Episode 24 - How to Define Values: Interview With Author, James Kerr

James Kerr is a highly experienced brand and business consultant, and advises clients, including KPMG, Raffles Group, Adidas, Heineken, and The Economist, to establish a compelling vision, values, and purpose to effect transformational organisational change. Combining how he grew up submerged in the traditions of New Zealand Maori culture alongside his studying the All Blacks, working with elite military forces, and prestigious sporting organisations you get a unique perspective of indigenous thinking, leadership philosophy, and practical action.

All of this set him apart from your run of the mill Leadership consultant and make him a highly sort after thought-leader and change maker. In this episode, we talked about all things 'Values'; How to define your values? What are great examples of values? How to use values to pull teams together? James gave key questions to help provoke leadership and also to help "get words off walls and on to floors"

Get a fresh pad and pen - James does not hold back on this and each little narrative in itself held 4-5 keys takeaways. His international bestseller book, Legacy - What the All Blacks Can Teach Us About the Business of Life identifies 15 fundamental leadership behaviours that create success and explores the culture of the New Zealand rugby team, the most successful sporting side in history.

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 Sticky Interview with me, Nathan Simmonds, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM, Making Business Matter, the home of Sticky Learning. Today's interview, it's difficult for me to explain because there's so many crossovers in ideas, concepts and necessary learnings from what I get from this man from his content, the crossover of indigenous wisdom of timeless leadership skills and the necessity for values in businesses and organizations.

Nathan Simmonds:

The content that is shared from James is phenomenal and worth the time to invest in the listening to the understanding and the deployment of is phenomenal. He's a highly experienced brand and business consultant. He advises clients including KPMG, Raffles Group, Adidas, Heineken and the Economist which in itself is staggering to establish compelling vision, values, purpose and positioning and to affect transformational of organizational change.

Nathan Simmonds:

Even with that on its own, when you then go and look at his literature book, Legacy, the case study that was done with the All Blacks and his 15 behaviors of leadership and other books that are coming out and the talks that he does, those two elements separate are phenomenal. You put them together and you get an incredible career to date with some phenomenal changes that have come out of the back of it.

Nathan Simmonds:

Today, I'm going to dig into some personal interests of mine into this man's mind in order to share with you. There is going to be some deep wisdom shared for sure. I'm looking forward to this conversation massively. James Kerr, welcome to Sticky Interviews. Welcome to this conversation, and thank you for being here. So, very appreciate it.

James Kerr:

Thank you very much, Nathan. It's great to be here. Great to [inaudible 00:02:27]

James Kerr- brand and business consultant

 

Nathan Simmonds:

I didn't even know of you before and I've had a deep interest in spirituality and indigenous original wisdoms and culture for a long time. All of a sudden listening to your content. I think it was the Do Lectures I first picked up and talking about some of those mindsets and approaches just blew my mind. Jaw on the floor, absolutely, for 25 minutes of content. Thank you.

James Kerr:

Thank you. Thank you for listening.

Nathan Simmonds:

The first question that I always ask, I guess, is why do you do what you do?

James Kerr:

Well, why not? Why not? I think, we talk about indigenous culture, we talk about one of the pioneers and some of the writing around that is a guy, Joseph Campbell, who is a comparative mythologist. He tries to get to the bottom of what makes cultures tick, what are the mythologies of great cultures? He comes down to one phrase, which is follow your bliss. Find that things that gives you the deepest satisfaction. In whatever you do, in whatever format you do, find the joy, find that thing that drives you because it's that passion, and that connection that will give you the resilience you need, give you the focus you need and all of that.

James Kerr:

For me, it's always been about a crossover between writing, between speaking and between working with environments, with teams with culture. On the list, you're very kind list as you introduced me, the other aspect I work with a lot of elite, high performing teams. How do the best in the world become and retain their level of excellence?

James Kerr:

There is a small spiritual dimension to this. I think it's anthropological innocence that where these things come from and the processes and the practices and the values we talked about values really of the great teams now have been the same values really have been handed down for millennia, for centuries, maybe thousands of years. Because I think we're hardwired to an extent to work together as a team and the teams that have worked together really, really well have survived and thrived and their genes have carried on.

James Kerr:

There's a certain kind of values base that I think applies to all great, certainly all great elite teams that extrapolate out with all great organizations. I think I'm really interested in those transferable principles. One of the things that one domain can teach another domain about how to operate and how to operate at optimum effectiveness. That's my sweet spot.

Nathan Simmonds:

I did not expect you to say the words Joseph Campbell right at the start of that, phenomenal. This is the thing when you get into the values and whether it's at the individual or the team or the organizational level or sports team or whatever, there is that testing of those values. There is that, these are my values, this is what I believe true. There has to be that testing in order to create a testimonial. There has to be that hero's journey. There has to be the young Luke going through the process and finding out and then breaking down and then finding out his father is Darth Vader and going through and then finding out. Okay, actually which side of the Force do I want to stand on? Which side of my values do I believe in? That galvanization that teams go through, that elite forces go through, elite sports individuals go through, that trial by fire that we have to go through that says these values are true.

James Kerr:

Yeah. I think that's... I'll come back to the hero's journey in a second. But I think in particular, right now, I don't want to get too COVID heavy here [inaudible 00:06:19] data. But right now, we're in a time of reevaluation, profound reevaluation that we've really had to as a society as organizations, we've really had to revisit what it means to be human, where our values lies, is it about the economy, is it about health. How do you get that balance between the two?

James Kerr:

A lot of us have spent a lot of time at home living a simpler life, a slower life. Do we want that corporate rat race? Do we want that commute into work? There are a huge number of questions that are very values based questions. What do we value about life? We tend to move in the directions of the things that we value. That's where we put our attention.

James Kerr:

I think for any leader now, there is a definite process for that leader themselves to reevaluate, and for organizations to reevaluate, to be looking at their deepest values. Now, if we talk about in a time of crisis, the organizations that really survive and thrive tend to be those that really have a strong values foundation.

James Kerr:

Now, it's going to be very tempting for people to take the expedient view now, rush after the next opportunity, panic and do this, but my experience and my belief is that the organizations that really, as I say, survive and thrive, it's a bit of a catch phrase, but it really encapsulates that sustained success, the ability to build something for the future, are those that are able to come back and look at their values. Then a process of reevaluation that we're going through now, to be able to come back to the values set, what do we fundamentally stand for? What is our solid human foundations is more important than it's ever been.

James Kerr:

It's also a fantastically powerful prism for leaders, particularly of large organizations that are maybe being buffeted by the winds of change, to really go, "Well, what is it that we fundamentally stand for here?" Rather than chasing after the expedient solution going, "Well, what is it that... " Because from values comes value, really. If we can establish our values, we create value from that place, that's where we are valuable for other people. If we're valuable to other people, they will give us their valuables, they will give us cash.

Nathan Simmonds:

Exactly right.

James Kerr:

Trying to integrate that through line of who we are and how we act, and what we deliver, I think is in turbulent waters is an extraordinarily important factor in sustainable success,