Latest / King Dems Podcast | Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights / Why Brilliant Executives Fail After Promotion | Leadership Psychology w/ Navid Nazemian

Transcript

Why Brilliant Executives Fail After Promotion | Leadership Psychology w/ Navid Nazemian · King Dems Podcast | Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights

• 0:00
  We are at a leadership paradox right now, which means the tech
• 0:04
  is ready and in most of the cases, the tech is far more
• 0:08
  advanced than the leaders who are supposed to adapt that tool
• 0:13
  into the organisation who are supposed to bring that in and
• 0:16
  use it in a meaningful way. But if you were to look at how
• 0:19
  many of those companies consider themselves to be mature in AI
• 0:23
  deployment, it's 1%. So the biggest barrier is not
• 0:28
  the employees or technology for me, it's leadership alignment
• 0:32
  and vision and making sure that those leaders were supposed to
• 0:36
  enable this technology and make those decisions are really
• 0:39
  comfortable using that. Hi there.
• 0:43
  Are you a professional or business owner teaching
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  creating smarter with Gamma App. Real life ladies and gentlemen,
• 1:45
  you once again welcome to the Kingdom's podcast and Diary of a
• 1:49
  CFO. And today I've got will be a
• 1:53
  very important guest fighting out of Dubai, United Arab
• 2:00
  Emirates. Make welcome David Nazer, me and
• 2:06
  how are you, David? Thank you so much, Adam.
• 2:10
  Well, I'm, I'm well and I am super stoked has this
• 2:13
  conversation with you today. Oh wow, of course myself, I'm
• 2:18
  super stoked as well. OK, so we have so many
• 2:22
  connecting dots. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to
• 2:24
  another powerful episode of The Kingdom's podcast in Diary of a
• 2:27
  CFO. Today's conversation is 1 for
• 2:31
  leaders, founders, executives and ambitious professionals
• 2:35
  navigating pressure, transition and high performance
• 2:39
  environment. Our guest is globally recognised
• 2:42
  as one of the foremost voices in executive leadership and
• 2:45
  transformation. He has coached senior leaders
• 2:48
  across industries, cultures, and continents, helping them
• 2:52
  navigate some of the most critical transitions of their
• 2:56
  careers with clarity, resilience, and strategic
• 2:59
  precision. Ranked by CEO today as the
• 3:03
  world's #1 Executive Coach, he is also the author of the
• 3:07
  acclaimed book Mastering Executive Transitions, A
• 3:11
  groundbreaking framework exploring why even brilliant
• 3:14
  leaders struggle after promotions, role changes, and
• 3:19
  increased visibility. This conversation goes far
• 3:22
  beyond traditional leadership theory.
• 3:25
  We are unpacking the psychology of pressure, the emotional cost
• 3:28
  of leadership, organisational politics, identity shifts, and
• 3:33
  what it truly takes to try at the highest levels of leaders
• 3:37
  and influence. Whether you are a CEOCFO
• 3:41
  entrepreneur, emerging leader, or someone preparing for your
• 3:45
  next weekly this episode or to learn the way you think about
• 3:49
  leadership, performance and legacy, please join me in
• 3:54
  welcoming to the podcast Naveed Nazanir.
• 3:58
  Wow. Thank you so much, Adamola.
• 4:02
  Yeah, this is a warm and very lengthy introduction.
• 4:05
  I was not expecting that, but I do appreciate it.
• 4:08
  You're you're welcome. You're welcome.
• 4:10
  Definitely your career has been, has been a globe fool.
• 4:13
  It's been a handful. So definitely you deserve that
• 4:16
  recognition. And Speaking of recognition, you
• 4:19
  you've actually been ranked as the number one executive coach
• 4:24
  by CEO today in the world. What does that recognition mean
• 4:28
  to you personally? Yeah.
• 4:30
  Look, I mean, I want to be perfectly honest with you and
• 4:33
  your listeners here in that I would love to use the example of
• 4:38
  my time in HR. I spent 20 years working for
• 4:42
  some of the world's most admired companies in five different
• 4:45
  countries. And I, on the day I announced my
• 4:51
  retirement from active duty as a corporate HR executive, I
• 4:55
  received my very first award as an HR leader.
• 4:58
  And it was a surprise to me because, you know, all these
• 5:01
  years I had done all this, you know, quite, quite meaningful
• 5:04
  work. And Despite that, it took 20
• 5:06
  years for me to, you know, receive my first award.
• 5:10
  And it was a special 1. I actually got it back in the UK
• 5:13
  in the year 22 because it was a peer Recognition Award, meaning
• 5:20
  I had a lot of HRDS and CHROS who put in a nomination form on
• 5:24
  my behalf and, you know, talked about the, the value that they
• 5:28
  saw that my work had created. At the time I was working for
• 5:31
  Vodafone, which is one of the largest international
• 5:35
  telecommunication companies in the world.
• 5:37
  In South Africa where you're based that called Vodacom, it's
• 5:39
  the same organisation. So that goes to say that you
• 5:45
  know, when I started my coaching practise exactly 12 years ago, I
• 5:51
  did not have a single award up until four years ago.
• 5:54
  Probably all these awards are nice and I've collected 10
• 5:57
  awards just in the last four years.
• 5:59
  These awards are nice and A and a nice way to recognise the work
• 6:03
  that you do. But for me, the real recognition
• 6:06
  comes from the executives that I do the work with, and sometimes
• 6:10
  from the organisations that are so happy that they signed me up
• 6:14
  to work with them. What a journey and I think
• 6:18
  people watching us today, people listening to us, they should
• 6:21
  take a cue from this, should take some inspiration from this,
• 6:25
  right? When you're in the trenches,
• 6:27
  when you're putting on the work, know that the work will
• 6:30
  definitely pay up in in the process, right?
• 6:33
  It feels like nothing is changing, but when you keep
• 6:37
  going and you have a good sense of direction, definitely hard
• 6:40
  work definitely pays up. So, so I appreciate you being
• 6:45
  authentic, being bored and of course being vulnerable as well
• 6:49
  in terms of sharing your journey.
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  And when you reflect on your journey from corporate executive
• 6:56
  to being a globally recognised executive coach, right, What
• 7:01
  would you say where the defining moments that shaped you the
• 7:05
  most? Yes.
• 7:07
  So firstly, I will share a little secret with you and your
• 7:11
  audience here, which is I actually sign up to become a
• 7:15
  coach. This is in the, you know, 12
• 7:18
  years ago. So in the year 2014 with with a
• 7:21
  very different intention. So my intention was not to go
• 7:25
  solo and set up my coaching practise and do what I do love
• 7:29
  doing full time, but I actually wanted to become a more
• 7:33
  effective leader. That was my sole intent.
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  I felt that after spending more than a decade working in the
• 7:40
  human resources function, I had reached what I call functional
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  technical limits. As in there wasn't really much
• 7:48
  more left that I could learn to become a more effective HR
• 7:52
  individual. And that's why I decided that I
• 7:56
  needed to go into what I call vertical development.
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  So horizontal development is you add 1 technical degree or skill
• 8:05
  next to the other one, do the other one, and then you have ten
• 8:08
  of those. And by the time you do the third
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  one, you can't quite remember what you did in the first one.
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  But vertical development is really expanding the size of the
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  container. So I felt that for the position
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  that I had held at a time and the level that I had reached,
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  growth would come vertically and not horizontally, which is why I
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  didn't pursue an MBA or something, just to have another
• 8:32
  3 letters, something next to my name.
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  It was one of the best decisions I could have made in hindsight
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  as well. I mean I did my three-year coach
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  education training across 3 continents, but the middle part
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  of that I actually did in Cape Town.
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  So I did do that Gyps at UCT, and it's a lovely time that I
• 8:50
  will cherish for a long time because that really reintroduce
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  me to South Africa, to Ubuntu, to all these various things that
• 8:58
  are existing in that part of the world, and I'm incredibly
• 9:01
  grateful for that. Wow.
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  And they did, they did. Of course, you know, it's, it's
• 9:06
  amazing to know that you, you definitely had a good time in
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  South Africa. And of course, just on a lighter
• 9:11
  note, right, you were attacking, you were attacking me when it
• 9:14
  comes to the, the three letter designations, you know, I do
• 9:17
  have an MPA and be the chartered accountant.
• 9:20
  That is ACA, right? Yeah.
• 9:26
  I've got like those 3 letters. Yes.
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  And you probably needed those for KPMG, for PwC, for all the
• 9:34
  other various companies used to work for.
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  I just felt that at a certain point in time growth becomes
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  more vertical than horizontal. That was the point I was.
• 9:46
  Trying to make? Yeah, exactly.
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  I like for you, even given the fact that you're an HR person,
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  right? I like for you to pick each
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  other on what people who feel like or who know they have
• 10:00
  actually plateaued in their career should do because it
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  comes with a lot of confusion, right?
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  And I think so for some people did not feel like, oh, they're
• 10:09
  going to like a big life crisis. But it is not uncommon.
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  So I like for you to address that.
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  Put it on your HR. Absolutely, yes.
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  Look, this is the actual project that I did at one of the
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  companies I used to work for. At the time, that was a big
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  question mark as to OK, at the time, we had roughly 1600 HR
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  professionals around the world. How can we develop them in the
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  most meaningful way and how can we help them to accelerate their
• 10:41
  careers and grow their careers in a meaningful way?
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  And so that's when I embarked on this global project.
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  I interviewed the top most senior 100 HR leaders out of the
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  1400. I went after the first, second
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  and third layer of leadership and what then became as a result
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  of interviewing those, my intent was, and you know, this is over
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  a decade ago, so there was no ChatGPT at the time.
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  I could have just fed those interview excerpts and hoping
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  that something in interesting comes out.
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  It was all manually done. But what I achieved as a result
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  of those 100 interviews was to be able to distil the 12 most
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  formative experiences that would help to grow an HR person's
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  career, no matter what level of leadership they are AT.
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  And those 12 experiences, by the way, the, the, the, the, the
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  survey did not result in, oh, you need to do your MBA or you
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  need to go to this HR course or you need to study this HR course
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  at this university. It was really centred on
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  experiences, so the first four were in the business focus area.
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  So that meant that there are 4 experiences that HR people could
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  do and so can do to grow their HR level of leadership by.
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  And these four things were business related by working in
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  and with a variety of client groups.
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  I myself have worked with commercial leaders, I've worked
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  with finance leaders. This is the last five years of
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  my career where I worked with the group CFO, Vodafone and her
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  entire finance organisation scattered around the world.
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  The second experience in the business section is
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  international experience living and working in more than one
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  country. And again, I did that in five
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  different countries. The third one is to work in a
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  variety of different business scenarios, meaning you know, if
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  I, and that was my biggest challenge when I grew up in HRI
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  was in Europe, right? I came to Europe as a young
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  child and that's all the experience I had.
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  And you know if you have looked at the European economies at the
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  at the time, it was either growing slightly, shrinking
• 12:55
  slightly or staying flat. So that was the business
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  scenarios I was used to. And then I had my first
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  international assignment into the Middle East where we grew
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  the organisation from 70 people to 1000 people in a 2 1/2 year
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  time period. So we had like massive growth
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  plans and I just had never experienced that before, which
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  meant that I had to work in a very different business
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  scenario. Then slightly growing, slightly
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  shrinking or flat kind of established.
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  And then the last experience in the business section is to move
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  between head office and country type roles.
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  And that was also something that I really benefited from because
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  once you have sat on both sides of the fence within the same
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  organisation, that really gives you an appreciation for how it
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  what it takes to work with the other part of the organisation
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  in a meaningful way. So those were the first four.
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  The next four were what I call the people dimensional people
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  focus. First one is manage and work in
• 13:54
  large projects, meaning I actually have led and been part
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  of big projects in every single company I've worked for just
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  because it gives you a different level of exposure.
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  The second one is lead directly, meaning yeah, well you, you need
• 14:11
  people leadership skills in order to grow your people focus.
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  The third one is a surprising one for many.
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  Leading indirectly, meaning I don't have to be the line
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  manager of all these people. If I'm interested to learn more
• 14:25
  about how to lead people, I can become the leader of people
• 14:29
  through different things, such as, you know, being the project
• 14:32
  lead for a particular project and then having those people in
• 14:36
  the project sense leading up to me.
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  Or as I did get my very first people leadership experience
• 14:42
  back in Adidas when I was working for the world famous
• 14:45
  Three Stripes, my line manager gave me the day-to-day
• 14:50
  management of the two management trainees we had in our
• 14:52
  department. Although in the system they
• 14:53
  reported into Herb. So you can get those people
• 14:57
  experiences also indirectly. And last but not least, this is
• 15:01
  what GE did very well. I worked for GE back in the year
• 15:04
  2005 and they were really remarkably, you know, sharp on
• 15:09
  when it comes to accepting stretch assignments.
• 15:12
  So my boss who was an HRD, she had spent two years working in
• 15:17
  the quality function and going to factories and looking for
• 15:21
  defects. And so those stretch assignments
• 15:24
  really stretch you above and beyond your HR skills and really
• 15:28
  gave you a different edge. And that brings us to the 4
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  exeriences that makes U the complete 12 key development
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  exeriences for HR leaders. The last four are categorised as
• 15:39
  selfimrovement. First one is seeking and
• 15:43
  accepting feedback from a mentor.
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  This is someone who is more senior than you was been there
• 15:49
  done that and someone you look up to and and learn from.
• 15:52
  I'm sure in the in the big four experience you had, this is
• 15:55
  working with senior partners and really sometimes just being a
• 15:58
  silent observer in the meetings and and in those conversations
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  just to learn from their skills. Absolutely.
• 16:06
  The second one is undertaking external studies or attending
• 16:10
  internal leadership development programmes and the study could
• 16:14
  be an MB AA study could be something that is beneficial for
• 16:17
  your development as an HR individual.
• 16:19
  The third one is surprisingly to many HR leaders, building
• 16:24
  numerical and financial awareness.
• 16:26
  Meaning as an HRD I'm not only comfortable talking about the
• 16:31
  people part of the annual report, but I'm equally
• 16:34
  comfortable to read the PNL and have a conversation with the CFO
• 16:38
  on cash flow. Now he or she is not expecting
• 16:42
  me to give them advice on how to optimise the operating free cash
• 16:46
  flow, but if I don't know what cash flow is and how it's
• 16:49
  derived at, I will not have the same level of development and
• 16:53
  capability at the the table when I'm having those conversations
• 16:58
  with them as an ex core peer. And last but not least, the
• 17:02
  fourth and last of the self improvement dimension is all
• 17:07
  about building and developing professional networks.
• 17:10
  I happen to know that you have one of these networks that you
• 17:13
  have set up yourself, but there are many more networks where
• 17:16
  people can take part and start to add value before then
• 17:20
  eventually extracting value and learning also things from how
• 17:25
  other people go about doing things.
• 17:26
  So these are the 12 formative experiences that will help any
• 17:31
  HR leader to develop themselves no matter whether they are the
• 17:34
  first, you know, level of juniority or if they are as a
• 17:38
  Chr at the highest level of seniority anywhere on those
• 17:42
  levels of leadership. You can look at these
• 17:45
  experiences if you have not ticked any of these 12
• 17:48
  experiences to have a meaningful conversation with your line
• 17:51
  manager and make sure that it becomes part of your individual
• 17:54
  development plan. Amazing.
• 17:57
  This is super amazing, right. I'll tell you something that I
• 18:03
  think would interest you, right. I am actually scheduled to
• 18:08
  deliver a keynote, our presentation for the Chartered
• 18:12
  Institute or personnel management in my country.
• 18:17
  It feels like looking, you're looking into my slides, right?
• 18:21
  And trying to try to try to tick off some things.
• 18:24
  But I'll ask real quick. The the topic I'm, I'm gonna
• 18:30
  speak on is AI people and performance, right?
• 18:34
  So if you could give me one or two golden Nuggets to add to
• 18:39
  that slide, to add to the deck, what, what would you say
• 18:42
  regarding AI people and performance?
• 18:46
  Right. Yeah, wow.
• 18:48
  I mean, just the AI topic, right?
• 18:52
  I mean, it's a big one, I will tell you that.
• 18:56
  And so again, I do not consider myself to be a deep expert on
• 19:00
  AI, but I am, I'm a regular user and I'm an early adopter.
• 19:05
  So few things I can share with you as key Nuggets and you're
• 19:10
  welcome to use any of this or completely ignore them.
• 19:13
  Is that as we speak, as we speak right now?
• 19:17
  I mean today is the 11th of May 2026, which is a very special
• 19:22
  day by the way, and a special week for me and coaches because
• 19:25
  this is the international coaching week.
• 19:27
  So this is where all the coaches celebrate the world of coaching
• 19:31
  and those non coaches and leaders can take part in various
• 19:34
  other freebie sessions, webinars and so on.
• 19:38
  So leadership is being rewritten Ademolo as we speak right now.
• 19:42
  And I'm not talking about incremental change, right?
• 19:45
  It's the biggest shift in leadership expectations in
• 19:49
  decades. And if you were to look at what
• 19:51
  CE OS say themselves about this, the role has changed more in the
• 19:57
  past year than in the previous 25 years.
• 20:01
  This is according to Economic Times, which is the largest
• 20:04
  magazine and and publication in India.
• 20:06
  The second key takeaway I would like to share with you is that
• 20:10
  there is an adoption shock happening right now as well,
• 20:14
  which means AI is already everywhere without people
• 20:18
  necessarily noticing that. And so you may or may not
• 20:21
  remember those. Robot devices that, you know,
• 20:24
  roam around your house and do the vacuum cleaning almost
• 20:28
  entirely independently, right. So if I look at, yeah, the
• 20:33
  latest statistics, just to to make the point there, 78% of
• 20:37
  organisations now use AI in at least one of the functions and
• 20:42
  94% are exploring or deploying Gen AI in some form or shape.
• 20:46
  And 71% already use Gen AI regularly somewhere in the
• 20:51
  business, which also means that this is not a future leadership
• 20:55
  topic. It's a current leadership
• 20:58
  reality and we all are encouraged to learn how to work
• 21:03
  with it. The second thing, the third
• 21:05
  thing I can share with you is that I find that we are at a
• 21:10
  leadership paradox right now, which means the tech is ready.
• 21:14
  And in most of the cases, the tech is far more advanced and
• 21:18
  the leaders were supposed to adapt that tool into the
• 21:23
  organisation who are supposed to bring that in and use it in a
• 21:26
  meaningful way, which means a lot of companies are looking to
• 21:31
  increase their investment into AI.
• 21:34
  But if you were to look at how many of those companies consider
• 21:37
  themselves to be mature in AI deployment, it's 1%.
• 21:42
  So the biggest barrier is not the employees or technology for
• 21:47
  me, its leadership alignment and vision and making sure that
• 21:50
  those leaders were supposed to enable this technology and make
• 21:54
  those decisions are really comfortable using that.
• 21:58
  And so I think it's very obvious for me that, you know, I call
• 22:02
  this the exposure effect that AI reveals leadership gaps as we
• 22:06
  speak. Because again, this is another
• 22:08
  study that was done by The Economic Times. 47 of the
• 22:12
  executives that they surveyed said that their companies are
• 22:15
  moving too slowly on AI due to leadership misalignment.
• 22:21
  Meaning the CIO or the CTO is having one idea, the CFO is
• 22:25
  having a completely different idea, and the DHR isn't entirely
• 22:29
  sure how to actually use that in a people sense.
• 22:32
  Which also means that over 50% of those organisations that The
• 22:36
  Economic Times of India surveyed report that there is no real
• 22:40
  measurable value from the AI investments they have already
• 22:43
  made. And you know, you have this
• 22:45
  podcast also for CFOs, that is that those are the worst
• 22:48
  investments, right? Where you spend the money and
• 22:50
  you don't have any measurable impact as a result of that. 0
• 22:54
  Retail investment. Yeah, that's a poor one.
• 22:59
  The translation of all this is that leadership capability, not
• 23:03
  technology, determines the impact of this new fantastic
• 23:09
  tool called AI. And so again, if I wanted to use
• 23:13
  a more modern example, I think there are boardrooms right now
• 23:17
  in this, you know, year 2026 that are already leveraging AI.
• 23:22
  So 86% of the corporate leaders use already some form of Gen AI
• 23:28
  either in M&A decision making or in making sure that the minutes
• 23:32
  of the boardroom are captured. The sentiment is measured at the
• 23:36
  minutes are, you know, gleaned for insights and what have you.
• 23:39
  56% of companies adopt AI primarily to improve decision
• 23:44
  making quality. And so leaders are not no longer
• 23:48
  decision makers alone, they are decision architects with the
• 23:52
  support of this, you know, call it a machine or AI technology.
• 23:57
  And so that leads to an interesting phenomenon, which I
• 24:02
  reside as the confidence fracture, which means that there
• 24:06
  are leaders who do trust AI, but they are also leaders and, and
• 24:11
  sometimes the same leaders who also are fearful of AI and what
• 24:14
  it actually can unleash in their organisation.
• 24:18
  Which means if you were to look at at Investopedia, which is one
• 24:25
  of the citations I use sometimes, it's almost half,
• 24:29
  nearly half of the CEOs that surveyed believe that most of
• 24:33
  the role could be replaced by AI.
• 24:35
  And at the same time, 77% say that AI is already disrupting
• 24:40
  strategy, which means this is the very first time leaders are
• 24:46
  simultaneously feeling empowered and threatened by the exact same
• 24:51
  force. And so again, AI can create
• 24:55
  performance, AI can create friction.
• 24:58
  And which is why I call that, you know, the reality of our
• 25:02
  productivity right now. So AI can raise productivity by
• 25:05
  15% in knowledge work settings, in, in, in, in the most specific
• 25:10
  way. And yet employees who spent
• 25:13
  significant time correcting AI outputs means that they are
• 25:18
  losing again, 40% of the time that they have saved is lost to
• 25:22
  reworking and rejigging and making sure that those things
• 25:26
  before they're presented, for instance, to leadership or
• 25:28
  customers are are legit. I won't mention the name of the
• 25:31
  big 4, but one of the big four recently had to pay a double
• 25:36
  digit $1,000,000 fine to a government because the the
• 25:39
  document that they had produced for that particular government
• 25:42
  had a lot of AI hallucination baked in.
• 25:46
  And that is really the worst case, right?
• 25:48
  So that means that as a leadership and as leaders, they
• 25:53
  must manage the AI illusion versus the AI value gap.
• 25:57
  And this is something real and something very important to work
• 26:00
  with. So to kind of sum it up, I find
• 26:03
  that we are facing what I call the capability divide.
• 26:07
  So we see that there is a new leadership elite that is
• 26:10
  emerging. If you look at the latest
• 26:12
  generations entering the workforce, they are digital
• 26:15
  natives. They are used to all sorts of
• 26:17
  different technology solutions as a very normal tool to come to
• 26:21
  the work. And, and that being said, I
• 26:24
  remember the time vividly when I was working for the famous Three
• 26:28
  Stripes where a particular board member would refuse to use
• 26:32
  emails because they said no, no, no.
• 26:34
  That's why I have my EA and, and she can type it all in.
• 26:37
  I would just use my voice recorder and I will not learn
• 26:40
  this technology anymore. So it's real and it's here.
• 26:44
  And executives with AI driven investment decisions show
• 26:49
  measurable productivity gains at the firm level, which also means
• 26:53
  that younger executives are significantly more likely to
• 26:56
  adopt AI. And that's what I call the
• 26:59
  capability divide, right? So the longer the workforce, the
• 27:03
  less likely they are to want to use these tools or just learn it
• 27:08
  at the surface level. And then there is the new
• 27:11
  generation entering the workforce and kind of being very
• 27:14
  confident with the application of that.
• 27:17
  So if I wanted to sum it up, you know, leadership is of crucial
• 27:21
  essence. So for me, it's not a question
• 27:25
  whether AI will or will not define leadership.
• 27:28
  It's it's really a question for all the leaders listening to
• 27:31
  your podcast right now, which is, are you defining AI right
• 27:34
  now? And that's, that's kind of the
• 27:37
  last thing I can say about the topic of AI.
• 27:39
  And, and just the caveat is I do not consider myself to be an
• 27:42
  expert on AI. I'm just an early adopter and a
• 27:44
  regular user of it. Amazing, amazing.
• 27:48
  You don't have to be an expert to be able to what I say, read
• 27:54
  the book when it comes to what what is happening, especially in
• 27:57
  leadership. And of course, I appreciate how
• 27:59
  you broke down the Generation Awards.
• 28:02
  It's it's something that I have spoken about on the forecast a
• 28:05
  lot. You know, being a millennial, I
• 28:08
  feel like I'm in the middle that generational war because the Gen
• 28:12
  X, the jet access, right? And of course the Gen Z and of
• 28:16
  course we have the Gen alphas coming up, right?
• 28:19
  And it's amazing to see what I say the way each of these
• 28:24
  generations, right, adopt technology.
• 28:27
  And of course, even within generational sets, right, you
• 28:31
  have like the guys that are the early ONS and the later on
• 28:34
  within the each generation. And of course, I think that the
• 28:38
  way they adopt technology is quite different.
• 28:41
  But Speaking of leadership, right, while I was just PwC, we
• 28:46
  have this framework for our prison professionals.
• 28:51
  So it starts with whole leadership, whole leadership,
• 28:56
  business acumen are global acumen.
• 29:00
  That is your ability to work with cross functional teams.
• 29:04
  You also had the technical competence and building
• 29:09
  relationships. So I used to I used to make a
• 29:13
  joke with my colleagues at PwC. I'm like these guys gave you
• 29:17
  they've literally given you the cheats code to succeed as a
• 29:21
  professional, right? But you've been a HR leader,
• 29:27
  right? You would have seen that a lot
• 29:30
  of executive transitions break high performance even pre at
• 29:35
  leaders. So what is really happening
• 29:37
  beneath the surface? So the failure rate is 40%,
• 29:42
  which is a shockingly high number, meaning if you were to
• 29:46
  be appointed CFO of KPMG or any other notable organisation, you
• 29:52
  have a 60 perc percent chance of succeeding and a 40% chance of
• 29:56
  failing. And the 40% is very well
• 29:58
  established because Hydrating Struggles, which is one of the
• 30:01
  largest search rooms on the planet has placed over 20,000
• 30:06
  executives in several thousand organisations.
• 30:10
  And when they over a 10 year time period, by the way, and
• 30:12
  when they went back and started to look at OK, from these 20,000
• 30:17
  that we have placed, how many have actually succeeded and how
• 30:20
  many have left the role and the company or quit or were fired
• 30:25
  sadly. And they found out the 40%
• 30:27
  number. And then again, there are other
• 30:29
  studies by Howard Business Review, McKinsey and Company,
• 30:32
  Centre for Creative Leadership. So they all come to a very
• 30:35
  similar conclusion. So that brings us to the
• 30:38
  question of, Oh my goodness, how can this be?
• 30:40
  Because I can tell you Alamola, as someone who spent
• 30:43
  considerable amount of time working in the HR function,
• 30:47
  there is a lot of attention, energy and focus that goes into
• 30:52
  those top level appointments. I mean, it's essentially never
• 30:55
  happening that someone just gets hired to be the CXO.
• 30:59
  In any organisation, there is typically a search firm
• 31:03
  involved. They do their own background
• 31:04
  checking, their reference checking their own set of
• 31:07
  interviews to make sure that the candidate is legitimate to be
• 31:11
  put forward on the long list. Then the company screens all
• 31:15
  their backgrounds and then you know, shortens the longest to a
• 31:18
  typical shortlist with three to five candidates typically the
• 31:22
  case. Then these three to five
• 31:24
  candidates will get invited for interviews.
• 31:26
  Typically not just a single interview, but multiple
• 31:29
  interviews with a number of key stakeholders.
• 31:32
  Always part of the the game. Sometimes there is additional
• 31:35
  tests that they have to perform, such as a psychometric or
• 31:39
  something on top. And despite all of this, 4 out
• 31:43
  of 10 don't make it. Which then brings us into your
• 31:46
  brilliant question as to how can this be like what gets in the
• 31:50
  way? And in my book, I speak about
• 31:54
  exponentially challenged executives that are finding
• 31:57
  themselves in a crisis state. It's just one crisis after the
• 32:03
  other, after the other, after the other that is getting in the
• 32:06
  way. I worked with a CEO not not too
• 32:10
  long a time ago. He was based in Switzerland and
• 32:13
  that was a division of a part of a large enterprise group.
• 32:18
  And they decided to carve out that division and do an IPO.
• 32:21
  So bring it into a different state and have it to be a
• 32:26
  standalone company listed on the Swiss index.
• 32:29
  And of course the first time it didn't work out because at that
• 32:32
  time there was a shortage of CPU's globally and this was an
• 32:36
  electric type business, meaning that they could not do the IPO
• 32:40
  without having secured those chips for an ongoing basis.
• 32:45
  The second time that they tried to attempt to do the same, the
• 32:48
  war began between Russia and Ukraine.
• 32:50
  And then the the investment banks told him that the the
• 32:54
  market isn't really a good one to do an IPO.
• 32:56
  So see, these are two things that are completely outside of
• 33:00
  his control. He did not, you know, cite this
• 33:03
  as an issue. He did not start the war on any
• 33:05
  country. But the reality is that he and
• 33:08
  his business were affected by that.
• 33:10
  So there are external factors. And you know, if you, I wanted
• 33:13
  to use two recent examples, the tariffs that were put in place
• 33:16
  by the Trump administration is can be a very hurtful thing for,
• 33:21
  for businesses outside of the US.
• 33:23
  And then the last one is the, the, the conflict that has begun
• 33:27
  in the region that I am based in, in Dubai here again,
• 33:29
  entirely without the doing of, of the, of the country.
• 33:33
  So that means that there will be factors that are outside of the
• 33:36
  executives control that can affect on their performance in
• 33:40
  the role. But more concretely, if I wanted
• 33:43
  to look at what are the things that are inside the executive
• 33:47
  leaders control, then the top three reasons for aggregated
• 33:51
  transition failure are to do with people, culture and
• 33:55
  politics. So as I say it on podcast like
• 33:58
  like yours, it's the functional or the technical skills that
• 34:01
  gets your heart into the C-Suite.
• 34:03
  And it's the lack of the so-called soft skills that gets
• 34:06
  you fired pretty quickly on the back end of that.
• 34:09
  Wow, interested now your book is actually titled Mastery and
• 34:14
  Executive Transitions. What What really inspired you to
• 34:19
  write it and what gap were you trying to fill with that book?
• 34:22
  Before we dive back into today's conversation, I want to share
• 34:26
  something important. This episode includes a paid
• 34:29
  partnership with Better Health, a platform designed to make
• 34:33
  starting therapy easier. I know from my own journey as a
• 34:37
  leader and entrepreneur that life can sometimes feel
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  uncertainty, and pressure build up, and you need a safe space to
• 34:48
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• 36:02
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  King James to get. 10% off your first month of therapy.
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  I encourage you to take that first step.
• 36:16
  If you've been thinking about it, sometimes the best
• 36:19
  investment you can make these in yourself.
• 36:25
  Yeah, look, I mean, despite the fact that I did work for some of
• 36:30
  the world's most admired companies, I I can't really put
• 36:33
  my hand on heart and say this one company did this process
• 36:38
  justice in the most pure way. And so I felt that this even
• 36:42
  companies that are generally considered best practise when it
• 36:45
  comes to employee onboarding somehow fall short of making
• 36:50
  sure that the general onboarding, which is perfect for
• 36:54
  99.5% of the total population, is translated correctly for the
• 36:59
  top C St executives. Because it's a whole different
• 37:03
  league and it takes a whole different approach to make sure
• 37:07
  that those guys and girls get appointed into those top
• 37:11
  positions and are having a decent chance of succeeding.
• 37:15
  So that was the the intrigue. And another time, this is you
• 37:19
  know, 20/13/2014 I did try to educate myself.
• 37:24
  I did look on Amazon and other places to find the books that
• 37:28
  speak about the topic only to find that there isn't a single
• 37:31
  book written and dedicated to this particular topic.
• 37:35
  There were a gazillion generic on generic on boarding books
• 37:40
  like the first 90 days is the most popular one and there are
• 37:43
  about 100 copycats books of the same.
• 37:46
  There wasn't a single book dedicated to and you know the
• 37:50
  1st 90 days just to use this concrete example, had a subtitle
• 37:55
  that the author dropped a few years ago.
• 37:58
  Critical success strategies. Critical onboarding strategies
• 38:01
  for leaders at all levels. And I have worked in the HR
• 38:04
  domain for too long to know that if something has been written
• 38:07
  for any leader at any level, it clearly is not fit for purpose
• 38:11
  for the top level leadership. So when I saw that there isn't a
• 38:15
  single book written on the topic, I thought to myself, you
• 38:18
  know what? I might as well start to do the
• 38:21
  research to then write the first book on the topic.
• 38:24
  And I'm really delighted to see that, you know, since my book
• 38:27
  has launched, there have been three additional books written
• 38:31
  on the topic, always with the CEO in mind.
• 38:34
  So the life cycle of ACEO or the new CEO are just two of those 3
• 38:39
  newly published book that look at the same topic through ACEO
• 38:43
  lens. So I I think it's fair to say
• 38:46
  that in a way I opened that category of books to top level
• 38:51
  leaders because no one else had thought of writing a book about
• 38:55
  it. Amazing.
• 38:57
  And of course, what a great way to say with my next question.
• 39:01
  Speaking of the 1st 90 days, what would you say are the most
• 39:05
  costly mistakes that C St executives make during their
• 39:12
  first 90 days in the new leadership?
• 39:14
  Role So the first thing I would say about the 1st 90 days is
• 39:17
  that it's nowhere near sufficient for anyone at the top
• 39:21
  of an organisation to really want to hang on to just that.
• 39:27
  And the reason I say that is because I find in my coaching
• 39:30
  practise and in my 20 plus years of HR experience at the senior
• 39:34
  level, transitioning at the very top is a 12 to 18 months job.
• 39:40
  It's never a 90 day job again. It's beyond me.
• 39:43
  Adamola while an incoming CEO must be sitting on their hands
• 39:48
  waiting patiently until day one to then start to run like crazy
• 39:52
  and then drop the ball again on day 90.
• 39:54
  It's just does not make sense to me, which is why if you look at
• 39:59
  the double diamond framework that I gave to the world, you
• 40:02
  know in my book is a 12 plus months journey and it consists
• 40:08
  of seven unique phases of which only one looks at the 1st 90
• 40:12
  days. I would like to go back one step
• 40:15
  and and it's interesting because the 1st 90 days I call that face
• 40:19
  immerse in my double diamond framework.
• 40:21
  It is only the second phase of the seven phases.
• 40:24
  There is a. The very important phase that is
• 40:26
  oftentimes missed because the book of this other gentleman
• 40:31
  sadly didn't quite reach the same level of fame as the first
• 40:34
  90 days. And that book is called before
• 40:38
  onboarding. Imagine, Adam Ola, you are the
• 40:42
  incoming CFO of a company called X, right?
• 40:46
  And the company has announced your appointment, but you have
• 40:49
  another six weeks until you're actually starting your new job,
• 40:53
  right? You're still in your old
• 40:55
  company. You have, you're about to leave
• 40:57
  that company, but the company X has already announced your
• 41:01
  arrival, let's say on the 1st of July.
• 41:04
  Yeah, that roughly gives us six weeks from now.
• 41:08
  There are many concrete things you can do between now and the
• 41:12
  1st of July that you do not want to wait for the 1st of July to
• 41:17
  start doing. First one is educating and
• 41:21
  grounding yourself in your new organisation, meaning reading
• 41:26
  all the material that can get your hands on going.
• 41:28
  If it's a public listed company, going on the website, logging
• 41:31
  into an investor relations portal and watching all the
• 41:35
  analyst and quarterly results announcements where the analysts
• 41:39
  are grilling the CEO or CFO and what they expect of the company.
• 41:42
  Reading strategy documents that they may make available to you
• 41:46
  because you have already signed your new contract of employment.
• 41:49
  So you know you're you're Privy to confidential information at
• 41:51
  this stage. If there is a predecessor in the
• 41:54
  position, if it's deemed appropriate, you can reach out
• 41:57
  to the CFO in the role who you will replace in six weeks time
• 42:01
  to have a conversation about what sense they make of this
• 42:04
  position, right? If they were to help you prepare
• 42:07
  your SWAT, what would be the SWOT that you would want to put
• 42:11
  on this slide deck of yours? If it's deemed appropriate, you
• 42:13
  can reach out to the finance leadership team that you will be
• 42:16
  inheriting in six weeks from now and introduce yourself to them.
• 42:20
  Give them a bit of a flavour about you, your style of
• 42:23
  leadership and what you expect from them and at the same time
• 42:27
  learn about them and what they expect of the incoming CFO and
• 42:30
  the the future line manager. And one last example I want to
• 42:33
  use is every company has at least one leadership team off
• 42:37
  site that they sometimes do externally, sometimes supported
• 42:40
  by someone like myself. If that event is about to take
• 42:44
  place in the next six weeks, it will be foolish for you not to
• 42:48
  make sure that you attend that event.
• 42:50
  Because guess what? That event is going to set the
• 42:54
  stage for the next 12 to 24 to 36 months to come.
• 42:58
  Which means that you want to make sure to have a seat at that
• 43:01
  table, even if it's not possible to give your input, at least as
• 43:06
  a silent observer. So you know what the CEO wants,
• 43:09
  what the board members want and all that.
• 43:11
  So you see, there are so many things that you can do even
• 43:16
  before you are technically on your day one in the role.
• 43:20
  And This is why I I say often on podcast that the 1st 90 days is
• 43:24
  a myth. And so it's only one seventh of
• 43:26
  the total equation. If you wanted to look at the
• 43:28
  double diamond framework as a success formula, it's only one
• 43:33
  out of the 7th of the equation of what makes a an executive
• 43:38
  successful during the first 12 months.
• 43:40
  Not amazing. So you you briefly touched on
• 43:45
  organisational politics, right, and cultural failure in terms of
• 43:50
  factors that influence, you know, whether an executive, you
• 43:55
  know, is successful in their role or not.
• 43:57
  But this is a burning question that is on the leaves of a lot
• 44:05
  of people in the corporate space, right?
• 44:09
  So why do technically brilliant leaders sometimes feel
• 44:15
  politically or culture and even when they achieve strong
• 44:19
  results? Yeah, see at the more I don't
• 44:23
  know about you, but have you come across a course that
• 44:27
  teaches people how to become better politics or how to become
• 44:30
  better culture? There isn't, right?
• 44:33
  Which means it's one of those things HR keeps banging out to
• 44:37
  managers and individuals and leaders.
• 44:40
  It's one of those things you have to learn on the job and of
• 44:44
  course you can work with someone like myself or other people who
• 44:47
  can help you to reflect and make sense of it.
• 44:50
  But allow me to use one particular aspect of the double
• 44:54
  diamond framework. And so I call that the 5C's,
• 44:57
  right? I mean, you are currently
• 45:00
  dialling into our episodes from South Africa and I know South
• 45:04
  Africa's an incredible country and great for many things.
• 45:07
  One of them are diamonds. So if you wanted to buy a
• 45:11
  diamond as an investment, let's say, or you wanted to gift it to
• 45:14
  someone who's close to you, the 5C's that make an outstanding
• 45:19
  diamond are carrot weight, colour, clarity, cut and
• 45:24
  certification. So it's a combination of those
• 45:26
  5C's that you will want to make sure that you get the best
• 45:30
  diamond for the budget that you have available for this present
• 45:34
  of yours. Now if I wanted to use the same
• 45:36
  5C's in the sense of the double diamond framework, the 5C's are
• 45:42
  context, arguably the most important CFO because it looks
• 45:47
  at the circumstances of the organisation, of the
• 45:50
  competition, landscape of the government and society
• 45:53
  surrounding this role, this company and the wider say called
• 45:57
  landscape. The second C looks at culture.
• 46:00
  This is looking at organisational culture.
• 46:03
  What are the leadership traits in this company?
• 46:06
  And they may be different in PwC than they are in EY, right?
• 46:11
  And it also looks at values. What are guiding principles?
• 46:15
  What are our beliefs in this one organisation here that may or
• 46:19
  may not be similar to whatever else I am used to.
• 46:22
  The third C looks at commitments.
• 46:25
  What is this company or firm committed to achieving for its
• 46:29
  customers, clients and society at large?
• 46:32
  What are the ambitious ambition levels in this one organisation?
• 46:36
  And it says a lot about what is expected to be also commitments
• 46:40
  from you as the incoming C-Suite executive.
• 46:42
  The 4th 1 looks at circles. What are the circles of
• 46:47
  influence, power, but more importantly, informal decision
• 46:52
  making? I won't mention the the name of
• 46:54
  the company, but there was a very famous CTO who had to be
• 46:59
  let go of because they went for a technology solution that made
• 47:03
  all the sense in the world looking at the analysis that
• 47:07
  McKinsey prepared for them. But they failed to check this
• 47:11
  with someone who was considered to be the deep subject matter
• 47:16
  expert in the same organisation. He unfortunately did did not
• 47:20
  have the most senior job title next to his name.
• 47:22
  That's why he wasn't even on the radar of this particular CTO.
• 47:25
  But with that choice that he made essentially had to be let
• 47:29
  go of. And so informal decision making
• 47:31
  means who are the go to people in your organisation for the
• 47:36
  topic that are crucial to your mission success.
• 47:39
  And and last but not least, the fifth C looks at confidence
• 47:43
  levels. What are the levels of employee
• 47:45
  engagement in this company? What is the description of a
• 47:49
  leadership DNA here? And so the way I use the 5C's is
• 47:53
  I give them, I give the executive leader, if I'm
• 47:56
  coaching them a very brief explanation of what they stand
• 47:59
  for. Then they take it as their
• 48:01
  homework to sit down and think about what about the context of
• 48:07
  this new position and if it's a new company, even more important
• 48:11
  that I want to think about. And more importantly, that is
• 48:16
  different than the context of the other role in the other
• 48:19
  company that I was hired to do right now.
• 48:23
  What about the culture? What about the commitment?
• 48:25
  What about the circus, what our confidence?
• 48:27
  And I want them to think about mitigation strategies ahead of
• 48:31
  the of the coaching conversation.
• 48:33
  And when they come to the coaching conversation, I will
• 48:37
  coach them around every one of these five CS.
• 48:40
  And by doing that, what I will do is I will equip them to the
• 48:44
  best degree possible to not walk on all these landmines that are
• 48:50
  laid out for them around people, culture and politics in the new
• 48:54
  position slash new organisation. So what what would you say is a
• 49:00
  role of emotional intelligence right in executive leadership
• 49:05
  today? Is is it teachable?
• 49:08
  Of course, like anything, you can learn things, right?
• 49:12
  I mean, IQEQ are, you know, considered to be important to
• 49:18
  anyone that wants to grow their career.
• 49:20
  I would actually want to add a third one to this at the danger
• 49:25
  of creating a new acronym, but I call that Transition
• 49:28
  Intelligence TQ, right, which is OK.
• 49:32
  Just because you have been successful in the past
• 49:35
  transitioning from one position to another, it does not
• 49:38
  guarantee whatsoever that you will be continuing to be
• 49:42
  transition ready and successful in your future transition.
• 49:45
  Which again, you know, doing the work with someone like myself.
• 49:49
  And I have trained up 72 coaches by now who are certified
• 49:53
  transition coaches. So everything I use in my
• 49:55
  coaching practise has been made available to those 72 coaches.
• 49:59
  And they're already working for companies just to give you some
• 50:02
  names like ABP, Adidas, Louis Vuitton, Hennessy, LVMH, the
• 50:06
  largest luxury company in the world and many, many more others
• 50:11
  to who are deploying these tools in their transition coaching
• 50:14
  practise. So again, IQ is important, EQ is
• 50:18
  important, but TQ is equally important, if not probably more
• 50:23
  important because chances are at the MOLA if you are considered
• 50:26
  for the CFO position in company X, you have already demonstrated
• 50:30
  high degree of IQ EQ already. Now the question is can you do
• 50:34
  the TQ on top? That is very, very important.
• 50:39
  And of course, I think bringing it back to what I say outside of
• 50:44
  the leadership, let's talk about real life scenarios, right?
• 50:48
  Amelia wanted to host a webinar, but the tool couldn't deliver.
• 50:51
  Zooming out, she turned to Webinar Key, an expert solution
• 50:54
  for webinars. With seamless setup and
• 50:56
  intuitive design, she delivered the perfect webinar.
• 51:00
  Webinar Key host webinars like a boss.
• 51:04
  You've been a tough guy in the UK, doesn't transition to you
• 51:10
  being a tough guy in South Africa or in Nigeria or in the
• 51:14
  US for example, right? So same thing with
• 51:18
  organisations, right? You being a high performer
• 51:21
  software does not mean that you would necessarily, you know,
• 51:24
  just come in and plug and play. But I think a lot of people do
• 51:28
  not realise that they come and I think it's probably like a
• 51:32
  mindset thing. So what would you say in terms
• 51:35
  of adjusting the mindset because of being a lot of people don't
• 51:41
  realise this about me. I used to be, did I say teacher?
• 51:46
  I used to be a lecturer for professional students, right?
• 51:49
  So I've trained a lot of Chartered Accountants.
• 51:51
  I've treated thousands of Chartered Accountants, right?
• 51:53
  Recently, a post on LinkedIn was what reminded me of my past life
• 51:57
  that oh wow, you used to lecture, you used to train
• 52:00
  Chartered Accountants, right? But it's interesting to see how
• 52:06
  from the people that I trained, people who had a finance
• 52:11
  background, right tend to underperform compared to people
• 52:18
  without a finance background. And when I had a seat back to
• 52:21
  think about it, it's mostly because the guys without a
• 52:25
  finance background come with the mentality of I need to play
• 52:28
  catch up. I don't know this thing, I need
• 52:32
  to know it, but a lot of the guys with the finance or admin
• 52:36
  or management background, they come with the ideology of I know
• 52:39
  it's what I know already, but they now get outperformed right
• 52:45
  by the people without a finance background.
• 52:47
  So I'd like for you to to to shed some light on that.
• 52:51
  So two things come up for me. I mean, firstly, and that's,
• 52:56
  that's the easy of the two. So let's get that out of the
• 53:00
  way. Every organisation has their own
• 53:03
  beliefs, sometimes not even captured anywhere.
• 53:06
  And so I can tell you when I used to work for British
• 53:11
  American Tobacco BAT, the most GM/CEO appointments were made of
• 53:19
  leaders who had a marketing background.
• 53:21
  And you may say that's right or that's wrong, but the reality
• 53:24
  was that more than 65% of all GM/CEO appointments were made of
• 53:31
  former managing directors, sorry, made of a marketing
• 53:35
  directors. And it was never a written rule
• 53:38
  anywhere. We never considered that to be
• 53:40
  the norm. The reality was though, that
• 53:43
  that was where the most appointments were made from.
• 53:46
  Now Fast forward to Vodafone where I worked with the group
• 53:50
  CFO and then the finest leadership team and the 27,000
• 53:54
  finest leaders all around the world in 24 markets.
• 53:56
  Most of our GMs and CEOs were former FDS and CFOs, right?
• 54:03
  Again, it was one of these organisational beliefs that
• 54:06
  wasn't captured anywhere. And nobody said, oh, but I will
• 54:09
  not accept this GM appointment if he or she does not have a
• 54:13
  finance background. But these are the beliefs that
• 54:16
  sometimes colour our decision making right, whether we like to
• 54:21
  admit it or not. So that's the first thing I want
• 54:23
  to say. So what you said, I can't
• 54:25
  universally say that's true or not true.
• 54:28
  I just don't have a big enough sample size to be able to say,
• 54:30
  yes, people with the finest background outperform the other
• 54:33
  peers. What I can say though is what
• 54:36
  you said initially, which is when I describe the most common
• 54:40
  executive transition challenges, and I cite 12 in my book, I
• 54:45
  speak about challenges like the new organisation challenge,
• 54:48
  right? If you have been appointed in a
• 54:51
  new company, that's already one transition challenge you need to
• 54:55
  take care of. The second one is the big
• 54:57
  promotion challenge. If you have never been ACFO
• 55:00
  before, you may have been a head of finance or a finance target,
• 55:03
  but never AC suite finance executive.
• 55:06
  That's already your second transition challenge.
• 55:10
  The third one is the leading former peers challenge, meaning
• 55:15
  or you would just appear to all these people for whatever
• 55:19
  reason, the company has decided that you are now the PAC leader.
• 55:22
  And that in itself creates a whole different level of dynamic
• 55:27
  with all of your peers because guess what?
• 55:31
  That's what you have to live up with up to right now.
• 55:34
  The 4th 1 is what Michael Watkins very politically
• 55:38
  correctly refers to as the Corporate Diplomacy Challenge,
• 55:42
  which I think is a nice word for what I call politics.
• 55:45
  Again, no company likes to admit that this thing called politics
• 55:49
  exists in their company. It's always some competitors
• 55:52
  problem there, but the reality is, and I've seen that first
• 55:55
  hand, as soon as you move from a country position into a regional
• 55:59
  or into the global head office role, which I have done multiple
• 56:02
  times over, you get to be exposed to a high degree of
• 56:08
  politics. And if you cannot deal with
• 56:10
  that, well guess what? That's why it's one of your
• 56:13
  transition challenges to overcome.
• 56:15
  The fifth one is what you referred to as the international
• 56:18
  move challenge. I moved from Germany to the
• 56:21
  German speaking part of Switzerland and you could argue
• 56:24
  it's pretty much the same thing. The reality is if you were to
• 56:28
  move from Dublin to London, although technically all these
• 56:33
  are English speaking kind of cities and countries, the
• 56:35
  reality is you will face a very different cultural challenge.
• 56:38
  The 6th 1 is the turn around challenge, meaning you have
• 56:43
  always been the captain of ships that have had sunshine and
• 56:48
  steady, you know, performance. Suddenly you have to deal with a
• 56:53
  ship that is about to sink or hit the iceberg.
• 56:56
  And so the question is can you do that as well?
• 56:58
  You know, in German, we say to them, shouldn't better capitate,
• 57:01
  meaning nice weather captains who have always been riding the
• 57:06
  the waves somehow, you know, through luck or whatever
• 57:09
  circumstances. But now that the ship is about
• 57:12
  to hit the iceberg, do they have what it takes to stir the ship
• 57:15
  away from disaster? The 7th 1, which is 1.
• 57:18
  I have faced myself oftentimes. I've been headhunted many times
• 57:22
  in my career and often times the mandate that I was given was to
• 57:27
  make sure that I repositioned the HR function towards what the
• 57:32
  company expects of the HR leaders.
• 57:34
  Meaning I had to realign the HR function around more commercial
• 57:38
  targets or more closely with the business goals.
• 57:41
  And the last one out of the 12, the top 8 is the so-called
• 57:46
  business portfolio challenge. Think of Walt Disney as one of
• 57:50
  these examples. Walt Disney, the biggest revenue
• 57:53
  and profitability driver for them is the theme parks, a fish.
• 57:57
  They have, I don't know, 8 or so around the world, but they also
• 58:00
  have an IPTV proposition, which is called Disney Plus.
• 58:04
  But they also have merchandising articles, which is like, you
• 58:07
  know, mugs and and and and cups and toys and what have you.
• 58:11
  Now managing an enterprise that has all these various businesses
• 58:15
  underneath is a whole different complexity.
• 58:20
  And so these are just eight of the transition challenges I
• 58:24
  wanted to share with you office. You touched upon one or two.
• 58:27
  And what really gets those executives to fail 40% of the
• 58:30
  time at the moolah is the fact that it's a stacking of these
• 58:35
  challenges at the same appointment level.
• 58:39
  So if I use my own little example, when I was hired by
• 58:42
  Rush to move from Germany as a HRD for Europe to become the
• 58:48
  global head of HR for HR and Communications, that meant that
• 58:52
  I was faced with five transition challenges all at the same time.
• 58:57
  I had the new organisation challenge.
• 58:59
  Rush was a new company. I had never worked for them
• 59:01
  before. Actually, if I wanted to add
• 59:04
  another one, it was a new industry.
• 59:05
  I'd never worked for pharmaceuticals before.
• 59:08
  Then. I had the big promotion
• 59:09
  challenge. It was the first global role
• 59:11
  that I was hiding to. I suddenly had 140 country
• 59:15
  footprint to work with, not 8 European countries that were
• 59:18
  almost in the same time zone anymore.
• 59:20
  I also have to face and deal with the corporate diplomacy
• 59:24
  challenge or the politics. Because I was working out of
• 59:26
  Basel, which was the global headquarters.
• 59:29
  I also had to work with the International Move Challenge,
• 59:33
  which was something I had experienced before, but not
• 59:35
  quite in the same level because Switzerland was new for me as a
• 59:38
  new destination. And last but not least, they
• 59:41
  created the position as a new position and hired me into.
• 59:44
  Which means that although I did mention that that was a new
• 59:47
  challenge for me because I had to own my space, that was newly
• 59:51
  created space for me and for the position, which meant that some
• 59:55
  of the established HRDS who didn't want to let go of their
• 59:58
  beloved projects and their beloved budget.
• 1:00:01
  I had to force my way into those and, and, and get those to be
• 1:00:05
  transferred to me because that was part of my new remit.
• 1:00:08
  So you see how it's like you want to eat a burger that has
• 1:00:12
  five patties and you're trying to eat this thing all at the
• 1:00:15
  same time. And of course, the more you
• 1:00:18
  start to stack up, the more challenging and tricky it
• 1:00:21
  becomes. Amazing.
• 1:00:24
  Like at this point I feel I feel really envious for the audience.
• 1:00:29
  Of course we have delivered a lot of value today.
• 1:00:34
  But why are you speaking about those transitions?
• 1:00:37
  You know, especially from a regional role to a global role,
• 1:00:41
  right? But I think within the last two
• 1:00:43
  months we had the ex president of Coca-Cola International,
• 1:00:50
  Ahmed Boza on the podcast, right?
• 1:00:53
  And he was ACFO before he was made president.
• 1:00:59
  I think, you know, American companies called the CEO's
• 1:01:01
  president, but he spoke about that transition from the CFO
• 1:01:07
  role to the president role and spoke about the transition from
• 1:01:14
  regional roles to now the international roles.
• 1:01:17
  But one thing that really stuck for me from his, from that
• 1:01:23
  conversation with him moving from the CFO role to the CEO
• 1:01:27
  role was being a CFO, you're more buried in the numbers,
• 1:01:32
  you're more buried in the technical details.
• 1:01:34
  But moving to that CEO role, he now had to be more of a people
• 1:01:41
  leader, right? So I'd like for you to speak to
• 1:01:45
  that transition from, you know, one level of C streets to
• 1:01:49
  another level, especially, you know, if you're probably moving
• 1:01:53
  from the CMO to the CEO or CFO to CEO, we really don't see how
• 1:01:59
  it affects these individuals, right?
• 1:02:02
  You it's more like you're moving from a specialist role to a
• 1:02:05
  generalist role. So what are the guard rails that
• 1:02:09
  help with executive success? Right?
• 1:02:12
  Making those transitions, yes. So the short answer is the
• 1:02:16
  double diamond framework is what I would recommend that
• 1:02:19
  particular executive to also utilise, ideally with someone
• 1:02:23
  like myself or one of the 72 coaches I've trained because
• 1:02:26
  that really gives them the highest degree of a success.
• 1:02:29
  Now if I wanted to unpack maybe one or two additional tools, one
• 1:02:34
  of them is not based on empirical research.
• 1:02:37
  You know, my book is very well researched.
• 1:02:38
  I spent five years just researching the topic.
• 1:02:41
  I have 156 citations in my book, so the appendix is 22 pages
• 1:02:46
  long. This particular framework is
• 1:02:49
  something that I have created on my own without necessarily
• 1:02:53
  basing it on an empirical framework.
• 1:02:56
  It's, it's based on my humble experience of and the sample
• 1:03:00
  size of 350 executives I have coached in the last 14 years now
• 1:03:06
  in the last 12 years. So I called them the six
• 1:03:10
  essential qualities of extraordinary leaders, OK.
• 1:03:14
  And for this particular CFO switching into the CEO role,
• 1:03:19
  these are the six qualities I would want them to consider and
• 1:03:25
  rank themselves on a spider web to say what is my current state
• 1:03:30
  as a leader, honest assessment and what is my desired state as
• 1:03:35
  a, as an incoming international CEO.
• 1:03:38
  So that the first two are having the confidence and a high degree
• 1:03:43
  of self-awareness. OK, I won't mention any
• 1:03:46
  particular names, but there are many very famous walled
• 1:03:50
  politicians who have a tonne of confidence but aren't
• 1:03:54
  necessarily very good in taking a look.
• 1:03:56
  And the hard look in the mirror to determine is any of what I'm
• 1:04:00
  saying actually landing with my audience or is it a bit too
• 1:04:04
  much? So these two out of the six help
• 1:04:07
  the leader to expand their identity.
• 1:04:10
  I call that self leadership. OK, the next two are being
• 1:04:15
  connected. Imagine a Wi-Fi signal and being
• 1:04:19
  an, an inspiring leader. And again, I know many leaders
• 1:04:23
  who have a tonne of inspirational leadership.
• 1:04:26
  They go on a big stage and they, they make the, the, the most
• 1:04:29
  incredible speeches, but they fail to speak to the individual
• 1:04:33
  that is swiping the floors late in the evening in their office
• 1:04:36
  because they just don't know what to say or how to connect
• 1:04:39
  with that level of individual. So it's the combination of the
• 1:04:42
  two that enhances the impact of that executive.
• 1:04:46
  And I call these two the combination of two team
• 1:04:49
  leadership. And that brings me to the last
• 1:04:52
  two qualities of extraordinary leaders.
• 1:04:55
  The fifth one is courage and the 6th 1 is clarity.
• 1:05:00
  Again, stereotypical. I know a lot of executives who
• 1:05:04
  have a tonne of courage. Let's go, go, go, go, go, but do
• 1:05:09
  not necessarily provide the necessary clarity around why we
• 1:05:14
  are going this direction. What is the what's in it for
• 1:05:17
  everyone, not just for me or for the board, if we were all to
• 1:05:22
  rally behind this one mission and and really achieve this
• 1:05:25
  target here. So it's a combination of the two
• 1:05:28
  that elevates the results of an executive leader.
• 1:05:31
  And I call these two business leadership.
• 1:05:33
  So to sum it up, it's about being confident, self aware,
• 1:05:37
  connected, inspiring, courageous, and having the
• 1:05:41
  clarity to make sure that you align yourself leadership with
• 1:05:45
  team leadership, with business leadership so that you can
• 1:05:48
  expand your identity, enhance your impact and elevate results.
• 1:05:53
  And that's one particular toolkit is something that I can
• 1:05:57
  work with a leader, for instance, also to do a
• 1:06:00
  qualitative 360 interview with people that are the boss, their
• 1:06:05
  peers and the dark reports to gather their meaningful input
• 1:06:09
  and wise I download that for the leader.
• 1:06:11
  They will then do the self-assessment as to what is
• 1:06:14
  the current state of mine when I look at these six qualities and
• 1:06:19
  what is my desire to be. And that then becomes our road
• 1:06:22
  map for success. Amazing.
• 1:06:25
  But behind the courageous faces in public, right?
• 1:06:30
  We know that a lot of leaders struggle with the imposter
• 1:06:35
  syndrome at the highest of levels, but unfortunately, the
• 1:06:39
  stakes are the highest. So how?
• 1:06:42
  What's your recommendation for how to deal with imposter
• 1:06:46
  syndrome? Yeah, I mean, look, I, I think,
• 1:06:51
  and I do just briefly allude to this in in my book, right.
• 1:06:58
  I speak about the imposter syndrome in, in my book very
• 1:07:02
  briefly, because I really, again, I, I'm not a
• 1:07:05
  psychologist, I'm not a psychotherapist.
• 1:07:07
  I do not claim to know too much about the topic.
• 1:07:13
  What I can say, though, is that a lot more executives than they
• 1:07:19
  would admit actually have faced impostor syndrome, right?
• 1:07:24
  That's the real truth. I cite a particular study that
• 1:07:28
  looks at what is the actual percentage, right, of leaders
• 1:07:32
  and people who have cited that they have come across this
• 1:07:36
  phenomenon previously in some form or shape.
• 1:07:41
  And it's it's quite shocking because that number is 70%.
• 1:07:46
  So 7 out of 10 people have experienced these feelings at
• 1:07:50
  some point in their lives. And I cite the International
• 1:07:54
  Journal of Behavioural Science from 2011 here.
• 1:07:57
  And so why is I say that? Yeah, I mean, you know, impostor
• 1:08:02
  syndrome can be a challenge and can stand in the way of the
• 1:08:07
  leader and their mission and probably what whatever is the
• 1:08:12
  the success that they want to achieve.
• 1:08:15
  But we also need to bear in mind that there are real upsides of
• 1:08:21
  impostor syndrome. And again, I think that that's
• 1:08:24
  sometimes neglected or unexplored, but there are some
• 1:08:28
  real benefits to be had if, you know, you wanted to look at that
• 1:08:33
  as an actual upside. And I think there are scholars
• 1:08:37
  more famous than I am and more deep on the matter that have
• 1:08:42
  pointed out those upsides of coming across and facing
• 1:08:46
  impostor syndrome. And some of them are things like
• 1:08:50
  because you are so worried that you may not perform right, which
• 1:08:55
  is a real thing if you have impostor syndrome, you over and
• 1:08:59
  over prepare for whatever you are going to do.
• 1:09:02
  So if it's a keynote presentation, you really want to
• 1:09:05
  make sure that you have researched the topic and you
• 1:09:08
  have taken enough attempts with your family and friends to
• 1:09:13
  really get comfortable and a little more confident at
• 1:09:17
  presenting this topic. If it's about, you know, meeting
• 1:09:21
  and attending in meeting boardrooms and so on, you are
• 1:09:25
  more likely. If you're not quite a confident
• 1:09:28
  in your contributions yet, you may reach out to someone who is
• 1:09:32
  more senior than you are in the same boardroom and ask them to
• 1:09:37
  give you proper feedback on the back end of each meeting.
• 1:09:41
  Meaning again, you are taking very valuable feedback on board.
• 1:09:45
  And not only that, but you're actually listening for
• 1:09:49
  improvement suggestions here, and you are not dismissing the
• 1:09:52
  feedback because you think you're above it all anyway.
• 1:09:55
  And what, what, what really is there for you to improve on?
• 1:09:59
  And so there are real reasons. And this is actually called as
• 1:10:02
  the Dunning Kruger inverse, which means that sometimes
• 1:10:06
  competence correlates with doubts and that doubt drives the
• 1:10:11
  behaviour that compounds into more competence.
• 1:10:14
  So for me, I want to take it out of this imposter kind of title
• 1:10:20
  and bring it to humility, right? I mean, this is one of the
• 1:10:23
  profound things that I learned from one of my mentors.
• 1:10:26
  His name is Doctor Marshall Goldsmith, who said that, you
• 1:10:29
  know, he was in a conversation with a particular leader and he
• 1:10:33
  asked the leader, what is your development edge?
• 1:10:35
  What, what topic would you like to develop on?
• 1:10:37
  And the leader actually turned around and told him, look, I'm,
• 1:10:40
  I'm complete. There's nothing left for me to
• 1:10:43
  improve on. And this is where Marshall said,
• 1:10:46
  may ioffer you a humble suggestion.
• 1:10:48
  He said, sure, yeah, go ahead. And he said, how about humility,
• 1:10:51
  right? Because for me that that seems
• 1:10:53
  to be a development area to you. So humility is a learning
• 1:10:58
  posture and certainty is not, which is one of the reasons if
• 1:11:04
  you look at the research that's been conducted by a doctor,
• 1:11:07
  Robert Hogan, the founder of Hogan Assessment Systems, is
• 1:11:11
  that if you look at CEO performance over a longer time
• 1:11:14
  period and you look at the total shareholder return, the CEOs
• 1:11:18
  that have demonstrated humility are outperforming their peers
• 1:11:22
  who have demonstrated a lot of charisma or charismatic
• 1:11:26
  leadership. This is.
• 1:11:28
  Really amazing. And you know, I love that
• 1:11:30
  correlation between confidence, sorry, competence and doubt,
• 1:11:35
  right? But for me, I believe that
• 1:11:41
  confidence comes with competence.
• 1:11:44
  So I don't know if you agree with that.
• 1:11:46
  Of course, the more competent you are, the more confident you
• 1:11:49
  become. But I also love that humility
• 1:11:54
  that you spoke about, right? Because humility actually helps
• 1:11:59
  you to have, or would I say helps you to become teachable.
• 1:12:03
  And the moment you stop being teachable, it puts a ceiling on
• 1:12:07
  your growth, right? But a lot of people don't talk
• 1:12:12
  about the mindsets. And on this forecast, we have a
• 1:12:16
  philosophy, mindset, skill set, tool set.
• 1:12:20
  That is, before we collaborate with anybody, we want to
• 1:12:25
  evaluate where is your mindset art.
• 1:12:26
  All right, but believe that for you to be successful at
• 1:12:30
  anything, right, you need to first of all, have the right
• 1:12:33
  mindset, then develop the right skill sets, then adopt the right
• 1:12:37
  tool set, then you can actually achieve success.
• 1:12:41
  So while Speaking of the mindset on the pressure, right, you
• 1:12:44
  talked about the fair weather captains.
• 1:12:46
  It's very easy to to achieve success on the, you know,
• 1:12:50
  Clemence weather conditions, right?
• 1:12:52
  But what role does mindset play when you're navigating
• 1:12:56
  uncertainty, restructuring organisational politics by
• 1:13:00
  contingencies? What role does mindset play?
• 1:13:04
  You know when you're under pressure.
• 1:13:07
  Yes, and actually I wasn't quite successful trying to explain
• 1:13:11
  that. I think you and I are saying the
• 1:13:12
  same thing. So the honest version is.
• 1:13:14
  But when I look at, you know, someone even coming to me with
• 1:13:17
  the imposter syndrome as one of the issues they want to
• 1:13:20
  overcome. Feeling like a fraud is often a
• 1:13:24
  feature, not a bug. OK.
• 1:13:27
  Which means that you only feel like an imposter when you're in
• 1:13:31
  a room, when you feel that you're stretched to get into.
• 1:13:36
  So people who feel perfectly entitled to where they are
• 1:13:39
  usually, in my opinion, aren't growing, right.
• 1:13:43
  So the discomfort is the tax on operating above your previous
• 1:13:47
  levels or above your what, what you thought to be your
• 1:13:50
  competence levels, right? Which also means that again, if
• 1:13:54
  I wanted to look at it that way, imposter syndrome tends to make
• 1:13:58
  people better at the thing that they are insecure about, which
• 1:14:03
  means that they tend to over prepare, they tend to double
• 1:14:06
  check, they listen harder in meetings and with, you know,
• 1:14:11
  taking feedbacks more seriously instead of dismissing it and
• 1:14:15
  saying, well, I'm a complete product, look at me right, what
• 1:14:18
  more can I possibly learn? And this is where the Dunninger
• 1:14:22
  Kruger inverse is. Real competence correlates with
• 1:14:27
  doubt, and that doubt drives the behaviours that compound into
• 1:14:32
  more competence, which also means that humility is a
• 1:14:35
  learning posture and certainty or competence per SE is not.
• 1:14:41
  It also keeps you decent to other people.
• 1:14:43
  Let's face it, if you have some degree of impostor syndrome, you
• 1:14:48
  tend to read the room, you tend to assume others you know know
• 1:14:52
  things that you don't and avoid the kind of confident, you know,
• 1:14:56
  steam steamrolling that wrecks teams and conversations.
• 1:15:00
  And so again, for me, it's not a good or bad thing.
• 1:15:05
  You can look at it through different lenses.
• 1:15:08
  But yeah, of course mindset plays a big part because if if
• 1:15:11
  you had that, you know, a grotesque mindset that you're a
• 1:15:15
  complete product, well then then you have done, you have outdone
• 1:15:18
  your learning curve that there's nothing really you can learn.
• 1:15:21
  And that in itself is is not a good sign.
• 1:15:24
  Amazing. So have you actually seen AI and
• 1:15:29
  digital transformation increase leadership pressure for
• 1:15:33
  executives and how should they respond?
• 1:15:37
  Of course, I mean, it's another one of those unknowns if you are
• 1:15:41
  not a deep technical expert and and everyone is looking at you
• 1:15:45
  to come up with the brilliant solutions that you know, they're
• 1:15:49
  also waiting for it. But for me, again, it's not
• 1:15:51
  necessarily about having the deep technical competence.
• 1:15:55
  I mean, if every executive had to develop deep technical
• 1:15:58
  competence on every trend that comes the way they, they would
• 1:16:02
  never finish their learning and they would still be stuck in
• 1:16:05
  some formal university degree and training.
• 1:16:08
  So again, it, it comes back to what I said before, which is,
• 1:16:11
  you know, if you are open enough, if you have a learning
• 1:16:16
  curve where you don't consider yourself to have all the answers
• 1:16:19
  to all the questions that are coming your way.
• 1:16:21
  If you work with people who do are deep subject matter experts
• 1:16:27
  and help you to prepare those decisions in a more meaningful
• 1:16:31
  way, that's all you need to do. And of course, you, you know, as
• 1:16:34
  we say, you need to start drinking your own champagne.
• 1:16:37
  I mean, how many times have I seen that in HR where we, you
• 1:16:41
  know, some of the better initiatives that we rolled out,
• 1:16:44
  whether it was an ERP implementation or something
• 1:16:46
  technologically related. You, you experiment with it
• 1:16:50
  first with your own population before you start to roll it out
• 1:16:53
  into the wider organisation. And those critical learnings
• 1:16:57
  must be embedded in the final rollout of the tool or whatever
• 1:17:01
  the solution is before you do that.
• 1:17:04
  Wow, interesting. So when I look at the data in
• 1:17:08
  terms of the demographics of this forecast, we have a highly
• 1:17:14
  educated audience for Refonique. I think I saw that more than 40%
• 1:17:20
  of the leasters of this forecast have more than a first degree
• 1:17:26
  and I think about more than 20, about 20%, they're about have a
• 1:17:32
  master's degree or higher now. But that means that we, we have
• 1:17:38
  an audience that is predominantly made-up of
• 1:17:41
  professionals and entrepreneurs. So I'd like for you to speak to
• 1:17:46
  the founders, to the entrepreneurs, right?
• 1:17:48
  What can they learn from these corporate executive transitions
• 1:17:54
  that we have been talking about? Like what are the transferable
• 1:17:57
  skills, right that they can learn from in terms of
• 1:18:02
  transitions that can actually help them to save years of
• 1:18:06
  costly mistakes? Yeah.
• 1:18:08
  I mean, look, if they are leading organisations that are
• 1:18:12
  large enough to have executives hired and working for them, well
• 1:18:17
  then the topic applies to them universally, right?
• 1:18:20
  It's the same thing. And if they haven't quite
• 1:18:23
  reached that level yet, my advice to them is, and this may
• 1:18:26
  be a punchline for you, invest in preparedness, not in
• 1:18:30
  prediction. That is my ultimate kind of key
• 1:18:34
  takeaway that I want to share with them.
• 1:18:37
  And, and again, Adam, what I really enjoyed our conversation
• 1:18:41
  and I really hope that this was what you had in mind when you
• 1:18:44
  reached out and said, let's, let's have a have a podcast
• 1:18:46
  recording together. Oh, wow, amazing, amazing.
• 1:18:50
  And of course, you know, we had the number one, number one
• 1:18:53
  feature is #1 ranked features in the world on the podcast a few
• 1:18:59
  weeks ago. And it's like you guys are
• 1:19:02
  saying the same thing. She talked about preparedness
• 1:19:06
  instead of predictions. And this is the number one
• 1:19:09
  futurist in the world. Futurists are known for
• 1:19:11
  predicting future trends, right? So preparedness is actually very
• 1:19:17
  important. And of course, you know, we
• 1:19:18
  appreciate that. So before we let you go, I
• 1:19:22
  definitely we need to do a part to you because we, we've had a
• 1:19:26
  lot to to speak about. And of course, we have a lot of
• 1:19:28
  value to still provide to the audience, right?
• 1:19:32
  So before we let you go, we we do have a tradition, right?
• 1:19:36
  Like you tell me what name you would like to see on the
• 1:19:40
  podcast. I mean, one name I can recommend
• 1:19:43
  to you because I found him quite interesting is a gentleman
• 1:19:46
  called David Pope and he's a communications and presence
• 1:19:53
  trainer and guru. So if you if if you have an
• 1:19:57
  audience that is interested in how they can enhance the
• 1:19:59
  presence and the voice and the whole thing, I think that's
• 1:20:03
  that's going to make for a very interesting conversation.
• 1:20:07
  Wow, interesting. So you know the guy, you can
• 1:20:09
  invite him. So what guy should should should
• 1:20:11
  I invite? Give me a name to.
• 1:20:13
  Invite. Yeah.
• 1:20:14
  David Pope. I know him.
• 1:20:15
  Yeah. I'm happy to make an
• 1:20:17
  introduction on your behalf. OK, amazing.
• 1:20:20
  But what guy is it that you don't know?
• 1:20:22
  That you think I should reach out to you?
• 1:20:25
  That I don't know. Well, maybe some deep AI expert,
• 1:20:31
  someone who has been in the machine room training those
• 1:20:35
  algorithms on what they are capable of that you know, may or
• 1:20:41
  may not be as as known as Sam Oldman or someone of that
• 1:20:45
  nature. Oh wow, interesting.
• 1:20:47
  You know what? I have had somebody that fits
• 1:20:50
  that same description on the broadcast and they leave in your
• 1:20:54
  neck of the woods. So I think I might make an
• 1:20:57
  introduction. His name is Doctor Elias Meno,
• 1:21:00
  very, very brilliant Russian, Polish AI experts.
• 1:21:06
  I think you, you'd, you'd love that introduction.
• 1:21:10
  Please just remind me after the port.
• 1:21:12
  So quick fire route questions, right?
• 1:21:15
  So quick questions. Just give me the quickest answer
• 1:21:18
  you can give me. So #1 would be what is your best
• 1:21:23
  leadership book? Yeah, it's a it's a it's not a
• 1:21:26
  new book, but I loved reading that book.
• 1:21:28
  It's called the Coaching Habit by Michael Bunge Stanier.
• 1:21:32
  What I loved about the book is it's written for a non coach
• 1:21:35
  audience. And so this book really teaches
• 1:21:38
  you as a leader, as a line manager, if you wanted to use
• 1:21:42
  the instrument of coaching more often without necessarily
• 1:21:45
  training to become a coach. The Coaching Habit is your must
• 1:21:49
  read book. The coaching habit by.
• 1:21:53
  Michael Bunge's tenure. Thank you.
• 1:21:56
  What would you say is the most underrated?
• 1:21:58
  Skill. The most underrated executive
• 1:22:01
  skill. Humility.
• 1:22:05
  Amazing humility. I knew it had to be a soft
• 1:22:08
  skill. So AI, do you see it as an
• 1:22:12
  opportunity or as a trek? Where does AI see it in the
• 1:22:17
  analysis on boards? Can be both, depending on your
• 1:22:22
  worldview and your attitude towards technology innovations.
• 1:22:27
  OK, so #4 is what is the biggest leadership myth that you
• 1:22:34
  disagree with? The 1st 90 days is enough to on
• 1:22:38
  board at the executive level. OK.
• 1:22:41
  And of course, last but not the least, what is one word for
• 1:22:45
  leadership? That is one word that defines
• 1:22:47
  great leadership, and why that's word is above the authors.
• 1:22:52
  Wow. I mean, for me, it would be,
• 1:22:57
  unsurprisingly, TQ or transition intelligence that that for me
• 1:23:01
  really defines the cream of the crop.
• 1:23:04
  Because again, you could have done this several times over,
• 1:23:07
  not exactly knowing how and why you were successful before.
• 1:23:10
  But if you're able to articulate that, if you're able to be an
• 1:23:15
  inspiration to your peers, be a mentor to others who want to,
• 1:23:19
  you know, learn more about this and how they can be more
• 1:23:21
  successful, that for me, is the real ultimate leadership
• 1:23:25
  quality, I guess. I'm basin I do not disagree with
• 1:23:31
  you from me to you, it's a very big thank you.
• 1:23:34
  I always say it is that gratitude is good attitude and
• 1:23:37
  when a person shares their time with you, they share their life
• 1:23:39
  with you because the SI unit measuring life this time.
• 1:23:43
  So love and massive respect to you for joining us today for the
• 1:23:48
  insides, you know, gives you wealth of knowledge that you
• 1:23:52
  shared today, right? It is super, super amazing.
• 1:23:55
  And of course, to the audience, right, guys, do not forget to
• 1:23:58
  subscribe, share, like, you know, comment support and also
• 1:24:04
  always go for something in your life.
• 1:24:06
  Conceive, believe, strive to thrive and of course, go
• 1:24:09
  achieve. For me, it's goodbye.
• 1:24:11
  And of course, back to Naveed. Do you have any final words
• 1:24:14
  before you leave us today? No, just to say thank you for
• 1:24:19
  having me on your show and that I can't wait to get my hand on
• 1:24:23
  the actual episode. Oh.
• 1:24:25
  Wow, it's just coming to you soon.
• 1:24:28
  OK. Bye, guys.