WB: 0:00 Hello, I’m Wayne Brown and welcome to the ET project. We’re delighted to be delivering this podcast for executive talent all over the world whom we’re affectionately referring to as Team ET. 

Can you believe that we have hit the end of 2022 already. Incredible! Our planet seems to be spinning faster each year around that little star we call our Sun. BTW I’m wondering why our ancestors chose that name SUN – maybe if there is any budding Astrophysicists out there, they could let me know. 

Well, there are two reasons why I’m flying solo today – the first is I wanted to say a special thank you to all our listeners for making 2022 so memorable for me and the ET project team. This year as I’m sure you have heard me say, we decided to cut the corporate cord and get serious about building our company Skills 4 Executives. 

One division of this company is Coaching 4 Companies and that is the area of business we are placing most energy right at this moment, but it also sits closely with and feeds our Facilitation and Education divisions. 

There has been so much activity in C4C in the past 6 months that it’s difficult to pinpoint any one shining moment, however I do wish to acknowledge those that nominated and voted for me which led to me receiving the CEO Today 2022 Executive Coach of the Year award in November. Truly honored thank you.  At the end of this recording, I’ll speak a little about what lies ahead for our business in 2023. 

The second and very important reason for today’s episode is that we are at the end of our 2^nd quarter for this show The ET project podcast and as we did at the end of Qtr. 1, we’ll be recapping the Qtr. 2 guests that graced our presence, looking at some of the pearls of wisdom they shared with us along the way. 

And as I do at the beginning of each episode let me pinpoint where in the world we are broadcasting from. This week I’m at home sitting in sunny Shanghai China, with my wife and daughter, and celebrating the Festive Season with many friends and colleagues. 

So, let’s get straight into it shall we. Another 12 amazing guests from a cross section of professions, scattered (intentionally on our part) in many locations worldwide. 

Btw just a reminder that our website coaching4companies.com has the recording of every episode plus show notes and links to each of the guests. You can also download the full transcript from our conversations. 

And if you want to search for an episode we have tried to make it as easy as possible. From the main podcast page, select all episodes and you’ll go to a page that has the current quarter guests visible and then each subsequent quarter identified as a page link which you can open for further exploration. 

Phase 1: Our structure for this review is broken down into 4 groups of three guests, starting with our first episode of the quarter ET015 with a tag team duo of  Mr Steve Baltois and David Phillips, the ultimate business storytellers, followed in the next episode by a world renowned visionary Dr Oleg Konovalov and rounding out the first group a gentleman who turned 75 this year and is still doing more than most executives, having just released his 75^th book Prof. David Clutterbuck. 

Our guests Steve B and David P are based out of Sydney, Australia having spent much of their lives in different countries, building their careers and businesses. Both are actors and now focused on being the directors and producers behind the camera. What they specialize in is in helping their clients to tell their story in a way that gets the message across and produces results. 

And maybe no surprise but they have developed a model using the word STORY as an acronym to describe the process they follow when helping to build out that clients content in a way that works. So what does each of the five letters in the word stand for; 

The S is the Strategy. And is fairly self-explanatory

The T is the Teaser. The enticer that gets you interested.

The O is the Ovating moments, where you share enthusiastically

The R is the fourth thing that without it, the other three don’t work, and that is resonating. We need to be able to resonate with things and usually these are things that form part of our own desires 

And then to the Y which Steve refers to as the hidden gem. the one thing that all successful people in the world should know, but are never told, and it’s done so successful in Hollywood. It is called the yellow-back. This refers to creating a true, extraordinary emotional feeling that makes you believe what you see, hear and experience. 

To understand more of any of these recaps you can go to the episode which is number ET015. A fun fact Steve used to be the voice of Scooby Doo at one stage of his career. 

Now onto episode ET016 with our guest who is ranked as one the top 20 world leadership authorities and Thinkers 50 thought leaders, Dr Oleg Konovalov. 

He is author of the Vision Code, How to Create and Execute A Compelling Vision for Your business, and a business educator, consultant, and coach with over 25 years of experience operating businesses and consulting with Fortune 500 companies internationally. 

Oleg, is the author of management concepts such as Organizational Typology and the Corporate Culture Pyramid. Marshall Goldsmith named him, the DaVinci of Visionary Leadership for his work on vision and visionary leadership and in our episode that what we spend most of our discussion on through this book Vision Code. 

So the book is broken into these four stages.

1. Creation
2. Making Vision Strong
3. Execution
4. Visionary You

And stages 1 & 2 introduce multiple models that lead to stage 3 and we learn that Vision as a business process called CAVIAR. This is a six-letter acronym represented as 6 pillars of Vision; 

C stands for CLARITY OF CREATION

A stands for ABILITY

V stands for VIABILITY

I stands for INFLUENCE

A stands for ACTING

R stands for REVITALIZING 

Each pillar represents a sub-set of activities, for instance under Clarity of Creation, Oleg speaks about Vision elevating the Visionary, giving them a better view of the future and aspiration gives them strength to make it a reality. 

This comes with conscious awareness. Conscious awareness of the problem is not sufficient however regardless of how strong it is. Now to the 6 subsets. Learning, Listening, Diminished Ego to a state of selflessness, Bold Thinking and broad outlook, enhanced instinct that resonate with the world and Grasp of the Environment. 

These elements define how much the Visionary knows about the problem and the difference to be made. 

And so this CAVIAR model offers incredible insight and guidance at each progressive link in the six link process. I found the model and book overall wonderfully insightful and would sincerely recommend to all that want to better understand how to create and follow through with your Vision. 

Now onto episode ET017 and the last of our first group. Talk about finishing on a high with Professor David Clutterbuck. This gentleman has been so influential and touched the lives of so many in such an array of fields that it’s impossible to cover adequately here. 

From stand-up comedian, travel consultant, children storyteller, university professor, founder of companies, founder of global organizations, author and co-author of 75 books, business and leadership advisor, mentor and coach to scratch the surface. With this much experience the biggest challenge I faced was knowing where best to start, but of course as a true professional David made my job so easy. 

Many elements of our conversation were memorable and there was one portion in particular that stuck with me as I didn’t share the same perspective. – and this was around current day leadership qualities. Here is an extract from the transcript with Prof. Clutterbuck. 

“I think everything that I’ve done comes down to the quality of dialogue that people have. And that includes the inner dialogue. So our ability to reflect and to learn through our reflections. And what we’re noticing is that the world of leadership is radically changing. What constitutes a good leader now is not the same as 20 years or perceived 20 years ago.” 

From my perspective – all good so far but we are about deviate in our views. 

Prof continued – “And today’s leaders are much more secure, more effective leaders, they are much more secure in themselves, they don’t see themselves managing anybody, they see themselves creating the environment where people can manage themselves, they have these four wonderful qualities of compassion, then that includes self-compassion, courage to ask the most difficult things and do what is right, a curiosity, really wanting to know, to gather information that does… Not necessarily just looking for information that reinforces what they already thought. Connectedness, being connected with other people and with the wider world.” 

So clearly here, Professor Clutterbuck and I travel in different circles. Do I think those 4 elements are important – yes absolutely do I think the majority of leaders embody this already today – no.   

As he went on to say which I’m fully on board with – “.. I think that those four elements are so important in the shaping of tomorrow’s executives, and coaches and mentors come in here as well.” 

Overall it was a fascinating, enriching conversation that I thoroughly enjoyed and feel confident you as listeners would also have benefited. So that’s a wrap on our first three guests from the last quarter of 2022. 

WB: Phase 2:         All right welcome back – as we move directly into our second group of three guests. 

Starting with a colleague, who is stationed in Mexico, Ms. Miquette Dobros. Miquette is a Sales and Leadership Coach who has a wonderful life and career story to share. Then we meet with another colleague Marie Stuppard. Marie is based in Washington State in the north west of the US and works with women helping them understand themselves better so that they might communicate their intentions more effectively. And finally to Vidusha Nathavitharana. Another recognized global leadership guru and thought leader with an HR and learning bias. 

We have a lot of fun in all three of these conversations and here is what I learned from each. 

In episode ET018 I caught up with fellow Aussie Miquette Dobros who has based herself for the past couple of years out of Mexico. When we spoke Miquette was in the process of building her new coaching practice and busily writing content as do all of us engaged in the online space these days. 

It wasn’t long into the conversation that we settled into discuss corporate Sales. A favorite subject of mine and one which I train on regularly. 

As Miquette mentions there are a lot of things we can do in regard to making sure we get top sales. There’s lead generation, the sales processes, the sales funnels, social proof, so many different steps. 

Miquette cautions however before all that, if you are working in a situation where you are talking with people, what I found was there’s actually three… I call it three main relationships that we need to be aligned in before we can really move forward effectively, or to get the results, the top results that we really want. It’s really essential to be congruent in, 

our thoughts, in

our emotions, and in

our behaviors, AND in understanding these relationship between these three.

And in fact, not only their relationship but how these are also connecting through the gut and heart as well as the brain. 

It’s a fascinating field and involves a lot of new discoveries through modern technology and neuroscience studies. We are really just starting to uncover the impact from much of this field in science so there is likely still plenty more that we don’t know, waiting to reveal itself in the near future. 

From Miquette, I had the opportunity to converse with another coaching colleague Marie Stuppard. Marie does a lot in the space of a model called the Ladder of Inference. This is an interesting model that helps us understand the process steps leading us to make our decisions and take actions. 

Most of it happens below the conscious level which is why it is so difficult to become aware and start to self-regulate. I didn’t say impossible but just difficult – particularly so when wanting to change ourselves. 

And that’s where we often need the support from experts such as Marie who are well versed in how our minds are functioning on auto-pilot, but even more so on the damage that this may be causing problems in your relations in private and in life. 

In her coaching she on Voice lessons Marie speaks to four reasons that often sit behind the problem 

1. A life of conditioning
2. The existence of community and organizational cultural norms
3. Your family birth order – which sibling are you?
4. And finally family culture

And as a consequence she sees many women in business taking one or a combination of three different personas;

• The first is playing the role of Victim where everything seems to happen to them
• The second is the Rescuer, – I’ll help syndrome
• and third, the persecutor – consistently challenging others on why they aren’t doing something.

It’s quite revealing and the more we discussed it the clearer I became about the challenges.

 A wonderful exploration of a significant problem that exists universally in business but which is highlighted more so in specific cultures.

From Miquette in Mexico to Marie in the US, we now head west and south to the island country of Sri Lanka to meet up with someone whom I very happy to be able to call my friend. Mr Vidusha Nathavitharana. A proudly committed father, scholar and business entrepreneur and one of the most successful leadership gurus to come from this country. 

The early portion of our conversation centered on family life which then then traversed to education, and finding its resting place with business. There was a central theme that surfaced which was about the need for Discipline. 

As we started to dissect the topic of leadership Vidusha started into an area which truly peaked my interest – here is a section of the transcript so you can get the proper gist of what we started to discuss. 

Vidusha – “I think the future of leadership is to be able to understand that leading and following both need to interchangeably play in an organizational setting. And it should not be pegged to hierarchy. There’s nothing wrong with hierarchy. Trust me. I’m not one of those people who take pot shots at a hierarchy. I think hierarchy are a necessary evil. It just needs to be there. Because if not a hierarchy, what would an organization look like? It’s unfathomable. What would society look like if not for hierarchy? So it’s not possible to not have a hierarchy for administrative purposes. 

However, from a leadership perspective, there is no reason why a junior level executive cannot take the helm of running an assignment, a project, or taking leadership role in a strategic initiative and the CEO plays second fiddle or him or her. There’s no reason why that cannot be done. And in many organizations, we are moving in that direction.” 

Here Vidusha and I are perfectly aligned in our thinking – I see a future driven to a large extent by our young Gen Z and even younger generations that follow, where we have more agile based project style organization structures – PMO’s if you like but more agile, where teams of leaders co-exist at a similar level across projects and only the slimmest of hierarchy is witnessed throughout the operation.

In all, three more experts, three more great conversations and three more opportunities to learn and grow. 

My life in this new capacity is suddenly overflowing with rich new knowledge and insights and I feel tremendously grateful, empowered and fulfilled. 

WB: Phase 3:         Here we are back again and ready to launch into our 3^rd group of guests for this quarter. 

We set sail with Mr. Gordon Tredgold. Ranked in the top 10 of global leadership guru’s and thought leaders. An English gentleman by birth but current resident of Spain. 

Then off to Athens Greece to chat with Organizational Psychologist and Business Coach, Ms. Zoe Fragou. And finishing off with Mr. Brenden Kumarasamy, communications expert focused on the area of improving presentations and public speaking. 

So you may recall that Gordon Tredgold and I spent considerable time discussing sport and making connections back to the world of business and leadership. Gordon is an avid sports enthusiast – both as a competitor and from the armchair. 

Gordon has a couple of very powerful books that echo a leadership strategy of playing the long game as he puts it leadership is a marathon not a sprint. But he goes further than that and provides a simple 4 word acronym called FAST.  

F stands for Focus

A stands for Accountability

S stands for Simplicity

T stands for Transparency 

He is big on chunking, looking for and taking a rather pragmatic approach that enables him to simplify a problem and bring it back to a basic starting point from which he and the team can build. How can you take that first step on the project path that shows it is possible to do it and then look for ways to scale incrementally. 

Don’t try and solve the issue in one sitting instead break it into bite size pieces. This not only shows how it can be achieved but also enables others to buy into that belief – and this is important. As Gordon says, it’s not the leaders who are out on the field doing the work, therefore you need the team to see your vision and make it possible for them to achieve it. Fascinating as we leaders often have the habit of over complicating and allowing our own self worth get in the way of what we are wanting to achieve. 

So following beautifully off this conversation, we move to the opposite side of the Leadership fence under the guise of the Dark Triad. A trio of leadership qualities, traits and or states that underwhelm and destroy more than they help. 

This was the discussion that I had with Ms. Zoe Fragou. The three types of leader that I’m referring to are narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. 

Let’s define each as this sets the scene for why its such a dark and destructive blend. 

Starting with the Narcissist – as Zoe explains these are perhaps the worst. “With narcissists, it’s more about making the other person feel small. They’re very manipulative also, so they’ll do everything in their power to cause emotional damage to the point that the other person loses their identity and completely have a collapsed self-confidence.

They cause also a lot of dependency. They’re the kind of people that if you are a little bit of a dependent personality, seems to be dependent on them and be dependent on their approval and be dependent on their acceptance as well. 

Interesting right and as I asked Zoe is there an overlap with Machiavellianism people as well, to some extent. Is there or are they very distinguishably different from narcissists? 

Zoe’s response… There is. And that’s why we call it the dark triad of leadership, because in these three traits, they really correlate positively. So, when someone is a narcissist, it’s very possible and very often that they also score high in psychopathy or in Machiavellianism, more in both. Therefore, yeah, we tend to find it in common. 

So what about Machiavellianism – how to define. Again Zoe assisted us with, the expression they achieve by any means necessary. It’s about having your own agenda, having your personal interests, and not caring about anything else. And you shouldn’t let anything stand in your way as long as you achieve exactly what you wanted. They use cunning, deceit, manipulation, passive aggressiveness, open aggressiveness, everything at their disposal. 

And then finally to the psychopath. And this was something I learned. They don’t display a lot of emotion, actually they don’t have a strong understanding of emotions. emotions. So in a way, it resembles a lot with Machiavellianism, but the main difference is that psychopathics are genetic. Essentially born a psychopath. 

While when it comes to Machiavellianism, well, it’s more of a lifestyle choice. 

This whole discussion I found very interesting and as I reflect back through my own career, I saw many images of leaders appear that could fit one or more of these stereotypical types. 

Adding more fuel to my feeling that many leaders are still stuck in the 20^th century style of leadership and strengthening my resolve to bring some add to those most in need. 

Zoe’s closing message rings loudly in my head – if you come across any one of the three in your career, the best thing you can do is run. 

Fortunately we round out our third group with a more somber and joyous topic but ever so important for all leaders and that is about improving your communication ability. 

To assist us with this topic we set sail for Montreal, Canada, where we find Mr Brenden Kumarasamy. Brenden shared a number of valuable insights that we can all put into practice immediately and which will dramatically improve our speaking ability. 

Yet as he rightly challenged, the reality is that even though we can speak about, and all agree about the possibility of doing it and the value it would bring, the majority of those listening to our discussion will not do anything with this information. 

So, when he coaches his clients, he starts from a basic level and builds as they grow. 

During the conversation Brenden gave us three simply exercises which he calls his easy three, that we could practice for 5 minutes each per day – 15 minutes a day in total seems very reasonable if we truly want to make significant improvement wouldn’t you agree.  

Here are the three exercises he left us with. 

#1.      is the random word exercise. Pick a random word like trophy case, like computer screen, like China, like light bulb, and create random presentations out of thin air. There’s two reasons why this is an effective exercise. One because it helps us deal with uncertainty. Life is filled with uncertainty. Small talk is a great example. When you meet somebody new, you have no idea where that conversation is going to go, no idea what questions are going to be asked. And then the second piece that I wanted to touch on is if you can make sense out of nonsense, you can make sense out of anything. And that’s really the magic of the random word. 

#2 of the easy three is, is the questions. We get asked questions all the time in our life. At school, at work, on a podcast, but most of us are reactive to those questions. We wait for the question to come up, instead of being proactive in managing them. So how did I fix this? Every single day for five minutes, I would answer one question that I thought the world would ask me about my expertise, my products or my services. But if you do that once a day for a year, you’ll have answered 365 questions about your industry and you’ll be unstoppable. 

#3 is so simple, but nobody does it. Make a list of the people that you love in your life. People that are on social media, people that are open minded, people that really support you and ask yourself some simple questions. When was the last time we sent any of these people video messages? 20 seconds. Just to say, “Hey, Tom, I really appreciate the work that you do in this podcast. Thanks so much for the impact that you’re creating the world. I hope you’re having a wonderful day and wishing you a wonderful week.” Nobody does that. And all it takes is 20 seconds to make a difference. So, I encourage you to send video messages during people’s birthdays or just in general and it will drastically improve your ability to present online but on camera as well. 

See how we went full circle here with our conversation, back to Gordon and his break it down and make easy to see how it can be achieved. Far to say I love my job. 

All right we’ll see you on the other side of this break with the final group of three talented experts. 

WB: Phase 4:         Well, I really hope you are getting some added value here from this holiday season episode where we are recapping the valuable insights that we received from our 12 exceptional guests in this the final quarter of 2022. 

Let’s wrap this up by reviewing our final trio commencing with Ms Tanya Abbey, who is sitting on the Gold Coast of Australia and about 1 hour from where I grew up. We chat with Tanya about recruitment and preparation for interviews. Then onto speak Dr Chaz Austin the Hollywood coach and we chat about helping people prepare themselves for moving into what he believes is the future of work – being a freelancer. 

Then to our last guest for 2022, Ms Tiffany Cheng, who is native to China but residing with her young family in Belguim. Tiffany helps us to see what is possible if you wish to scale the corporate ladder. 

So as you can see by now in this quarter we have covered a lot of territory both geographically and intellectually. How cool is that? 

Alright enough of my ramblings, lets finish off this cluster. 

How many of you recall the conversation that Tanya Abbey and I had around the topic of what recruiters look for and how you can be better prepared before you walk into that interview room. 

Fortunately, there are people like Tanya and her company out there available to assist you in this regard. 

One thing I found very interesting was our discussion on the concept of being the leader and trying to put yourself as the leader in the shoes of the candidate and really getting your mind around what are the candidate is going through in their lead up to coming to meet with you? I’m guessing, but I can’t imagine too many leaders who actually do that? 

We also spoke about the leaders and candidates EQ. Their ability to be self-aware and self-regulate are vitally important qualities regardless of the role you play. And from looking at the interview with the formal traditional sense we move to the more nuanced environment which as Dr Chaz Austin highlights is really the future of work. 

According to Dr Chaz corporations are outsourcing more so today at ever increasing rates and he predicts that with-in the coming decade, we will see as much as 50% of the employment market being dominated by freelance work. 

In fact some reports are suggesting that by 2027 freelance workers will form the majority.

That quite an increase from where we are today at the end of 2022, but highlights a genuine need to be looking at specific skills that you need to be growing and building. 

I love the latest book from Dr Chaz where he offers 101 suggestions for doing just that and maybe no surprise but much of our discussion centers around the online space and using technology and social media in particular to grow that basis for self-promotion. 

I’m late to the party myself but in the past 24 months have really started to turn my attention to this environment and it is remarkable just how much there is to learn, understand and hopefully master, in this regard. 

Those that know me well enough know that I’m a strategist and enjoy studying trends and speculating about the direction of things in the short and medium term. When I look to the evidence I see platforms such as Upwork supporting this trend. 

I also see AI playing a significant role in making it possible for virtual work worlds to exist and grow. We see movements such as Meta shifting us in a direction that will be so foreign to most corporations that it provides the real potential to redesign our entire hierarchical societal structure. And then finally we have our younger generations that are moving into the workforce with somewhat differing expectations than those of the senior leadership. I have only scratched the surface here but certainly it paints a picture of the future very different to that of where we sit today, which is already significantly different to where we were even 5 years back. 

Essentially the future looks like we will be cast into a world of freelance work where you will need to become an entrepreneur to survive and this may not sit comfortably with many people at least in the short term. 

And this is about as perfect a segue as we get to our last guest Ms Tiffany Cheng. So Tiffany is an extraordinary lady that has refused to let a challenge hold her back both in private life and professionally. By almost everyones account (perhaps other than the Gen Z among us) taking 10 years to move from individual employee to the head of the Tatum pole is remarkable. 

And her ascent was not random or by chance. It was strategic and calculated, with decisive actions along the way which she is now willingly sharing with her clients. The secret that Tiffany shares is that you need to master your communications. So there it is once again, this topic of communications. Hopefully if you are listening to me ranting each week, that this message is starting to sink in. 

As a leader today, regardless of your organization, whether you are self-employed, running a start-up or heading a multi-national corporation, communication is truly central to the degree of success you can create. 

Tiffany shares an important message with the listeners, however, in particular for those who are aggressively seeking that progression up the corporate ladder. Her message is this – I think most important is your own internal change. That is to really understand the identity change occurring. Who are you becoming? Who do you want to become? 

So rather than to focusing only on changing this tactic or that. As this will have minimal impact. Focus also on that internal shift that is occurring in parallel and become acutely aware so that can also learn to self-regulate yourself. This is where the real transformational change occurs and has the biggest impact in your career. 

I love the part of this conversation where Tiffany starts to explain the need for all of us to understand how we Influence – starting with how we Influence ourselves through the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. 

Only after understanding and regulating this do we have a shot at influencing others. In other words we need to be our authentic self in front of others as people can see straight through us when we are trying to fake it. 

It’s a powerful message and I’d encourage everyone to listen to the entire episode if you haven’t already. 

So with that its’ a wrap on our summarizing the messages shared by our wonderfully talented 12 guests in Qtr 4 of 2022. Naturally it doesn’t stop here and we continue next week on the 3^rd of January with Psychologist and Neuroscientist Ann Betz.

Before we close I wanted to share what lies ahead in 2023. As technology improves and makes our processes smarter, I’m hoping to be sharing much more by way of video. 

Clearly this is a trend that is already well embedded and we are looking to several methods for being more visible on camera. 

In parallel, we’ll be releasing a number of things in 2023 – in addition to our weekly audio podcasts, we have already launched the bi-weekly episodes of the ET project LIVE broadcasts. In January and once every quarter there after we’ll be releasing a free 5-day Challenge and tackling live a leadership or business related case. This comes with a whole host of free material so it offers incredible value – both in learning and in content. 

And wait there’s more as we expand our pool of associates we will also be releasing through the ET Academy three different sets of programs. The first are a series of bi-monthly live virtual masterminds – 5 different topics in total. The first will be released in February. 

We will release 3 transformational talent coaching programs of varying durations and for different levels of executive talent – from 10-week program for emerging talents, 6-month program for mid-level and a full 12 month program for senior executive talent. 

And then finally the icing on top of that wonderful Value ladder of goodies are our 3-day fully immersive destination masterminds, where three times a year we select an exotic slice of paradise somewhere in the world and take a small group of truly exceptionally leaders who are wanting to experience the ultimate in growth and development, with us. 

So we have a lot going on and literally something for everyone – so how does your 2023 look to be shaping up. We hope that you will join us on this journey and maybe one day even get the opportunity to meet in person. 

All the best for the remainder of 2022 and hoping for an impactful & empowering 2023.