have come back on or responded to or adding you know that sort of thing and you had some lovely tips about how best to sort of you know access those library of experiences in the moment yeah access to your library of experiences is is practice right um it is a reflective practice in part and it is also i write them down if i have an experience i i don't i remember i don't remember the last one but there was one in particular it was in my old house i lived in covent garden and i would walk through soho in the mornings which is always done with some trepidation especially on a monday when the weekend has ravaged the place and I was walking through and I went to the gym and I came back and the Caffe Nero, I don't know, is it Old Compton Street was open and so I went in and grabbed a coffee and these two young men were having a conversation.

45:53Both of them spoke English as a second language and spoke a different first language and they were talking about their potential and how they thought they were worth and could do so much more and one of them said to the other, but how can we when all anybody ever sees is this and they kind of pointed to themselves. And it was such a, it was, you know, here it is seven o 'clock in the morning. And I went home and I wrote it down immediately. I didn't write the whole story. I just said, Caffe Nero in the morning, purpose and worth. And it sits in my spreadsheet of things. And now I'm more readily able to access it because I did a little bit of work, right, to try and note it down.

46:34And I think that's something that we can all do. Think about the interactions you have that often in the moment you think, oh my god that's really powerful you may not even examine why but that was really interesting or powerful write it down there's anything truth about that because um uh i you know you do a lot of keynote speeches i do quite a lot of keynote speeches and i i never ever use notes and people often go how did you manage to say that and what they miss in the not using notes is i'm very prepared yes very prepared but i i over prepare and then i don't use because what happens is i've done all the preparation i've done all the thought i've i've written a bit like you've just said i've written down all the potential things i might say and then i almost have to dismiss it completely because once i'm in the moment i have to relax into the mode so that it will it will just come to me at the right point but if i try and follow notes and try and say exactly whatever it is i've written down i fail dismally i mean the difference in my performance is just stark night and day between those two things yeah and people will be terrified by you saying that yeah because i i like to have some notes and then i laugh about how little i use yeah and then don't use it at all right yeah and sometimes the bit i use of my notes is simply the name of the person who's introducing me because i want to make sure i get that right and often that's the kind of thing that might flip from my head but the thing you described there i talk about in the book is a clench right i have a lot of people who told me i should use different terminology but i think it's evocative and i think it's part of the problem yeah your brain is not the problem whether you be neurotypical or neuroatypical your brain is not the problem it is an almost unlimited resource when functioning optimally and the thing that stops is that we clench the funnel that would would allow the information to come out because my my in my conversations with you today with anybody when people talk the appropriate the appropriate stories anecdotes pieces of research or ideas they're jumping into my brain so much so that I often have a book with me a little piece of paper so I can just write it down so it doesn't get lost they're just jumping into my brain because I'm not clenching I'm not going oh my god I've got to be able to think of something around that because I know that I've got a library of experiences that will cover this or something approximate to it that will work and then it's just my job to breathe yeah and people think that's some not and i'm not a woo woo person i'm a scientist but you know four box breathing some meditative breathing something like that in the midst of a conversation will just allow you that little channel that would otherwise flood the exact thing you need to your brain it will unconstrict it and allow that to come and that's it does work it really really does work the other tactic i use that situation i mean a bit like the conversation we had at creative equals actually was i only think about you in the conversation i'm having i'm not thinking about the 500 people and what they need or what they're thinking about their reactions or their faces i'm just thinking this is a conversation between two people and i i know from the time that we've spent before you know you're a great person you're eloquent you're able to cope with whatever i'm going to do i'm just going to relax i'm just going to talk to you as if we're talking just the two of us yeah there's no cameras there's no lights There's no audience.

49:55And I've always found that framing to be really helpful. And I've just, and whenever I coach people on how they do the talk, I said, just put me in the seat. Imagine I'm the audience of one. How would you talk to me? Yeah. You know, and then you take away all that sort of clenching of the audience, the lighting, the cameras. What if I say the wrong thing? And I also say, no one knew what you were going to say. Yeah. That you didn't say. So, you know, no one's going to sit there and go, ah, he didn't mention this. They're not looking at your transcript before you've done it. Yeah, exactly. Because they're just not.

50:25I think one of the things with this is when I teach, I teach a storytelling class. It's one of my favorite things, just helping people to tell their own kind of story in their own kind of way. And when we do this, I often get this, well, I can do it, but not in front of crowds. And so I ask the question, how many? Is one person? No, that's fine. Is two? Fine. Is 10? And we keep going up, and it's like 10. Well, my boardroom is 10, and so that feels fine. 11 and you suddenly it's laughable we start to laugh because you suddenly realize at some point you're gonna have to pick a number and then now you've got this ridiculous scenario where it's 63 people you can no longer speak cameras the same thing can you do it with one camera that's not on oh yeah yeah yeah two cameras that are not on yeah if i put one of the cameras on it's and it just you suddenly realize that we're just creating obstacles that make us clench rather than thinking the lights the cameras are nothing to do with the fact that you are talking to a real human being it's the biggest thing that i think makes people better in virtual communication is recognizing you are not talking to a screen that would be madness yeah you are talking to real people or real persons up in a different space and once you think of it that way your body language relaxes and you start to to speak as if speaking to a real person because you are yeah completely now talking about people's fears one of the bits in the book is how you deal with your own weaknesses as well i think probably a lot of us although it's interesting in the book you differentiate between men and women quite differently in terms of you know whether we think we're good enough for the job and how we perceive our own weaknesses as a big divergence there wasn't there but that seems to be an inhibitor for a lot of people isn't it when they're stepping into leadership positions their position that they're not yet the finished article Yeah, we punish people differentially for their weaknesses or areas of development.