Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - Why the Most Successful Leaders Still Can’t Connect With People | Talia Fox - Harvard Fellow & CEO of KUSI Global

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Lessons - Why the Most Successful Leaders Still Can’t Connect With People | Talia Fox - Harvard Fellow & CEO of KUSI Global · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, explore how conscious connection transforms leadership and performance under pressure,
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  discover practical ways to reset after stressful moments, understand how leading with values
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  builds stronger teams and uncover a simple framework for creating a culture rooted in trust,
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  empathy, and lasting success.
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  You always go into a day with the best intentions and you feel clear and then,
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  you know, you're going into meetings and then stressful emails and stressful news and then all
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  of a sudden, it's very hard to have great meetings, great outcomes, great conversations. The
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  words don't come as easily as quickly as they did when you were, you know, happy and there was no
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  stress in your life. So all of a sudden your whole performance starts to degrade and I don't think
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  people really have a strategy when they're in this fighter flight mode in work to really just
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  bring themselves back to baseline so that yeah, there was some stressful event, got yelled at,
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  client boss, whatever missed a deadline, whatever it is, but that can't jeopardize the next six
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  hours of your day. And it definitely shouldn't jeopardize your home life too with your family,
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  your spouse, kids, friends, whatever it is. But I think that because I don't think this is just
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  a pure post COVID thing like the level of stress that we have right now compounded with the fact
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  that we're always distracted in social media and whatnot keeps us from having any meaningful
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  moment to really reset because even if you have a stressful morning at work and then you go on lunch,
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  on lunch, you're not just with yourself, you're not just with peers, you're on your phone going
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  through Twitter, whatever anger, hate, politics, whatever it is that's happening on social media.
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  So like your your brain is always like an overdrive non-stop.
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  Yes, and I want to key in on what it means to come back to basics as it relates to the model.
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  So the V is about value. So coming back to basics is aligning with your values.
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  Really quick story. I was doing a keynote and as I was going up to the keynote, someone in
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  the audience handed me their trash to throw away. I also had an experience, same situation,
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  high level place where someone started telling me all the issues in the bathroom. I was dressed
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  all up in a suit. I was like, you know, and we can infer. Yeah, absolutely. They thought that I
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  was the cleaning person. It was it was bad. But here's what this love system does. It was awful
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  for me, but I didn't go into revenge. How dare you could do that. I actually went on stage and I
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  started a talk with a what it looks like to what forgiveness looks like and what uplifting people.
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  And this person, of course, as I looked into the audience, they were a very high level person
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  sitting in the front. They were turning completely bad. And I could tell that they were embarrassed.
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  But I talked about like the impact that we have on each other and our choices. And what was
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  interesting about is this person ended up being a spearhead for all of these like diversity efforts.
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  And I had a conversation with this person after and and it was a very moving conversation. And
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  there was an apology that that's given to me. But I think a lot of people, so even when I tell
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  the story, it's enraging. And with the love system, I observe my values are when someone's in my
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  presence. I hope that they feel lifted or the same, but not diminishing anyway. I actually got
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  that from Abraham Hicks, Esther Hicks, Esther and Jerry Hicks for those of you that that might be
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  familiar with that work. But I love the idea of of of treating people well. So here's the
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  clincher. Oh, here's the thing. It's do I get to lay that value down if I feel justified with
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  someone else's poor behavior? So do I do I get to can I leave someone not diminishing anyway,
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  even if they're diminishing me? That's what's hard, right? So the love system allows you to stop
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  and make choices that are constantly in line with your values because other people don't have the
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  power to change who I am. So my authenticity is my values. And so your rudeness doesn't get to
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  determine how I'm going to live my day and my values of goodness to you. And when you deal with
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  because I can only imagine if anything even anything that happened to me going up on stage,
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  even if it wasn't as serious as that, that would have thrown off an entire speech. I wouldn't have
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  been able to continue or I would have been flustered the whole speech right on stage. So when you
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  implement the system, you find that in that moment, you were able to like sort of collect yourself,
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  use this system to again, bring yourself back to where you need to be to deliver an incredible
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  keynote. And that's really this is a system that you rely on for something like that.
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  Yeah, so I have the love because I'm just trying to think of you in that moment. Like I'm trying
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  to like, like go through how I would be thinking. And I know that the it would not have been good.
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  Yes, I almost was in tears to tell you that it was that big of a deal. But let me tell you how
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  the love system works. So part of the strategy is I call it the shift. So so kind of I have I'm
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  trained to monitor what's happening in my mind. And so I was able to quickly go from
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  I can't believe this happened. What the heck? You know, like anger and I was too, it's okay. This
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  is an opportunity for you to to be of service. You're okay. You're you don't need to have ego right
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  now. You can connect with this audience. These are just people. We're all on the on a journey of
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  improvement and trying to get better. I even thought about my own mistakes. I've made in the past
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  in life. And so I literally start to have a different voice inner critic inner voice in my head,
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  which puts me in the mind frame to do a better job. And then I got up on the stage. I observed
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  myself. I said, you know, can I stand tall? Can I look out in the audience? And my value is that
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  I just want to be the best that I can for the moment with whatever I have. So that kind of gets
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  the jitters down. And then I did it and engaged. And it was probably one of my best talks. That's
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  amazing. I'm very curious. I haven't looked at any of these questions yet. It always been chatting,
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  which has been amazing. But I want to actually bring up some stuff that I purposefully wrote down
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  because I think it would really help frame it for the audience as well. I'm very curious. In your
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  career, where did this, where did this understanding of conscious connection come from? How did this,
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  like this obviously this framework, it makes tons of sense now. But looking back, what were those
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  key things? Sort of were light bulb moments for you in your career that led you to have the clarity
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  of thought to be able to put this system together. So you know those moments in business where you have
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  to really figure out your value proposition. So you have a value proposition. But then as things go
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  on, you're like, wait, there's another value proposition. You know, that's it's a normal journey.
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  So for me, you know, the key question was, how do you duplicate yourself? So what have you learned
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  and what do you do? And so I started to think what makes these experiences with clients so successful?
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  And it was all about the connection. That's the thing that's very difficult to duplicate. I could
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  hire a bunch of people. I could do whatever, but they were kind of even their emails. Good afternoon,
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  sir. You know, everybody is so formalized. And I even watch people on meetings with me. And
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  it's great. You want to be professional, but there is that missing. The question is like, what's
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  the magic in a company or what's the? And so I said, it's the connection. So I actually started
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  observing and asking questions. So that was my listening. I just would ask questions,
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  solve my clients to, you know, I interviewed a lot of very wealthy, high level people.
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  And I started to actually just keep a journal on like, what are those things that matter?
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  And so as I read, I told you all the books that I read, I started finding this common thread.
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  You know, like Nelson Mandela, you read this, I read a long walk to freedom and it's,
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  you know, he's done these amazing things. But if you delve into that book, he will, it's so simple.
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  He's like, what I sort of started to do was to listen to the other people on the team, you know,
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  and he even has stories about how he used to observe people in African, what they would do in
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  their meetings and that how they would listen and interact with each other. And so all throughout
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  the book, like his success is contingent upon the way that he was able to connect to what was
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  important, the way he was able to listen to people, the way that he was able to observe the needs
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  of people, and then how he engaged with the world. Right. So if you take any leader, there's something
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  in those four things that is a common theme across everything, emotional intelligence, systems
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  thinking, critical thinking, it requires you to do four basic things. So in my career, it's been,
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  you know, really keying into what I like to look at. What are those little things that make
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  the biggest difference? And so that is how we came to the power of conscious connection.
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  Any, any founder suffers from what you were suffering from, but many of them don't know how to
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  actually replicate themselves and they don't have the ability to maybe tie all those different
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  threads together and find a way to replicate them. So they end up hiring someone and hopefully
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  they find a CEO or somebody that can sort of manage for them. If you were going to give advice to
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  a founder on how to replicate their own style, where would you tell them to start?
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  So I would start with love, right? Which would be begin to listen to the feedback that they're
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  getting. Yeah. I would say observe themselves. What are the very specific decisions that they make?
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  And they could probably make the way that they interact and communicate with people if they've
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  been successful with that into a model. Yeah. Right that people can use. So at Kusai, we actually
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  call our interaction with clients a warm, competent hug, not a real hug, but it's a warm,
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  open hug. So everybody has a system as to what's important in our values. And so they actually apply
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  that and they get measured. We have something, which I'm going to let this cat at the back. I'll
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  probably write my second book on this, but we have something called the GAD factor, GAD. My mom
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  came up with this, but it's great. So GAD, it's the art of giving a damn, right? Oh that's good.
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  So you get a GAD score, right? You'll get a GAD score, Kusai. So it's like, how much do you really
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  care? And so that's big in our company and what we do. So I think with founders begin to figure out
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  what's really important to you. What are the pieces of the system of your organization that make
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  the biggest difference? Observe how you implement those and observe how other people are receiving
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  that implementation. Like are people aligned with the values? Or are you just kind of at a Zoom
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  meeting, just giving reports, right? And then how are you engaging with your team? Are you just
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  engaging on telling people what the numbers are and where you want to go? Or are you doing something
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  that's engaging them in a different kind of connection or experience with the company? So it starts
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  with just a little bit of strategizing and pausing. And from there, create a model, just like you
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  created your product, create a product for how you're going to run your culture and your system.
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  Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you
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  never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links
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  in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.