Latest / Beyond Leadership - Adopting a Coaching Mindset / #06 - How to Recover from Serious Illness: Lead.

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#06 - How to Recover from Serious Illness: Lead. · Beyond Leadership - Adopting a Coaching Mindset

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  you know, when you first heard or  when you first received the diagnosis,  
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  what happened to the MBA and  the international contract?
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  Well, yes.
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  I've spent some time thinking about it  this week and thinking, first of all,  
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  oh my goodness, what have you let yourself in for?
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  Now, you're going to have to  sit here and talk about it.
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  And verbalizing it is different  from it going on in your own head.
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  Welcome to Beyond Leadership,  adopting a coaching mindset.
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  In this series, our conversations aren't  about biography or polished advice.
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  They're about how decisions are made in  the real world when the pressure is on.
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  We'll anchor on one situation where  the path wasn't obvious and explore  
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  what goes on in the mind of a leader  when confronted with real tradeoffs,  
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  imperfect information, and  the need to move anyway.
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  This podcast is brought to you by Peer Plaza.
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  Human help instantly.
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  Lisbeth Fangel-Lloyd spent 27 years building  a life abroad, raising a family and working in  
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  international schools across the UAE, Indonesia,  and Brunei, always centered on inclusion.
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  In 2018, she returned to  Denmark and continued that work.
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  Then in 2022, just as her daughters  had left home and she was preparing  
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  for an MBA and another international  chapter, she was diagnosed with cancer.
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  The plan stopped.
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  What followed wasn't a pause, but a redesign.
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  I want to understand how she made that shift  
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  when the future she had mapped  out was no longer available.
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  what it is about on a more philosophical  perspective is that being what I've been  
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  is a middle leader being a  middle leader and wanting to  
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  go back to being a better qualified  middle leader just didn't happen.
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  So I sort of personally had to redefine  what leadership is and I have done that  
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  by becoming a self-employed person because  I think that is also a form of leadership.
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  Well, absolutely.
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  It's a it's a very important form of leadership.
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  You're you're now leading your  life and you're doing that alone.
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  You don't have a boss telling you what to do.
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  So, you're you're a supreme  leader in that respect.
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  Well, yes, but you know theory  behind all of that and all that,  
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  but that I think is probably the angle.
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  Very interesting.
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  You've made me think about it again this week.
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  And it's always good to go  back and think, isn't it?
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  Yeah.
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  I don't think we do it enough, do we?
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  Well, some people do. some people think too  much and other people just don't think enough.
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  What about you?
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  Do you think or how do you think?
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  You're going to put me on the spot now.
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  Yes, I love it.
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  And I do.
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  Lisbeth is what I call a natural coach.
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  She brilliantly asks me what I think.
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  Not for any other reason than curiosity.
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  It isn't that coaches aren't curious.
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  We are.
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  But we can get so caught up in  ensuring that we facilitate our  
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  clients well that our grounding in  curiosity can sometimes get lost.
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  Lisbeth reminds me how powerful  simple genuine curiosity can be.
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  I review.
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  I certainly do.
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  As a matter of fact, I have a I've built a  program for my team that at the end of each day,  
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  it's an attendance program because in Spain, we  now have to give our attendance to the government.
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  It's not happening yet, but I've created a  program to do that or a platform to do that.
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  And when somebody checks out, they can  voluntarily answer six questions and  
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  they can skip them and I don't see the  answers to the questions and they do and  
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  they can download them and you know all  the GDPR stuff that's involved with that.
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  I've written some questions and I  also made it possible for them to  
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  alter the questions so they can ask the  questions that mean the most to them.
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  And the idea is that you end your day with looking  back and seeing if there are the things that did  
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  you accomplish what you wanted to what is the  most important thing you want to do tomorrow.
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  Important questions to consider  and then if you want to skip them,  
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  you can skip them and they're only for them.
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  And I really enjoy it and I was very  pleased when I heard that they liked it.
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  They liked it very much.
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  Okay, that's good.
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  Yeah.
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  I mean, it was always voluntary,  so they didn't have to do it,  
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  but the idea that they also enjoyed it and  looked forward to it, I think that's good.
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  So, I think it's important to  at least be aware that you have  
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  that choice of thinking back or thinking forward.
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  As a matter of fact, I just had a coaching  session with a woman in Denmark Okay. who who  
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  were talking about calendaring and setting  aside a day to look forward and look back.
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  And she called it and I asked  her if I could use this.
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  She called it looking out the window,  whatever you want to call it, stopping
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  and taking stock of where we are  in our minds, feelings, stress,  
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  agreements with others, priorities, etc. is  one of the least valued tools in our arsenal.
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  Building in that habit is gold,  
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  especially if you find yourself on  the continuous hamster wheel of life.
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  And I thought it was fantastic.
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  You know, the idea that you're just  looking out the window and whatever  
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  thought comes up in your mind,  you can jot that down or not.
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  It was just but just review a little  bit what's going on in your mind.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  No, no, no.
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  I think you I think you're right.
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  I think it's super important as a teacher  in the IB system in in in my dark past.
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  We've always had to end a teaching unit  with asking the kids to reflect and it's  
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  also been part of the current teaching thinking  that the kids have to reflect on the lesson.
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  What went well?
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  What didn't go so well is is part of good  teaching practice and also reflect on the unit.
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  What did you do well and what didn't you do well?
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  And I'm going to say though that once kids have  had to do this for, for example, seven subjects  
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  over the week, they and I don't mean to be crude,  but they get really fed up with reflecting.
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  And they said, just let me  get the work done and move on.
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  And I guess the whole reflection thing is about  choosing the important things to reflect on.
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  I mean, may maybe you don't really  want to reflect on your maths lesson.
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  I mean, who cares?
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  Did you get the work done or didn't you?
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  Perhaps not everything is worth reflecting on.
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  Totally agree.
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  And again, it's it's really about  awareness more than than anything.
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  It's about, you know, being  aware that you can do that.
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  And sometimes we need reminders to do  that, but also reminders can be too much.
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  Lisbeth makes a valuable point.
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  There is simply not enough  awareness around the immense  
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  theft of energy and concentration caused  by software developers eager to addict  
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  you to their software constantly  reminding you of this and that.
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  How often are you actually  grateful for the reminder?
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  And how often is it just a nuisance  that you snooze without further thought?
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  Being aware of these two types of reminders  is a good starting point. taking action  
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  against the latter can greatly improve your  level of concentration throughout the day.
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  But getting back to your  situation and your restraint,  
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  you're diagnosed with cancer and you  decide that instead of going back to  
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  your job or finishing your MBA,  you decide to start a business.
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  Not too many people would have done that.  yeah, but I mean I did finish my MBA.
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  You did?
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  I did. but I mean are we are we recording now?
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  Are we start is this our beginning?
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  Because then I'll start waffling on about it  or if not we'll take it when we get there.
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  We started 12 minutes ago.
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  Oh, did we?
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  Yeah.
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  I don't I tend not to announce we're starting  now because it kind of kills the mood.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  Of course it does.
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  No, you're absolutely right.
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  So I did finish my MBA.
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  So the whole thing with with cancer  was obviously it came at a time when  
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  my husband I he figures heavily in this  obviously thinking okay this has been good.
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  The kids have moved on.
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  They are down moving on their  own track and they're doing  
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  really well and they don't really need us hugely.
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  So what can we do with our time?
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  We had thought a lot about going abroad again,  
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  taking up another international contract  and my husband had actually already started  
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  in Malaysia to set up an international  school for Charterhouse School in the UK.
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  So in any case, when sorry, quick  parenthesis about your husband.
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  Tell me a little bit about what  he does and or what he does.
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  So, so a long time ago, I met my husband  in the UK and he had just finished as an  
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  engineer at Rolls-Royce in Glasgow and  then he'd started moving on into physics.
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  So I met him just at the beginning of his PhD  
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  in physics in the UK and we spent a long time  at Manchester because he was at Manchester  
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  University and he started a couple of spin-off  companies with the patents that he'd made.
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  And then in 2008 we sort of thought, yeah, nice,  
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  but really what we would love to do is to  pursue our passion, which was to travel  
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  and to travel with our children. and he also  had a pedagogical qualification in his bag.
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  I was teacher trained in East Manchester and  
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  then we really had enough that we could  move abroad and we started in the UAE.
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  So in the UAE then Indonesia  and then in Brunei on Borneo.
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  He he's a physicist and he's from  Scotland when we moved to Denmark  
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  we also had to sort of really  find out what he wanted to do.
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  So there's a lot of things in it.
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  Also Denmark is not hugely welcoming towards  
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  people coming from what is now  considered a third country.
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  So you have to be a little bit  creative with these solutions.
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  In any case, we had decided we wanted  to do a little contract again, just a  
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  little flurry and it was going  to be Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.
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  Looking forward to going back to theat and etc.
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  I got a scholarship for an online MBA  from a university in Tampere in Finland.
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  And I finished my job here at the  International School of Billund,  
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  which I don't know if you know  Michael, but Billund equals LEGO.
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  And that we all have these funny little  hands and we're all made of plastic.
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  But in any case, I finished my job there and I  started my MBA online and I started a little bit  
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  of Airbnb here in our house because it all  seemed to work quite nicely and within two  
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  weeks of starting my online MBA, I had already  been on my trip to Finland met all my mates.
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  I was I was diagnosed with  galloping stage three cancer
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  and I was just so lucky that  I was in a really great place  
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  for receiving cancer treatment. so for the  next 16 months I had a really fantastic  
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  service and help from the cancer ward  in Esbjerg and so I finished my cancer  
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  treatment my preliminary cancer treatment  within two weeks of also finishing my MBA.  
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  so it also went hand in hand at the same  time my husband came home from Malaysia.
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  Okay, what do we do now?
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  We are two people, no job and  one cancer treatment between us.
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  What do we do?
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  So we established an Airbnb  business here in Billund because  
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  Billund is hugely attractive in the  summer and for us it worked quite well.
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  It's a flexible solution.
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  It gives us the room to do what else we  wanted to do and it meant well as I as as  
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  I said the operative word here is flexibility  and it gave us the flexibility that we wanted.
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  So after the 16 months when I was luckily  finished with the cancer I had finished my MBA.
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  It was an MBA in educational leadership.
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  I've really had to make some  decisions about what do I do?
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  Whoa.
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  Whoa.
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  Hold on a second.
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  I think we missed something important here.
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  The 16 months of dealing with cancer.
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  After all, this is the constraint  Lisbeth has been living with.
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  And constraints are theme of this podcast.
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  But I get it.
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  Lisbet is not one to ruminate.
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  She is quick on her heels,  ready for the next adventure,  
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  and hardly glances back at the turmoil behind her.
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  That says volumes about her priorities,  her resilience, her outlook on life.
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  My experience, my past experience in  terms of leadership was I had been a  
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  head of faculty for an inclusion  department at a very large and  
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  very prestigious school in Brunei  called Jerudong International School.
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  And I had been as I said head of faculty and  really enjoyed the middle leadership role  
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  of having some absolutely fantastic  teachers on my team who work really  
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  hard to make life easier for the weakest  students in this very academic school.
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  And I really enjoyed having the job of  of as I said making their lives easier  
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  so they could do a better job for  the students. so that was a large  
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  portion of my leadership experience  and I had to make some decisions.
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  What what do I do now?
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  Do I go back into teaching?
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  Do I go try and look for  another leadership position etc.
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  And and I suppose my big constraint in  this was that I probably didn't really  
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  feel that I had the huff and the puff  the energy to go back into teaching.
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  Now, pardon me, but you were  in remission at this point.
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  Yes.
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  I mean, technically speaking, I'm  I'm I suppose I'm still in remission.
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  I'm still receiving preventative treatment  and I will be for the next 8 years,  
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  but I'm I'm not inviting cancer  back into my life on any scale.
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  No, that's not too bad. you know  they've put all my data into the  
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  big spreadsheet into the big machine and  calculated that my odds are very good.
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  So I think that's really good.
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  It's really lucky.
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  I really feel like I've been super lucky  to get all thelp that I needed at just  
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  the right time in my life and being  able to find some flexible solutions.
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  Paradoxically, lucky is a word Lisbeth  uses eight times in this brief chat.
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  Her gratitude might be construed as  something she gained from beating cancer,  
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  but I think it played a great  role in how she beat it.
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  Being my own boss, I think was useful because I  
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  wasn't pushed back into a job  at a time when didn't suit me.
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  So, I was able to take things nice and easy.
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  Hm.
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  On on the one hand, you know,  obviously nobody wants cancer.
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  No.
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  On the on the other hand, it kind of stopped  your life for a bit for you to think about  
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  what you wanted to do in your next chapter  instead of just following along your path.
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  Do you feel that way?
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  Oh, absolutely.
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  Absolutely.
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  I think you're right to say I didn't invite it in.
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  I didn't want it, but it came.
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  And I certainly think that the universe  had something else and a different  
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  direction that was 180° different to what  I thought it was going to be back in 2022.
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  So yes, not what I expected, but it's what I got.
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  And then I was I really feel I was super  lucky that I was in a situation where I  
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  could make the best of it because I had  worked or we my husband I had worked and  
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  for long enough and accumulated enough  experience and resources that we could  
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  choose our own path and I know that  this is not the same for everyone.
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  It's not the a lot of people have to go back  into a situation for economic reasons obviously.
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  Sure. have to go back into a  situation that they might not  
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  like and they might not feel is the  new direction that they want to take.
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  But in my case, I was just really lucky that I  was able to go in a new direction and follow.
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  And I think the new direction came a  largely as a result of my MBA studies  
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  because as part of the MBA studies I did,  I completed a what was called an a Reiss  
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  Motivation Profile at the beginning of the  course and much of the work throughout the  
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  course related to me as a leader in the  light of my profile or the profile that  
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  I was given as part of the Reiss Motivation  Profile and it taught me a lot about myself.
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  Mhm.
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  For example, it taught me a  lot about how idealistic I am.
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  That made me see that perhaps this  is why in education I've sometimes  
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  felt frustrated at things not going  the way that I thought they should.
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  Particularly because I have always in in my  teaching career, I've always worked with the  
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  weakest students and had strong opinions  about how we should look after them.
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  And I could see with the outcome of this  new profile, it did teach me, oh, okay,  
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  I can see that there are some things here  that will always frustrate me in a job.
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  M and this has later on this whole profile  has later on led me to think well maybe what  
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  I really should do is try to take the best of  my work that what I have felt was the best in  
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  my job in in in middle leadership take  that and turn it into my own business.
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  What what a privilege.
• 19:32
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• 20:25
  And so what is your business now?
• 20:27
  My my business is new.
• 20:30
  It's a baby. and it is I coach and I am a  consultant for companies small to medium-sized  
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  companies and as I said I've carried on the idea  of the Reiss Motivation Profile and I use it as a  
• 20:49
  tool to help inclusion in the workplace because  once you have completed your profile you have a  
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  lot of words to use to talk about yourself to  verbalize yourself to put yourself into words.
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  Also in Denmark, just like many  other workplaces in the world,  
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  we have conflict occurring  and we don't really know why.
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  And I am not necessarily saying that  people want conflict in the workplace,  
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  but they find them happening without knowing why.
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  And and I can give by way of example myself.,  I have found out that I'm hugely idealistic and  
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  therefore I get frustrated when I don't see the  best things happening for my former students and  
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  this is something that will likely always  occur because that is a part of me.
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  It is what drives me.
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  It's not necessarily wrong, but it  can frustrate me if it's not met.
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  If it's a need that's not met.
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  So that is my company.
• 21:51
  I help people discover what  drives them, what motivates them,  
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  what gets them out of bed in the mornings and  what frustrates them at the end of the day.
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  And I do this for people  and I do this for companies.
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  You know, I'm curious.
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  You're saying you're you're frustrated sometimes  because you can see a better way of doing things.
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  How does that come out in behavior?
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  Well, that's interesting.
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  But I think perhaps in my past in  my in my previous school in Brunei,  
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  I felt it was very easy because I felt like I  was being listened to and leadership listened  
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  to me and took heed and would come and  ask me questions and at in the essence  
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  of it we all want to be heard in one way  or another and I think I get frustrated  
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  if I feel that I'm not heard because I feel I  have a lot of exper experience in education,  
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  broad experience and long experience broad from  different systems long and broad also because I  
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  have taught in probably five six different  countries in the world in various systems.
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  I write exams for the IB.
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  I feel I do in a lot of ways  know what I'm talking about.
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  So it's frustration and then the frustration  is that something that you are working on?  
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  something that you because as you said  it's a part of your life probably is not  
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  going to go away because you're  going to notice these things.
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  You're highly attentive to  these these types of issues.
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  How do you deal with that?
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  How do you Well, it comes from a form of  idealism as we said and in in my case,  
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  as I said, this is was really my turning point  in that I'm trying to set my own business up so  
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  that I'm not part of a system where I go in  and I see the system and I feel frustrated.  
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  in in the previous jobs I've had, it's always been  about setting up systems for the weakest students  
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  and support systems or improving on support  systems. and that's not an ideal situation for me.
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  I understand now.
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  So therefore, I feel that  if I can be my own leader,  
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  work in my own company and be heard or feel  like I'm being heard, then I will be happy.
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  So, so instead of trying to change people, you  changed environment., yes, I think that's it.
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  Instead of trying to change the people  or the system in the places that I work,  
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  I have I have chosen to step out of this  and tried to change the environment instead.
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  Do you think you might have  ended up doing that even if  
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  this incident had hadn't happened in your life?
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  Oh, that's interesting.,  no, I don't think I would.
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  I don't I don't think I would because  likely very likely I probably would  
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  have just changed the place that I was  working at when I had my cancer diagnosis.
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  I had already started a change process and I  knew that I wanted to get away from a system  
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  that I felt was frustrating but I just  didn't know why it was frustrating but  
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  I knew that it was so the process  that I have been through in the  
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  last 2 three years has taught me a lot  about why I was feeling frustration and  
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  where it came from and what my own needs are  really in order in order to be a bit happier.
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  Yeah.
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  Can you help us with an  understanding of this methodology?
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  The the profile do you mean?
• 25:30
  Yeah.
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  Okay.
• 25:31
  So, I really like this profile.
• 25:33
  So, as I said, this is something I started my  MBA with on online because my course director is  
• 25:42
  is also very big in in the Reiss  Motivation Profile in the Nordics.
• 25:46
  And the point of it is Dr.
• 25:48
  Reiss statistically evaluated that in common we  all have 16 motivators, 16 drivers that drive  
• 25:56
  our values and this is something that's pretty  common to everyone but it work on a sliding scale.
• 26:04
  So if we take for example one driver and that  could be something like status you might be  
• 26:12
  statistically in the top 2%.
• 26:15
  This is just a statistical tool.
• 26:18
  Once you have responded to the to the  128 statements, it will tell you where  
• 26:24
  you are on the sliding scale compared to  the rest of the population statistically.
• 26:30
  Right?
• 26:30
  So it might tell you Michael that for you, you are  
• 26:34
  in the top 2% of the population  for whom status is important.
• 26:38
  And that means that I can use  that to predict your behavior.
• 26:43
  It means that for example means  that you will always go for a  
• 26:47
  job that will give you status symbols  and it will mean that you will always  
• 26:53
  go for an opportunity to show status  because that is what works for you.
• 26:58
  It's not it's not good, it's not  bad, it's just the way you are.
• 27:01
  It's it's like a figure how somebody's wired.
• 27:04
  It is just your wiring.
• 27:05
  It could also be Michael that you sit in  the bottom 2% of the population and that  
• 27:11
  means that you will never ever choose an  option that gives you more status or you  
• 27:16
  could be in the 20% that sort of sit a  little bit in the light blue zone or you  
• 27:21
  could be very average which means that  it depends on which team you get into.
• 27:26
  If you then work as part of a  team where status is important  
• 27:30
  then you will probably choose to go with the flow.
• 27:33
  So, we're like this on 16 different  parameters and it spits out numbers.
• 27:38
  The reason why I love it is  it doesn't give you colors.
• 27:42
  It doesn't tell you a label., I  mean, I did one of those profiles  
• 27:47
  and it told me I was a popcorn brain  and I was yellow and I said, "Okay,  
• 27:51
  well, what am I going to use that for?"  So, also because I come from a world of  
• 27:57
  of of teaching and we're really trying  to move away from giving kids labels.
• 28:02
  I much prefer the idea of a fingerprint  and I really like working with people  
• 28:09
  and them understanding, oh okay,  yes, this makes sense for me.
• 28:13
  This is why I act the way I do.
• 28:16
  And it also makes people understand that  just because it works for Michael and  
• 28:21
  his values work for him, that doesn't  mean that they'll work for Elizabeth.
• 28:26
  Michael's values are his and my values are mine.  and I can't expect you to live by my values.
• 28:35
  You know, when you when you talk about this,  I'm wondering how young this this begins.
• 28:42
  At what age do you form these  values and if they change over time?
• 28:48
  My instincts tell me that they're formed quite  
• 28:51
  young and that they don't  change too much over time.
• 28:54
  But you're the pro.
• 28:55
  You tell me.
• 28:57
  So the thing is so that when this  was created back in the '9s, Dr.
• 29:02
  Reiss said, "No, this does not change over time.
• 29:05
  You only ever need one profile because you is  you." but we know now much better or we have a  
• 29:14
  better understanding of the brain and we know  that we're more plastic than we thought were.
• 29:19
  But yes, I agree.
• 29:20
  I think it starts very early on and I  think it's a mixture of nature and nurture.
• 29:27
  I don't think it's just one thing  
• 29:28
  but obviously our values are are  very much shaped by our parents.
• 29:33
  Sure.
• 29:33
  I mean, Eric Berne in the 60s talked about  the five drivers, and it sounds like there  
• 29:40
  are some similarities to this, but it extends  it to a much more granular level so that you  
• 29:47
  can really take a look at yourself and  understand why you are the way you are,  
• 29:51
  or maybe not why you are, but  you can understand how you are.
• 29:55
  I think this is the crunch of it though  that this profile tells you why you do  
• 30:01
  the things you do whereas and  this is obviously not to talk  
• 30:06
  ill of other profiles but other profiles will  tell you how you do things not why you do it.
• 30:12
  So I think this one lends a little bit more  depth and I can give you another example.
• 30:18
  It's of a young man I was working with young.
• 30:21
  He was 27 and he was he  didn't I think that's young.
• 30:27
  Yeah, exactly.
• 30:28
  Right.
• 30:28
  But he was talking about how he's got  a big job in a big company in Denmark.
• 30:34
  He really loves his job.
• 30:35
  It pays him loads of money.
• 30:37
  So he's super happy.
• 30:38
  But he didn't understand why he  was struggling with his team.
• 30:42
  He did the profile and we understood that he  has a very low need for tranquility in the mind.
• 30:52
  He loves the change.
• 30:54
  He loves the challenge.
• 30:56
  And that means that he would come into work on  
• 30:59
  a Monday morning and he would say to  his team, "I've had this great idea.
• 31:04
  We're going to do this and then we're going to  do this and then we're going to do this and it's  
• 31:07
  going to be fantastic." and he could see that  there were team members who were upset with him.
• 31:13
  And you also know, Michael, that in Denmark,  
• 31:16
  if someone in your team is  upset, they will let you know.
• 31:20
  Yes.
• 31:21
  They're not going to hold back on that one.
• 31:23
  So, he didn't understand.
• 31:24
  He couldn't see.
• 31:26
  I'm sorry.
• 31:26
  That's a beautiful thing, by the way.
• 31:28
  It's a shortcut.
• 31:29
  It is.
• 31:30
  It is.
• 31:30
  It is.
• 31:31
  We don't We don't we don't hold back.
• 31:33
  So he could see that there were people  who were really upset by this situation,  
• 31:38
  but he didn't understand why.
• 31:40
  So we talked about it and he said  and he says it's super exciting  
• 31:43
  with all these ideas that he's got  of making things better, new systems,  
• 31:48
  but actually he was neglecting to see that there  are people in his team who want to finish a job  
• 31:54
  before they moved on to the next one because  otherwise they were going to get bellyaches.
• 32:01
  Sure.
• 32:01
  They needed the peace of mind of one job done  before they could move on to the next one.
• 32:07
  And he just didn't see that.
• 32:08
  You know, I'm just thinking of David Allen.
• 32:11
  He talks about the mad scientist and the bean  counter and how you want to travel along the  
• 32:19
  diagonal between those two, the X and the Y axis.,  and you want to travel between that diagonal.,  
• 32:27
  most of the time, you know, some  personalities are mad scientist.
• 32:31
  Hello, that's me.
• 32:34
  And and and then there are people  who are more bean counter-ish.
• 32:39
  And if you know that you're  more of one or the other,  
• 32:42
  then you're you're looking  for a way to equalize that.
• 32:45
  And it sounds like with with your framework,  you can find out where you are so that you  
• 32:52
  can at least understand why people  interact with you the way they do.
• 32:56
  You may not want to change that about yourself.
• 32:58
  That's up to you.
• 32:59
  But at least you can understand that, hey,  
• 33:02
  if I go too much in this direction,  I'm going to piss people off.
• 33:06
  And if you feel like doing that, you go ahead.
• 33:09
  But you should be aware of what's going on.
• 33:12
  And you're bringing out the awareness of this.
• 33:16
  Well, absolutely.
• 33:17
  This is this is it.
• 33:18
  So if I look at my own profile, I would say I'm  probably the furthest my highest motivation,  
• 33:26
  my strongest motivation perhaps is curiosity,  
• 33:29
  which means that I will it is almost  to the point where it's non-negotiable.
• 33:34
  I will always try and find out more,  
• 33:36
  which really annoys other people who are more  pragmatic, who just want to get the job done.
• 33:42
  So are you taking out your phone at dinner  and looking up the date of that happening?
• 33:47
  Yes.
• 33:48
  Yes, that's me.
• 33:49
  I will say, "Oh, let me just  go and Google that." Yes.
• 33:53
  Well, we don't Google anymore, do we?
• 33:54
  Now, no, no, no, we don't.
• 33:56
  We don't ch it, right?
• 33:58
  Or whatever, Gemini or whatever.
• 34:00
  I want to be agnostic here.
• 34:02
  No, you're right.
• 34:02
  You're right.
• 34:03
  But I am very, very curious.
• 34:05
  I know I'm driven by curiosity and this is part of  the work that of why I enjoy working with people.
• 34:12
  I'm very curious about people.
• 34:15
  You're certainly well suited for  this new occupation that you have.
• 34:19
  I want to ask you, do you ever have people  guess where they are before they take the test?
• 34:24
  Yes.
• 34:25
  And it is I find that it's something  that we don't really know because very  
• 34:32
  often well in my experience anyway  very often we know what other people  
• 34:36
  have said about us and that is  usually the story that we tell.
• 34:41
  Well, my parents said that blah blah blah  so therefore I must be etc. so usually when  
• 34:47
  we think of ourselves we think of ourselves  in terms of other people's feedback to us.
• 34:52
  So sometimes people are surprised  and usually the re motivation profile  
• 34:58
  you have to get into your head and  you have to keep reflecting on it.
• 35:01
  It you it's not going to give you the  answers in one day. you'll keep coming  
• 35:05
  back to it and thinking about it and  usually people will say it makes sense.
• 35:11
  It's not set in stone.
• 35:13
  For some people it's a surprise  and but most people will say it  
• 35:18
  makes a lot of sense to them when they think back.
• 35:22
  Sure.
• 35:22
  And just because it makes a lot of sense to them  
• 35:24
  doesn't mean there isn't  huge value in seeing that.
• 35:28
  It's it's like you have a you  know if you don't have a mirror,  
• 35:32
  you can have a feeling of how you look, right?
• 35:34
  You can you can touch your nose, you can touch  somebody else's nose and when I touch mine,  
• 35:39
  I know mine's bigger than the other people's  noses, but still having the mirror is very  
• 35:44
  helpful because it says, "Yeah, I was right  here, but I wasn't so on on spot here." Huh.
• 35:52
  I wonder how that's affected my relationships.
• 35:54
  Yeah.
• 35:54
  I wonder what I can change here to increase my  affinity I have with these people over here.
• 36:01
  So there are so many things that  you can do once you know what's  
• 36:05
  going on and have have some evidence of that.
• 36:09
  So it's it's no longer an idea  that you have about yourself.
• 36:12
  Now there's some it's evidence-based  which can I think be very helpful.
• 36:17
  Well, absolutely.
• 36:18
  This is and this is exactly it.
• 36:19
  It is something that gives you data  and the data it gives you is how you  
• 36:23
  responded to those statements compared to  how the rest of the population responded.
• 36:29
  So that's all it gives you.
• 36:30
  It is just statistics.
• 36:32
  There is absolutely no magic  in it. it is just numbers and  
• 36:39
  it gives you the words to start thinking about and  start talking about yourself and start thinking  
• 36:46
  about where the conflicts have been in the past  and where they're likely to be in the future.
• 36:52
  And so how does somebody practically work  with you? so I would so I have B2B and B2C.
• 37:02
  B2B is me going into the company.
• 37:05
  Everyone in the company or allocated  a profile would complete the profile.
• 37:10
  I would give a 60 to 90 minute feedback  session where we would talk about  
• 37:16
  a variety of things and the things that we would  talk about is this is what the profile shows me.
• 37:24
  Does it make sense to you?
• 37:25
  And usually people say yeah  that's surprisingly accurate.
• 37:29
  And then afterwards, okay, so  if you say that this is true,  
• 37:32
  you have by way of example  a huge need for acceptance.
• 37:37
  How does that affect your daily grind?
• 37:40
  How do you think how do other people view  you if everything you do is about gaining  
• 37:47
  acceptance from the group or how do you  view other people who are opposite to you?
• 37:54
  So in those 60 to 90 minutes, that's the sort  of conversation that we have. what does it mean?
• 38:00
  What does it mean for your life  in the past, in the future?
• 38:02
  What does it mean for your relationships?
• 38:04
  And it could be your work relationships or it  
• 38:07
  could be people in your team or it  could be your private relationship.
• 38:13
  It also gives you a personality report  a person a relationship report sorry.
• 38:19
  So it gives you a lot of information like that.
• 38:23
  So there's a one-to-one and then there's  if if people if if the people in the team  
• 38:29
  agree then there's the work with the  leadership and saying this is you as  
• 38:33
  a leader how do you affect your team as a  leader how do you put a good team together?
• 38:40
  So for example, if you have a team  that consists of people who are  
• 38:46
  highly competitive or you have two people in your  team who are really motivated by competition,  
• 38:53
  they will if you put them likely if you  put them into a customer service role,  
• 38:57
  they will very soon feel frustrated or even  worse get into arguments with the customers  
• 39:04
  who are ringing up to complain because  they're competitive. they want to win.
• 39:09
  These people probably need to get moved  into a sales position instead, a sales role.
• 39:15
  So that's the sort of work  that I do with leadership.
• 39:18
  Then talk about who have you got in your  team and how do you best make use of them?
• 39:23
  How do you grow a collaborative relationship?
• 39:27
  How do you diminish the conflicts?
• 39:29
  So that's a B2B model.
• 39:30
  And then as a B2C model, it is a  Michael does a profile and then we meet.
• 39:36
  It could be digitally or it could be physically.
• 39:39
  And again, it's a feedback session of 60 to 90  minutes happily followed up by another one in  
• 39:44
  three months time when people have had time to  think about what it actually means for them.
• 39:49
  And and I think this is really relevant  for people in a variety of ways.
• 39:53
  First of all, because it's all about values.
• 39:56
  What are your values?
• 39:57
  Where did you get them from?
• 39:58
  And how do they conflict with other people?
• 40:01
  It is relevant for a lot of the  expats we have in Denmark because  
• 40:05
  values is a good way to get to know the Danes.
• 40:08
  Danes have certain values.
• 40:10
  If you come from India for example and  you're here as an Indian programmer,  
• 40:15
  you have different values.
• 40:17
  Why are your values making conflicts with your  with your team or or the people in your team?
• 40:22
  Right?
• 40:23
  So that's one way.
• 40:24
  The other way to work in in in the workplace  is for example the younger people who the  
• 40:30
  younger professionals in in our experience  they have a big need for more coaching.
• 40:36
  They are interested in developing  themselves and they in in my  
• 40:41
  experience they often find when they  their leader is my age so 50 60 etc.
• 40:48
  There's suddenly an issue with the younger ones  wanting to talk about themselves, wanting to  
• 40:54
  develop themselves, meeting dinosaurs like me who  don't really know what this whole thing is about.
• 41:02
  So the young people speak one language,  
• 41:04
  the older people like me speak  a completely different language.
• 41:08
  So it is about inclusion through  having a common language.
• 41:13
  And I know we don't use the  word inclusion in the workplace,  
• 41:16
  but this is what I would do at school when I  work with students and getting them included.
• 41:22
  It was about enabling them to talk about  themselves, talking about what they can  
• 41:28
  do and what they can't do so that they  can verbalize themselves to the teachers.
• 41:33
  Tell me why we don't talk about  inclusion in the workplace.
• 41:36
  Oh, I don't think we like to call we  don't like to use the word inclusion.
• 41:40
  We do like well-being instead  and particularly also in Denmark.
• 41:44
  We like to use the more technical terms that are a  
• 41:47
  part of the whole ESG reporting  that we have to do for Europe.
• 41:51
  Right.
• 41:52
  So inclusion is a word that we use in school but  
• 41:55
  when we are older we like  to use the word well-being.
• 41:59
  Okay.
• 41:59
  Good good to note.
• 42:01
  I'm just thinking about your journey and how  you went from being a teacher and somebody  
• 42:09
  who got their MBA and took a left turn and  now you're doing what you're doing today.
• 42:16
  Sounds like you were first handed almost a  death sentence, but then it turned into a gift.
• 42:22
  Well, yes., and this is perhaps something  I'm not reluctant to talk about, but again,  
• 42:28
  it is I think I've been incredibly lucky  to be able to do this and I am acutely  
• 42:37
  aware that not everyone is in this lucky position.
• 42:40
  So, so yes, I think I have been lucky enough in  that I've been able to turn into something good.
• 42:47
  And you did turn into something. you  did look into yourself to understand,  
• 42:52
  okay, I have a new lease on life.
• 42:54
  What am I going to do with that?
• 42:56
  Am I reading into that or  or did you feel that way?
• 42:59
  No, no, absolutely.
• 43:00
  And I think you're right that I was given  some tools in in my MBA that allowed me  
• 43:05
  to look into myself and I also had to  at at the end of the whole treatment,  
• 43:09
  I also had to be a little bit realistic.
• 43:11
  Well, what am I actually capable of?
• 43:14
  I don't and I don't think a job in teaching or  a job in inclusion I'm not really sure it would  
• 43:24
  have been the best choice for me because  as as everyone knows being a teacher is  
• 43:30
  hugely demanding physically and mentally and it  takes a lot of energy to do a good job of it.
• 43:37
  So I'm just extremely lucky I think that  I have been able to take what I think  
• 43:44
  is my best work from previously  and distill it into my own job.
• 43:49
  I've made my own job taking the best from  the past and I think I'm hugely lucky.
• 43:59
  Miss I want to thank you  so much for our talk today.
• 44:02
  It was wonderful to see you again.
• 44:04
  Thank you.
• 44:05
  I hope it wasn't too painful for inviting me.
• 44:07
  I'm very flattered that you invited me.
• 44:10
  Oh, wonderful.
• 44:11
  Thank you very much.
• 44:12
  Thank you and have a wonderful weekend.
• 44:14
  Oh, okay.
• 44:14
  Thank you.
• 44:15
  And you too, Michael.
• 44:16
  What are your What are your plans for the weekend?
• 44:19
  Actually, we have great plans.
• 44:21
  We're going to Palamós, which is a small fishing  village on the Costa Brava where we have our  
• 44:30
  weekend home, which we haven't visited in three  or 4 months now because we did some renovation.
• 44:39
  It's not a very big apartment, but has a  very big terrace right next to the ocean.
• 44:43
  So, it's it's quite nice.
• 44:45
  But the renovation we did  was a 2 m by 2 m bathroom.
• 44:50
  Oh, and it took three months.
• 44:52
  Oh, you know, Michael, I totally believe it.
• 44:55
  It is not it is not easy.
• 44:56
  Mañana, mañana Spain.
• 44:59
  I want to thank Lisbeth Fangel-Lloyd for joining  
• 45:02
  me and sharing her story with such  honesty, lightness, and courage.
• 45:08
  Her perspective on cancer, work, gratitude,  
• 45:11
  and choosing of her environment  gave this conversation real meaning.
• 45:19
  Thanks to my guest and to  all of our loyal listeners.
• 45:23
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• 45:27
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• 45:31
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• 45:36
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• 45:42
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• 45:48
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• 45:49
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