Exponential Leadership

Today I’m speaking to Jackie Handy. Her mission is “ensure everyone feels safe, valued and understood at work”. She’s the creator of the BRAVEwork programme, which gives businesses training in diversity, equity and inclusion, but in a slow and manageable way. That the ethos she’s brought to her book, “the little book of belonging”, which is 52 weeks worth of simple ideas. She says inclusivity opens up a more motivated and successful workforce, and makes companies more trusted and respected. 

We start by discussing various labels and identifiers, such as sex, gender, cis and genderfluidity. We move on to talking about trans people in the workplace, and the difficulties of educating people and how often we can just be preaching to the converted. We talk about how tiny remarks can really add up when they come in droves. She gives us two tips for businesses, and the difficulties we’re all facing. We discuss problems of trust and mentality, and how to foster that in a hybrid working environment. We end by talking about the dichotomy of getting on with a task and being done with it, versus the human element of being part of a team.

My guest today is Tsitsi Mutendi. She’s a family business expert in Africa, who worked in Zimbabwe before going to Johannesburg. She specialises in building multigenerational family wealth. She’s currently building brands that include a Montessori primary school in Harare, and a network to link family businesses together. 

She first tells us about her work helping families discover their core motivations, history and values. We spend a long time speaking about the clash of legal and cultural norms, and how the law looks at different people in Africa. After that, we try and work out what makes people giants. Tsitsi tells us about how important it is to think about broad societal questions about where we are in the conversation, and what parts we’re playing and what parts we aren’t. We finish by talking about who we trust, and why?

Today my guest is the queen of love and the queen of the african mindset, Dr Beatrice Lukose. She started out at the slopes of Mount Kenya, and has now travelled to Europe to be a speaker, diplomat, and mother. She’s the author of three books about healthy marriage, which are all well received. She’s also the European Coordinator of Women in Business Network, helping provide women in business access to European market opportunities. To list everything she does to help people will take the entire podcast. 

We begin by just trying to figure out what love is, and she speaks about the four pillars of love. She has a lot to say about how to manage being married business partners. We talk about the difference in connectedness between Europe and Africa, and how she felt in Europe the first time. I speak about somebody I know who used hostage negotiation techniques with his teenage kids, which leads us onto cognitive empathy and family relationships. We end by talking about the importance of random acts of kindness, and how much it can improve somebody’s day.

Does the phrase “leadership is a relationship” hold the same for all cultures? I’ve approached this thesis for the podcast somewhat as a human universal. However, speaking to Beatrice showed me the culture differences between Africa and Europe in terms of relationships. 
It sounds like it’s a much lesser jump to have such a dynamic in the workplace in Africa, and more complex in Europe. The motivations and incentives are different, socially, so the end result of that kind of approach is going to change. Perhaps in Europe it’s more novel, something to set the company apart and motivate people. I wonder what the response would be in the more socially minded Africa.  

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. 

~John Quincy Adams 

https://nl.linkedin.com/in/dr-beatrice-lukose-mba-dba-52b68b46 
https://www.facebook.com/public/B%C3%A9atrice-Lukose 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcSkCWvMb3k 
https://imotivat.com/  https://mindflixmedia.com/

Today I’m speaking to Investor and academic Professor Adrian Saville. He’s from the Gordon Institute of Business Science, and in the past 15 years, has been given the school’s Excellence in Teaching Award thirteen times. He likes to give his students “impossible questions” and make sure they find an answer. 



We start by talking about the investment club he started in 1994, which formed the basis for his whole career. We then ask what pushes against progress, and what role for-profit organisations have to make good, purposeful change. A topic we talk about in depth is inclusivity, and exactly how much a boardroom can have at any one time. We end by talking about coaching and the importance of belonging. Without any further discussion, let’s hear from Adrian. 


Adrian talked about economics should start with defining wellbeing. I wonder whether or not that works in practice the same way it does in the classroom. Who gets to define my wellbeing, and do they have my individual interests at heart? How often can a nation state get to work with specifics, rather than broad generalisations considering the vast differences across demographics? How aligned are they with mine, considering the goals of running a country, that being prosperity in order to pay for things, can play against what helps me stay happy day-to-day. He also said that very obvious problems make obvious market gaps for benevolent businesses. Comedian Henning Wehn said that charity is a failure of government’s responsibilities. But maybe there are some charities and benevolent companies that are just forced into existence based around this very dilemma. Perhaps the two will just always have to work together. 

Bio
Pursey Heugens is a professor of organisation theory, development, and change at the Department of Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM). His research interests include comparative corporate governance, business ethics, and bureaucracy, institutional, and demographic theories of organisation. He has won numerous awards and his specialties include: research methods, issues management, beer breweries, genetically modified food industry. 

Summary
The key word for our discussion is identity. We begin by talking about how people use disposable income in the third world. We move on to conspicuous consumption and how people use craft beer as a statement. One thing we spend a long time discussing is the relationship between brand and consumer, is it a reciprocal relationship? We close by talking about Dolly Parton and country music, and how songs like Coat of Many Colours show the importance of identity. 

Reflection
What’s the line between a product for your identity and a product for necessity? I feel no connection to where I fill up my car and I’m not going to pay for artisan craft petrol, but I do choose my ornaments extremely carefully. Perhaps it comes down to how many people see me, and my connection is to those people around me. Although even if it’s just myself sometimes, I hardly want to drink a wine made by somebody I greatly dislike. I remember reading The Life Changing Magic of Tidying by Marie Kondo, where she says you should hold something you own and ask “does this spark joy” as to whether or not to keep it. Maybe I’ll try a variation on that. Does this say something about me? I wonder what I’d end up being attracted towards. 

Do you think, like Rasmus Hougaard, that to lead other people effectively, we need to avoid “mental rigidness”? 

Bio

Today we have our first professor on the podcast, John B Molidor. He's President of Michigan State University Flint Area Medical Education. He focuses on helping people understand how their brain, communication and interviewing can work together.

Synopsis

We begin at the very beginning, by talking about how babies connect with people. This leads us to discuss facial expressions and the limits of video calling. We speak a lot about how brains are wired, and what we can do to change that later in life. He tells us about how labels can affect us and how we can avoid them. One of the parts of neuroscience I found really fascinating was talking about the connection between the body and the brain. We finish by talking about intentionality, and how important deliberate actions can be to us. 

Reflection

I think what I found interesting about this discussion with John was that cut off around about 25 years of age. I finally came out when I was 26, I think it's because I realized at that time that who I was was not going to change. I was just wondering how much are we actually influencing people around us that they have to carry that with them the rest of their lives. I mean, when we're going into work in our early twenties, how much of that relationship burden we get saddled with are we going to be stranded with when we're over the age of 27, and how are we gonna deal with it now with a pandemic being rampant and we're not really getting that personal interaction. Are we gonna be restructuring brains forever? And could we use neuroplasticity, even if we have to push it to the limits, to reconnect as people?

Well, I know from personal experience that after my PTSD in the military it took me a while to get back, to connect with people. And I now know that it's possible, but it takes a lot of work. So, can we all commit to helping people under the age of 25 to find relationships that are worthwhile, authentic, and helps them to understand the connection between humans and how that is really, really important to be able to do our work properly? Well, I'm there, and I will, and I hope you are too.

More from John
https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-b-molidor-ph-d-2916218
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007OWRBLI/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0

Tom Peters said that Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing. What do you think?

Bio

Hannes Leroy is Associate Professor at Erasmus University and Distinguished Research Professor at Exeter Business School. As Academic Director of the Erasmus Center of Leadership, Hannes helps to oversee the quality of leadership development at different levels in Erasmus University (undergraduate, graduate, post-graduate, and executive education). Furthermore, as steward of the League of Leadership initiative he helps to oversee an international consortium of top business schools across the world with the mission of collectively enhancing quality standards of leadership development. Aligned with these efforts, Hannes has published numerous studies on leadership and its development in top journals, has taught a wide variety of leadership classes and is principal coordinator of various leadership development curricula.   

Summary 
We start by talking about how you need to be curious about people in order to motivate them. This leads us on to talking to your boss, and the importance of each party being able to admit mistakes. Next, we discuss being challenged as a leader, and what challenges leaders are facing. We close by asking if alignment is the ultimate form of authenticity.  

Reflection 

Hannes said that your non-verbal signals have to correspond to what you’re saying. I wonder how much people can trust somebody if their main point of contact is emails and the occasional zoom call. How many non-verbal signals can somebody’s brain pick up on, if they’re not around the person enough? That’s something I didn’t really think about in office working, the greater chance of creating that relationship just with your small day-to-day actions. I remember Cynthia Bryant talking about the importance of closing your eyes and trying to figure out what you can tell beyond that. Maybe I should now do the opposite, keep my eyes open but try not to listen, putting my fingers in my ears or something. How much information can I impart just beyond the words I’m saying?

More about Hannes

https://www.ted.com/talks/hannes_leroy_i_was_never_trained_for_this

https://www.rsm.nl/people/hannes-leroy/   

www.rsm.nl/leadership/ 

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-011-1036-1

‘We all have common ground, we are all human at the very core, we all experience the same emotions, just about different things and in different ways.’

Bio
Jennifer Johnson is not only an award-winning businesswoman and lawyer, but she is the immediate past president of the Mississippi bar association. The Mississippi bar is a compulsory bar. Every lawyer in Mississippi has to pay into it, but historically not every lawyer has been represented. Jennifer has set the first steps into making an integrated future a reality. I am proud to talk to this 21st-century lawyer, advocate, award winner and awesome mother on the podcast today.

Synopsis

She starts by talking about how she was elected and the state of the bar.   We talk about how some people don’t see a racial issue in that state and the idea of racism being “over”. The need to temper honesty with compassion, and the strength gained with diversity. We end by talking about the personal truths of each person, how people can end up being defined by a social category they are assigned to, and how important it is that we don’t see those so vividly, and connect with each other.

References
Books / Articles
Radical Candour
Thanks for the Feedback

Organisations
The Mississippi Bar Association
Harvard Law School
University of Southern Mississippi
Oscher Lifelong Learning Institute
ABOTA, the American Board of Trial Advocates
The Magnolia Bar Association

People
George Floyd
Robert Gibbs
Sacha Baron-Cohen
Sir Simon Philip Baron-Cohen
Douglas Stone
Sheila Heen
Chris Voss

General Powell said that great leaders are great simplifiers, offering a solution everyone can understand? What do you think?

Bio
 
Vlada started his career in strategy consulting under the leadership of Tim Hough, former Managing Partner of Bain & Company’s Johannesburg office. Tim was an astonishing leader, mentor and strategist who helped fast-track Vlada’s career within the industry. 
 
Effective in engaging with stakeholders throughout the life cycle of consulting projects, from the sales process to implementation where necessary. He has presented to Board-level Executives and has worked collaboratively with culturally and functionally diverse teams across 14 different countries. 
 
Specialising in strategy, business model and organisational design, Vlada prides himself on delivering excellence in all that he does, and has consistently achieved excellent feedback from organisations about the quality of products and strategies delivered to date. 
 
Since joining NIBC he has worked closely with ExCo members to lead strategy and organisational design projects that have reshaped the organisation and continue to work in identifying and implementing organisational bottlenecks that may impede their strategic intent. 

Synopsis:

We talk at great length about organisations as complex adaptive systems. This is especially relevant as we work more from home and connections become more tenuous. 

He tells us how an underlying purpose is essential to join a large operation together. We then talk about managing people and how personnel need to be suited to the context the business operates in. We move onto talking about how the pace of innovation is increasing, the fact people need to adapt, and the challenge inherent in that in both the long and short term.

Reflection

Vlad said that a leader may excel in a business at one stage of its life, and yet become irrelevant in a very short space of time when the business enters a new phase or the environment changes. It is a little scary on a personal level, but I think if we learn to dance in the moment and move like the proverbial willow in the wind, we can see the change for what it is and adapt. Rigidity is our biggest enemy as a leader.

Youtube: https://youtu.be/g7psaPFkDk8
Blog: https://exponentially.me/podcasts/004/

More from Vlad

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lakcevic 

http://www.genesis-analytics.com/ 

http://www.africaia.com/ 

If a leader takes people where they want to go, does a great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be?

Bio

Cynthia Bryant has worked in federal agencies for over 20 years. She has led mediations to resolve workplace conflicts and been part of an advising body to the president on diversity and inclusion. She has served on the boards at the University of Kansas Law School, and the Seeing Eye guide dog school, which incidentally, is close to her heart as she uses a guide dog too.

Synopsis

We begin by talking about her experiences with President Jimmy Carter, before moving onto broader topics about how disability knows no race or colour or gender. She gives incredible insight into the difficulties of segregation, and the search for solutions that help people move forward. We then talk about the best qualities of a leader, how to engage with people and deal with their assumptions. We close by discussing why we need to take a moment, shut our eyes, and just listen. When we see less , we often hear more.


Reflection

Something I found interesting was her mother deliberately exposing her to a wide range of cultures growing up, causing her to see empathy as an essential quality in a leader, especially as she talked about the difficulties of segregation. I know I have cast my net quite wide over my lifetime, but don't we all sometimes miss something?

More from Cynthia

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cynthia-bryant-8945b024