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Aaron Hale, a former U.S. military bomb technician, endurance athlete, and entrepreneur shares his inspiring journey. Starting with his military career, facing a life-altering bomb blast in Afghanistan, and coping with blindness and deafness.

Despite the challenges, Aaron discusses how he harnessed the power of pain and reframed his mindset to overcome emotional struggles. He emphasizes the importance of facing discomfort, learning from hardships, and avoiding the fear of failure. Aaron shares insights into his daily life, challenges, and the team effort involved in his ultra-endurance running, where he became the first blind and deaf person to complete the Badwater 135.

He talks about his podcast, Point of Impact with Aaron Hale, and his dedication to helping others by sharing his story of resilience and triumph.

👉🏽 Harnessing the Power of Pain

👉🏽 Overcoming Emotional Struggles

👉🏽 Creativity as a Superpower

Aaron Hale (Former U.S. Military Bomb Technician)

Aaron Hale, a 14-year veteran, military chef, and Explosive Ordnance Disposal (E.O.D) team leader has overcome all odds. From the moment a blast robbed Aaron of his vision in Afghanistan to years later when he lost his hearing, he refused to accept defeat.

Not letting his injuries hold him back, Aaron became an EOD instructor, motivational speaker, mountain climber, white water kayaker, and marathon runner.

Now equipped with cochlear implants and his wife McKayla at his side, Aaron has found his passion again–it’s back in the kitchen! Cooking is providing not only a sense of happiness for himself but for others around the world… one piece of fudge at a time. McKayla and Aaron work together every day to create these Extra Ordinary Delights, and they can’t wait to share them with you.

Point of Impact Podcast

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⚡️ In each episode, Paddy Dhanda deep dives into a new human Superpower and gives practical advice on how you can apply it immediately.

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Transcription:

[00:00:02] Aaron Hale: I became one of those people that get into the bomb suit and work on defusing everything that goes boom from bullets to nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction. there was a secondary device that hadn't been detected, it detonated in my face, and it took my eyes, it cracked my skull in a few places, it was a long, arduous, frustrating learning period. During the Covid era when everybody was quarantined, locked down, everyone was complaining about being isolated and lonely and not knowing what to do.

Imagine, I was thinking, welcome to my world And learning to deal with these two tragedies has actually amplified my my life. It's been a catalyst for my growth. I've learned that, every human we're, we're, wired to avoid discomfort. We hate failure. don't want to be ridiculed or mocked or judged. We don't want to feel that discomfort. And we certainly don't want to feel pain. And what we do is avoid these hardships.

And unfortunately, that's handicapping us sitting In the hospital bed, learning, just learning for the first time that I'm going to be blind for the rest of my life.

And you imagine the emotions that are going through one's mind. I can't do this, I can't do that. I'll never be able to do this again. You know, why me? What if? All those demons that creep into your mind. And, that was me. I was feeling awful.

[00:02:12] Paddy Dhanda: Dear friend, thank you for joining us for another episode of the Superpower School podcast. I am your host Paddy Dhanda and on today's episode I have someone who is truly inspiring and I am so excited for this conversation because I'm hoping to learn so much from him. He is deaf, blind. An endurance athlete and entrepreneur. Thank you for joining me today, Aaron Hale. Who's all the way from the U S Hey, Aaron

[00:02:43] Aaron Hale: Well, thank you for having me on, Paddy, and I did say I'm blind, deaf, and quite daft.

[00:02:49] Paddy Dhanda: that makes two of us. Don't worry. So Aaron, I would. I would really love to hear your story of how you came to be in this situation, because I know a little bit about you from reading up on you and hearing your story on other podcasts. But could you tell some of the listeners your journey and how is it that today we're going to be talking about a very inspirational topic?

[00:03:12] Aaron's Journey: From Military to Bomb Technician

[00:03:12] Aaron Hale: Of course I am a former U. S. military I started in the military as a Navy chef, then I jumped ship, so to speak, and became an Army bomb technician EOD, Explosive Ordnance Disposal. It's the military's bomb squad, and it's a far cry from Navy cooking. But I tell people when I got my first confirmed kill with an egg roll, I decided to start saving lives instead.

But the truth is, I joined in a time of peace in 1999, and then soon found myself like so many of us, in a time of war. Facing two different... enemies in two different lands, and I was, even though I was a part of the big military machine, I was cooking, and I loved what I was doing, but I knew that my skills and talents and abilities could be put to a better use towards mission success.

And that's when I switched uniforms and switched jobs and became an explosives expert. And I became one of those people that get into the bomb suit and work on defusing those roadside bombs, suicide vests, everything that goes boom from bullets to nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction.

[00:04:30] Life-Altering Incident: The Bomb Blast

[00:04:30] Aaron Hale: And I was on my third deployment in Afghanistan. When working on an IED, an improvised explosive device, roadside bomb, when there was a secondary device that hadn't been detected, it detonated in my face, and it took my eyes, it cracked my skull in a few places, left me with some Cuts and bruises and skin burns but thankfully alive.

However, my life was drastically changed. I was plunged into blindness 100%. And I lost some of my hearing at that time, but I hadn't gone completely deaf.

[00:05:10] Coping with Blindness and Deafness

[00:05:10] Aaron Hale: It wasn't until four years later, after I'd... I learned how to become a blind person and was making my best at it that the complications from the fractures in my skull came back to haunt me again.

And when bacterial meningitis crept into those cracks that we thought had been patched up. Well, the bacteria, that meningitis nearly killed me and I was in the hospital a second time four years after the bomb blast and despite living again, surviving one more time, the bacteria stole what was left of my hearing.

and left me 100 percent deaf on top of 100 percent blind. It wasn't until almost a year later that I was able to hear a little bit again through the advent of a cochlear implant. It's not a hearing aid. It It doesn't take sound in through the ear canal and amplify it. it takes the sound in, digitizes it, sends it through a magnetized tether to the implant that's inside.

And it sends the, that, you know, that digital signal right to the inner ear, the cochlea and right to the auditory nerve. So it was a long, arduous, frustrating learning period. Both times learning how to be blind and learning how to be blind and deaf. And if you can imagine when during the Covid era when everybody was quarantined, locked down, everyone was complaining about being isolated and lonely and not knowing what to do.

Imagine, I was thinking, welcome to my world, . But, I was no stranger to it. And learning to deal with these two tragedies has actually amplified my life, accelerated. It's been a catalyst for my growth. And, uh, I've become, since... Since the injury I've become a public speaker, a podcast host myself, a entrepreneur, real estate investor.

I've gotten married, had a pair of identical twin toddlers who are now four years old. And, of course, identical because I shouldn't be the only one who's confused. And I live a rich and fulfilling life. And in a sense, I'm actually very grateful for the path that I was thrust into.

[00:07:53] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, Aaron, thank you for sharing that personal story. And I just can't even begin to fathom what you've been through. And it's something that I think as the listeners are listening as well we're probably all reflecting on that situation and, you know, being thrust into such.

Devastation and then rising up from that the way you have and so Aaron on this episode superpower would you like us to deep dive on?

[00:08:21] Harnessing the Power of Pain

[00:08:21] Aaron Hale: It's harnessing the information from pain. I've learned that, every human we're, we're, wired to avoid discomfort. We hate failure. We don't want to be ridiculed or mocked or judged. We don't want to feel that discomfort. And we certainly don't want to feel pain. And what we do is avoid these hardships.

And unfortunately, that's handicapping us. Instead... You know, having been forced into painful difficult situations, uh, I've learned, I've grown, and I've actually become appreciative of the hard times of the painful times. Pain is chock full of information, if we're willing to pay attention and listen, and pain itself is.

is a mental construct. It's like the smoke detector. It's not the actual fire. So, if we listen to pain, if we listen to those emotions, it's going to tell us what we need to know. And we can act accordingly.

[00:09:31] Overcoming Emotional Struggles

[00:09:31] Aaron Hale: So, sitting In the hospital bed, learning, just learning for the first time that I'm going to be blind for the rest of my life.

And you imagine the emotions that are going through one's mind. I can't do this, I can't do that. I'll never be able to do this again. You know, why me? What if? All those demons that creep into your mind. And, that was me. I was feeling awful. I was angry. And I was sad and I was in mourning for a life of potential that will never be, and I was asking all the wrong questions and I was saying it was, I was all that self-talk that was leading me down a road that was a dead end.

If I kept saying I can't do this, or Why is this happening to me, then. There's no answer. It's impossible to answer. So you just go into a spiral of despair. And self defeat. It's self limiting.

[00:10:26] Reframing the Mindset

[00:10:26] Aaron Hale: But, if you can take a step back and imagine the and listen to the pain, the emotion, and try to separate yourself from the emotion and go to the the lesson that it's trying to teach.

So I started changing the questions instead of I, I can't do this, I would say, I can't navigate the world on my own anymore without, you know, someone's help. And now I say, how can I navigate the world? How can I do this? How can I do that? And it opens up a world full of opportunities. You know, I also stopped saying, why is this happening to me?

Rather, I would say, why is this happening for me? What can I learn from this? What information can I pull from a certain situation? And that opens up creativity, that opens up imagination, that builds your resilience. And you become far more resourceful and then every situation in your life becomes less about the pain itself, but the experience and the opportunity to grow.

So I've gone one step further to from why is this happening to me to why is this happening for me? And then the next step there is, why is this happening for me so that I can teach others? And that becomes the greatest strength. Because if you are always looking to help others, you are living a life of service.

And when you are living for something greater than yourself, then everything becomes manageable. Nothing is impossible. And that pain becomes so far diminished that you're not feeling it. This is a physical pain. This is emotional pain. So, all this discomfort, it's the catalyst for growth. And in fact, uh, when I find myself being too comfortable the warning bells start going off again I'm becoming stagnant, uh, maybe I'm not doing something I should be because I want to put myself into a perpetual state of discomfort and that has become my superpower.

[00:12:41] Paddy Dhanda: and Aaron again, it is absolutely mind blowing just hearing you talk there and just how you've reframed some of that language into a positive, into a more kind of open growth mindset approach. Can you remember the moment where things did start to change in your mind? So you mentioned you were, thinking, I can't, and then all of a sudden you were able to reframe that language. What was the contributing factors that helped you change that mindset?

[00:13:14] Aaron Hale: There are so many, uh, points where it was just me reframing the situation that made it so much more bearable and sometimes even enjoyable. I remember breeding about vice Admiral James Stockdale and the Stockdale Paradox. He is a Vietnam, POW. He was asked, Who...

Did you know who would make it? And who would not? And he said, of course. It was the optimistic. Which is a paradox there. You mean the ones that were just hopeful? Yes. And to explain, he would know when people weren't going to make it because... They would say something like, The Americans are going to come get us by Christmas.

And Christmas would come and go. And they would just move the date. Okay, so we're going to be rescued by Easter. And Easter would come and go. And eventually they would lose hope in rescue. And soon thereafter... They would commit suicide or die. You could tell when all of the life had drained out of them.

That positivity, that optimism, that hope was gone. And rather, it was the ones that could endure were the ones that said, that, that realized they don't put a finish date on it. They had a firm grasp of the reality in front of them with faith. In the positive ending. So, for me, those transition points were when I was completely deaf and completely blind.

And sitting at my breakfast bar at home, you know, in my kitchen counter trying to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I loved running. But I'd also lost my inner ear balance, vestibular balance, when I lost my hearing, so I came home in a wheelchair. It was pretty desperate. I couldn't even get onto my treadmill because it was like somebody was trying to steal it from under me.

So I went back to cooking. I knew that I could still cook, I could still taste, and I could still smell, and that positive. Action, taking a step towards something, keeping myself busy, and I was cooking for Thanksgiving. It was a holiday that I love so much. One, because you get to gather everybody around you for to talk about what you're most grateful for in the world, with the people you're most grateful to be around.

Hopefully. And the second reason is because it's an excuse to eat like an absolute glutton. I started cooking, and I remembered everything I enjoy about cooking. And then, one day, after having this thing tuned in a little bit more, I accidentally hit my wooden spoon against the pot while cooking some fudge and it actually sounded like wood against iron, wood against steel.

That clang and that little piece of joy entered my world again. And before I knew it, my before I knew it, my wife was coming out of the bedroom going what is all that racket as I was like a toddler that had gotten into the cabinets playing drums on all of the pots and pans. And I just told her, sweetheart, this sounds like me clanging on pots and pans.

She's like, I know. And then she realized what I meant. So, I took joy in a little bit of progress and that's part of leaning into the pain and being creative, doing activities that you know, are small steps. You don't have to take massive change every single time and that, of course, trying to make.

Huge improvements uh, will lead to burnout. All you need is that 1 percent one step forward every single day and appreciate the small wins and you'll live a life of fulfillment.

[00:17:09] Paddy Dhanda: I am a terrible cook, Aaron, so I do envy you. I can just about boil an egg. So let's just put it that way. That's about my extent of my cooking ability.

[00:17:19] Aaron's Daily Life and Challenges

[00:17:19] Paddy Dhanda: But your life now, could you put it into perspective for us in terms of does a typical day look like for you and what are some of the challenges that you've had to overcome from waking up in the morning through to going to sleep at night?

[00:17:36] Aaron Hale: I've had to learn how to face so many challenges, big ones of course, and even little ones. Imagine trying to pair your socks So, you know, speaking of cooking you know, there was definitely a learning curve when it came to learning how to cook all over again, when you couldn't see the pot or pan, or even where the dial on the stovetop was to know the heat.

So, at first, the fire alarm scared the heck out of my children. And then it became the dinner bell, smoke alarms going off, dad's done with with dinner. But my daily routine starts fairly early, of course, because toddlers they have no respect for full night's sleep beauty rest, but I also appreciate having my own time in the morning is the time to get things going, and I truly believe in prioritizing my day and putting the most important things first.

Getting that out of the way, three or so of my most important next steps in work life. And fitness and I believe in, you know, decision fatigue we make about 30, 000 different decisions from pair of socks we're going to wear what pants we're going to put on to should we refinance that house or, you know, partner on the, somebody on the next deal.

So yeah. I try to take as many of the morning decisions away out of my day as possible. So the day before, I'll set up my clothes for the morning. I'll pre set my coffee pot so I don't even have to decide whether or not I'm going to turn it on. It's just going to be ready for me. And I just, I try to build in habit versus routine.

And I think that's one of those things that people get it's kind of a misnomer. I need to get into the habit of working out, or I need to get into the habit of eating better. And the difference is habit is something that you can do with regularity without, with little to no thinking or effort.

And a routine is something you have discipline in doing. . thOugh it does take some thought and some effort. So a lot of things we call habit are really routines and I wanna make my morning routine as much habit as I possibly can, so I don't want to think about it. And the very first thing I want to do is get the most important thing out of the way.

When I'm at my most fresh. So, First, my most important thing in the whole world are my children. I get them ready for school. feEd them. And that brightens my day. And once the house is nice and quiet again, then I set my most important business activities.

[00:20:31] Paddy Dhanda: Aaron, how old are your children, by the way? Just so we get a view of the level of support you have to give them.

[00:20:36] Aaron Hale: I've got a soon to be teen, 13 years old, and twin 4 year old boys. All boys.

[00:20:44] Paddy Dhanda: Wow. Okay, so that puts things into perspective for me, because I was assuming maybe, you've got one or two kids, but you've got three, and there are very challenging ages. I sympathize.

[00:20:56] Aaron Hale: Yeah, so I am a stay at home dad with a e commerce fudge shop. And my wife and I are real estate investors with a portfolio in a couple of different states in the U. S. And on top of that, I'm an ultra endurance runner, so I run ultra marathons, 100 miles. And just this past July, I became the first...

blind deaf person to complete the Badwater 135. It's a ultra, uh, foot race. It's called the world's toughest foot race across Death Valley and up to the Mount Whitney portal. It's 135 miles across Death Valley and three mountain ranges.

[00:21:45] Paddy Dhanda: That's just phenomenal. I mean, that type of challenge, I think even for someone who's fully able bodied, find extremely challenging. How do you navigate that? Is it a case of using some technology to help you, some support from someone, or is it entirely down to you?

[00:22:05] Aaron Hale: Everything in my life has become a team sport Everything. You know, it's very unwise of me to just lace up and step out my front door for a run. So, when it comes to running it's very simple. I use a short tether that a running guide, a sighted guide and a fellow runner holds onto and I hold on to another end.

We've got just a little piece of nylon with two loops and I slip a couple fingers in one loop and my guide slips fingers into the other loop and we run side by side, almost as though we're holding hands. That's gonna get all my cues from where that tether goes. Now, as a little piece of creativity or inspiration, we learned just two days before Badwater that I would have to run single file for the, almost the entire 135 miles.

And we had to come up with an entirely new... Method for blind running that I'd never done before So we used some trekking poles that I would hold onto the handles and I'd lift up the tips of the trekking poles so they were horizontal and we taped them to my guide's waist belt that says guide on it, or pacer.

So it was a pacer's belt. And uh, that's how we ran the entire way. It worked out great. In fact, it actually worked out better than the side by side method. beCause from the motion of my guide's hips the Trekking poles actually moved like horizontal pistons, and I was able to have a natural arm swing, which I hadn't had in, oh, about a decade of running blind, from holding on to a tether with somebody who was going shoulder to shoulder with me.

So, it was just another example of how necessity was the mother of invention. And we... We actually did it from taking something that was comfortable or, you know, something that was known And taking that away and creating something absolutely new at a point of discomfort

[00:24:24] Paddy Dhanda: That's like something so simple yet it's had such a profound impact. On your experience, as you mentioned, you're now able to have that natural movement when you're running that's phenomenal. And Aaron, mentioned at the start, you've now had the opportunity to help others by sharing your story.

Could you tell us a bit more about that? In what ways have you managed to touch other people and any stories that you can share there?

[00:24:53] Aaron Hale: Of course decade now, 12 years

I've become a bit of a case study in resilience, so, and part of that is, it's, you know, one hand washing the other. I want to learn how to become more resilient and face these difficulties so that I can teach it. And share it with others. And that makes it in turn a lot more easy to face the challenges ahead.

So now I host my own podcast, Point of Impact with Aaron Hale. I'm a public speaker and I've traveled all over the country telling corporations, non profits, veterans groups, and telling my story of this. You know, success because of struggle, and triumph because of tragedy. We've got to face our fears.

We've got to lean into that pain. And we've got to not be afraid of failure. Because like I said, pain is chock full of information. If we're willing to and open or to look at it and learn from it.

[00:26:04] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, amazing.

[00:26:05] Aaron's Aspirations and Future Goals

[00:26:05] Paddy Dhanda: And have you still got other aspirations that you want to fulfill yet? Like what are some of the things that are on your mind that you want to do next? Because I'm sure I know the answer to this, but I'd love to hear the details behind it.

[00:26:17] Aaron Hale: I'm focusing a lot on making the podcast the best it possibly can, so it means becoming a better speaker Myself becoming a better podcaster. And bringing on many incredible guests that have their stories to share and teach. And you know, running a couple businesses, so of course that takes a lot of my focus.

But the number one challenge, and my favorite challenge, is being a great husband and dad. And I don't know all the answers. But I'm open and willing to learn and I'm up for the challenge. Of course, when it comes to endurance races, I'm always looking for something that my first instinct is that's crazy.

So, there is a Himalayan Race Ultra Marathon. that runs across a few Himalayan mountain ridges. And there's something called the Coast to Cozy, which is a, I think it's a 150, 160 mile race from the Australian coast to the tallest peak in the continent. But there are so many challenges out there, physical, mental.

And as long as I'm learning and growing and pushing myself I believe I'm becoming a better person for my family, for my fellow wounded veterans and everybody in general. So,

[00:27:51] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, nice. And Aaron. I've started to incorporate a new question into the podcast, and I gave you a little bit of a warning right at the start. So, I'm hoping you've had some time to ponder over this one. So, if you could have any superpower in the world to abolish something on the planet, What would that be?

[00:28:10] Aaron Hale: I believe it would be the power to take away narcissism. Which I believe is the opposite of creativity. I think creativity is an openness. It's humility. You're open to learn. And creativity is where, it's just the ability to connect pieces. Connect the dots. Put a puzzle together. So if you're not looking at a mirror, right, if you're not looking, just thinking about yourself and you're thinking about the world as a puzzle, a challenge to put together, then I believe that if more people could do that, this world would be a far greater, a better place.

[00:28:51] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, I love that. And creativity is close to my heart too. So, I am feeling that one a hundred percent. Aaron, we're fast approaching time. How do people get in touch with you for they'd like to continue to follow you and follow your amazing journey?

[00:29:06] Aaron Hale: I'm at A. Clay Hale. On Instagram and Facebook, and you can of course, tune into the podcast Point of Impact with Aaron Hale.

[00:29:17] Paddy Dhanda: Fantastic. And we'll include the links. It's in the show notes as well. So folks, you don't have to remember all of that. If you're driving you can definitely when you park up, click on the link and check it out and Aaron, I'm hoping to be on your podcast too. I've just got to schedule that in with you because I would love to continue our conversation.

And sort of continue the banter because I heard you're bit of a fan of Indian food. And again, that's something close to my heart. So if you're ever in Birmingham in the UK, then I will definitely take you out for a curry. And I'm biased and I will say this. on air. I'll take you for the best curry in the UK.

So,

[00:29:57] Aaron Hale: fun.

[00:29:57] Paddy Dhanda: That's my commitment to you.

[00:29:58] Aaron Hale: That sounds fantastic. I haven't been to the UK since 2014, it's been a while. And I could definitely go for some real fish and chips and some good curry. I just can't find it around here. it would be my honor to have you on my show as well. Thank you.

[00:30:13] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, thank you, Aaron. And yeah, now you've got a reason to build that business case to come to the UK. It's been such a pleasure. It's been so inspirational hearing your story. I've certainly become a lot wiser than I was at the start of this conversation. So thank you so much. just love the way you have such a positive outlook and the way that you've gone through all of these challenges and not let them get in the way of your progress and.

You know, you're climbing mountains. You're talking about climbing up to the Himalayas. It's something that don't think, you know, many people could even fathom. So, yeah, well done. And thank you so much.

[00:30:49] Aaron Hale: Thank you, Paddy. This is it's an honor to be on the show, and just to follow up with that we underestimate how powerful our minds really are. It's become cliche, but It's not until we're put into or we put ourselves into extraordinary situations that we find out just how extraordinarily strong we really are.

[00:31:09] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, what a lovely way to finish. Thank you so much, Aaron.

[00:31:12] Aaron Hale: Thank you.

Matt Abrahams is our special guest for this episode. He is a strategic communication lecturer from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, host of "Think Fast, Talk Smart" podcast, and the author of the new book “Think Faster, Talk Smarter.”

In this episode, we explore the significance of spontaneous communication, strategies to manage anxiety, the correlation between martial arts and communication, and tips on navigating networking situations.

Matt Abrahams

Matt Abrahams is a passionate, collaborative and innovative educator, author, podcast host, and coach. He is the Larsen Lam Family Lecturer in Organizational Behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business where he teaches two very popular classes in Strategic Communication and Effective Virtual Presenting. He received Stanford GSB’s Alumni Teaching Award in recognition of his valued service to teaching Stanford Alumni around the world.

In addition to his teaching, Matt is much sought-after keynote speaker and communication consultant for Fortune 100 companies. His online talks garner millions of views and he hosts the popular, award winning GSB podcast called Think Fast Talk Smart.

Matt is especially interested in applying communication knowledge to real-world issues. In service of this goal, he published Speaking Up Without Freaking Out, which is now in its 3rd edition. His book was written to help people present and communicate in a more confident, connected, and compelling manner.

Prior to teaching, Matt held senior leadership positions at several software companies, where he created and ran global learning and development organizations.

Matt received his undergraduate degree in psychology from Stanford University, his graduate degree in communication studies from the University of California at Davis, and his secondary education teaching credential from San Francisco State University. He is a prolific writer with articles published for the GSB as well as Fast Company, Toastmasters Magazine, Inc.com, Quartz, etc. He has also published several research articles on strategic planning, persuasion, and interpersonal communication.

⚡️ In each episode, Paddy Dhanda deep dives into a new human Superpower and gives practical advice on how you can apply it immediately.

👉 Sign-up to Newsletter: https://www.superpowers.school/subscribe

★ BUY ME A COFFEE ★

If you enjoy the podcast, then you can donate a small amount here as a token of your appreciation: https://ko-fi.com/paddydhanda

Transcription:

[00:00:57] Paddy Dhanda: Hello friend, welcome to another episode of the Superpower School podcast. I'm your host Paddy Danda. And on today's show I have the most amazing guest. And I say that with absolute conviction, because I've been following this guest for the past few months and I'm so honoured to have him today. He's a passionate and collaborative...

And innovative educator, author, podcast host, and coach. He's a lecturer at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, where he teaches strategic communication. He's the host of the award winning podcast, Think Fast, Talk Smart. And he's recently launched his book titled, Think Faster. Talk smarter how to speak successfully when you're put on the spot and in my own words He is the mr.

Miyagi of conversation and small talk. Welcome to the show Matt Abrahams.

[00:01:54] Matt Abrahams: Paddy, it is a true pleasure to be here with you. I have to say, I love your voice. Your introduction of me love listening to it. And you know that I love the martial arts, and the Karate Kid was an important movie early in my life. while I think completely untrue, I think it is very kind of you to compare me to Mr.

Miyagi. I will not be catching flies with chopsticks, though.

[00:02:15] Paddy Dhanda: I think there's definitely an element of wax on wax off because i've heard some of your interviews in the past and you simplify things so much that I think they're Easy for anybody just to pick up and try out. So I do like that part of the analogy. We'll leave the flies and the chopsticks then for today.

charge. Okay, thank

Matt's Background and Passion for Communication

[00:02:36] Paddy Dhanda: So, Matt, I would love to get to know you a bit better. And what I was wondering was if you could tell us about the younger version of yourself. So when you were growing up as a child, what was Matt Abrahams like? And how did you discover this passion for communication?

[00:02:54] Matt Abrahams: Well, as a young lad, as you might say I, the one thing that I think characterizes me is I've always been very curious, even from a young age, I was very curious and I was always interested in stories and other people's stories. I wasn't much of a reader, although I did read I was very interested in film.

I in fact wanted to be a movie director got into film school actually and chose not to go. That was one of the most interesting and challenging decisions I made. So I've always been fascinated by story. I've always been fascinated by language and the way people use language to influence others.

I tell a story that's very true. When I was around seven or eight years old, my mother asked my brother and me to have a garage sale. We had so much stuff. She wanted to get rid of it. A garage sale, yard sale. Not sure how that translates across the pond here, but essentially you put stuff out on your front yard and people come by and buy it from you.

And I grew up in a community where lots of people did that. And my mother instructed my brother and me to write a sign that was misspelled. So instead of garage sale, we inserted the letter B in the middle. So we had a garbage sale while everybody else had garage sales. And we sold more stuff that weekend than anybody else in the neighborhood .

And to this day, my mother believes it's because our sign stood out. I think people thought we were stupid and they would get better deals, but it was, Around that time, I came to see that wording, language matters. It can influence people. We had more people coming by, so I've always been interested in it.

And it's something that to this day, I'm still curious about .

[00:04:22] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, brilliant. Brilliant.

The Role of Anxiety in Communication

[00:04:24] Paddy Dhanda: And, you mentioned you have a passion for martial arts as well. Like how did that develop?

[00:04:28] Matt Abrahams: Yeah, I think you're fishing for a story. So I'll tell the story when I was 14 years old. I was asked by my high school English teacher, literature teacher, to go to a speech tournament. It was the first day of class, everybody had to stand up and say what we did that summer.

And I, of course, went first with the last name Abrahams. I always went first. And at the end of class, Mr. Meredith, the teacher, came up to me and said, You're good at this talking thing. Those were his words. You need to go to this speech tournament this coming Saturday. Each teacher, I think, had to send a student, so I was his student.

And he told me, Give a speech on something you're passionate about and at the time, and still to this day, many decades later, I'm still passionate about the martial arts. So I gave a speech on karate, or planned to. I show up 7. 30 in the morning on a Saturday. The room is packed. The parents of my friends are judging this event.

My friends are there. The girl I like is sitting in the back of the room. I am so nervous, Paddy. I shaking. I forgot to put on my karate pants. And if you know anything about the martial arts, the pants that you wear have are very loose fitting. You can see where this story is going. I started the speech with a karate kick and I did this kick.

In the first 10 seconds of my 10 minute speech, and I ripped my pants from zipper to belt buckle. It was horrific. I was totally panicked. It demonstrated to me. How important anxiety is in communication and from that moment on I have been fascinated by the impact of anxiety on communication I've studied it I've written about it and I really work to help people feel more confident and it all boils down to a 15 year old boy Standing partially naked in front of a class or a group of people I actually finished the speech and did pretty well not because I was a good speaker But mostly because people took pity on me and I finished the talk

[00:06:18] Paddy Dhanda: Wow, Matt, I was thinking about this story myself because I had a,

I had an introduction to martial arts, a very small introduction as well when I was a kid and I started judo, which is

a lot of wrestling and throwing.

And I remember one of my first sessions I went to. I was paired up with this young girl, and I never forget her because she was a little bit shorter than I, and she had ginger hair, and that was the most striking aspect of her, but all I remember is she threw me to the ground so hard that

I couldn't breathe anymore, and my cousin who was there, he never let me live that moment down, and I think it was Must have impacted me deeply because I never went back and and so I don't know which is more embarrassing, ripping your trousers or being thrown by this small gingerhead girl,

[00:07:08] Matt Abrahams: had a very similar experience in the martial arts. I was asked to spar with a petite girl at the time. I was a boy and I thought, Oh, I'm going to take it easy because , I'm a guy and she kicked my butt left and right. And that is a lesson that I remember. All the time because one it told me some things about gender inequity and the abilities of people.

And two it also taught me not to judge a book by its cover. I mean, she was far superior to me, continues to be to this day. And I just I, I was in my head thinking about stereotypes and preconceptions and I literally learned the hard way that , that's not the

[00:07:48] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, wow. And when we talk about conversation, Matt it's quite a broad topic. I mean, communication conversation,

communication,

The Importance of Spontaneous Communication

[00:07:57] Paddy Dhanda: but you very much focus on spontaneous communication. So, first of all, what is that? And why is it so important?

[00:08:05] Matt Abrahams: And why is it so important? So if you think about it, Paddy, most of our communication is not the planned type of communication. It's not the presentation we create slides for in practice.

It's not the pitch that we deliver. It's not the meetings with agendas. Most of our communication in our personal and professional lives happens in the moment. You asked me a question. You asked me for feedback. I need to introduce myself or others. I have to give a toast in the moment. Maybe I have to apologize or fix a mistake that I've made or even make small talk.

None of that is planned. It happens in the moment and it is enriching. It's an opportunity to collaborate and connect. That can be very exciting. But for many of us, it's very daunting. We don't know what to say. We want to. Sound intelligent. We want to do it well. So there's a lot of pressure in these in the moment spontaneous situations.

And so I've dedicated a lot of my past decade or so developing a methodology and helping people feel more comfortable and confident speaking in the moment.

[00:09:06] Paddy Dhanda: Now, we have this saying in the UK that certain people just have the gift of the gab.

[00:09:11] Matt Abrahams: have the gift of the

[00:09:12] Paddy Dhanda: I don't know if that's something that resonates in

[00:09:14] Matt Abrahams: something. Yeah, no

gift of the gap is said here

 And so, is this not just a natural talent that a lot of people have? Or is this something that we have to work hard at?

[00:09:25] Matt Abrahams: have So the answer is yes to both. The book I wrote and the work I do has several counterintuitive notions in it. And one counterintuitive notion is that we can all get better at it.

The ability to speak spontaneously is, like any other skill, one that with work, you can improve on. Now, there are some people, by virtue of experience, maybe personality type, who are more conservative might have a slight advantage in that they are more willing to take risks and do it. Or perhaps they're more extroverted and enjoy just connecting with people, but everybody has the opportunity to get better at it.

I have seen it in my own personal life with myself, with my family. I've seen it with the students I teach and the people I coach. So you absolutely can improve, but it does take work. And that's the second counterintuitive notion in the work I do, which is that you can prepare. to be spontaneous. And that sounds strange.

But again, if you think about athletics, if you think about music, you practice to do well. So a jazz musician doesn't just randomly make up notes, they actually play chords and progressions that they've practiced before. An athlete drills over and over again so that when they're in the moment of playing the game, they have tools and preparation that helps them respond agilely in that moment.

[00:10:42] Paddy Dhanda: That's fascinating because recently my son, who's 11, started high school. And and

when he started, He made one friend and this other friend really struggled to make more friends because I don't think anyone had really Taught him or given him this exposure to be able to go into an uncomfortable situation and just start making small talk so unfortunately He really disliked school for the first few days because he was just having such a hard time making friends.

And I just think

making personally, having seen that experience, it brought home to me just how important these skills are. And I wish someone had taught me a few lessons at a young age, but it's not something that school really covers. And and so I'm so glad. That you're doing this work because it's much needed.

[00:11:31] Matt Abrahams:

what I see younger kids being taught...

today is far different than what you and I did. So, for example I have a six, six and a half year old nephew. And when I hear about what he's doing in first grade one here, they're requiring collaboration. They're doing group work. They're doing, they're presenting that work. So it is something that the younger children are being exposed to much more than I was in my education, but you're absolutely right .

We don't have a formal way of teaching these. critical and essential skills.

[00:12:02] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, I love that. I wish they would do more of that here and so Sometimes when I introduce myself to people I tell them I used to be a professional introvert And now i'm addicted to conversation

I'm addicted to

through my work On this podcast because I get to speak to strangers every week and

week. Yeah.

I have reflected on what was the moment where I sort of switch from that more introverted person.

I still am, but I'm much better in terms of engaging and having the guts to go over to someone and speak to them.

go over to

But I guess anxiety plays a really important part in overcoming our fears. And I know you've done a lot of work in this space.

Overcoming Communication Anxiety

[00:12:42] Paddy Dhanda: Your previous book was very much. Focused on this, could you tell us a few insights on how could we overcome that anxiety, especially if someone at home is feeling a little bit under pressure when they're put into these situations,

put into these situations?

[00:12:58] Matt Abrahams: Yeah, absolutely happy to help and to share some ideas. I want to start first by congratulating you for really reflecting and becoming more comfortable with the uncomfortable.

That's a big step in many endeavors. I would like to share a few thoughts I have about and and extroversion . Many of us feel that when we are introverted, by definition, not good at communication. In fact, introverts, by their nature, tend to be very good at conversation.

They are very open to learning and listening. Introverts listen first. and synthesize and process, and it turns out in group functioning, those skills are really important. We need a blend of people who are more extroverted and introverted. So Introverts are not bad . You need introverts. In fact, introverts exhibit many of the behaviors that are successful in collaboration and connection and communication.

That said, introverts tend to be slightly more fearful of speaking than extroverts. But extroverts can be quite scared of speaking as well. I believe the fear of speaking in front of others is innate to being human. It's something that's just part of who we are .

But what's more important is that we can learn to manage the anxiety that we feel . And I use manage very carefully. I don't think we can ever truly overcome our anxiety, nor do I think that we would want to. Anxiety is helpful. It gives us energy, helps us focus, but we want to manage it so it doesn't manage us.

So in the first book I wrote, Speaking Up Without Freaking Out, I provide 50 academically verified techniques for managing anxiety. I do not expect every technique to work for every person. I'm happy if three to five seem to work. And they fall into two primary categories, Paddy. They first fall into symptoms and then sources.

How to relieve the symptoms. I'm curious, when you get nervous, Patty, what happens for you? I blush, I turn red, and I sweat, I perspire. I

[00:14:54] Paddy Dhanda: I probably start telling really bad jokes. jokes.

I try and sort of be really funny and I'm not, and I'm just like trying to fill the void with that stuff. Yeah. that stuff.

[00:15:04] Matt Abrahams: Interestingly, that's a technique that many people use.

It's a technique of trying to connect. And through that connection, you begin to feel more comfortable. And there are lots of ways to do that, that you can do that by asking a question. Asking people to contribute their point of view on something. Humor is risky because if it's not funny, it actually makes things more awkward, but it can serve, a good joke can serve connect .

So that's one way of doing it. So when it comes to symptomatic relief, things that we experience, the single best thing you can do is take a deep belly breath. If you've ever done yoga or tai chi, it's a deep lower abdomen fill. And the key is to exhale. It is during the exhale that all the magic happens, the anxiety reducing hormones and experience happens then.

There are other things you can do as well. You can do some purposeful movement. That helps with the shakiness that many people feel. The shakiness is from adrenaline trying to move you from threat to safety. So if I step in with big, broad gestures, if I'm standing in front of people, that can cause the shakiness to abate.

Someone like me just needs to cool myself down. We sweat and perspire because our heart is beating faster and our body is tensing up. So our blood pressure is going up. It's like when we exercise. So we get hotter. So you can cool yourself down and a great way to do that is just to hold something in the palms of your hand.

The palms of your hand are thermoregulators for your body. Just like your forehead, if you've ever had a fever and put a cold compress on your forehead, same thing happens. So, on a cold morning you've probably held warm tea or coffee in a cup in your hands and felt it warm you up. So there are things we can do to manage symptoms.

Sources also have to do with... Sources are the things that initiate and exacerbate anxiety. One way to deal with it is what you do, which is to try to connect with the audience. I do as well. I always try to have a individual conversation with somebody in the audience before I speak.

You can do other things. Get yourself present oriented. Many of us are made nervous by Worrying about achieving the goal we have. A goal is a future state. So if I can make myself present oriented, I'm less nervous about that future state. So talking to people is a great way to do it. Doing something physical, like light exercise, walking around the room.

You can count backwards from 100 by some challenging number. I tell people try 17s, listen to a song or a playlist like athletes do. I say tongue twisters to help me get. present oriented. So the bottom line is this. There are many things you can do to manage your symptoms and sources. You just have to work at it .

And eventually you will begin to feel more confident and less anxious.

[00:17:40] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, thank you for that. And some great advice there.

[00:17:43] Matt Abrahams: Great

Insights from Matt's Book Think Faster, Talk Smarter

[00:17:43] Paddy Dhanda: Now, I would love to hear some of the insights from the book, but I know we've got a real shortage of time and you can possibly do it justice in 10 minutes, but could you just give us a broad explanation of some of the key insights from the book?

[00:17:58] Matt Abrahams: insights Thank you. And I will try to distill this down as clearly as I can. So the book is based on a methodology I developed several years ago at Stanford's Graduate School of Business to help our amazingly bright students get through a big challenge they have, which is the teacher's cold call. When the professor looks at them and says, what do you think, several of us, myself included, still have nightmares from experiences we've had with that.

So the methodology has six steps. It's divided into four that have to do with mindset and two that have to do with messaging. The mindset starts with managing anxiety. I've already spent a few moments talking about that. The second step is to actually reduce the pressure we put on ourselves. Many of us, when we communicate, especially spontaneously, we want to do it right.

We want to give the right answer, the best feedback. We want to be the most interesting in small talk. And that puts a tremendous amount of pressure on ourselves. We have to adjust our mindset. And say, Hey, in these situations, I just need to get it done. I just need to answer the question. I just need to give the feedback.

I just need to respond to the small talk. Because when I'm judging and evaluating how good I am doing in the moment, how well I'm doing, it actually gets in the way of doing well at all. Because I'm dedicating part of my cognitive bandwidth. And we have limited cognitive bandwidth. Just like a computer can only do so much.

And the more windows and apps you have open, the slower it performs. Same thing is true with our brains. So if I focus less on judging and evaluating and focus more on just getting it done. I do it better. So I have a saying I like to say to my MBA students on the very first class. I say, maximize mediocrity so you can achieve greatness.

And these students have never been told to be mediocre, but they understand what I mean is that when you just work to get the communication done, you actually free up resources to do it well. So that's step two. Step three is all about seeing these as opportunities. Many of us, when we're told we're going to be asked questions, panic and we say, Oh my goodness, I have to defend my position.

I have to show myself as bright. I have to demonstrate that I know what I'm talking about. So we become very defensive and that changes the way we speak and what we say. Yet if we were to envision even challenging questions and feedback, et cetera, as opportunities to extend, expand, collaborate. It changes our demeanor.

We become more approachable. We give more detail. So the third step is really to see these things as opportunities. And then the fourth mindset step is listening. And you are a great listener, Paddy. Not only have you been great to me, but I've listened to other episodes. You listen very well. Most people don't.

And it is in that listening that if we listen poorly, we miss listening. potential clues and cues that could help us respond better. So we have to listen for the bottom line, what's really being said. Most of us listen just enough to get a gist of what somebody's saying, and then we start rehearsing and practicing and distracting ourselves.

So those are the four steps, anxiety management, Get out of your own way . See it as an opportunity. Listen better. And then the last two steps have to do with messaging. I am a huge fan of structure. And by structure I simply mean a logical connection of ideas. Many of us just ramble on and list information when we're put on the spot.

And that gets in the way of others understanding us. Our brains are wired to process structured information, stories, not lists. I challenge you and any of your listeners to think of a list that's more than five or seven things and how hard it is just to remember it, let alone process it. So if we can put things in a structure, and let me give you an example of a structure, the one most people are familiar with.

If you've ever seen an advertisement, you've seen problem. solution benefit. Here's a problem. Here's how our product or service serves that problem. And here are the benefits. And you can do the same when you're advocating for something, pitching for something, sharing ideas, using a structure like problem, solution, benefit can help.

And then the final step is what I call the F word of communication, not the naughty one, but focus. Many of us, when we are speaking in the moment, take our audiences on the journey of our discovery of what we're saying. We say more than we need to. In this day and age, the most precious resource we have is attention.

And if I am rambling on and on, as I feel like I'm doing in this answer, and I apologize, we are not focused and people get distracted . So the last two steps, the messaging steps are have a structure and be focused. I did pretty well, only two minutes to go through the whole methodology.

[00:22:33] Paddy Dhanda: Well, like I said, we couldn't possibly do it justice in the short space of time we've got here, but there's so many hooks right there. And I would love to explore those in more detail, but I'm going to have to get the book and do that deeper dive do that. Very quickly, Matt. As we wrap up this episode, I had a few real world situations that I was.

Hoping to put to you and just to get your hints and tips on those.

Real World Applications: Networking Tips

[00:22:57] Paddy Dhanda: So I've been attending a lot of conferences recently, and there's that dreaded networking word that people use, and I came across a couple of people who. I could see they were a little bit nervous about talking to somebody and they were sat on their own and I wanted to help them out and support them, but it'd be great to hear some of your tips on how could someone network in that situation where they are feeling a little bit overwhelmed.

[00:23:22] Matt Abrahams: Right. So many of us feel overwhelmed in chit chat and small talk, and especially if you have a goal is a purposeful goal to connect and drive future interactions. So I have three things I'd like to share about this. And first and foremost, it's very normal and natural to be nervous in these circumstances.

I had on my own podcast, Think Fast, Talk Smart a woman named Rachel Greenwald and Rachel's fascinating. She's a professional matchmaker and an academic, an interesting combination. And she shared something that, that is my new mantra for all small talk. And that is the goal is to be interested, not interesting.

Many of us go into these situations feeling like we're playing at Wimbledon and we've got to ace every point we make. Every point we share with somebody has to just land and has to be really interesting. And that's not the best way to envision it. Rather, we should lead with curiosity. I don't know if where you are, here in the States we have a game we call Hacky Sack.

It's a little beanbag ball that you pass back and forth with the goal being that it doesn't hit the ground. So the your challenge is to serve it to the next person in a way that it makes it easy for them to get back to you. So you're actually thinking the goal is to set the other person up for success.

So being curious, asking questions, paraphrasing what you hear, that's the way to be successful in these circumstances. My mother in law has a black belt in small talk. She was amazing. She would fly from the Midwest of the United States to the West Coast where I live, and by the time she got off a plane, she would have five or six best friends.

And here's how she did it. Three simple words. Tell me more. She would, as somebody was talking, she would just pause when they were done, say, tell me more, people would tell more, she'd learn more information, connect more. So, going into these situations, your goal is to be interested, not interesting. It's about the curiosity you bring.

Number one. Number two. The best way to start these conversations is to highlight something that you have in common. Maybe it's something in the experience, in the moment. Maybe it's something you came from. These networking events and conferences also often follow keynote addresses or panel presentations.

Comment on that. You want to avoid what I call the doom loop. And the doom loop is... Hi, how are you? Fine. How are you? Fine. Now we're no better and we're awkward. So start by highlighting something in the room. I was at an event once where I looked around and I turned to this person I didn't know and I said, did I miss the memo?

Everybody's wearing something blue and the person looked around and said, you're right. And we had a great conversation that started off that way. And then the final thing is when we end, we need to end well. Many of us end these conversations by referring to biology. I've got to go to the bathroom. I'm hungry.

I'm thirsty. You can get in trouble that way. I was conversing a while back with somebody and I needed to get out of the situation. I said, Oh, I need to use the restroom. And the guy said, Oh, no worries. Me too. And then the conversation kept going. We need to avoid these situations. So think about how you exit.

A great way to exit is just to signal in advance that you want to exit. Finish the conversation and then say thank you so much and exit. So by giving that person advance notice that you're going to go over there and talk to people, it prepares both you and that other person to excuse yourself. So chit chat is challenging.

There are things you can do to be helpful though.

Wrapping Up and Final Thoughts

[00:26:40] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, thank you so much, Matt. And talking about exiting well. I know we've run out of time. I just wanted to really just talk about a quick story. So how you and I got introduced was through small talk where I was speaking to Axelle, who's from Belgium. She's a founder of Drawify an awesome platform. And we just struck a conversation. We were having some small talk during the recording of that episode. And your name came up and I said, Oh, I'm such a huge fan of Matt's. And she said, Oh, I met Matt just the other week over in San Francisco. And and it all started from there. So the power of small talk has led us to this moment.

And I think that just epitomizes for me, the power of it and the experience. And I just want to thank you for being such a great guest, Matt. I know you're a busy man, so, really appreciate you taking the time today and sharing your insights.

[00:27:30] Matt Abrahams: The power of it, and I just want to thank you for being such a busy man, so I really

appreciate you taking the time

 It's the end of another episode. Thank you so much for listening. Please do connect with me via LinkedIn and drop me a message. And let me know your favorite takeaways from the episode. Also, don't forget to subscribe to the superpower school newsletter so that you can be notified of all future episodes. Simply visit the website, www.superpowers.school. Thank you once again

To celebrate Global Business Analysis Day (1st November), we rounded up 12 experts to create a complete guide on the Business Analysis profession. Each expert is a respected Business Analysis practitioner. Some are authors, public speakers, educators, coaches and above all, advocates of the Business Analysis profession.

This episode is for you if you are curious about changing careers or simply if you want to deepen your knowledge about the role. We explore the following topics in this episode:

* What do Business Analysts do?

* The History of the BA role

* Essential skills for BA’s

* Popular BA techniques

* How to become a BA

* Training pathways and resources for BA’s

* Future of the BA role

A huge thank you to all of the guests who dedicated their time and energy to help create this episode. If you found any of the insights useful and would like to explore these topics further, then please connect with the expert directly using their LinkedIn profiles below:

Adrian Reed

Angela Wick

Bronia Anderson-Kelly

Christina Lovelock

Fabricio Laguna

Grant Wright

Jamie Toyne

Jared Gorai

Linda Parker

Nick de Voil

Sam Merrick

Vincent Mirabelli

⚡️ In each episode, Paddy Dhanda deep dives into a new human Superpower and gives practical advice on how you can apply it immediately.

👉 Sign-up to Newsletter: https://www.superpowers.school/subscribe

👉 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/paddydhanda/

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Transcription:

[00:00:29] Paddy Dhanda: Dear friend it's a very special day today. Not only is it the day after Halloween? It's the birthday of Apple's CEO, Tim cook. So if you're listening to him, Many happy returns of the day. But no, that's not what I'm talking about. Today is global business analysis day. And we'll see thousands of business analysts across the world coming together to celebrate. And only personally have a long connection with this amazing profession. In a previous episode, I shared my journey of going from a professional introvert to a conversational addict. Well, the BA role was pivotal in helping me build the confidence to come out of my shell. And helping me harness my human skills. Over the years I've had the pleasure of meeting, amazing people in this profession. That have helped inspire me. But also we've given back so much to the community, through sharing their knowledge and insights. So I wanted to give back in my own small, but important way. And to put it out there.

This has been the most challenging episode I've ever put together. I wasn't happy to interview just one, two or three guests. I wanted to go big or go home. So in this episode, I've managed to round up 12 of my favorite business analysis thought-leaders. And I use the word thought leader in its truest sense. Between them they probably have more knowledge about business analysis than ChatGPT's, grandparents. They are authors public speakers, educators, coaches and above all advocates of business analysis. Who are passionate about helping others?

So in alphabetical order I am privileged to be joined by Adrian Reed, Angela Wick, Bronia Anderson-Kelly,. Christina Lovelock, Fabricio Laguna, Grant Wright, Jamie Toyne, Jared Gorai. Linda Parker. Nick de Voil. Sam Merrick and last but not least Vincent Mirabelli.

So if you're thinking about a career change and curious to know if business analysis is the right career for you, then this episode is a must listen episode for you. And if you're already a business analyst, but want to know how can you take your career to the next level, then I'm confident you'll discover some golden nuggets of wisdom in this episode. But before we dive in to some of my burning questions. I thought I would test out our experts sense of humor and this is what they came up with.

BA Jokes

[00:03:31] Linda Parker: I'm pretty sure there must be a, how many BA's does it take to change a light bulb joke, but I don't know it. Obviously we'd need to do a requirements analysis to know that, and as you can tell, I'm not really known for my comedy.

[00:03:46] Sam Merrick: a good project manager makes updates. A bad project manager makes updates. Yes, it is terrible. I know. Sorry.

 A BA walks into a bar. They spend the next 15 minutes wondering why someone would leave a metal bar in such a stupid place. They then repeat this five times just to make sure they understand the root cause.

 What do you call a delivery team without a business analyst? My response would be brave. So you can chuckle away at that one if you find it funny.

 So I thought I would go and have a look at chat G p T

a business analyst was asked what he does for a living. He replied, I turn confusion into clarity and problems into solutions. The person asked, so you're a magician.

The business analyst replies, no, I'm a ba. We don't make things disappear. We just make them visible. It's okay.

What is the role of a BA?

[00:04:51] Paddy Dhanda: Okay. I don't think any standup comics need to be worried about their jobs. But one of the key traits of a good business analyst is being able to deal with uncomfortable situations. And possessing a sense of humor also helps to keep the team motivated during the tough times. So thank you experts for stepping up to the challenge and going beyond your comfort zone. On a serious note. I find there's often a misunderstanding about the key responsibilities of a BA. And the value that they can bring to a project. So what does a business analyst actually do?

[00:05:31] Angela Wick: I really think it comes down to facilitating the process of problem solving or opportunities, right? So that includes things like making decisions that lead to process changes, system changes, product changes, and all those details we commonly refer to as requirements or discovery work.

It's also facilitating the discovery of the impacts of that change. Who is it impacting and what does that mean to them and what are the impacts to the data, the tech, the people, the process, the policies, the rules.

It's quite far reaching can go in so many directions, in so many different contexts.

[00:06:06] Jared Gorai: I think if I look at the BABOK guide, you know it states that business analysis is the practice of enabling change in the enterprise by defining needs of recommending solutions that deliver value to the stakeholders.

And I think business analysis always been about understand the needs of an organization, whether that's at a strategic, operational or project level, right?

[00:06:28] Linda Parker: Another one I came across is this, A business analyst is a person who processes, interprets and documents business processes, products, services, and software through the analysis of data. This is okay, but only goes part of the way to describing what we do. What's important though are the key responsibilities and these wide and varied.

For example, at a high level, we define strategy, set goals, develop target operating models, do benefit realization and business plans.

[00:07:05] Sam Merrick: And as you kind of move down that, that scale from strategy into requirements and design, you're probably hitting the more traditional BA or maybe even service design type roles where you're thinking about, meeting those needs. I guess from a stakeholder point of view. And then you end up in that sort of deep solution mode at the other end of the scale, which has kind of got more of a systems focus.

[00:07:26] Christina Lovelock: I often talk about bas being the conscience of a project or product to make sure that we're doing things right and doing the right thing.

[00:07:34] Grant Wright: A good metaphor for business analysis is that of a doctor with the patient in our context being the business or the organization or a part of an organization that we're working with to solve their problems.

A patient may report symptoms of their problems. They may even tell you what they think the solution is. I think I need to take this medicine. But the good doctor has to validate that they have to probe a little deeper, ask a few questions and confirm what the true needs or problems are that they're trying to solve.

[00:08:12] Adrian Reed: I really think a lot of it is about the human side. It's about understanding stakeholders, understanding their perspectives, working with them often in quite challenging circumstances and utilizing that broad BA toolkit that I'm sure will we'll hear more about and come on to talk about during this podcast.

History of the BA role

[00:08:32] Paddy Dhanda: So, what I'm hearing is that the BA role is extremely diverse. They get involved in everything from discovery work, facilitating problem solving. Uh, working with stakeholders to elicit requirements.

They can work at different levels, such as strategy, operational and project level. I also really like the metaphor of viewing the business analyst as a doctor diagnosing business problems and acting as the conscience of a project. Fabrizio, I'm intrigued to find out the history of the BA role and how it's evolved over the years.

[00:09:11] Fabrício Laguna: In the first step of a software development, they have to define the needs of that software. And the definition of those needs is based on the specification of requirements. And they understood that specifying requirements is not an easy task. So they created this discipline called requirements engineering and requirements engineering had some processes as well and some default techniques you can use to elicit requirements, to analyze requirements, to specify requirements to validate, manage requirements.

But as you can see, the need of understanding and looking for business has become so much greater than looking for how we develop software that. It ask it for a new discipline.

That's how business analysis was born. And that's the way that business analysis is evolving, trying to bring better business outcomes, trying to understand all stakeholders connected to those business and what do they value and how can we give them the best value that they're looking for.

[00:10:24] Nick de Voil: Some people will tell you that business analysis is a new profession that's only emerged in this century. That's not quite the case. I was certainly working with people called business analysts back in the 1980s, and at that time we also had people called systems analysts.

Again, people might tell you these days that a systems analyst is someone who concerns themselves with the technical details of an IT system, but that wasn't necessarily the case back then. A systems analyst was someone who concerned themselves with systems in the broadest sense, but gradually the term business analyst became more and more widely used for those people, and it was given a massive boost in the by two things, really the establishment of the IIBA and the creation of BA BOK, the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge and the Creation in the UK of the BCS Certifications in Business

Analysis. And I think those two things together have brought about a real consensus on what the business analysis profession is.

[00:11:35] Angela Wick: In the early two thousands,

I I B A of course came on the scene, the Agile manifesto came on the scene. I really think it's those early two thousands where we just really seriously start to go, whoa, this is way bigger than a systems' analyst or someone analyzing one system. So the complexity keeps snowballing, right? And that just keeps happening more and more. And that's where this field is so amazing and so complex and continues to change, is that no longer can we look at it as I'm

analyzing a single system or a system integrating with this system.

There's just so much to analyze and that's where nobody today can be a subject matter expert and a business analyst, right? That would be a very difficult role to be in because nobody knows all the information. In the seventies, if you were supporting one system and one user group, you could know it all.

You can't though. Today when we're talking business model changes and constant integrations and automatic updates, artificial intelligence, robotics, and all the capabilities of today. It just makes the idea that we need to have these elicitation and analysis techniques and this problem solving decision making mindset and the user mindset so much more important than it has ever been.

Should BA's be technical or non-technical?

[00:12:53] Paddy Dhanda: As Angela mentioned, we currently live in a technology led world. Things are moving at such a rapid pace and I can understand having someone on the team such as a business analyst who keeps up to date on new developments. To ensure that we've considered their impacts to inform our decision-making. So does that mean all BA's have to geek out on techie stuff and how important is it? That we build technical skills.

[00:13:23] Linda Parker: Personally, I don't believe it matters whether you are technical or non-technical, or indeed, whether you are a business expert in a particular field. What drives your ability to be a great BA are the skills that mean people want to engage with you.

Once again, it's back to your emotional intelligence or your abilities to empathize and build rapport. In essence, do you know how to talk to people, ask questions, and create and hold a space? Enabling people to feel comfortable enough to share information with you?

[00:14:03] Bronia Anderson-Kelly:

So I would say problem solving and communication skills and being organized are probably key things.

And being able to kind of step back from the picture and really see things, see the context that we think, we call it helicopter view, to be able to see things from above. Being adaptable is really important. And it is useful to have domain knowledge and it, that doesn't mean the specific exact technology or the specific industry that you're in, but understanding the concepts of business and technology I think they're really key.

This is a really interesting question because I think that the BA role is so broad, as I said before, that it can suit technical, non-technical people. It can suit people that are very analysis oriented. That are very creative. It can suit people that like detail, that don't like detail. It's so broad.

Angela:

 I mean, I came into the role as no technical skills whatsoever. Like this might age me, but I really struggled to even save something on a floppy disk when I started out in business analysis.

At the same time, what I was told when I joined the team was I asked such great questions that they loved that I didn't have all that technical knowledge, but as I grew in my career and I started learning the technical things, I also saw how that helped me. I learned ask SQL L really fast. I learned about technical architectures really fast and how code is structured and the whole software development life cycle.

Those things absolutely have helped me in my career as well. So I think it's a balance, but I don't think you need one or the other to get started. I think both and the balance of both help you succeed in the field.

You do need to be happy working with people and communicating with people, and you generally need to have a good grasp of detail. But apart from that, I don't think there's such a thing as an BA and it would be a bit sad if it was.

 The top three things that I personally look for and I think are invaluable.

If you're wanting to start out in the profession. One of those is curiosity. So the first C is curiosity. And I think having that curious mindset is really. Difficult to teach or to learn. I don't think, it's not really a learn behavior as such. I think it's something that you either have or you don't have.

And, you know, curiosity can be described in lots of different ways. It could be inquisitiveness, it could be nosy. But ultimately I think you know, curiosity is such an invaluable behavior that without it, it's very tough to excel in the world of business analysis.

The second C is, you know, having a collaborative nature. And I think, you know, being able to get on with people we're often, you know, working with lots of different people in, you know, in, in a time that can be quite scary for some, you know, we were changing stuff in an organization, so when you're working with stakeholders or users I think being able to get on with people is really important.

And I think also that's true as, you know, as you're working with more senior people in the organization too, being able to have that rapport and and find that common ground and network is key. And my third one is sometimes a controversial one and courage is. You know, really for me, what brings curiosity and collaboration together. Often as a business analyst, you have to be the one in the room who ask those DAF questions or that aren't really DAF questions, but can be perceived as DAF questions to bring it back something clearer and simpler.

Creativity actually, I think is really key. I don't actually think there's any one set of, you know, previous jobs and previous skills. You find bas have come from all sorts of different backgrounds. I remember once speaking to someone who wanted to be a BA and they were working in a ticket office at a train station at the time.

And you would think, well, what possible similarities are there with working at a ticket office? But they explained to me about how they'd worked on, what I would call process improvement opportunities, albeit at a local level. They had that improvement mindset. They talked about how they'd resolved different conflicts with customers.

So actually, I think it's very much about that curiosity, that analytical and analysis mindset and carrying those transferable skills forward. I don't think there's any single, like in inverted commas, best type of person for business analysis. In fact, I think one of the great things about the BA community is how diverse we really all are. And I think that diversity is something that is, is worth a huge amount to our community.

 I know excellent bas who have done all sorts of things, including being a town planner, a paramedic, and a PhD chemist.

We're starting to welcome new generation of bas through apprenticeships and other entry level roles who have only ever been a ba And I'm interested to see how that influences the profession going forward.

 I don't know that there is a type of person suitable for becoming a business analysis professional. I think everyone does business analysis, but those that do it professionally embrace a particular mindset. They question and analyze situations to understand and drive change.

It's about continually asking why as well, and why not to enable better business outcomes.

Role of the BA in Agile

[00:19:33] Paddy Dhanda: I remember working in an organization previously, and the leaders decided everyone who wasn't in a dedicated agile role would be rebranded as engineers including business analysts.

I've also heard people say there is no role for a business analyst in an agile team. So what's your thinking around this and that's to Jamie.

[00:19:58] Jamie Toyne: I'll start off by saying is that if I had a quid had won the British Pound for every time I'd heard that bas don't exist in Agile because they don't appear on the scrum list of roles, I'll probably be sitting somewhere much warmer than just outside Sheffield right now.

And I think just to quickly hone in onto the, that scrum list of roles that, particularly those quite new to Agile seem to focus and talk about a lot, is that actually many of the roles that exist in an agile multidisciplinary team aren't mentioned on that list. User researchers aren't called out.

Content designers aren't mentioned. Service designers, business architects, interaction designers, all those roles, which. Many of us work with day in, day out, don't exist according to Scrum. And of course those roles are hugely important to success of any digital delivery, any agile delivery in the same way that business analysts are.

[00:20:54] Bronia Anderson-Kelly: Yeah, so I think similar themes really to a ba in a non-ag agile world.

I think that the skills are transferrable between the different development environments. So things like ensuring and understanding business needs and the requirements they transfer across both. And you've got to bring them into play in a, in an agile world too. And things like supporting the solution design to make sure that they meet those needs.

But we just have to in an agile world, we just have to have an eye there on incremental delivery. And the continuous improvement aspect that you get within Agile I firmly believe that bas deliver their value within the framework of an org organization. No matter how that organization prefers to work and develop, you know, deliver their software.

[00:21:38] Adrian Reed: So BA's an agile, oh, am I gonna open that? Hornet's nest. Oh, go on then. I always remember a, a friend of mine and Paddy, I'm sure a friend of yours Paul Turner who's you know, always got insightful things to say. I remember him saying once, do you know what, you might not need a business analyst on an Agile project, but you do need business analysis.

And I'm firmly of the view that's true. I don't care what the person's job title is. You absolutely need business analysis. And if you think about you know, like. Scrum as an example, there ought to be some kind of product vision, right? So actually even before you've got to the point of saying, we're gonna do this in an agile way, someone's gotta have like understood the problems and opportunities.

That's strategic analysis, right? That is a form of business analysis. It's a form that pre-project or pre-product problem analysis is analysis that isn't always done very well, right? And you and I know this and that's a whole area where we can add value. It's like, well actually, you know, if we actually know where we are going, then maybe we'll get there a little bit quicker.

I remember someone saying, you know, requirements are not a documentation problem. They are a communication problem. And it's about creating shared understanding. And sometimes it's about challenging and making sure we go right back to that strategic view and say, okay, yeah, at this micro level does it connect up?

Are we in the right direction? Has something changed?

[00:23:12] Grant Wright: Fundamentally the BA role is still there to support and add value. Now, some may argue that's a product owner's role in Agile, I think. It, depending on your setup, BAS can step up into that product in the role. They can almost be part of a product team where they support the product owner and help refine and elaborate user stories to get them ready for sprints.

Bas can add value during the sprints to clarify acceptance criteria in a three amigos conversation with the Devon test teams, and they can help with that kind of transition of the ready stories into the business by explaining what functionality has been drip fed through to help with business readiness and acceptance.

[00:23:56] Christina Lovelock: One of the principles of the Agile manifesto states that the best architectures, requirements and designs emerge from self organizing teams. There's so much emphasis placed on the last part of that principle, the concept of self organizing teams that a lot of organizations have forgotten that they be, should be striving for the best architectures, requirements and designs to inform those teams.

User stories are not really analysis, and if that's all that bas are being asked to do on a project, that's a fraction of what they're capable of and it's unlikely that those teams are achieving the best results.

[00:24:30] Jared Gorai: Organizations are now bringing back the business analysis skillset cuz they understand that business analysis must happen on a project and that the title of the practitioner doesn't really matter.

Many business analysis professionals have become product owners where they take on a leadership role within an agile team, while other teams have found the need to add business analysis professionals to their project teams. Success begins with business analysis.

Steps to how you can become a BA

[00:24:54] Paddy Dhanda: Thank you experts. I'm glad we cleared that one up and I hope we've closed that question once and for all. And if you have anyone in your organization telling you otherwise, then please send them a polite email, informing them. They may want to reconsider their thinking. And share this episode. Now, if you've enjoyed what you've heard so far about the role and feel you'd like to make the move to becoming a business analyst then where should you start? So experts. What two or three steps can someone take to starting a career in business analysis?

[00:25:32] Fabrício Laguna: If you are interested in becoming a ba, I invite you to join the business analysis community. There are a lot of people talking about business analysis, sharing their experience, showing how they are doing business analysis, teaching how to do business analysis using different techniques and concepts.

 Go for conference. Try to see everything you can find. There's a lot of good podcasts, YouTube channels and courses online. There's a lot of good content around you can find the best thing for you, but try to be close to this community. Try to share their mindset and make that mindset part of you.

[00:26:19] Jared Gorai: as Director of Chapters and Member Engagement IIBA, I think one of the first steps would be to join IIBA and your local chapter.

Download your copy of the BABOK Guide and learn the techniques and jargon contained within it. Then I'd suggest that you attend business analysis events and meet other practitioners. Foster the business analysis mindset and seek ways in which you can affect change. Be curious, ask questions and really jump into the profession with both feet.

Cuz if you don't immerse yourself in the profession, you'll miss out on much of what it has to offer.

[00:26:49] Jamie Toyne: I think my main bit of advice would be if you can try and find a structured way to learn and grow something that allows you to build your knowledge. Then supports you to find opportunities to test out your new knowledge, your new tools and techniques in applying it in a practical sense.

And alongside that, equally as importantly is it allows you to build your confidence. And for me, you know, skills are confidence and knowledge applied in a real world setting. So that's your, where is elevate something that's theoretical and gain that experience firsthand.

[00:27:22] Christina Lovelock: In every role there is the opportunity to apply business analysis skills, whether that's approaching a problem, logically seeking different viewpoints and perspectives, or improving processes.

Someone who wants to become a BA needs to look at some of the common criteria on BA job descriptions and see how they can find ways to demonstrate and gain those skills and experience from the job that they're currently doing. I've seen teaching assistance and window cleaners move into a business analyst role by demonstrating a curious and analytical mindset.

And I personally gained so many of my skills relevant to business analysis when I was stacking shelves in st including customer relationships and looking for business efficiencies.

[00:28:03] Adrian Reed: You've got the bcs, the Chartered Institute for It, which has a, although that's IT based, and business analysis is broader, of course but it has a broad business analysis diploma program. Engage with the meetups and the many good online communities that are out there. Such as you know, you are listening to this this podcast now you might want to look at websites like BA times. I, you know, I'm biased in saying this, but Ba Digest as well, the quarterly free magazine is a good thing to look into, connect with others.

[00:28:34] Linda Parker: If you are a new to being a ba, I think it's useful to follow a BA pathway and for organizations to set one up so their bas know how the role might progress from trainee or junior all the way to senior ba.

A pathway provides a framework for BAS to follow, focusing their learning so there is an understanding of what skills should be known at what stage in their career. The key thing is to have a route to follow, but also don't allow it to constrain your training as a BA with so much learning available.

What training courses would you recommend?

[00:29:11] Paddy Dhanda: Some fantastic advice from our experts there and I absolutely agree with everything they've shared. There's just something really special about the BA community. There's a real sense of wanting to help each other. We can see this firsthand, even on this episode where every one of our experts has been so forthcoming in sharing their top tips. Now the BA role requires us to develop a whole host of new skills. And apply a bunch of different analysis techniques. So, where do you start when considering business analysis training? Over to you, Sam, let's hear some of your thinking on this.

[00:29:53] Sam Merrick: My mind is completely clear on this question, so I think there's two pathways that you should be looking at.

There's the IIBA E C B A, the entry certificate for business analysis course pathway. I mean, courses are about the BABOK and trying to understand the kind of conceptual view of what business analysis is and how that hangs together from the IIBA's point of view. That's really good cause there's a bunch of techniques, different knowledge areas to consider.

Lots of different tasks you may or may not do as a BA in different contexts. So that's a great way if you like, reading and building a kind of conceptual model in your mind. If you're looking for something a bit more accessible, then I would say take a look at the BCS courses. You know, provides a process for business analysis, which I think is, you know, really easy to digest and a good set of techniques in order to get you going.

So yeah, look at both of those things. I think it depends on the kind of learner you are, kind of mind that you've got, whether you're more logical or more more kind of flexible. So yeah, take a look at those. I think that's the best way.

[00:30:54] Christina Lovelock:

I'm a big advocate for professional certification, for business analysis, and in fact, all roles in tech and digital. In my experience, professional qualifications improve the confidence and competence of business analysts, and they improve the consistency of business analysis across an organization.

So I think it's so valuable. I also have to do a plug here for the level four apprenticeship standard in business analysis, which is a great route for people to be really well supported, to become a ba and there is no age limit on apprenticeships. Anyone can do one, and there's also funding available in the UK for employers to support this.

[00:31:29] Fabrício Laguna: If you are looking for a content in business analysis, I invite you to subscribe to the Brazilian BA YouTube channel. There is a lot of good videos, small videos with concepts related to business analysis there, and also some good interviews with business analysis experts from all around the world.

[00:31:51] Angela Wick: I would recommend for someone starting out the LinkedIn Microsoft certification to start, and that's a LinkedIn learning Microsoft collaboration. You can find it on opportunity.linkedin.com. It's a free learning path to start that journey. I would also recommend BACubed.com. I am the host of BACubed.com where our motto is we empower the best and modern business analysis of tomorrow and help bas thrive.

So if you're new to business analysis, it's a great place to learn more from others, from experts. It's on demand courses, it's live events, it's cohort learning, there's templates, everything you would need to really thrive in a thriving community to get support from as well.

[00:32:35] Grant Wright: So I'm a little torn on this one because I don't have any formal BA qualifications. I haven't done my BCS exams. I haven't done my IIBA exams and it's never really helped me back in being able to get work in the BA space.

But I guess what I did have was I had some formal training early on in use cases in U M L that gave me a good foundation. And I've always just researched and read up myself about different BA techniques. But I do absolutely recognize that, you know, that some bas really benefit from the more structured learning that some of those courses offer.

I was working on an interim basis one of my clients heading up their BA function, and we actively encouraged the BAS at that organization to take their BCS diplomas in business analysis. And the people that did those exams, you know, they really got value from them. Likewise, I know a few people who've done their C B A P through the I B A and again, that they've found that really valuable.

So I think there is value in doing those courses. But I personally have managed fine without them. What I have done is I've invested in training that I think allows me to grow above and beyond the basics of business analysis. So I did do some product ownership training, some user experience design training.

I've done a lot of work in the last few years on visual thinking as a skill that I think can really amplify and enhance the BA skillset. So I'd recommend also looking at those kind of those kind of softer supporting skills as well as just the core ba kind of, discipline and the courses that go with that.

Favourite BA Techniques

[00:34:44] Paddy Dhanda: Thanks Grant. Now something that BAS love to talk about is techniques. So I'm keen to hear from our experts, what some of their favorite. Business analysis techniques are. Bronia what have you got for us?

[00:34:58] Bronia Anderson-Kelly: A lot of people hate rich pictures. I suppose with your visual thinking skills though, Paddy, I'm sure you'll probably be aligned more with me because I love them.

I understand why people don't like them because they're not formal. They've got virtually no rules to help you produce them. And to a BA professional they can be seen as a bit juvenile, but I think they're really powerful. As an example many years ago I worked on a listing requirements to improve a payments process I could process in.

I met with the stakeholders, but then I produced a rich picture afterwards to explain all the complex things that happened kind of in their process. Sort of like a fun flow diagram. And guess what? I got confirmation back from them within minutes to confirm that it was correct. Why? Because they're engaging and because they're easy to interpret.

[00:35:52] Sam Merrick: So Rich Pitch is absolutely, is one of my favorites. But then the other favorite that I've got weirdly is data flow diagrams.

I think that's because for me, processes. And if we're making a change that's significant enough to affect the operating model, you're gonna start looking at process. And the data flow diagram is very much a process model. So you draw out your processes, but you consider the data flow and the data storage within that.

And I think that allows us to be able to think a bit more about what the requirements are of the information that's within that system. And broadly speaking, we bas are involved in information systems projects. So for me, yeah, data flow diagrams helps to kind of logically think about information and process together as well as people who are obviously, you know, making, you know, a lot of cases, making the information, man managing the information and the technology as well.

[00:36:43] Grant Wright: So I highly recommend learning about visual thinking and how to apply visual thinking to express yourself using rich pictures. And the other one was story mapping. If you're working in an agile way, and for me, even if you're not working in an agile way, I just like the way that story mapping allows you to externalize your thoughts, again, in quite a visual way.

And you can use online tools as well as physical post-it notes to make sense of the scope of something, and choose. Which high level activities you want to expand upon and when. So that allows you to then start thinking about planning in a more agile way. I just think it's such a powerful technique and I'd highly recommend people having a look at Jeff Patton's book and user story mapping if they wanna find out more about that.

[00:37:34] Angela Wick: Only one or two techniques, that's just not fair. There's so many more goodness. I would've to say, okay, I'm gonna name 3. They're all visual models. I swear I use them nonstop with clients and projects. And it always creates light bulb moments for everybody. Number one, a scope or context diagram.

Make it from a user perspective. Number two, a state diagram or state transition diagram. Number three, decision tables. Those are my three favorite visual models to really get at so many details that go unstated finds so many requirements that folks are just not thinking about and really gets the right conversations going.

[00:38:14] Linda Parker: I'm old school, so I still love a process model. If I'm stuck, I'll sketch one out or search for an existing process. This helps me understand the business area I'm trying to deal with. It may not be very detailed at the start, but it helps to focus my mind and is a good way of introducing myself to the business area.

[00:38:36] Fabrício Laguna: Concept modeling is a technique where you can define a business vocabulary using a diagram that connects nouns through verbs.

So you may have two nouns connected by a verb, and that defines an expression that you can use in your process development, in your requirements, specifications in your business rules, specifications, or even just to talk about your business. And besides the diagram, you also have a glossary where you define the meaning or the definition of every long term.

So concept models can help your organization to have a well structured and clear vocabulary to talk about business.

[00:39:25] Nick de Voil: The thing that I absolutely love is workshops. I love doing workshops. So when I'm working as a consultant with customers I try to have a workshop as early as possible in the process. Get as many stakeholders as possible together in one room and start working things through together.

And the level of energy that you can get going in a workshop is such fun. It really is. It's like the air that I breathe when I'm doing a project that the energy that you get in workshops, there's lots and lots of other techniques I suppose, you know, some of the more technical detailed techniques.

I suppose the one that I've used more than anything else over the years is data modeling. And it sounds like rather an arcane idea. Data modeling sounds rather technical, but the great thing about it is you can apply it at many different levels. So yes, you can create a data model to describe a database that needs to be built, but you can also create a data model using the same ideas to explore what are the information needs of people in the organization and what are the things in their business, in their world, if you like that are important to them.

[00:40:46] Jared Gorai: Describe one or two of my favorite techniques. The guide has 50 techniques in it, and I remember being in a conference a number of years ago and they were the speaker was saying that, you know, of the 50 techniques, the typical business analysis professional uses maybe eight or nine of them and then challenged us to increase that.

Grab one more technique that you've never used before. So of the 50 techniques I do have a couple of favorites. Brainstorming is one of them. I love getting into a group of individuals and we would talk about, you know, here's the problem, how can we solve it? And just throw out ideas.

There are some amazing stories. I remember hearing one story in, well, the northeast part of the United States, where they were having problems with ice accumulating on transmission wires. And what they did is they had a brainstorming session for like, how do we get this ice off?

And at one point someone said, well, hold on a second. What if we got bears to climb the poles and, you know, the action of them climbing the poles, they would knock the ice off the lines. Well, believe it or not, that brainstorming actually worked because the way it worked is, well, okay, but how do you get the honey on top of the poles?

So the bear wants to climb it. I'll use a helicopter to, to put these pots of honey on the poles. Well, they soon found out that the rotors of the helicopter would actually come shake the ice off the lines. So it's one of my favorite stories and obviously one of my favorite techniques as well.

[00:42:17] Christina Lovelock: So I have been known to create a force field analysis or a decision tree to help me with a decision I'm trying to make.

A force field analysis allows you to think about and visualize the opposing forces acting on a decision or a change, and you can quantify the different forces and think about how different aspects can be addressed or overcome.

[00:42:35] Jamie Toyne: Capability mapping. So, you know, dare say venting more into the world of business architecture in some ways.

But understanding how an organization is made up, the, you know, the capabilities, the components of what an organization does is something I just find really, you know, essential to do when I'm working with any new organization. Whether that be for the first time, one I'm coming back to and I'm less familiar with it.

So I think that's such an important technique to able to, I think it's one which can be helpful, particularly as you grow in the career business analysis and start working maybe more in strategic sphere. It's hugely helpful.

[00:43:12] Vincent Mirabelli: Okay, so this is one I always answer whenever I see these polls what's your favorite BA technique?

My answer is always coffee. And everyone goes, ha. Because, you know, maybe they think it's because of the caffeine or whatever. No, coffee is a great way to get to know your stakeholders, get to know their needs, get to know what their stakeholder requirements are, not just what the business requirements are to help get to know them as an individual, which then helps to build trust and buy in from your stakeholders.

So coffee is a great technique. If you want something, you know, more formal, I'm a big fan of those enterprise techniques. So SWOT is a great. Technique for understanding the strengths and weaknesses and opportunities and threats of any given option or solution. I'm a big fan of PESTLE, which is very broad in the enterprise or strategy analysis space.

So pests a great tool for understanding, you know, the lay of the land from political and economic and legal and technological, and I'm gonna run through the whole acronym, but, you know, it's a great way to understand what's going on in the market and what's going on out in the world.

So, those are my favorite too. But number one is always coffee.

[00:44:32] Paddy Dhanda: Okay, so you've heard it here. If you want to be an awesome BA then you have to fall in love with coffee. Let's now look at the future with all of the advances in AI it's probably left many of us are a little uncertain about the future of work. And what all of this means specifically for the BA role. Linda. Can you tell us more?

Future of the BA role

[00:44:57] Linda Parker: I think the need and importance of the BA role is stronger than ever. Currently, there is a mix of organizations working in different ways, some more traditional approaches like Waterfall and some more agile techniques. These organizations really need bas, and as a contractor, I see firsthand the drive for more business analysis.

However, this ever increasing demand is outstripping availability, and so the market is in danger of being flooded with under-skilled bas. If you are a ba, be a skilled ba. Embrace learning and not just traditional business analysis ideas and techniques. Work with and learn from your closest allies like UXs, product owners, content writers.

Anyone that is really close or on the fringes of what we do similarly, develop your people and communication skills. You will then be worth your weight in gold. Additionally, keep in mind future technologies and ensure you remain current. Do not shy away from topics like cybersecurity, analytics or AI to name just a few.

Just because they seem more technical or edgy. These areas will still need requirements. There will still be users who the organization needs to understand.

[00:46:26] Fabrício Laguna: I see the role of the business analyst is growing far more away from the original. It. Perspective or software projects where it was first born.

I see business analysis being using for very different kind of professionals. Recently, I B A just closed the a partnership with human Resource Association explaining how human resources analysts can use business analysis, or in other words, how can they also be business analysts trying to understand the needs of an organization in the aspect of a human resources and defining solution for those needs.

A solution in a human resource perspective could be a training or hiring a new employee or defining a career path. You can have different kinds of solution, but what we are doing when we are analyzing these kind of needs is business analysis. So business analysis as a role is becoming more and more useful for different kinds of professionals.

That's why I argue that we should look for business analysis more. As a mindset than a role.

[00:47:51] Vincent Mirabelli: I always credit Jared Garry from IIBA he's got this great line around, you know, we're not business analysts, we're business analysis professionals and everybody, when you're in business, you are a business analyst or you are a business analysis professional. So I don't think that part of it is going away.

What I think is really interesting I for bas as we, you know, navigate towards the future is, you know, how are we going to adjust to things like chat, G P T? And if you haven't played with that yet it's a fantastic. AI tool how are we going to benefit from it? Let's not be afraid of it, but how are we gonna benefit from it?

Can we use it or can we leverage AI and bots to do a lot of the mundane work? Now that being said, now that I'm saying this, what does mundane mean? So I think of someone like, you know, Jamie Champaign who seems to, and I don't know how love writing, validating and building traceability into her requirements.

Loves it. I don't and maybe that's why she and I get along so well, cuz we're like opposite ends of the BA spectrum. But you know, what is mundane? What is the work that you don't wanna do and that somebody else wants to do? So I think, you know, we're gonna have to find a way to integrate AI and technology's gonna continue to evolve.

[00:49:22] Sam Merrick: I think that there's a, an awful lot of bas that have been moving, I guess into more sort of strategic roles. So I think that's probably a step towards kind of a more business focus, more broader context, more strategy oriented type, business analysis role. I don't necessarily wanna say business architecture cause that implies that you are inputting a framework in to to manage the value streams of the organization.

But I think that having wider touchpoints as a BA and having probably more scope of change, I think is a good thing. It enables the organization to think more holistically.

[00:50:03] Bronia Anderson-Kelly: I think there'll always be a need for BA skills for, you know, helping organizations in that way. You know, as long as organizations exist, then there's gonna be the need for that skillset.

I think with the advent of ai and more in data analysis, I think we, we'll find BA roles getting involved in those sorts of things. You know, ai, data analysis, process automation UX design. And then there'll be certain technologies within specific domains say that a BA might specialize in.

And I think we'll probably see that you know, over the next 10 plus years is just a further breakdown of the BA role into further roles. And we'll just get more specialists. There'll still probably be generalist bas, but I think we'll find a lot more roles that are requesting kind of specialist knowledge and skills.

[00:50:58] Jamie Toyne: In short, I'm really excited. I think there's never been more of a need for a BA mindset and the wider business toolkit that we can bring to organizations, to, for our customers, for our users. And I think that's so many reasons that the world has never been more complicated, whether that be in the world of tech and data, whether that be the implications of tech and data in, in terms of ethics and also whether that be around Changing expectations and increased expectations from our users and from our from our customers.

So I think business analysis brings a huge amount to the table in trying to break down that complexity and trying to have clarity and conciseness of where we need to get to, you know, whether that be an organizational level or delivery team level. But I think there's also a couple of things we need to focus on within the profession to ensure we're best placed and seen as a go-to point of contact to, with some of stuff.

Those is thing do and ways more obvious in that we need to keep up to date. We need to evolve as a profession in terms of being aware of you know, the tech and the wider tech landscape that sits around. Everything we do, whether we're in that particular space at the moment is individuals or not.

And obviously what that means and like say from an ethics perspective and other perspectives too. And we also need to be aware of what other professions exist. Obviously for those who've been business analysis for more than 10 years, the professions you work on a day to day level will have likely changed, probably likely more digital tech professions that exist today.

There never has been. So we need to be clear on how we work with those other professions. How do we get most from them with what we're doing, but likewise, how can they get most from what we do and how we work? And additionally I think the other big thing is we need to be, and this is probably the harder thing, but we need to get our BA brand to be clearer.

We need to make sure it's more engaging. And I think there's a lot we need to do in that space. Cause other professions being really honest, seems to do a much better job of it. You used to look at you know, the UX professions and product professions, they have a much clearer and a much more engaging brand.

For what they do. And that's not be said. There aren't brilliant things that individuals are doing. Already I think Paddy podcast here in terms of the, is brilliant towards, across community level, across profession level.

[00:53:31] Angela Wick: I think the future of the BA role is going to be leaning more and more towards collaboration, how bas facilitate information exchanges among others, how they facilitate decision making, how they facilitate problem solving, structured conversations collaboration, and just really guiding a group through the process of making sure that everything is taken care of.

You know, old school way of doing this is creating a bunch of really sick, big documents. But more and more the trend and the future that I see is that we're gonna be writing and documenting far less and facilitating meaningful conversations to get the decision making process on track to get the problem solving process on track, and to do that at the speed of light.

[00:54:18] Adrian Reed: So I really see business analysis as being an area where there's real opportunities and, you know, I see bas getting involved much earlier in the business change life cycle in the product development, life cycle.

And I think that area to the left of the sort of conventional area where, you know, requirements analysis starts, that's an area where we can really move the needle because, those early interventions where a quick question like, you know, why are we doing this? Are we still on the same page here?

They can save hundreds and hundreds of days of scope creep further downstream. I mean, and maybe I'm being dramatic here, but you know how much I believe in this kind of stuff and so I think there are huge opportunities. Teams are definitely pushing into that direction. And I think it, it really is about being that, a phrase we've probably heard from time to time that trusted advisor to the business and really helping to adapt organizations.

If organizations want agility, then they need people who can be there to help work with those relevant stakeholders to help see the opportunities to help work out how the internal plumbing works so that change can be made in a really expedient fashion. So I think when you look outwardly, when you've got organizations wanting to adapt, when you've got a possibly a, you know, a tough physical and financial environment changes happening, then we are exactly the types of folks that people will need.

[00:55:58] Nick de Voil: Things do change. Nothing stays the same forever. And there are lots of job titles around now that didn't exist 30 years ago, and job titles that exist now won't exist in 30 years time. So we can see already that there are people doing business analysis on projects who don't necessarily have the job title business analyst.

They might be I called a product owner or all sorts of other things. I think in the long run that will happen to business analysis. There won't be people called business analysts. One day they'll be called something else. And I think, you know, there's a constant process of professions changing their boundaries, splitting, merging with each other and so on.

One thing that I'm particularly interested in is user research. And user research has a massive overlap with business analysis and also business architecture is another closely related discipline to business analysis. And I think maybe in the future there will be enterprise designers and enterprise designers will be people who combine skills in all those different disciplines.

[00:57:10] Grant Wright: I think if you look at where business analysis goes in the future, the obvious thing is the technology, isn't it? It's the introduction of cyber, of robotics, of artificial intelligence and how those things fundamentally change the world around us and the art of what's possible, you know, that will impact what bas do.

So I think bas have to keep in touch with that. I know the bas have to be a technical role, but I do think it has to be a technically aware role. I don't know many projects that where you are using business analysis and technology and those emerging technologies don't have some bearing on that work.

So I think those are the obvious things. I think the other things that, that they're not new trends, but the application of business analysis is a skillset outside of the BA role is something I see the community talking about and I agree whether that's expanded into business architecture, service design strategy analysis all of those.

Sort of roles can benefit from good business analysis skills and as a profession, I think that's where bas can kind of grow and see their longer term career path. So I definitely think there's a need to keep that conversation going, but probably the biggest thing for me that, that has to improve is the ability for BAS to engage and communicate with their stakeholders.

There's so many bas I've worked with over the years who are comfortable sitting at their desk doing some modeling, right in a spec, but they're really uncomfortable at getting people in a room, having an engaging conversation, surfacing ideas, leveraging the wisdom of the people in the, and the diversity in the room.

And I think that's a missed opportunity. And I think a lot of that is just about confidence, about creative confidence or a lack of IT in the BA community. So it's something that I'm passionate about and I really think that we need to take seriously as things do evolve and as technology continues to evolve, our ability to leverage those human skills and to be able to create a human connection and more important than ever,

[00:59:31] Christina Lovelock: I am excited to see where business analysis goes next. I think it has much more of a role to play in setting strategy and strategic decision making. I hope we're gonna see more bas working at an organizational level rather than a project or product level. And I think that organizations can access this expertise when they have a well-structured BA practice, which is identified and articulated what services it offers to the organization.

So that's what's gonna help our colleagues and senior leaders really see what bas have to offer.

[01:00:01] Jared Gorai: This is one of my favorite questions. The future of the BA rule. The sky's the limit. It's interesting. You look at the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics says that there's going to be another 800,000 new business analysis jobs in the next five years. And that's in the US alone. The world around us needs more business analysis practitioners.

And I think, you know, the future is very bright for business analysis. Look at LinkedIn says, you know, of the top 10 skills that people are looking for business analysis. I think this sits at number six and you look at some of the other ones. Yeah, that's business analysis.

Well, when you look at, you know, cloud computing and analytics and data management, whatnot, that's part of business analysis as well. So the future of the behavioral is incredibly vast and, and it's the world's our oyster. the future looks very bright.

Resources for BA's

[01:00:52] Paddy Dhanda: Thanks, Jared. I just love your optimism and it gives us great hope for the future. Now if you're a regular listener of the podcast, then you'll know I always ask my guests to share their favorite resources to help you continue on your learning journey. So I put this same question to the experts. Fabrizio tell us what are some of your favorite resources

[01:01:17] Fabrício Laguna: I have been participating in some different conferences around the world and they're amazing places to learn business analysis, to connect with other business analysts and to share knowledge. So building business capability in US is probably a great conference. The biggest I know held by IIBA is the official conference of the International Institute of Business Analysis that happens once a year pm BA conference in North America, Canada, and United States is also a great conference that talks about business analysis.

We have BA and Beyond in Belgium and the Netherlands, which is a great conference we have in South Africa. The I B A chap in South Africa making the BA Summit a very good conference in business analysis. I know they have a very good conference in business analysis in Australia. We have here in Brazil, the BA Brazil conference.

So all chapters around the globe are doing great business analysis conference. I do have my own YouTube channel, the Brazilian BA on YouTube, and there's a lot of content there that I bet would be useful for you too.

[01:02:41] Sam Merrick: I iba uk.org. I'm going to say that, aren't I? No. There, look, there's loads of stuff on there. So there's load of past events. So if you've not been a member or a pass holder before and you wanna view some of the past events, then either sign up to the IBA as a global organization or head along to iba uk.org and purchase an event pass you can book on for new events, upcoming events.

But you can also view the event archives as well. And we've had a lot of them over the past couple of years, given we've had covid and a lot of the events have been virtual. So that's an absolutely fantastic resource to look at. It's very relevant to bas and BAS in the UK as well. So if you're based in the uk, you know, for me, then great.

If you are, you know, a bit more worldwide, then perhaps your local chapter's got more relevant content as well. But no, IIBA chapters are a fantastic resource to use.

[01:03:31] Linda Parker: Well, as I run the BA Life conference, of course I'm going to start there. Seriously, as you said yourself, Paddy conferences are a great starting point for learning.

I also love a good book because I can make notes in it. One of my go-to books is the fourth edition of a book called Business Analysis. There are also many great podcasts like yours and one called BA Brew, both of which I listen to quite often. Similarly, there are online meetups and training sessions.

And again, I would be very remiss if I didn't suggest any BA would do well to attend BA Life, the BA Festival in A Day . And you don't need to go anywhere for this because it's all online. For more details, check out www.ba life.code.uk.

[01:04:30] Angela Wick: Resources for bas, I would say, gosh, I would say connect with me on LinkedIn.

I am posting resources all the time, posting content as well. So I'm Angelo Wick. It's Angelo Wick, C bap, I think it is on LinkedIn. You'll find me. And yeah, I mean there's just a great community on LinkedIn and folks that are posting all sorts of resources, getting great conversations, going, posting videos, et cetera.

[01:04:52] Adrian Reed: There's the b c s book, business Analysis and Business Analysis Techniques, which is more of a kind of toolkit type approach. And if you want a little bit of info in the the BA career, then doing a little plug for myself I wrote a book called Business Analyst by bcs, which is nowhere near as good as the other books.

But hey, you know, you might wanna humor me and buy a copy and also check out all of the good blogs and online content as well. That's definitely worth doing.

[01:05:19] Nick de Voil: So I'm personally more of a book person than a podcast person. I've got literally hundreds of books about business analysis and related related areas.

There are actually a lot of good books by BBCs. So it's worth knowing that if you are a member of bcs, there's something called the BCS Library, which is an online resource that allows you access to all BCS's books. So you can read about, you know, agile user experience. You know, product management business architecture, all sorts of related areas as part of that.

So that's something worth considering. Another great book is Business Analysis and Leadership Edited by Penny Poland and James Archer. I would say that because I wrote one of the chapters in it the iib b's business Analysis Body of Knowledge Guide is quite dry. But it is a very good collection of and quite well structured collection of ideas about how to do business analysis.

And also, finally, one other book I would mention is that there's a new edition coming out at some point of mastering the requirements process by Suzanne and James Robertson which is, I think the current edition is the third edition, but I believe there's a fourth edition coming out quite soon.

So that's worth looking out for

[01:06:51] Jamie Toyne: I personally like, analyst corner medium com. I also do some writing blogging for that too.

And I also really like the Be a Digest publication that Adrian re pulls together. All are fantastic. You know, fantastic places to find out new information, to find out different perspectives and angles on things from experienced practitioners around the globe in, in both of those.

[01:07:14] Grant Wright: In terms of books, o one that sticks out and I remember is a book called Discover to Deliver agile Product Panel Analysis by Ellen Gut and Mary Gorman. And that's just a really good book on how to apply business analysis techniques in an agile context and one that I just find myself going back to again and again.

So I think lots of stuff for bas. I would also recommend looking into the world of visual thinking. That's something that I'm passionate about. And there's lots of good authors there and if you wanna find out more about visual thinking, come along to the visual jam.com and being carry on the conversation there.

[01:07:51] Vincent Mirabelli: If you're looking for podcasts Dave Sabo has a great one called Mastering Business Analysis. I will throw in a, you know, couple of my own. I also have a podcast called Business Not as Usual. If you're not sure which one it is, cuz there's a few that have the same name.

Look for the pineapple the Pineapple with Sunglasses Business, not as usual. I do that with my, my buddy and former colleague Mike Martino. Good dude. So in terms of books there's a lot I know Jamie Champaign has written one on mastering business analysis. Jamie and I also have a a community that we're trying to build called the Modern Business Analyst.

You can get more information about that at at my website, vincent marielli.com. There's no lack of education and knowledge out there. And I'll throw out one another. I'm gonna use this as an opportunity to plug myself. You know, I've got, I've just actually just yesterday come back from recording my fifth course on the LinkedIn learning platform.

 A few are related to, you know, my Lean Six Sigma world in, you know, change management and in Lean Six Sigma and building a culture of continuous improvement. Although I would argue that one probably is applicable to everybody and not just the Six Sigma folks.

But my first course ever was called Business Analysis Foundations Enterprise. It's all about enterprise analysis. And then I did a follow up in my third course called Essential Techniques in Enterprise Analysis, where we talk about, you know, SWOT and PESTLE and the Three Horizons technique and Porter's Five Forces. The field, the industry the people that are in it. Are so, open to sharing their perspectives and their knowledge, and I think that's amazing.

[01:09:42] Christina Lovelock: I would direct people towards the BA Times, a free online magazine and BA Digest, also free and is released quarterly.

There are loads of resources on the BA Hub created by Black Metric.

[01:09:54] Jared Gorai: Representing i b as I do, the resources that I'm gonna recommend are definitely I bs focused.

We do have an i b A podcast. We do a minimum of two webinars every month for our members. And then we do periodic public webinars as well. And of course, the big conference in North America building business capability.

We have 115 chapters currently around the world that have professional development days. So tho those are awesome opportunities to learn. There's so many resources out there from a book perspective. I can't go anywhere without talking about the BABO guide from I b a as well as if you're a member of I B A.

You have access to our online library with over 11,000 titles of amazing books on leadership analysis data agile pretty much anything you can think of. It's all there. So those are the resources that I will recommend and hopefully you can find some nuggets. In those

Final words

[01:10:54] Paddy Dhanda: Wow. There's bags of learning just right there. And we're almost at the end of this epic episode. I personally want to thank each and every one of my awesome guests on today's podcast. I'll be sharing everyone's LinkedIn details in the show notes. So I do encourage everyone to follow up with them directly on any points that you've heard in this episode.

[01:11:18] Sam Merrick: Thank you very much for having me on the Superpowers School podcast.

I'm so chuffed to be invited to, to do this, so thank you very much. Yeah, if anybody's got any need to get into contact with me, you can find me on LinkedIn. It'd be awesome to connect. And yeah, thank you again.

[01:11:33] Fabrício Laguna: Thank you very much for having me here, Paddy. It was a pleasure and an honor. Thank you everybody for hearing it. And if you want more information, please check my website, thebrazillianba.com. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, The Brazilian BA on YouTube, and let's get connected. Find me on LinkedIn. My name is Fabricio Laguna.

It'll be a pleasure to connect with you, to have you in my network to share information with you. Don't be shy.

[01:12:07] Christina Lovelock: Thanks so much for giving me this opportunity to talk about business analysis, which is pretty much my favorite topic.

You can keep in touch with me, Christina Lovelock, via LinkedIn, and you can hear more from me in the BA Times It Now magazine and Ba Digest, or in the book that I wrote with Deborah Paul, which is called Delivering Business Analysis. Bye for now and thanks again, Paddy, and for everyone for listening.

[01:12:29] Nick de Voil: Thanks very much for having me, Paddy. If anyone would like to keep in touch, I'm easy enough to find on LinkedIn or Twitter, that'd be great to hear from you. You might be interested in taking a look at the articles I've been writing in Ba Digest.

And I've been writing a series of articles in there about group construct analysis, which is a way of understanding organizations and people in organizations and the way that they think and talk and influence each other. So yeah be great to hear from anyone that wants to keep in touch.

Thanks very much, Patty.

[01:13:06] Vincent Mirabelli: So folks thank you so much. And Paddy, thank you so much for having me on the show. You are a gentleman and a scholar and one of the finest dudes I know, even if you are from Birmingham. Oh, just kidding, man. Don't send the Peaky Blinders after me.

But anyways, I wanna thank you for inviting me to participate and share my thoughts, share my perspectives on things. You know, I would invite all of your listeners to provide feedback. I wanna hear, you know, what do they agree with, what do they disagree with? Any of the things that I've said? And, you know, if anyone wants to hit me up, they can get me at my website, vincentmirabelli.com. Oh, I guess let me also promote while I'm here, Analysts After Work. And I know Paddy, you were a memorable guest on Analysts After Work where, you know, I refused to draw and I kind of regret cuz I should have played along.

But anyways so Analysts After Work vincentmirabelli.com and you know, you and your podcast. You're awesome dude,

[01:14:02] Jamie Toyne: Paddy, thanks again for inviting me on to the Superpowers School podcast. I've long been a fan of the series, so I was really humbled when he invited me onto it. If anyone's enjoyed listening to what I've had to say would like to follow up the conversation, please get in contact with me either via LinkedIn or via the Herd consulting website.

It's a shameless plug time, it's www.herd.consulting and he can drop us an email or get in contact every, the socials there. But thank you again and if there's anything we can help your organization with in terms of business analysis we are a rockstar business analysis consultancy, so we like to see things a little differently.

And if that's something of interest, get in touch and would love to have a conversation. Thanks again.

[01:14:47] Adrian Reed: Fantastic. Paddy, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I think it's such a great set of topics to be discussing. Such a tricky set of questions you set for me, but that's always part of the fun.

I would love to stay in touch with anyone that has even been vaguely interested in what I've had to say. So just connect with me on LinkedIn. My name's Adrian Reed that's r e e d. And if you just let me know you heard about it on this podcast, then I'll know you know, it's always useful to know where you where someone has heard about me.

Also I've mentioned a few times the Ba Digest magazine. you'd like to get access to that if you go to blackmetric.com and click on resources and Ba Digest, you'll find it there. And that's blackmetric.com. And then click on resources and Ba Digest, you'll find it there. And if you have any trouble finding it, just you know, ping me up on LinkedIn.

Also if you want free ba stuff throughout just follow Black Metric Business Solutions on LinkedIn cuz we share all sorts of content and memes to brighten up your day. But do get in touch. Always great to hear from other bas.

[01:15:51] Angela Wick: Paddy, thanks so much for having me on your show. I am looking forward to hearing the feedback from your listeners and if folks wanna follow up with me, they can find me on LinkedIn or ba-cube.com and I look forward to seeing everyone on LinkedIn or BA Cube.

Thanks so much.

[01:16:09] Bronia Anderson-Kelly: Yeah, thanks for having me on Paddy. It was great to chat on here. I think it's always good to get involved in any discussions that are BA related. I always enjoy that. Yeah, if any feedback or if there's any questions or people wanna get in touch, then feel free to find me on LinkedIn.

That's the easiest way I think I'm the only Bronia Anderson-Kelly, that's b r o n i a. So, yeah, look me upon there and connect upon there. I look forward to hearing from anyone.

[01:16:34] Jared Gorai: Wow, what an incredible experience. I love the fact that I had the opportunity to, you know, talk about business analysis, which is a topic that's near and dear to my heart, obviously.

I want to thank you for listening. Thank you, Paddy for the opportunity. This has been exceptional. I daresay even fantastic. I know my team gives me a hard time cause I love using the word fantastic, but it has been fantastic. There are so many ways to connect with me and I hope that you do.

You can connect me via LinkedIn at Jared Gorai. Also you can look up me up on iiba.org. I'm, as I said, the director of chapters and member engagement and it's been my absolute pleasure. So thank you.

[01:17:14] Linda Parker: Thank you for having me on the show. If you want to know more about me being a BA or the BA Life Conference, you can find me on LinkedIn.

My username is Linda Parker BA. Feel free to get in touch. Similarly, to discover more about BA Life, the BA Festival in a day. Check out our website at www.balife.co.uk or again on LinkedIn. I look forward to catching up with you and listening to your feedback. Thanks again.

[01:17:48] Grant Wright: Thanks Paddy for having me on the show. If anybody does want to keep in touch, I'm more than happy to connect on LinkedIn. I'm quite active on LinkedIn and, uh, more than happy to, to receive connections and talk about any of the things that we've spoken about on the show today. If people want to follow more about what I do in the world of visual thinking, you can find me on Instagram my handle is GW underscore Wright. And you can also go along to thevisualjam.Com, which is an international visual thinking community that I founded with Paddy and we run a free monthly meetup where we get along guests to talk about all things related to visual thinking. And we have lots of fun while we do it.

So I would love to see some people come on to that and, you know, learn how you can leverage the power of visual thinking to really amplify your BA skills as well.

[01:18:48] Paddy Dhanda: And as they say in show business, that's all folks. I hope you found the insights in this episode useful. If you have any feedback for me, then do let me know. You can connect with me via LinkedIn and drop me a message. And I want to thank Ian

Borthwick the head of publishing. at the BCS. Who did exactly that and said, Paddy Why don't you include an outro in your episodes? So just for you in, I'm going to try and endeavor to include outros in future episodes. And I just want to thank everybody for taking the time and listening to this episode.

We explore the concept of "job crafting," where individuals reshape their roles to align with their strengths and passions, ultimately boosting job satisfaction and performance with Rob Baker.

Key topics include:

👉🏽 Where did job crafting first originate

👉🏽 Research studies highlighting the benefits of job crafting

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Rob Baker

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Rob was named #8 Most Influential Thinker by HR Magazine in 2023, is a TEDX speaker, author of Personalization at Work and Chartered Fellow of the CIPD and the Australian HR Institute. He has written for the likes of Harvard Business Review and Work magazine and is world-leading when it comes to enabling and encouraging job crafting and personalised people experience. His work, ideas and research has been presented at academic and professional conferences around the globe.

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Transcription:

[00:01:00] Paddy Dhanda: Dear friend, thank you for joining me for another episode of the superpower school podcast I'm your host paddy danda and on today's show. I have a very special guest somebody I met at a recent conference Who did an amazing keynote speech and I just had to get him along on the podcast today He is the founder and chief positive deviant at tailored thinking Tailored thinking is an evidence based positive psychology Wellbeing and HR consultancy.

Welcome to the show Rob Baker. Hey Rob, how you doing?

[00:01:34] Rob Baker: Hey, thanks so much for the warm introduction. It's great to be

[00:01:36] Paddy Dhanda: Rob, I actually did that introduction without making any mistakes, and you're one of my only guests out of my hundred or so, where I've managed that, so I feel like I'm doing a good job so far.

[00:01:49] Rob Baker: I was very impressed and also it's good to keep these things simple, right? So as well, so that,

[00:01:52] Paddy Dhanda: Yeah, and I was going to say, your job title sounds very intriguing. Could you just explain that a little bit for us? And the whole story behind Tailored Thinking, like, how did you come up with that name?

[00:02:05] Rob Baker: So my job title is chief positive deviant and founder of Taylor thinking. So as you described, Taylor thinking HR consultants. And we bring. Ideas from science to practice within organizations, but it's one thing knowing that something's a good idea, it's a very different thing about actually practically applying that within workplaces.

So that's our kind of a sweet spot. And that's what we do. And we kind of describe ourselves as being a force for good in the world of world of work. So just trying to you. Make a positive difference in terms of what we do and the reference to positive deviance and chief positive deviance Is that I'm a lot of our thinking is shaped by research around behavioral science and positive psychology Research and there's a subset within positive psychology called positive deviance and positive deviance looks at People or organizations and teams behaving in different and distinct ways and getting different and distinct results, normally positive results.

So the ones that I'm interested in less, so the ones that aren't, they're kind of doing strange things and getting bad results are more interested in doing different things, different approaches and getting different, positive, different results. So that field is called positive positive deviance.

And so I kind of draw from that in terms of the, in terms of my job title. And I find it really interesting when you, when I'm introducing myself to. People and clients with that job title. So some people lean in at that perspective and some people kind of lean out and it tends to be the people who lean in are the ones that I know that I'm going to probably have a connection with, or we're going to have a connection with.

They're going to connect. They're curious about the things we're going to talk about and the ones that are going to leaning out, maybe some of the ideas or the concepts that we try and bring to bear with an organization is maybe not going to work for

[00:03:45] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, I love that. I was doing a talk just yesterday, actually, for a conference in Australia. Not that I flew out there, but it was all done remotely. And I was talking about the power of connection and how do we make small talk, environment where we're networking, for example. And I heard some really good advice.

It's on another podcast by a lady called Rachel Greenwald. And it was all around job titles and things like that. One of the things she's talked about was try not to be a data collector in those situations. And what she meant there was don't ask the obvious questions when we meet someone rather than saying, Hey, what do you do?

Or what's your job title? Because that's what everybody asks. Try and make it a little bit more curious and And she said, you know, and if someone does ask you that question Answer it without answering it. I was giving the example where I now say to people I Used to be a professional introvert and now I'm addicted to conversation and I get to play with Lego every day and That just leaves a conversation in the state of curiosity So I love these really interesting job titles that spark that curiosity because it creates a whole conversation around it

[00:04:58] Rob Baker: I'm not sure where I could have came. This came from, but one of the ideas, the links to that is around. I often just ask people to describe their job as if they're explaining it to a five year old. And this was, I think was influenced by my conversations with my son and my daughter.

But when you talk about your job to a five or six, or you don't talk about your job title, the specifics of it, you actually talk about the meaning and the purpose and the substance of what you're doing, because you're trying to communicate within that explanation and often when I'm getting people to connect, I don't get people to talk about their job as a.

In the job title, I say, can you please describe your job as if it was to a five year old, which is linked a little bit to some of those kind of conversations that creates that space for curiosity, I think.

[00:05:36] Paddy Dhanda: I love that and talking about curiosity What superpower would you like to bring to this particular episode?

[00:05:42] Rob Baker: I'd love to bring job crafting as my superpower, please. So, the ability to kind of personalize our work and shape it around ourselves. So that would be my superpower, please.

[00:05:50] Paddy Dhanda: I hadn't come across this term before and it was at the moment when you did your keynote speech that It just all made sense because I was thinking I do bits of this, but it's actually got a name so i'd love to dive into that, in a moment because I think it's really something that A lot of people would be interested in and you're doing some fantastic work in that space.

But before we do that, I want to know who is Rob? How have you navigated along your journey and ended up in this space? Because I'm pretty sure when you were 11 years old, you didn't dream to be a job crafting expert. So I'd love to know how you got into this.

[00:06:33] Rob Baker: And then my 11 year old self wanted to be an outdoor instructor. So that was like outdoor pursuits instructor. My thing or an architect, I think. So definitely chief positive deviant wasn't there.

So my first adventure was in the world of consultancy. So I started life.

And that was looking around yeah, HR particularly. And I was interested in psychology as an undergrad but I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do with it, but I was curious about people and organizations. And so that was, seemed like a good fit in terms of that. And I love consultancy. I love the opportunity to learn.

From different perspectives. And I think also loved if I'm being frank from an ego perspective, working with a consultancy, you've got to go in and sit with a very senior leadership teams and learn from people in a way that if you work with organizations, you'd never kind of got to see that kind of higher echelon.

So you got, you really got to see the insides of people working at a very kind of senior level very early for me. I didn't realize how lucky I was until afterwards, actually, in terms of that exposure. But I was, as I did all my HR qualifications at PwC, I didn't. Feel that I was a proper HR person because I wasn't doing the, the employee relations stuff, the hiring and firing or the discipline, the result, that kind of stuff, which I felt that if I didn't do that, I couldn't call myself an HR person.

So having worked for PwC for about five years, I then moved to an organization with a joint venture between British Telecom and Wotheringboro Council. So they, Wotheringboro Council were transforming how they. approached HR and I worked with them for a number of years and then found myself working in universities.

So I worked at the University of Sheffield and then was really fortunate to be approached about a role at the University of Melbourne in Australia. And. There I did a number of different roles including some kind of change and transformation kind of pieces and it was at Melbourne that I Was significant for a couple of reasons.

So one was I really enjoyed my job There's great exposure to learn about how kind of universities kind of works in Australia Secondly, my son was born there. So that was significant for us. And then thirdly I came across positive psychology. So Positive psychology was first coined as a term in about 99, 2000 by Martin Seligman and Mikhail Cech Semihai in a paper, and I graduated in 99, so I was too old for kind of it, for to kind of puncture the psychology.

Researcher I was studying and I was googling one day and I found positive psychology And it was like this really spoke to me and I was like, where can I study? Where can I do more and it just so happened and this is where you could have feel very lucky in these situations is that there'd been a philanthropic donation to the Melbourne University to set up a center a world leading center of positive psychology and they just launched this center at the university where I was working.

And they're just advertising kind of master's program. So I got to do a part time master's in the first kind of cohort there. Whilst working at the university, so it's two miles away from my house. So it kind of manifested itself two miles from my, from where I was living. And I just loved it in terms of the resonance and the relevance of the ideas.

And I realized, and this will come into our conversation later on, how much though, that we, we could see from positive psychology, which is all around optimum functioning and flourishing in different realms of life. So that's work or at home or in education, in different settings. And I was interested from a work perspective specifically.

And there was lots of research showing that this seems to work in terms of, for, to enable people to thrive and be resilient and could perform well within workplaces. And this is kind of like what we were doing. And I was culpable for this, right? As well. I knew that there was a gap between a no do gap in a kind of HR practice and organizational practice.

And I was just curious about what we could do differently to kind of bridge that gap. And so that was the seed of doing something differently. And when we came back to the UK, rather than go back to. The senior HR role, I thought, right, I'm going to have another adventure here and go back to my consultancy routes and see what I can do to bring this knowledge and ideas to practice within organizations.

And that was six years ago. So that's where kind of Taylor thinking come from. So that kind of, and that's, there's lots of happened in the last six years, but that kind of quickly kind of gets us to, to where we are

 I love that because when I often ask that question to guests, it's amazing. The journey it's almost like this spaghetti journey that we go on and things happen, like you say, just so happened you were in that university and they were setting up this program. A lot of it can be by chance. And I think.

[00:11:04] Paddy Dhanda: It's sometimes the fact that we're starting to connect with people around us and we're curious and we just don't know what conversations are going to lead to what thing. And sometimes someone inspires us in a five minute conversation. Just like your talk, I'm sure there were lots of people there that really reflected on that and were thinking.

Wow. I'm going to take this back to work. I'm going to try this out. I'm going to try something different. And that might lead them to take a further, deeper dive into this subject as well.

[00:11:36] Rob Baker: That's a lovely reflection. And just add to that a little bit. I think a lot of things when you see the opportunities is around having, being open to those possibilities when they when they present themselves. So I think if you have a door ajar, sometimes you think you're curious about a few things.

You then see that door open to you when you're in the right space to kind of, to walk through it effectively. Whereas if you don't ever have the time or the opportunities to think ahead about the kind of things you might be curious about doing in the future, it's harder to spot those doors or those opportunities when they kind of present, when they present themselves.

So I think there's something around having an idea of the kind of doors you want to kind of open up in terms of. you know, from ideas or from a work perspective or from a home perspective, because you'll probably see more of those kind of doors ajar because you're kind of looking to spot them, if that makes sense.

You're primed to kind of spot those opportunities.

[00:12:25] Paddy Dhanda: For anyone who's thinking, what is this job crafting thing? It sounds really fascinating, but I have no idea what it is. Could you explain it to us? And

[00:12:36] Rob Baker: Sure. So job crafting in a nutshell describes making changes to our job. So it's around crafting our job, is around customizing or tailoring our job, around our strengths, our passions, our interests. And we tend to craft our jobs in a number of different ways. So it's around how we act at work. So our tasks and activities, how we run meetings, how we Process our emails or do we do any elements of our job is also about how we interact.

So is our relationships with other people. So in terms of how we connect with others, how we spend our time with other people, and that could be our colleagues that could be our customers. That could be. Service providers, so anyone you could have come into contact with, through your job.

And then lastly, it's about how we think about the purpose and the meaning of our job. So our mentally, in terms of our perceptions of our job and what we see from a research perspective is that the, when people feel that there is a good fit or connection between their work and themselves, they tend to.

Have lots of positive outcomes for themselves and for their colleagues. So they tend to perform better. They tend to be more motivated. They tend to be more resilient. They tend to want to stay within that job and not necessarily give it up. So job crafting is all around crafting and customizing our jobs in small ways to make it a better fit for you as an individual.

[00:13:53] Paddy Dhanda: Would a boss or a manager not have objection to that to say, why are you doing all of this other stuff when actually we're paying you for this? Is that a question that you hear at all?

[00:14:06] Rob Baker: All the time. And you jump straight to it. So I love the, I love it, Paddy, that you're going to jump straight to this kind of the challenge. I think one of the biggest barriers to job crafting is the sense of suspicion that if we give people permission to do things differently, they're going to run away with it.

So in terms of they're going to take this and use it in negative ways. There's a couple of things that I would kind of, when I'm working with leaders or introducing this to organizations, I say a couple of facts around this, one, there's lots of evidence that shows that when you encourage people to do this in positive.

Ways that people do this in proactive ways that serve themselves and their colleagues. So that's one. The evidence is there to show that doesn't happen. People don't run around and set fire to their job descriptions or their role profiles, right? It's around making small changes to their job.

The second. Is that people do this anyway, right? So that if you're a manager or leader but don't think that anyone is kind of customizing or shaping their job in any respect. Then you're a bit, I'd say you're delusional effectively. You don't know your colleagues in terms of this, but they tend to, people tend to do this in secret.

Like they don't tell other people about it. They just do it anyway. And what we find is that when we do this more openly, we can amplify this effect so that actually it benefits lots of people in lots of different ways. So that's the other kind of, that's another kind of aspect in terms of it's happening anyway.

Surely it's better to do it more openly with you seeing what's happening rather than it happening in ways that you don't necessarily see. crafting enables people to perform better. So if you are a manager or leader who is interested in performance, and most people kind of are, personalization and performance go hand in hand, right?

So if you think about any element of our lives, kind of a home life or sport or kind of work, when we feel there's a good connection or fit between. The work that we do in ourselves, we tend to perform better. So if you are an organization looking for a performance advantage, job crafting is definitely there for you.

So I think the suspicion like absolutely is there. And I think it's one of the reasons that job crafting hasn't jumped into the mainstream kind of consciousness a little bit in terms of awareness, because there isn't this kind of suspicion, but actually. I think you can knock down pretty much any and every argument about it in terms of the in terms of people's Skepticism or concern about it.

[00:16:16] Paddy Dhanda: Because I mean, I hear a lot of people talk about work life balance and, you know, having that balance in place to help with, you know, your mental state, mental health and all of those good things. But it feels like there's a. Home thing and a work thing and you've got to separate the two completely. I When I was talking about I think I've been doing this, but not knowing that it was a formal thing. I doodle a lot and I love to incorporate visuals when I'm presenting and things like that. And previous organizations, I probably would have been very shy to do that. Thinking I'm working for this big corporate.

I used to work for Deutsche Bank, a big German global investment bank. If I start doodling on a slide that. Isn't the done thing. And so, like you say, it is almost then a secret thing that you do behind the scenes, but I just remember I ran one of my first ever training courses. At Deutsche Bank and I just started doodling some stuff on the flip chart and people really warmed to that and lots of curious questions came from that and it then became a thing and it became a thing that I thought, well, now I've got to include this and so now even the company I work for today, I am kind of.

I've become a little bit famous for my doodles because anytime I do a presentation to our Salesforce, people will be pinging me on the team's chat saying, Paddy, what doodle do you have for us today? And it's become a thing, but it gets me to actually add my personality to the work. Is that the sort of thing that you would

 Oh, it's amazing. I love that example and i'm going to steal it Like so i'm just going to tell you they were coming up and you know next time i'm talking to an organization So this is all about superpowers, right? So you want to doodling is one of your superpowers and Why wouldn't you want kind of people to use their superpowers within the organization?

[00:18:09] Rob Baker: And I bet you that particularly in those, probably even more so in Deutsche Bank, in terms of the presentations, if you were someone who, who shows up and gives a presentation in a distinct way, using something that was different as a doodle, people remember that like, and some people would love it. And some people would be like, Oh, take it back, but they'll remember it.

I'm sure. And then I love the story that you said now in terms of people. Actually celebrate it and recognize it and actually look forward to that in terms of that's something that's unique and different about You've had in that's the you know, something you can bring to it. So Absolutely, so that could be a form of task crafting.

So task crafting is saying well I do presentations anywhere on flipcharts or whatever and I can use doodling So you're doing that you're doing that task in a slightly different way because you're using your doodles Or it could be a form of purpose crafting. So purpose crafting is around, I think, connecting to things that are meaningful and purposeful for you.

And you're saying, actually I'm an art, like I like art and I'm an artist and I do it in my spare time. Actually, is there a way that I can channel my passion and bring that to life within work? And so that's a way of potentially kind of purpose crafting. So it's bringing more of you. As you know, you know, and crossing that work life divide a little bit in terms of so it's not so So black and white which again, it's not for everyone just be really clear.

That's not for everyone So it's absolutely a fantastic example of crafting and I love the fact that often when people so what we do with individuals Is encourage them to think about what are some experiments they can run? And so it could be previously paddy. We were in deutsche bank. We ran this session.

You're like, oh, maybe I can do But we ask people to do it in small ways to start with. So don't necessarily take big risks with this stuff. Take a small thing, which will take about five minutes a day or an hour a week, and then see what happens. And we tend to find that it, when people do this, they take a leap of faith.

Not only does it benefit them, but it benefits their colleagues too, or the other perspectives. So although you might enjoy, or did it feel better? Did you enjoy kind of like doing it? Is it more fun

[00:20:07] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. Because otherwise, even when you're presenting, you're so fixated on the slides and. After a while, the brain just goes into autopilot and you're just doing slide after slide. I just think just changing things up a bit. I'm not advocating we get rid of PowerPoint, by the way, you know, PowerPoint has its

[00:20:27] Rob Baker: no,

[00:20:28] Paddy Dhanda: The way I think of it is almost, you know, if we think about our attention spans are shrinking. And so I think it's a bit unfair to ask an audience to focus on you for even half an hour, because that's a lot of concentration. Right.

[00:20:43] Rob Baker: and they can't do it. Like, again, like from a science perspective, people's attention spans, like two, three minutes, like everything. So people are not like, again, you're deluding yourself. If you think people are listening to every word you're having for half an hour, like it's not happening. So in terms of people will zone out, they'll zone back in again.

They'll but if you're doing something distinctive and different to like, people are going to be leaning into that stuff. So, so you enjoy it, which I love to hear. And then I, there'll be a positive benefit of you in terms of maybe you did it just for you because you wanted to do it, but actually what you find is that there's a positive benefit to other people because they look forward to it.

Like it brightens their day. Like your sales colleague that you mentioned, like it gives them a bit of light relief, or it could be a way of people connecting an idea up or something. So it's, it will have a benefit beyond yourself. And this is what we find time and time again, when it comes to crafting and personalization is that.

It benefits you as an individual because you're doing something that's kind of special and important to you. But it the impact of that often reverberates beyond the ripple effect is beyond you itself. It's when you use your superpowers, it kind of beams out in different ways that you don't necessarily expect.

[00:21:45] Paddy Dhanda: And you mentioned the research shows that this has a positive impact on the workforce and productivity. Could you give us some examples of that? Cause I'm sure there's people sat at home listening, thinking I'd be really interested to hear the research because if they want to make the case to their employer about some of these concepts, it'd be really useful to know some of that science.

[00:22:08] Rob Baker: So there's lots out there. So the first, Job Crafting was first written about in 2001 by Amy Wineski and Jane Dutton. If you do a Google of Job Crafting Research, you'll find lots. We've got stuff on our website and things as well, and I've written a book about this and stuff. So there's a lot to condense it.

But there's been over 150 peer reviewed papers, academic papers, looking at Job Crafting and the impact and so there's lots of been looked at in lots of different ways, but if we were to summarize the evidence in three themes effectively, so one is showing that when people can personalize their work, they perform better, and that performance perspective has been measured in lots of different ways, so that could be Individuals measurement of self performance.

So it's like me going to, how did you think when you kind of, in your job day to day, do your, how would you rate your performance and people who tend to rate their performance more highly compared with their peers. They also related to people's job crafting behavior. They tend to also, when we separately measure for job crafting, they tend to do some of this element of personalization, but also this performance advantage applies with line management.

So when we look at organizations that have looks at their. Kind of the performance ratings over the year. So the people who've given high levels of performance ratings also tend to show high levels of job crafting. And there's been a couple of studies, which I love around customer service and it shows actually this goes beyond this.

So in terms of, if you look at customer satisfaction with a. with a particular issue or say a sales satisfaction in terms of with the sales person that they're working with. If you separately then measure those sales, people's or those customer service, people's measures of job crafting, they tend to be correlated so that people tend to personalize their work, tend to give a better service to other people.

So that's the kind of performance is measured in three different ways. And it's really robust kind of measurement. It makes sense, right? When we. If we feel that we're able to do ourselves use our superpowers use our strengths then we tend to perform I think it's it makes sense like in but it's the research backs it up.

So that's the kind of performance aspect when it comes to Looking at wellbeing, we tend to find that there's a relationship between job crafting and happiness and engagement of work and just feeling kind of a positive mood. So again, people who tend to report higher in terms of the positive mood and motivation tend to report higher on job crafting scales as well.

But also I think this is interesting is that people tend to be more resilient as well. So in terms of actually they're able to deal with challenges. better than those that maybe don't feel they can job craft. And I think the most, most compelling explanation for this is people feel more control of their work.

They're in the driving seat of what they're doing. And if you feel more in control, you feel you're better able to kind of deal with what's. what's kind of happening.

And then lastly, around career growth and satisfaction. So if you look at people's career mobility, some measurements of people who've got their careers, and so they're very happy with their careers at different stages. They tend to again correlate with job crafting. So these people have tended to kind of crafted their careers effectively in terms of those, and it's also related to career mobility as well.

And I think this is an interesting point. So people who have got more mobility, those who have progressed kind of higher within organizations tend to report high levels of job crafting behavior. I think there's an interesting bit. If you dig into that, more men tend to graft openly than females, like in terms of this perspective.

But actually in terms of the research perspective, more women job crafting than men, but they tend to not do it openly. And I think this is what comes back to this invisibility bit is that although we know it helps for kind of career mobility, people are more likely to kind of overtly say if you're a man, cause you've got more power, potentially more confidence.

That's a simple, that's my explanation for it. You're more likely to say, yeah, I craft my job. This is something that I do. Women tend not to do it as openly and also people from different backgrounds and kind of different ethnicities and different kind of genders they tend not to necessarily to report doing as much job crafting as others.

And I see this for me, a personal agenda. Is that we should be encouraging and enabling everyone to kind of craft so that everyone can have the positive benefits of it rather than just allowing the kind of a few people to do it because of their background or their experiences and their makeup or their, the color of their skin or their gender or whatever, like whatever that will be within that context.

[00:26:17] Paddy Dhanda: And so Rob, if I'm a leader or a manager and I want to bring more of this thinking into my team, do you have any advice for those folks in terms of how they might start to have those conversations with their teams? I mean, would they go as far as almost advocating an objective or two in their annual performance

review or not?

[00:26:43] Rob Baker: So, I think we don't have to get to that point. And some organizations we work with who try and embed job crafting in a really high quality way, they've been, they've actually, as part of their check in conversations is around, they actually encourage a different job crafting conversations every quarter.

So you might talk about your task one quarter, your relationships, another quarter, your skills, the next quarter. So they actively do, they systematize it effectively. But I think if you're a manager, a really good, there's a couple of things that I'd recommend. So one, just a very simple thing in terms of a one to one was if I was to you, Paddy is saying, right, Paddy if I challenge you to make your job 1 percent better, what do you think you could do?

And what could I do to help you? That's the starting point. What could you do? And I think deliberately use 1%. So it's not like everything, but like, let's, what are the small low hanging fruit that we could do to get better? So that's one like thing, one, what can I do to help?

That's a really useful starting point. From a team perspective, a really great activity, and you can do this individually as well, is something we call love and loathe activity. So what you do here, if you imagine. A graph that goes from minus 10 to plus 10 on the X axis and on the Y axis of time, effectively.

So how much time you're spending. And you might think about that time as being the week, potentially, kind of like 35 hours or something. And then you think about what are the key activities that you do in your job and you might like, so pick 10 and you might be going, Rob, like I've got thousands of activities.

I get it. But like, just start somewhere, start 10 to 15 things. And think about where do they plot on this grid of time and energy. So is it, if you spend a lot of time in meetings, actually, are they an energy, are they a meeting sucker? Like, are they actually got really bad meeting culture and they take a lot of energy?

Is it around kind of strategy development and ideas that you love doing? Is it around the chit chat with colleagues that you that you really value that kind of ability to understand things? Is it completing? Did something recently with the marketing team and the crm system updating their kind of their systems Was a drainer for pretty much all of them But they kind of recognized that they needed to do it and we talked about how they could improve it so if you as a team if you could get this kind of you can plot this out on a grid of like What are the different things that people love?

What you might find is that there's some things that people love that other people loathe and there may be an opportunity for people to swap and actually dial things up and dial things down and so we did this with an HR team and someone was saying for example, I hate doing I find it really energy drag doing disciplinary kind of like grievances or those kind of investigation things.

I just find them a time suck as someone said, but I love doing, kind of meeting the customers in terms of understanding their strategy and what they want to do and how we can align with that kind of work with someone else was kind of almost the opposite within the team and saying, I love putting on my Sherlock Holmes, Dear Stalker, you know, like kind of getting into an investigation and they just love that kind of, that, that analytical kind of thinking and previously the team for the best reasons.

Had just evenly distributed these tasks because they wanted to be fair So they said right we need have a certain amount of caseloads. We've got a certain amount of clients or organizations we need to kind of connect with to help about their strategy. So we're just going to evenly distribute it. So we're being fair to everyone.

And actually they were being unfair to people, I'd argue, because they were actually putting everyone in a box and not allowing anyone to kind of align to their superpowers or to their strengths. And so having had this conversation of saying, okay, well, why don't we just do it? So that I think it was Samantha does more of these disciplinary cases.

And. And Kate does more of the kind of the strategy stuff and doesn't, Kate doesn't stop doing it all together because it's an important skill that she has. So she needs to do some bits of it, but she doesn't do it all the time. And so that, that love and loathe activity as a leader can be a really helpful way of just getting people to, in a very non threatening way, talk about kind of energy and time and where people are spending it.

[00:30:21] Paddy Dhanda: Rob, thank you for that. Because I do think a lot of people out there are in this situation where it sounds like a great idea, but they just don't know where to start with it. So thank you for those tips. I think they're really useful. Do you have? A template or two that people could use to start to build out their approach to job crafting because I just vaguely remember from your talk, you put up some really useful.

Slides. There was some really great resources that you have. So could you share a little bit more

[00:30:56] Rob Baker: I'm disappointed. You haven't got the tattoo yet. Then the stencil was out there. You haven't got the tattoo to your arms. So. I think what you're referring to is what we find is a way of kind of moving kind of from ideas to action. So in terms of, we have a framework that we use to do that. So the, we've got a goal setting framework that we kind of introduced for people.

And it's very kind of, again, simple, but it's evidence based in terms of what we do. So we tend to know that if we have a plan to do something, we tend to be more successful in terms of that plan. If we share it with others, we're even more successful. So the plan is, what are you going to do when you're going to do it and why?

So it could be. If you think back to your kind of Paddy pre Deutsche Bank, you wouldn't do the doodling. So in terms of this kind of perspective, it's like, so what are you going to do? Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna doodle the next kind of presentation that I have could have, so what are you going to, when are you going to do it for the next one and why are you going to do it?

So what would your why be Paddy? What would your, from your perspective, if you were thinking back to your

[00:31:52] Paddy Dhanda: Yeah, I guess there's probably some selfish reason, but if I think about the audience, it was to hopefully help them connect better with the message. And to have the freedom from a personal perspective to go a little bit off script. So I'm not in this box. And I, you know, with the PowerPoint presentation, you're constrained by the bullet points you have on there.

Whereas starting to draw something, starting to create something, I might be getting feedback from the crowd. We might then actually go off on a tangent. We might start to explore other things that we may never have done otherwise. And I'd rather we talk about the things that the audience want to talk about rather than.

What I wanted to

[00:32:33] Rob Baker: I love that. I love that. And I think it's certainly great for, I think having two purposes for that is even better. So it's a suit to be more fun. And secondly, it's going to actually serve the audience, like in terms of that perspective, it was awesome, right? Like win. So that's the kind of why.

So it's the, what are you gonna do? When are you gonna do it and why? So that's a starting point and then you can get kind of extra bonus points for getting a bit late, kind of taking it a bit deeper. And the next deeper level would be. Who are you going to tell about this? So in terms of if we have, if we share our goals with someone else, that could be a line manager, could be a colleague, could be a partner, could be a friend, we're more likely to achieve it because we've got something the researchers call an accountability buddy.

So it's like someone who's going to keep you accountable. So in terms of that, in terms of that perspective, if you think about how you're going to reward yourself, so what are you going to do to kind of recognize you trying something new? Cause it can feel a bit uncomfortable, right? The first time you're going to do it.

So could be going to treat myself to a coffee or a cake at lunchtime, or it I'm just going to, I don't, just doing it itself is going to be a kind of celebration. So they are kind of extra layers as well. We would kind of encourage people to think about beyond the, when the, what, and the, why kind of element

[00:33:39] Paddy Dhanda: And Rob, you work with many different people. You mentioned a couple of examples there. You've recently working with some marketeers. Could you give us an example of an organization that you've helped

[00:33:50] Rob Baker: so let's talk about, kind of, ConnectHealth. So, ConnectHealth is a an organization based in the Northeast, but they're based all over the UK. And often when it comes to... they come to tele thinking with a purpose in mind. So when it comes to job crafting, it's like you have a purpose.

And so the purpose of Connect Health was to create sticky workplaces. So they wanted specifically for physiotherapists. So physiotherapists is a very kind of hard to recruit skillset globally. So in terms of keeping hold, kind of attracting and then keeping hold of physiotherapists was a tricky thing to do.

And Connect Health were a musculoskeletal and physiotherapy. service provider. So they worked with the NHS, but they also worked with private providers. So obviously there was a critical source of talent for them in terms of the physiotherapist in terms of people and their engagement scores shows that they're positive, but they could potentially do better in particularly around people's sense of they've got a future here within connect health.

So they're coming, but they weren't necessarily always staying or they were thinking about other opportunities. So they wanted to think about could job crafting be something that would actually allow people to. Personalize our approach to do things differently. So what we did and what we often do is, although we had an idea in mind about embedding this, we'd test this first because we'd take an experimental approach.

So we tested what was the the relevance and resonance of job crafting. So we tested it with the HR team. We tested it with the finance no the IT team within Connect Health who were sent as potentially skeptical of this and then we tested it with physiotherapists and all of those colleagues in terms of running a workshop with them, they had positive feedback.

positive results. So, 98 percent of them. So I think all but two people from all the different perspectives we did, we'd recommend this, we continue with this kind of project within Connect Health, which is amazing. And 68 percent of people kind of applied the job crafting work kind of actively within the two weeks following the workshop, which was great learning transfer.

So we had, and so we then said, okay, what could we do to kind of embed this? And they did the earlier one. You said, could they do this as part of checking conversations? And that's exactly what we did with Connect Health. So we designed simple coaching orientated questions for people to. Consider each quarter when they had a check in with their colleagues, so it could be around what are the elements of your kind of your physio, as a physiotherapist, what are the things of your job that you're enjoying the most?

What are the things you find challenging? What are the things potentially you could change? How could we help with you in this perspective? What are the things you could do to bring more energy to your work? Or what are the things that you could do to recharge for like, in terms of to feel more charged at work, what are the ways you could build more connection with your patients?

And so how, one of the questions we have is how connected you feel with your patients at the moment? On a scale of 1 to 10 how connected do you want to be? Cause that might be different for different people on a scale of 1 to 10. And then the question was, what could you do to kind of bridge the gap between the two?

And again, so these are very coaching orientated questions. They're very simple to have, but we could have made them an easy approach and then we measured the outcomes. And so. Over a year and a bit later, we had measurements and I haven't got them to hat and so I'm going to be careful about what I said.

They are downloadable the kind of case that they, so I can broadly tell you. And but there's this caveat myself is in terms of there might be inaccuracies in what I'm saying. It was around, we had really positive impact in terms of Expressions of wanting to stay within connect.

I'll think of it up to 30, 40 percent from previous studies. The retention rate was dramatically impacted there. And sickness absence went down, which wasn't something we're specifically targeting, but we had an eye on because we thought job crafting was saying it had an impact on And also in terms of people's intention to stay.

So the intention to stay kind of went up. And levels of well being as well in terms of satisfaction in terms of went up as well. So we, across a kind of basket of measures, the majority of them were kind of positively impacted. Now we can't say job crossing was the only thing, but we can say that these are the measurements we wanted to impact through our intervention.

And these are the things that kind of post measurements that we have.

[00:37:34] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, fantastic. So Rob, we're fast running out of time. I am going to start having a regular question that I've never had before. I was thinking about this the other day, and so I'm springing this one on you a little bit. If I could give you any superpower to abolish anything right now at work. is that thing that you might want to abolish? Like for me, I was thinking about this the other day. I would ban pineapple pizza because I don't get that concept, but that's just me. Is there something that you would love to ban right now?

[00:38:17] Rob Baker: I would ban job descriptions. I think job descriptions box people in rather than set people free. And they're very fixed and rigid. They don't add value to it. They often as an HR person, I've written lots of them, I've reviewed lots of them and I've never liked them, but I've never met a job description I liked, right?

So they've like never perspective. So. And I think they don't speak to the world of work that we're setting up for now and the future, which is going to be more flexible and more adaptable. They kind of box people in, they put people in boxes rather than set people free. So we need to have some frameworks around we need to have some some scope so people know what they're doing.

It's really important that people have clarity and confidence about what they're doing. But we don't need to go into in forensic detail that we do in terms of job descriptions because I think they tether people They hold people back rather than setting them free. There would never have been do some doodling on your job description, right?

it's like so how can we find ways to create our own? Descriptions that support our own superpowers to that. And I personally would be very happy to have no just job descriptions, but pizza with pineapple at lunch. I'd be very happy with that, Paddy. So, if that, if I could have free food and it was just pizza with pineapple, I'm, I'll be happy with that.

So maybe we're arch enemies there, but Hey, we can duke that out

[00:39:23] Paddy Dhanda: I guess we could scrape the pineapple off the pizza. you're winning me around here, Rob. All right. I'll let pizza continue, but for one day only we have the power to abolish job descriptions. Try it out, folks. See what happens. Let's convince our team managers and leaders to go with that approach and maybe put some Okay.

Loose framework around that instead and

[00:39:48] Rob Baker: Yeah. So if I'm being set like a plug or something, we use something called the job canvas. So it's around actually. Framework looking at jobs more holistically rather than a set of tasks and responsibilities. It's something

[00:39:58] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, brilliant. So Rob, if people want to get to know more about the work you do or get in touch with you, how can they do that?

[00:40:07] Rob Baker: Well, we're quite, hopefully quite easy to find. So like Taylor thinking the, you can Google it. So it's Taylorthinking. co. uk. and LinkedIn. And so you're happy to kind of be able to connect and you can find my email, I think kind of quite kind of easily as well. So, so any, however you can find us, find me or find us, please kind of drop us a note, there will be, I'll send you some links to some resources that people can download and use, but hopefully people will see I'm very passionate about this stuff, and if I can do anything to help be an individual or be an organization or a team, I'd be really

happy to do it.

[00:40:40] Paddy Dhanda: I'd definitely vouch for that because I just approached you after your keynote and you very kindly agreed to come on the podcast. So thank you for that. And you mentioned a book you've written. Could you just give us the title of that as well?

[00:40:52] Rob Baker: yeah. So the book is Personalization at Work and it's by Kogan Page and I think it was published in 2020 or 2021 is, and it was my best attempt at bringing all the research to date into a kind of like an accessible and easy to digest approach. So there's loads of coaching questions and there are loads of kind of the summary of the research and other aspects.

So it's a great starting point if you want to kind of do this in a more kind of sustained way.

[00:41:15] Paddy Dhanda: Brilliant. Well, thank you so much, Rob. It's been an absolute pleasure to get to talk to you one on one and to hear some of your insights. Thank you.

[00:41:25] Rob Baker: Thanks very much. I've really enjoyed it.

Paddy’s talk at the Festival of Business Analysis (Australia Chapter of the IIBA)

During childhood, we are told not to talk to strangers. Paddy took this advice literally and became a professional introvert. But when he became a Business Analyst, he was encouraged to engage with everyone. Having the ability to connect, communicate, and collaborate effectively gives us new superpowers. In this episode, Paddy shares his experiences on how he overcame his conversational fears and became a public speaker, trainer, podcaster and co-host of one of the largest Visual Thinking communities on the planet.

👉🏽 How to conquer your conversational fears👉🏽 How to develop a connection mindset👉🏽 Non-conventional techniques for effective engagement

So don’t just click with your stakeholders, let’s build deeper connections through powerful conversations!

TED Talk mentioned in the episode: Click Here

Email Paddy with your key takeaways: pardeep_dhanda at hotmail.com

Paddy Dhanda (Host of the Superpowers School Podcast)

Paddy is passionate about helping people build better human skills to be more productive and thrive in today’s fast paced world. He graduated from the worst performing High School in the UK. He has gone on to advise CEO's and Executives on effective innovation strategies to some of the biggest brands on the planet, as well as guest lecturer at the University of Birmingham MBA programme.

Paddy is currently the Agile Practice Director at the UK’s largest tech training organisation and is the former Head of Agile Learning for a global investment bank, where he rolled out Agile education to over 100k agilists. He is also passionate about Visual Thinking and creativity and co-founder of the one of the largest Visual Thinking Meetup communities (The Visual Jam) in the world.

Paddy also hosts the Superpowers School podcast exposing the human side of tech. He was recently nominated as a finalist for the Best Content Creator at the Creative Industry Awards.

⚡️ In each episode, Paddy Dhanda deep dives into a new human Superpower and gives practical advice on how you can apply it immediately.

👉 Sign-up to Newsletter: https://www.superpowers.school/subscribe

👉 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/paddydhanda/

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If you enjoy the podcast, then you can donate a small amount here as a token of your appreciation: https://ko-fi.com/paddydhanda

Transcription:

[00:00:00] Paddy Dhanda: Hello friend. It's Paddy here. I wanted to remind you that you can subscribe to the newsletter of this podcast by simply visiting. www.superpowers.school. So you'll be notified of all future episodes. As well as some bonus resources that are be sharing over the coming months.

Today, we're doing things a little differently. I'm sharing a recent talk. I recorded when I presented at the Festival of Business Analysis for the Australia chapter of the international Institute of business analysis. Unfortunately, I didn't get to physically go to Australia. But I did manage to record the talk so I could share it with you today. It's titled click and connect how to have valuable conversations at work. I share my personal experiences of how I overcame my battle. As a professional. Introvert to becoming addicted to conversations. I would love to know your key takeaways. So please do drop me an email, which I'll share in the show notes. I hope you enjoy this episode.

From the city of the Peaky Blinders, Birmingham, England, I would like to introduce you to Paddy Dhanda As the world becomes more automated and the robots take over, it's imperative that we build the right human skills for the future. So pull up a chair, grab a samosa or two and make yourself very uncomfortable.

[00:01:44] Paddy Dhanda: It was the year that facebook was launched. I was three years into my career as a software engineer and I was trying to figure out that one big question. When will England ever win the Football World Cup ever again? No, actually it was a bigger question than that. In fact, I'd just returned back from India, having trekked up one of the highest temples in the Himalayas.

And I was feeling kind of spiritual. I was asking myself, what is my purpose? And my first assignment, when I got back to work, was to pair up with a lady called Natalie, and she was a mature student. She had worked in sales for years and years. And the two of us had a simple task. It was to capture some requirements from a really difficult stakeholder whose name was Malcolm.

And so I thought this was my calling. This was the reason I was put on the planet. Now, the problem was Malcolm. I'd fallen out with our IT project manager and at a previous meeting, the team had spent all night getting ready for a presentation with Malcolm, but within five minutes of walking in the room, Malcolm had stormed out and it was at that moment that my life almost flashed before my eyes.

I was thinking, how am I going to survive my encounter with Malcolm? But Natalie, on the other hand, was super happy. She was relishing the challenge. And she was confident that we would succeed.

But to cut a long story short, Natalie and I eventually did manage to win Malcom over. And we successfully delivered the project. But as I reflected, it wasn't because of all of the technical skills that I had acquired. It was all down to us being able to connect with Malcolm.

And it was a connection at a human level. For example, when we met him for the very first time, Natalie invited me to sit next to Malcolm rather than sitting opposite him, which we often do when we attend face to face meetings. After every meeting, Natalie would phone Malcolm and ask him how things had gone.

Could we do things differently next time? And it had created this deeper level connection that Malcolm had never had with the previous IT team.

The Importance of Connection

[00:04:07] Paddy Dhanda: So, in this session, I'm going to be sharing some insights about the importance of connection. and how we have valuable conversations at work. We can all have lots of social media friends, and we may have lots of colleagues that we say hello to every morning. How many of them do we actually know? It's super important that we don't just click with people but we build a deeper connection because that's when we unlock the magic.

Personal Journey and Background

[00:04:37] Paddy Dhanda: I graduated from the worst performing high school in the UK. And I know that because that was the year that the UK had decided to put out league tables, high schools. And out of all of those league tables, My school was pretty much at the bottom. I would say I was a bit of a professional introvert.

I will talk a bit more about that in a moment. But now... I would say I'm a conversational addict. I'm one of those annoying people now that if you take me anywhere, I'll end up speaking to a ton of people. And my wife absolutely hates me for this, especially when we're on holiday. And I've been asked to go and get some drinks from the bar.

And I return about half an hour later because I've made lots of friends.

When I was growing up, I grew up in a town called Warwick. And if I had to compare Warwick to any movie, it would probably be Harry Potter. Because Warwick has this very traditional feel about it. It has a big castle, right, in the middle of the town. And everybody is super friendly and knows each other.

And then, just before I went to high school, we moved to Birmingham, which is the city of the Peaky Blinders, if anyone's seen that program. But Birmingham is very much on the opposite spectrum of Warwick. It was a place where only the strongest survived, a bit like the movie Jurassic Park.

And I remember my very first day when I went to my high school in Birmingham. I was scared stiff. Nobody had prepared me. for being able to talk to these other children that I had nothing in common with. And I think that was my first realization, that no one had actually taught me how to connect with others or engage with others.

As we grow up, all good parents tell us, and they do the responsible thing, they say, do not talk to strangers, which is great advice. And I was an only child, so I had even less opportunity to speak to people because I didn't really have many kids around me at home. I'd be the last person to put up my hand in class and I would get scared stiff if anybody ever asked me to do a presentation in front of a group of people.

In fact, it was so bad that when eventually I did meet my wife, I panicked and I proposed to her within four hours of meeting her. Now, luckily, we've just celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary on Friday. So things... did work out. But I was just surprised that this girl wanted to talk to me. And I panicked and I decided I would just ask her to marry me because it would save me a whole load of conversation.

The Evolution of the Connection Economy

[00:07:16] Paddy Dhanda: Let's explore the importance of connection through various economic eras. The industrial economy, which was between the 18th century to the mid 20th century. In the industrial economy, people moved to cities and it created this emergence of a more interconnected society. However, it really posed a lot of challenges for people, especially in terms of their personal relationships, due to the demands of those factories.

And then, in the late 20th century, up until now, we started to experience the information economy. This is where we've seen a surge in technology, the internet, and we should be much more connected. Based on all of the technology around us. And then, as we now move into the more recent economy, which is really popularized by the famous marketeer Seth Godin, he calls this current era the connection economy.

And he talks about if we're to really flourish in today's society, it's going to be the people that are able to build and leverage connections. And that's not just personally, but also within businesses as well. And it's all about networking, building trust. fostering meaningful relationships. You've probably heard the old saying it's not what you know but who you know.

There's several startups that hopefully we recognize on this slide, and these organizations don't really sell a physical product.

They built their whole business model off of connection. So Airbnb connects travelers with hosts who have spare rooms in their properties. We have Uber who connects drivers with passengers. And obviously LinkedIn, their whole business model is to connect individuals and businesses and create those social networks for professionals.

And I refer to these as the super connectors.

Understanding the Fear of Rejection

[00:09:20] Paddy Dhanda: So a quick question for you What might be holding you back from speaking to a stakeholder in order to start building meaningful connections? Imagine if I picked on one of you as an individual right now, and I asked you to explain this slide in front of all of the people that are on this call.

Now, I'm pretty sure that would be quite an uncomfortable experience for most of us. What actually happens in our brains if we're put into an uncomfortable situation? The first thing the brain does is it categorizes a situation as being uncomfortable because it's trying to work out, is this a potentially threatening situation?

And this perception comes from past experiences, maybe some cultural norms The amygdala.

 which is the region of the brain that is responsible for processing emotions and threat detection kicks in. It's like a mental alarm system that flags potential danger. The amygdala signals the release of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. And these hormones prepare the body for a fight or flight response.

This increases our heart rate, sharpening our focus. and diverting energy to essential functions within the body. At step four, the brain engages the prefrontal cortex, sorry this is getting a bit technical which is responsible for decision making and planning. And it assesses the situation and considers potential outcomes.

A bit like a cost benefit analysis of the brain. Then we have a decision to make. The brain searches for past experiences or coping strategies that relate to the situation. If previous experiences were positive, it might help alleviate discomfort. If past experiences were negative it might amplify discomfort.

And so, based on our assessment, the brain starts to engage in internal self talk. And... might start to get us to think about, if I proceed will I be embarrassed or will there be social judgment? Despite our decision, we will either proceed or the brain might decide I'm going to stop here. I'm not going to proceed with this situation and I'm going to avoid this or delay it for another time once we have more information.

Now, if we did proceed. Then, after the uncomfortable action is taken, the brain evaluates the outcomes, and if the experience was positive or neutral it can actually help modify the brain's responses to similar situations in the future. So, the good news is, if we repeat this exposure to uncomfortable situations, with positive outcomes, then it can actually help reshape our brain.

So we become less uncomfortable with these types of situations in the future. And for a lot of us, if we say, go and speak to a stakeholder, go and engage with a stakeholder, that can be a very uncomfortable process. So, as you can see, it's not as easy as just walking up to somebody and having a chat with them.

Changing Mindset and Overcoming Fear

[00:12:29] Paddy Dhanda: What I wanted to do in the next section of this talk was really share some of my experiences having done over 100 episodes of my podcast which equates to about 3, 000 minutes of conversation.

I'll be sharing some of the things that I've been learning as I've been going through this experience.

 The starting point for any type of change or change in behavior is being able to change our mindset. Because, like I said, I was a professional introvert. I was scared stiff of going over and speaking to people and having a meaningful conversation because I had never really been prepared for that.

And so we need to change our mindset if we're feeling like that. Now, what we don't want to do is go too extreme and push ourselves too hard too early. Because the brain just won't be able to cope with that and we'll probably end up doing more damage than good. if anyone's heard of this analogy, it's called the boiling frog analogy.

I think it sums it up quite nicely. So imagine we have a frog, and I'm not advocating we do this in reality, and we put them in a pot of boiling water. They're probably gonna jump straight back out because it was too uncomfortable and the temperature was just too hot to start with.

But if we put the frog in pot of cold water and we slowly heat up the water, the frog's less likely to jump out and they may even get boiled alive because they don't notice the heat creep up on them. But it's the same with changing mindsets. If we slowly give ourselves nudges along the way, we're much more likely to then start to shift our mindset.

Now, in 1983 Lorne Whitehead wrote in the American Journal of Physics all about the domino effect. And he discovered that a single domino is capable of bringing down another domino. That's actually 50 percent larger, and I'll just play this video in the background so you can see this.

Now in this video there are 20 dominoes, but if we continued this video and we had 29 dominoes, the 29th domino would be the size of the Empire State Building, and it would get toppled over as well. So it's quite remarkable. that when we take lots of small steps, we can see huge results at the end of it.

And so this goes back to having those small nudges rather than trying to completely change the way we do things in the hope that will change our mindset. There's a great TED talk where Jie Zhang, who is the speaker in this TED talk, he did a similar experiment where he wanted to overcome his fear of rejection and he set himself a challenge.

So I'd encourage you to go and watch this video if you're interested in changing your mindset. And it doesn't just have to be about Being a more confident speaker, being able to engage with your stakeholders. It could be any new skill that you're thinking of learning. And Zhejiang goes through this process where every day he sets himself almost an impossible challenge.

But he just wants to start experiencing that whole process that we talked about there of rejection. and being uncomfortable. His hope was over time he would learn from that hopefully he gets more comfortable with rejection as well.

Through my podcasting, I have had lots of rejections. I've had many guests that I've approached who have politely declined my invitation to come on the podcast. This was actually just a few weeks ago, this particular email. And at first, I would feel quite, I guess, emotional about the rejection and I would be taking it to heart, the fact that I've been rejected.

Why has this person said no to me when I've sent them a very polite email and all I'm asking for is half an hour of their time? But actually, people are busy and we all have different priorities. And some of the people that I've been approaching are super, super busy. And they probably have many of these requests coming through.

And so how do I stand out? How do I get onto their priority list? Well, often I can't, it's really difficult. If we think about people at work, we're under so much more pressure at the moment. Our stakeholders are dealing with lots of challenges. And if we're then approaching them to ask them for some time, it can be super challenging for them to give us that time.

So try not to take things personally. But if there is somebody that you really, really need to talk to, then persevere and keep going. I had one guest, not this particular one, who had rejected me twice. And on the third time, I went out and I bought their book. I took a selfie of the book. And I listed a bunch of questions to say, I've really enjoyed your book, but these five questions have stuck in my mind.

I would love to be able to talk to you. And all I'm asking for is 15 minutes of your time. Well, as it happens, the guest replied and said, well, I'll give you 30 and I'm happy to answer your questions. Because they could see a genuine interest in their work and they were prepared to then give me their time.

Now, somebody mentioned in the chat, one of the reasons why. they might be held back in terms of approaching their stakeholders is this fear of making a mistake and This is true for many of us. We don't want to come across unprepared. Mistakes are common, but if we think about other industries and how they deal with mistakes Especially the movie industry they call these missed takes and it's a simple reframing of this word And what they do is every time they make a mistake is they re record and they learn from the previous mistake and they don't get too emotional about it.

If anything, if you look in the movies, they often have show reels of all of the outtakes, which can be quite humorous. Now imagine if we had A showreel of all of our mistakes, and we look back at that in years to come. I'm sure we would be quite amused as well. So sometimes it's a case of reframing our language and just the way we think about these mistakes.

If I do come across someone senior and I don't quite hit the mark with them, then I'll learn from that.

One of the hardest things that I found is getting comfortable with my own voice. Now, when you're editing podcast episodes by yourself, you're having to listen to your own voice for hours and hours on end. And... At first, it was extremely cringy. I've talked to a few actors who have been on the podcast as well, and they tell me the same thing.

Even though this is their profession, they cringe at the sight of themselves on the screen. They cringe at the sound of their own voices, which is actually quite remarkable. And so, this is just another aspect of... Us connecting with people, because I would say we should all record ourselves and we should all listen back to ourselves so that we really understand how we come across to other people, because our tone of voice, the energy that we put forward in our voices can tell a lot about us.

Now, if I came on this session and I was It was very monotone and I didn't really put much energy into it. I'm pretty sure you would have switched off ages ago. I hope you haven't switched off just yet either. So just by hearing our own voice, recording ourselves, listening back to ourselves, we can learn.

The Art of Starting a Conversation

[00:20:27] Paddy Dhanda: Once we've built the right conversational mindset, we've got over our fear of rejection, and we're more comfortable with our mistakes and our own voice, we need to work on an actual message. And many people will tell you, always have an elevator pitch. And the idea or the metaphor of the elevator pitch is based on if you're ever in an elevator or a lift with a stakeholder, then.

If they ask you, what do you actually do? Are we able to articulate exactly what we do in a very succinct manner? Because I don't think we often do a very good job of that, especially as BAs. And I've run BA teams in the past when people have asked me, what do you actually do for a living? I found it really difficult to articulate succinctly what a BA actually does.

And there's lots of formats you can use to help you craft your elevator pitch. But this is one that I particularly like. It's from a guy called Matt Abrahams, who is the host of the Think Fast, Talk Smart podcast. A guest that I'm actually going to be having on the podcast as well. So he's a legend when it comes to communication and the art of communication.

So I'm hoping to learn a lot from him. This very simple structure, it goes by, What if you could? And then we articulate the opportunity. So that, which is the benefit. And then we give an example of the value that we deliver. And then we give a bonus piece of advice as well, which is, and that's not all, here's another benefit.

So, if I was doing this for my podcast, and I was trying to convince you to tune in, not to say that this is a very good example, but I might say something like this. What if you could invest just 30 minutes a week to listen to conversations with experts about human skills in technology so that you can diversify your learning and become a better business analyst?

For example, you could learn how to be a confident speaker, get more creative, and be even more productive at work. And that's not all, you'll receive a weekly newsletter notifying you of all new episodes. There we go.

So, think about the types of people you speak to on a weekly basis. Are they all technology people? Are they predominantly the people you work with? Do you speak to people in different departments? Do you speak to neurodiverse people? And by expanding our conversations beyond our regular circle of colleagues and friends, it helps us to build a more diverse map of the world.

We get to understand a lot more about people's situations, people's perspectives, and if anything, it helps us to empathize with more people. And hopefully that will lead to much more deeper conversations. And as you can see, there's just a snapshot of the types of people I've been talking to over the last year and a half.

Everybody from a NASA engineer through to a monk through to a rally car champion. It's absolutely phenomenal that. When you talk to people from very diverse backgrounds, just how much you can learn from them. And so again, I'd encourage you all, if you're trying to build this habit of becoming more conversational, being able to connect with people, the more we can read a situation, the more we know.

about the world, the better it's going to be. It's going to really help us. And I often talk about treat people as books. We're living and breathing books. We can speak to someone and get their complete life story in a matter of minutes. And we have so many interesting stories that we can share with one another.

It's just about tapping into those.

So, how can we start a conversation? Because it can be quite daunting. I've created this really simple scale. On the left, having sort of very little confidence to go up and speak to someone, all the way through to having that confidence and striking a conversation. So, we're going to start with a very simple tip.

You can Invite a conversation through your email signature. Now, what do I mean? Well, you could put or include a very simple motivational quote or you could put something interesting about yourself in your email signature. Now, what that's not going to do is create a conversation at that exact moment in time.

But what we're able to do is come across to others in a very unique way. On my signature, I have my favorite quote, which is from Gandhi. And the quote goes, the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others, which is very much about helping other people. And I've had countless people then comment on my signature, either responding via email saying, I absolutely love that quote.

Or that really resonated with me, or when I'm on a call, clients will mention that and they will say, Oh, I was really struck by your motivational quote at the bottom of your email. Who is that from? So this can be a very simple way of inviting a conversation. I didn't do it today, but I kind of had a real world wallpaper, which is a tower bridge behind me.

But just by having a quirky virtual wallpaper can often create this conversation starter. I did this last week. I actually tried an experiment at work. I put a space themed wallpaper on the back of my Teams app. And almost in every call I went on people were commenting on it. And so we'd spend the first five minutes just creating some small talk about this wallpaper.

The third one is the smile test. I sometimes do this when I'm jogging in the morning, and I challenge myself to smile at as many people as I can. And the idea here is when we smile at somebody, 9 times out of 10, they're going to smile back. So I almost have a tally in my mind of how many people can I receive smiles from.

And I have to say, the majority of people smile back. And this is because smiling is this universal social norm that we often see as a sign of friendliness, approachability, someone with good intentions. Provided it's a real genuine smile and not one of those fake ones. I think people really warm to that.

So that's something you could try. If you're feeling really brave, you could wear some quirky clothing. I was at a conference recently and I came across this one. Participant who had matching belt and matching shoes. And apparently he buys these clothes from this one company that create these matching sets.

But it was really unique and it was a conversational starter. He had a whole load of people around him asking him about this belt. What was the story behind it? And again, it was an invitation for others to come and talk to him about what he was wearing. You could wear a quirky t shirt with maybe some interesting visuals or perhaps there's a message on that t shirt.

So it's whatever you feel you're comfortable with. But try and stand out or make it slightly interesting so someone will stop and talk to you about it. And then finally... Once we're feeling really confident, small talk is super important for when we're starting conversations. So rather than jumping straight in with a stakeholder and talking about the project and the work that we're doing, what are we going to talk about in that initial interaction?

How are we going to build that rapport right at the start? Well, small talk is difficult. So I'm going to give you a few interesting learnings that I've had on that. I'm not sure who said this, but I love this quote. It's about being interested and not interesting, because when we're engaging with others, it's about them.

what we want to do is give them the airtime to speak and share. Rather than telling them everything about us, let's be curious about them. Let's really understand they are going through, what are some of their challenges. Now, there's a lady called Rachel Greenwald. She's a dating coach. So I thought I would diversify my thinking by hearing from her, seeing what kind of tips she has for creating small talk, because I think it's equally as applicable in the business world.

So the first tip was don't be a data collector. What do we mean by that? Well, when we're meeting people for the first time, especially in a networking event, or perhaps this conference, rather than asking, what do you do? Or where are you from? These are predictable questions that we probably ask everyone.

Instead, let's try to create some curiosity to encourage the other person to really lean in. If someone asks you a data collection question, you might respond by giving a really engaging answer. Again, an answer that creates curiosity. So in my case, if someone asked me what I do now, I might say, well, I'm addicted to conversations and I get to play with Lego every day and that creates some curiosity because the other person doesn't quite know what I do.

And so they're going to follow up with more conversation and more questions. And eventually I'll reveal that I am a podcast host and that I head up. The Agile practice at a training company, so I get to play with Lego a lot. So that's just one tip that you might want to take. If you're really struggling to ask the other person a question, we can always make observations. For example, wow, these chocolate brownies are awesome. What do you think? And so we're taking the focus away from ourselves. We're talking more about the environment that we're in.

The other tip that I often use on the podcast is. I love hearing stories. If we can ask questions that invite people to tell you a story, we find that we're able to learn a lot more about each other. the sort of questions you might want to ask someone is, well, was there ever a time when? Or, when did you realize you had a passion for business analysis?

How did you get into it? Can you recall a time when you were proud of your team? These questions are very open ended, but it invites people to share more than just a yes no answer.

Now, Rachel Greenwald, she talks about a way of ending the conversation as well. Because I think it's really important that when we end our small talk, that we do it in a positive way. And she calls this the white flag technique and it's inspired by car racing so if you've ever watched any kind of car racing, what they do is on the penultimate lap, they often throw down the white flag.

And this is to signal the last lap of the race. What we're doing here is, we're going to be ending our small talk by asking one last question. So for example, we can say something like, I've got to run to my next meeting, but I had one last question. Is there anyone else in the business who could tell me about this process?

It's a dignified way of ending the conversation rather than giving the other person a cold rejection to say I've run out of time and I've got a dash . In psychology there's something called the recency effect. And this is where people tend to remember the very last thing you said to them. what we always want to do is leave on a positive because that's the way people are probably going to remember you.

Often we feel we have to fill the void, especially when there's lots of silence in the conversation, when actually silence is golden.

The Power of Listening and Technology

[00:32:16] Paddy Dhanda: It is to help people fill that with thinking time, and so they're able to use that silence for them to get their thoughts together. Try and be comfortable with silence.

Listening is another superpower and Stephen Covey in his seven habits of highly effective people talks about these levels of listening and so what we really want to get to is the top two levels here where we're Able to paraphrase things that people have said to show that we are attentive when we're listening to them and then really show people that we understand how they're feeling in terms of the things that they've said to you and that's really about empathetic listening One thing that, back in the day, was really difficult for us as BAs was we would have to write down and capture information whilst we were talking to people.

Well, AI has changed that now, and here's just one tool that I've been using on my Zoom calls called read. ai. That actually records the whole conversation and is able to highlight some of the key actions that were captured. as well as some of the key summaries in that conversation. So it's super, super useful.

So you can focus more on listening.

Finally, if all else fails, buy yourself a cute dog. We bought ourselves a puppy and he's been a conversation magnet ever since. He's even enabled us to get on TV. So that's just another tip for you.

Patrick McAndrew dives deep into the concept of focus, exploring its crucial role in our modern lives filled with distractions. Sharing his personal journey from struggling with reading to becoming a speed-reading trainer, Patrick delves into how fractured attention spans are affecting personal and professional aspects of life.

* The Myth of Fixed Skills: Patrick’s experience with a speed-reading course shattered his belief that reading skills are fixed, leading to the realization that focus can also be trained.

* Continuous Partial Attention: Our day-to-day lives are governed more by a state of 'continuous partial attention' rather than actual multitasking, making us highly susceptible to distractions.

* The Loop of Distraction: Heavy media multitasking changes our brain's orientation to constantly anticipate distractions, negatively affecting performance unless under high-stress conditions.

Patrick McAndrew (High Performance Coach)

Patrick McAndrew is the Founder & CEO of HARA, an organization that trains leaders to optimize performance. He has coached over 300 executives on managing attention, energy, and focus in the modern workplace. Patrick is passionate about equipping people with science-based skills to thrive amidst technology-driven distraction. His customized training helps organizations and individuals reach peak productivity.

hara.co

patrickmcandrew.co

https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickmcandrewonline/

⚡️ In each episode, Paddy Dhanda deep dives into a new human Superpower and gives practical advice on how you can apply it immediately.

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Transcription:

[00:01:01] Paddy Dhanda: Dear friend, thank you for joining me for another episode of the Superpower School podcast. I'm your host, Paddy Danda, and today I have somebody who is the founder and CEO of Hara, where they help organizations and people focus. Amidst a world full of distraction and those of you that know me will know this is a topic close to my heart So welcome to the show Patrick McAndrew.

How you doing Patrick? I'm very

[00:01:32] Patrick McAndrew: good. It's good to be here with you Paddy we're almost namesakes.

[00:01:36] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, yes. I'm gonna tell you a funny story now Patrick I used to work in Dublin for a short while and I remember Going to the bar and I was about to order a drink and the man next to me said, Hey, where are you from and what's your name?

And I was like, I bet my name is more Irish than your name. And he said, well, I'm John. And I said, I'm Paddy. And then the look on his face was just shock horror seeing an Indian guy with the name Paddy. He didn't let me buy another drink that night, it was such a nice moment. And so, yeah, when I meet another Irishman or woman it's always interesting to see the look on, on their faces.

[00:02:12] Patrick McAndrew: Oh, I'd say so. Suddenly they feel like you're one of them just by hearing that, just with the name Paddy. I can imagine you slotted right into that environment in Dublin that night.

[00:02:19] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, yeah. And now I normally say to people I'm half Irish and half Indian because I feel that, I feel the love.

[00:02:26] Patrick McAndrew: So, yeah. Just like our prime minister, actually. He's half Irish, half Indian.

[00:02:30] Paddy Dhanda: Well, before we get onto the topic of alcohol, let's talk about the subject of this episode. So Patrick, what superpower would you like to talk about today?

[00:02:40] Patrick McAndrew: Let's talk about the superpower of focus. I think that's an interesting one to explore. I think it's one that people long for in today's world in the kind of environment we live in and the way that we use technology. So that's the path that I'd like to go down and the path I'd like to explore.

[00:02:57] Paddy Dhanda: Those of us that don't know you so well, as you were growing up, tell us a little bit about your life and some of the experiences you went through and some of the dilemmas as you were growing up.

[00:03:10] Patrick McAndrew: I can maybe bring things in from my youth, but I think maybe to a point that's more connected to this theme of what we're talking about, the path maybe was started to emerge about five years ago.

I took a speed reading course in the Upper East Side of New York, and from doing that I realized that this was one of the most transformational four hours that I ever had. I studied corporate law in university, and the reading part of school was actually somewhat challenging, being able to extract all the information, being able to Memorize a lot of these different cases, the details of the cases.

 I found that part challenging because you really have to read and synthesize a lot of information from a lot of different eras when you would arrive to your exams or discussions. So, I had this sense of myself that I was a poor reader. And I carried that with me for many years until I took this four hour course in the Upper East Side.

And from that I realized, Oh my God, this is not a fixed skill. It's not something that I'm born with. We are not born good nor bad readers. It's a spectrum. It's about how exposed we are to different skills and how much we develop the skill that allows us to become a better reader.

And I then became very curious and passionate about this and really took the lessons from that four hour workshop into my life. I started trying to read books faster, trying to read harder books slower, trying to test my memory. And I also ended up working for the organization that I learned from.

And I traveled around the United States, going to high schools, to universities and to businesses, teaching, teaching people how to improve their reading skills, how to process information faster and how to store more of what they read. And everywhere I went, I saw that people have what I could see as fractured minds.

They knew what they wanted. There wasn't a lack of motivation. There wasn't a lack of intention. What there seemed to be was a lack of attention. They really seemed to struggle with that capacity to have a sense of ownership over their mind. To be honest with you, I was feeling the same thing at that time.

I had my own business, which I was running, which was my full time gig. The speed reading was just something on the side and I struggled day in, day out. I would arrive with a huge amount of desire and motivation for the business I was trying to build. But as I would arrive to my desk, I would go through the typical kind of start of day activities.

I would go through Instagram. I would check my Facebook. I would check Sky Sports, The Guardian. And that might take me 20, 25 minutes, and then I would begin into my day. And then as I said, I tried to start the work that I needed to do. Suddenly I'd feel that I needed a coffee and I'd go down and get a coffee after getting a coffee, I'd go back and almost do the same loop of checking again.

Then I try and work, then I'd feel like I needed something else, or maybe I'd go and check my emails. And this dance of constantly moving away from the thing that I wanted to focus on or work on would take me up till 3 or 4 p. m. in the afternoon. And then at that point I would realize, okay, I really have to start working now.

And I'd be in the office until 8 or 9 p. m. And I tell myself tomorrow, I'm really going to do it. Tomorrow is going to be a day where I get everything done, but yet the same pattern would emerge. And I realized that I was dealing with the same thing that so many were that I saw. And if I could have made a change in how I was able to expand my reading skills, I thought the same must be true for focus, because we learned how to read when we're three or four or five, but the complexity of the material grows.

But we never learn how to focus. Nobody ever comes along and teaches us that. So, that's what began this journey of exploring the concept of what is focus and what is making me so distracted. Oh,

[00:07:03] Paddy Dhanda: nice. I can totally relate to a lot of what you've just said there. There's been times when I've been at home with the kids and the family and my mind's been.

Wavering in lots of different directions and I've completely ignored what they've been telling me or what they've been asking me and it just It feels awful afterwards when you then realize what you've just done And I think for me actually Patrick I remember there was a pivotal moment when a good friend of mine at work was actually giving me some really bad news.

He was telling me about how he hadn't been to work for a few days because he had lost someone really close to him. And I had half an eye on him and half an eye on my phone. I just zoned out. And afterwards I said something ridiculous like, Oh, okay and there was no empathy. There was no kind of emotional connection to what he just said.

And that's when he said, Dude, did you just hear what I was telling you? And for me, that's when I realized. What I was doing. I could totally relate to what you were saying there and I'm sure there's lots of science behind this as well, Patrick, how big a problem is this for the world?

[00:08:13] Patrick McAndrew: Yeah. So it's a huge problem. And I think there's many strings that we can pull out of. If we take a step back and if we look at the design and the organization of our lives today. We have multiple virtual personas, so we have at least one virtual persona on our email, maybe we have a few if we have different email addresses for the vast majority of people they have these multiple personas on their social profiles, so that's.

TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or X as it is now. There is your instant messaging channels, Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, Teams. And the list goes on. There's many other things. Then if you're into sports, if you are interested in certain types of news. So what this creates is that in the moment of waking up, Our first gesture is often to go and check in on those virtual selves, those virtual personas.

I kind of liken it to the Tamagotchi. If anybody can remember the Tamagotchi of how it lasted for about 12 days, it was this kind of digital virtual pet which had a life cycle of about 12 or 14 days, but it needed constant nourishment, it needed constant checking. Just on this small little digital piece, but if you didn't check it every, I don't know, 45 minutes, 60 minutes, it would die.

It needed to be fed. It needed to be watered. It needed attention. And in the same way, this is what's occurring with our virtual selves. So we want to check in and make sure that. Everything is okay in these different arenas, these different spaces, because if not, we feel in our own real selves, like, there's a threat, we're missing out on something or somebody needs us.

And that creates a certain pattern in our minds, where we often speak about focus and its opposing force being multitasking. So focus is where you have one single objective that you're moving towards, and in being aware of that single objective, you're also Able to block out all of the things which arise on the path there.

So like the example of what you spoke about, your friend was telling you something to be present in that would be to really sit there and feel what he's saying to hear what he's saying. Yet your mind was drawing you astray somewhere else. It was making you think about something you needed to check or to see.

So that in that framing that's maybe multitasking in that sense or another essence of it is to be on a video call yet to be typing an email on a completely different subject matter. But really, that's not where the issue is and where we are today the issue is more along the lines of continuous partial attention, so it would be one thing if we were spending a lot of our time focusing and then sometimes multitasking.

But the truth is that we spend the vast majority of our time in this constant kind of malaise of continuous partial attention where we're just checking. The day is spent checking to see if anything new has come in, checking to see if anything is there that I need to be aware of. And that's across all of these many virtual selves.

And this has come because we've tried to make ourselves as available as possible to incoming information. And in the end, we become unavailable to ourselves because there's no space for ourselves because anytime we get a moment, there's something to check, something to see. And of course, it has the boomerang effect because the more that you respond and send things out across these platforms, the more they will come back to you.

So this then starts to create this mindset of what we can call and has been coined multitasking as a frame of mind heavy media multitasking and a study that was done, it was a meta study at Stanford university that was looking at how heavy levels of media multitasking and low levels of media multitasking affect the brain.

And for those who are heavy media multitaskers, which means that they're constantly switching, constantly moving. So it's different if you're writing a paper and you're writing an email, and there's something that you need to Google to find out about a little bit more information. And then you come back to the email.

That's what we could call light media multitasking. Heavy media multitasking is where you're writing an email, but then you switch and you look at a notification you got, or you send a text message or you check Instagram. You're constantly switching the contexts completely. This starts to change the orientation of our brain, where we anticipate a distraction whenever we try to attend to something.

So it means that it creates a loop of distraction. So almost by association, whenever we try to focus on one thing, we've created the pattern that by focusing on one thing, we are also drawn automatically to do something else. And the only way to come out of that is to be placed in environments of extreme high stress with extreme high levels of pressure.

And people who are not in those levels of extremely high stress, they underperform because their mind is so fragmented. So in ways it causes people to almost create and want these very high stress states because it's the only way that they can narrow their focus. And this then leads into the pattern of what we've seen with a lot of burnout that for a lot of people I've seen that they create the patterns of this themselves.

[00:13:16] Paddy Dhanda: I can definitely see how with all of the social media out there. We get drawn into it and it's almost this addiction that oh my god I've got some likes here or how many more can I get or how many followers can I get here?

And the more of these platforms that evolve and Come about the more we spread ourselves thinly Don't we it's there's only so much we can do. And it just becomes impossible and so patrick I'm hoping you've got some solutions for us, because I think this is a problem that is very common.

Lots of people are facing this at the moment. So how can we help people if they're feeling this way?

[00:13:57] Patrick McAndrew: I think it requires your own introspection to yourself. Do you need this?

Do you need to have? access to all of this information. So the challenge that we're dealing with is that we're suffering the consequences of abundance. We have overexposed ourselves to too much stimulation and that's having a huge impact on ourselves. So there's this sense that I must know about this.

I must be aware of this. There is a trading of. Gathering lots of information, but not really doing much personal inquiry for yourself. A great place to start is to stop sleeping with your phone in the bedroom, to get into a practice of leaving your phone somewhere, maybe in some sort of a drawer or a cupboard at some point in the evening, and it's not with you, and it doesn't come into the bedroom with you.

And for the vast majority of people that I speak to, their phone or a screen is their pacifier. So they use the screen to lull themselves into a state of rest. But it's also the stimulant in the morning where it's the first thing that they wake up and look at. And when you wake up and start your day like that, you have lost yourself in a sense, because you completely get hooked by the rhythm and the demands of the messages, the incoming needs coming at you.

And that's where we lose that sense of resilience. Because we don't have that inner stability to have our own way. We don't set our own rhythm. There's a lot to explore in that. A lot of this is about your own exploration. Everybody needs to understand, what am I distracting myself from?

Am I unable to spend time with myself? If I am unable to spend time with myself, then I need to explore that I need to actually put emphasis and intention on spending time with myself without the screen. So, not going for walks with your AirPods in or listening to podcasts, not working out with your AirPods or listening to podcasts or music, spending less time with your phone in the evening, not bringing it into the bed, giving yourself at least the first 30 minutes in the morning without it.

Reducing a lot of these time wasting apps on your phone, which offer you the promise of incoming information, but also kind of fool you into thinking that you need to be aware of everything constantly, because that's what stretches your time and fragments your attention. So I think it's right there.

It's right beneath our nose. It's just that we're not really observing it.

[00:16:19] Paddy Dhanda: often hear in lots of productivity books. People do talk about the gadgets and social media. I guess what's your opinion on this is social media and the gadgets, are they solely to blame here or is there some ownership for us as individuals, and I know you've alluded to that as well, but we need to reflect on our own usage of these things, because

many new inventions and innovation are normally created with the intention of them being good, but then often they have these indirect disadvantages. So I'd love to get your thoughts on that.

[00:16:57] Patrick McAndrew: I think it's about the quality of what you want to get. So let's take a step back and let's look at the.

How we've had to evolve as human beings in dealing with processed foods. So if you go and you fill up your car at the petrol station or you're in the airport, you're just surrounded by candies. There's M& M's, there's Mars bars, there's all the processed sweets everywhere. It's underneath your nose constantly.

Now if you allow yourself to fall into the impulse every time you're in that space, and you pick up a bar, you pick up some M& M's and you eat them, this becomes a habitual pattern of your life. That when I go there, I get something. If I feel tired, I get it. If I crave something sweet, I go for that.

Now there's a natural inbuilt desire in us to crave sugar. It's something that we long for. It's something that we need. It's something we derive energy from, but there are higher quality levels of sugar that actually feed us and give us energy. So if we turn to fruit, if we have maybe a date, something like that, those are really good and healthy forms of sugar, which will give us energy.

So the issue is not the sugar. It's quality of the sugar that we get. The same is true with information. There's incredible information out there. For example, I don't really read news anymore, but I have a lot of substacks which I'm signed up to. I think there's incredible writers on substack.

Because they think deeply. They have time. They have a week or a month. to publish their pieces, to share it with their audience. There's an accountability there. They focus on specific themes and it gives you the opportunity to go deep and to explore many things. For example, a lot of the news outlets, they don't have that privilege because they're in this news cycle, which is instantaneous.

And it's all about the headline and the first three lines that you got. So you're being fed this. This drive of this novelty of information and for most people when they go to a new site like I did when I would go to the Guardian, it was just the skimming of the homepage and looking at the headlines and dropping in to see something.

So then when you speak to people about a topic, you're just quoting verbatim what you read in the newspaper or on the website but you don't know anything in any great depth. The same is true I've seen for people who think that they're learning through YouTube Shorts. They tell me that they get to learn a lot through YouTube Shorts, but you don't.

You just end up echoing the words that you got from this person and then you think that it's your own, but you never even crafted those thoughts for yourself. So all of these candies... These processed forms of information which come through TikTok, which come through Instagram, which come through YouTube Shorts, they are processed to feed us in a more bite sized way, just like we get the candies at the store, at the airport.

But they're made of fructose corn syrup, a lot of processed ingredients. There's no fiber and they pass right through us and spike our blood sugar. The same is true when we engage in learning. And because just like I spoke about sugar, we also have that deep longing for information and awareness.

So this is not something to be deprived of, but it's what is the quality of what we're getting? So this is why we are losing the capacity to actually read books that are challenging. Read books with depth. Once again, I'm not somebody who really tries to put out here's four things to do, because it's not as simple as that.

It requires your own introspection, but look at the quality of the information that you're exposing yourself to and question if you really need this bite sized, fast paced information, or is it just another form of a distraction and a stimulation that is Much like anything else.

[00:20:15] Paddy Dhanda: Yeah. Oh, I love that. I think the way you've put it there by using that metaphor really does put it into context.

And Patrick, you do this for a living. You work with lots of organizations out there. Could you give us some examples without obviously naming names and any sensitive information, but just to understand the sort of work that you've managed to do and what have been some of the results when you've helped individuals?

[00:20:42] Patrick McAndrew: So for a lot of the teams that we worked with, of course, we're helping them in the work environment, but really what they're longing for and what they need is more structure in their daily lives and that will bring more structure into the way that they work. So we have the momentum mind program and we've run this with many sales and leadership teams and where we begin, and this is also available for individuals now.

So for the last three years, we didn't make it available for individuals, but now it is. So the place that we begin is on their evening and the quality of their rest because for a lot of people, their level of rest is either inconsistent or diminished on this impacts than their cognitive performance.

Like I've been traveling quite a bit this week, there was one night there where I didn't get very good sleep. And I could tell myself the next day, I craved coffees, I craved sugar, I craved distractions, it just comes it's a natural thing that arises when we're sleep deprived.

It's very hard for us to sustain some focused involvement. So we keep looking for a more shallow level of engagement. So that's okay. It's good to be aware of that. You know? So when I saw it that day, I was like, okay, this is what's here. And these cravings are going to arise. But do I lean into them or not?

Or do I do just focus on what's really essential? And I reduced the tasks that I have to do on that day. So it gives you the sense of creating order amongst the chaos that arises or the disorder that arises. So that's just the place that we begin with. We begin with their evening. And from there we dedicated quite a few weeks to that so that they can get more sleep, but also better rest, better quality rest.

So we give them different practices and techniques to wind down in the evenings. And then from there, we move in towards their morning and the way that they start their day. So I mentioned that for a lot of people, they just roll over, pick up their phone, and this puts them into a state of immediate stress and immediately fragments their attention.

Because they've just initiated their day in a very reactive way. they've kind of forgot actually of what the most important thing is that they need to do because they're just responding to the demands of the moment. And exercise important getting some sunlight, getting some movement.

There's some elements of diet that we suggest, but we don't focus too much on diet. And what that does is that creates a very stable foundation with the way that your day has ended and the way that your day has started. And it puts your body in a good state of balance and it puts your mental state into a state of balance.

And it also gives you a more cognitive sharpness. And then from there we move towards the work. So the work when you actually have to focus and we train people on how to sharpen that skill because really the capacity to focus is also about. Becoming more comfortable and aware of how you feel inside.

So when we are seeking out these distractions, it's to move away from the agitation that we feel as we try and focus on something. And the beauty and the challenge of today is that we have so many easy access things to reach to whenever we feel agitation. So as soon as you're trying to work on something that's difficult, It creates this agitation inside, because you don't know the next step.

You have to figure something out. So that creates this unknown, it creates this blank space. And you need to sit there and stay with it. Maybe you need to get up and go for a walk, or you need to stay at the desk, or you need to write things down, but you need to stay on that path. But for a lot of people, what they do is they will switch and look at their email, or they'll go and look at the news, or they'll go and look at their phone.

And that brings the context of their attention to another place. And research has proven that it takes on average 23 minutes and 15 seconds to come back to the original point of focus. Yet for most people, they switch contacts every three minutes. So there's never an opportunity to even build up to, to get to a point of focus.

But if you don't have the stability of rest and a balanced and calm and healthy and energized interstate kind of fine tuning, the work stuff will be redundant. So we begin there and then we fine tune the work elements. And then from there we, we segment the day. So we segment the day. And for a lot of people, they start their day off with meetings.

For most, that's unfortunately a poor choice of their early attention. Of course, for some people in leadership roles, it's valuable, but for people who actually have to get stuff done, the morning is the best time to actually get it done. So, on certain days we delay the start of meetings. We have maker days where things get done.

So that means that you might not start taking meetings until 11 or 1130. And then other days you have manager days where maybe you start taking meetings earlier in the day, but that means that it allows people to switch between the days when they're actually producing and when they're managing.

Because for a lot of people, they try to squeeze in the important work into between 1 and 3 p. m. in the afternoon and they're cognitively spent at that stage. So that's kind of like a high level overview of what we do and the outcomes of that is that people teams find that they're a lot more effective.

 Even though their capacity is restricted, they get to produce and bring a lot more in that restricted capacity because a lot of teams are feeling that resources are being tightened yet the expectations are growing of them. So we're helping them to reach that. That level of expectation that is of them, and there is a lot less burnout, a lot less unhealthy tactics and how people are living.

And then for business owners who have taken it, they find that they are getting out of their own way that they realized that they were the bottleneck to the growth of their business because their mind was so fragmented and they were so reactive, but now they can just be more diligent.

And intentional about the really important priorities and they can organize their attention and remove a lot of the waste because when you're in that highly reactive state, you're so busy that it's very hard to identify what's necessary and what isn't. And really, that's what we're trying to help people do to really see what drives value and to act on it.

But there's many elements that comes into it.

[00:26:41] Paddy Dhanda: That's fascinating because I was originally thinking when I saw the program that you're offering, I thought, Oh, maybe it's going to be a bunch of techniques that you practice to get more focused on things. And you're building some kind of muscle memory around that, but it's actually sounds like there's a lot of additional constraints.

That we're surrounded by that we need to remove or change for us to then be able to thrive in that environment.

[00:27:10] Patrick McAndrew: Yeah, we have to start from the ground up. And look this came from my own observations of myself. I read so many books and spoke to so many psychologists and neuroscientists on this topic.

And eventually I got to the point where I felt like I was a mechanic that knew how the car worked, but I didn't know how to drive the car. So I stopped engaging in reading about neuroscience and psychology for a long stretch. And I went to meditate and I went to practice silent retreats.

 Practice yoga and I wanted to go into my mind to see what was going on there. And that's when I really started to see new things, and I really started to see that. A lot of what's out there, a lot of what people are sharing with us, yes it's really valuable literature really valuable research, but it also needs to be combined with the pragmatic elements of what's going on within us.

And it's not a cut and dry cold cognitive dimension, it's very much interwoven with our emotional state, and it's very much interwoven with how we feel within our bodies. So how we feel drives often as a core driver of our behavior, we are moving towards the pleasure that we seek or moving away from this discomfort that we feel inside.

And if we are unable to sit with those pleasures, those cravings that we feel, but we're not going to act on, or those discomforts that we feel, but we're not going to run away from, then we find massive strength to actually stay on the path that we want to commit to. But if you are fleeting and you're constantly being pulled towards your cravings, or you're constantly running away from your discomforts, that's at the heart of the issue here.

And this has been an issue that has. been alive for as long as we have any written context or mythologies on the human experience. It's just that today we have so many easy access points. And it's not just that they're easy, but they have been fed to us that they're useful and necessary. So we end up creating these Environments of chaos in the name of being productive or in the name of getting stuff done, but it really is diminishing the quality of our craft, the quality of the work that we can really do, because I think a lot of people are starting to question is this what my life is about?

Is this all I'm here for? To sit in front of the screen for 12 hours? Moving communication streams back and forth with one another, but I'm not really able to actually hone my craft and do hard work to get better. And when I say do hard work, I mean, engage in a skill to get better at it. I think people are longing for that.

And when you do it, that's when you truly feel fulfilled. But if your day is spent moving streams of communication around an organization. That's exhausting. And the saddest part is that I'm seeing some people who are actually relinquishing their own ownership over their time and their attention. And when you start to do that, then that is a sad thing to see.

But if you can believe that you can have your own time and your own attention, then you can start strengthening your own focus and you can start doing great work and feeling extremely fulfilled from what you're able to produce. And that's what I want to help people move towards so that they can match the intention and the drive that they have with the attention that's available to them.

[00:30:30] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, as you were talking there, Patrick, you reminded me of a moment when my son, who's a few years ago said to me at the dinner table, he said, Dad, what did you do today at work? And you mentioned there about communication streams and facilitating communication going back and forth.

And. I pretty much read out a list of tasks that I had done, like I'd sent a few emails, I had organized some meetings. But at the end of the conversation, I was questioning my own value, thinking, what on earth did I actually do? Because telling a seven year old, I sent a bunch of emails. He just looked confused as to what the hell do you do for a living and I couldn't explain it in a meaningful, purposeful way and I think there's probably a lot of us that are in that boat.

[00:31:21] Patrick McAndrew: Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I think the sense of meaning and purpose there's many ways to look at this and to peel it apart. But if we just look at it from one frame of reference, it comes from the evidence of our efforts being the proof in what we have created and built, and that can be something that can be material, or that can be something that's felt because we've built a team, or we've built a cohesion amongst group of people, or we've built a certain quality of experience with our customers, and we feel that.

Or we've built products or we've created objects. And if you work really hard, but you can see and feel that evidence of something that has been created, it makes it all worthwhile. It suddenly feeds everything back to you. But if you are putting in all of this work, but it lacks meaning at the end of the day.

It's very hard to sustain them. It really starts making you question things and within a lot of organizations, they're not helping themselves and they're not helping their teams because you see there's two opposing forces here. There is the necessity to be able to communicate conveniently and efficiently, but then there's also the need to focus on to do proper work.

So that requires. having space to attend to things, having space to think about things, and that hasn't been considered. There's only the consideration for Efficient communication, which is why if it's a large organization and they have an it team, of course, they're going to get a sales rep, who's going to come in and they're going to pitch them on the benefits of Slack and how messages can be sent very quickly on teams can create their own boards and their own channels.

And this was really helpful. And all of that on the basis of the speed and the transmission of communication looks very positive. But the thing which isn't considered is the bottleneck, which can't be overcome, which is their people's attention. We need to hold to opposing forces of what are we channeling our attention towards and what we're working on and what are we building and how can we build it quickly, how can we build it well, but how can we also give time to go in with depth into things.

So that we can do good work and that's the real challenge and that's, I think the new step that we need to arrive to just like we spoke about where as we had to evolve to be able to walk in to the stores and these shops where there are all these temptations, all these candies and ultimately to live a healthy life, you have to be able to see them, but recognize that they're not for you.

They're not something that I want, because you have an awareness of the quality of the life that you want to live, so you're not going to be sucked into the kind of really easy access temptations, and sometimes you will, and that's fine, and occasionally it's okay. But if it's done on a consistent daily basis, then a lot of problems will arise.

The same is true with our attention. So we've, we're in a very nascent time in our human experience in the way that this is all playing out. And organizations and individuals are going to have to see that, okay. Everybody is communicating, watching this show on Netflix or talking about this or communicating with each other on this group chat or they're seeing this new video on Instagram.

But is that for me? Is that the life that I want to live? Is that the kind of health that I want to have? Because health is not just a state of being, it's a relationship to your way of living your experience of life. And that is what I think about when I think of the health of the individual and the health of the organization.

The, their people's attention is going to have to be considered and we're going to keep coming up against the boundaries of our attention and eventually people will start to make some shifts and we're seeing that I see a lot of people who are making adjustments in their life because they're recognizing how the existing way of rapid fire communication and information Is fracturing and fragmenting their attention, which is degrading the quality of their life and they want a better quality lived experience.

So they're starting to put boundaries and limitations around where they allow their attention to go, which is just like we had to do when processed food came around for a while. Everybody engaged in it. Then we started to see the problems, the health problems that came. Then we started to put boundary lines around it.

The same is going to have to happen with our attention and you can wait until those boundary lines become enforced upon you. Or you can start to establish them for yourself now. And that's what I'm trying to help people do. Oh,

[00:35:37] Paddy Dhanda: Patrick. I have one final question, but it's a big one. We were talking about candies and probably the biggest candy at the moment is AI.

Do you think AI is going to help us with this challenge or do you think it's going to make things even worse? What's your opinion?

[00:35:57] Patrick McAndrew: I don't know, Paddy. That's the honest truth. I was at a conference during the week and the conversation of AI came up, it was small in a sense that it was like 70 of us there, so we were all able to engage in a shared conversation.

And I think there's a blessing and a curse on both sides of this. But I don't know enough really to answer that. I don't know what's coming. From the reference point of reading, for example, if I just bring it back to that just to frame it maybe in this way I don't teach speed reading.

And when I say speed reading, okay, that's the framing of it, but really what I was teaching people was how to deepen their reading practice. If you imagine when you drive a car. Or if you drive a bicycle, it's a very different experience having a single speed bike than it is having multiple gears.

It helps you move through many different types of terrain when you have different gears. And that's what I was trying to give people when they would read, so that for a lot of people they just have one approach to reading, but I was trying to give them many different approaches so that they could use it in different types of information, different types of material that they engage with.

But a lot of people will come and say, why do I need that when I can just get the book summary? When I can't remember what the platforms were, there was like an app where you could pay and a book was digested into three pages. So people would say, I have the access to that, so I don't need it.

The thing is that the act of reading is an act of if you engage in it the right way, it is expanding your mind. If you are actively engaged in the process, if you are arguing and critiquing the author and connecting the points that they're making to previous things that you wrote and looking out for where the gaps are.

Your awareness and your models and your framing of the world is expanding hugely. And if you can read consistently in a layer of depth, it starts to feel like the books are speaking to one another. And now you're connecting. You're able to start synthesizing because you're connecting different elements, different topics, and you're bringing them together. Maybe you're reading about architecture, and then you're reading about biology, and then you're reading about neuroscience, and then you're reading about business. And suddenly they end up starting to connect in this melting pot. And you can see separate points, but shared points together.

And in the sense of AI, I'm just going to speak about it, like in what chat GPT and say, Claude is offering us, which is from Anthropic. These are amazing tools. And I think they can do amazing work to support us if we have been thinking with depth. And if we are already going and exposing ourselves to developing these cognitive capacities to think deeply, to read, to expand our mind.

But if you're trying to bypass that, and you're just trying to get a short circuit to it, and you're thinking that this is going to give you all of the knowledge that you need. You're being fooled because just like those people who were reading the cliff notes, nothing ever sunk in with great depth.

It was shallow learning. So I think that the more that we get these tools. The more that people are going to chase those candies and they're going to find themselves more and more engaging and very shallow learning. And those who choose to deepen their cognitive abilities in this era will surpass the vast majority of people.

Because they'll be able to think at a level that most others won't. Because for most people, they're just echoing what they've heard from podcasts. They're just echoing what they've seen in videos. They haven't done the deep work, they haven't done the deep observation themselves, so they haven't created their own original thought.

So use the tools, but recognize that they're only a supplementary factor that can help you if you do the deep work first. So that's from a very personal, subjective perspective. That's my view on AI and its relation to work and productivity and ideas and creativity. The deep work has to come first.

[00:39:37] Paddy Dhanda: Patrick, thank you so much for sharing that. And I love the way at the moment there's all these experts out there or so called experts are all predicting the future in so many different ways and yet we don't even know what the next version of CHAP GPT is gonna come up with, it's just such a black box at the moment.

So I feel you on that one. And Patrick before we finish, how do people get in touch with you? How can they find out more about the great work that you're doing?

[00:40:02] Patrick McAndrew: You can connect to me on LinkedIn. I put stuff up there occasionally, not too often. If you have things that you want to reach out with.

Patrick at Hara do co h ara.co is my email. hara.co is the company. And then my own personal website is Patrick mcandrew.co. Sometimes I go and I speak to companies but then primarily we have our programs that we help people go through. So, yeah, feel free to reach out and connect with me there.

[00:40:32] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, brilliant. And Patrick, thank you once again. It's been such an invigorating and insightful episode for me. I've learned so much and I'm sure the listeners have as well. Lots there for us to unpack. We couldn't possibly do this justice in the amount of time that we've got, but I'm sure people will go away and ponder and reflect just as I will.

So thank you so much.

[00:40:54] Patrick McAndrew: I hope so. Thank you, Paddy. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for hosting The Space.

When I grew up, I wanted to be an astronaut. But kids of today want to become professional gamers and influencers. But are these legitimate career paths? In this episode we explore valuable insights into the eSports industry, showcasing how it has transformed from a pastime into a legitimate career path with potential benefits for players beyond the gaming world. It encourages listeners to consider the broader impact of gaming and eSports in today's evolving landscape.

👉🏽 eSports as a Viable Career Choice: eSports has become a legitimate career choice, with professional gamers earning substantial prize money.

👉🏽 Transferable Skills: Communication, teamwork, and strategic thinking are crucial in eSports, and these skills can be applied in various professions beyond gaming.

👉🏽 Opportunities for Diversity and Inclusion: Women in Esports campaign and women's-only tournaments are helping bridge the gender gap in the industry, making it more inclusive.

Liam Brown (eSports Executive)

Liam Brown is a seasoned esports executive who brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise about the eSports industry. With a background in player recruitment, management, sponsorships, and brand building, Liam has a deep understanding of the competitive esports landscape. His insights and strategies are invaluable to both fans and commercial professionals looking to break into the rapidly growing esports market. He is head of branding at the Knights eSports team.

* Linkedin: Click Here

* Knights Twitch: Click Here

* Instagram: Click Here

⚡️ In each episode, Paddy Dhanda deep dives into a new human Superpower and gives practical advice on how you can apply it immediately.

👉 Sign-up to Newsletter: https://www.superpowers.school/subscribe

👉 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/paddydhanda/

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Transcription:

[00:01:00] Paddy Dhanda: Dear friend, thank you for joining us for another episode of the Superpower School podcast. I'm your host, Paddy Danda, if you're a bit like me, and you had a fascination growing up for gaming, then have I got a dream guest for you. I have the Corporate Partnerships Manager for Knights Esports over in America.

I have Liam Brown with me today. Hey Liam, how you doing?

[00:01:24] Liam Brown: Hi Pardeep, great to be here.

[00:01:25] Paddy Dhanda: I can already see on the video you've got like these cool little gaming controllers behind you. Tell me more about some of those, I bet there's a story behind those.

[00:01:36] Liam Brown: So when you look at technology peripherals, this is something that I always like to say to people.

There's always a way to make a buck in everything that you see. So this guy, I met him actually in where we were talking about the Transformers convention and over at BotCon in New Jersey. And what he has developed is a way for you to take grips and basically put them on your controllers so that it trains you to be more exact when you're playing.

And then also there's different weights and magnets you can put on them to add resistance. So, one thing he was bragging about was that he's already been banned from a couple of different fighting game competitions, like in the FGC, because it adds so much...

performance enhancement to his ability. So, you know, in, in existing in a space, I got to stay up to date with a lot of this stuff. And I go to a Transformers convention, expecting cool comic books, artwork, toys, and then I see this and I was just like, what is this? So, But yeah, that's where my travels take me.

Everything turns into work with me because I try to find the tie in with non endemic brands or endemics like in this space. So everything kind of turns into a, okay, I gotta take a screenshot of this. So if you were to look at my phone library, like on my, all my pictures, it's mostly screen records and screen captures of like cool commercials I saw.

Cause I'm just like, yeah, I should reach out to those guys cause there could be something cool here. But that's like a little bit about my, some of my tchotchkes back here.

[00:03:01] Paddy Dhanda: Also, you sound like you've got a dream job. There's so many aspects, I think that, sound amazing the way you've integrated all this stuff into your work.

So then for. This episode, what superpower would you like to bring?

[00:03:13] Liam Brown: Probably the ability to bring people together, specifically on the stage of gaming and esports. That's one thing that I've really been about, and I think that as a passion has, or as a superpower, has really driven me towards this field in particular.

And it's why I believe in it so much.

[00:03:31] Paddy Dhanda: Wow, and for anyone out there that doesn't know what esports are we're gonna jump into that as well in a moment. Because I think unless you've got kids, it sometimes is an area that you may not have heard of. But it's certainly getting very popular at the moment.

And I'm sure Liam's going to tell us all about that as well. But Liam, how did you get into this? You know, are now making a career out of games and gaming sounds like a dream job, but was this something you dreamt of as a kid or did you get into this through some other avenue?

[00:04:04] Liam Brown: I did get into this in some other avenue that you're exactly correct.

You know, I found this relatively late into my time at university. So I'm a university of Pittsburgh alumni. I changed my major like. Four or five separate times. I changed my career path six or eight times when I was in university. And it was through the COVID 19 pandemic that I really found that e sports and gaming was the one conversation that did not stop because while it, like many other industries took a hit.

It would still allowed for people to come together on a common platform and interact with each other, make new friend groups, keep existing friendships in play engage in that varsity sports experience in a COVID compliant environment. And I was, I had always had a background as a gamer. I've been gaming actually since I was around eight years old with my dad.

Actually, which not a lot of people can say, and I've always followed esports because I always like to see like new industries coming in to change everything. And what esports allows a lot of brands to do is to have just kind of inject a main line of communication directly into that. 18 to 35 ad blocking, cord cutting, high income audience.

And I saw that from early on, and I just always kind of stuck with it. So then when I found that eSports was really something that I was passionate about, by the time I found that it was, is around like. The like halfway through my senior year at university, not the most ideal time to pick up a new career, but I had a certain skills skill set for creating relationships and again, bringing people together.

So I started learning as much as I could. I started becoming a force for change at my university. I was able to plant the seeds for my university to start to begin their esports transformation, which they have now moved in on. I just found out this past weekend and. I was also able to find out that a professional esports organization was based in my same city, and I did what nobody should do, and I put all my eggs in one basket, and I took a big manila envelope, I put my resume that I rewrote like five times, and my cover letter I rewrote a bunch of times, a white paper that I had written about esports and some of its global implications, as well as a couple of face masks University of Pittsburgh face mask.

I went to their their offices, because we're an organization that works closely with the Steelers pirates and Wiz Khalifa and his Taylor gang. And our offices were located at that time in the same Steelers offices. We were just down the hall. So I talked to security guard and I was like, Hey, I have mail for the CEO.

And she was like, yeah, it's up there on this floor. And then I walked in and nobody was in the office. And I was, my heart sank. I went to the Steelers and there was one person in the offices, and she was one of the heads of marketing. And I asked her, Hey, can you drop this off? And she was like, yeah, they're still getting their mail.

And then a week later, I ended up getting a call back. And... In my first conversation with James O'Connor, who is our president and CEO, who is, if anybody knows anything about eSports, he's a really big figure in CSGO. He was one of the first people to coach a North American CSGO team to the World Finals, and he did it four times, and he was the first person to ever do it for any North American team.

And I ended up talking with him, and if you were to... Like in eSports to the Mafia, okay, now stick with me here, he would be one of the people who has a seat up at the table because he's been in this from the competitive stance for 20 years, 20 years or more, and he's really been here at the founding, so he named different figures that I had, I know about, and he was like, yeah, I have their phone numbers, like I know these people, and he's It was just crazy.

So we talked for like an hour and a half and that ended up being what I didn't know was my first interview. And then I went through the traditional, like the other interviews to gain a position here. And that's really how I found e sports by going in and chasing what I was passionate about. And what I'm really passionate about is bringing people together.

And one of the closest things that I can do that with is with e sports and gaming. So. That's really how I found my path. It's an unorthodox way. I didn't go in wanting to be a professional player or a content creator. I didn't want to work in game design. I just wanted to stick with what I had learned.

[00:08:48] Paddy Dhanda: That's fascinating. And, when I was growing up, gaming was a big part of our entertainment because back then we didn't have the internet showing my age now, didn't have many of the gadgets that we have now, but we did have consoles and games consoles, and it was a nice escape from daily grind.

And but obviously when we were growing up, we didn't have. So professional gamers back then and it was more just You know we would go to each other's houses as friends and we'd just

[00:09:20] Liam Brown: Play. Yeah. And you would just have land parties at each other's houses, right?

[00:09:23] Paddy Dhanda: Yeah. Or exactly.

You'd be in the arcades and you'd see like someone who's really good on the machine, and then you'd be like, oh, I've gotta beat their score. Yeah. And that's the sort of level of competitiveness that we would have but nothing quite as grand as, you know, a whole kind of competition that's hosted and there's prizes and all that kind of stuff.

So could you explain for anyone who. Hasn't heard of eSports, like how did it all begin and how big is it now? Because I hear it's huge.

[00:09:52] Liam Brown: You can argue that the mainstream development of eSports really began with CSGO, Dota, and World of Warcraft. Because these were... MMORPGs, you know, are a huge followings and they allowed for people to engage in competition when they wanted, but also allowed people to have that simplistic, my own sort of single player experience where I'm able to enjoy it without fear of getting absolutely demolished by somebody who's better than me.

So they played a really cool role there. And. From that, we also learned of a revenue model that exists in gaming with different smaller purchases. So like CS go is a really good example for this because you can utilize real world dollars to purchase different in game items and trade with other people.

So there are people that have hundreds of thousands of real world dollars in game items for CS go alone. So you can kind of trace the competitive representation back to there and. In the grand scheme of things, we are the fastest growing industry to have come out of the 2000s and the late 90s.

And, you know, as a result, like it's caused a lot of like really positive attention to come to this space and it is allowed for different people to reach out to a completely unreachable and very hard to target audience group in like the gamer, or you could also argue just the millennial and Gen Z because, You guys.

These are people that are, you know, they're as I just mentioned, like they're ad blocking, cord cutting, they're higher income they exist on different platforms, but they just want to get back to the things that they enjoy. And gaming is one of those. So. As far as it's relative size and scale, you know, we're, I think we're on track to hit like another billion in the next couple of years.

But one thing that I always go back to is every, it, the competition that exists on the esports developer side is massive. So you look at these different games, let's say Valorant for example has over 25 million active players. per month. You look at Minecraft and Roblox.

They have over 115 million active players per month. So you quantify those and their entire, each game exists as its own ecosystem because a lot of them follow that freemium model that we were just talking about with CSGO. You know, you can participate, but you can also pay to like do customizable skins.

You can buy and buy and sell, trade different items with other players. So when you have so many different developers, for the player's attention and their long term attention, you know, then it starts to, then you start to see, oh, wow, the, this is huge. I hope that's my verbose way of answering your question of like, how big is all this and kind of where the origins are.

No, that really does

[00:12:50] Paddy Dhanda: start to put things in perspective and CSGO stands for Counter Strike global offensive. Yeah.

[00:12:55] Liam Brown: Yeah. It's they only recently came out with the sequel for the title, but it's, and a lot of influence from the past comes into now. A lot of people talk about how Valorant.

Is a more family friendly version of CS go, you know, they don't have like terrorists, like those kinds of team vernacular in it. They don't have a bomb. They have the spike, they have different playable characters with superpowers instead. And that's one of the ways Valorant I feel has been able to kind of dominate the first person shooter side of competitive e sports currently.

And it's, you know, I'm also biased because our team has, is very uniquely suited within e sports. And we could get into this, but we are strategic partners with the Riot Games, the developers of League of Legends Valorant, and also Project L, which I can't wait for. And from that, we've been able to take more of a leadership position in this industry as not only somebody, not only a team that has competitive representation in several different titles, we also have the influencers, but Also, we're the only eSports team in the world to regularly run and host our own events.

We have our own entire events and tournament management armed to our organization, which you can't really say. A lot of teams just do teams. And a lot of events, tournaments, organizers in eSports just do that. You know, and we're also like a tech developer with some of the guys over at Discord and making sure that everybody can hop in.

To a session with their friends, whatever they want. So like we can get into this more but the team that I chose to be a part of it's very logical. Be with the Knights from my standpoint, because we're doing so much and we're also doing so much to bring people together because we allow for amateurs and pros to come onto our events and just consistently win prizing.

Or to better start their professional career. So like we host amateur events all the time. We allow people to earn their stripes in both like, Valorant teams or even women's only teams in Valorant, Rocket League, Apex, like all of these different gaming titles.

[00:15:06] Paddy Dhanda: It's fascinating because I had no idea about this side of gaming. I mean, I've heard of e sports, but I just assumed it was a bunch of people that get together and go, Hey, shall we form a team? And they go, yeah. And then they start playing or enter into a competition, I've got a young child, well, two, two young children I should say. Yeah. I shouldn't be sexist here because my, I have a daughter and a son although my son is the one who's probably the biggest gamer in the family, but all of a sudden, You know, he talks about becoming a professional gamer and I get worried and I'm like, that's not a job for any parent who has that situation.

What's your perspective on that? Like, is professional gaming now a real career choice for

[00:15:51] Liam Brown: people? Yeah, and one of the things that I always go back to is at the Fortnite World Championships, I think, what is his name, Duga, he was 16. And won the Fortnite World Championships, and his prize money was officially in the millions of dollars.

And he was the first person to win the Fortnite World Championships. And... He was 16. So it is a very real possibility from the competitive standpoint for anybody to get in and now one of the One of the advantages that traditional sports had on eSports was the fact that there was A path to pro environment present at all times there were, you know, you're in the U.

K. There. I'm sure there's all bunch of youth football clubs from primary to high school and then even into university and the same thing over here. You know, you had a bunch of different Baseball camps for elementary in the summer, even club, and one thing that has changed a lot in recent years is with NASIF and NASE.

So NASIF is the National Association for Scholastic Esports Federation, which primarily deals with middle school and high school. age people who want to get into e sports. And then NACE is National Association for Collegiate e sports. So over here, in the States, when the NCAA didn't want anything to do with e sports, they handed it over to NACE, which, thank God.

Thank God. But So now that path to pro environment from the academic side exists now. So that people can go on to, first off, get full ride scholarships to university. Being professional gamers, they can study in relevant majors to eSports through different like eSports majors, certification programs that exist in every age group, and then they can go on from there to try out for different teams and there's so many different avenues to Try out for different teams, but it's another example of sticking with the grind and those lessons of delayed gratification and repetition of basic skills that are fundamental in everyone's life path and those same lessons.

Can be learned in eSports as well. The one thing that, that I hope to bring to that development of the next generation of eSports professionals is also the balance of life and your health and wellness. One thing that, that we see in, and that you probably as a parent have a concern of for your children is that they need to understand the contract negotiation, ensure that they are being best represented and best paid for their talents.

And then. They also need to make sure that they are still existing in a balance and making sure that their health, their sleep is dialed in. Sleep is its own superpower once you get it regular and in a routine. Once you break that routine, it's detrimental to your success. While making sure that physical activity and the nutrition avenue is well taken care of.

I've read the research and that's one thing that I brought to the Knights. I've looked at the research and found that when there is a nutritional and fitness intervention into an eSports player, Players daily life, their performance in the game skyrockets by, you know, double and single digits. So what we've got to look at is how to elevate this space and making sure that the players have that path to pro environment.

They're making sure that there's a balance and making sure that they look at this as a way to get to the next level. Once they operate at the next level, they don't coast and they are constantly looking at the self optimization that's really That would be my advice to you, really. And maybe one, I could take it a step further in saying like, Hey, with whatever setup they have, whether your son and daughter, whether they game on console or on PC, make sure that they're on a treadmill whenever they're doing it.

That's something that is going to boost their focus because what one thing that I've learned from a lot of competitive sports is that when you're in movement and have to process many different things while in movement, that is really good for your brain to kind of flex the muscle of concentration and processing multiple different things.

So your reflexes get better. It's one of the reasons that, like, athletes have such good reflexes, because they're in movement and they have to process so many different bits of information. In eSports, you could say, okay, I am walking at this speed, I've gotten in this many steps, whatever, but I'm also having to process all the different things going on the screen.

So, that's one thing that I do whenever I game. I have a treadmill that's right over there that I that I always walk on whenever I'm... Whenever I game so that's one thing that I would say that I would tell that a few steps of advice that I would give Yeah

[00:20:38] Paddy Dhanda: Never thought of it that way. I mean, I just pictured professional gamers in a darkened room playing computer We

[00:20:45] Liam Brown: turn the lights on now.

That's one thing that's changed We started doing that last year

Because it's flashy it looks good Yeah, you know, and you look at any eSports gym that's opening up or eSports arena that's opening up and they all had those same fluorescent lights. One thing that's really cool about the lighting setup is that it increases the immersion in the game. So there's a lot of people, you can go on Amazon and purchase these for super cheap, but you can connect it to your monitor so that the light and the background to your screen changes in in synchronicity with the action that's going on.

So. And also, like, LED lights just look super cool. Yeah. I'm off of that, I'm off of that Tron legacy, Tron aesthetic with, like, all the cool neon and stuff like that.

[00:21:33] Paddy Dhanda: And so, a professional gamer obviously has to practice playing the games. On average, how many hours would they practice a day?

[00:21:42] Liam Brown: Six to eight.

Just playing the game in question. And then, that could be in scrimmages with other players. One big thing that we always need to focus on is the fundamentals. So, so your aim, movement in the game. And just like when just like say, the most athletic team with poor talent will overtake the team.

That has all the talent, but less athleticism. That's something that I have from a tennis background. That's one of the reasons that my old tennis coaches would always run us through sprints and stuff like that is because when you focus on the basics and the fundamentals of your skill set it's very instrumental in your growth.

So six to eight hours of not only doing scrimmages with other players, other teams in the game and practicing in the game, but also practicing your aim with a resources such as aim labs. Aim labs is one of the biggest Training tools utilized by the pros because you're it's literally just you, the mouse, and you're just aiming at dots on the screen, and it's it is a huge rush when you're able to score 85.

All right now, 95 now 100. And the highest score I ever saw was 145. And that's from a former CS go pro. So focusing on that and then focusing on movement in the game. This particularly pertains to first person shooters such as Apex Legends, Call of Duty Valorant. If you can focus on being accurate and being able to move around and not be shot.

You will be able to hone in your skills and shoot that enemy target. So that's going to be around six to eight. And then you need to break it up with time spent either outdoors, physical activity, and making sure that the blue light is at minimum exposure. So one of the things that we've done is, you know, one of the, one of the companies that we work closely with is any optical, they have a huge line of like.

blue light blocking glasses. So we do giveaways with them all the time, and all of our players have zenny blue light blocking glasses to make sure that they are able to focus in on the fundamentals when they're training and they're able to, they're able to physically. Turn it off. And what I mean is turn off the setup and also take off the glasses and get away from the setup.

And, you know, that the blue light isn't still messing with their brain when they try to put their head down to sleep or things like that. And they're not

[00:24:01] Paddy Dhanda: just wearing these cool looking glasses to look like... You can

[00:24:03] Liam Brown: wear, no, I mean like they're, I like, I mean, I like their glasses. So like, yeah, you can just wear them like universally, but it also helps to get into a habit now that I have the glasses on.

It's time to train, and then I take them off, I'm gonna take a step back.

[00:24:19] Paddy Dhanda: What makes a really good game? I mean, there's Oh man. There's tons of games out there, right? Yeah. In a moment, I am gonna ask you for your favorite game of all time. Dude,

[00:24:29] Liam Brown: You can't tell me that right as Shadow, like, Fires of Rubicon just came out and I haven't even gotten to play it.

And like, Warhammer, the new Warhammer game hasn't even come out yet and I haven't even gotten to play it. But, those two are probably going to be my favorites in the future. But, as far as, like, a really good game... As far, I can't answer that question. I can tell you what makes a good eSports title and what makes a good eSports title is a few things in no particular order of importance.

So one of the things is going to be constant maintenance. So whenever somebody has questions, there needs to be or they're running into problems, you need to have support on them, making sure that they not only feel supported, but also so that the problem is fixed within the day. within the day or within a few hours.

And constant maintenance also falls under the category of new things, new stuff coming out, new maps being developed, new characters and new skins, new collectible items. So that people constantly have something to show for their performance in the game, one. And two, they're not bored. You don't want the players to be bored.

The boredom is, that's cancer. That's the worst thing. And another thing is going to be organization. So what do I mean by that? When I say organization, there has to be a clear and concise competitive strategy. And Schedule an organization of what teams and how they qualify, when they qualify, what geography is going to be competing against who, okay, when that, when they conclude, how do you take that on to the world championships?

Is there more steps? What times of the month or the year is this happening? So like, I'll give you an example. We work closely with Riot Games. We are a big fan of why just sponsor a team when you can run the entire league. Why just have one slice of the pie when you can have the whole pie? So we ran the entire competitive scene for all of North America in the form of the Valorant Challengers League for North America in this past year.

So the Valorant structure is that You compete in your continent's Challengers League and then you go on to go against another continent and then you go on from that to the Premier League. So for North America, how it goes down is you qualify, a lot of teams can qualify for open spots, but other teams that have proved their worth are just invited.

Then they all duke it out, then the winners of that go against South America, and then the winners of that go on to the Premier League. So while that took a lot of words for me to explain, it's still a simple, it's still a relatively simple structure, right? There's Open Qualifiers, there's Split 1, Split 2, then there's the Playoffs, and then there's also the Ascension Tournament.

But that's really it. So, making sure that there's a structure in place for the, not only for people to go and compete, but also for the fans to watch. And also making sure... The third thing that's really crucial is making sure that the content or the accessibility of the professional side is within view of everybody.

If you can make sure that your live events are being hosted on all different platforms and people can find them more easily, it's going to be better for your game because not only people want to play it, But once they see it, oh, I cannot tell you how many games I have seen clips of and immediately I go to the comment section of the video to see what game it is.

Just simply because I liked what I saw. So, Those three characteristics make a really good e sports title.

[00:28:02] Paddy Dhanda: My son for a while had this fascination with fortnight and I only knew about fortnight because of him because he used to Constantly be pestering me to buy new skins and yeah, you can do that. And Then he's got into the Oh god, what's the car racing game where you have a big football?

You mentioned it. Oh, Rocket League? Rocket League.

[00:28:25] Liam Brown: Yeah. Good game. Good game. It's used, Rocket League is also being used by a lot of colleges and universities physics departments to visualize different examples of principles that are taught in physics. So, it's used in a ton of different classrooms.

[00:28:39] Paddy Dhanda: I thought it was really good because he and I used to play as a team and there's so much collaboration going on, right? Yeah. Dad, now you need to do this. And I was totally useless at the game, but, you know, if you have the right player, I'm sure he would have been strategizing with his team mate as well.

[00:28:57] Liam Brown: That's also indicative of the lessons to be learned in e sports communication is key as a team. And when you're able to, in those split seconds, be able to. Transfer the maximum amount of information in as few words as possible. That is instrumental to your success in this field, and that's also something you can take, you know, brand building, social media management communication there's a bunch more skills that I could say that all can be learned in esports.

And in any competitive stage. But you imagine the, what is, what comes after the competitive era of your life in esports? Well, a lot of these guys will continue to play until they end up going for a team management or coaching position. They might try to be leaders in the space as well, establish their own teams.

They might go on to be content creators and provide valuable info for the audience. Doing like analysis and hosting watch parties. They might go into a corporate position because they have a very valuable background and are able to consult. endemics and non endemics in the tech space for you know, what is the viewpoint of e sports and they are a true representation of that.

So you look at the skills that are learned and if you play your cards, right, you can port those skill sets to a lot of different. Avenues so that you're not like in traditional sports, injuries can kill your career. But in this, you know, instead of dealing mainly with physical injuries, I mean, we do have a really bad problem with like posture and carpal tunnel and those kinds of things, but and burnout, but you can still take those skills and port them over to a.

A lot of different industries. So, I mean, you know, you bring up a really good example of communication there.

[00:30:40] Paddy Dhanda: So I've also got a daughter and she seems to be really into some of the games like Tale as old

[00:30:47] Liam Brown: as time. Tale as old as time.

The two kids are interested in completely different gaming titles. Yeah.

[00:30:52] Paddy Dhanda: Yeah. And so. Are you seeing now more females coming into gaming? Because when I was a kid, I can't really remember any of my female classmates. Ever talking about playing computer games, but yeah now I am seeing a shift in that like Even in some of the teams.

Do you see a much more diverse crowd or is it still male dominated do you think? Yeah,

[00:31:17] Liam Brown: I mean One of the reasons that is male dominated is just because gaming historically has attracted such a wide male audience And that's purely one of the reasons. So then if it attracts a male, a lot of the younger male audience, they're gonna be the ones playing the game more.

They're gonna be the ones having the larger skill set in that game. Then when they go on to be become pros, they have such a wide array of experience under their belt in comparison to some females in the space that may they may have a couple of years Under the skill set, and that's one of the biggest reasons I find but there is a lot of female competitive representation going on.

So what, I'll give you another example, like with our live events, we have an entire, and our organization as a whole, we have like an entire campaign called the Women in Esports campaign. Where we, you know, we do lectures, we have internships in gaming for targeted specifically towards women in corporate that want to either port over to eSports or come into the space.

And another part of that is going to be our women's only tournaments, then to provide that kind of path to pro experience that primarily existed for the rest of eSports, but it also allows for women's teams in Rocket League, Apex Valorant. To earn their stripes on a professional competitive stage and go on to have that experience.

So. I know, just from what I've seen and participated in, that the field is changing. I just want to make sure that everybody, again, bringing people together is a big passion of mine. I'm just making sure that everybody is able to enjoy this as a pastime. Whether you like Roblox, or you like... Minecraft or whatever gaming title you choose, you know, you can also make a huge judgment call based off of what gaming title you primarily play with, you know, so, yeah, I think the field is changing.

A lot more women are coming into it.

[00:33:15] Paddy Dhanda: That's good to hear. And talking about changing A. I. Is upon us. Is this that you think A. I. Will disrupt in any way? Or do you think eSports is here to stay and that human side is here to stay.

[00:33:33] Liam Brown: Well first off, AI has existed in gaming from a, possibly has had one of the biggest roles to play in gaming for so long because you look at the enemies that you might fight in a single player game, all of their movement is detected, is based off of AI.

Their response to your movements and your playstyle is crucial for either difficulty settings, progression in the game, that kind of thing. So, so AI has been in eSports for the longest time. And also now it makes level design so much easier. Perhaps it even I won't be one of those people and say it makes script writing easier.

Because I don't know if you've seen some of these AI generated scripts for different things, but they're terrible. So, I think that one thing that will set eSports apart and gaming apart when it comes to AI implementation is the fact that The companies that are able to bring synchronicity between the human side and A.

I. These companies that are staffed by people well versed in A. I. Art generation and scripts and writing. Those are going to stand the test of time because it's not the technology you have to fear. It's the people that know how to use the technology. So I think that those companies that Further implement it with and become bastions of leadership in how we can use AI to better our industry.

I think that's going to be the best change. So I don't, I mean, there, there are some people that are like, you can make a game completely in AI. They suck. They suck. They're horrible games. So, I think the biggest thing in esports that needs to happen is people need to learn how to implement it. Because then if, when that happens, the player experience, the gaming titles that come out, it's going to be so much more fun.

You know? And we get to reap the rewards of that because we're playing the games. You know? So, those are my two cents on AI. I believe it has a really positive role to play. In gaming in

[00:35:27] Paddy Dhanda: particular. Yeah. And that's again, another fascinating insight because for many industries that haven't previously faced AI, all of this stuff that's coming out now is a bit of a shocker.

Like I think about the medical field and, where AI is now able to do pattern matching so radiologists are fearful. Of, you know, the future of that career, because AI is just able to do that stuff way more efficiently because, you can feed it so many more piece of data, but your field sounds like.

You've been swimming with AI for a while, so there's nothing to fear. Yeah,

[00:36:04] Liam Brown: we've had, I mean, like, the competition that exists on the marketplace, Nobody's more vocal than gamers on social media when they're disappointed in something. And game review channels, there's an entire ecosystem specifically within content, gaming.

As a label for content and then underneath gaming content specifically for game reviews or you know, your son used to play fortnight for different battle pass reviews, things like that and because of that ecosystem that exists, these developers have to be at the top of their game and it's even got to a point where some developers just straight up.

If the fans don't like it, they just like lash out at the fans, which is not good. Let me just get that straight. That's not good either. But A. I. Has existed in this space for a while. I can, there's so many games coming out now that utilize AI, kind of, they base your movements and what you do consistently in the game and the enemies will learn from that.

And that's something, one, that's, that makes the game more interesting because you're going to be dying quicker because the game's learning from you. But also it's just so interesting to understand that this has a lasting impact on. On really the industry. So yeah, AI is definitely here to stay as far as gaming goes.

[00:37:25] Paddy Dhanda: To get your perspective on the sort of the future of gameplay, because. When I was growing up, we just had the traditional joystick, then the game pads kind of came out and then we've been toying with virtual reality. Oh, and then the Nintendo Wii came out and we had the whole motion movement.

We now have the Nintendo switch and that has similar sort of controls. Where do you think? The future lies, is it going to be almost that, what's that movie? Ready player one, get ready player one. Yeah. So what's going to happen in the future? Are we all going to be wearing these facial goggles, or is it going to be more the traditional gamepad?

[00:38:14] Liam Brown: So it's going to be the traditional gamepad for a while, but in the future I would like to see more virtual reality. So, so one thing that I can tell you is I, for us, I spent a summer in VR. When I was in university, so I had worked for a larger tech company, and one of the ways that I was doing research was learning about VR and kind of its impacts on the student population.

So I we University of Pittsburgh opened a digital media lab and you could go to and they had a bunch of different VR headsets. So for a summer I spent in VR, I can tell you it is Really, I don't want to say harmful. It hurts a little bit when you're in it for the first time for more than an hour, you're going to get awkwardly sweaty.

You've got a weird headache that's in the middle of your brain, and it's you can't look away from the screen because it is all encompassing. You might close your eyes. Sure. But then when you open your right smack dab in there. So, VR also is in such a different price point for a lot of people.

That's why there's an entire business model for companies that have VR rooms and they provide the VR experience. Because it's so expensive to purchase and own one. And then also it's still hard to really get immersed in it. Sure. Your vision is tracked in your hands and your motions are tracked, but when you want to move in game, crouch, stand up, that kind of stuff is still really inaccessible.

There's one company named Virtuix that just recently came out with an omnidirectional treadmill that you strap into and you can sprint in game, crouch, jump, all that kind of stuff. But. It's really expensive. So a lot of people are either making the, they're making one of a few decisions. They're sticking with console.

They're sticking with PC or they're including VR in with the mix of that. Now, just to include VR into the mix of that, it's in the. Let's face it, it's in the upper hundreds of dollars. So, you're also going to be experiencing a lack in player base. So, even these multiplayer games that exist on the VR platforms, there's, there, the player base is a lot smaller.

So, you're not going to have as many people to play with in the first place. Now you can also talk about how last year there is a downhill trend of VR headset purchases, despite meta putting, you know, massive dollars into promotion of it. It still went down. It went down by like single percentages.

Like I think it was like two or 3%, but that's still for the millions of VR as the next big thing. It's kind of tough to see that. So with platforms in XR and ar, so extended reality and augmented reality that allows you to take part in what you love most and in console gaming. And when I say xr, you can take like a pair of glasses like this it has like a little battery that's attached to it and you can plug it into your Xbox.

And you can put on the glasses and you've got a 168 degree inch monitor that only you can see, and you can just play your games on it while you're on a flight or, you know, just walking around or at school or stuff like that. So those solutions to make the console and the, let's say, traditional gaming experience more immersive and more tailored to your specifications, I believe that's going to allow.

the console and PC to stand upright with the advent of virtual reality. And I think that if we could find some way to kind of tie in the, almost the, it's kind of tough too, but like you, you see PlayStation with like their PSVR which costs an arm and a leg. Another one. So I think that as far as the technology that's coming out, we're going to see consoles and traditional gaming avenues such as console and PC really stay up at the top as far as the experience, but later on when VR becomes more accessible.

And more portable, because let's face it, the headset is this big this, it's like having a, like a ho, like a sandwich, like something as, as wide as a sandwich on your face and when we're, we have those more accessible and portable platforms, that's when VR will start to really come into the space, I don't see a lot of people adopting it like super quick, like, like, but, You know, that's kind of my envisionment for the space, so yeah, that's my for both.

So I'm sorry, I just ranted like so much with that.

[00:42:45] Paddy Dhanda: No we've got the oculus quest too. Yeah.

[00:42:49] Liam Brown: Device and quest is the one that has like minimal chords, right? Yeah, but it's so

[00:42:53] Paddy Dhanda: heavy. It's so heavy and yeah, we realized the weight of it. And like for me. Even I get tired after probably 15 minutes, I can't even imagine how difficult it must be for a young child, like, you know, with my kids, so I don't let them play on it for too long, but Yeah.

You end up with like a stiff neck after a while,

[00:43:09] Liam Brown: because it is so stiff. Hey, that's why you gotta get them into into the gym, too, and you gotta get them into boxing so that they learn to, like, work their neck and stuff like that.

[00:43:17] Paddy Dhanda: Ah, that's a good point, that's a good point. And talking of consoles, I was recently at the British Science Museum.

Over in London, and they had this really cool exhibition, which was I think it was either the last 50 years or the last 70 years of gaming. And they had about 160 consoles and machines on display that you could just jump on and start playing. And that's awesome. It was amazing. And it and they had this timeline of, I can't remember from what year it started, but all the way to the present moment, and they had all the different consoles.

My question to you, Liam, is, from your childhood, what was your favorite console?

[00:43:59] Liam Brown: Yeah, I think PlayStation 2 was my favorite, and then I migrated over to Xbox 360, and then from Xbox 360, I have my Xbox One S that I have now, and I have yet to migrate to an Xbox Series X or a PlayStation 5. PlayStation 2, that was my favorite just because I was able to do so much with it.

So, I was able to experience so many cool games still. And then when I migrated over to Xbox 360, that was probably the next favorite because Xbox 360 stood the test of time with PlayStation, like, 2, 3, 4. And it, it went head to head with those for, like, the longest time. So, I ended up enjoying, the Xbox more because of the controllers now.

I don't really take any any side in the fights of like, you know, Xbox exclusive versus PlayStation exclusive. If you look at exclusive titles, PlayStation definitely takes it takes the game because, you know, you've got uncharted God of War, you know, all the and, Now, a lot of developers are choosing to do a console exclusive release for the first few months, and then they, then they shill out the, oh, this is the Xbox One Series X, this is the Xbox One S version of the game, this is the Nintendo Switch version, and that, that's kind of been my evolution as far as gaming systems go.

So, I, probably PlayStation 2, because I have the most memories of that.

[00:45:31] Paddy Dhanda: God, I'm showing my age now, because... My very first proper sort of computer was the Amstrad CPC 464 and I don't expect you to No, that one, Liam, it was it was way back in the day, but it used to have cassettes, so you stick the game in and it used to take some time to load.

And what was really interesting was we were really patient and had to wait for the game to load and it can sometimes take five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever the time was. And I actually thought that added to the experience because there's almost this anticipation. The game's coming, it's coming and you'd see like.

The screen changing and they'd start showing you different images as it's loading. And it really got us to get excited about the game. Now, the only downside was when the game was poor, then you just wasted 15 minutes of your life waiting for this thing to start up. Yeah. So that was always the downside of that.

But I just feel now we live in this age of everything has to be instant. And like my son, even if it takes like, about five seconds to load up a page on the internet, he feels it's a lifetime and he just doesn't have the patience. So we're living in a, in an age of, you know, everything has to be instant and it's just interesting how things have moved and changed so much.

[00:46:50] Liam Brown: No, I completely understand. In gaming alone, you look at the concept of instant gratification, and how people are rewarded when they complain. In the sense that when they complain about certain things, or the release date of how this thing has been brought forth, they are given... Whatever they were asking for and sometimes to the detriment of the experience, you know, there's been a lot of games that They rushed the release because people were complaining so hard about it.

So then they ended up getting a bad game. So With the concept of delayed gratification and working towards your goals I think that's one of the things you could learn in either the competitive side in eSports because you have to grind in some way In order to participate at the better At a better level or achieve an in game rank, but it's also one of the reasons that I am such a big proponent of health and wellness in the space because when you learn a quantifiable reason for your body's health and how much time it takes to get to some of those physical milestones, I think you can take a lot of that and poured it into gaming and that's one of the things that I'm looking to change.

Really, so I, you know, I completely agree. We do live in an age of instant gratification, and I think that because of that and chasing what feels good or really just engaging those kinds of almost primal senses, I think that has kind of been to the detriment of the human experience for a lot of people, so.

That's my view on that.

[00:48:29] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, no, thank you. And it's great that you're focusing on that side of gaming, because I think that's the side that, as parents, we worry about most, is that well being of the kids.

[00:48:39] Liam Brown: Yeah, and I'm on, you know, I'm on every level of this. Like, I just mentioned before, we hopped on, but I hop in and...

Work are in person events that will run locally. Yeah, we're and in that I'm always meeting parents like concerned parents who are come to me to learn about e sports and kind of this as a career path and they're like, I can never get him off the game, this and that, and I'm just like, there just has to be some kind of balance.

You'll talk to other people where they're saying, well, you should let them because as a parent who didn't grow up with this technology, you're not the best equipped to. Tell them what to do or say. And I'm just like, that's not really, I don't think that's the best way to look at it. I think it's more like, the youth needs to understand that for success in anything, there has to be a balance.

So one of the things that I learned from a young age is like, my parents never said I couldn't play video games. They just wanted me to make sure that I got done responsibilities. And then they would game with me. They didn't want me not to go to friends houses to game all night. They just wanted to be.

To balance my grades sports and things like that. So I think if people are to almost legitimize esports and gaming as a pastime, they have to make sure that the balance is there. And unfortunately, that isn't something that responsibility of the Almost the human experience or that responsibility of balance is not something that we really hold in such high regard, which again I would like to change.

[00:50:11] Paddy Dhanda: Well, Liam, it's been an absolute pleasure and a joy. You've honestly just got me so excited and I just have learned so much. Myself. So thank you so much and really appreciate your time and your passion as well.

[00:50:24] Liam Brown: Yeah, man. No, it was great being here. I mean, you know, I always tell people there's never a dull moment and I never get tired of explaining this in any level of detail to anybody.

Laughter isn't just a break from the mundane, it's a tool for improving health and strengthening human connection. In the tech world, where logic often dominates, injecting humour can transform a typical presentation into a memorable experience, encouraging more engagement and lighter spirits.

Contents

* Alfie Noakes: Stand-up Comedy MC and Promoter

* The Origin Story

* Comedy as a Hobby

* Live Workshops

* Observing and Learning

* Rejecting the Joke Request

* Encouraging People to Try Stand-up Comedy

* Incorporating Humor into Talks/Workshops

* Structuring a Joke

* Crowd Work and Spontaneity

* Online Courses

* Importance of Body Language

* Teaching Funny vs. Being Funny

* Plan B for Unfunny Moments

* Resources and Contact Information

* FAQs

Thanks for reading Superpowers School! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

🎤 Alfie Noakes: Stand-up Comedy MC and Promoter

Alfie Noakes, a London-based stand-up comedy MC and promoter, brings light and laughter wherever he goes. With a history rich in media and public relations, Alfie transitioned from film production to the comedic stage, crafting a unique niche in the comedy world.

🎬 The Origin Story

Alfie's career pivoted when he skipped film school for a production job offered during his appearance on a film TV show. He nurtured a successful freelance career in cinema programming, creating a catalogue of notable movie shows throughout the 90s and 00s.

🎟️ Comedy as a Hobby

Comedy started as a hobby for Alfie when he assisted a friend in managing an open mic night. His casual interest soon morphed into a thriving business, launching the "We Are Funny Project", which now celebrates 10 years of regular comedy events and workshops designed to foster new comedic talent.

🏫 Live Workshops

Alfie’s business doesn’t just stop at performances. He offers workshops that bring professional comedians and MCs to teach amateur comedians vital skills in comedy writing and performance, enriching their capabilities in humour and timing—key skills for effective public speaking.

🌟 Observing and Learning

Over 10,000 performers have graced Alfie's stages, providing him with insights into what makes or breaks a comedy act. These observations are crucial for teaching comedic timing and delivery, essential skills that also benefit public speakers.

❌ Rejecting the Joke Request

Alfie believes that the context in which a joke is delivered is vital. He emphasises that a joke that works in a live comedy environment may not translate well to an audio podcast, demonstrating the nuanced understanding required to use humour effectively.

🚀 Encouraging People to Try Stand-up Comedy

According to Alfie, attempting stand-up comedy should be on everyone's bucket list. It builds confidence, public speaking skills, and the ability to engage an audience—skills that are incredibly beneficial in the professional sphere, especially in technology-related fields.

🎭 Incorporating Humour into Talks/Workshops

To improve public speaking with stand-up comedy, start with your strongest joke, pepper humour throughout, and close powerfully. This strategy not only captures attention but also helps in maintaining audience engagement, making technical presentations more impactful.

📏 Structuring a Joke

In a typical 5-minute set, aiming for 15 strong laughs is ideal. Pacing and the arrangement of punchlines should be considered carefully to keep the audience engaged—a technique that can be mirrored in tech presentations or pitches to increase engagement.

🎉 Crowd Work and Spontaneity

Proficient comedians often seem spontaneous, but their delivery is usually well-practiced and perfected over time. This ability to appear spontaneous is something tech professionals can adopt to make their dialogues and presentations more engaging.

📚 Online Courses

Alfie offers online courses that cater to various levels of comedic expertise but are also incredibly beneficial for public speakers. These courses use filmmaking tactics to help shape a presenter's ability to tell compelling stories and deliver punchy content succinctly.

🕺 Importance of Body Language

Body language is as crucial in comedy as it is in any public presentation. Open, engaging and receptive body language can significantly influence how a message is received, making it an essential study for anyone in the public speaking realm.

😂 Teaching Funny vs. Being Funny

While not everyone may be naturally funny, Alfie insists that comedic skills, particularly timing and joke structuring, can be taught. These skills help in crafting engaging and memorable public speeches.

🔄 Plan B for Unfunny Moments

Always have a couple of backup jokes ready that differ from your main set. If the initial material doesn't resonate, switching gears can help recover an audience’s attention and engagement, ensuring your presentation remains effective.

📞 Resources and Contact Information

For anyone interested in advancing their public speaking skills through comedy, Alfie Noakes offers a wealth of resources through his website, wearefunnyproject.com. Here, one can find courses, free ebooks, and a plethora of video content designed to enhance comedic timing and public speaking prowess.

FAQs

Q: How can stand-up comedy improve my public speaking? A: Stand-up comedy sharpens your timing, improves your engagement skills, and helps you handle unexpected situations, enhancing your overall public speaking effectiveness.

Q: Are there specific comedy techniques that can help technical presenters? A: Yes, techniques such as structured punchlines, strategic pauses for effect, and tailored crowd work can make technical presentations more engaging and relatable.

Q: Can anyone learn to be funny for public speaking purposes? A: Absolutely! While innate humour varies by individual, the mechanics of delivering a joke or humorous story can be learned and refined to improve your presentations.

Incorporating stand-up comedy techniques into public speaking, especially in the tech industry, not only breaks the ice but also makes the information being presented more digestible and memorable. By harnessing these skills, tech professionals can present their innovative ideas in a way that is both enlightening and entertaining.

Alfie Noakes (Comedy Coach & Promoter)

Alfie Noakes is a London-based comedy coach and promoter. He is the creator of the We Are Funny Project. Alfie has written and presented a series of online courses designed to support anyone who wants to have a go at stand-up from their first gig to reaching for the paid circuit and bagging an agent. Alfie is a potent champion of stand-up as an art form and encourages people to feel the fear and still "give it a go". There are so many transferable skills, all while having a lot of laughs. Several years reporting on aspects of cinema and entertainment for the BBC, MTV, and the rest, led to a lot of run-ins with famous people, both positive, and less so. Having quit TV in 2007 to set up an eco company, the credit crunch of 2008 led to my bankruptcy. My side hobby of running an open mic comedy night expanded into my creating one of the biggest comedy resources in the UK, We Are Funny Project. My production skills were extended to live comedy shows, professional workshops, and the production of a litany of resources to help comedians get funnier, faster. Or, find the tools to give them the skill and confidence to get up and try and make 'em laugh. I have staged over 1800 gigs, hosted over 10,000 performers and created over 30,000 "spots" for stand-ups. I have witnessed, up close and personal, the worst stage deaths, the smartest comedy, the freshest faces rise through the ranks from first gig to nationally recognized comedy talent. I was never a comedian, always an MC, promoter and most recently, a comedy coach. I have a unique take on the whole stand-up thing. For many, the notion of performing stand-up is terrifying, one of the many reasons why it should be done. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Do it well, and feel like an actual rock star!

FREE eBook: Click Here

⚡️ In each episode, Paddy Dhanda deep dives into a new human Superpower and gives practical advice on how you can apply it immediately.

👉 Sign-up to Newsletter: https://www.superpowers.school/subscribe

👉 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/paddydhanda/

★ BUY ME KO-FI ★

If you enjoy the podcast, then you can donate a small amount here as a token of your appreciation: https://ko-fi.com/paddydhanda

In this episode, we delve into connection and its importance in our lives. We explore the concept of intentional connection and how it can lead to more positive and magical experiences in life. Hear personal stories and examples, highlighting the importance of trusting your gut feeling and being deliberate in your choices and relationships.

👉🏽 The significance of connection with ourselves in leading a fulfilling life

👉🏽 The value of genuine communication and self-awareness in building connections and elevating conversations

👉🏽 How to respect and listen to your emotions

🔥 The first 3 people to email Anna will recieve a 1 hour FREE coaching session. Just include the word ‘Superpowers’ in the subject line: [email protected]

Anna Urbaniak (Organisational Transformation Coach)

With almost 15 years of experience, Anna Urbaniak is a business consultant, coach and change leader who supports ambitious organisations in improving their mindset, culture and performance.

Anna is on a mission to alter the way that we see change, empowering organisations and individuals to reframe it as an opportunity for incredible growth and lasting transformation. 

Having worked with some big names across a wide range of industries, Anna has a unique approach that looks at businesses holistically.  She invites them to consider things from a fresh perspective bringing new innovative ideas and a people-centric approach to the table. 

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.annaurbaniak.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annaurbaniak/

⚡️ In each episode, Paddy Dhanda deep dives into a new human Superpower and gives practical advice on how you can apply it immediately.

👉 Sign-up to Newsletter: https://www.superpowers.school/subscribe

👉 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/paddydhanda/

★ BUY ME KO-FI ★

If you enjoy the podcast, then you can donate a small amount here as a token of your appreciation: https://ko-fi.com/paddydhanda

Transcription:

[00:01:01] Paddy Dhanda: Dear friend. Thank you for joining me for another episode of the Superpower School podcast. I'm your host, Patty Danda, and on today's episode I have somebody who I've previously worked with. Somebody who I often pester for information and knowledge. She's one of the most lovely human beings I know and always willing to help.

She is a organizational transformational coach. She helps organizations navigate change with a human touch so they can get the best results that they can. And I'd love to welcome Anna Urbaniak to the show. Anna, have I said your surname right? Because I always think I get it wrong.

[00:01:43] Anna Urbaniak: No, you spot on. Thank you so much for having me. Very excited to be here. We planned this for so long, Paddy, and it's finally happening, which feels like something to celebrate. Thank you for having me. Oh,

[00:01:55] Paddy Dhanda: you're welcome. I was saying, just as I was recording the intro, I don't often make a mistake as I'm introducing the show.

And today I did. And I think it's the nerves. Look, the nerves are jangling because you're on the show. So that's the impact you're having on me.

[00:02:11] Anna Urbaniak: Maybe it's the fact that I was just giggling right before you started. I won't tell anyone.

[00:02:16] Paddy Dhanda: So Anna, what superpower would you like to bring to this particular episode?

[00:02:22] Anna Urbaniak: The superpower I would like to bring to this episode is a superpower of connection, in particularly human connection. And that is three things in my mind, is the connection to ourselves, is our ability to connect with others, regardless of their role, their status, where they're from. And our ability, especially at work, to actually connect to the purpose and the organization that we are part of.

And we spent so much time in.

[00:02:55] Paddy Dhanda: Wow. This is a coincidence because I'm doing a talk in a few weeks which is all about connection. And pretty much that structure you've just mentioned there is the structure that I've written for the talk. So the first point was about connecting with yourself and having the right mindset, building that mindset.

And then how do you bring that to connecting with others? So this is going to be a great learning experience for me because I think I'm going to be definitely slotting in some of your insights into my talk. So really excited for this conversation. But before we do that, Anna, you have a very unique surname.

So for anyone that doesn't know you, could you tell us a little bit about your background, where you've come from, and how did you get into all of this type of work?

[00:03:47] Anna Urbaniak: I am originally Polish. If I was to pronounce my name with a very Polish accent, it will be Anna Urbaniak.

So it's very different from anything people normally say, but I don't have a very strong attachment to that. So that's cool. So I am Polish. I grew up in a super small town in Poland, and it was in the times of the eighties just when the communist amended. And then I think I was one of the first generations to go to primary school post the communism.

The only part that is relevant of that is probably like a heightened sense of security because I always find myself being very courageous and adventurous and wanted to try new things, experience different things, meet new people. Like, always been fascinated by all the Abby and Bee guests.

It wasn't called Abby and Bee back then, that came to my grandmother's house. Being just like, oh my god, life can be so much more than what I see in this small town. But the family around, the small town, the protectiveness, the security of a world might happen, the uncertainty of the times.

led to my parents really holding on to me until like I was 18. And then I was like, now the world is the oyster. I'm off. But to cut the long story short, I recently posted about having big aspiration, wanting to go to the best school at the best university we had in Poland. And I got rejected.

And I say more about that in that post, but what that led to me not even being able to go for my second choice, but going for my backup plan. Long story short the backup plan ended up being a smaller university that I was able to excel at, and then that led to me Being like, you know what?

I always dreamt of being in a big city. There wasn't a bigger city that could be in that London. My first career dream was actually to be a diplomat. So after graduating my Polish university, I applied for every single Polish diplomatic mission in the world.

I sent back then letters. To about over a hundred diplomatic missions, like under seas and consulates requesting or applying for internship. And that's how I ended up in London. Cause when I got, did you get any

[00:06:00] Paddy Dhanda: replies?

[00:06:02] Anna Urbaniak: Yes, I did. Funny enough. I did. I got accepted to London and Austria. Oh, wow. Back then London was our top bilateral relations country that Poland has relationship with because of the Second World War, et cetera.

So I was like, I've got to go to London, this is the top of the top and wanting more, there's probably something to deal with there, always wanting to go higher and achieve a badge. And that's how I ended up in London. After the internship.

I ended up applying for a master's degree at the Diplomatic Academy of London. So I am your in house fully qualified diplomat. I graduated from that. And then I realized that having done those internships. Diplomatic service is very much about serving your country and very much about projecting the current agenda of your country.

So it requires a lot of patriotism. It also requires a lot of following instructions or complying with the agenda of the government in power. I was in my twenties, I still had the energy to change the world. I was like, no, I want to make things better. I want to change the world. I might come back to being diplomat when I'm in my fifties.

So that was the seed. After doing my first degree to be like, no, there is something else that is calling for me. And that was change. So since then I navigated my career choices to lead me to organizational change and transformations. And that what I have been doing for solely focusing on the change in transformation for, I think it's heading towards.

It's 15 years soon, probably about 12 years now.

[00:07:42] Paddy Dhanda: So you were about five when you started? Yeah.

Oh, well, Anna, it's phenomenal amount of knowledge that you have, because I remember when we were working in a previous organization you'd be buzzing with lots of insights. And I would say fresh perspectives because I always knew if I have a conversation with you. I'm going to learn something different.

It wasn't just the norm as everybody else was pushing. There'd be always some interesting insights from you. We talk about connection and could you Go a little bit deeper for me on the first point you mentioned about connecting with yourself. First of all, why is it important to have a superpower of connection?

And then how do we connect with ourselves?

[00:08:32] Anna Urbaniak: Great question. So maybe I start with what connection actually is. Connection is a relationship between two things that is of tangible or intangible nature. When we talk about connection, we can have connection to things. We can have connection to ideas.

We can have connection to things that might not be tangible, like the human you can touch. And the reason why we start with connection with ourselves is because at the end of the day, I truly believe that each and every one of us. I hear for a reason and I hear with the gift to share another thing I have learned on my journey and just kind of experiencing life is that there is this incredible emotional guidance system that we have like our emotions are not just something that happens to us that is unexplained.

But it's something that is really trying to guide us or protect us sometimes from things that, again, are tangible or intangible. So the reason why we start with the importance of the connection to ourselves is that only knowing ourselves, we can then understand what is our connection to something else.

Is it because we value something? Is it because we've experienced something in the past? Is it because those are the kind of things that we perceive that are necessary to be connected to? So we can only understand our connection to other things when we understand ourselves. Then understanding ourselves, and this is your probably textbook mindfulness, it starts with practicing awareness of what is happening for me.

It is much simpler than you think and much harder than you think at the same time. Because it's as simple as stopping and being like, what's going on for me? But when we are at the height end of the emotions, we don't always feel what's going on for us. That's why self awareness. It's important if we can in the moment, it's like, oh, something happened there, but you might not always be capable to unpack it there and then.

So that's where the second layer of connecting with yourselves come in, which will be self reflection. So kind of reflecting with someone or on your own, depending what resources you've got available and what works for you. What was going on there? I really responded strongly.

Why did I get so agitated, like this person maybe hasn't done anything wrong. But all of a sudden I felt like blaming them for what they said. But it wasn't them, it's what they said that perhaps triggered me in that conversation. And then I think another layer to self awareness and then self reflection is that's where this gut feeling comes in.

 And being able to differentiate between Ooh, am I feeling this because something is trying to protect me? Or is it trying to teach me something? Or even the other way around, sometimes I had those moments when I would meet someone and I would just have that gut feeling like I know you from somewhere or me and you need to talk, right?

And following that gut feeling and trusting that is there for a reason is not like, okay, yeah, it's just another person just don't overdo it, right? That's another thing that we can only tap into if we start paying attention to ourselves. And then I think from this point or the space of being aware of who we are, what we value, what is going on for us emotionally, we can then arrive at the place of genuinely what is our intention for connecting with something or someone else.

Because any connection without intention can manifest in different ways in people's lives. But the moment that we connect with intention. Then things become much smoother and more magical in life, I found.

[00:12:18] Paddy Dhanda: I tell you why I'm so intrigued by Connection is in terms of just the experience of this podcast.

It's helped me in so many ways because every week, apart from yourself and a few, a handful of my guests, I don't know anybody. And most of the guests are complete strangers. I find it really fascinating turning up on a Zoom call and speaking to someone for the very first time and spending like an hour, but trying to connect with that person.

And it's really taught me a lot about just how do you do that? Sometimes we have things in common. Other times we have nothing in common. Like I had a guest who was a psychic medium. I have no idea about that particular profession, but we connected on so many other levels and there's so many human levels that we connected on, which was amazing.

And I recently had a, an American air force fighter jet pilot. Again, I can just about drive a car, and I never mind flying an aeroplane, and I'm scared of heights. So, again, that was crazy. But the other interesting thing for me was, when we're growing up... For good reason, our parents tell us don't speak to strangers, right?

Don't speak to strangers. And so especially because I was an only child, I didn't have any brothers or sisters. I think I lived a fairly quiet life and didn't really know how to connect to people because I wasn't really put in those situations. And when you start work, you're told it's good to network.

It's good to connect. It's good to engage with lots of people. So I think from what you're saying, just being. Cognizant of your own. Mindset and the way that you think about yourself is a really good first step and just understanding yourself and then start to think about how do I connect with all these other people.

But the bit was really intriguing because I've found this as well. I usually refer to as positive energy. Like I normally connect with people that have positive energy, but is it positive energy or what is that thing? Like you said, in your gut that draws you to certain people closer than others.

[00:14:26] Anna Urbaniak: It's a great mystery what that thing is. For me personally is accepting that as a mystery and yet trusting it. Depending on the discipline, you're going to look at it from, so your psychic medium would have probably said it's something to do with the auras and past lives.

And maybe the reason why we connected is because in the previous lives, we're best friends, or maybe we're siblings. So one would explain it like that, right? Sounds crazy, right? Another person might explain it by pure psychology. So you see something in that person that either is like you or like what you would like to be.

Because apparently the psychology or one of the schools of psychology says that we are attracted to people who are either like us or who we would like to be, so who we admire. We don't necessarily attract it to people who are complete opposites to us. If we don't admire or we don't see our mirror reflection in them, we don't attract it to them.

Another school of thought might give you another explanation what that gut feeling is, right? It's like more neuroscience. We'll probably talk about the subconscious mind. So it might be that protective mechanism or is something that is giving you reassurance based on the certain conditions that are in the environment, the facial expression of the person that reminds you of the mother, whatever that is.

And another school of thought, quantum physics will say it's vibrations. So I think it was very flattering what you said about that I always would have a different angle to a subject. For a very long time, I felt that I have commitment issues as a person.

I couldn't commit to a job. I still cannot fully commit to long term friendships. And it's not necessarily and I always felt bad about it, because the society teaches that you've got to commit, you've got to focus. And I always find myself and describe myself as the butterfly. I was like, I go there, I sit on that flower, I enjoy the view, I take what kind of serves me or what I can or give what I can, and then I'm off.

I go to another flower. I recently came across the term called multi potentialist.

[00:16:33] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, say that one again for me.

[00:16:35] Anna Urbaniak: Multi potentialist. Multi potentialist. Yeah, so it's like when you have multiple potentials. Wow. Okay. Interesting term. When you basically get interested in the topic and you will go like deep enough and then you will bounce back and you will go into another one and then you start connecting different disciplines.

So you become, because you see multiple potential in different disciplines that can come together and generate even greater insight. And I feel like what I'm doing right now with the answer to your question about what is that gut feeling is a little bit like that, depending the perspective you take it from, depends what you believe in.

 For a religious person, it will be the God and the angels and the soul, right? For someone very logical would be just like, I just like the guy, not a biggie. Don't tell me about a gut feeling, but many CEOs make decisions from that place of they just trust they got feeling. And it says that some of the best decisions that they can from that place, but they don't dwell on it, where it comes from.

So it also depends on the level of relationship you want to build and what you believe in, et cetera. Have you ever had the moment when you felt like a miracle just happened?

It's like, how did I just meet this person? That was my dream. Or you felt like life is happening for you being just like, Oh my God, I always wanted to go to LA and they invited me to go for that conference. Have you had a moment

[00:17:53] Paddy Dhanda: like that? I just had one before this call, actually. I was speaking to some people who have invited me to a conference in New York and I've been saying for ages, I would love to take the family to New York.

So that was cool.

[00:18:04] Anna Urbaniak: If we truly connect our heart and we think about our professional and personal lives, we all had those moments that felt like miracles, like magic. Different discipline call them different things. And I think when they give us a good feelings when they work, when we've learned that we can trust them and they lead to positive places.

And I think it's our choice to trust them regardless where they come from. And I think the more we connect with that, the more we can be deliberate of our choices and our relationship with that gut feeling. In my experience, like the more you connect to it, the more it's going to be there for you.

Other people call it law of attraction. I forgot about that one. Was that just you going to New York? I'm like, that's law of attraction. Which is lovely and all of those different disciplines have something to offer some kind of depth of understanding some kind of ability to Just resonate ability to feel seen or to feel understood and they will help us in different times in our lives.

[00:19:03] Paddy Dhanda: What is that feeling for you? What is that feeling for me?

[00:19:06] Anna Urbaniak: Yeah, the gut feeling. What does that mean to

[00:19:08] Paddy Dhanda: you? I think a lot of the time I put it down to positive energy or the energy between us. Is somehow compatible, sometimes you find toxic energy and it can be where people are very negative about everything and I just like, oh, I need to move.

But when I find people that are positive, I'm naturally drawn towards them. So that could also align with the psychology perspective that you mentioned there. If we're having this conversation, I'm very down and I'm just talking like this and you're probably going to go.

I could have been doing so many other useful things right now, but I'm talking to this guy who has no energy. So being a bit upbeat, I think it really helps with that connection. Now you mentioned CEOs there. And I know you have a great story about meeting probably one of the richest men in the world he warmed to you and for someone to be able to do that to somebody in such a position, there's something special.

So could you tell us that story?

[00:20:09] Anna Urbaniak: Yes. So the particular story that you refer to, it was my first time meeting the chairman of the company and it was a boardroom and it was probably about around dozen of people in the room and I was the only female in that room, as you would have imagined, and without going into a detail, the chairman was expressing some Direction or some kind of expressing his viewpoint or a particular matter that he was trying to get the group of people around the table to joined up as a shared group of people or as a team and go the same direction.

And so what happened is there were various attempts of trying to fully understand where this gentleman is coming from. Because we all have different backgrounds, we use different language, for many of those people, maybe English is not their first language for others it is, and it sometimes makes it quite difficult to encode our intention of communication versus how it is received.

It's a whole science around that. And my diplomatic training went into play there and I was just like, I know that all of those people are saying the same thing, but just in different words. And by saying it in different words, they create miscommunication, like perception of misalignment, right?

It got the point where I got it up my own kind of courage, and I've noticed, how do people get to speak? It's my first time in the room, completely different culture. So I am trying to be also very aware of what's going on. And I think that's also one of the skills that I have really hard work on, is to be able to reach the room beyond the words, but also into like

How do things get done around here? And so what I've realized is that eye contact and a little bit of like a gesture, just gets the attention to say, okay, you have something to say. And that's when the chairman will ask you to speak. That's what I've tried. I was like, okay, that's what I need to do.

So that's what I've tried. And that's where I tried to summarize the conversation where everyone was coming from, where the chairman was coming from, and was very careful and I was making very detailed notes as everything was going on about what is the shared ground here and how can I use everyone's words in order to help to bring alignment.

 I raised my hand and I tried to summarize the conversation in points, because I know that the CEOs are not the people that will just listen to a waffle. So I was trying to be prepared. I'm just like, okay, those are the points. And so I raised my hand, I was given the voice and I started speaking with like, I would very much appreciate if I could just play back what I've heard, just to make sure we are all on the same page.

And then the ask is to do X. And I try to point those things out. And the smile on the chairman's face and his eyes lit up. And he was like, yes, exactly what she said and two or three more things. Right. So the new ideas came on top of that. And it was a great point of connection from that point onwards is because not only he felt understood, right?

 There was the sense of like, Oh my God, you've listened and you understood what's going on in the room, but you played it back to me and I am feeling hurt. That's what I think happened in that room that created this connection, and actually when I think about connection and we haven't spoken about two people connecting, but I think this is a great example.

I think what primarily happened here, and that's what I really apply to as many situations as I can, regardless of the ranks in the organization, is that I set the intention for my communication or for the reason of connecting. And when that intention comes from trying to help someone else, it's like, how is that I can be of service in this room?

How is that I can help? How is that I can help to achieve the common goal? Then it comes from a very different place when you actually put the other person higher than yourself, right? When trying to build connection, I think you get that a lot from like networking events, comes from the place of me to try to show off my knowledge.

Or me to try to show off my achievement, how great I am and don't get me wrong, there is a place and space for people to elevate themselves and job interviews, of course, talk about your achievements, but I think when we genuinely seek to create connection, it's about that intention that is outward facing that allows us to connect not from our heads, but more from our hearts.

When we just genuinely are trying to help and I feel that's what happened in that particular story that I shared with you some time back it was an amazing experience for me because it was probably the first time it happened at that level, but I also think that it happened because that particular person also is very self aware and was also speaking from the heart.

So it wasn't the ego speaking, it wasn't the numbers, it wasn't the managerial bluff. It was genuinely coming from the place of trying to do something good for the customer, something good for the organization.

[00:25:24] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, thank you Anna for sharing that. And I think a lot of us, me included, when we're talking to people quite senior in an organization, it can be very overwhelming and difficult to have those conversations sometimes.

And we can just end up shying away. So it's great to hear you had the courage to actually speak up and share your perspective, which sounds like it really helped you elevate the conversation even further. So that's amazing. Now, I know we are running fast out of time. I think we could probably have had an extra long episode today, and we probably would still not have enough time, but I will look to get you back on the show because I really want to explore more of your insights.

And hopefully by then, you and I will have tried out a few different things when it comes to connection. We can come back together and talk about what's worked, what hasn't. If anybody is interested in learning more, Are there any resources, any books that you would particularly recommend?

[00:26:22] Anna Urbaniak: The book that is on top of my head right now is the one I'm reading.

I'm actually listening to another audiobook and the person that is creating a lot of connection between me and what's in the book. And that book is called The Myth of Normal by Gabor Mati. So it's very much from the perspective of understanding ourselves and it actually has very similar layers to what we spoke about is about the connection with ourselves is the connection with our immediate people in our lives.

Chapter 14, which I'm on is about a connection to the workplace. But then it also talks about the connection that we have and how that connection works both ways, why the political system, the cultural system, religion, economy, social systems, et cetera. So it's quite big when it comes to connection and how everything is connected.

 If there is one book I can recommend, it will be this one.

[00:27:16] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, thank you so much, Anna. I will be definitely checking that one out. So Anna, thank you so much. And by the way, how can people get in touch with you ?

[00:27:23] Anna Urbaniak: So the best place to connect with me will be LinkedIn.

You can also find me on my website, which is annaurbanek. com. And I actually have a special gift for your listeners. I think you're doing such an amazing job partly with your podcast. And I think exploring our superpowers is so important. Because I truly believe that one person that is connected to who they truly are and do their work with the meaning and the purpose they're connected to.

can make much more difference than hundreds of people doing the job mindlessly. So if you find yourself in one of those people who feel like, you know what, the connection to myself is so important to me, I would love to talk more. Maybe you're impacted by the workplace and the dynamics of the workplace.

So the first, I will offer you three, the first three people, then send me an email with the subject superpower. Get a one hour free coaching session with me. My email address is Anna at Anna Urbaniak. com. So send me an email subject superpower. And the first three people we will get to talk and we can explore more in your particular context, in your organization, whatever challenge you've got.

We talk more.

[00:28:38] Paddy Dhanda: Awesome. And I will share the email in the show notes as well just in case somebody wants to check that out for sure. So thank you so much, Anna. You've been a superstar as always. Really appreciate you taking the time today and sharing valuable insights.

[00:28:52] Anna Urbaniak: Thank you so much for having me and yeah, let us know what you got away from it.

Axelle Vanquaillie, a Belgium-based entrepreneur, has transitioned from a non-tech background to founding her own tech company. Axelle shares her journey from being a social nurse to creating "Drawify," a platform that simplifies complex content into visual stories.

* Axelle's transition from a social nurse to a tech entrepreneur, highlighting her passion for visual storytelling.

* The inception and evolution of "Drawify," a platform that turns complex content into visual narratives.

* Axelle's advice for budding entrepreneurs: dream big, be authentic, and surround yourself with the right people.

Axelle Vanquaillie (Founder of Drawify)

I live in Belgium, but I feel like a citizen of the world. My visual story started in 2010. I’d been an HR and communications professional for 18 years when I discovered the magic of (live) visual storytelling for corporate purposes (Where has this been all my life?!). By combining drawing and strategic skills, I hope to prevent information overload and create illustrations with a powerful ability to clarify the most complex strategic content and transform viewers’ perspectives.

My mission is to inspire and empower anyone in the world to draw to communicate and to learn. My trainings and book Start to draw were the first step to make this possible. During Covid, I started the visual storytelling platform Drawify to convert content into visuals, without having to draw yourself. Together we can make information in this world easier to capture, to understand and bring to life.

Linkedin:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/axelle-vanquaillie/

Instagram:

Drawify_com

Axelle_vanquaillie_

Website: Drawify.com

⚡️ In each episode, Paddy Dhanda deep dives into a new human Superpower and gives practical advice on how you can apply it immediately.

👉 Sign-up to Newsletter: https://www.superpowers.school/subscribe

👉 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/paddydhanda/

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Transcription:

[00:01:01] Paddy Dhanda: Hey folks. Today we're joined by a very special guest on the Superpower School podcast. I have a female entrepreneur who has gone from a non tech background into starting up her own tech company.

And she's based in Belgium. And I have the pleasure of meeting her because we are meeting at the International Sketch Note Camp conference over in Leiden, which is in the Netherlands. So I'm super, super excited to welcome Axel van Kwaaij. Hey, how you doing?

[00:01:37] Axelle Vanquaillie:

Hi. Hi, Paddy. Thanks. I'm doing good. And thanks for inviting me for this podcast.

[00:01:42] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, you're welcome. Did I get your surname

[00:01:44] Axelle Vanquaillie: right? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. It's closer than anyone else. Thanks. Thanks.

[00:01:51] Paddy Dhanda: That's good, because I have been known to get people's names very wrong on this podcast. So I'm glad we got that right.

[00:01:57] Axelle Vanquaillie: I have a very difficult name.

[00:01:59] Paddy Dhanda: So Axelle, like your background when you and I were talking previously, you mentioned, that you never saw yourself

as a tech person and all of a sudden you've won this award. So could you tell us a little bit about your background? Like, where did you start? And it'd be great to know what you did.

[00:02:20] Axelle Vanquaillie: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe first before expectations are too high. It wasn't really an award. It was kind of a nomination in a magazine.

But anyway, it was very special already. So my background is. It's really something different. So as a, from study, I'm a social nurse. I have chosen for that study because I wanted to help people and I wanted to travel around the world. I thought if I'm a nurse, I can work wherever in the world and I can help people.

So that's how I started. But I'm very eager in learning. I'm always.

So I ended up being a communication specialist, a human resource specialist, I became a consultant, I saw someone drawing at a conference, making visual summaries, and I thought, wow, that's the coolest job in the world, I can travel with that, and I'm helping people to remember their message better. So I went to a training, and I learned that, and I started doing graphic recording 12 years ago.

So that's. The background of the last years and then of course, COVID came and as I was traveling around the world to visualize meetings and conferences, my agenda was, of course, wiped out in less than two days. I had nothing to do. And in the beginning I enjoyed it, but after a few days or weeks, I was really getting bored and I was thinking, okay my mission is.

To make visual storytelling accessible for anyone in the world. So I wrote a book, but that's clearly not enough to make people become a visual storyteller. So I was thinking, how can I make visual storytelling more accessible for everyone? Also people without a budget or without the talents to draw.

And that's how I came up with Drawify. So it's a platform where people can create their own visual stories without having to draw. And it's from that... perspective as an entrepreneur that indeed I was nominated as Tech Woman of the Week or of the Month, which was really funny because of course I learned so much about tech last three years, incredible what I learned, but from background I'm not a tech person at all.

And so my good friends, they thought it was quite funny to see that as a title on my face. But anyway.

[00:04:29] Paddy Dhanda: Well, in my eyes, you're a tech person. I think somebody that can take an idea and Put together, a team and build a business and a tech platform like you have Certainly qualifies. I think as a tech entrepreneur, so I'm really interested to understand, from the moment, well actually, how did you get the idea for Drawify in the first place?

I mean, I know you were talking about, you'd written a book and that wasn't enough to be able to help people with visual storytelling. So, like, what was the... The next step after that,

[00:05:06] Axelle Vanquaillie: well, the first seat was planted two years before COVID more or less, I was training I had a client where, which asked me to do a drawings.

He was a serial entrepreneur, a young guy starting startups, and he had a management buyout and he wants to have a drawing for his startup. So he became a client and then short after that, he came to one of my trainings and he wanted to draw himself and after the training, he said, Oh, I want to chat a little bit.

And we were fantasizing Canva was just starting up. And he said, imagine that you could do a kind of Canva. For the visual storytelling fields and we were fantasizing. So we were just brainstorming. Oh yes. And this and that. But then of course, like I said, I wasn't really busy. I didn't have any brain space to think about something new.

So when COVID happened, I suddenly was thinking about that conversation. I was thinking, Oh man, I had that very interesting conversation with that client who I didn't hear back. Since then, I'm going to contact him. So I send in the mail. He responded in one hour. He said, Yeah, let's talk today.

So we had a chat. We talked about the idea we had two years before. And that's how we got started. And then very fast. I'm super grateful for that. I contacted a few rock stars in the world about visual storytelling, like, Ben Crothers, Heather Martinez and a few other people. And I asked, well, I have this idea.

It's maybe a crazy idea. I don't know if it's going to work. I can't pay you anything. That's how it's going to work. Do you want to join? And 15 people said yes, but really big names. In the, for me big names in the field, and that was so powerful because if you start an idea and there are 15 people around you saying, yes, we go for it, that really helps to get the idea yeah, in the air.

[00:06:56] Paddy Dhanda: So, to be able to secure these 15 port leaders, did you take a certain type of approach to convince them to come on board? I know you said, Hey, this is my idea and I don't know if it's going to work, but did you have an approach that you had thought about? Maybe a visual story yourself, had you created anything like that or what was that sort of approach there?

Because I always think about. When I'm trying to entice guests onto the podcast, especially some of the, you can say more famous thought leaders out there, some of the famous authors, I find it really difficult to attract those sorts of people because a lot of them are looking for podcasts that have hundreds and thousands of downloads and I'm just not in that space.

So it's always. It's interesting for me to understand, like, how do you persuade people to buy into your idea?

[00:07:57] Axelle Vanquaillie: Well, you had a very good session this morning, people of course from the podcast don't know, but you told us that people buy or decide with their heart. So I, of course, because I'm quite some time in the field, I met a lot of people and I reached out to the people I like and to the people I had a connection with.

And I have the chance that those people are very nice people and also top leaders. And so I've really started with all the people I said, okay, who do I know? Who is nice to work with, has a nice personality, who has some knowledge or talent that could really help the platform. And then of course I made a visual presentation, I made some estimations about what they could earn, which by the way was completely wrong.

It was way too much, so I promised them all things that I couldn't live up to, but anyway, sorry for that. But anyway, so I've chosen with my heart. I've really chosen from a connection point of view. So, yeah, that's something I did.

[00:08:57] Paddy Dhanda: That's amazing. You were authentic in your ask because you said it with such emotion and feeling.

And then I guess those sort of people they find that irresistible. Like how could they possibly say no, if someone's asking them so nicely, which is wonderful. And so. Going then from getting people on board. To securing funding getting a team set up. Like how did you go about that?

[00:09:27] Axelle Vanquaillie: Yeah. So, I w we were lucky that fails.

So that's my co founder who was also my client. He knew a team in Sri Lanka who was, he could trust they were. It's amazing. They have treated Drawify like their baby. It's unlike any other tech team, I think. They have given their lives for Drawify. And they have to work, basically, like, a lot of Drawifys have to work with us.

They have given So much without getting back. So I don't know how that's, I don't know how we did it, but it's incredible how much we can do with a low funding. And then we did, yeah, we had we've put a lot of money ourselves in. So that's the money I, we earned by. While things were really going well, I've put a lot of that in the company, of course.

And then we had business angels and we had a crowd lending and all smaller amounts. Let's say we didn't have big investors still. Now we are looking for big investment for the future, but we all did it with small amounts. And then of course, revenue also this revenue coming in, which helps. So yeah it's really lean startup. It's fairly limited to the amount of funding we have. But what we did with it is amazing.

[00:10:36] Paddy Dhanda: That's phenomenal. And I guess on that journey, did you have to pivot at any time? And if so, could you give us some examples of when you've had to make those tough decisions?

[00:10:48] Axelle Vanquaillie: Yeah, we've pivoted a few times also on, on our architecture and platform itself. So we started with something that was really bad, full of bugs. Yeah, it was terrible. So we had to rebuild very fast. After six months, we had to rebuild the platform because we just started. We see, okay we'll see what happens.

And it wasn't good enough. So we had to rebuild. And then we pivoted a few times in how to position it. And recently where we thought in the beginning was more going to be like a database of visuals that people would use to create a visual story. Now with everything that's going on in the field of generative AI and mid journey and all those, a database of illustrations is not possible.

is relevant anymore. So we had to pivot really fast towards creating visual stories that people can adjust. So not the illustration is not important, but the story behind is important. So, and we were not yet ready for that. It was something we were going to do in the far future. And pivoted in two, three months, last couple of months.

And so we just launched Maya, which is a result of that. So yeah, we Since the world is changing so fast, you have to change constantly with the world, and that's really challenging, and also really exciting.

[00:12:04] Paddy Dhanda: Where the platform is right now. If someone's listening at home thinking, well, joy if I visual stories, like, could you explain like who might get use from the platform and what problem it will be solving for them?

Yeah,

[00:12:21] Axelle Vanquaillie: the biggest problem it solves is that it turns something complex content into something very. Simple and visual. So like you said yourself, we are getting information all the time and too much information is text and it's not visual at all. So it's very hard to capture. So if you have a message to convey, if you have a change to announce people involved.

You better be visual and you better use something that touches the heart of the people. But yeah, so most people can't draw or they don't have the courage to do it. So they can put their content in the platform and it translates it to a visual story for you. So you get a summary of your content in a visual way.

And so before you had to do it yourself, but now it's done by our intelligent assistant. So you can basically put a very difficult note. In it, and you get a summary in a visual way, so you can present it immediately to the people you want to convey.

[00:13:17] Paddy Dhanda: And that's Maya, you mentioned. That's Maya, yeah. Is your new AI extension of the application, which is phenomenal.

And I guess if someone's thinking, well, surely I can do this in PowerPoint, I can take stock images, I could somehow... Create and craft a visual story through using stock images. How does Drawify give you the additional benefit?

[00:13:42] Axelle Vanquaillie: All the images in Drawify are, by the way, made by true people, true artists the community behind the platform.

And we all know that an image, so a drawing, a handmade drawing, is. much more appealing than a regular stock image. Because it's more simple, and apparently the brain processes it much easier than a normal picture. So, the fact that it's hand drawn appeals much better. So that's a big advantage.

And also, yeah, a slide. So if you're talking about PowerPoint, it's linear, it's slide, where we generate one pagers, where you see the connections between the different parts of your story, which is also, our brain is not linear, but we present everything in a linear way. So by making it more visual, as visual story in one pager, you see the connections.

Instead of one linear story. So that's another way. But I think the drawings the reason why the demand for drawings is increasing is because it's reducing a lot of yeah, complexity. If you can draw it, you can tell it. So that's, you can explain

[00:14:51] Paddy Dhanda: it. And you mentioned you've got

15 plus thought leaders. Yeah, now we're 40 already. Oh wow, now it's up to 40. Okay. And so each one will have their own style. And so I'm guessing that might well appeal to people as well. Like Ben Crothers style or, you know, Martinez's lettering style.

[00:15:11] Axelle Vanquaillie: Yeah, indeed. So you can indeed, and that's some people are just a big fan of someone on the platform and that happens all the time, which is great.

So they can say, okay, I like Ben or I like Colina or like Martin or whatever, it doesn't matter which name. And I want to create my my infographic or my visual story in his style or her style. And then you can indeed choose and And adjusted in that style.

[00:15:33] Paddy Dhanda: As a female entrepreneur, you know, there's probably other people out there females who maybe have ideas, but never quite had the guts to go forward with an idea. Like what advice would you have for somebody who's contemplating going down this entrepreneurial journey? What other kind of two or three.

Big lessons that you've learned that if you could look back and tell yourself these lessons

[00:15:59] Axelle Vanquaillie: still learning. But dream big enough. I see that we, I don't want to. I don't think there's one type of woman, and in general, I'm not a women man thinker, so I don't like to make that. But what I see that I do, and I recognize it with a lot of other women, is that we think very often too small.

So if you can do 50 percent of what you should do, we see the 50 percent we don't do. And I see a lot of male entrepreneurs, they see the 50 percent that they don't care about the other 50%. So they just Dare to think bigger and dream bigger than a lot of women. That's what I see. I don't say everyone is the same.

Not at all. But it's something. So dream big enough. Dream big enough. So that's certainly something. And then a second one. I very often get the feedback I'm too authentic and too honest. That's something. Too authentic and too honest. Wow. That's something I get every week. As a feedback, and it's not helpful if you want to pitch, because if you pitch, they are not looking for the honest version.

They are looking for the inspiring, promising version. So, that's something I would also say be honest, but focus on the promising and on the positive and not on things that might go wrong because that's not what is selling. what you're doing. So that's another thing.

The third one is probably make sure you have the right people around you because it's impossible to do it on your own. And it's so much more fun when you have people around you that elevate you, that make you laugh, that. Like to make fun without them. I wouldn't survive for one week.

Really. I have so many wonderful people It's not a female thing It's same from for men. I think but it's really important to have the right people around you And it doesn't have to be employees. It can be whatever kind of people that support you.

That's really important. Without them, it's, for me, it would be impossible.

[00:18:02] Paddy Dhanda: Yeah. Oh, that's a really good point because I always think I want to surround myself with positive people. So then I feed off that energy as well. And in the past, I think I wasn't quite aware that if you are in a group of people that are quite negative, they will drag you down as well.

Absolutely. Yeah. So it sounds like, you know, you've found your crowd of people that are elevating you.

[00:18:32] Axelle Vanquaillie: Yeah. Yeah. Get rid of them. I mean, it's very exciting. The journey as an entrepreneur and I love it and I learn every day, but man, it can be so hard some days it can be so challenging in so many ways. So you have, yeah, like, in a tech space and that's something I had to learn. I didn't know that things will always.

Go a little bit wrong. It's impossible to build something and especially not a web based thing because the web changes every day So your program can work one minute and the second minute it doesn't work. So you have to hear what's going wrong You have to immediately solve it. So that's part of the game So it's sometimes, yeah, you have to deal with a lot of problems and you have to solve constantly problems.

So it's not always easy. And especially with a startup, it's always demanding. You have to go so fast. You probably don't have enough resources very often. Yeah it's just, it's challenging. You have to pitch thousand times to get a positive result. You have you have believers, you have non believers.

You have people leaving the team, whatever. You have so many things and because you are a small team, you have to deal with, you have to deal with a small team. If you're a big company, you have your responsibility and that's it. In the startup, you have everything, so it's very fun it's very yeah, inspiring and energetic, but it can also be hard.

So if you have them negative people around you, I wouldn't recommend that.

[00:20:04] Paddy Dhanda: So something I've heard from some entrepreneurs is that one of the big lessons they learned was. Although they're really passionate about the idea, they should have been a little bit more hands off on certain aspects. And what I mean by that is, for example, I had a conversation with one entrepreneur a few years ago and his startup failed because what he found was everyone was too dependent on him because nothing would get done without him being there.

And he was so into the detail. That actually, if you'd focused on elevating the brand forward and thinking more strategically, it would have enabled the team to sort out that low level stuff. Because you can't be everywhere at the same time. Have you found that at all?

[00:20:56] Axelle Vanquaillie: Yeah. I don't want to be on the hands on work, to be honest.

Some years ago I did like a strength test or talent test. Core talent is strategy. So, I don't want to be there on the operational stuff. Unfortunately, I have to be sometimes because I just don't have the staff to do it. But I follow you completely. As soon as you grow, you have to be able to delegate that.

On the other side, what I learned is that sometimes you have to do it yourself first. to understand what you have to delegate. That's something I learned last year about a very specific thing, marketing. I didn't know anything about it. I delegated it. It's very hard to delegate something if you don't know what you have to delegate and how you can follow it up in a correct way.

So that's, even if you don't do it yourself, you have at least to understand really well what the other person is doing. That's also a challenge if you're not tech and you have tech team. But yeah, of course I have other people who help me with that, you can't be on the operational yeah, stuff every day.

[00:22:05] Paddy Dhanda: It's really interesting point you raised there because I remember when I first started my career and I. Became a programmer and I'm not a very good programmer.

I should never be allowed to program probably but At the time I was like, well, why am I doing this? Yeah. I mean, I quite enjoyed it because it was problem solving and it really did challenge me. And I was able to be creative, but I never thought of myself as a very good programmer. But I was so glad I did it because I did it for about two to three years.

And I was doing some quite hardcore programming. It was C programming at the time. Oh yeah. I was working on interconnect billing systems for a big telecoms company. And there were lots of calculations and algorithms that we were trying to implement. But then as I've gone through my career, because I've had to work with tech teams, just having that appreciation, if nothing else, just the appreciation for that particular skillset was invaluable because I would then work with of technologists who were having to code and just being able to speak the same language was really invaluable. And even with the podcast that I, with the podcast, it's really interesting because a lot of people were saying to me, Hey, like just get an editor. Like, why do you do everything? Cause I literally do the thumbnails I do like all of the editing. I do all the social media, everything is on me. And now I've started to bring in like other people I have an editor now who helps me, but like you say, it's been invaluable for me to do it myself because I've figured out a good workflow myself. And then when the editor has come in, I've said, Hey, like, this is exactly how I would want this done.

I've given them some very clear guidelines. And if I hadn't done all of that stuff myself, who knows what would have come out the other end. So, I totally agree with you. I think I'm one of those people as well that I like to have a go myself first. Yeah. Just to appreciate the thing. And then then be able to bring in someone better than I who can do it.

[00:24:20] Axelle Vanquaillie: Yeah, exactly. Exactly, that's. And then you also know which part exactly you have to delegate because maybe there are some parts you are much better doing yourself and other parts you delegate. By the way, you said something really interesting. You said. in the beginning, why I'm doing this. Another advice, the fourth one, and for everyone, not only for female Oh, you really have to stay connected with the reason why, because sometimes you will forget why you are doing that, why you are sacrificing your holidays, why you are whatever, sacrificing whatever.

There's a, it comes with the costs when you're an entrepreneur. You don't have a fixed salary. You don't have the certainty. You don't, you're giving up a lot of things you have as an employee. So you really have to know why you're doing what you're doing and stay true to that. Why? And understand it and to see it. And at any point, it's crucial. I still have my poster that I, my brainstorm poster that I did when I started with Drawify, my own brain dump. It hangs in my office and it stays there and it's still relevant. But it reminds me all the time. Okay, that's why I started. When I have a bad day, I look at it and say, okay, I'm doing this for a reason.

So, that's really important. Start with why and stick with why.

[00:25:35] Paddy Dhanda: Yeah, no, I love that because I think Simon Sinek, right? Yeah, that's

[00:25:38] Axelle Vanquaillie: my biggest, well, if I have one big idol, it's Simon Sinek. I want to spend One night with him on the bar, to talk with him. So if you've never listened to this podcast, please find me.

[00:25:49] Paddy Dhanda: Simon, if you're listening, dude, just come on the podcast.

[00:25:53] Axelle Vanquaillie: Yeah, this is my biggest source of inspiration for many reasons.

[00:25:56] Paddy Dhanda: Because he's quoted saying something like, I can't remember the exact quote, but he does say, like, if you have values, like don't let them be just a poster on the wall, you should live and breathe them.

And I think that's. Really interesting that you say you've still got your original why, and it hasn't just become something that was forgotten that you do constantly revisit it. And I think that's a really great thing to do. Constantly remind yourself of the reason.

[00:26:29] Axelle Vanquaillie: And also, whatever you delegate, I would never delegate contacts with users.

I'm still getting all the support questions. I'm not going to solve them all. Right. But I see the feedback of users. Huh. I reach out to users sometimes. I do sessions with users. Like conferences like this that you can hear from people why they would use it. People use it already.

So the connection with the end user and how you're changing their lives. That's crucial for me to Yeah. To keep on doing it because they give me the reason to continue. Yeah. 'cause they tell me, oh, you changed my life. I'm saving so much time. Or, oh. It's so much inspiration. Whatever. It gives me the feeling.

Okay. It's great what I'm doing. I have to continue . So especially the, not every day, but especially the days that sometimes you, there's so much fog, you don't see , the road anymore, you know? So,

[00:27:21] Paddy Dhanda: absolutely. Yeah. So my final question, you mentioned earlier, think big, dream big. So where are you taking Drawify?

What's the big master plan?

[00:27:31] Axelle Vanquaillie: The big master plan, and I know some visual thinkers are not going to like this, but I'm going to say it anyway. So, like I said I believe that we can go a whole way further with visual thinking. There are far too many meetings that little nothing. There are far too many trainings that people forget everything that has been said.

So I'm always thinking, imagine that you come out of the meeting and you get a visual summary. And I know that's what we do as graphic recorders, but we are expensive because easily like, I don't know, 2, 000 a day. So it's expensive. Not everyone can afford that. So imagine that you can have a smaller, affordable version.

That comes out of the computer after a meeting, that everyone has a very clear visual summary of what has been agreed on and everything. That's when, in the end, I want to bring verify that there's no one making that report that no one reads of whatever 20, 000 words or 20 pages. No one will read that, but if people get the summary in a visual way, they will.

Remember what has been said, and I want to make that affordable to anyone in the world, and it can be a meeting, it can be a training, it can be whatever, a panel, that's something I want to democratize for everyone. That's my biggest that's my

[00:28:54] Paddy Dhanda: vision. Oh, wow. Nice. And with the way the world is moving, it's possible, absolutely.

[00:29:02] Axelle Vanquaillie: We need a bit of funding because everything is possible already. You only have to connect the dots, train the system and we have the knowledge to do it. We only need the resources to make it happen. But it's possible.

[00:29:16] Paddy Dhanda: Got it. And, hey, I think you mentioned the visual thinkers aren't going to like this, but actually...

[00:29:22] Axelle Vanquaillie: No, but a lot of people think they will become obsolete with it, which I don't believe because they will being that person in the room who connects the dots and make people think and facilitate the conversation. That's not something AI will take over. Never. So we just have to reinvent ourselves and add more human factors to our work, and then it will become even more valuable. I heard, by the way, Peter Diamandis, I don't know if you know him, it's a guru in the US about technology. He said, because of the human factories getting lost in a lot of AI, the human in the room will become more important.

So that's where we can, yeah, bring more value, I think. Yeah. As graphic recorders

[00:30:06] Paddy Dhanda: oh, well, I'm glad. I'm glad.

[00:30:08] Axelle Vanquaillie: That's why I'm not replacing. I'm just making it accessible. That's all. But I know there's a kind of fear about it. Yeah.

[00:30:15] Paddy Dhanda: I think it's just the fact that when things are uncertain and there's change happening.

Yeah. Without us having a clear path uh, or sometimes we feel a bit vulnerable because, you know, things are going to change, jobs are going to change, our responsibilities are going to change. I think that's a natural human instinct, isn't it? To fight the change. But I think with all of these things, progress then brings some new opportunity.

And that's what I'm hoping with just general AI as well.

Don't just think it's going to replace the thing we're doing and then we don't evolve any further because actually if it takes some of the hard work away from what we're doing, that's fantastic, right? We can focus our efforts on things we enjoy that are going to add that value. So yeah, brilliant.

Well, it's been a pleasure talking to you so I've learned a lot and I just think yeah, Drawify, you know, we talked about it earlier as well at the booth who came to your stand and you gave me a demo of Maya. I love the name, by the way your AI extension that you recently launched.

Yeah, super cool. I just think it's gonna be, really interesting how things evolve in this space and as a visual thinker I think Any tool that helps visual thinking and bringing visuals to the masses is only a good thing because I still think, when I sit through presentations at work that are heavily text based with tons of writing and paragraphs, It's a shame.

It's cruel. It's

[00:31:57] Axelle Vanquaillie: terror. It's torture. It's

[00:32:00] Paddy Dhanda: torture. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So thank you. Thank you for trying to change the world.

[00:32:06] Axelle Vanquaillie: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. It