Impactful: The Podcast

In this podcast, Julia and Andrew turn their thinking towards purpose. What is purpose and how has this changed with the impact of Covid-19. The discussion was sparked by a McKinsey quarterly article about purpose shifting from why to how. Julia was really inspired by this article, because she has been talking for a long time about purpose, and why it’s important for companies to have purpose, and we often talk about purpose before profits people have started to reevaluate what their own personal purpose is, and how they want to contribute to society.

business is a force for good. But the more that organisations can get clear on their purpose, and collectively with their team members get clear on the purpose of the business, I think it absolutely gives people that NorthStar, you know people know where they’re going. And that gives them the safety and security and certainty that many of us have been lacking over the last few months.

The duo also touch on the impact of Covid-19 on the corporate social responsibility agenda. Andrew talks about the recent documentary on the planet with Prince William and how young people are changing their attitudes. They delve into John Mackey, Conscious Leadership to look at purpose along with Simon Sinek’s The Infinite Game where he clearly sets out the difference between a finite and an infinite mindset. They then discuss companies that practice what they preach.

Purpose is about that beating heart in the organisation, pushing blood and oxygen, that excitement, that infectiousness that it talks about in a positive infectiousness around the organisation. It is about creating win-win situations by getting your teams galvanized behind your purpose.  

SHOW NOTES

00:46 McKinsey Quarterly: Purpose: Shifting from why to how April 2020

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/purpose-shifting-from-why-to-how#

01:44 Why it is important to have purpose

03:47 It’s more than just ticking boxes it is about hard wiring it into the DNA of a business.

04:33 A few years ago, Unilever came up what they called a massive transformational purpose for each of their different brands. And the brands that are totally have fully embraced this.

05:21 Ethical and moral dilemmas related to Covid-19 volunteering

07:00 How young people are changing attitudes.

10:25 the significance of what it means to write about issues in company reports

12:36 Conscious Leadership John Mackey

13:35 The Infinite Game Simon Sinek

13:56 https://www.zappos.com/

19:44 ”… when stakeholders so for stakeholders, we could read customers, employee shareholders anyone participate in and help evolve an organization’s higher purpose, it can be infectious. The whole company receives an extra boost of alignment. There are a few things More powerful than a shared commitment to a higher purpose among all relevant stakeholders, this allows everyone to feel connected to the beating heart of the organisation, at least to some degree…” Conscious Leadership John Mackey.

23:00 “When stakeholders see important decisions being made in ways that are aligned with the company’s core values. And when they see leaders actually engaged with that higher purpose. It has enormous impact, for lack of a better word, it gives people faith.” Conscious Leadership John Mackey

With the backdrop of a COVID pandemic Julia and Andrew tackle leadership and discuss various models linked to the herd.

There’s a real need for leaders to be agile and flexible. So what does that mean to Julia and Andrew? We find out through a canter looking at how the herd operates and challenging old styles of leadership

During the discussion the pair draw a direct link between how good our leaders are and their ability to navigate the current situation, inspire and motivate others and the results of the company. Finding a direct linear connection and empirical evidence of how if we’ve got better leaders, we can actually improve team performance and get better results.

The couple touch on the importance of and learning and development because there is a point at which leadership, when we’re looking at leadership, those that are planning and looking at how things are run, do need to have more of a commercial mind about them.

In essence we are all  leaders, but what could shared leadership look like in an organisation and what can we learn from the herd?

Julia sets out how the mare leads at the front and the stallion at the back but what happens at the side this leads to  dialogue on collaboration and the importance of empowering your teams. To round off the conversation Julia and Andrew look at the impact on millennials

Podcast Show Notes

01:00 The need to develop better leaders

01:42 Is leadership a soft skill?

01:52 The concept of shared leadership

02:47 Comparing the old styles of leadership

04:40 What is shared leadership and how do we learn from the herd?

05:05 It’s about leading from the front

05:34 Pull / push energy

06:45 Channeling energy

07:00 Who is leading and who is providing energy from the back?

09:00Leading from the side

10:13 Being a herd member means you are still a leader

10:57 The power of empowerment

11:50 Accountability

12:54 It’s back to nature

13:57 Deloitte Human Capital Survey 2020

16:35 Jim Collins the importance of talent

In this episode Julia and Andrew look at to re-engage your teams as they start to return to work after furlough or a long period of home working.

Julia introduces a seven step pyramid model on how  to start the process of rebuilding  relationships based on what she learned from a  horse trainer in America. The trainer observed horse rituals at a waterholes and how the horses interacted with each other to build relationships within the herd.

Horses are good at hanging out together doing something and doing nothing. And in the workplace, when we were actually physically in the workplace, the doing nothing would be the bit for Julia and Andrew,  which is the water cooler talk, when we were hanging out. They pick up on the importance of reestablishing and developing good connections.

Andrew picks up on the importance of being self-aware about oneself and others and putting yourself into other people’s shoes and introduces a technique called Johari’s Window created by two American professors, Joe Luft and Harry Ingham, in the 1950s. So how do we press the connection reset button? What should we all be thinking about? It includes getting our body language right and knowing our own personal stories and how to use them in the reconnecting

Podcast Show Notes

00:48 How do we get back to re-engaging in the workplace.

01:20 Waterhole rituals and the human water cooler conversations

01:48 Horses are good at hanging out together doing something and doing nothing

03:10 The magic of relationships comes in that time when we just hang out.

04:55 The importance of the self-awareness dial

06:10 Johari’s Window – devised in the 1950s by and they were two psychology professors in California.

09:07 Horses are always asking each other questions when they meet each other, which are: Who are you? What do you do and how do you operate?

10:00 It’s about listening and body language, right, to find out how we’re now operating in the New World.

11:03 Pressing the reset button on all of our relationships.

11:06 A powerful exercise to do, is  to get people to share a time that they went through some adversity or some challenge.

11:40 Sharing their experience and their storytelling

15:04 Horses feel great respect for each other. And so the foundations are building trust, and creating respect.

17:09 Effective listening.

18:00 Body language, the non-verbals, making sure we get the words right.

The importance of agility and being agile and flexible in a fast moving world  is explored in this episode of Impactful the Podcast, especially with the threat of  potential and UK-wide local lockdowns.

The Impactful duo look at the problems with a rigid working practices and what we can learn from the recent national lockdown. Julia and Andrew look at structure relating it to a pendulum swinging  between structure and no structure and what that shows us in terms of fluidity, freedom and security. They bring in their personal experiences to highlight how we can adapt to build momentum.

Julia discusses a piece of research that Accenture did on leadership imperatives for an agile business and its three pillars here, of what is called demystifying leadership and  what we can learn from high performance leaders. Now we’re all coming back to work and everyone’s got very different agendas about how they want to return  it comes down to different levels of flexibility and agility to respond to what’s going on and which is very, very different.

Can businesses be agile and flexible? Andrew talks about the importance of communication especially internally and the two then chat about employee engagement with reference to Robert Dilts logical levels of change, looking at environment behaviours, capabilities, beliefs, identity, identity, and purpose.

Podcast Show Notes

01:54 Importance of transferable skills in the workplace

02:39 Are there barriers?

03:07 Structures operating like a pendulum

03:22 Structure gives freedom

03:40 Structure security

04:47 Proactive &  Reactive – learning from the herd

09:15 Accenture Report  – The Three Pillars

09:58 Pulling in the same direction

10:55 Shared Consensus

11:18 Talent & Skills

13:05 Employee engagement and internal comms

14:28 The Comfort zone

16:12 Trust as a leader

16:56 Robert Dilts – Logical Levels of Change

As leaders, we all know that we need to sometimes have difficult conversations.  Julia refers to them as courageous conversations.

These are conversations, which, if they took place, would improve life for us and everyone else in our teams. The problem is that fear often causes us to put this off and, as a result, the offending team member continues to provide sub-standard performance, miss deadlines, engage interpersonal conflicts and exhibit ‘toxic’ behaviour.

Andrew and Julia discuss the emotions involved and how important thoughtful, unambiguous and honest conversations are. During their conversation they look at feedback, different personality styles and tapping in to your inner self.

In Julia’s book The Alchemy of Change she gives tips on how to approach courageous conversations using a framework that she calls the 6 C’s to successful Courageous conversations:

Centre: the key that you stay in charge of yourself, your purpose and your emotions energy throughout any courageous conversations remembering to breath.

Clarity:  being clear on the reason for the conversation and the outcome that you desire

Curiosity: cultivating an attitude of discovery and curiosity.

Coherence:  showing you’ve heard and understood and trying to understand the other person so well you can make their argument for them.

Congruence: when you sense the other person has said all they want to, then it’s your turn

Co-Create Closure: building new solutions.

Communication is essential in business. Learning to read body language and listening is essential to notice any inconsistencies in what is being said.

Podcast Show Notes:

* What are courageous conversations (00:50)* Emotions  (2:34)* The Six-Step Process (3:30) Email us for our fact sheet* Being Centre and Present (4:19)* Clarity on Outcomes (5:00)* Curiosity (5:32)* Coherent (6:20)* Congruent (6:44)* Co-Create (7:06)* Make Gravitas count (8:46)* The Power of the Horses to lead the way (9:56)* Creating Time & Space ( 12:57)* Understanding Personality Types (15:43)* The Chair Exercise (18:17)

In this episode we talk around boundaries and what they mean especially in the workplace and for us both and how the horses have been masters at teaching Julia all about boundaries.

The word boundary is a word in common use and for clarity Julia defines it as “a limit, something we will permit or not into our lives”. Our boundaries define what type of person we are and therefore the opportunities that we’re going to let in our life. Often a boundary can be imagined like a fence that we’ve got around ourselves, and it’s our responsibility to ensure that that fencing is in good repair, because otherwise we’ll let things into our lives that we don’t really want.

Our physical boundaries are probably the ones that we’re most familiar with, in terms of people that we let into our personal space. There also mental and psychological boundaries as well as spiritual boundaries.   So, a boundary is really shaping what we’re going to allow into our lives and why is that important?  It helps create real clarity about what we want into our lives and what we don’t want into our lives.

Julia explains the problems about not setting boundaries by recalling stories with the horses. After all boundaries are there to protect us and what clients get out of working with her horses.

Andrew then shares a workplace story which leads on to a discussion around the benefits of contracting.

Julia and Andrew then discuss how anger and resentment can build up in personal relationships before summing up

Podcast Show Notes

* What are boundaries? (00:45)* What are the different types of boundaries? (1:37)* Boundaries are there to protect us (2:38)* The Aha moment – learning from the horses (3:55)* Contracting in the workplace (5:52)* The box model of contracting (6:20) * Bracken teaches Julia about trust (7:12)* Rules of the game (11:38)* The working from home trust problem (15:15)* The problem of not speaking up (17:11)* Having honest conversations (18:24)

Disraeli  said: “what we anticipate seldom occurs, what we least expect, generally occurs.”

That is the basis for this episode on our comfort zone. 

Andrew and Julia discuss the comfort zone model. Quite simplistically, all of us have a comfort zone that is the area in which we feel safe and secure. And these are kind of the activities we do each and every day, and quite comfortable doing them then at the next time. level we have the growth of the learning zone.

But once we step out of our comfort zone, we move into the growth and learning zone.

And that’s where we are, we acquire new skills and we develop and effectively we expand. And then finally, on the outside ring, if you imagine this is kind of three concentric circles:

Inner ring is our comfort zone

The next ring is the learning zone

The outside ring is the fear zone

Shownotes

The Three Concentric Circles of the  Comfort Zone (1:00)

Using the horses to demonstrate  (4:45)

Being prepared for the unprepared (8:42)

What gets you there wont keep you there (8:55)

Physiological safety (9:33)

Andrew’s training tips for public speaking (11:45)

Confidence (12:42)

Susan Hef quote 12:53

 Building fear quote (14:00)

Hierarchy of needs (16:09)

Being in the moment (18:34)

In the middle of this COVID pandemic, it is becoming apparent that trust is really important.

Julia starts by discussing the Edelman Barometer which measures trust usually on a yearly basis.

At the beginning of 2020, the Edelman barometer was showing trust at some of the lowest levels. And this is trust with governments, NGOs and businesses. At the start of the year society had higher levels of trust with business than with government organisations with the media not scoring high.

Trust has a magnetic quality and can make the difference in business.

A recent second Edelman survey in April during COVID-19 there was a reversal with businesses coming out worse on the trust scale and governments came out best.

Perhaps there is little bit of a paradox there maybe because we’ve been in a situation where people have been frightened of being under threat. We have looked to the government to make some decisions and so far the decisions have been pretty decent. And as a result, people are now beginning to trust the government that they could actually do something well, whereas businesses ironically, haven’t done such a great job and their trust levels have dropped. Julia and Andrew muse on whether it is because some people have had experience of poor leadership within the businesses they’ve been working for, and how those businesses have been dealing with furloughing employees etc.

Then they move on to discuss why it is important to have trust in yourself to build confidence in the decision making process. How to connect with people and build up trustworthiness.

As always horses play an important role in the work that the duo do and mention is made of the Trust Mirror  mentioned in Julia’s book Unbridled Success linking back to the way horses think and drawing parallels.

Andrew recalls Gloria Barczak from Northeastern University, in the US. She  talks about how teams , build trust. There are two ways the effective and the cognitive.

This leads on to building gravitas and why it is important and how to develop and use it.

Trust is such an important commodity that John Maxwell sees it as a bit of a piggy bank, putting money in the piggy bank, aka trust in the piggy bank. But break that trust and you just shatter everything. So that’s why we’re always talking about how it can take a long time to build trust but that it’s quick to break.

Which leads on to Patrick Lencioni and his Five Dysfunctions of a Team, the first thing is a lack of trust. And if there’s a lack of trust, then just everything breaks down.

One simple way to build and maintain trust in the workplace is the use of contracting so everyone understands what is required and when.

Have you ever thrown a pebble into a still pond or lake and caught the moment perfectly? By that, I mean as the pebble hits the water it creates a series of concentric circles that ripple out from the centre.

It is beautiful when you get it right and that’s what Julia and I call the ripple effect.

As we all go about our daily lives, whether it be at home or work, each and every one of us creates a ripple around us. And the thing is, most of us are pretty unaware of that.

We call it the impact ripple and it aligns with the imagery of the pebble causing all those ripples.

Now we have created the image in your mind, it is easy to see how it effects our relationships.

If we think about where the stone actually touches the water, that’s the effect of the ripple on ourselves. We are the centre and what we radiate out needs to be thought about from a leadership perspective.

Meaning we are impacting ourselves. If we extrapolate that to the next level, in a  business sense with your teams, or your family, you are directly impacting the people directly around you and now we know we can think about the consequences both positive and negative as the potential of the cascade to influence our colleagues, customers, clients or suppliers, maybe even your shareholders, should not be underestimated.

In this podcast we discuss the importance of understanding your personal ripple, the emotions and how to adapt your leadership style by being self-aware about your personal style.

We consider what happens if you’re unaware of the impact you’re having and how it manifests itself, which could be a fall in productivity across your organisation.

It is about connecting and understanding the ripple and we then introduce what we can learn from the horses. They are perfect teachers.

Have you witnessed a boss that suddenly decides to walk the floor wreaking havoc causing a trail of negative emotions? In this podcast, we describe it as a wake and turn to the horses to demonstrate how leaders can improve their personal ripple effect by getting to know their self.

We then move on to talk about being in the present. What does that mean?

When a leader is in the space of being really present, that’s really important because it’s the space where one can really connect. The horses are very good at doing it as they live in the present moment. Horses don’t walk around wondering, oh, I wonder what happened yesterday or, you know, I wonder what I’m having for dinner tonight. They’re actually living right now in the present tense. So the first part of  awareness for any leader,  is really noticing and sensing how they’re feeling in that moment.

It comes down to instinct and gut feeling and knowing that once you are aware of how you are feeling  and being really good  at understanding the present, then you move into the next step.

That means we have to know how we communicate and show our gravitas and how to channel emotions.

When our clients come and work with the horses, they really get in to the present with the horse immediately.

Some maybe nervous but as Paul Ekman, an emotion researcher thinks, being self-aware is such a powerful skill to have and is influenced by the way we breathe and the horses powerfully demonstrate this. Another way of getting immediate feedback in the moment is the 360° feedback as well as doing a personal SWOT assessment.

Any nervous energy has to be channeled we consider techniques for breathing that will real...

Welcome to IMPACTFUL, the podcast. We are delighted to be here with you today. 

Who is this podcast for?

This is your go to resource if you are a business owner, business leader, entrepreneur or executive who knows they want to make a real impact in the world and leave a positive legacy.  It doesn’t matter if that dream is big or small – but we will encourage you to think big – everyone of us leaves an imprint on the world. What will yours be.?

What is it about?

In this podcast we will be sharing with you strategies and tactics to help you become the leader you have always wanted to be so you can make a real difference in the world.  Each podcast will be full of actionable steps you can take and implement immediately.

We’ll also be interviewing guests to learn from them about their legacy and the impact they have been making in the world.

Who are your hosts?

I’m Julia Felton and I am the Lead Impact Igniter at Business HorsePower. I’m passionate about igniting the possibility and hidden potential in 10,000  business owners, leaders and their teams. Through throwing away the rule book and challenging the status quo we create businesses that deliver impact and influence, whist also making a great income. Our business principles are based on the principles of nature and herd dynamics where collaboration, community and connection reign. 

I’m Andrew Palmer and I’m the managing director of the gravitas matrix where I’m a communications coach, and I help business leaders and entrepreneurs scale up through the power of content creation, and presenting with confidence, authority and gravitas. By understanding audiences, identifying their needs, and modifying body language you really can become an influential leader.

We want you to discover that you can make a massive impact in the world whilst still creating a great income if you apply the laws of nature and the herd to building your business.  In nature there is abundance and generosity.  Everything is inter-connected and inter-dependent.  Nature understands the principles of IMPACT. So if you’d like to join our movement why not head over to our exclusive Facebook Group Impact Igniters Unite where we can continue the conversation

Podcast Show Notes

* Impactful the Podcast what is it all about?(00:30)* Julia Introduces herself (00:55)* Andrew Introduces himself (1:31)* Nature what the horses teach us about impact (2:10)* Our face book page (2:24)* What are we all about (2:40)* Nine Essential Traits of being IMPACTFUL (3:40)* System thinking (5:28)* The Gravitas Matrix Model (6:15)* Horses and rapport, listening and leading from front, middle and back (7:31)* Empathy (10:31)* Culture (10:45) www.nationalcentrefordiversity.com* Emotional Intelligence identified as one of the top ten leadership skills (12:45)* Why silence is golden (13:50)* Reframing leadership (14:15)