Show 100 with Steve Rush - The Leadership Hacker

The Leadership Hacker Podcast

Steve Rush, The Leadership Hacker interviews the top 5 guests by download during the shows 100 mega episodes. Listen in to this special show with special guests, Dr Oleg Konovalov, Michelle Boxx – The Blonde Fixer, David Marquet, Andrea Sampson and Andrew Bryant.

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Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA

Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services

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Start of the show

Well, hello and welcome! I'm incredibly excited; this is our 100th show. If you haven't had your opportunity to join us until of late, we started out in March 2020, right at the beginning of the first ever lockdown in the United Kingdom. While all our guests are as global as our audience comes from all corners of the world, we have been a lockdown podcast. And I want to reach out to you personally, while you're listening to this to say, thank you. I really mean that from the bottom of my heart, without you showing up every week, tuning in, downloading, and listening to our podcast, there is no show. There would be no Leadership Hacker Podcast - period. And I think that's an amazing sentiment to everybody that is contributed to the show, both as listeners and more importantly as our wonderful guests. So, to our guests who are listening to this, we have had the most amazing diverse group of CEOs, C-Suite executives, leadership coaches, and experts, and have shared over 300 hacks with us and with our audience. And we're now connected through algorithms, through the internet, through our websites. And I'm incredibly proud and privileged to have been on this journey with you. So, to celebrate our 100th show, we are going to dive into our top five downloaded shows. We're going to revisit some of the stories and we're going to revisit some of their learning that we had from our great guests.

Dr. Oleg Konovalov

Steve Rush: The first of our five top downloads is Dr. Oleg Konovalov. He's global thought leader, author, business educator, consultant, and C-Suite coach. Oleg is named amongst the top global thought leaders and shortlisted the distinguish award in leadership by Thinkers50. He is a Global Gurus top 30 in leadership and has been recognized as the number one thought leader on culture by Thinkers360. Having been named as da Vinci of visionary leadership by many leading authorities of our time, Oleg is helping companies to create and execute their vision and strong purpose and corporate culture. And in our show, we got into talking about visionary leadership and vision is not gift, but a well-structured algorithm can be taught. We talked about how to create and execute a strong, compelling vision and leadership being a system of growing. And you join the conversation. As we talk about why knowledge is the most important part of every leader's kit-bag.

Dr. Oleg Konovalov: Knowledge is the sexiest thing in the world. Knowledge is their most demanded product in the world. Knowledge is what shifts us into the future. Knowledge is always in demand. And it's always respectful and always well paid, but it's most rewarding thing when you see people succeeding because of you helping them. This is far beyond our instant necessities, like food and shelter, because it is impact on the next generation, it is everything. You see when we talk. The digital era being now, we should assume that it is a knowledge era triggered by people who changed the things in management that allowed to change technologies and so allowed to make this digital era coming, so it is knowledge

Steve Rush: And I guess knowledge was what led you to put pen to paper and your first best-selling book was The Corporate Superpower. And that was around, you know, taking some theory if you like, but giving it some structure and having read it myself, it's around that whole theory of how do we give structure to culture? Tell us a little bit about that?

Dr. Oleg Konovalov: It started from very, very curious point. We love talking about positive culture and how culture is important. Then I looked at, hold on. Why are we not talking about negative culture? Because the majority of companies, these days. They are still have negative culture and what I have found. Right about 450,000 articles, you could find only from academia on positive culture and only about 72 articles on negative culture. Whereas reality is completely opposite, and I said, hold on, what is the algorithm? Because whatever we are reading in the books or listening to the conferences. All discussion is wrapped around how to have a good culture, but how to have a clear, simple and effective algorithm was still remaining as a gap. And so, I decided to cover this gap and created Corporate Superpower as an algorithm, as a response for everyday needs. Where every leader, every manager could open it and see how to create culture. What stance on it? you know, how to create values or defined values? What’s the properties of engagement? Everything, so to find the code, therefore I called at the end of the book. I called defined making a checklist because it is like winery; you are taking care of it. You growing, you cultivating it, and then you get a great result. And therefore, it was important to give people really practical solutions instead of general chit chat and that's a good point of being an efficient industry. You must come with a result.

Steve Rush: Right

Dr. Oleg Konovalov: Because you can't sell the fish that you don't have. People need exact instructions, simple, because we don't have much time for philosophical conversations about something being good or not.

Steve Rush: You've either caught fish or you haven't caught fish, right?

Dr. Oleg Konovalov: Absolutely. I love catching big fish and so big results

Steve Rush: But laying behind that, I guess, would still be all of that foundation of disciplined, structure, the people you work with. That does not change, does it?

Dr. Oleg Konovalov: No, because I would call myself lucky, blessed, whatever, because I have worked with incredible professionals. I learn and study from incredible people from academia. You know, I am really grateful because it's a matter of who teaches you and not just a personality, not just a professional, but a whole person from whom you really learn how to be a whole person yourself and that is incredible. For instance, if we look at a simple point, which we often neglect, and outlook is one thing, but how you could connect dots, which seems like very non-relevant is a mastery itself. So, you must know how to make so nice pictures, really vivid pictures that could give you the right answers or most effective answers.

Steve Rush: I always enjoyed talking to Oleg. And what we learned from this episode was knowledge impacts on everything and everyone, it informs our next generation. It isn't the digital world that is changing, it's the people's knowledge that is changing the digital world. And I particularly like the way he reframed the whole notion of being taught and people who teach us doesn't have to be in academia it doesn't have to be a college professor, but anybody who teaches us should be teaching us to be the whole person ourselves. Thanks Oleg.

Michelle Boxx – The Blonde Fixer

Steve Rush: Next up, we're going to introduce you to Michelle Boxx. Michelle is a CEO of Boxx Marketing and started out on her entrepreneurial career when she was just 15 years old, starting out in politics, helping folks fix campaigns and was a real campaign manager for many years. She then had a stint as a successful real estate agent. And after achieving great successes realized that using her public relations knowledge and campaigning, she could turn her hand to marketing. And she's now a small business advocate helping teach small businesses and owners to really thrive. You join us at the part of the show, where I ask Michelle to just describe how her early life in politics and real estate sales has helped her grow her business today and some of the core capabilities.

Michelle Boxx: You know, I learned a lot through policy and politics. I learned a lot about communications, of course, but I also learned a lot about leadership. You know, speaking at that one, the video you found. It’s so funny that you found it. I have tried to take it down so many times, but I have lost access to the account. Through that, I ended up launching a website a few months later that was really a policy website geared at covering legislation here in the States and I recruited a whole bunch of my fellow high school friends to help me with it, and so we would literally read legislation, we would post content every day. And so, the website got 10000 page views monthly just organically from us posting this information, and so that was really my introduction into marketing, into leading the team and everything that I do now as a CEO.

Steve Rush: And it is a super experience because people get often confused with leadership, has something to do with the job title or a career or a salary, but actually what you have demonstrated is leadership is about just behaviors and we can have leadership skills and behaviors at any age, right?

Michelle Boxx: It is so true. A lot of it is really just jumping in and saying, okay, you know what? I am going to do my best here and I am going to figure it out. So many of us in life do figure things out as we go along. And so, it's better to not wait for that moment of coronation, if you will, and instead just jump in and say, okay, I'm going to do my best here. This is the result we are looking to achieve and nurture these people in the process.

Steve Rush: So here we were talking about leading ship as a behavior, not as a thing, not as a job title. And as often we find ourselves just jumping in, gives us the experience to find ways of working and nurturing people on the way. We've rejoined the conversation when I ask Michelle from her experience of being a young entrepreneur through politics and real estate, what her biggest learning in leadership was?

Michelle Boxx: I think the realization that you can't do everything alone, that you really do need support, so you need your mentors, you need your team, you need. If you have a lot of internal drive, it is very natural to think, you know what, I can figure this out on my own. I can do all of this on my own. I am independent. And then just really putting your ego to the side and saying, you know what? I don't have all the answers. Like you said, you know, copy, and paste and really having the network around you to support you along your way up.

Steve Rush: Super wise words for Michelle there. No leader can be successful on their own. They need a team who can support them and help them on their way. And many of our guests have echoed that sentiment throughout the series. We thank the blonde fixer Michelle box for being part of our show.

David Marquet

Steve Rush: Number three, highest downloads of all time was for David Marquet. David's a real superstar. I met David on location in London. We talked about his humble background being pretty much down to earth in math club when he was in Pittsburgh. Then joining the U.S. Naval Academy in 1981, where he ultimately took control of the USS Olympia. A Nuclear-powered submarine as a Captain in the U.S. Navy, it was there that he started evolve his leadership career when he was appointed to lead the US submarine, Santa Fe, which was the worst performing submarine in the fleet.

It was these foundations that gave him the story that now forms Turning the Ship Around his global best-selling book, where Stephen R Covey, the infamous author and guru, spent time on the Santa Fe and ended up creating The Eight Habit. In recognition to his global successful leadership, based on David work. Since retiring from the U.S. Navy, he has shared those lessons and is helping Leaders to think about creating more leaders, and giving control to only those who need it the most. You join us in this show where we were talking around how the language of leaders has changed over time and how the labels, we give people have been unhelpful. How by reframing some of that language and changing our perspectives, we can get a greater outcomes from our leadership behaviors ourselves.

David Marquet: So, we have work. The industrial age organization design was this. One group of people will make decisions and one group of people will execute the decisions made by the first group of people. And we have labels because they all look like humans, but we need to know which tribe you're in and we call them leaders and followers or thinkers and doers or management and workers, and we pay people by salary or by hourly. White collar, blue collar. We wear different uniforms but there is this whole cultural industry with artefacts and rituals to put us in one of these, two groups, and this is one of the things that is suddenly embedded in our language and in minor organization design, which is totally unhelpful.

Steve Rush: Yeah, and you talk about this in your new book. Leadership is Language.

David Marquet: Yeah.

Steve Rush: And you give the type to behave as color, don’t you? Just tell us a little bit more about that.

David Marquet: Yeah. As an author, you have to create a new term. No one gets credit, here is a bunch of great ideas. Aristotle said everything let me reiterate them. I call them red work and blue work. So, the doing work is what we call red work. Red being typically the color of focus and action and blue work the color of creativity, and the difference is when red work. I want to narrow my perspective, but in blue work, I want to broaden my perspective, so I am using my brain in two fundamentally different ways and industrial organizations solve the problem by not asking people to change. The thinkers were just do thinking and the doers just did doing. And we didn't need the thinkers to do doing and the doers to do thinking. Now we say let the doers be the deciders. So, what we're going to do is say this group to the organization at the bottom who used to just do what they're told. We are now going to pause and give them the chance to think and actually make decisions, but that requires them to use their brain in different way. That requires us if we are in the leading group, to talk in a different way.

Steve Rush: And as leaders, it is our responsibility, isn't it? I guess through our language will influence and either help new ideas and creativity or we will stifle them.

David Marquet: You can only control yourself. So, when you say, oh, well, this person does not speak up, it the really frustrating working with them. The unhelpful behaviors is to go give them a lecture. I give you some feedback? i.e., can I permission to be a jerk? You really need to speak up more. Well, how about this? How you look inside yourself and you figure out. You know what, the way we are running the meeting, the way I am asking the questions, if someone comes to me and says, well, I am not sure about this decision, and I said, why would you say that? Again. Subtle, but it sends a signal, you are wrong. Justify yourself, not, oh, tell me about that. I am really interested in that. We really need to know before we go ahead, launch this product. If you think, we are off track.

Steve Rush: So, what David's describing here is the outdated leadership model that we've all perhaps learned about at some point in our leadership careers, however old or young you may be, it doesn't seem to work anymore. It's time to shift perspectives, fall out of love with our own voice and to listen to our teams, let the doers be the deciders is how David described this. In order to harness the eyes, the ears, the minds of our people, our teams, the people we lead and work with. We need to foster a climate of collaboration and experimentation that encourages people to speak up. And when they notice problems that are not working well, to identify them and to get on with testing solutions, we salute you David, and thank you for being part of our community on the podcast.

Andrea Sampson

Steve Rush: Once upon a time in a land not too far away, there is somebody reading a story to somebody else. Wow. The power of story continues to be the most important way of communicating. Well, why is that? Well, it's been the way we've been key communicating for millennia. People have been writing on walls and drawing pictures, around campfires, around dining room tables, as we've evolved, because stories make the emotional connection. I'm going to introduce you to Andrea Sampson. Andrea not only tells great stories but is teaching the world how to tell better stories through her TED Talks, coaching business, Talk Boutique.

Andrea was a former strategist and consultant spending over 25 years in a marketing, in advertising space and with a natural flare for compelling stories and persuasive content. It wasn't long before Andrea sort after, assisting teams and executives in developing their presentations and pictures. Having worked on a side hustle with TEDx Toronto, where she volunteered initially as a speaker coach. Worked out that her technique for teaching storytelling could be really powerful. That led her to create Talk Boutique and is now the founder and CEO.

Not only is this a second downloaded episode of all time in our series is actually the number one for 2021. So, if you've not yet unlocked, the power of storytelling with Andrea now is the time to download that episode. You join us at that part of the show where Andrea was telling us about what she'd learned from her time, coaching TED Talks and how she developed story by helping unlock great emotional connections with audiences.

Andrea Sampson: What I've learned in doing TED Talks and now working with very seasoned professional presenters is that it's really about building a story in five steps. And we developed, so my company Talk Boutique has developed a process that we call the story-spine, which really allows for a speaker to take about, you know, anywhere from 30 seconds to three to four minutes at the beginning of their talk and set up the premise of a story that will hold the idea.

Steve Rush: Really interesting.

Andrea Sampson: The spine is so important because what it does is it forces us as humans first of all, to think about the things that create good storytelling, because it starts off with what we call the environment. So, if you think of an environment, the environment is your sense of place. Now, most of us, when we're at a cocktail party or meeting up with a friend and we started telling a story, what do we do?

We rushed through the environment, first of all, and we rush right into the purpose of the story. But if you take a moment and you step back and you say, okay, let me just set this up for you. So, I was walking in the woods the other day. Now it was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, you know, it was warm, but not hot. You could feel that the day was going to get really hot. But we weren't there yet. And the moisture in the air was activating the pine needles. So, I could smell as I was walking, that musky scent of pine, and it was just a beautiful morning, and it was peaceful. Now you're all on that walk with me, aren’t you?

Steve Rush: Totally, I’m right there.

Andrea Sampson: Right, now when you do that, what's happening is everybody is leaning in, but what's really happening is their brain has just gone to the place when they were last in the woods or a meaningful moment when they were in the words. That smell, the sounds of the birds, the feeling of this sun dappled through the trees, everybody. Now, if I were to stop the story right there and ask a question around how everybody felt, the likelihood is, I've got everybody at the same place in that moment, which is, in a peaceful place, in a memory that is enjoyable. And from there, it's almost like I'm a mind reader now, because now I'm controlling how they are feeling and what they're thinking.

Steve Rush: Its very powerful, isn’t it?

Andrea Sampson: It’s incredibly powerful. That's the power of environment. So, once we have the environment, the next thing that we want to do is say, who's there with you? Who are the characters? Now, you know, characters, aren't just me and my friend. You can do that, but the thing is, you've robbed the audience of getting to know who you are and who your friend is. So, what you want is just a little bit of a backstory. So, there's me, you know, this was about five years ago. So, I was in, you know, maybe an emotional place. This was just at the breakup of my marriage; I'm making this up. And my friend, who was a dear friend, who was supporting me through this very emotional time, her name was Shawna and Shawna was a lovely human. She's still a dear friend of mine, but she's one of those people whose incredibly compassionate and helps people through really difficult times. So here we were on this early morning walk, going through the woods and, you know, we can hear the birds chirping, and I'm at that point in the separation where we are, you know, separating stuff. And so, it's a difficult moment, and Shawna is helping me to see, you know, that I can let go of things that I thought were really important, but the reality is, they weren't. Now, again, I just want to stress here. I'm fully making this up.

Steve Rush: Hey, listen, you may be making this up, but I'm still ironically with you because of the compelling use of language.

Andrea Sampson: Right, the language I'm using. Every piece of language is using rhetoric, really, right. I'm using a combination of metaphor. I'm using emotional words, words that have meanings that go deeper than just the core idea of that word. I'm also using in some cases repetition. So, I'm using metaphor all the way through it. So, what we've gotten through now is the environment, the characters, and we've gotten to the issue or opportunity. That's the third part of the story spine. And this is where most people jump into a story because this is the real reason, I could've just started it off.

Steve Rush: That's true, yeah.

Andrea Sampson: I could have started off going, you know, the other day I was walking in the woods and Shawna was helping me figure out what I was going to give to my ex, right? Because that is really the story, except you can see I've built it out, right? And so, then what you want, the fourth part of the story spine is what we call the raising of the stakes. This is the difference between a good story and a great story because the raising of the stakes is that tension moment. It's the end to them, and so, you know, as Shawna and I were talking about the things that I was going to keep and what I was going to let go of, we came to that blanket. You know the one, the blanket that my family had given us, but it was also the blanket where we had our first date. And it was the blanket that had followed us all the way through our relationship. And there was a part of me that really wanted that blanket, but there was a part of me that actually didn't ever want to see that blanket again. And I was distraught in that moment. How could I let go of the blanket? Now I think if you're following me, what you know is that blanket is really a metaphor for the relationship.

Steve Rush: Yeah, it is. But it's ironic because it is still also a physical thing.

Andrea Sampson: Yeah.

Steve Rush: It's a metaphor, but actually we all kind of have something that we relate to in our day jobs and our lives that are similar metaphors of physical things but carry loads of emotion with them.

Andrea Sampson: Right, and so, as I'm going through this story, you know, anyone who's listening to this, you know, they may or may not have lived a similar story, but they have lived, everybody, because, you know, here's the thing about stories. Stories are all meta stories, as humans, we all live the same stories. And so everybody has walked in the woods or has watched, you know, a movie or seen an image of walking in the woods. So, there's some experience of it. Everybody has a good friend who helps them through things. Now, you know, you may not have as good a friend or maybe your friend is better, but you have the experience of it. The human condition is that we all go through relationships and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't and heartbreak is common. And then the idea of having something that represents that, you can see, it's a meta story. right?

Steve Rush: Yeah.

Andrea Sampson: As I'm going through this story, everybody is having the same experience because they're living their own experience and my experience at the same time. And that's what makes it so powerful. So, when you take the time to build it, when you take the time to use emotions through it, what you're doing is, you're building a connection with anyone who's listening to that. Now we've gone through the four elements of the stories. By the fifth element is just the OCA. It's the way in which you tie it together. And so, in this case, it could be that in that walk in the woods, you know, Shawna helped me to understand that the blanket was in fact, a metaphor for my relationship. And as much as it was something that I was having a hard time letting go of, it was time for me to let go of it because I was letting go of that whole part of my life. And that blanket was in a part of my life that was no longer going to be in my life. So, it was time for me to let that go. And by the end of that walk, I had not only let go of the blanket, but I had let go of the relationship, I was ready to move on. So, there's the story spine in action.

Steve Rush: It's the most compelling model. And if you are anything to do with telling stories or engaging audiences or helping people understand something that they don't yet understand well enough, let's think about how we could use the story-spine to really bring our stories to life. Andrea, thank you for being part of our show and bringing our stories to life.

Andrew Bryant

Steve Rush: When I look back over the 300 plus hacks we've had on the show, the one thing that keeps presenting itself is, “lead yourself first” - Self-leadership. It sounds so obvious when you say it in such simple terms, but before you can lead others, you must first lead yourself. If you lack self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-learning, you'll fail to really, truly reach your full potential. And our top downloaded show of all times so far, is Self-Leadership with Andrew Bryant. Andrew is a motivational speaker and has become the number one authority on self-leadership. He's featured on TEDx and wrote the book, Self-Leadership, of course. You join our conversation as we explore the notion of, what really is self-leadership and why that can help us or hold us back.

Andrew Bryant: The concept of self-leadership goes back to the Roman Stoics. It goes back to the Greek philosophers. It goes back to louts. Influencing others is strength, but influencing self is true power. The concept itself is not original. It is human reality around that, we have some sense of personal power if we take ownership and so it is very much the ownership of what can you take ownership of?

And you can actually take ownership of your thinking. We all have thoughts, but do the thoughts have our us or do we have the thoughts? We all have emotions. But are we having the emotions or the emotions having us? Now, if you have ever been in a fury about something, you know that the emotions had you. If you have ever been really sad about something, you've been gripped by the emotion, you were not in control, but when we go, I'm angry about this. Why am I angry about this? What is driving that anger? What is that really about? Then, we take that step back into the observer place, and that gives us choice. You know, that is the heart of Stephen Covey work. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was that proactivity between idea and action, that there is a choice point that we have as human beings.

Steve Rush: And in my experience as a coach, Andrew, and I am sure you see this a lot with your clients too. Is most of my work is in a bit in the middle, the gap between the idea and the action and the evaluation of how you get people to move forward. How has that been part of what you do right now?

Andrew Bryant: Just before I came on this, I was talking to a CEO pharmaceutical company who wanted me to coach one of his executives; I have been interviewed by his head of HR. Before, I spoke to him, she was obviously playing Buffa, I didn't waste his time. Then his opening statement was, tell me about yourself, because I haven’t had time to read the briefing material. I kind of wanted to do… groan, because that means I've got to tell my entire life story, which I'm doing again. It is a long-life story and I have to edit it, and I just I want to come across as like, why are you a different coach? How do I go about that? I really took this point that, you know, the classic coach comes from the inner game and the outer game, and you will be familiar with a book called The Inner Game of Tennis.

Steve Rush: Sure am, yeah.

Andrew Bryant: And that is coaching is about inner landscape. Outer coaching is how you hold tennis racket, how you serve the ball. The inner coaching is how you think about yourself as a tennis player and with leadership coaches, is how do I think about myself as leader? I mean, just this week as coaching the CEO of an organization, it is very successful CEO. I have coached him in other organizations. He has been parachuted into this company, Joint Venture Capital Support, and he his stressing himself out because he built this runway, and he has attached his ego. When I say build the runway, build the runway to profitability in a certain amount of time and a curtain number, and he's attached his ego to that. And if it doesn't work, he's feeling like a failure, and so the way he's created a mental schematic of that is, his inner world is driving his outer communication. The coaching was to help him not spread doubt amongst his troops, because he's having these doubts. But as the leader, there his doubts, they're not their doubts and their only doubts because he's made such a big deal out of this. Now, if the company burned to the ground, he would rise from the ashes and he would lead another organization. He is very successful, very competent, very intelligent individual. But the coaching is around that gap between his inner thinking and his execution, in this case, his speaking was not as aligned and motivational inspirational as it could have been.

Steve Rush: So, David's talking here about the inner game, the voice in our head, that inner coach, and we need that coach to serve us well every day. But in order for us to serve us well, we need to be mentally agile and fit. We need to be physically agile and fit, and we need to be focusing on ourselves first. And you listen to the full show. You'll find out why self-leadership is not self-centered or selfish, but essential for us as leaders. We rejoined the conversation as we're talking about ego and why ego can sometimes get the way of us being really successful self-leaders.

Andrew Bryant: Somebody drives outside the restaurant of the hotel in the Maserati or a Lamborghini, the Ferrari, gets out, you know, after having revved the engine so that everybody's paid attention to him, and then throws the keys to the valet. Do they have a big ego or a small ego? Most people listening will say big ego. But actually, from a psychological perspective, there ego is fragile. Because they are engaging in egocentric behaviors, right. Look at me, look at me, right. So egomaniacal egocentric behaviors are based on a need to feed an ego. When somebody has a healthy ego, a healthy sense of self. They don't need the attention. They don't need to throw the keys at the valet. They could turn up on a bicycle and they would be fine because they know who they are, right. So actually, when you do the work on yourself, you are a better human being to be in relationship with others, right.

Steve Rush: Like that.

Andrew Bryant: Carl Jung talked about ego means sense of self. Egocentricity is a fragile ego. Look at me. Look at me. I am not Okay. You know, a relationship should always be a Gestalt, where the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. If two broken people meet each other and trying to make one complete person, they are co-dependent. When two people have got their stuff together, meet. They create a relationship that has things over and above themselves. Self-leadership is not selfish because when we have taken care of ourselves, we have all the energy to focus on other people. We can listen. We can help and the simplest one is a metaphor that precedes me, but I use it as well. And that is, if you are on the airplane and the oxygen mask does fall from the ceiling. You are supposed to put it over your nose and mouth first before assisting others, because if you don't look after yourself, you're useless to anybody else. The biggest compliment you can do for somebody is to turn up and authentically be yourself, right? If you are hiding behind some mask or you're playing some game and then manipulating them into whatever bizarre reality you have, then you're really not doing anybody a favor.

Steve Rush: So, it's interesting, isn't it? Ego has been seen as being quite a bad thing, but it's a healthy sense of self. It's egocentricity that is unhelpful. And recognizing that egocentricity will hold us back from engaging and behaving in the true sense of self is essential part of our leadership behaviors. Andrew was on one of our very early shows in March 2020, as we launched the podcast, but continues to get regular hits through our channels and our media. And therefore, goes to show that the message of self-leadership is always going to be relevant. Andrew, I'm incredibly grateful for you being part of our community and helping us all lead ourselves better. Thank you.

Closing

Steve Rush: So, we're coming to the end of our time together on our 100th show. It's been an incredible journey and thank you to our five guests for reliving some of those moments from our hundred episodes over the last two years.

And please remember we have 95 other guests who bring diversity, stories from across the world, different genres of leading and leadership. So please head over, download the show, and never miss a future episode. And this is a shameless plug. If you like what we're doing, please tell others, please share it with your business communities. Please share it with teams at work and let's help spread the word of leadership and leadership development so that we can all grow. We can all learn, and we can all develop because the irony here is there are no hacks to leadership. There are just great tools, great tips and great ideas. But if we shortcut them through our learning and our lessons with you, the quicker we learn, the better our teams perform and the better our teams grow.

And before I sign out, I want to make a special mention to Jermaine Pinto. He's my trusted, side-kick and partner in the show. He's been a great support and a great aid as we've developed a hundred episodes together. Thank you, Jermaine. I appreciate you, man.

And I'll be super grateful for you to leave us a five-star review and let us know how you think we can continually grow our Leadership Hacker Community. It's the way that we grow, and it's the way that our audiences get to meet our great guests. Thank you for being part of the community. Thank you for being on our journey. That's me signing out, on our 100th show. I'm Steve Rush. And today I have The Leadership Hacker.