Episode 27 - The Meaning of Trust: Interview With Csaba Toth from ICQ Global

Founder of ICQ Global, an organisation that helps leaders make sense of why people behave, think, and feel so differently so they can unlock their own potential and lead others in a way that they feel engaged and inspired to create synergy. ICQ Global has combined the latest business data with academic research to develop the multi-award-winning, internationally accredited portfolio of assessments, training, and coaching that has already benefited Fortune 500 companies, national governments, universities, and local businesses. Additionally, to this, he’s just released his already acclaimed the best-selling book Uncommon Sense in Unusual Times collaborating with the likes of Marshall Goldsmith and John Mattone. Today, we discuss what is the meaning of trust?

You Can Read the Transcript of Our Interview Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to Sticky Interviews. I'm Nathan Simmonds, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM, Making Business Matter, the home of Sticky Learning. We are the provider of leadership development and soft skills training to the grocery and manufacturing industry. The idea of these interviews is to share great ideas, great concepts, and great ways these skills are being used to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do. Welcome to the show.

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to this Stick Interview with me, Nathan Simmonds, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM, Making Business Matter. Now, I have, I would say, a fairly longterm friend, acquaintance in a man by the name of Csaba Toth, who is a phenomenal mind around creating and developing the mindsets of businesses and understanding what the group intellect is. He is the founder of ICQ Global, which is an organization that helps leaders get ahead on understanding not just their own mindset, but the group mindset, providing a complete range of services that help businesses understand how their people are communicating with each other, departmentally, as well as geographically, which I think is a phenomenal thing, in itself, when we look at this assessment.

Nathan Simmonds:

Additionally to this, he's just released his already acclaimed bestselling book, Uncommon Sense in Unusual Times, which is beautiful, by the way. I love the cover of this. Collaborating with the likes of Marshall Goldsmith and John Mattone. And those people that don't know who John is, he was Steve Jobs' coach. And that's just to name a few people that are contributing to this and collaborating on this book, which is amazing. Really looking forward to getting in depth with some more of this conversation. Why? Because Csaba actually trained me in this assessment process and in this profiling. We haven't seen each other for awhile, I don't think. There's been a lot of stuff going on for him and his business and also me and my business. And we're now bringing this conversation together to get a deeper understanding of what's been happening and share some of those new insights with the likes of yourselves, as well.

Nathan Simmonds:

So Csaba, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.

Csaba Toth:

Thank you for inviting me.

Csaba Toth - Founder of ICQ Global

Nathan Simmonds:

It's a pleasure. Look, before we get into the next set of questions, the first question that I always ask people on this interview series is, why do you do what you do?

Csaba Toth:

I think the answer is pretty simple because I think the best solutions are born out of pain and frustration and [inaudible 00:02:29] is a prime example of that. I studied international management at Sussex and my dissertation was about the implications in Eastern and Western Europe in joint ventures. So it was really specific. I got a good grade. And then, as soon as I finished, I started my own company, which was a restaurant booking site. We started with 35 restaurants here in Brighton and, in one year, we had 5500 all over the UK, became the fastest growing and biggest restaurant booking website in the United Kingdom.

Csaba Toth:

So on paper, everything made sense. It became a joint venture with a software company and that's where it went wrong because I just couldn't work with the other CEO, who was French. And I'm not saying there was a problem, but definitely I couldn't stand him. So on paper, we were getting the results, we were growing, but on a personal level, I thought, "mm-mm (negative)." So we got to the point where we had to get out of the business. We sold the shares. The business is still online. And this is when I started my research. I didn't understand. How come that was the exact topic of my dissertation and that department, itself, is number one in the world in its category, I had years of experience, but I couldn't put that theory into practice? It just didn't make sense.

Csaba Toth:

So I got certified in a lot of different things; psychometric assessment, leadership models, intercultural models. And I wanted to understand what went wrong and how we could fix it. And the result of that research is something called global DISC, which is now ICF accredited and we won six international awards in the last 12 months and we have certified partners in 29 countries now. So that's the story behind it because I realized that it wasn't only my problem. It was the people that had the same problem, but they don't even know about it. They don't know they have an issue. They don't know how serious it is. So they are not actively looking for a solution or, when they do, they don't realize that most of the solutions are outdated or incomplete. And this was a really painful journey, but it seems to be working now.

Nathan Simmonds:

Yeah. It's not just because they're from so on, and so on, and so on. I think we use that as an excuse. "Oh, there's Bob. Oh, it's just because he's French. Oh, there's Yan. It's just because he's Dutch. That's the way they work." Well, actually, yeah, there is some cultural stuff here. There are some potentially kind of cultural biases that sit in there, but then when we get to understand how people work, we can say, "Okay, that's why they're approaching it this way." When we understand how we're approaching it, we can see the world a bit differently. We can then collaborate more clearly and we can include people because we can understand how they're seeing the world and get those two viewpoints, which actually makes a better outcome in the long run.

Csaba Toth:

Yes, but it's not [inaudible 00:05:19] and this is the problem, that we see the world from our perspective. And that's why I believe that cultural differences are clashes of common senses, hence the title of the book, Uncommon Sense in Unusual Times. Because if that's how you approach the topic, then it's not a binary option. You don't have to win so the other person has to lose. That's not how it works. No. You're right from your perspective. I'm right from mine. We have a disagreement, so let's find out what the reason is. What do you know that I don't? What can you see that I cannot?

Csaba Toth:

And I also fully agree with you that most people think that culture equals nationality, or maybe generations, or maybe now they talk about gender. So when a company focuses on increasing diversity, these are the main three culture groups that they focus on. But if you look at the research where they compare 17 different culture groups in terms of practicality, in terms of range of differences, then these were the bottom three, the most unreliable ones, the most impractical ones. And if you think about it, it makes sense because you don't choose your gender or generation or country of origin, but you learn how to navigate in that environment. Culture is not who we are, it's what we are used to. And country of origin is just one of the 15 or 20 culture groups that we belong to at the same time. Maybe that's the most visible one, the most easily disclosed one, but if you focus on only the country of origin, it's almost like just washing your head and not the rest of the body. It's okay for awhile, but for how long?

Csaba Toth:

So when you talk to someone, what are the chances that the other person belongs to the same 15 or 20 culture groups like you, even in your family? It's next to zero. Every single conversation is a cross-culture dialogue, but most people don't know about it. And even if you Google inter-culture or cross-culture, then you find a lot of counter briefings. But culture shift doesn't happen because you don't know how to celebrate Christmas in the UK or in Germany. It happens when you interact with people and they react differently to what you expect. So you cannot run on autopilot. You have to use your neocortex constantly and it is draining and people are burning out. That's the problem. But intercultural equals interpersonal, not just international. If you have a team with more than one person, it's already multicultural, even if it's not international, and that's the key to our topic and that's exactly what I discovered doing my research, that it was completely ignored.

Nathan Simmonds:

As you were saying that, the thing that was coming up for me is you have this generational gap. So you see your grandparents or parents and then you see the children. And then maybe the children are gay, lesbian, transgender, so all of these kind of gender stereotypes or differences go out the window. And then, even in a family environment, which is geographically in the same location, have no idea what's going on because there is such a safe divide between the cultures, the understanding, and that interpersonal relationship because the parents can't understand what's going on for the children. So the communication breaks down.

Csaba Toth:

Yeah, because they have different conditioning. And that's why I mean by culture, that this is something we are used to. When we grew up and it wasn't polite to talk about,