How to become an extraordinary marketing leader - John Amaechi

Summary

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Uncensored CMO: How to Become an Extraordinary Marketing Leader – John Amaechi

Host: Jon Evans
Guest: John Amaechi
Date: September 24, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the realities of leadership for marketers, focusing on John Amaechi’s new book, "It’s Not Magic: The Ordinary Skills of Exceptional Leaders." John shares practical, humanistic insights, challenging perceptions of leadership as mystical, and instead presenting it as an accumulation of attainable, ordinary skills. The discussion is layered with practical advice for aspiring leaders, personal reflections, memorable analogies, actionable frameworks, and a healthy dose of both inspiration and candor.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Framing Leadership as Attainable: The Myth of "Magic"

• Ordinary Skills, Not Wizardry
  • [04:27] John Amaechi: "The elemental makeup of most interesting things is quite mundane... Diamonds... are made up of just like carbon, assembled in an interesting way."
  • Leadership is a product of consistent application of basic skills, not innate charisma or magic.
• Attainability of Leadership
  • [06:23] John Amaechi: "I don't make this feel attainable because I want to kind of pander to people. It is attainable."
  • Leadership isn’t reserved for a select few; everyone’s sphere of influence—however small—can be a platform for positive impact.

2. Navigating the Transition: From Functional Expert to Leader

• Identity Shift
  • [09:55] John Amaechi: "You get your promotion and you're an idiot. I was an expert yesterday and now I feel stupid."
  • Leaders often struggle moving from mastery of technical skills to enabling others’ performance.
• Changing Measures of Success
  • Output shifts from tangible, individual tasks to more intangible team empowerment—and the latter is often poorly measured.

3. Common Misconceptions About Leadership

• Diversity of Leadership Styles
  • [15:20] John Amaechi: "Many men who are leaders have an idea that leadership is strength. And by strength they mean certainty... never being vulnerable."
  • There’s no one ‘correct’ style—collaborative, empathetic, and quieter leaders are needed just as much.

4. Impact of Public Figures and Bad Role Models

• The Trump Question
  • [18:00] John Amaechi: "People love a model excuse character. You can yell in the middle of your meeting... and it gives you this immediate sense of, oh, I can be so much more terrible before there isn’t somebody out there who’s more extreme than me."
  • Intimidation works only in the very short term and breeds environments of fear, not high performance.

5. The Critical Role of Self-Awareness and Accurate Feedback

• The Reality Gap
  • [23:32] John Amaechi: "95% of people believe they are self aware. And yet the research would suggest that perhaps the reality is more like 10 or 15%."
  • Self-awareness is rare and vital; leaders must cultivate honest reflection.
• Delivering Useful Feedback
  • Make feedback specific and contextual, not “woolly”:
    • [28:13] John Amaechi: "Don’t be woolly about it... Me telling you specifically what I spotted that would give you an insight to yourself is the key, and it’s far less irritating."
  • Permission yourself to give feedback, increasing its acceptance and impact.

6. Self-Assurance vs. Confidence

• Defining Self-Assurance
  • [30:24] John Amaechi: "Self assurance is the actual tangible and accurate assessment of your own skills and deficits."
  • Many high-achievers underplay their competence out of misplaced humility, which can confuse colleagues and undermine trust.

7. The Power—and Practice—of Vulnerability

• Transformative Openness
  • [38:19] John Amaechi: "People help people. They don’t help concepts."
  • Leaders who admit vulnerability create loyalty and unlock team contribution.
• Loneliness vs. Isolation
  • [39:58] John Amaechi: "Isolation is a fact. Loneliness is, is an option, right?"
  • Authentic connection and sharing responsibility reduce leader loneliness.

8. Micro-Affirmation and Giving Credit

• Hoarding Credit Creates Misery
  • [41:26] John Amaechi: "Hoarding credit creates misery. People who are sad, anxious, fearful, who feel unrecognized, do not do their best work."
  • Praise should be specific, actionable, and encourage learning—not just a generic “well done.”

9. Preparing for Impact—Accessing the "Library of Your Experiences"

• Reflective Practice
  • [45:12] John Amaechi: "Access to your library of experiences is practice... I write them down."
  • Regularly record impactful moments; rehearse retrieval so stories and lessons are accessible under pressure.
• Avoiding ‘Clench’
  • If you freeze or blank, practice calming techniques and focus on individual connections rather than the intimidating context (audience size, cameras, etc.).

10. Weaknesses, Gender, and the Warped Self-View

• Different Standards
  • [52:21] John Amaechi: "Men who go for promotions are often judged... on... them in two years time. Whereas women... are judged... right now."
  • Leaders must develop objective, non-emotional language to describe their abilities and weaknesses, and support others to do the same.

11. Empowering Others to Become, Not Just Do

• Leadership Growth
  • [57:50] John Amaechi: "Sometimes it’s about what you’re capable of empowering others to become."
  • Measuring success by the expanded skills and confidence of one’s team, rather than just their outputs.

12. Leadership Is Learned—Not Age or Generation Bound

• Changing Expectations
  • Leaders of all generations can—and must—adapt, just as they embrace new technology.
  • [61:46] John Amaechi: "Leadership is learned behaviors. It’s not innate, it’s not magic."

13. Practical Learning for Busy Leaders

• One Thing at a Time
  • Absorb from non-traditional sources (social media, short video clips), file interesting ideas, and practice reflecting on just one actionable insight.
  • [65:11] John Amaechi: "Just one thing... One thing that you could learn or improve... could be a fractional improvement that keeps someone with you a day longer, a week longer, a month longer."

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Ordinary Leadership:
  • "[Leadership] is just small things stacked in the right order and consistently... The endurance of that object makes it truly special and desirable." — John Amaechi [04:27]
• On Feedback:
  • "Permission yourself... people are far more likely to want to hear what you have to say." — John Amaechi [25:00]
• On Vulnerability:
  • "People help people. They don't help concepts." — John Amaechi [38:19]
• On Praise and Credit:
  • "Hoarding credit creates misery... micro-affirmation is a really important thing." — John Amaechi [41:26]
• On Self-Perception:
  • "When you do that thing in the name of what is it? Humility? Perhaps what you’re doing is lying to me." — John Amaechi [30:24]
• On Generational Change:
  • "Leadership is learned behaviors. It’s not innate, it’s not magic." — John Amaechi [61:46]
• On Growth:
  • "It is about what I've become, and it's helping our outcomes. But there's a core of this that people miss." — John Amaechi [57:50]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00–04:27 — Introduction, John’s background, masculinity in marketing, book premise.
• 04:27–07:51 — Attainability and elemental nature of leadership skills.
• 09:12–12:29 — Transition challenges: from expert to enabler.
• 15:20–18:00 — Misconceptions of leadership, influence of masculine stereotypes, Trump’s leadership style.
• 23:32–29:13 — Self-awareness, feedback, bridging the "incongruence."
• 30:24–34:28 — Self-assurance, confidence, leader insecurities, vulnerability and loneliness.
• 38:19–44:17 — Vulnerability, loneliness, affirming others, sharing credit.
• 45:12–51:42 — Accessing your experience library, unclenching under pressure, audience engagement.
• 52:21–56:51 — Weaknesses, gender differences, transparency, "hiding" skills, senior leader threats.
• 57:50–61:46 — Empowering others, how leaders help people "become," generational differences.
• 63:18–66:23 — Practical advice for self-development amid busyness.
• 66:23–End — Closing thoughts, book recommendation.

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Practical Takeaways & Action Steps

• Leadership isn’t magic—break it down into repeatable, ordinary skills.
• Feedback: Be specific, contextual, and seek permission to deliver difficult truths.
• Self-awareness: Reflect, solicit, and accept the gap between perception and reality.
• Empower others: Judge your impact as a leader by your team’s growth, not their obedience to you.
• Manage vulnerability: Express it purposefully to foster trust and connection.
• Affirm specifically: Praise should teach, not just appease.
• Curate your learning: Capture interesting experiences and review them regularly.
• Aim for one improvement at a time to achieve sustainable growth.

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Closing Tone

Jon Evans and John Amaechi share a spirited, open, and slightly irreverent rapport—combining hearty laughter, teasing (notably about milky tea), and deep reflection, balancing practical advice with warm humanity.

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For more, John Amaechi’s new book "It’s Not Magic: The Ordinary Skills of Exceptional Leaders" is out now. Each chapter is packed with actionable steps to become better—not just as a marketing leader, but as a human being who inspires others.

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Transcript

[A]

Foreign Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Uncensored cmo. Now, one subject I'm so passionate about is seeing more marketers in leadership positions. Now, the skill set required to be a great leader is quite different from being a great marketer. And that's why I think marketers don't often succeed in those leadership positions. But I want to see more of them do. So. Now, my next guest is perfect, perfect for this conversation. John Amici has got a fascinating background. He was originally an MBA star over in America and he's now become a psychologist, a business coach, and has written many, many books on the subject of leadership. He also has a new book out called It's Not Magic, which looks at the ordinary skills of extraordinary leaders. And actually, John has a beautiful way of describing what great leadership looks like, like how it sounds, how leaders behave, and some of the ordinary skills that you and I can acquire to become extraordinary leaders. This is an amazing conversation. John is genuinely one of the most inspiring people I've ever had the pleasure to meet. And I know you'll get a lot out of it. Here it is. Jon Amici, welcome to the Uncensored cmo. It's really good to see you again.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

And we met, didn't we, quite recently at the Creative Equals Conference, which I thoroughly.

[B]

Private space on stage.

[A]

On stage in front of only a few hundred people listening into our conversation. But I thoroughly enjoyed it. I mean, it was, it was great to talk about masculinity, you know, very important topic at the moment and, you know, really important to kind of have those dialogues which don't seem to happen as often as maybe they should these.

[B]

Days and not in as nuanced way as they should either. And not increasingly, not assigning it's not blame, but assigning a responsibility responsibly. And it's such an interesting thing. We can acknowledge that there's a crisis around masculinity, for example, and it's doing real harm to men without suggesting it's the fault of women, which I feel is creeping into the dialogue a little bit. The idea. There's a lot of people I respect a lot. Scott Galloway really like him. I did a response piece to his stuff on masculinity because he was talking about the fact that men have to swipe. I've not been on an app in a while.

[A]

Oh yeah, right. So many more times, like women, you.

[B]

Know, 500 times in order to get one thing. And it's like the inter. The implication is that women are too picky or Women are something else, but really, like all people, it's not the picture. We know from the research that women, you know, you put images of men, a little bit of extra weight, you know, a kind of corny mustache, whatever it is, that's not the stuff that's gonna make women go away. It's what you write in there that's making them swipe left at lightning speed. And it's. So it's your fault. It's the man who needs to think about and rethink about it. I just wish I was talking to a young person about this the other day. I just wish people could realize that masculinity can be personalized and flexible. It doesn't. You don't have to pick now and keep to it, but it can also. You don't have to pick somebody else's idea if it can be yours and work for you.

[A]

Yeah. And that's a great, valuable conversation. And definitely more to come, actually inspired me to do. Because at System One, where I work, we kind of measure emotional response to advertising, and we spent a lot of time looking at how people are portrayed in different segments of society. But it's true, we haven't really thought much about men and how they see themselves and what role model we are setting for men in the kind of creative that we produce. So, yeah, a lot more to come on that, I think.

[B]

Yeah, I hope so.

[A]

Yeah. Be really good to talk about. Well, listen, we're here today because you've got a new book coming out I would love to quiz you about. I want to start with. With. With the title and the premise of the book, because it's. It's not magic and it's the. I've got the book here. The Ordinary Skills of Exceptional Leaders. And what intrigued me straight away was the framing of ordinary. Because, of course, you know, we see leaders on stage, don't we, doing these inspiring speeches, or we listen to people negotiate. You watch people negotiate a difficult situation and it feels out of reach. It feels kind of somehow, you know, magical and so on. But you position all really as ordinary and that we can all achieve it. So I'm just intrigued to know what inspired this positioning of ordinary skills.

[B]

I suppose there's a couple of things to this, and literally, I've not talked about it this way. It's just occurred to me because you said this, the elemental makeup of most interesting things is quite mundane, Right. Diamonds. These things we value so much, broadly, whether it be for commercial purposes, mining rocks or whatever, or whether it be for beautiful Rings, necklaces, they are made up of just like carbon, assembled in an interesting way and maybe some other things to make them slightly different shifts in color. And that's what I'm talking about here. These leaders that we see that appear so polished and amazing, the relatively few that there are, by the way, that are so polished and amazing, what they do is just small things stacked in the right order and consistently right. Because nobody's impressed by a diamond that looks good and then falls to pieces right afterwards. It's the endurance of that object that makes it truly special and desirable. And the same thing with leaders. It's these basic construction elements that on their own, you look at them and you're like, boring, dull, uninteresting. How can that be anything? And you pull them all together. And the shape that it creates is one that is alluring and draws people to it. And that's leadership.

[A]

I mean, what I love about that framing is it then feels attainable, doesn't it? Other than because often when we see very successful people, it just the gap between us and an elite athlete or an elite speaker or whatever just feels too big to bridge, doesn't it? And I think bringing that back and breaking that down just suddenly gives you that confidence that actually maybe I could step into that, you know, because I think a lot of this, I mean, we started at the beginning about kind of self assurance as well, isn't it is often a big deal, isn't it? For a lot of people, they don't think they could ever do something like this.

[B]

Yeah. And I don't make this feel attainable because I want to kind of pander to people. It is attainable. Right. Not everybody will be the same magnitude of storyteller as their favorite leader. Not everybody will have that same kind of seeming person of the people type of approach. And not everybody will be as comfortable on stage, and not everybody will be as technical in front of their stakeholders. But in terms of helping people to see that you're a person they can follow safely, we can all do that. And I think it's important that we recognize, especially now, we live in a time where I think part of the narrative that exists as a low hum in society broadly is one that tells everybody that you're not very powerful, there's very little you can do. And so this book in part is to help people to realize that maybe your sphere of influence is small, maybe your sphere of control is even smaller. Maybe it's your family, maybe it's a bit of your extended family, maybe it's you and the person who sits next to you in that cubicle in your office. If you use some of these skills, if you build them, compound over time, you will be the kind of person who will be a magnetic influence on the people around you without having to kind of have a title that goes along with it. And maybe if you can build those skills, good, conscientious workplaces will see them and you'll earn that title as well as those skills.

[A]

Yeah, you mentioned something there about, you know, finding, you know, not everyone necessarily will be the great speaker or the great writer or whatever, something that comes out later in the book. I thought I maybe start at. Because it just struck me as a good place to start. You talk about finding your value proposition and I thought that was quite powerful because we sometimes don't spend enough time thinking about what our skill set is and thinking about what the organization we work for needs and finding that overlap between the two. And it reminded me of a period in my career where I was a bit lost and really kind of not sure what to do next. And I kind of got to the point where I thought I'd been at the company like 13 years, quite a long time, and I thought, I probably, if nothing changes, I'm going to go. And I did this off site for a few days. And they put this really simple thing up on the board. It was so simple. It just said, write down all the things that you're passionate about that you believe in your skill set, and then write down all the things that the company are struggling to do or have a challenge with and overlap and just look for the little thing in the middle. And it just put this spark in my head. I went, oh, yes, I love this. Yeah, exactly. And I thought, the company's not doing that. I remember I was so excited, I phoned up a couple of the directors on the board and said, can I breakfast with you on Monday? And I took all my flip charts in. It felt, you know, it's funny, on Friday it felt all very clear and straightforward. Then on Monday I'm like, yeah, it doesn't look quite as, like, obvious.

[B]

Isn't that always the way it slips the context?

[A]

Exactly. You know, exactly. But I remember on the Monday saying, right, this is the big gap for the organization. I think I'm persons to it. And it was probably one of the most transformational parts of my career. And the reason it links to this actually is it was the point at which I went from being probably a good, functional, functional manager, you know, I was good at doing elements of marketing to a new role where I was leading a big team. And man, that jump is huge because the things that kind of made you good are no longer the things that make you good in the next stage. And I think that you must find this a lot with people you coach. That jump from being I'm the expert to then I'm the leader that people are looking to.

[B]

Yeah, I just talked about this in one of the social media posts. I did this exact thing. This transition from I am valued for my direct technical expertise to I am valued as a person who can enable other people's direct technical expertise and the relationships of trust you have to build and the delegation communication skills you have to have, the conflict management skills you need to negotiate the, the ways you have to be able to set boundaries clearly and set expectations even more clearly. And to me, that's. It's a, it's such a different skill set, but also the fact that many people who are technical experts, that's exactly the stage where they start to lament because what happens is you go from being expert, expert, expert, you get your promotion and you're an idiot. Yeah, it's like I'm, I was an expert yesterday and now I feel stupid. And very few adults like to go from feeling. I don't know if this data, this research has been done with people who are legitimately, you know, not that sharp or not interested in being sharp, but certainly people who are interested in being sharp, the experience of feeling dumb is one they have to get used to. Academia, good academia does that regularly. Right. Because you buy into and endorse and study an area of study and then over time it develops and you, you have to catch up and so you get dumb and then you get clever again. But yeah, it's a big part of that transition. But the other piece I think is important in that transition is, is that you disconnect people. Their technical expertise is almost like a transactional relationship with an organization. I'm just really good. I get paid for being good. And then that's disconnected when all of a sudden your job is slightly different. You have to reconnect people. And that's by the look of excitement on your face when you talked about that. That was the thing that seems to be. It's like, oh, I've got some real purpose and value and it's specific. And it's not just that I'm clever and can do this job technically, it's that I can also have a bit of a vision and See things that other people have missed. It's an amazing opportunity, this transition. But it's often handled transactionally. That's why it goes poorly.

[A]

It's very, very hard, isn't it? Because also the other thing with it is when you're doing a functional role, your value is on output. Right. So it's tangible. Right. So I delivered this thing, reduce that much. You know, I spent this and in a responsible way. But with leaders, it's intangible, you know, it's, it's. Have you empowered people? You know, is the team morale high? Have you collectively achieved not. Have you individually achieved this? It's a different set of kind of success measures, isn't there?

[B]

I would encourage us. It is a different success measure for sure, but I would encourage us to think of it this way. It is not that it's intangible. We just don't measure that. And when we do measure it, we measure it poorly. I am a nerd. I think I've had this conversation with you before. But the idea that it frustrates the hell out of me how we do surveys, for example, you know, because your work is about building, at least in part, the robustness of what you do is important. Yeah. And you look at some of these surveys where they're going to measure morale and you ask them what you mean by morale. And I asked five people and I get five different answers. And that's going to be a terrible question if you don't have a unified idea. Measuring collaboration. What do you mean by collaboration? One bloke over here who's very senior thinks it's people sitting and nodding while he talks to them. And another person thinks, a younger person perhaps thinks it's my ability to contrib and disagree and whatever else. And you've got to choose what your definition is before you even ask the question. And then you ask questions and they ask them. This is my. This is so dull. But it's my bugbear. Right? It's the idea of people asking five point questions, you know, strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree. And I don't understand it. How can you. If I asked you how do you like your job at the moment? And you said neutral. It's like somebody sliding over a plate of food at you, you taking a bite and how do you feel about it? Meh. Who's attributing that to neutral?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And there's no neutral where it comes to culture and leadership. There is off the fence either way. I just, I look at this and that's why we struggle in part. Right. Because we just don't measure it accurately or well.

[A]

Yeah. So it's funny actually talking about survey, the one that always makes me cut.

[B]

That whole section out.

[A]

Surveys are funny. The classic one in marketing is you have the five point scale, like, would you buy this? Definitely. Would you buy this? Maybe. Would you buy this? Not sure. Would you buy this? Definitely not 5 point scale. Everyone always adds the maybes to the definite maybes. Just being polite, that's just people going, I probably wouldn't but I'll just be polite for a maybe. That's the classic one.

[B]

Yeah. And it doesn't help you. It muddies your data and it means you head off in a direction ill informed. To me, those things, it's like adding. It's like having a compass that can tell you the direction. It can tell you north. Right. But what you do to make somebody else happy is you bring in another tiny magnet next to it and so you're heading off in north. Ish. But it's not exactly north because you've got this factor in here that's just messing up your data. And that's what those questions do.

[A]

Yeah, I can see that. We talked about kind of the, some of the surprise that you get when you go from being functional leader to a leader. You train a lot of people on leadership. What do you commonly see as the misconceptions of leadership or what people are surprised about when they have to make that kind of jump into leadership?

[B]

Some of it is about, as we talked about with masculinity, this idea that there is a leadership style. And this is born actually it's not really people's fault. It's born of the idea that many, many men who are leaders have an idea that leadership is strength. And by strength they mean certainty in the face of absolute refuting evidence. It means always knowing the answer. It means never being vulnerable. It means being the loudest person in the room. It means being charismatic. And you'll know from the book that it's not a word. I think again, there are a thousand different definitions of it and all of those things works really well if you might be some combination of middle class, traditionally educated, Russell group or other country equivalent and on and on and on and male. If you add all those things together, maybe that's a natural choice. But there's a vast swathe of people who come from different backgrounds, countries which are not so focused on independence in leadership but are more collaborative in nature. And there's a space for all of these flexible, different types. And it prevents people from going to leadership because they look at other people and say, oh, I can't lead that way. And it's like, don't then. Because I'm telling you right now, there are tons of people, if you led a different way, who would breathe a sigh of relief, whose performance would rise. And even those people who had tolerated and maybe even thrived in the crucible of toxic leadership. Imagine what they could do if a percentage of their energy wasn't always there as a firewall to keep them from burning up. Imagine what they'd be capable of if they realized they could say, I don't know, and not have their ear tune off. I think that's the thing. We need more people who lead in different ways, but responsibly.

[A]

That's a lovely framing. Actually. I've got a WhatsApp group of CMOs and we often have chats before I interview people. And I dropped this conversation to chat and said, but there was one question that came through about three different people, all similar question, which is unusual one. But do you think Trump's re election is. What impact is that having on our perception of leadership? Because there's a very, very different style, you know, a very sort of aggressive, hard negotiator, extreme kind of in language and body, you know, everything. Right. Do you think that's having an effect on how we see leadership in terms of what's. It was a tricky question really, isn't it?

[B]

It is. Because I've got no one a visa. And that's why it's a tricky question. No. So a. I would refute. Refute some of the premise. Right. So is he a hard negotiator just based on the facts? I'm not sure that's true or clear. I think it's hard for any person who's the principal of a country to just be a hard negotiator because. As well, certainly a country that's nominally a democracy because there are checks and balances that will prevent you from just saying, I'm doing this for the most part. Is he himself part of the problem? The world and people broadly love a model excuse character. Right. And he's a model excuse character. You can yell in the middle of your meeting and instead of feeling bad about it and other people saying, that's not normal. That's not how leaders behave. You can go, leader of the most powerful man in the world is what people call the president. Right. Right there. And it gives you this immediate sense of, oh, I Can be so much more terrible before there isn't somebody out there who's more extreme than me. And it's a wonderful excuse for people. I would suggest that I'm a massive bloke. I am 6 foot 9 and 20 many stone. And I know for a fact that intimidation, anxiety and fear are terrible motivators. They work sharply in the extreme short term. And what I mean by that is they create a reflex. So the first time you terrify somebody, they will respond, but their response will be amygdala based. It will not be prefrontal and frontal cortex smart person base. It'll just be, oh my God, what do I do so I never get shouted at again. And some of that is, I'll bury the bad news. I'll make other people tell the bad news. I will keep my head down and not, you know what I mean? It's not pro performance stuff that happens. And so don't be that. Don't fall into this trap of thinking that because it's easier, and it's always easier to be a bad leader than good just because it's easier. If you really are interested in winning in this world that we live in right now with the kind of diverse, cognitively diverse, interesting people who are going to perform and win with us, then your approach has got to be, how can I create an environment where individual people can thrive, where they know the rules of engagement with each other and with me as a leader. They know what, what good looks like to me. They know what high performance looks like to me. They know their, their scope of authority and power, and they know that I'll back them with the use of that. These are the things that make people like sit down and think, I'm just going to kill it for this person. People who are terrified, they're the ones who run away when the shooting starts.

[A]

Yeah, you're so right. I was just doing a mental checklist actually, as you were talking about good bosses and bad bosses. I've had, and you're absolutely right, the bad bosses, I had to jump when, you know, when they said jump. And you know, I had, I had to, you know, follow the orders, you know, because they were terrifying, whatever. But I was working out my exit plan from day two, you know what I mean?

[B]

Right.

[A]

Whereas the good leaders, which were empathetic, empowering, understanding, you know, delegating, responsibility, all the kind of stuff we'll come and talk about, they're the ones that today I'll still be loyal to, go out of my way to help Talk about in the rooms where they're not in all that kind of stuff, you know.

[B]

But it is important for us to say here that this is not about soft leaders with no ambition. Because I'm incredibly robust, right? I am interested only in helping people win. I want them to thrive, but I want people to thrive in organizations that win in terms of their objectives. And if you think of the leaders that you're thinking of, it's not that they were just like, yeah, whatever, don't care about standards or anything else. They did all that with the, with the behaviors that made interpersonally, that made it easier for you to want to perform. The other thing about being scared or using fear as a tactic is that it stops working over time. Because in America they do these. I remember when I went to high school there, for one year I went to haunted houses. And they aren't like the ones I'd seen, you know, somebody putting up a. A scary skeleton. These are things, these are proper productions like Theater Standard. And you go in and the first time there's a jump scare, you lose your stuff, you pee a little, and then the next time it's. It's a bit frightening. And the third time and then you. What you realize is these things are winding productions through a house. And by the time you come to the end of it, somebody's jumping out with a bloody knife and you're like, can we go for food? And that's the thing leaders need to remember your tactic of fear, anxiety, all of that. It'll give you one good jump and maybe a second. And not only will they be looking for the exit, they'll be like, I'm bored of this.

[A]

Yeah. So, right, let's talk about some of the stuff in the book. Getting onto great leaders. I thought I'd start with self awareness. And this stat jumped out a lot. And I smiled at this, that 95% of people believe they are self aware. And yet the research would suggest that perhaps the reality is more like 10 or 15%.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

That's a big gap, isn't it?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. This work is not mine. This is Tasha Yorick and she's amazing. But to me it's so telling. Right. Because the gap. I'm a humanistic psychologist by training and as a group of psychologists, we're interested in incongruence, the gap between what is and what what is said. And here's another example of that. A gap between what you think in terms of how you know yourself and how you actually know yourself. And in that Space pain lives, right? Pain for you because you're unaware of your impact on others. Pain for others because you're unaware of your impact on others. And to me, it's one of those remarkable, consistent things. I meet leaders and I talk to them and I'm like, they tell me about how they handle the situation and I said, well, can you see how that might be interpreted a different way? And it's like, no. Well, what if I told you this might make someone feel this? It's like, oh my God, I never would have. And that's that lack of. And in the book I talk about the idea of reflection, right. On your experiences. That's not just a lack of self awareness, it's a lack of reflection on the experiences you have that could be informative.

[A]

What tips would you give someone to help overcome that in Congress? Because I bet that must be a very common scenario. And I mean, I recognize that in myself, I recognize that in some of the people I've led and you have to kind of bridge that gap. And it can be quite scary because you're telling people things you know they might not like as well. How. What's the best way of getting over that?

[B]

So.

[A]

And becoming more self. Aware.

[B]

Yeah. So there's two things for you as an individual. Just acknowledge the fact that however self aware you think you are, pick a percentage number and then take 25% off just to be. That's being generous, right. So if you think you're 95, you just take 25% right off that and know that you've got work to do. And most of us would probably not, you know, especially after listening to this, they would not say 95%. So. But whatever number you pick, if it's 50, just take 25% off and realize that there is likely scenarios where you've no idea about stuff about you or the impact you have. And then you start thinking about the moments that really agitate you or excite you. And this can be bad or good, Right. There are things that make you feel greatly. I cry at a lot of people. Films, it's just a thing. But examining what kinds of things make you cry and what kind of things might be equally sad but not make you cry is informative about who you are. The fact that you cry at films is informative about who you are. Examine the things that irritate you. Many people have triggers and I use that in a non scientific way, but things that really get to them, for me, I have a number of them. I'm quite pedantic But I have a special patterning code for my diary and I went through today and placed colons where colons should be because they were missing. And it really made my ears hot. It made me mad that it wasn't right. Cause it's such a small thing and it's making me mad to think about it right now. I can see this but it's ridiculous. But it's important for me because the fact that I'm a pedant about details will have an impact on the people who have to work with me closely. The person. I don't have an EA at the moment but we're looking into that and when that happens, kind of a crucial piece of information, right? That missing, not knowing the formula for my diary is going to create friction. And I just think we don't examine these moments. That's one thing when telling other people. People love to say feedback's a gift. It's not how it's interpreted by most people but there is a way you can do it. And I think, and again when I talk to you about this, I don't remember everything that I even wrote in the book at this stage. But one of the things you can do is permission yourself even if you. And almost especially if you're a senior person talking to a junior person. But definitely if you're talking to a peer or you're managing up, you're talking to somebody else more senior permission yourself say look, I know that you want to be the best possible kind of leader. I spotted something that's getting in the way. Could I tell you about it? And that's it. And they may say no in the moment because it's not the right time. They may say no in the moment because they're irritated by it. But the beautiful thing of that approach, and there's research that talks about this is when you permit yourself people are far more likely to want to hear what you have to say or be willing to hear what you say even if they don't want to. And then far more likely to take action on it because you permissioned yourself. And that I think really works well. And then you've got to do them the courtesy. And this is another place we all fall down. If you're trying to tell people stuff to help them be more self aware, don't be wooly about it, don't be like oh, you know, you know your tea the way you do your tea is a bit, bit weird.

[A]

By the way. If anyone, most people listening won't be able to See my tea? So I've just drunk the milkiest tea I think there's ever been. We've just had this. Dom Dwight, he's gonna be furious.

[B]

Yes. By the way, listen, you could be murdered for that kind of tea.

[A]

I'm not safe when I leave this building or go anywhere.

[B]

That was put on the table before you arrived. And when I saw it, I thought, somebody hated you.

[A]

They want me dead.

[B]

That is not how tea should be. It is.

[A]

That's it.

[B]

Right? It's bronze nectar. That's what tea is. And if it's not bronze, it's not right. Anyway. But doing the woolly stuff about that doesn't help you because then you might be saying, what do you think's wrong with it? Is it not hot enough? Is it not cold? What is it? Me telling you specifically what I spotted that would give you an insight to yourself is the key, and it's far less irritating.

[A]

The specifically is really powerful because I think most people tend to worry about the reaction and therefore they put it in general terms or they try and, you know, reduce it down a bit to being less specific so it's kind of more acceptable. That makes a lot of sense.

[B]

But doing that, you know, when you talk to people about they're trying to advance their insight, you put it in a context that matters to them. So I know you want to be the best kind of leader. I know you're really interested in that internal promotion. It's in that context that I'm telling you. I think this is getting in the way of that. And it's this specific thing. And if you stop doing that or you started doing that or you did it more or less, then that helps you in the thing that you want, rather than. I prefer it if.

[A]

Yeah, I like the framing of that in the context of a shared goal where you're going together. So it's like, help us go in the same together. Rather, I'm distancing myself from you by telling you what you're not very good at or making it about me. Making it about us. One thing that a quote in the book that surprised me about self assurance. My assumption before reading your book would have been self assurance is something all great leaders have. They're naturally self assured. And you said this, that you've noted in the remarkable diversity of people that you've coached and mentored, a lack of self assurance present. Present in highly competent and accomplished people. I was curious to know why that was, because I think assumption would be that of course they're all self assured and they're successful people.

[B]

Yeah, I suppose helpful if I say that don't conflate self assurance with confidence. Right. Self assurance is the actual tangible and accurate assessment of your own skills and deficits. Right. It's the idea, it's linked to self awareness, but it's really about your skills in the context of your role, which includes the leadership skills as well as the management skills as well as the technical skills. And what I'm amazed by is the incongruence between people I meet. I'm like, you're bloody remarkable. They talk in ways. There's one woman I spoke to the other day and her job is fintech and crypto stuff inside a very large bank. So already I am underwater. And the way she talked about it in a way that I could understand, I was like, this is remarkable what you're doing. And she says, yeah, I know a little bit about crypto. And it's like, that's not right. She's like, well, you know, I don't know because that's not right. And the way I characterize it is that when you, when you do that thing in the name of what is it? Humility? Perhaps what you're doing is lying to me. And that's confusing because now I'm wondering, are you trying to manipulate me by telling me you're not good at something I've just spent 15 minutes listening to you be brilliant at instead of just telling me that you're in a granular way and an objective way, not just saying I'm really clever because that's annoying to everybody. But in this specific area, I really have built up great knowledge and I'm really good at explaining this and understanding this and using that. That's all we're asking for with this. And I'm amazed by the number of leaders who don't have it. I think leadership builds insecurity in people over time. I think they recognize that the world is moving faster and their roles are so busy that they often find themselves behind the curve. When it came to the pandemic, leaders were behind the curve on how to interact with people and manage people who weren't right next to them in an office or down a corridor or on a different floor of the same building. And they'd never considered it after the pandemic, this idea that balance of life and well being, which are not things that, you know, should shock people, leaders that people want, but they were like, I don't know how to have a conversation about somebody's Mental health. I've never considered that my people are people outside of their role. And so it builds these small anxieties. Plus, we all watch great leaders and think, oh my God, I'm terrible. Compared to insert name here.

[A]

Yeah, one thing, I mean, because this podcast gets to speak to lots of the best marketers on the planet, chief marketing officers of big organizations. Couple of things I notice really consistently is one is they all have this appetite for learning. It's almost like the more senior they get, the more they realize they still have to learn. It's. It's a bit like, I mean, leadership is like a never ending, kind of lifelong kind of lesson, isn't it? You never, you never quite get there. It's not like Mars mastering one sort of functional thing. It's like a constant thing. And I noticed the appetite for learning. And the second thing I noticed is a vulnerability. Because you talk about vulnerability in your book, which is really powerful, but also vulnerability of that position because when you are a leader, I mean, I'd say one emotion I felt, going back to my moment I told you about where I did this pivot from functional expert to leading this new division, I felt for the first time in my career, a massive sense of loneliness. It was really interesting. And what I realized was no one else was doing what I was doing and no one was telling me how to do it. Because before it'd be like, John, can you go and, you know, put this promotion in Tesco or you know, can you go and launch this new flavor of drink or something? And it's like, well, there's a manual for that. I know what I'm doing. And then suddenly it's like, nothing happens unless I lead. And that felt really. It made me feel very vulnerable, but it also made me feel quite lonely and isolated. So. So suddenly I. And I recognize this in a lot of people interview is this desire to learn and coupled with this sort of anxiety and vulnerability about the position, those kind of two things.

[B]

It is. So the desire to learn part, I love this. I remember the exact moment I realized I could never be a finished product. And it was when I was going to do. To see if I could teach a couple of classes at a university up north. And I went with this stuff. And I was talking about Daniel Goleman, who's kind of the father of emotional literacy. And I was talking about his theories and the room, the three other scholars or better scholars, proper academics who were talking to me, they're like, oh, yeah, that's really been superseded by the four branch model. And I didn't know they were in university. It was only just happening. I had no idea. And I was just like, oh, my God, that's true. I was so invested in it too. I knew everything, every wrinkle of this other theory. And now there's this new thing that was more elegant. I researched it afterwards, it was more elegant, it was more appropriate, it was more applicable. And I was like, damn it, oh, no. And. And that's when I realized it's always going to evolve. And it, you know, some things are going to be consistent. Gravity is real, you know, the Earth is a globe. These things aren't necessarily going to evolve. But when it comes to. To the. This kind of stuff that we're doing in workplaces and dealing with human beings, there's always going to be a new wrinkle. And it's meant, now that I'm so interested in finding lots of different ways to get insights. You mentioned Rory Sutherland.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So I watch him on TikTok and there's so many other people in the book. There's this bloke who's a random linguist who I follow and has been incredibly informative and interesting for me, working with lots of different types of people. So on the one side, we just need to recognize that. That learning new stuff is not about our ignorance, it's about our appetite for more intellect. Right. That's what it is. It's not ignorance, it's an appetite. And I have a huge appetite for learning more stuff. It's exciting to me when I watch a TikTok and I'm like, I have never thought of that. And then I must. I've got to follow it. I've got to put a block in on my Saturday or Sunday, and I've got to follow the rabbit. And I think it's so incredibly exciting, it's amazing. That learning part is really key and I want people to recognize that there's no negative about you from being excited about this. And it's not a statement about how much you already know, because our brains do not have a storage limit in that way.

[A]

But that does touch on one of the challenges of leadership, isn't it that people feel like as a leader you have to have all the answers. And I know one of the chaps in the book that really struck me because it's kind of resonated with part of my career as well, was the power of vulnerability. And I remember in this one kind of chapter in my career where I was. I was struggling with the team, because they. We were losing trust with each other. And I was like, why aren't they doing what I'm telling them to do? You know, and sort of thing. And they were kind of, you know, all up in arms. And I remember the HR director said to me, look, John, have you ever been open with them about how they're making you feel? I was like, well, no, because I'm the boss, because I don't do that. And it was really. It was one of the most powerful meetings ever had with them is I sat down and said. Said, I'm actually feeling quite exposed. I'm feeling upset, I'm feeling challenged, and this sort of thing. And I remember there's one person who couldn't make the meeting. And I got this constant missed call after she goes, what just happened? The entire team had been on the phone saying, john just opened up. And it was like this transformational moment with the team because I'd shown some vulnerability. And I remember HR director who's kind of coached me in this point. She said, john, the thing with you is you appear very slick every time you turn up. You're confident, you know the answer, you've got the right. You sound good. You know, you position things brilliantly, you've got the answers. And we just want to see that vulnerability come through. And. And then it will just. You just, you know, you just. It'll create permission for people then to, of course, give it back. You know, people help people.

[B]

They don't help concepts. Yeah, they help people. This idea of a label. They don't help labels. They help people. People. And. And they've got to know that they can contribute. Because if you are presenting this idea of a slick. I know everything, which many leaders feel absolutely beholden to do, like they have to. There's no space for anybody to add their stuff. I had a thought. I had an idea, but you seem so certain. I won't bring it up. But also, that speaks to the sense of loneliness. That engenders the sense of loneliness. Because you were talking about loneliness and isolation. And one of the things I think mention broadly need to do, as most women have a better and more accurate emotional vocabulary. It's. Some of it's socialized at the very least, but most men are trained not to. So everything is funneled into a couple of emotions. Sadness is rage, disappointment is rage. Embarrassment is rage. Everything gets funneled into rage or one other thing that they're allowed to have. Have Stoicism, perhaps. I don't know if that's that's not an appropriate emotion. But if you can label it and look at isolation and loneliness as two very different things, isolation is a fact. Loneliness is, is an option, right? So isolation, you being there and looked at for, for answers and perhaps not having peers in a very real sense, doesn't mean you have to be lonely because there's a whole group of people there who, whilst they won't be your friends because you're their boss, can at least be authentically connected, can recognize their, their channels for contribution and recognize when you need to be replaced contextually in a leadership role. You know those meetings where you go, and I have them with some of our psychologists who know more stuff, right, because they are newer graduates and they know more stuff, more technical stuff. And the meeting will just be like, all right, I'm going to hand this over and Gina's going to take it from here because she's the one with the expertise and I've loaned some of my credibility, but that person is the person leading. And it's, it's not just that it's a relief for me to be able to listen in a different capacity. It also is less lonely because we're actually peers here in this context.

[A]

It brings on to another elements of vulnerability search, which really struck me, and I've seen this play out really well, is when you give credit to people because you know, rather than take credit, and also where you give away knowledge rather than protect knowledge, because the assumption is in the kind of old model it would be, is that power is the knowledge, right? And being the smartest person in the room, all that kind of thing. And I remember weird kind of comparison with this podcast, but I remember when I started this thinking, why do I, you know, why do I be giving all this information away? Why do people come on and like, literally share everything they know? Because they're experts, they should be charging for them. And of course, actually what I realized is by giving, giving it away, you create credibility because, you know, you're, you're back to self assurance. You're comfortable enough to be able to do that. And actually it has power in crediting other people for success and sharing the secret to what you know, what you've done as well.

[B]

Hoarding credit creates misery. Hoarding credit creates misery. People who are sad, anxious, fearful, who feel unrecognized, do not do their best work. You do not have to be a psychologist to know this. Right. Is there anybody who's not aware what it feels like to be sad, anxious, fearful, or feel unrecognized you're just not doing your best work. And so it is a smart, tactical, if not strategic move for leaders to recognize that micro affirmation is a really important thing. This is not, in America, the kind of attaboy phenomena. I think it happens way too much here as well. So somebody does something, you say, yeah, well done. It's like, that's not praise and it's not feedback, because feedback is actionable. It is saying, you know, what made you think. It's questioning curiously, what made you think to do that? I don't know that we would have had the same result if you hadn't done that thing. You added that one link to this and suggested that we looked at it. What made you think to do that? That's proper affirmation. That's a way to say to everybody, I'm saying that thing that seems tiny and you might have ignored it is a difference maker.

[A]

I really like it because the other thing about that that strikes me is when you say, well done, you're sort of going, thank you for doing what I asked. It's about you, isn't it? Whereas doing that, you're actually recognizing the skill and you're encouraging the learning in the moment as well. To build on it.

[B]

Yeah, both those things and even the build on. You know, the thing that lots of people say in meetings, I do not say this, but in meetings I hear a lot of people, and again, it is mostly men say to build on.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And what they really mean is they said the same thing as say, but I'm going to say it better and I'm going to say it afterwards. And recency will mean that you only remember what I said.

[A]

That's so true.

[B]

I think there's such a better way of doing it to say, I would not have thought of this had it not been for Muriel's idea here, but here's an additional thing. And then make it actually an additional thing or another thing as a way of giving praise and affirmation is the idea of, does anybody else have anything? And saying, not saying no, and then speaking for 10 minutes, which is also a thing that people do, but rather saying, I was actually going to say something, but I can't be what's just been said.

[A]

I couldn't say it better than it's just been.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then you're done.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Don't say, no, I couldn't say it better. And then do five minutes on trying to say it better. Just know what this individual and use their name has Said has really captured the essence of what I was talking about. Yeah, it's praise, affirmation, all of these things. And it's easy. And you don't, you don't lose. And that's the amazing part about you don't lose by doing it. Everybody can see what you're doing.

[A]

That's the thing, isn't it? Exactly. It's a win, win. You become better as a leader, the person feels recognized, and you build them up. One bit in the book as well that I think is this is something I personally find a real challenge with. You talk about, and I'd never heard this expression, by the way, about the library of your experiences. I. Lovely phrase that, actually, because all of us as leaders, we have to tap into our experiences, don't we? And in different contexts use it and so on. And a feeling that I'm sure everyone listening has had many times is when you're in the room and you think, why didn't I think of that when we were in the room? I mean, I get it doing this job a lot podcasts. I had one the other day where I was like, literally, I was kicking myself. There were so many things I could have said in that moment or could have come back on or responded to or added that sort of thing. And you had some lovely tips about how best to sort of access those library of experiences in the moment.

[B]

Yeah, Access to your library of experiences is. Is. Is practice, right? It is a reflective practice. In part. It is also. I write them down if I have an experience. I. I don't. I remember, I don't remember the last one, but there was one in particular. It was in my old house. I lived in Covent Garden and I would walk through Soho in the mornings, which is always done with some trepidation, especially on a Monday when the weekend has ravaged the place. And. And I was walking through and I went to the gym and I came back and the Cafe Nero, I don't know, is it all Compton street was open and so I went in and grabbed a coffee and these two young men were having a conversation. Both of them spoke English as a second language and spoke a different first language. And they were talking about their potential and how they thought they were worth and could do so much more. And one of them said to the other, but how can we when all anybody ever sees is this? And they kind of pointed to themselves and it was such a. It was, you know, here it is, seven o' clock in the morning. And I went home and I wrote it down. Immediately I didn't write the whole story. I just said caffeinero in the morning, purpose and worth. And it sits in my, in my spreadsheet of things. And now I'm more readily able to access it because I did a little bit of work. Right. To try and note it down. And I think that's something that we can all do. Think about the interactions you have that often in the moment you think, oh my God, that's really powerful. You may not even examine why, but that was really interesting or powerful. Write it down.

[A]

There's a truth about that. Because you do a lot of keynote speeches. I do quite a lot of keynote speeches and I never ever use notes. And people often go, how did you manage to say that? And what they miss in the not using notes is I'm very prepared, very prepared, but I over prepare and then I don't use. Because what happens is I've done all the preparation, I've done all the thought, I've written a bit like you've just said, I've written down all the potential things I might say. And then I almost have to dismiss it completely because once I'm in the moment, I have to relax into the mode so that it will, it will just come to me at the right point. But if I try and follow notes and try and say exactly whatever it is I've written down, I fail dismally. I mean, the difference in my performance is just stark, night and day between those two things.

[B]

Yeah. And people will be terrified by you saying that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because I, I like to have some notes and then I laugh about how little I use.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then don't use them if at all. Right. And sometimes the bit I use of my notes is simply the name of the person who's introducing me because I want to make sure I get that right. And often that's the kind of thing that might flip from my head. But the thing you described there I talk about in the book is a clench. Right. I have a lot of people who told me I should use different terminology, but I think it's evocative and I think it's part of the problem. Your brain is not the problem. Whether you be neurotypical or neuro atypical, your brain is not the problem. It is an almost unlimited resource when functioning optimally. And the thing that stops is that we clench the funnel that would, would allow the information to come out. Because in my conversations with you today, with anybody, when people talk, the appropriate, the appropriate stories, anecdotes, pieces of research or ideas. They're jumping into my brain. So much so that I often have a book with me, a little piece of paper so I can just write it down so it doesn't get lost. They're just jumping into my brain because I'm not clenching. I'm not going, oh, my God. I've got to be able to think of something around that because I know that I've got a library of experiences that will cover this or something approximate to it that will work. And then it's just my job to breathe.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And people think that's some not. And I'm not a woo woo person, I'm a scientist. But you know, four box breathing, some meditative breathing, something like that, in the midst of a conversation will just allow you that little channel that would otherwise flood the exact thing you need to your brain. It will unconstrict it and allow that to come. And that's. It does work.

[A]

It really, really does work. The other tactic I use in that situation, I mean, a bit like the conversation we had at Creative Equals, actually especially was I only think about you in the conversation I'm having. I'm not thinking about the 500 people and what they need or what they're thinking about or their reactions or their faces. I'm just thinking this is a conversation between two people. And I know from the time that we've spent before, you know, you're a great person, you're eloquent, you're able to cope with whatever I'm going to do. I'm just going to relax. I'm just going to talk to you as if we're talking, just the two of us. There's no cameras, there's no lights, there's no audience. And some. I've always found that framing to be really helpful. And I've just. And whenever I coach people on how they do the talk, I said, just put me in the seat. Imagine I'm the audience of one. How would you talk to me?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, and then you take away all that sort of clenching of the audience, the lighting, the cameras. What if I say the wrong thing and I also say no one knew what you were gonna say?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That you didn't say. See? So, you know, no one's gonna sit there and go, it didn't matter.

[B]

They're not looking at your transcript. They're not exactly. They're just not. I think one of the things with this is when I teach. I teach a storytelling class, it's one of my favorite things Just helping people to tell their own kind of story in their own kind of way. And when we do this, I often get this, well, I can do it, but not in front of crowds. And that's why I asked the question, how many is one person? No, that's fine. It's two. Fine is ten. And we keep going up and it's like ten. Well, my boardroom is ten. And so that feels fine. Eleven. And you suddenly. It's laughable. We start to laugh because you suddenly realize at some point you get a number and then now you've got this ridiculous scenario where it's 63 people, you can no longer speak. Cameras, the same thing. Can you do it with one camera that's not on? Oh yeah, yeah. Two cameras that are not on. Yeah. If I put one of the cameras on, it's. And it just. You suddenly realize that we're just creating obstacles that make us clench rather than thinking. The lights, the cameras are nothing to do with the fact that you are talking to a real human being. It's the biggest thing that I think makes people better in virtual communication is recognizing you are not talking to a screen. That would be madness.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You are talking to real people or real persons up in a different space. And once you think of it that way, your body language relaxes and you start to speak as if speaking to a real person. Because you are.

[A]

Yeah, completely now talking about people's fears. One of the bits in the book is how you deal with your own weaknesses as well. I think probably a lot of us, although it's interesting in the book you differentiate between men and women quite differently in terms of whether we think we're good enough for the job. And how we perceive our own weaknesses. Is a big divergence there, wasn't there? But that seems to be an inhibitor for a lot of people, isn't it, when they're stepping into leadership positions, their position that they're not yet the finished article.

[B]

Yeah, we punish people differentially for their weaknesses or areas of development. So, and this is not my contention, the evidence, the research would suggest that, for example, men who go for promotions are often judged on the basis of the judges perception of them in two years time. Whereas women who go for promotions are judged on their perception right now. So what you'll get is this conversation about, oh, some deficits, but I can see how he'll be brilliant in a year's time or two years time. And for women it's like, well, she doesn't have this this and this that. The current 10 year in post person has. And, and that's a big problem. The other problem, I think is how we perceive our weaknesses. And there are differences there across the gender spectrum, right? The idea that many men perceive rather large gaps in their, in their, in their kind of technical arsenal as small and less important and talk about them that way. Whereas women can perceive minor gaps as very large and really important. But broadly, this is also true for introverts versus extroverts too. That's the thing. So even men who are introverts can have that same perception that their weaknesses are much bigger and much more important and much more obvious to the people around them than they actually are. So I think the job of us as good leaders and as people who want to lead well is to be accurate and descriptive about our areas of development and our weaknesses and describe them in a really objective and Teutonic language. Don't, don't, don't use this hyperbolic, hyper emotional language. I'm terrible at this. I've never been able to do that. Just speak about the stuff that you don't do as well as you'd like and then be specific about it because so few people are terrible at. Right? Even, you know, people say I'm terrible, I can't cook. What you mean is you've, you've got a friend in your head that you can think of who's a much whose food you enjoy more than yours. That is not the same as being a terrible cook. And accurately describing it and without emotional language can really help you to get a better register of what's going on. Especially because that hyperbolic nature around your weaknesses is often associated with a, an underestimation of your strengths. You know, Are you any good at telling stories? Yeah, I mean, I'm all right. If you said that, it would just again, be that kind of. What are you doing?

[A]

It's incongruous again, isn't it?

[B]

I saw you on stage. I've heard you today. What are you doing? Is this a manipulation? Am I being gaslit? Are you delusional? And I know I'm not going to hire you on that basis, right? If I just can't tell what's going on. So just tell me. And you don't have to say I'm the best storyteller in the world. There are people who do that. They're the greatest everything, they have the best words. But you don't have to do all that. Just simply describe so that I know what resources are at my command. Right. You're coming to work with me, it's really good if I know that when it comes down to it, if I really need to hone our storytelling approach, you're the person I should talk to or at least consult.

[A]

You trigger a thought in my mind actually linking back to what you previously said. Is that fake humility or maybe the sort of lack of awareness is actually like you say, a signaling to the person who's hiring you that you don't know or you haven't got an ability to evaluate what you're good and bad at, which then presents a risk.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Well, then what else they're not able to assess about. About their own performance? I've thought about it like that before.

[B]

Yeah, it's absolutely.

[A]

It's a flag, isn't it, when you.

[B]

It's a red flag for a hirer. But think about, in the context of most of our workplaces, we have this supposed, and I think this is bad language, but supposed war for talent going on and people constantly saying we don't have resource. And when they mean resource, they mean people with certain skills. And it's like I am convinced by the people that I talk to that teams are replete with skills, replete with talent. But much of it's hidden. Much of it is under described in a way that you can't notice it or hidden away because there are leaders who are literally terrified of the skills of the people who work for them, rather than being excited about the fact you know how to do statistics. Amazing. It's never been my strong point, oh, you know how to do this and with Canva and that's never been my strong point. You know how be excited about that instead.

[A]

Yeah, I think removing the threats that some senior leaders feel would be liberating, wouldn't it, to the organization.

[B]

And you talked about isolation and loneliness. Again, if people are frightened of you, that is loneliness inspiring. What could create a moat around you of separation other than people worrying that if you get too close to them, they're in danger?

[A]

Totally. Totally. You put a quote out recently, which I really liked, saying leadership isn't always about what you're capable. Capable of achieving. Sometimes it's about what you're capable of empowering others to become. I thought it's interesting that because it's such a truism about leadership, but it's interesting you use the word become. Not do not achieve, but become. I thought that was quite a specific kind of thing in terms of thinking about the. The person, how they can become their full selves or Achieve what their potential is, all that kind of thing. But I mean that, that really is the role of the leader that becomes hard when you have to. Your success is other people's success, isn't it? And, and how do you, how do you achieve that?

[B]

Outcomes will come from if you are empowering other people, if people feel like they're growing, developing, learning, earning more skills, becoming more expert, then your positive outcomes will come from that. Right? When I think about great leaders that I've worked with, when I think about great leaders that I've had, it is the expansion of my skills, slightly divorced from the outcomes, that brings me the first blush, the first warmth. It's this idea of, I'm better now, my boss is also my best friend, but is not a nominal CEO. He is our CEO. And, and I think back to some of the stuff I was truly ignorant about, operational stuff that really stopped me from being the best possible organizational and business psychologist possible. And I think about how I've radically changed because of him and how it felt hard at times. But part of the warmth that I feel for him is not just this childhood bond we have. It's the idea that even now as an old man, I am learning and growing because of him. So it is about what I've become and it's helping our outcomes. Love that too. But there's a core of this that people miss. Don't always be focused on are they doing the work right and better and whatever else, because that will come as a function of them growing.

[A]

100. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I love that. One sort of build on this is do you notice difference in terms of genetics? You know, refer to yourself as old, but no, we're not that. We're not done yet.

[B]

Just in my bones, just exactly in my bs, in my brain, I think I'm, I've just experienced puberty, but in my body, yeah, I might be 90.

[A]

I swear, everyone's 25 in their heads. You know, this is, you know, we don't really move on from that age. But do you do, do you notice any differences in generations in age in terms of how to lead? Because again, going back to my experience, you know where I said I had that intervention about being vulnerable, there was a perceived, there was quite a perceived difference in what a good leader looked like. So I shouldn't say look like was based on, I don't know, 15, 20 year age gap between us sort of thing. It was quite stark actually. And I noticed what they were looking for was very different to what I thought they wanted. Do you see differences when you're coaching teams in terms of either age or experience?

[B]

Yeah. Expectations have changed. And so I would focus on age is less material than the fact that 50 years ago, what was expected of leaders and indeed what leaders were willing to offer is very different than 40 or 30 or 20. And then that from 20 years on, I don't even know if the research would bear that out. But like if we say 20 years on, it suddenly became more marked changes after 15 and 10 and 5. And then we experienced the pandemic. And it's not that it itself was this pivotal moment in time, but since then, the expectations have also evolved in a way that I think is significant year on year. And so it's not just that old people versus young people have a different experience. If you reached your leadership zenith in the middle of, you know, five years ago, then your, your understanding of the expectations will be different than somebody who reached their leadership zenith 20 or, or 30 years ago. All I would say is this. Anybody who's watching this or listening to this, the leader you think is antediluvian is old fashioned. Ask them to show, show you their phone because I, I guarantee you it's not a bag phone that I had with my first phone when I lived in Arizona. I guarantee you it's not a Nokia 8000. Right. I guarantee you it's not. And I guarantee you that whatever their clumsiness as a leader and their, oh, I can't wrap my head around this or that, or I can't talk about menopause, or I can't do this, whatever their clumsiness in these areas, when their grandchildren texts them or whatsapps them, they can zip, zip, zip and respond to them quickly. And I think that's the thing we need to remember. Leadership is learned behaviors. It's not innate, it's not magic learned behaviors. And it's just a choice. And the thing that I will continue to say as my mantra on this is simply there is an implication for the things that clever people choose not to know. And your leader who can't wrap their head around the idea that of asking questions about mental health or understanding, you know, differences in people or whatever else, there is an implication for the fact that that is something they've chosen not to learn. But WhatsApp video is something they've chosen.

[A]

Chosen to learn and why. Yeah, yeah, very good. I thought maybe to round us off, I'd ask. So most leaders are in positions where they're juggling a Huge amount, under a lot of pressure, loneliness, all the kind of things to talk about that they're moving at speed. Any advice on how to do the learning when you've got so much struggles? I know, I know something. I mean I'm lucky because I do this job, I get to learn every single conversation I have, which is, which is partly why I do this actually. But you know, for most people when I talk to them they're like John, I just haven't got time to kind of read that book, do that course, you know, sort of thing. Any advice to people in that kind of situation? Maybe listening to this, thinking, oh wow, this is, this feels like a lot.

[B]

So they're already doing it in part, right? So uncensored. Cmo, here it is. Here's an opportunity for you. Listening to it is one part that opportunity. Picking one thing to reflect on, to say how can I improve my practice based on that one thing that I said perhaps or you said perhaps there's the second thing that you can do. Recognizing non traditional sources and non work related items are going to be really useful to you. They're going to be great for your brain health as you get older, but they're also going to be really useful to you in terms of your learning. I mentioned the random linguistics bloke and Now I have three or four of them that I follow on TikTok.

[A]

We'll put some links in the notes after as well.

[B]

It is, I tell you, you just think what use is that for me to know? And then all of a sudden if you just unclench, you'll be in a circumstance where suddenly it whips back into your brain. It's like this is why I need to know that. And so pick non traditional sources. Especially because many of those non traditional sources and I'm not talking about please stay away from conspiracy, make sure it's evidence based. Pick your sources carefully. But many of the non traditional sources are 90 second samples. And then just develop a little filing system in TikTok where it says oh I'll save that into this was interesting in this way. I'll save this into this was interesting in this way. And then you commit to one more thing. Pick one Saturday morning when you're on a train to visit your relatives or one trip air flight when you're going for business. Just say all I'm going to do, I'm just going to flip through one of those folders today and write down what occurs to me. That's it.

[A]

That makes, I think there's some Study that showed that the more messages there are, the less you remember overall. So the one thing, doing one thing, you've got the best chance. That one thing working you had 2, 3, 4, then overall goes down.

[B]

Just one thing you'll do less. The leaders, I hope, will know and I hope they'll read the book. But if they do, I hope they recognize that at every chapter there's a bunch of stuff you can do. Just pick one. Just pick one thing. If you need to pick the simplest one of them, pick one thing and then think, how can I practice this? How can I, how can I put this out there? Because most leaders are one small decision away from fractional improvement in their. In their skills. One thing that they can do or do more, one thing that they can do less or stop, they're that far away. One thing that they could learn or improve. Why not? If you really want to win. And by the way, I am, you know this, I am not a warm and fuzzy psychologist. I want to kick ass in a contextually appropriate way. I want to win and I want to help people win. One thing that you could stop or do less, one thing you could start or do more, one thing you could learn that you didn't know yesterday could be a fractional improvement that keeps someone with you a day longer, a week longer, a month longer, helps someone perform a percentage point better. I want to win and just say.

[A]

As well as we close, do get the book because it's beautifully written and I can see the care taken over the examples, the language and the phrases. I learned a couple new phrases as well, which is quite cool. But at the end of each chapter, very practical as well. So you've got lots of simple tips as well. John. Thank you. I could talk for ages because it feels like I've had my own therapy session here, which has been lovely. So appreciate you giving up your time to do this and congratulations on the book which comes out end of September. I think by the time this goes out, you'll be able to get the book.

[B]

You'll be able to grab it.

[A]

Amazing. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for listening or watching uncensored cmo. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on on other people discovering the show. So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcast. If you want to contact me, you can do. I'M over on x uncensored CMO or on LinkedIn, where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.