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