Crisis Leadership

I think what I found most interesting in this conversation with Dorine is that there’s always a sense of connection. There’s always a sense of connectedness, no matter where she is in the world is looking for those connections that will bring together a network or create a new network that supports not only people locally in a community but attaches them to an international community. I also think those connections, those abilities of hers to ask the right questions. I mean, she’s challenged me quite a few times, by asking me some amazing questions, I learn from it all the time. And I think that is one of the things that. I’ve learned here in the Netherlands and to me, is that they’re the epitome of” ask the right question”. Keep on asking the questions till you get the answers that you need to find the best solutions. Don’t just take for granted what people give you as information, always dig a little bit deeper, always find out is that the real reason behind things?

I think what I learned most today from my interaction with Anastasia is that when the proverbial shit hits the fan and you have to find a way forward looking at the possibilities, the options, looking at ways in which you can find some form of resolution to just put your one foot in front of the other helps you to find the direction that you need in the moment to keep going. I’m not sure if that is part of long-term resiliency, but definitely in the short term, because I think in long-term resiliency, We will also need to deal with those things that have happened to us and all of us deal with things differently.

Our guest today is a neuroscientist, business psychologist and recalibrating your brain expert. She has owned three businesses, she is an international professional speaker (in fact she is the current National President of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I) mentor to senior business people, founder of the Neuroscience Professional Development Programme and the Learning Lab, and is often in international newspapers and magazines and a regular guest on national radio. I think what really stuck with me today is that for starters, when you start getting to the metaverse, we’re not quite sure yet what would form in and outgroups, I personally think it is the way that we can represent ourselves within the metaverse. If we look at gaming, for instance, who has the best gear, who looks the spiciest, who has the most knowledge of the environment, each one of those creates its own little group. You also have things like formalised structures like gills , will those kinds of things happen in the metaverse as well, we have these VR worlds that we’ve been around for awhile, but the full immersion of it, now looking at at the metaverse, what will that mean for team engagement and for a biological need to be able to see people’s facial expressions and how much of that would already happen.

Today I am talking to Mark McLaughlin. Mark’s a neurosurgeon, and at the same time, also a youth wrestling coach. Can imagine that? How do you explain what you do to the youth? And at the same time, inspire them to be their best selves, Give them self-confidence. And how do you learn from that again? And bring that back into a neuro-psychological surgical team in hospital, we’ve got to lead brain surgery in essence. I mean, we’ll even use that as reference, “It’s not as bad as brain surgery”. Now, Mark does that on a daily basis. So what can we learn from mark? And from the way that he leads and the way that he coaches and the way that he talks to west point about what leadership is. He wrote a book about cognitive dominance. That sounds really dominating, or as he calls it almost like Darth Vader, but in this case, it is about how we act in a crisis. I think no more relevant than it is today. So I hope just like me, you look forward to this talk today with Mark McLaughlin. When I reflect on what I just talked to mark about, one of the things that he said in one of his talks that actually came to mind. Casual and casualty. If we treat leadership casually, we don’t use this as a learning process to become a little bit better every single day, then our people are the casualties and in a world dominated by violence at the moment and by war, why should we still accept leadership that causes casualties. Can we take ownership duty? Take that little bit of care with people’s lives to make sure that we can actually make a difference, make it better and leave no casualties behind. Let’s all not treat our people casually, our leadership casually and let’s learn, grow and become the best leaders.

One thing that interests me about the explosion of identity is how will we trust anyone? If this is going to be used for business meetings, will we end up optimising the technology to obscure our faces and hide our thoughts, so that when it turns out the client has twice the budget we were expecting, we can hide that glint in our eye, or will there be bright, interrogative lights and full motion capture, even in a smartphone? Which products and services will ride to the top, due to the inevitable pressures of market forces? Could AI bots be introduced by market opponents, not to steal our thoughts by hacking our devices and having to bypass all our security settings, but just by picking out tiny details in our facial and body language, or just the tone of our voice? We can always take about these things on a conceptual level, but I always keep in mind that when they become real, there’ll be incentives at play that will shape its practice for those of us in the business world.

What does a fun working environment look like when everyone works remotely? Perhaps it comes as much down to intervening as it does leaving people alone to enjoy their own spaces. Restraint is a very important role for a leader, but maybe there needs to be an asymmetry. More effort put into the working environment when people come in. Maybe you could give people a budget to improve their working spaces, but this is of course an extra expense. But how does this impact fairness, when there are people who come in more and people in a financial situation where they can do up their spaces on their own. Maybe this is a situation where there just isn’t an easy answer.

One thing that stood out for me is that Jackie said how often she feels she’s preaching to the converted. The people who turn up for talks on inclusion are people who are willing to spend an hour of their time on such things, it’s not the people who don’t care and want to be persuaded. Someone like JK Rowling has been publicly shamed for some of her comments, but that doesn’t appear to have altered her thinking. Jackie said it’s a brave thing to do to bring people in who question us. Trust is going to take time to build on both sides, so a sense of perspective to the scale of the problem is going to be really valuable. I hope trust is built properly, with mutual understanding, and not through fear of public shaming if somebody says the wrong thing.

How useful is it to understand a society on paper? Tsitsi made a great point in showing the differences between what’s written in law and what’s actually thought by the people of a country. But I wonder if there’s a third factor in the middle? What norms they’re aspiring to. When it comes to family businesses in particular, this has to be the most important thing to think about when dealing with them, as such companies are held together by the core values of the founders and directors. The goals of a business can certainly go beyond profit. Perhaps thinking more about the type of business it might want to be, even if it it isn’t obvious to them, could make dealing with a company much more rewarding to both parties.

Does the phrase “leadership is a relationship” hold the same for all cultures? I’ve approached this thesis for the podcast somewhat as a human universal. However, speaking to Beatrice showed me the culture differences between Africa and Europe in terms of relationships. It sounds like it’s a much lesser jump to have such a dynamic in the workplace in Africa, and more complex in Europe. The motivations and incentives are different, socially, so the end result of that kind of approach is going to change. Perhaps in Europe it’s more novel, something to set the company apart and motivate people. I wonder what the response would be in the more socially minded Africa.

Adrian talked about economics should start with defining wellbeing. I wonder whether or not that works in practice the same way it does in the classroom. Who gets to define my wellbeing, and do they have my individual interests at heart? How often can a nation state get to work with specifics, rather than broad generalisations considering the vast differences across demographics? How aligned are they with mine, considering the goals of running a country, that being prosperity in order to pay for things, can play against what helps me stay happy day-to-day. He also said that very obvious problems make obvious market gaps for benevolent businesses. Comedian Henning Wehn (pronounced ven) said that charity is a failure of government’s responsibilities. But maybe there are some charities and benevolent companies that are just forced into existence based around this very dilemma. Perhaps the two will just always have to work together.