Side Mirror: "Be Your Own Leadership Coach - Self Coaching Strategies to Lead Your Way" with Karen Stein

Karen is an Executive Coach with a depth of business experience from over 30 years in the professional services industry, including 23 years as a Partner of Deloitte. After 16 years as a Tax Partner and following completion of her Master of Science in Coaching Psychology, she commenced her second career designing and implementing the Coaching Program for Women Partners at Deloitte.

With over 2,000 coaching hours and as a Professional Certified Coach (ICF), Karen currently provides executive coaching to evolving senior leaders, supporting them with
achieving their professional goals. She also regularly volunteers with Dress for Success and the Bambuddha Group, providing coaching support for their clients.

Karen most recently published her first book, Be your own leadership coach (self coaching strategies to lead your way) with Major Street Publishing. Her hope is that this will provide more equity to coaching by sharing evidence-based self coaching practices, which can be used by you, in the moment, when your coach is not on hand. Through building your self coaching strategies you will be better equipped to lead as your best self, improving your wellbeing and that of your teams, organisation, and our communities.

I recently caught up with Karen virtually and I thoroughly enjoyed talking with her about her book and I'm delighted to introduce her to you in this episode.

Connect with Karen on LinkedIn: Karen Stein
Buy her book: Be Your Own Leadership Coach

Thank you to our sponsors:

ASKE Consulting
Email: hello@askeconsulting.co.uk

Aquilae
Email: cvm@aquilae.co.uk

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Episode recorded on 27 September 2023.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

I am sitting in lovely Siesta Key Florida.

Sherene Redelinghuys: 0:03

I'm coming from Bangkok in Thailand, Prague

Andy: 0:06

the Czech Republic, Cairo in Egypt, Auckland, New Zealand, and London, England. Welcome to Career-view Mirror, the automotive podcast that goes behind the scenes with key players in the industry looking back over their careers so far, sharing insights to help you with your own on your host, Andy Follows Hello, listeners, and welcome to this side mirror episode of Career-view Mirror. If you're a regular listener, thank you and welcome back, you'll be aware that most of our episodes feature interviews with people with a link to the automotive industry who kindly share their life and career journeys with us. We celebrate their careers listen to their stories and learn from their experiences. We also publish these side mirror episodes in which we introduce guests or topics related to careers or developing ourselves or people we lead parent or mentor that we hope you'll find valuable. For this episode I'm joined by Karen Stein. Karen is an executive coach with a depth of business experience from over 30 years in the professional services industry, including 23 years as a partner of Deloitte after 16 years as a tax partner. And following completion of her Master of Science in coaching psychology, she commenced her second career designing and implementing the coaching programme for women partners at Deloitte with over 2000 coaching hours and as a professional certified coach certified by the international coaching Federation, Karen currently provides executive coaching to evolving senior leaders supporting them with achieving their professional goals. She also regularly volunteers with Dress For Success and the Bambuddha Group providing coaching support for their clients. Karen most recently published her first book Be Your Own Leadership Coach, Self Coaching Strategies to Lead Your Way with Major Street Publishing. Her hope is that this will provide more equity to coaching by sharing evidence based self coaching practices, which can be used by you in the moment when your coach is not on hand. Through building your self coaching strategies, you'll be better equipped to lead as your best self improving your well being and that of your team's organisation and our communities. I recently caught up with Karen virtually and I thoroughly enjoyed talking with her about her book. I'm delighted to introduce her to you in this episode, and I'm looking forward to hearing what resonates with you. Let me take a moment to tell you about our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by ASKE Consulting who are experts in executive search resourcing solutions and talent management across all sectors of the automotive industry in the UK and Europe. I've known them for almost 20 years and I can think of no more fitting sponsor for Career-view Mirror. They're the business we go to at Aquilae When we're looking for talent for our clients and for projects that we're working on. ASKE was founded by Andrew Macmillan, whose own automotive career includes board level positions with car brands and leasing companies. All ASKE consultants have extensive client side experience which means they bring valuable insight and perspective for both their employer and candidate customers. My earliest experience of working with Andrew was back in 2004, when he helped me hire regional managers for my leasing Sales Team at Alphabet. More recently, when Aquilae was helping a US client to establish a car subscription business ASKE Consulting was alongside as helping us to develop our people strategy and to identify and bring onboard suitable talent. Clients we've referred to ASKE I've had an equally positive experience. Andrew and the team at ASKE are genuinely interested in the long term outcomes for you and the people they place with you. They even offer the reassurance of a two year performance guarantee, which means they have skin in the game when working with you. If you're keen to secure the most talented and high potential people to accelerate your business and gain competitive advantage, do get in touch with them and let them know I sent you. You can email Andrew the team at hello@askeconsulting.co.uk or check out their website for more details and more client feedback at WWW.askeconsulting.co.uk ASKE is spelt A S K E. You'll find these contact details in the show notes for this episode. Okay, let's get back to our episode. Hello, Karen and welcome and where are you coming to us from today?

Karen Stein: 4:40

Well, I'm located in my study in Sydney, Australia on a cool and rainy night.

Andy: 4:46

Yeah, thank you for joining me in your evening time. Really appreciate that. And thank you for joining me you've written Be Your Own Leadership Coach. And it's helpful. It's a gift to people it goes some way towards making coaching more accessible to more people. It's structured in a way that really appeals to me. I love the topics that you've chosen to include for your 12 practices. So it's got just to explain and we're gonna talk a lot about it in the conversation, but you you give 12 practices for people to use is very practical, but even the order that you've addressed them in, I don't know, just fitted with me, it resonated with me. I really enjoyed it. And I suspect also that subconsciously, I appreciate your years of corporate experience that you have. So they you know, before you became a coach, you have this corporate career and subconsciously, I appreciate it that that comes through when you're writing the book. And also, it's packed with lots of academic references for people who like their guidance to be evidence based, with plenty of notes at the back for that. And you also share your own experiences as well. You've got your own experiences coming through there as a coach and a leader. So my first question is, how do you come to be in the position now of having written this lovely book and sharing it?

Karen Stein: 6:04

Well, first of all, thank you very much for for your assessment of my book. I really appreciate that. I'm glad it's resonating. How did I come there, it's after a long career in professional services. I found that I pivoted into my second career. So initially, I had I'd studied Economics and Law, I had every intention to practice in family law. I went off and got my practising certificate to be a solicitor. And in the back in the day before the recruitment dot coms where we could access adverts online, we had lots of billboards with lots of job ads, and I plucked an advert off a billboard, I went very unprepared, assuming that they would be a practising law firm, and found myself in a small boutique consulting firm, and went through the interview realise that they weren't, in fact, going to practice in family law at all. They were practising in an area of taxation, it was all around research and development incentives. And strangely, they offered me a job, which I took thinking I'd keep it for six months, and then get a real job. But this is how I fell into my corporate career, I fell into the world of tax. And I stayed there for seven years, and I absolutely loved it. And I was finding myself doing really purposeful work helping organisations seek funding from government. So they could support the the additional research and development they were doing for the benefit of the Australian economy. And in time, I decided it was time to move on. I learned a lot about who was working in the same space as me. And I liked the team in one of the professional services, firms, Deloitte, and I thought they'd be fun to work with. So I stepped in and was able to take upon an offer to work in Deloitte. And so my career continued in the world of tax. And I was seen finding that I was getting opportunities in support of myself in support of my career, whether it was with mentors and coaches, and so on. But as I came closer to what I call my halfway point, I was getting closer to 50. So we've moved, you know, quite rapidly through my career here, too, I was moving up to 50. And I was thinking about chapter two of my life. Because I'm determined to live to 100, I had felt that the shine of the r&d tax world was losing its glistening somewhat, and I felt that I needed to do something a bit more purposeful and impactful for chapter two. So I took my mind back to that, that instinct to want to help people when I wanted to do family law, I wanted to help individuals. And I thought that perhaps this would be an opportunity to assist people by looking at coaching. So I've retrained, I took up a Masters of Science in Coaching Psychology, and I thought about leaving the organisation I'd been in, I'd been a partner in taxation at Deloitte for 16 years, I didn't really want to leave Deloitte, I really enjoyed the organisation, I was never devoid of opportunities. But I did feel that what choice did I have, if I really wanted to go and help individuals, I'd have to go off and be my own executive coach. But then an idea came up where I could actually do it within. And so I guess it was a bit of a courageous conversation I had I had a conversation with the Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and suggested to her that perhaps I should leave, but only leave the tax business and step into what was in our executive development business and roll out a programme to coach women partners of Deloitte and she was excited about it. And so were the the COO and the CEO of Deloitte, Australia at the time, they supported me and I did just that I left the world of tax I deregistered as a tax agent, so never to return back to that world. And I started coaching women partners across Deloitte, Australia. So for the last seven years, that's been what I've doing been doing. But I recognise that in time, as I finished my masters as I was supporting people in the business with coaching and also supporting people through voluntary work, I deal with a number of organisations and coaching their clients. I realised that I was only being able to access or impact a smaller number and I felt Perhaps that I could increase the equity of access to coaching strategies by writing this book. And really, that was the inspiration behind it, if I could write a book where I could help people access coaching strategies, so they could support themselves in the absence of a coach, well, that would really go towards improving their well being that would allow them to have a better leadership impact, which would hopefully ripple to the people around them. And in doing so that would slowly and surely lead ourselves to have a better world. So from going back in the day, we're talking 30 plus years ago to really wanting to help the individuals through family law to come into this part of my life where I can still help individuals but perhaps in a different way, with a different impact. I felt that I've lived through a career which has exposed me to seeing the corporate world experiencing it and having a lot of interesting opportunities, enjoy, and then coming out the other end to support other people so that they too can have their best life.

Andy: 10:55

Wonderful, beautifully. But I love that you had right at the beginning, the example is a great example of you finding yourself completely by accident, in an environment doing tax law, no, you have no no desire to go into that no preconceived idea to go in that direction, you found yourself in that situation. And you found the meaning in that you found the purpose in that that it was actually you helping organisations through r&d credits, and so on, help them to do the good work that they wanted to do. So if this was a long career conversation, we dive into that, but it's also Yeah, that you've you found your way through. And I love a lot of people, I took on a lot, but I talked to quite a few people who similarly reached that midpoint in their career. And they are conscious that they've had their heads down, getting on with stuff and they're looking for the second phase. Now, you've really handled that in a very admirable and enviable way to have all that opportunity within Deloitte now to carry on working, and then to see, well, I want to do something more I want to get out, I want to share this with more people. And a book will help do that. So congratulations on on doing that. So diving into the book, I found myself making notes, I was only in the Preface. I was reading a breakfast. And I wrote down. This is a quote from from your preface, I discovered early in my leadership career that the more I discovered about myself, the more positive my leadership impact could be. Bought. That was fabulous. Can we say a bit more about that? Or can you say a bit more about that?

Karen Stein: 12:36

Yeah, absolutely. I think I think it was a bit of a discovery. Because as you started to tease out there, I found myself falling into into the world of tax. And as we experience our careers, and we grow through our careers, sometimes we're not really paying attention to ourselves. And it's only when we start to unpack who we are and what we stand for, and what are the values that we'd like to honour in the work that we do in the careers that we have in the leadership impacts that we'd like to have. Only then do we start to be able to find our true north to know what we stand for, and how I can actually have the intention and the impact that I'd like to have. So it allowed me to have more informed choices when I started to become much more conscious and mindful of what my impact could be compared to perhaps what it was. And I think that's really important is that each day if we can start our days with an intention as to well, how would I like to be today? What's the impact I'd like to have today? What do I intend? And how do I feel in this current moment? Is that going to support me as I move towards that intention? Or, or perhaps it might hinder me, it's only when I'm being much more mindful and conscious of the choices I make throughout my day that at the end of the day, when I reflect to say, Well, how did I go? Can I calibrate that back to a point of intention, but too often we just get up and do we get up, we get ourselves ready, we jump in the car on the train or the bus and we get ourselves to where we need to be. And we go through the day doing what we think we need to do without actually thinking about who we need to be. So that positive intention I found the more that I could start to notice of the better impact I could have. When I was really honed in on who I was and what I stood for, the more enjoyable it was for me, but the more enjoyable it would be for people around me.

Andy: 14:19

I love that so much. I think it's completely fair that when we start out, we've got some big things we're trying to sort out, get a job, get a roof over our heads, get food on the table, maybe you pay a mortgage, maybe we get a child to fund as well. And there's all this stuff that really makes just earning a living can be a priority for many of us. And then when you've got some of these things sorted out it's you have a little bit more headspace and hopefully, if you then invest some time, you can work out what your end what your purpose is and how to how to be more intentional and live life deliberately and intentionally

Karen Stein: 14:58

and positively. Yes And don't get me wrong, I'm not putting a happy face on every day and putting a little yellow smiley face button on my shirt and walking around glowing, we all have the ups and downs of human emotions, but it's more about recognising what what are they doing in terms of the impact that I'd like to have? How are they helping and hindering me? And how are they supporting me or otherwise? And how are they supporting the relationships I'd like to build and throughout our lives throughout our careers, one of the biggest things about them is the relationships that we built, and how we engage with people or how we interrelate with people. And so if we can try and have more of a positive view of the world, and more of an openness of what's possible, and a curiosity of mindset, then we're probably able to build relationships more readily, more easily. We're probably less sceptical and suspicious. But we have a healthy scepticism Yeah, we'll both understand context and purpose and, and try and discover what we need to know to make informed decisions. But if we can do so with the positive mindset of well, what could occur, you know, what is possible, if we team together, work together, have a conversation, discover things together, that to me is important in the minds that we hold.

Andy: 16:12

And the more we have our own stuff sorted, the less it gets in the way when we're leading other people, I love that you started with leading yourself. And, again, lead you said leading yourself is a process of learning to honour your values, utilise your strengths, and fulfil your purpose. And I'm punching the air at this point. Because these are the things that I totally agree. And you also said, in the same paragraph, you lead yourself to have an impact and to find fulfilment, so you can live a purposeful, meaningful life and you lead your way. And I'm on a mission to enable what I call fulfilling performance. So this was right up there. The opening of the book is about leading your way that in fact, the book was much more than I expected, I expected from what we talked about some hints and tips and some practical exercises for coaching. I wasn't expecting quite this holistic approach of before you get to that stuff, you really need to work out your purpose, and so on. So sorry, I'm in danger of talking too much here. Because I'm very excited by this topic. And I'm excited that you're excited. It's wonderful. It's great. So finding your purpose can be a daunting task. You know, I don't know how many people would actually hold their hand up and say, yep, I've got mine. Thank you very much. I found it. And I can articulate it. I'm suspecting it. It's not the majority. And yeah,

Karen Stein: 17:38

I agree with I'm sorry, I was just gonna say that so many people struggle with that. And I personally did, because I felt earlier in my career, I thought, Well, surely I have to feel that, that I'm purposeful. And that this is all very meaningful. And I'm super connected with what I'm doing. And it took a while to get there. So it wasn't as though in day one year one that I kind of thought, wow, you know, this is this is my life, this is what it's going to be and I have meaning and connection with it. It took some time to build that out and to understand what it meant for me, as opposed to something that was transactional and something that I was learning about, and I'm trying to understand and unpack what was this work that I was had fallen into? What did it actually mean?

Andy: 18:17

And you offer a short exercise, I was really impressed with how you managed to tackle this aspect of finding your purpose with an exercise that was inspired by a leadership expert called Zach Mercurio. Do you want to talk about that. Because that I think can be if people feel daunted by finding their purpose, you have a way to help people on their way, don't

Karen Stein: 18:39

Yeah, so I'm absolutely inspired by the work you? of Zack Mercurio. He's absolutely impressive organisation positive psychologist who's based over in the States. And Zach actually talked about trying to find your purpose by reference to understanding what is the human problem, which is exist to be solved. And if we can identify that everything that we do relate to a human problem. So every business is operating to respond to a human problem to solve a human problem, whether it's a business who's manufacturing food, the human problem being how do we actually provide food and sustenance for our communities? It could be an electricity provider, how do we provide power sources to allow people to have heating and cooling and functioning homes, everything we're doing, whether it's government legislation, they're doing it to resolve a human problem. So if we can identify the human problem which exists for which we are significant, and trying to solve for, then we're actually able to identify how do we see ourselves being of worth? How do we see ourselves being significant and of value as well as adding value? And when we can identify that we're much more likely then to feel that we matter? And when you feel like you matter, you understand what your purpose is, why do I matter? Well, my purpose is to try and do this with this level of expertise with this insight with A strengths with his understanding of the way I see the world. That is why I get up every day and feel connected with what I do I feel that it's meaningful and what I do, and I feel that I can have an impact that matters. And that's really a nice way, if we stop and try and unpack what's the human problem I'm trying to solve in my day to day, it could be people working in the health industry, trying to help people with well being, it could be in the financial services industry, where you're trying to safely provide financial instruments to people in the community so that they are able to lessen the amount of financial distress or anxiety that they're carrying day to day, in terms of where their money is held, how they can have an income stream coming, whether it's it's safe to leave their retirement funds, sitting where they are in superannuation, or whatever it might be. And so we all have issues that we're responding to often around different aspects of well being that we can be leaning into and looking at from a purposeful point of view.

Andy: 20:56

I love the way this allows people to start thinking almost right away, about Okay, so what could mine be? And it doesn't matter what industry you're in, and the people I've met who do feel they've got a grasp on what their purpose is. Invariably, it's about serving others in some other ways. So and what you're saying is sounds similar, it's about how am I serving others? And how am I bringing what's unique about me to that? And therefore, you know, why does that matter? Why am I why do I matter? And off we go. And I'm sure it takes a little bit longer than that. But it's a great entry point for have people work that out. And it's right at the beginning of the book, and then you go into setting SMART goals, and practice to is about that. And then getting into being motivated is the next one. And there was a question here, I wanted to ask you about you talk about self concordant goals, and how pursuing them is good for well being. And I genuinely didn't really understand all of that. So I just wanted to ask you, what do you mean by self concordant goal,

Karen Stein: 22:01

it's when a goal actually is a goal, which is sitting well against your values. So if you have a values based goal, which you can, you can recognise has a meaning that's relevant for you for what you stand for, it's associated with your beliefs, it's aligned with your beliefs, what you want to honour in the way you want to live your life, it's much easier to lean into that goal and to have confidence in trying to fulfil that goal, you'll feel a lot more connected with the goal in how you're approaching it. So for me, if I had a goal that was aspiring to try and support people to be their best selves to have long term sustainable careers in the work that they do, and I'm trying to do that through bringing the best of me as a coach, then it's self concordant, in relation to me, because some of my key values relate to kindness. And how I can support people is a strong value of mine, how I can bring empathy and compassion is another strong value of mine, I have a love of learning. And so helping people through learning about what they can be, or what they can do is another value that I'd like to try and honour and those goals and have much more meaning when I'm associated with them. Because I can actually feel them that can be connected with how I want to see the world and feel the world. And so I'm much more likely to be motivated towards their completion.

Andy: 23:15

Sounds like you've got an almost limitless tank then of energy, that's going to be replenished, to help drive that goal. And it's going to keep coming up to the top of your priority list. Because it's important, it's got meaning for you. So there's lots of x, there's lots of things, helping it to or helping you to achieve that goal, because you've picked the right sort of goal. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, if

Karen Stein: 23:41

I've got a goal that's more externally motivated, somebody's told me, I must do something, I'm usually going to feel probably a bit irritated or not not necessarily aligned with it, it might not actually be aligned with how I see the world how I feel about doing things, I might feel a little bit dismissive of it, because somebody else is trying to set up the goals for me and tell me what I must do, how I must do my work, how I must live my life. And so I need to try and get past that external feeling that that distance between myself and that goal and bring that motivating factor closer to me by thinking about my mindset, how can I align it more so with my values? And rather than thinking that it's something I must do, how could I maybe reframe it to something maybe I should do it maybe if I do this goal, I might present some opportunities to other people in my team, and allow them to grow and learn and develop and feel empowered. And so that's something I probably should do in my role. And maybe I'd actually like to do it so I can move from should do something to liking to do something because I like to actually support my team to grow as I like to have acts of kindness where I'm actually looking at them and understanding what their needs are and what matters to them and trying to present them with opportunities which use their strengths. So I'd like to do that because I'll see the joy that they have in doing what they do and it'll increase the well being of the team will have much higher perform mentioned engagement and motivation. So I've moved myself from something where I felt I must do it to something where I perhaps should do it. And now I'm at a stage where I'd actually like to do it. And it's much more aligned with my values and how I'm actually seeing the world through that or seen the goal through those values.

Andy: 25:18

Yeah, I thought that was really helpful. That piece about how to reframe those things that may be there must end of the spectrum, how to reframe those into something so you can see them as something that aren't I quite want to do this.

Karen Stein: 25:31

Yeah, well, I was just thinking that often in life, we were autonomous creatures. And how often do we really like being told what to do? I mean, think of it from a child, children don't really like being told what to do. And as we're adults, most of our lives, we like to have some level of autonomy. And so if I can move away from feeling I've just been told, and feeling controlled about what I must do. And even if in business, there are certain things we must do to run a business, and we will have to lean into our fair share of those things. But if I can actually structure it differently, so I can see it differently, I can feel it differently, then I'll feel I have more autonomy in the way I approach it. And so perhaps I won't be as resistant to doing it, or I might reprioritize it from something that or somebody else thinks it's important, but I don't, to maybe moving it closer to where I am, so that I can actually feel more aligned with the goal and then focus on my goal orientation, and also my goal achievement.

Andy: 26:24

And when we've mastered that, or at least got pretty good at it for ourselves, we can start thinking about when I present this opportunity to someone in my team, how can we approach that with a perspective that they're going to recognise the what's in it for them, if you like how this fits with us, what's meaningful for them.

Karen Stein: 26:42

And that's where purpose comes in again, so if you can help the team understand the context and the purpose of the goal, rather than operationally telling them, this is what you need to do, I need it done by Friday, just put it in an Excel spreadsheet, which is very operationally focused, it's pretty disconnected from who they are, what they stand for what there's no meaning in that. And actually reframe it so that they understand the meaning behind the goal, then people will have a greater sense of connection with it. And when we're more connected with it, we're actually going to apply ourselves quite differently, will bring more discretionary effort will feel much more happier and optimistic towards it more hopeful, more autonomous, we'll be able to use our own mastery. So we're building up our own self determination and confidence in what we're doing. So that approach, I think, is really helpful for taking teams on a journey, helping them navigate what needs to be done.

Andy: 27:35

Yeah, absolutely. And I was going to ask you about that. And I think we've almost covered it really, but maybe there's just one or two sentences to explain the overarching theory. So I was going to ask you about this theory of self determination that you talk about, which is the autonomy, competency and relatedness. So perhaps, I think that's what we've been talking about isn't really. But is there just a couple of words on on that, Karen, to show the evidence based piece the science behind that?

Karen Stein: 28:05

Sure. So it's a theory by Deci and Ryan. And there's references within the back, as you mentioned, the back end of the book to the original theories. And the theory is looking at using self determination, which is referable, to, as you said, building out your autonomy, looking at how you can develop your sense of competencies. So sorry, autonomy, but what I mean by that is, how can you have greater choice? In what you're doing? How can you have greater control in making decisions about what you do? Then we can move on to competency or mastery? How can I actually build my expertise and my skills and use my competencies in fulfilment of what I'm trying to do? And then how can I have a sense of relatedness? How can I actually think about how I'm doing this with myself, how I'm doing it with others, how I'm engaging with people, so I feel a part of something I feel a sense of belonging, and for bring all of those together, those three elements, were able to build our own self belief. And that builds our confidence. And so when we're actually approaching our goals, if we can do so confidently with their greatest sense of self belief, we're much more likely to be able to approach them in a much more positive way. That's really, I guess, in summary, what we're looking at,

Andy: 29:15

and that can all happen within an organisation, within a department within a team with a job that has to be done that could accidentally be seen as something dull and boring and has to happen. But if it's approached in this way, we can leverage that theory to make that a much better experience for someone.

Karen Stein: 29:34

Yeah, I guess it's being a consciousness in your leadership impact of moving away from perhaps micromanaging somebody to giving them more autonomy so you could talk about what needs to be done and allow them perhaps to show you or talk to you about how they'd like to approach it. How would they like to work to get it done, rather than me, you know, sitting over them pushing the buttons in effect for them and telling them every step. It's also about me as their leader bringing to their attention their competencies. strengths that they could use in responding to the goal. So I might bring to their attention that they're a great communicator, and perhaps their written communication skills might be to their advantage in responding or writing this piece of advice. And then lastly, in terms of relatedness, it's how are we collaborating, rather than me dictating or not giving them any opportunity to build out any sense of belonging, I can actually ensure it's inclusive, and I can make sure that they have a sense that they feel it's psychologically safe, where they can participate, they can have a point of view that can be shared, and they can actually feel that they're part of something bigger than themselves. And that's going to build their confidence, there's a

Andy: 30:39

huge amount of potential for people's current situation to be better. Using this, there's a bit of an all or nothing, I think, thought sometimes I need to autonomy means I need to leave, I need to leave corporate and get my own business or lots of it seems lots of younger people having a side hustle, it's become quite normal that you have your job, but you have a side hustle that you're really passionate about. And so maybe we don't have to have a side hustle, if we can actually find the meaning and create structure, what we're doing in such a way that we get, we get the buzz, the fulfilment we want from what we're already doing. And we can wait for our managers to create this, we can wait for our managers to read your book, and to then create these environments, or we can take responsibility ourselves for saying to her manager, now I've been thinking about this, I'd like a sense of autonomy, I'd like a sense of mastery, I'd like a sense of relatedness about this task, can you help me do that?

Karen Stein: 31:39

So or even even just you talk to the managers reading the book, even yourself reading it, because I believe everybody, the book is called The your own leadership coach, I believe everybody is a leader. And so we don't have to wait until we find the people who are badged as leaders to tell us what to do or to show us how to lead. I'm of the view that leadership is a set of Acts, it's a set of practices, it's a set of habits that we build at all stages of our career. And so in the example you gave, that individual would be leading by actually having the courage to have such a conversation, their role modelling to somebody else that they're working with it, this is a preferred way to actually think about how we work together. So if I talk to you about, you know, you've given me some instruction, I'd like to have some autonomy in terms of the time of day, which I'm going to get this done, but I'll still meet your deadline rather than sitting in front of you and getting it done right now. Give me some autonomy in in how I choose to work, perhaps it's where I'm working, maybe we have autonomy in terms of where I'm working in the office or working from home. Maybe it's even if I'm in the office, where I locate myself, maybe I prefer to sit in a quiet room for a while to do it. And I have autonomy and choosing where to locate. Or maybe I'd like to sit with the team on the open plan and be able to share points of view as I go. So it's role modelling that level of autonomy. And to your point, it doesn't have to be at the polar ends, that the autonomy is I come off, I leave or I stay. It's about making choices as we go. And there's so many choices, both micro and macro that we make in how we work. There's a lot of autonomy, which comes with all of them at all parts of the scale. So I mean, that's an example of leading with just focusing on that one element of self determination and it would roll out for the other elements as well in the same way.

Andy: 33:24

Absolutely. And some of those elements of macro and micro, you only know yourself, there's no one else can tell you what's going to feel right for you as well as you can if you do some reflection. So then the next question partly comes from nosiness, I think from But more seriously, there's a story you're talking about leading with self awareness. And you give examples of people from your background who didn't realise the negative impact they were having. You talked about working with a leader in your first corporate job, and you were sceptical about his thought processes and problem solving skills. And you you didn't raise it. And then one day, he called you about out about your facial expression. He'd said something and your face must have said something back and he called you out. Sure did. And you explain what you learned from that. So can we just talk about that? I thought that was really interesting.

Karen Stein: 34:20

Yeah, absolutely. So So I was working with a leader and and to be fair, he was very intelligent. He was entrepreneurial. He knew what he was doing. I was probably thinking that I knew a bit more than him in my young days is sometimes we do with, you know, some headstrong ways that we see the world.

Andy: 34:41

I'm nodding and smiling. Yeah, being there.

Karen Stein: 34:44

And so I guess with the little I knew about the business world at times, I had doubt as to you know, what his decision making was like or the approach that he took. And what I didn't recognise is and I take this from my mom who one day Listen and not in agreement. I have very expressive faces just as my mom. And you wouldn't call me a poker face. So there I was thinking I had the poker face. And as he'd speak to me, I'd probably was raising an eyebrow and pursuing my lips and kind of saying, Are you kidding me? And I didn't actually use the words. But time after time, I must have been doing that to the point that one day he actually just called it out. And I remember him saying he was midway through a sentence. And he's like, Can you just stop? And stop doing that? It's that face every time you have that face? And I started with it. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, what are you talking about, but I knew exactly what he was talking about. And I realised I'd been caught out. And I realised that that that look of scepticism was coming through really clearly to him. And I, it occurred to me, I had a choice, I had a choice, I could either tell him that I wasn't a believer that, you know, I did hold a high level of suspicion and scepticism about the process of how he made his decisions. Or I could actually start to attend to myself. And that was a choice that I made through that feedback loop that he provided to me. So the choice I made was, well, first of all, to try and control my facial expressions, and to be more conscious of what I was showing to the world. I'm probably a little bit better at it today than I was then. It's not taking away from authenticity. I think it's also just giving people comfort. And so it was probably recognising that I was causing him some level of discomfort in the way that I was responding without actually verbalising What was it that was worrying me? What was it you know, so it wasn't helping him in any way. What I started to do, though, was to change my mindset. And rather than being a sceptic, and at that time, I'd suggest I wasn't a healthy sceptic, I was more of a suspicious sceptic, I actually started to try and be much more curious. So as many more questions to try and understand context and purpose, and dial myself up from being the sceptic to the healthy sceptic, where I could, with more insight more information, push open my cognitive boundaries, test my assumptions, actually understand whether what I was holding was true. So accessing more data points through questioning, so that I could be in a better position to then have a conversation, to then share a point of view to be additive towards what was trying to be solved rather than dismissive based on limited assumptions. And so what I had engaged in prior to him calling us out was probably a lot of cognitive distortions, where I was engaging in self limiting thinking, their self limiting thinking related to the assumptions I was holding. And I was holding assumptions without testing them. So I would form a whole lot of thoughts and beliefs. And the beliefs would then be played out in my behaviours because they became real, which weren't necessarily true. And by me, actually opening my mind to understanding more and raising more questions and testing more of my assumptions, I was much better able to then be engaged in an attitude conversation, much more exploration, much more value being added by my participation, rather than me holding back and being dismissive or, you know, not particularly pleasant to work with, I imagine if that's how I was responding to him and probably provided a safer space for him, in that he felt more at ease more comfortable. Rather than every time he probably came and spoke to me, you probably didn't have the most pleasant of response, which was unfair. So that was, yeah, that was an interesting learning for me. But it was a good learning, because you do need people to help draw things to your attention when you've got blind spots. And that's exactly what that was

Andy: 38:37

such a rich example. And now you've described it, I'm thinking, because we know how powerful body language is a nonverbal cues. And effectively, you are interrupting him with your face weren't your expressions were were kind of interrupting his flow in a way that will be a lot more obvious if you were verbally interrupting him.

Karen Stein: 38:59

That's a lovely point, though, because it was also not listening. And so the facial expressions, were telling him that, you know, I didn't think highly of what he was saying, therefore, I was not, you know, it was like talk to the hand, but it was taught to the face. So it was stopping him. I imagined from also going deeper into detail or wanting to engage me in a conversation.

Andy: 39:22

Yeah, I can imagine that jarring with him as he's trying to explain, and I love how you then trace that back to the paradigm. What are the what's the root cause of this was that you had gone into that conversation, where they're all boxed off in terms of your assumptions. And so anything that he said that didn't fit in the box was getting, you're getting your full disdain full force.

Karen Stein: 39:48

But I learned so much more. So I agree. Once I started to actually open myself up and become so much more curious. I'd suggest that my work experience changed because I started to see the world differently. And I started to enjoy things more so and, and connect differently with people, obviously, the way I was connecting with him was not particularly pleasurable for either of us. But once I was able to work through that, we actually had a really good working relationship. And it was a long standing relationship. But it wasn't just with him, it was also with others, I think I started to improve my listening skills, I started to use more inquiry, I started to be a bit more present in how I'd digest information and be with people and rather jump to conclusions. Just try to hold more of a space to understand more.

Andy: 40:35

Yeah, I can only imagine what a huge moment that was in your career timeline if that epiphany, and then the quality of your experience and your engagement. After that would be exponentially better and more rewarding.

Karen Stein: 40:49

It allowed me also to be much more purposeful, because I think it was from then on that I started to explore more of what I was doing and why I was doing it. Whereas before it was, it was probably much more operationally focused much more tactical, okay, this is what I have to do. And he's saying this, and I was really focused on the process. And to be fair, often, when we have training at university, you are focused on process, you know, you've got to study a certain amount, you've got to write exams in a particular way, you've got to attend certain lectures and have an attendance record. It's very process oriented. And then you step into the workforce. And suddenly, you've you've got to create a different way of being and seeing and interrelating with with a range of people who are much well more advanced than you in their lives and careers, and their experiences. And so I think it helps mature me in my thinking.

Andy: 41:39

Yeah, that makes sense with you going from, okay, what's the operational task at hand, and I'm getting some input now from this person, too. Okay, how's this interaction going to further what I'm working towards lots of open mindedness, curiosity. And as you say, more purpose driven from your point of view, that was unsolicited feedback that he decided to lean into the danger if you like, and call it out. And it was usually beneficial. You also talk about taking responsibility for getting feedback, not not unsolicited, for you, but really going out and looking for it. And the line I wrote down was invest in yourself and get to know yourself better. So join us a little bit about seeking feedback.

Karen Stein: 42:26

Yeah, I think feedback is critical if we're trying to build our self awareness. So through the art of Self coaching, we're actually able to stop and reflect and notice more of ourselves. So we can come back to understanding is this the impact that I'm having? Is it is it the impact I'd like to have? Or is it an impact that is far away from what my intention was, and so I need to be much more self aware of my behaviours, of my emotions, and my cognitions. So I can start to unpack that through self reflection by by pausing and noticing and reflecting by looking at examples of what I'm doing that's helping and hindering, and so forth by asking myself a series of questions, and stopping in the moment to try and understand what's going on for me. But I can only see so much. And so I need help and assistance, I need to gain support from others to say, look, show me what I can't see. Because if, if I actually just see the world through my eyes only, it's going to be quite limited. I need people to help me see things about myself that I can't otherwise see. And I mentioned blind spots before, effectively, that's what we're searching for. But also, it might not be a blind spot. It could be something I'm aware of, but not deeply aware of. And I need some help and support. So I always encourage people to try and identify some trusted colleagues, family members and friends who you can seek feedback from. And in seeking the feedback, there's a few things to notice. The first is how do you actually open yourself up to receive feedback. So if you just go and seek it, and you dismiss it, or you're very defensive, every time someone gives you feedback, it's kind of a waste of their time and yours. But if you open yourself to feedback and think about the intention and how it's been given to you, you'll be much more receptive to learn from it. So it's about holding a learning mindset. What can I learn from this that I didn't know before? And what can I do with the feedback that's been given to me. And so I like to refer to feedback in the sense of gift giving. And I'm a great lover of both giving and receiving of gifts. Don't get me wrong, I love my fair share of gifts. But I do also really enjoy giving gifts. And I like to imagine when you're giving feedback, you've got a beautiful box that you've racked up that feedback and I prefer the Tiffany's box myself. So nice blue Tiffany's box, a beautiful ribbon, that's, that's holding it closed. And the person who's giving you that box has a very positive intention. I'd like you to have this gift of feedback. And when you receive that gift box, you don't typically just say thank you and put it on the shelf. You typically would take two hands and undo the ribbon. You'd lift off the lid and you'd peek inside. And when you look inside, sometimes you'll find that there's a whole lot of wrapping. There. that's hiding anything from the view. And to say, when you first receive feedback, you might be given the gift of feedback, you might have a comment that's given to you. And you've tried to unpack it by opening up the lid to understand what is it what's inside or behind that feedback. And you're not really clear, there's no clarity yet. So it's only once you start pulling out the inside wrapping, that you can get yourself down to that listening gym, inside the box. And it's the same with feedback by you unpacking the feedback, and asking for more examples of what you see in me that you think I could focus on. Or what's an example of when you saw me in action that I could reference to describe what you're talking about. Or if you're standing in my shoes, what's the one or two things that you'd really focus on to advance myself towards my next half year, breaking down that feedback, unpacking it and looking for the gems, so that you can actually understand what was meant by that gift is probably the most helpful way that you can be in receipt of feedback, and also how you can give it you can be sure that you're testing yourself about how am I giving the feedback? Am I just being dismissive to someone and saying, oh, yeah, you're doing really, really well just keep doing what you're doing. In that case, they haven't even opened the ribbon, there's nothing there, effectively giving them nothing. So how can I be a bit more generous in gift giving? How can I, you know, bring to their attention, what I'm seeing in them the strengths that they might be using, or the strengths I'm aware of that they could be using to advance themselves or to support themselves in different situations?

Andy: 46:28

Yeah. And if you're doing that face to face with somebody, rather than through some kind of anonymous 360 process, you have the opportunity to say, Can you give me an example? Or when I did this, was that an exam? Oh, no, it wasn't, then it was more okay. Right now, so you can get a better appreciation. Yeah.

Karen Stein: 46:49

I mean, otherwise, we're left in the dark aren't we. And so you really want to mine that feedback. So you can get out of the darkness and find the light, and actually understand and see what it what it truly is. A lot of people are not very good at giving feedback, so you can help them. So you could ask them questions. Yeah. Tell me about what are the three things that you think are working well, in what I'm doing in my role today? Okay, thanks. I understand that that makes sense. To me. There's some examples I can reference. It's great. And how could I make it even better? And so it's just two small questions that I've asked to pose the framing of the feedback, which might help the feedback giver Be thoughtful as to well, what can I share with you? And also telling people why you want feedback is helpful? You know, it could be look, I'm looking for some feedback, because I'm focused on X, how have you seen that working for me? or what have you noticed of me, if I've been trying to work on some change around this behaviour, or some emotional control in the way that I've been speaking to the team? Or perhaps my presentation skills? I've been focused on how, what came across for you, when you saw me present this morning in the meeting? How did it feel for you?

Andy: 47:55

Yeah, that makes me think, Karen, of what happens to the person you're asking, and I learned this from Marshall Goldsmith, his book about What Got You Here Won't Get You There, that when you do ask people to give you feedback, it's also an opportunity for them to reset their impression of you. So if you have actually been working at something you have been making progress, they might not necessarily notice and they'll stick with whatever their most recent assessment of you was, unless you encourage them to just reassess and think, oh, yeah, you know, you have been doing I've noticed, now you have, and then they that then gets reprogrammed in them, and you their awareness of you changes their perception of you, improves. So that was all about self awareness, a super section on raising our self awareness. And then we get into some practical topics like managing time, and you reference a paper. And I just love the title of this paper. It's called conspicuous consumption of time, when busyness and lack of leisure time become a status symbol. And I just thought, oh, wow, that hits the nail on the head with where we're living at the moment. So do you want to go there?

Karen Stein: 49:12

So So I mean, busy being busy is something that's become of social worth. And so when we have conversations with people, I mean, how many times when someone says, Yeah, Hi, Andy, how you doing? Oh, I'm so busy. And then you'll ask me and I respond saying, Yep, me too. So, so busy. And it's almost the end of conversation. And if we're not busy, then it's kind of like, oh, well, why aren't you know what's going on for you? If you're not very busy? Obviously, you're not doing very well in your workplace or you're not doing very well in that group? Or why would I want to get you on a job if you're not busy? Because surely all the best people are really, really busy. So it becomes this social status, social worth and so the less leisure time we have, because we're so busy. The higher the social worth is the thought process, but what we want to do is to actually break that back and break it down and bust through the busyness and recognise the causes of being busy, but also the the consequences of being busy. And many of the causes of that come from a variety of things. Some of the causes relate to just the sheer digital push and pull of information that's coming our way. In the workplace. We've got emails, and we've got internet's and all of the different apps that we've got lighting up every minute of the day, and text messages, phone calls, and so on, there's so much information that's hitting us so fast, it's pulling and pushing our attention to so many things. It's causing us to feel that we're so busy, because we're so much more enlightened as to what's out there, what we need to do what's drawing and grabbing our attention. So our attentional focus is changing much more rapidly, we've also just become much more busy because of the complexity of the world we're working in, there's so many more things that are also taking our attention and causing us to move our time between different things. And And also, what we noticed were coming through COVID is the different responsibilities that different people have within households can cause them to be tremendously busy. So from a gendered point of view, it was discovered that many more women were carrying more than their fair share of household chores of looking after children as well as aged care, as well as themselves when they could get a minute, but also then working. And so it's just the sheer amount of things that need to be done in a day that are causing us to be busier. And of course, the worst one is the lack of boundaries. We're finding that in this new way of working, working from home working in the office, there's this blurred line between when do I stop working? When do I start working? And how do I switch off from working, which is causing us to be busier and busier, switched on all the time. So people are finding that they just can't switch off as well, which is a problem. And the consequences can be quite awful. I mean, from increasing stress and anxiety and reducing well being leading towards overwhelm and burnout. When people are too busy, they tend to want to do a lot of things themselves. And so they collaborate a lot less, which means the diversity of thought and ideas is much reduced. And so we're not necessarily coming up with the brightest way of doing things or the most efficient way of doing things, which means innovation is reduced. There's a greater potential for mistakes and errors and, and lesser efficiencies, because we have to redo things because we were so busy trying to get it done this way, we didn't think perhaps we should do it another way. So if just from a time point of view, it's not particularly conducive to doing it the better way, it's doing it a particular way. And it has a poor leadership impact. So you're role modelling to people that you're too busy to be present with them, you're too busy to necessarily notice things. So you talked about that example of giving feedback and how it's helping people lift their gaze to notice more of their teammates, I would hope that we're not that busy, that we're not doing it ourselves as leaders, that we're not actually noticing and trying to help people feel like they matter. By taking our time to affirm them, and to actually recognise what they're doing, rather than having to rely on wait for them to try and pour it into our cup to help us realise what they're doing. And I think is the best of leaders, if we actually slow ourselves down, and we notice more and become much more present, we'll listen much more intently, will be much more curious will be more patient will be kinder in the way that we communicate with people, and more tolerant and will be open to allowing for much more diversity of thought and interest in our team so they can actually feel a part of things. So it's a danger in terms of of what's happening in this busy, busy world.

Andy: 53:37

Yeah, you describe what I was seeing as the sort of downward spiral that's happening is a lot of external factors that, understandably, are contributing to this busyness and sense of busyness and perhaps obsession with busyness, there are tactics and things we can do to try and put a stop to it. But what I love is that in your book, if we go right back to the beginning, if we go to leading yourself, you acknowledge that really the king that's going to move the needle that's going to shift this is you understanding your purpose, and why you're here and where your meaning is. And that's going to give you lots of energy and resources to be able to fend off the external influences to create business to slow you down on this dissent, and allow you to look around and then invest in the people around you and give them feedback and be a better leader and all the relationships you have and focusing on the right things and then you start spiralling upwards if you can get a grip on this, and it's all in there in the books when I said it was really thrilled that it was so holistic. So that yeah, I love the title of that paper because it just had me thinking yes, yes, that is the conversations and I feel embarrassed because people say to me, you're busy. I think well, I'm all under control.

Karen Stein: 54:58

I think that's beautiful because that's something You can be proud of and you can role model to people, you know if if rather than necessarily responding with the complimentary Yeah, I'm busy too, is actually helping people see that there's another way, there's a different way that we can be. That's much more intentional and conscious. And you're experiencing so much more when you turn your mind to how you use your time, because the one thing that we can't get back and we can't control in our lives is time. And so rather wondering, Well, where did all that time go? Wouldn't it be better to say, Oh, how am I using my time, this is how I intend to use my time. This is what I'm going to do with my time. This is how I plan to use my time. And that's coming back to that self determination. There's much more autonomy, much more choice that you're applying to how you use your time when you're mindful and conscious of it, rather than just getting to the end of the day and say, gosh, where do all the time go? being so busy? Yeah.

Andy: 55:50

So without turning this into a private coaching session for me, doesn't respond with I do feel slightly embarrassed when to say it's all under control. Thank you very much. I also because I now I'm realising because of the external factors. It's it's the, because I have exposures we all do, I have exposure to everything everybody else appears to be doing in the world, on LinkedIn, and everything else, I still have a torrent of things coming into my mind of I should be doing that, I want to be doing that. So I do have a sense still of being behind. And I will also work long hours because I love what I'm doing. But it's very much things I choose to do. prioritised and sequenced in the order that works for me, every day, I'm still putting in the hours. It's an important

Karen Stein: 56:39

point, because what you've described is what people might say, is busy for them. So there's, you know, you're describing your working hours, but you're finding meaning in what you're doing. If you're finding that you're engaged in what you're doing, you're motivated and connected with it. And that's your choice to invest in how you use your time. So you've made some very deliberate decisions as to what you spend your time on how you use your time, how you carve up your day to do so. It's when people are not paying attention to what they're doing that they become what we call busy when they're just doing that perhaps feeling they don't want to miss an opportunity. So they say yes to everything. And you said that you're seeing things on on LinkedIn, I think we always have to remember that. That's what I call my curated life. I mean, that's not true. It's, I'm a big user of LinkedIn. But I also recognise that I've created the vision that I see day to day by following particular people. So I'm having a stream that's pushed at me, telling me this is how the world works. And it's so much broader than that. And so, I think we need to when we're using social media, we actually need to remind ourselves, what's the frame in which we're using it? How are we making best use of it, and reminding ourselves not to just view the world through that lens? How are we making use of it in a way that allows for connection allows for interest allows for expansion of thinking towards different topics or insights or otherwise, but remember that there's things beyond that. And that's not necessarily representative of the whole of what's happening around us in our lives.

Andy: 58:10

Yeah, but don't spend your whole time looking in that window, either. The image that popped into my head was the way a dog sticks its head. You've got a torrent of other people's curated lives hitting you as you've put your head through the LinkedIn window. So thank you for your thoughts on that. You're absolutely right. So I'll remind myself of that next time I look at LinkedIn, you then talk about managing your energy. And I'm going to be a little selfish. And this is I'm going to skip over this bit fairly quickly with you, it reminded me of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People I know you reference that book as well in your book and sharpen the saw, and making sure we take care of ourselves from our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual capacity. And I love that. And there's a lot of thought around that at the moment. So please, listeners that you've got that to look forward to in the book, I want to jump ahead in case we run out of time, I want to talk about building your personal board of directors, which I thought was very helpful, and especially for people or maybe this works everywhere, but especially for people in a corporate environment. I think that the language lends itself very well to people in a corporate environment, but there's no reason why you can't do this in any any environment, actually. And you talk about mentors, coaches, sponsors, reverse mentoring, in some people get you know, and you you answer this in the book, you give clarity around, okay, what's the difference? And what is the role of each so did you want to talk about that?

Karen Stein: 59:46

Yes, thank you. And the reason why I talk about your own personal board of directors is it was my own experience that I was reflecting on in that chapter was as I was advancing in my career, I've been promoted and I was observing another team member who'd been promoted at the same time, and I was curious as to how we were both going, and I used to see that he was having some fabulous opportunities. And so I'd, you know, run around trying to get as many opportunities as I could. And it was trying to be self sufficient and do things my way. And after a while, I started to realise that it wasn't just him who was getting opportunities, it was people who were getting opportunities for him, he was being spoken up. And he was always being spoken very positively. He was teeming with people who were recognising his strengths and his skills and his expertise and tried to help him have opportunities to move forward. And so I started to realise that it actually takes a team to support you, when you're you're trying to advance yourself, it's, it's learning from others, it's exploring things with others, it's having people who are advocates for you, I didn't really understand the difference between all of these different terms. When I first started through my corporate career, it was only when I first had a coach that I started to understand the difference between coaching and mentoring. So if we think of a mentor, a mentor is somebody that you approach when you're seeking their their advice based on their professional experience or their lived experience. So I might approach somebody who's been in the business for a very long time, and I asked them to tell me how I should approach a problem. You know, based on your experience, what should I do in this situation, and I'll have a listen to my problem, they'll tell me what they think I should do, who I should speak to how I should go and solve for this problem. And it can be really useful information, because they're giving me some insights into into a way of responding that maybe I wasn't aware of. But at the same time, it might not be because we're all very different. And so what's worked for them might not work for me, what's worked for them might suit their communication style, it might suit their level of confidence, their expertise, their skills, and experience. I might not own all of those at that point in my life. And so I might be listening, thinking, Who there's no way in hell, I'm going to do that. And I can I could walk away thinking, you know, smile and nod. But as I'm in the room and walk out and think, No way, I'm not going to touch it. But what that can do is open up some thinking for me to think and why not? Why wouldn't I be comfortable doing that? What is it that's making me uncomfortable in what they've advised me. And that's when I can start thinking about, well, maybe I need a coach. And a coach is somebody I'd approach is going to have a collaborative conversation with me to help me explore and discover how I can approach my goals, how I can work through some of the obstacles or barriers I have, and they're not so much going to tell me, they're going to be asking of me. So they're going to pose questions to me to help me try and unpack or widen my perspectives or my thinking as to how can I or how should I or how will I solve for whatever issues, or hopes or dreams that I have and work towards those. So they might act as a reflective frame, they might bring more to my attention to help me build out my self awareness, they might bring to my attention, some of those assumptions I'm holding, maybe there's some blind spots, maybe there's some of that self limiting thinking I was referring to before, maybe they're hearing that or seeing that in me. And so they can bring that to my attention. Maybe there's patterns of behaviour, they're noticing from session to session that they can challenge me about or bring to my attention and and talk to me about that to see or understand for me how that's impacting how I'm progressing or otherwise, they can also help me connect with what I'm doing. So they might help me explore what's the meaning that I give to what I'm choosing to do? Or choose not to do? Why is that important to me? Or why is it not important to me, and that can help me actually prioritise things, it can help me build out my goals, my purpose, how I use my time, who I involve in my time, etcetera, etcetera, who I collaborate with, and so on. So, coming back to summarising that a mentor is somebody I'd ask for support, and they tell me what to do. A coach is somebody who will explore with me, and help me discover through questioning what I might be able to do. And advocate is somebody who's actually going to try and pull me through to opportunities. So an advocate is usually somebody with whom you have a relationship, which is reciprocal, I'll help them succeed with the goals that they have. And in so doing, they're going to help pull me through so they can champion things for me, they can talk to me, or have me when I'm not in the room, so people get to learn about me, they might identify opportunities for me. So if say a proposal comes in, and they hear about it, they might go, oh, you know, bring Karen into that she's really skilled at doing that. I think that would be great opportunity. So they're in the room, they've got a level of influence. They're able to also connect me with their network, which is really important because they can open up for me opportunities by trusting in me that I'll do the right thing. So there's a high level of trust within advocate. It's really them relying on me doing the right thing by them so they don't feel at risk if they have opened up the network or suggested that I'm the right person for the opportunity. The reciprocal mentorship is really then the last piece in it, that board of directors and that's somebody who might be working Even with you who's not at the level that you're at, and so it could be a junior team member who can see the world differently to you. And so they can actually give you feedback and insight and an understanding of what they're seeing and how you're leading or not or otherwise, or how you put forward and initiative and how it lands or otherwise. And so you can then mentor them in, in return. So there's a lot of trust that needs to be built up in that relationship as well, so that they don't feel that it's, you know, perhaps career limiting, to be telling someone more senior that hey, in that meeting, you know, you didn't communicate particularly clearly, there has to be a lot of trust, a lot of psychological safety. And those four elements can be used wisely in your career, but each of them require you to have an open relationship where you all understand the rules of play, what are the expectations of each of us in each of those relationships so that we can be in best support of each other and have a common understanding as to what we're trying to do?

Andy: 1:05:55

You said, I think you gave an example in the book of an initiative you'd rolled out and it was you thought it was pretty cool and be exciting for people, but it was your reverse mentoring partner who was able to guide you with that. So John just mentioned that Yeah,

Karen Stein: 1:06:12

absolutely. So it was it was an initiative, it was an around some innovation. And I came to the group and I described what I thought would be just a fabulous initiative that we could all get involved in, and everyone would be super excited about and, and from here, we, you know, go forward and challenge the way that we were doing our work and doing things. And I thought, yeah, that that landed pretty well. And then I was fortunate that I had a relationship with a team member, reciprocal mentor, and she came to me afterwards to describe to me how flat it had landed across the team. And and many of the team were quite a bit younger than me as well. And she was very connected with the team. So it was it was really eye opening for me, because, you know, in the meeting, I thought that I'd seen smiles and kind of nods and the rest. But I guess it was also people just feeling that maybe it's not the best thing in this moment to say it isn't good. It gave me the opportunity to go away and revisit what I had first presented and come back to the team with some more clarity as to what would resonate how we could engage. And you know, the second time going, it landed really, really well. So without her assistance, it would have fallen flat, and that would have been the end of it. But with her assistance, I was able to reassess the impact that I was having and collaborate with others and bring forward the initiative. So it was much more successful.

Andy: 1:07:27

Yeah, that sounds so helpful. People won't necessarily tell someone senior. Once you get to the top, you have such a sanitised view or curated view of it to use the word you used early ever curated view of what's going on and what people think. So she was your connection with what's really going on on the ground?

Karen Stein: 1:07:50

Well, it's often an expectation that you do know. So the team will often think Well, of course, you'd know, surely, it's obvious that you'd know, but there's can be a lot of silence as you get more senior and organisations that people don't necessarily feel that they can come until people in the moment maybe at a later point in time, they might. But in that moment, you know, sometimes people might hold back and assess is now the right time, or how would I put that and so on. So it's about trying to build the relationships. So there's less of that so that people can feel that they have a greater ability to bring their voice forward in the moment not feel that they're at risk in doing so.

Andy: 1:08:27

So all of those roles are super important and understanding the distinction. And if it is a sponsor or advocate, you absolutely have to show up, you've got to deliver because there's a huge amount of trust, saying that they probably wouldn't have picked you if you hadn't already delivered and you give some good guidance for how to behave, to get yourself into a position where someone's going to feel comfortable to sponsor you or be an advocate for you. So we've done all this work, it feels like we've been going through the chapters, and we've been doing all this work on ourselves and really getting ourselves in a good position. And then the focus moves on to, but how do I show up as a leader? What's the impact that I'm having, and you give four lenses to look through, or the four lenses of leadership impact? And I was curious to just have asked you to expand a little bit on those?

Karen Stein: 1:09:19

Well, actually, you're right, just in summary. So I'm of the belief that we need to be our best selves in order to support ourselves to lay that way. And only once that you've worked on being your best, or it might be your better self rather than your best self, then you can feel that you're in a position to be your best self and how you lead others. And so this is what we're now referencing this second part of the book where How can I be my best self and how I lead others. So to do so you want to think about the leadership impact that you'd like to have towards others. And not necessarily initially we're also talking about towards ourselves, what's the impact I'd like to have for myself in terms of how I lead myself, but now it's also to others. So the four lenses that we look at. The first one is visibility. What do people see of you as a leader? So what do they see in your behaviours? What do they see in the way that you interrelate with people? Whether you show up at work on time, whether you're always late, whether you're dismissive of people, whether you're always in a good mood and you have a laugh? Or what do they see of you. And it's really important because as we become more senior in organisations, our leadership shadow grows larger and larger. And what I mean by that is, as you are casting a shadow people watching what falls from you, so are you sitting in the darkness? And is it something that's positively minded that they're watching and responding to, as you walk in the office, as a leader, everybody lifts their head, they click their eyes on you, they watch you dance across the floor, they notice if you're stressed, they notice if you're happy, and they will form a point of view, which, which leads ourselves to the perceptions that can occur. So we don't always have the reality of what's going on, it could just be in what people perceive of you as to whether or not that's factually correct. So we have to be conscious of how has that visibility also led me to get self to perceptions, which creates an impact. And what we're actually doing is working our way through a set of behaviours. So these allow us people to see and respond to the behaviours. If people see me behaving in a way that's conducive to allow for inclusivity, they're more likely to feel that it's been role models, so they can actually see what that means when I talk to it. If I'm suggesting we need more diversity, they'll see in my behaviours, how I'm bringing people in, to ask for different points of view, to pause and to make space for others to attend to it. And that all brings itself to then how do we build trust. So trust is fundamental to the impact that you're going to have as a leader. And in the book, I won't talk you through the model at this point. But there is a model that I've written about how you can actually build trust some of the elements that you can attend to, to try and ensure that you are building trust between yourself and those whom you're trying to lead to have that positive impact.

Andy: 1:11:55

Okay, we won't go into the model, but can you just tell me what it's called, because I didn't know the word is the Hebrew word,

Karen Stein: 1:12:00

the Hebrew word? Yeah, the Hebrew word is chaver, C ,H, A V, E, R, and chaver means friend. And when you have friends, the implicit notion of having a friend is you have a sense of connection or a sense of trust. And so the model is built on the words coming from the word chaver. So what we're looking for is consistency in the way that you behave. Honesty. So that's the age for honesty, attentiveness that you actually with people if I remember that correctly,

Andy: 1:12:31

vulnerable, so consistent, honest, attentive, vulnerable, vulnerable,

Karen Stein: 1:12:36

that you enable people and that you're responsive to people. And if you if you have a look at the examples I produce, each of them make sense on their own. But when you bring them together, then you'll actually be much more likely to form trust to form that sense of connection to be a have it to be a friend of somebody through that connection.

Andy: 1:12:54

That's lovely. And I once again, yet another super practical tool that really hangs together. And I like the the etymology of it.

Karen Stein: 1:13:05

And I think with these tools to is one thing I didn't mention is when I was writing the book, I really wanted to allow people to build up their self coaching strategies build their self coaching muscles. So as they'd leave their house each day, they'd strap on what I refer to as your virtual backpack, and the things that we've been talking about and discussing all of the different exercises and the tools. And each chapter would be things that you would throw in your virtual backpack, so that when you leave the house, you're you know, making sure the straps are nice and tight, you've got the flap of it loosely left open, you can reach into it and grab whatever self coaching strategy is going to be in support of you as you face into the challenges of the day. So if for you, it's about well, I'm trying to build more trust with my team, I could have that model sitting neatly inside my backpack and think to myself, Okay, to demonstrate trust, I'm going to have to show people that I'm responsive. So when an email comes into me, rather than just ignoring it, I might just be responsive and let people know that they've been heard, even if I'm busy, as we talked about before. So I might just say thanks, or noted or I'll get back to you, rather than just ghosting them, and not having any sense of connection with them. You can't really build trust, if I don't know how you feel, in response to what I've been communicating of suggesting with you. It's kind of leaving it in this void of uncertainty.

Andy: 1:14:23

Yeah. And you just reminded me then of all these tiny gestures, if you like that the hundreds, if not 1000s of tiny gestures we might make that have an impact have a leadership impact. And when you first become a leader realising Well, as you say, when the leader walks in the room and I loved your phrase, we watch them dance across the floor. When they come in, all eyes are on them, and we're just seeking information data from watching them and that happen as soon as you've got leadership responsibility, even if it's not for me even if you decide you choose right I am going to step up and people start to see you as a leader, then everything you do has an impact. So be mindful of what you're doing. And yeah, lovely practical examples, things you can have in your backpack to help you each day this, I'm going to focus, I'm going to be intentional. You said at the beginning of the conversation when you leave the house in the morning, let's be intentional about what am I, what's the end in mind for today, and you've got it there. I think you could not possibly hope to succeed if you weren't good at listening. So you've got a whole section on listening. And we've talked quite a lot about listening on this podcast. So I'm going to let people read that in the book so that we have time to talk about the last couple of sections, which one is about actually being conscious with how we communicate with people. So let's go there now. Lots again, of really practical suggestions, getting people to realise how intentional and deliberate they need to be. So shall we talk about that, Karen?

Karen Stein: 1:15:56

Sure. i And again, it comes back to mindfulness and to consciousness, because how often do we say things? And then we turn around, say, Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean that. Oh, you know, I've said it. Don't take the wrong way. I said that. I didn't mean that. And it's because often we think we're talking before we're thinking, and we're not actually really giving due regard for how we can be conscious about communicating, how can we be effective? And how can we also be considerate of the role that we're in? And so how are people listening to us? And as you mentioned before, as we get more senior, and the eyes are on us, it's also the ears are on us. And so people are listening to the way that we speak and communicate. They're listening to the tone, the pace that we speak at the language that we choose the familiarity, which is perhaps used with some people, but not with others. And so then we come back to well, what does that mean? Is there favouritism that's happening there? And so we don't have to have all the formalities around it. But we just need to be conscious as to when do we use different communication styles? in which situations? You know, is it appropriate to be joking in a certain situation? Or could that be saved for another time? Should I be using nicknames when I'm addressing a very formal town hall style presentation and referencing people by nickname as though everybody would know that person? When perhaps people have just joined the organisation a month ago, I've never heard of that nickname. So they're then feeling left out because they don't feel a part of things. And so maybe I use the nicknames when I'm speaking to them in a smaller context, or in a more personal context. Yeah,

Andy: 1:17:31

that was so sorry to interrupt. But I just wanted to say how much that made me think you use nicknames and what it what it automatically does. I think it creates a sort of separation between that group of people who use the nicknames and as you say, the new people who come in who aren't at that level, it's unnecessarily saying, Okay, well, we're different than you are.

Karen Stein: 1:17:53

Yes. Oh, who are you? Yeah, like, who is that person? Yeah, sometimes nicknames could be people's initials. Who is JC and who is you know, AB and all these things and, and so people then have more work to do to try and feel a sense of belonging and feeling like they're included, because then it now they have to try and unpack the relevance or understand that. I do believe that people can have strong and positive relationships and that nicknames can have a place, but I think we just have to pick and choose when we're using them, and also not close them on people. You know, sometimes you see that happen when people are struggling with pronounciation, or shortening people's names without permission. And and I think, again, we've just got to be careful and sensitive to perhaps it's not something that's been well received, but we've just put it on them. And now the whole workforce knows them by that because they weren't given a choice. I've seen that happen sometimes when people feel a need to perhaps anglicised a name, or shorten a name, because you know, they're they're feeling uncomfortable that people aren't trying to pronounce it properly. So yeah, what can we do to do better? To make people feel we talked about feeling like they matter? Well, names are very important to that.

Andy: 1:19:04

Yeah. And again, lots of very detailed help in how to do that. I'm big believer that we, we often underestimate how much help we have to do how much hand holding when we explain a concept to somebody, and then we stop, and we leave them with this huge gap to work out what am I actually going to do? What do I need to do? And then I'm not sure what to do, so I won't do anything. So helping people realise. Then finally, Karen, you end with this chapter on the practice leading with kindness. It's clearly you said earlier, it's one of your values. You talk about intentionally deciding to have a year where you live and lead kindly, which sounds you know, very admirable. And then there's all these side benefits that came and I thought that was intriguing that having started this this idea, you found it that you are getting lots of benefits yourself.

Karen Stein: 1:20:03

It was a great year I tell the story in the book, I was driving home, we've got the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Sydney, which some of you would be familiar with. And I have to cross the bridge every day when I come home from work. And I like to listen to the radio when I do that. And there was a radio show that I was quite familiar with. And day by day, they'd have different people in and they'd be talking and they brought in someone who was talking about doing good deeds. And I was familiar with the concept through the my study of positive psychology, but I was really enjoying it. And they said a task where they wanted to see if listeners could find in, and I could try and accumulate as many good deeds as possible. They were after 1000 Good deeds in a shorter time as possible. And so every day as I drive home, I'd be listening to this. And I was being really inspired by what I was hearing it was, it was exciting, it was touching, beautiful things that people were doing for each other. But I love the fact that it was so public. And then it was drawing the community's attention to what could be and how we could have a better way of interacting and being with each other. And I thought about calling in a few times, but the challenge of driving and being on the phone, it didn't actually work for me. So I started thinking, well, what could I possibly do? 1000 seemed out of reach. But I was heading towards the Jewish New Year. And each new year I bake honey cakes for my family and my closest girlfriends and their families. And the reason I do honey cakes is it's symbolic of bringing in a sweet new year. So it's, it's the roundness of the cake, which is the continuum of life continuum of a new year and the sweetness spring being the honey. And I thought, Well, why don't I just do a year of living kindly? What could I do where I could have an impact beyond my business as usual? So beyond doing school lunches, and things like that, for the kids, what could I do, that's an extension of me, which would actually have a better impact on many more people across the year. And so I set out doing it day by day. And, and it was it was fabulous. Because I started to see the world quite differently. It made me realise and see so much more of people, and what they did what they enjoyed myself to learn more about people because I was listening and watching for things. So I could think about, well, what could I do, which would be kind of in support of that person today. And as I was learning more about people in different ways, I became you know that that curiosity I spoke earlier was dialled right up. And I would record in my phone in my notes section of my phone every day, my act of kindness, I still have it, which was fun, because, you know, I could reflect on Well, what have I done, and I really wanted to try something different each day, I didn't want to be repeating acts. And I wanted to make sure it wasn't all financially based. So you know, it'd be very easy just to be buying, Pay It Forward coffees every day and saying, Well, that was my year of living kindly. But I thought that was a bit lazy. So I was finding lots of different things to do. I'd also have the tension of going to bed, and just before going to bed realising Oh, no, I haven't done it. What am I going to do? And how will they do it? When it's like 1030 at night, and I can't get on the phone, and I can't do this. And so I had to start being a lot more creative in how I do it and think more broadly about people and you know, how could I do something which could touch them. And maybe it was, in that moment, I might think of an article that I could send them that would really they'd enjoy. Or maybe it was sending a note to somebody I hadn't been in contact with for years and years and years to tell them I'm thinking of them and remind them of of the fun times we had or inquire of them or, I mean, I'd come up with all sorts of things. It made me much more positively minded. So I felt that I was lighter in the way that I experienced the world, I felt my sense of relatedness increased. So we talked earlier about that self determination, my sense of being connected with people of belonging, of caring, a big boost in positive emotional effect for me, because when you are kind to people, it does boost your positive emotions, there are studies on that. But obviously, it was boosting those of the individuals who I was touching, which made me feel great. The ones that are the fun ones to do are the ones when you're doing it to somebody that you don't know, because there's research that shows that it has an even bigger impact when it's unexpected for somebody who receive an act of kindness from someone who isn't known to them. So you know, it could be you know, just thinking a bus driver stopping literally before you get off the bus and having a very short chat and telling them hey, I really appreciate you getting me here on time. Thank you for driving me today. Have a great day. Yes, small things where you could actually bring things to people's attention. There was a lot of fun, I really I'd suggest if a year is too long, start with a month and see if you can you know have a month of living kindly and have a better impact on the world that we live in.

Andy: 1:24:39

Wonderful advice to start with a shorter period just helps you get started, doesn't it and then if you find it, you can extend it wants to go. I love how you set about doing that this was I'm going to do something kind for other people below me if you end up to benefit from it that you hadn't foreseen, expected, you hadn't done it for that. But there was all this really valuable stuff that came out of it,

Karen Stein: 1:25:08

there was well, the the kindness was not only an internal view, but also an external view. So it was, you can be kind to yourself, that's also important in the Year of Living kindly. And so at times, we have to be self compassionate and kind and forgiving, and treat ourselves as we would a kind friend. And so there's some of that that came into it from time to time. But most of the time it was it was broadening my external view, and actually seeing well, how could I see the world differently? That's a fun thing to do. We live in a very complicated world. And I think if we can try and look for some softness and light in it from time to time, and how we can make it better for other people. That's the way I like to experience life.

Andy: 1:25:47

sounds absolutely, super, you've got me thinking about about that. The very last topic was psychological safety talks about Clark's model of psychological safety. For those that like to get into the concepts and the models, and self determination theory, which we talked about earlier in the conversation. The bit I'm particularly would like to take this opportunity to raise with you is, I do a lot of work with teams around creating psychological safety with their leaders, and then creating a psychologically safe environment. And it sounds so soft. It sounds like you're doing it for all these soft reasons. But it helps us into a situation, I believe it helps us get into a situation when we can, we're much better able to do some really hard things. Yeah, I just like to have a if you've got some thing on that, that we could just talk about to help people understand why it is absolutely not soft, to create an environment of psychological safety.

Karen Stein: 1:26:53

It's interesting, you say that, because the chapter that I write about that is in the chapter of leading with kindness. And sometimes when you talk to people about kindness and leadership, you know that that's a lot of nonsense. You know, kindness is all being soft and gooey. And we don't do that in leadership, we're in fact, kindness can be really tough. Because sometimes you have to make some really tough decisions around when you're being kind to people, whether it's giving a feedback, whether it's making choices as to who has different opportunities, it might be choosing the right person based on strengths, it might be not giving somebody a promotion, because they're not ready for it yet. And so you're being kind in not pushing them into a role where they're going to fail, but you're actually giving them space and time to further develop. So kindness is not about being nice and soft, it's actually about being appropriate, and consider it and and mindful of who the individual is and how they matter. So when we talk about psychological safety and self determination theory, the reason I talk about it in that chapter is because it allows us to think about how do we assist people with bringing their best self into the workplace, with feeling that they can be like we talk about BU or be yourself. And if I'm in a position where I can be me, I'm much more likely to be creative, I'm going to contribute, I'll challenge the status quo, we won't end up with groupthink, where people are just going along because they're lazy, and they couldn't be bothered to, you know, perhaps disrupt some of the thinking, it's just easier just to go along with the group rather than to point out things that are wrong. And that's when we get bad behaviours, when those types of things can happen. And the bad behaviours can be very damaging from many points of view. So it's kind for us to build an environment where people feel they can come to work and be their best self, they can be productive, they can be engaged, they can be motivated, recognised, and feel that they matter in the workplace, rather than necessarily just be told, Well, you are part of this group, you belong to this group. So we've put the label on you, therefore you should feel happy. It's not enough. It's actually making sure not only do they know where they belong, they know where they sit when they come to work. But they also feel they matter, that they're affirmed for what they do. And they're actually noticed for what they do, and they can be of themselves, they can bring their best self into what they do rather than feel they're at risk. Even though I'm part of this group, I still feel at risk if I can't contribute. So I think we have to bring to people's attention that leading with kindness being presenting a situation which allows for psychological safety is when people can have honesty in whether they can meet deliverables. They can meet deadlines, whether they're overwhelmed with too much work, whether you know, they have limited capacity to solve problems in the moment because they've been given too many opportunities and haven't been able to speak up. Are we actually allowing people to have a positive experience in the workplace so they'll feel engaged and feel that they want to continue so our retention will increase and be maintained? Or are we creating such conditions that people feel that it's stressful and anxious making and depriving them of being able to to bring their best self into the workplace, which I think that's a very sad situation to create for people to live a life of anxiety and concern and worry. And I guess a sense of obligation that they're just pitching up, but they're not really feeling that they can participate. And that's not a healthy way for us to trade any working environment.

Andy: 1:30:21

Thank you for sharing that. And absolutely, yes, it's beneficial for the individual, but it's also so beneficial for the team and the organisation. And if you're absolutely focused on results, it's better for your results to create this environment so people can show up as them their full selves and lean in and speak up and commit to things and deliver and all that good stuff. Is there anything we haven't talked about that you would like to take this opportunity to share? Karen,

Karen Stein: 1:30:54

I think the only thing is with the book itself, there is a lot in there. My hope is that people will read the book in its entirety. But I also recognise it's the books that you can go back to. So if, for instance, you were thinking about, well, how do I build up my own personal board of directors? What do I need to know? Or I've been offered a coach or a mentor? And I'm not sure what's what, I can go back to the book. And I can actually read that chapter. And I can do the self reflective exercises within it to open my mind to what the solution might be. Or similarly, if you're thinking about your goals, and how do you frame them, how do I build them out? Each chapter is a chapter on its own, where you can go back and work through those self reflective exercises, learn from it, and then step forward. And you might read it a couple of times. So it might be at different stages. As you move forward. You might go back and say, Oh, now I'd like to reframe my goals, what do I need to do, I need to remind myself how to do it. The biggest thing I'm going to ask people though, is to make space, make space for yourself. And the more that you can find time to stop and be mindful of who you are, and what you're bringing to leading as you and how you can try and lead yourself to be your best self, the more likely you're going to have a positive impact. In the absence of making space, you're just going to keep doing what you do in a very unconscious way, which won't necessarily allow you to have the best experience you can have yourself.

Andy: 1:32:14

Thank you for making space for me today. Karen. As I said, I thoroughly enjoyed your book, I agree with you. It's a book that I think should be far from people sides, it should be in their desk drawer on their desk and one that they come back to, there's a lot in it. So you're not going to be able to do all of it at once. So is going to be okay. This week or this month, I'm going to focus on my board of directors. So what is it I need to be thinking about? So it's very much a reference. It's a guide book. It's a handbook. It's a trusty companion. So thank you so much for joining me. I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. And I wish you all the best with sharing, coaching, and being your own leadership coach with as many people as possible around the world.

Karen Stein: 1:32:56

I really appreciate chatting with you tonight. Andy, thanks for having me on.

Andy: 1:33:04

You've been listening to Career-view Mirror with me, Andy follows it was an absolute pleasure and a privilege to have this conversation with Karen. The insights and practical tools that she shares in her book are well suited to helping people enable fulfilling performance for themselves. And I'm grateful to have had this opportunity to share some of them with you. I can highly recommend her book and we'll put a link in the show notes to help you find it. If you enjoy listening to our episodes, please could you do me a huge favour and share them with someone you lead parent or mentor or a friend you think will also appreciate them? Thank you to Karen for joining me thank you to our sponsors for this episode, ask consulting and Aquilae. And thank you to the Career-view Mirror team without whom we'd not be able to share I guess life and career stories. And above all, thank you to you for listening.

Unknown: 1:33:50

No matter how hard you try. No matter how hard working you are, you're never going to be able to do it on your own. It's just not possible.

Paul Harris: 1:33:57

You know, at the end of the day, you're steering your own destiny. So if it's not happening for you, and you're seeing what you want out there, then go out there and connect.

Sherene Redelinghuys: 1:34:05

Don't rely on others. You have to do it yourself. You have to take control.

Rupert Pontin: 1:34:11

If you've got an idea if you've got a thought about something that might be successful. If you've got a passion to do something yourself, you just haven't quite got do it.

Tom Stepanchak: 1:34:21

Take a risk. Take a chance stick your neck out what's the worst that can happen? You fall down okay, you pick yourself up and try again.