December 3, 2024 • 39 mins
How do we unleash our leadership potential and transform the world around us?
In this heart-centered episode, we explore the principles of love, leadership, and influence with Dr. Sam Adeyemi, a distinguished leader, author, and speaker. Dr. Adeyemi has inspired millions through his transformational leadership approach and deep understanding of human behavior, bible truths, and how to balance rational thinking with emotional intelligence.
Throughout the conversation with host Nicole Jansen, Dr. Adeyemi shares his journey, including his paradigm shifts in church management, the significance of love, and trust in building effective leadership. This episode offers listeners invaluable insights on creating an environment where individuals feel empowered and valued through heart-centered and systematic leadership.
What We Discuss in this Episode
- How did implementing love and trust influence the success of your church during your three-year absence?
- Can you describe the transformation from a stage-centric ministry to a purpose-driven model?
- What does your "SHIFTS" model entail, and how does it foster transformation?
- Why is building emotional bank accounts crucial in leadership?
- How does intuition integrate with rationality in your leadership approach?
- How can leaders navigate global changes through cultural shifts?
- What are the core elements of heart-centered leadership?
- How do you define and balance character and competence in leadership?
- How can continuous exposure to ideals influence an individual's subconscious?
- What role do training programs play in creating a cohesive organizational mindset?
Favorite Quotes
"Leadership grounded in love builds trust, care, and a sense of belonging." - Dr. Sam Adeyemi
"Creating emotional bank accounts is crucial for building strong relationships within an organization." - Dr. Sam Adeyemi
"Adaptation to cultural shifts is vital for navigating global changes and ensuring sustainable leadership." - Dr. Sam Adeyemi
Episode Resources: https://leadersoftransformation.com/podcast/leadership/522-love-trust-and-influence-leadership-insights-from-dr-sam-adeyemi
Check out our complete library of episodes and other leadership resources here: https://leadersoftransformation.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
How do we unleash our leadership potential and transform the world around
us? Our guest today is Doctor. Sam Adeyemi. He is a global
speaker, a strategic leadership expert, minister,
and author who has influenced millions of people on success
and leadership for more than 25 years. He shifts mindsets
help to help leaders see possibilities and to become
(00:26):
those possibilities. And in 2015 and
2017, he spoke with the Global Leadership Summit, which is a
global conference attended by over 400,000 leaders from a
130 countries. And his Daystar Leadership Academy
has graduated over 45,000 leaders since he founded
it in, 2,002. And
(00:48):
his recent book I actually read, it's called, dear
leader, your flagship guide to successful
leadership is a valuable resource for leaders, and it
outlines how successful c suite leaders think. And I say I read
that book because I know he's got another book coming out. I have not read
that yet, but we'll talk about that here today. Doctor Adeyemi, we're
(01:09):
welcome to the leaders transformation. We're glad to have you here today. Thank you so
much, Nicole. It's my pleasure to be here. It is
a pleasure to have you, and I read all that. Sometimes I don't
do people's kinda like I mean, I could be sitting here all day reading
your bio, but I I expanded on it from what I normally do
just to kind of give the understanding of the experience that you
(01:31):
have as a leadership developer. And so I'm I'm
really excited to have the conversation with you talking about because we're this is
leaders of transformation, talking about leaders who create
transformation. Now before we do that, I always love to do a shout
out to the person or the
firm that introduced us. So Wasabi Publicity,
(01:54):
gave us this opportunity through their introduction. So thank you to
them. They have been amazing over the years. Drew has been on this
show as a guest number of years ago, the founder cofounder,
and, we just really appreciate them. So thank you. Thank
you. Alright. Let's talk about leadership starting
off with how you define the role of leadership, and then we can
(02:17):
go from there. Okay.
So I I see leadership as the ability
to influence 1 or more people
to achieve worthwhile goals.
Well, it should be goals normally, but I like to
qualify because leadership has
(02:39):
tremendous impact. Its its effect is outsized
both positively and negatively. Over the years, I
I've come to realize that people confuse the word
leader with the word leadership. Well, leader refers
to personalities, but leadership refers
to the concept, right, of influence,
(03:03):
the influence of 1 person on another,
right, to produce results. So, again,
in my view, leadership is the ability to influence 1 or
more people to achieve worthwhile goals.
And once we shift the discussion
from leader, from personalities to the concept of
(03:25):
influence, then we realize that leadership happens at all
levels. There are many people who want to see
the word leader or the word leadership, they just tune off because they
believe it has to do with the guys at the top. Right? Yeah.
Especially the guys in government. Right? But once
you say it's one person influencing the other, then we
(03:48):
realize that it happens at all levels.
How do we account for the influence of parents on the children?
Right? And they say the basic foundation for the values are
usually laid by the age 7. Parents
have tremendous influence on their children's lives.
In fact, what the teachers do in school is
(04:11):
actually help the parents to achieve their objectives.
Hopefully. Hopefully. Right? I know.
That's what it's supposed to be. So and
then teachers exert tremendous influence, employers
exert tremendous influence in
(04:33):
the religious space. People exert influence. Even friends
exert influence on one another. So
leadership happens at all levels.
So it reminds me of a mentor of mine many years ago. I said
to him, I always wanted to be an example. And he goes, Nicole,
you're always an example. The question is what kind of example are you?
(04:56):
Oh, wow. And it's like, wow. We're
always being an example. Even when I'm in the grocery
store and I might be rushing and I'm
not paying attention to people around me or the way I, the
way I operate, the way I treat the the cashier.
I'm an example. Even in that situation,
(05:18):
I'm demonstrating my leadership and the influence in
that. And so it's, I'm so glad that you started
off there by saying it is something that is relevant to all of us because
I've actually had people say, oh, my that show is about leadership. It's not a
not for me. And it's like, no. It is for all of
us. And I believe that we're all capable of being leaders of transformation. We're
(05:40):
always transforming. It's question is, what's the transformation that
we're we're making? Are we elevating? Are we
diminishing? Are we sidetracking? What are we doing? So, yeah, so
good. Now let's talk about this idea of heart centered
leadership because you mentioned worthwhile goals. And I know this
heart centered leadership is is near and dear to your
(06:02):
heart. Yeah. And so talk about what that is and and why
that is so important, especially right now.
Thank you, Nicole. So I have these concepts that
I call leadership stroke. And
the thing is that, sadly, when somebody has
a stroke, it's likely that one side of their body
(06:26):
does not function that well anymore. So I
say in leadership, character is
important. Competence is also important.
Character is important. Competence is also important.
And, I draw
the attention of corporate executives to the fact that,
(06:50):
they do a lot of training for their managers and their
leaders, and most of it has to do with,
competence. But then I tell them the character side is
also very, very important. Well, I was
interviewed on the TV show some time ago, and and
they quoted, you know, a prominent person who
(07:12):
said, well, in leadership, you need character and you need competence.
If you must do with only one, make sure it's character. And I said, I'm
sorry. I beg to differ. If someone
has character, but he doesn't have competence, he's
like somebody who wants to drive a car, and they say,
oh, he's such a nice person. He's so kind.
(07:35):
He won't even have to fly. Well, nobody taught him
driving. He doesn't have a driver's license. Yeah. He just
drives by the grace of God.
I'm not driving with him. Right.
I said, would you be comfortable sitting in the car? Oh, no.
So being nice is not enough. You've got
(07:58):
to have the skills, and leadership is a skill. I said,
however, if somebody has the skills but has no character,
you just have a sophisticated crook. Yes. The person
will be intelligent, sophisticated, and so but the person will use
the skills for the wrong reasons. Right?
(08:18):
So and that's where the heart comes in.
And, honestly, I would say that the the
basic thing that drives Hart's leadership
is capacity for empathy,
capacity for love, the capacity for compassion.
Now people feel
(08:41):
uncomfortable when I use the word love in the boardrooms,
right, in a leadership discussion, and I say, oh, no. No. Sorry.
It's not about romantic love. Okay?
Because I read somewhere in the Bible that God so
loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. I
said, I am absolutely certain God wasn't feeling
(09:03):
romantic. No. The kind of love we're
talking about is sacrificial love. It's the
recognition of a person's value. Yeah. To
the extent that you set you recognize it, you celebrate
it. Now how do
you value a human? A human is the most
(09:24):
valuable asset on the planet, and leadership is about
people. So leadership is about
relating with an influence in the most valuable assets on
this planet. And and what what I
know at least from the scriptures is that
God created man in his own image. At
(09:48):
least we know that of all beings on this planet,
man is at the top, is at the highest level. Okay. Fine.
So if man is the most valuable asset on planet earth,
then treat him like that. Right?
I made up my mind. Once I saw some of those verses in the bible,
I told myself, there's a beat of God in every human.
(10:12):
There's a beat of God in every human. Whatever
God does not deserve, then the person does not
deserve it. Period. Whichever way I would not treat
God, I would not treat them that way. Whichever way I would treat God, I'll
treat them that way. I found out just that basic
policy, that basic philosophy makes me to serve people
(10:34):
with excellence, makes me to treat people with excellence. The second thing
it does is it helps me to recognize
gaps in people's lives. If this is the
most valuable asset on the planet,
then no one desires to go to bed hungry.
Not having Yes. Such a basic need
(10:56):
Yes. Diminishes human dignity.
That's why I want to take out of my own food and give the person
to eat. And, you know, and there's something about that
that resonates with all of us humans.
Right? Yes. That is it's a virtuous deed. It's a
good deed, right, to meet basic needs in people's
(11:18):
lives, to give someone water to drink, you know, to to give
someone food to eat, you know, to give somebody shelter who cannot
afford it or give somebody $5 or $10 who cannot
afford to buy groceries. I
think when leadership starts from
that foundation, when it's built up from that foundation, you get the
(11:40):
best results. It sounds like the foundation for the most
powerful values on earth. Now
if I love you, I won't deceive you. Right? I won't
lie to you. So that love, that compassion,
that empathy is the basis for integrity. It's
the basis for honesty. And like we've described, it's the
(12:03):
basis for kindness. It's the basis for generosity.
It's the basis for patience. It's the foundation
for forgiveness. Right? I can write
off an emotional debt because I know you are
worth more than that. Yes. So,
today, we do a lot of things that are plastic. Yes.
(12:26):
We've read the books. They say this is how a leader should
behave. This is what a leader should do, but
if the inner motivation is not there,
the capacity to sustain those things will not last. We cave
in. Yeah. Right? We we break under pressure
because people can't really stretch you when you're a leader.
(12:48):
Right? They can task you. But
when you see potential in a person,
then you decide to make whatever sacrifices you can to
bring the best out of the person. Now that's the highest level
of leadership, helping other humans to be the
best they could be, to become people even they did not know
(13:12):
they could become. Right? Yeah.
Well and I love that that your explanation of
that and how it's so simple and yet so
profound to think that that issue of love
filters out and actually influences
all the other and determines how we will,
(13:36):
approach all the rest of the topics of leadership, if you
will. In terms and I love what you said there about character and
competence. And I think if you have enough character and you realize you don't have
the competence, you all should should set that step down. I've had
clients being a business coach and saying, look, I'm an asset to your
business. Right? We helped grow your business asset on
(13:57):
several levels, but that that asset and I said enough,
I'm not, I should fire myself because it goes against, you know,
like that's where that character also comes in there. It was interesting that you're saying
that, but, by the time that this is released, we'll know the
next president of the United States. Right. And now
one of the things that as we as we vote,
(14:19):
I hope that people vote from a place of character
and competence. I actually did a post about this a few months ago. It's character
and competence. Some other things as, you know, policies like
and that's but that all is tied into what you're talking about here.
And, the challenge with that, of
course, is and when we look
(14:42):
at why leaders don't do that. I mean, I think everybody wants to love
and be loved at the core of who we are. And yet there's so
much brokenness. There's so many leaders that are
that don't have that capacity. So when
you go into organizations and you're working with
leaders, and I'm sure you've been in rooms, if you've
(15:05):
worked with that many leaders, you've got there's going to be a good percentage of
them that don't have the capacity for that when you
start off working with them. How do you create that
capacity in them when
perhaps it was somebody else that that was not a good leader and
did not foster that in them? Like, how do where where
(15:28):
is that turnaround, that transformation in them so that
they can actually go out and and
share that with others. Thank you.
So, interestingly, the foundation
is in the is in the invisible parts.
Yes. It's in the mind. Right? It's in the mind.
(15:53):
I love the book atomic habits by James Grant.
And just for the fact that it actually presents
a step by step model for
cultivating new habits. And he says, well, the way it
works, something gets into your conscious mind.
If it stays there long enough, then it goes into the subconscious
(16:16):
part of the mind. And that that's the
basic thing that leaders actually have to be able
to create sheets down there in the inside, that
subconscious part. So the basic tools for us as
leaders are, first, the vision, you
know, the vision of of the organization. I repeat
(16:39):
the vision of our organization over and over and
over and over because the beautiful thing about it is it's a
picture actually of the future. It's the picture of a future
reality, and when we place ourselves in that picture, all of us
are better people in that city. That's
it. All of us are better people in that picture. So I I wanna
(17:01):
sell an idea to someone that
I see a picture of them that is a future reality,
and I'm seeing possibilities. I
define vision as the ability,
to see people, places, and things
(17:23):
not just the way they are, but the way they could be.
People, places, things, and you've got to use your
imagination for that. Right? That's why I believe vision is so
critical to leadership. It's at the heart of leadership.
So so this is important that
I keep in mind the vision of our organization. When
(17:46):
I look at the people that I have, I see them in the light
of that vision. It it's they've got to be better people in that
vision. Our mission statement is important. I
repeat it over and over. That's what we do every day to get to the
fulfillment of that vision. That's the reason why we got to wake up in the
morning and show up at work. I repeat it over and over
(18:08):
and over and over until it sinks in. Right? Then I
repeat the core values of our organization
over and over. These are principles and standards that
we have adopted to control our
decisions and our behavior. I
find stories, right, that demonstrate those values
(18:31):
because they've got to buy into those values, and to buy into those
values, sometimes people have to make paradigm shifts.
They have to make shifts in their thinking. They have to shift what they believe,
right, what they believe about other people, what they believe about people of other
races and other genders and or the other gender
and what they believe about
(18:54):
somebody who belongs to another social class and things like
that. People have to make adjustments in the process
of adopting those values.
So I repeat the values more than that. I model the values. I model
the values. I make sure that our policies
(19:15):
reward alignment with those values and
and react to nonalignment with those values,
it has to come from everywhere, even the environment.
Right? It's it's got to speak the vision, speak the values
because it always has to start from that shifting
(19:36):
of people's minds. I also make sure
that there is a defined training program.
Defined. Because there's got to be consistency of thinking
Mhmm. With the organization. So So there's got to be
it's a basic training program. I pay attention to the staff handbook.
I pay attention to, our onboarding process.
(20:01):
Right? You know, the onboarding process. And then finally, I should
say, actually pay attention to the recruitment to make
sure that some yeah. That somebody has at least
some basic alignment with our vision, that somebody buys into
the vision and buys into the values. Right? Yes. Or they even come
in in the first place. Mhmm. And in
(20:23):
extreme cases, if somebody is struggling, we pay
attention. We adjust maybe adjust their roles. Maybe
their talents are not best suited for their roles and so on. Sometimes we
go to the extent of appointing a mentor to work with the person for 6
months, help them to make adjustments. But then in extreme cases, we let
someone go Yeah. For our own good and for our own good.
(20:46):
Yeah. Mhmm. Well and I love
I love that you started off with vision because, you
know, where there is no vision, the people perish. And when we talk
about capacity, there's a lot of a lot of times and
issues of the heart. We can talk about
past wounds going into that. Business
(21:09):
is not designed to be a environment for therapy.
Right? You go and you do that and then you come here. But what
can we do as leaders? Right? And even for ourselves to
increase our capacity, we might go on and and deal with some of those
things. But coming here into this conversation,
what you're talking about is creating the space, the
(21:31):
habits, the vision. What I hear is planting
seeds. You are planting seeds. You are there may
be some weeds in there Mhmm. In the mind, but you are
planting seeds and you're planting seeds that are and,
and creating the environment for that, for that,
those seeds to be planted in good soil. Sometimes it's
(21:53):
not, sometimes it's not gonna work out. Somebody refuses it.
Mhmm. That's a choice, but you're creating that environment for
them to thrive. Absolutely.
And sometimes, yeah, we need to have those private conversations.
Yeah. You know, someone, you know, I'm at a
moment of something. If somebody is, you know, serving
(22:17):
with me in our organization, I never want
them to doubt the fact that I love them
because it it gives them peace of mind.
Mhmm. It builds trust. That's a huge
seed to plant is that seed of love, that seed of trust.
Mhmm. Thank you. Right. And and it makes it easier
(22:40):
for them to be vulnerable when they need help. Exactly.
So sometimes, actually, I have to call someone into my office
and have a private conversation, you know, maybe to help
them deal with something they're struggling with. And, interestingly,
I usually start those conversations by being vulnerable myself.
(23:01):
Yes. I tell them when I was dealing with the same thing before, and it
makes them relaxed enough to be able to open up.
Yeah. That's good. You know, this is the
type of thing that we need, and I know you're based in the US. I'm
based in the US, this is global, right? But especially
here in the US, this is something that is needed in
(23:23):
organizations and I think there's still a lot of I've
mentioned on this show that there's so many leadership consultants
out there. Right? But we still have so many messed up organizations. And the
reason why and I say toxic organizations. I
think one of the reasons why that is is because a lot of what we're
doing is behavior modification. And there's a
(23:45):
subtle difference between the behavior modification
and, like I say, not it's not about going into therapy, but, you know, and
having therapy sessions throughout the day. It's
about what you're doing is you're it's you're in between
that where it's like we're create we're
planting those again, planting those seeds,
(24:07):
creating the environment for someone
to thrive in that environment, and you are calling out the
best in them. You're calling it out. You're seeing it.
And one of the one of my favorite scripture in the bible
is life and death is in the power of the tongue. It's actually death and
life. Right? It's in the power of the tongue. Right. It's we
(24:29):
speak we can either speak life over something. We can
speak death over something. I remember something that Joel Osteen said
once. Don't use your words to describe your
situation. Use your words to transform your situation.
If we knew, if we really understood the
the the power of our words, You mentioned
(24:50):
about us being created in God's image. Well, God
spoke the world into existence, and we speak. And
I know some people don't believe in in God. Okay. We still we
speak the we speak our world into existence around us. If
I say I'm hungry, I'm gonna be
not just hungry if I keep saying that and thinking about that and
(25:13):
reinforcing that, I'm gonna be famished. Right? If I we
all know what it's like to have somebody who says something harsh towards,
towards us. Perhaps that person, we had a certain perception of
them. And they totally surprised us with something that they
said that was hurtful. And it changed our reality.
It changed our perspective. And so our words have so
(25:35):
much power. And what I'm hearing in all of what you're saying is
those principles applied, practically
speaking, in business, you know, and speaking,
calling out the greatness in others. In order to see
that, we have to first we get to first love
them and care about them as human beings. And so I just I love
(25:57):
how you built that you built that up. Thank you so
much, Nicole. You know, interestingly, when some
people also say, oh, I have a difficult boss. How
do I deal with a difficult boss? My boss is just difficult.
Right? I say, you know what? Your boss is a human.
Why don't we start with you actually caring genuinely about
(26:20):
your boss? You know? I said, look
beyond the facade. Look beyond the job. K?
If you see your boss sad, why don't you just ask, excuse
me? I hope everything is okay.
I tell them, you'll be surprised how the boss's attitude will change to
(26:41):
you just to know that you care. Right?
But once you believe, oh, this person is a bad person,
it will begin to show your own attitude. Right? And that's not
gonna get us anywhere. Yeah. So
love is the highest law. It's the greatest
law that governs human relationships, and leadership
(27:03):
is about relationships. Yeah. So
good. I talked about your first book. You
also have another book coming out. And, actually one
little thing about that I wanted to highlight that I did enjoy,
there was so much in your first book. I was literally copying and pasting things
into for preparation for this. And there's we could
(27:26):
spend hours talking about the different things, you know, the
the ways to demotivate, the ways to motivate. Something you
said stood out, which is it's you
are building a brand, not an ego. And that's what you've been talking about here.
Right? It's that difference. There's so many leaders that are
building an ego. Again, one of my mentors said, you know,
(27:48):
mission has to come first. Right? That vision. Mission first.
Mission first. Team second. Individual third. If you get those
mixed up and somebody puts himself first,
the team is probably not going to get served. The mission is probably is,
is most certainly not going to be it doesn't work. So
we have to have those in the right, in the right order. And so
(28:11):
I am going to encourage our listeners to get a copy of
your book. We're going to make sure it's in the show notes, dear leader.
And, but now you have another book coming out and you're talking about
these shifts. Do you want you wanna unpack that a little bit further
and and, share with us what you know, because I know that book is actually
on preorder now already. Yes, Nicole. Thank you so
(28:33):
much. So I wrote the book out of a
burden. When I see the
shifts going on in our world right now, it's like we're not
changing fast enough to catch up with the change or with the
changes. Disruptions happening everywhere,
literally. So when I what I
(28:55):
realized is leaders are responding
with behavior modification, like you call it.
The changes are not deep enough, and I'm saying
we humans are creatures of habit. Organizations
behave like living things. That's
(29:17):
the why they are organizations. Right? They behave
like living things. It's every organization kind of
has a soul. So what habits are to the individual,
that's what culture is to the organization. Right?
Mhmm. Or any community of people. So
and I'm saying, you're not gonna create sustainable
(29:39):
changes until you can shift culture. Period.
Right. Culture is so powerful.
It's default mode when it's because it's default mode.
That's what habits are. Right? We call them second nature. Yes.
So culture is default mode for the majority of people in
a community or group 14. That default mode is
(30:02):
going to overwhelm any new changes you're trying to bring in.
That's why people's new year resolutions don't work.
Right? Because if if you don't pay attention to
your programming, to what's habit already,
and you deliberately or intentionally change it,
you'll end up doing exactly what you were doing before. So that's what
(30:25):
culture is, and I'm saying leaders are not gonna be able to
create sustainable changes until they can shift culture. To
shift culture, you've got to be able to change mindsets,
period. Mhmm. Mhmm. To be able to shift people's belief
systems. Yes. You've got to be able to then shift
their values and then their behaviors and its
(30:47):
behavior consistently over time that forms the culture.
Yes. So, many years ago,
once I realized, okay, do you
deal with what I'm dealing with is internal. Right?
Because I read, keep your heart with all diligence for out
of it are the issues of life from King Solomon In in
(31:10):
Proverbs chapter 4. I said okay.
Okay. Then I saw Jesus Christ himself also
spoke about it in Matthew 1235. He said a good man
from the storehouse of his heart brings out all the
treasures of his heart brings forth good things. An evil man from the
treasures of his heart brings forth evil things. In fact, when I read it in
(31:31):
the Amplified Bible, it said a good man from the storehouse of
his heart flings out good things, and an evil man from
the storehouse of his heart flings out evil things. I said, oh my god.
I've been flinging my life out of my heart.
If you don't like what you've been flinging out, you've got to go change
something there in the heart. And I read
(31:55):
from, the focus driven life by Rick
Warren. He said the heart of the matter is a matter of the
heart. Yes. Okay. How do I change
my heart? That was like a big research
question. How do I change my heart? And one day, I was reading
Matthew 13:15. Jesus Christ was explaining the parable of the
(32:17):
sower, and he said, the hearts of these people
have grown dull. I said, oh my god. If somebody's heart is
dull, then their life's gonna be dull. He said their eyes, they have
closed, and their ears are dull appearing, lest they should see with
their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should
understand with their hearts and tone. I was
(32:39):
reading it then in the King James version of the Bible, he says, and be
converted. He said, so that I should heal them.
It was just like boom in my mind. I said,
wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. So that I should heal them? That's the physical
change. That's the the healing is the physical manifestation. I said, look at all
the things that happened before that. With less they should see
(33:02):
with their eyes and hear with their ears, less they should understand with
their hearts. I said, wait. Wait. Wait. That's another dimension to this, the
heart. Oh, wow. Okay. So it is what you
see and what you hear eventually that enters your heart. Like wow,
wow, wow, wow, oh my God. Can I prove this principle elsewhere in
scriptures? Then I remembered Proverbs 4.
(33:25):
Where King Solomon spoke. If you read from verse 20, it says
my son attend to my works. Incline your
ears to my sayings. Don't let them depart from before your
eyes. Keep them in the midst of your heart. I said, that's it. Same
principle again. The eyes, the ears, the heart. Then I remembered
1st Corinthians chapter 2 verse 9, eye has not seen,
(33:47):
ear has not heard, neither has entered into the heart of any man. I said,
that's it again. Wow. There's a connection between the
eyes, the ears, and the heart. I took time to reflect on
it and came up with this principle. Whatever you see and hear
consistently over time will enter your heart. Yes.
What enters your heart puts your life on autopilot.
(34:11):
So I went back to that verse again. Wow. Okay. Let's look
at these 5 steps that I actually began to teach
the model in at our leadership school,
the Digital Leadership Academy. I called it the process for transformation.
Seeing with the eyes, hearing with the ears,
understanding with the heart, internal conversion,
(34:35):
and physical manifestation.
However, when I was writing the book, my editor said,
okay, can you help us to use words that would help us to form
an acronym? Because that will make it memorable for people. I
said, okay, the s is for seeing.
The h is for hearing. Yeah. The I is for
(34:57):
insight. That if you meditate,
if you reflect long enough on what you're
seeing and hearing, you will gain understanding. You will gain
insights. You will be able to connect dots. You will see cause and
effect connections. Say, oh, wow. Okay. So this thing
that is happening, this is what is causing it. That gives you power.
(35:20):
You can now be intentional, so that moves you to the next level,
which I call formulate for the f, decision
making. Okay. Good. Good. Good. From now on, this is
what I'm gonna do to get this result, and
then the t is transform. That's where you take
action, and then you repeat the actions, you
(35:43):
form habits. And then I added an
s for succeed. Nice.
You get the results you want, and
you get to repeat them over and over and over.
And I also talk a bit about succession
there, that you can actually continue to succeed after you've
(36:06):
left the position and even after you've left this vault.
So that's what I have in the book. I apply the shift
model to the individual for transforming your own life, then I
apply it to teams and organizations. So as a leader,
you can actually help your team to go through this process by influencing
what they see and hear consistently over time. And then
(36:29):
I apply it to nations that we can actually
do this with all nations, sharing our
vision, leveraging the educational system, the
media, the entertainment industry, music,
because what happens what makes all those platforms powerful
is the fact that it is what people see and hear consistently over
(36:51):
time. Yeah. Chips their hearts. So
good. Oh, I love this. I love this. And and I love
the fact that you talk about, like, personal, like the individual, the
teams, and the nations, because it really is. It's like going
out from an inward outward. And I think so
often we think capacity wise, do we
(37:13):
focus on ourselves? But that's just the beginning point.
Right. It's the beginning point where then it's our
it's like micro, macro global. Right? It's that
process that, that we're called to. Right? So
transform the world, transform nations. We
are we are called to that. I love this. This is so great. And
(37:35):
I look forward to reading your book when it comes out. One last
thing, and maybe you can tie this tie this in
to everything we've talked about because it applies to, you know, the the
long distance leadership. Because I know that at some point,
you know, back in Nigeria, you had, I think, a bunch of churches
and then you weren't able to be because of the pandemic. You weren't able to
(37:57):
to be there. So we're talking about
proximity, but it's also something that is applied even virtually
because we have so many virtual teams and long distance teams right now. So,
how is it the same? How is it different? How do you how do you
instill that culture so that it actually,
(38:19):
is able to to reach the farthest ends of the
of the organization? Thank you.
Yes. So it was an unusual scenario. So we we
have a church in Nigeria that my wife
and I founded some 29 years ago, and we have
about 40,000 members. So
(38:42):
and after COVID, we just found out we had to stay in
the US. Now there's a lot of intuition,
you know, at play there because we we got
the messages intuitively, you know,
dreams and different things, different things like
that. Any intuition does play a
(39:04):
big role in the life of a leader.
Everything is not linear in our world. Everything is
not rational and logical. And leaders learn to
listen to their inner voices, to their gut feelings as long as we
keep our consciences clear. Anyway, we found ourselves
being in the US for 3 straight years.
(39:27):
3 straight years away from Nigeria,
from the church, that was hard.
However, the positive side to it is the fact that the
church continued to run. Right? And now
leaders ask me everywhere, what did you do? How did you
do it? What are you doing? What made it possible?
(39:50):
And I say culture. Culture. Culture.
The seeds that we had sown consistently through the
years. 1st, the leadership dimension to
it, the fact that we actually had
empowered thousands of people through the years.
We we had this shift in paradigm at some
(40:13):
point. Where we said, wait, wait,
wait, wait, wait. This idea that it's those of us
that hold the microphone on the stage, that are the ministers
is not in line with the New Testament. In the New Testament,
every member is a minister. So we had to
(40:34):
train short members, and then we
just shifted the load, the weight of,
the ministry on them. Right? So we we
created small groups. So and we
had thousands of those small groups. We had
thousands of leaders there. So we
(40:55):
shifted from being an event driven
church to being the purpose driven one, where it wasn't only what
happened on Sunday that determined the life of our church. Oh, no. In fact, it
was what happened outside of the building. Right?
And we empowered the leaders. So
when we then were not there, things just continue the
(41:18):
way they went. And we studied systems.
We we actually we studied systems both from the business
sector and even from the biblical point of view. We found systems in
first Corinthians 12 where all the apostles said
that the church is like the body of Christ. Now the human body
runs on systems. Reproductive system, digestive system,
(41:41):
respiratory system. A system is a group of parts that carries
out a specific function. So with that, we
we structured our church in such a way that each
area focused on achieving excellence in some
important area, whether it's in fellowship, ensuring church members
love one another, or it's in soul winning, or
(42:03):
it's in ministry identifying unique problems in the
community and then training church members to serve, to solve
those problems. So you have those visiting prisons. You have those visiting
hospitals and all that, you know, and then the worship
and so on. So all those running at
the same time, and then we have our management team, and we have
(42:25):
our board of trustees, and we allow the boards to run.
So even when you took us out of the system, everything was
working. I'll say here, when
did, the basic principles come to play,
the love. Right? Yeah. Because with it comes
(42:46):
the commitment, comes the loyalty, comes the
trust. Yes. With the distance, it becomes difficult to
maintain the trust, but if you have made enough deposits, you can
make withdrawals. Stephen R. Covey said that in the
7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and I love it. He said
we all have emotional bank accounts with one another.
(43:08):
With Yeah. With positive acts, we make deposits. Then when we
offend or hurt, we're making withdrawals. He said, but if you've been if
you've not been making deposits, you make a withdrawal, the check is gonna
bounce. That's when relations break, and you have big problems. So,
gratefully, we did not have a crisis because of how
much investments we had made, how much seeds we had sown. I'll
(43:30):
recommend that in this day, this post COVID
era where people do remote work.
Now managers don't see their subordinates sometimes for
weeks, you know, some for months.
That foundation, it's more important actually for
that foundation to be laid that we genuinely
(43:53):
care about people. So even though we're not in the same space,
we can actually still show that care. And those times when
we meet virtually or on the phone should not only
be for running tasks. We've got to care for the
person that we're not seeing regularly. Right?
Yeah. Exactly. So good. That is
(44:16):
this is so good. My my goodness. We could talk for, like,
hours. I know there's so much here. We're going to finish it
off and I'm just going to encourage our listeners and viewers to
go get copies of your book. So the one that is out right
now, Dear Leader, Your Flagship Guide to Successful
Leadership, and then your newest book, Shifts, is,
(44:38):
on pre order. And so your website, so that's
sam and then your last name,
adeyemi.com. We'll make sure that's in the
show notes too for people that they can go there and they can access
those books, follow you. You have a huge following online.
I think you said like 3,000,000 people following you, leaders following you
(45:00):
around the world, online. And so they can follow you there
as well. And, doctor
Adeyemi, I think did I say that right? Yes. You did.
Okay. And thank you so much for
being here and, for sharing your heart with
us and for sharing these, very
(45:23):
they're, like, simple yet profound. I think we were talking about this actually
on our pre chat about the, you know, genius takes the complex and
brings it down to the simple. Simple takes the the complex
complex that makes it, you know, more complicated or whatever. I I forget what it
was. We were talk my favorite quote. I don't know why I can't I can't
think of it right now. Okay. Let me try it again. Mhmm. Because
(45:45):
genius takes the simple and, that's that takes the
complex and makes it simple. Yeah. A fool takes the
simple and makes it complex there. Okay. I got it.
It's been a full day. Wonderful conversations, and I just
am so blessed, to be able to have these conversations,
to learn from from you, to learn from, you know,
(46:07):
people that are creating such massive transformation in the world. But
starting off with not just structurally and system
systematically, but also from a heart centered
standpoint, transforming lives 1 person at a
time, 1 organization at a time, you
know, and and that's the it's one team at a time and that's the way
(46:28):
it goes. So thank you again, Sam, so much. Appreciate
you. Thank you so much, Nicole. I've had a
great time. And by the way, you're looking really beautiful today.
Oh, thank you. Thank you. Right. And
I wanna say I identify completely
(46:49):
with your mission, you know,
transformation, not just behavior and modification, but
transformation. So thank you for having me on your show. Awesome. Well,
thank you. And I always say that leaders of transformation
take action. And so you mentioned it earlier,
as well, Sam. So I'm just gonna tell, you know, for our
(47:11):
listeners and our viewers, you might need to listen to this one over
again a few times just to be able to get all the concepts.
Take the scripture that is is that has been shared here,
the concepts, write them down, and then meditate
on them for yourself. How do they how have you
seen them applied in your life? How can you see the
(47:34):
how they can be applied in your life? And you say your life, but also
your business and your and your leadership role, whatever
that is. And take action on
something. Maybe it's stopping the next time when you're
passing somebody, in the office or you're on Zoom
and rather than just jumping into the tasks is to stop and
(47:56):
check-in. I'm a task oriented person so I needed to learn this
and remind myself on it regularly is to stop and check-in and
say, how are you? And wait to hear and literally let
people know that you actually do care. And then from
there, then you can go so it's like you're presencing yourself to each
other and what's going on. And then you can go
(48:18):
into tasks and what needs to get done. Maybe that's for you is is a
big deal and just starting there and continuing to
develop it from there. Plant the good seeds,
increase the capacity of your team, and you'll see
transformation happening, culture shifts happening. And,
and all the things that you've been looking for, the profitability and
(48:41):
the productivity and all the things flow out of that.
So I encourage you to do that. We'd love to hear your stories. You can
go on leaders of transformation.com. Reach out to us there. Let
us know how this has impacted you and what you're doing and how you're applying
it. And if there's anything we can do to support you along your journey, let
us know that as well. And, again, thank you for being
(49:02):
here, and we look forward to seeing you next week on another
episode of the Leaders of Transformation.
How do we unleash our leadership potential and transform the world around
us? Our guest today is Doctor. Sam Adeyemi. He is a global
speaker, a strategic leadership expert, minister,
and author who has influenced millions of people on success
and leadership for more than 25 years. He shifts mindsets
help to help leaders see possibilities and to become
(00:26):
those possibilities. And in 2015 and
2017, he spoke with the Global Leadership Summit, which is a
global conference attended by over 400,000 leaders from a
130 countries. And his Daystar Leadership Academy
has graduated over 45,000 leaders since he founded
it in, 2,002. And
(00:48):
his recent book I actually read, it's called, dear
leader, your flagship guide to successful
leadership is a valuable resource for leaders, and it
outlines how successful c suite leaders think. And I say I read
that book because I know he's got another book coming out. I have not read
that yet, but we'll talk about that here today. Doctor Adeyemi, we're
(01:09):
welcome to the leaders transformation. We're glad to have you here today. Thank you so
much, Nicole. It's my pleasure to be here. It is
a pleasure to have you, and I read all that. Sometimes I don't
do people's kinda like I mean, I could be sitting here all day reading
your bio, but I I expanded on it from what I normally do
just to kind of give the understanding of the experience that you
(01:31):
have as a leadership developer. And so I'm I'm
really excited to have the conversation with you talking about because we're this is
leaders of transformation, talking about leaders who create
transformation. Now before we do that, I always love to do a shout
out to the person or the
firm that introduced us. So Wasabi Publicity,
(01:54):
gave us this opportunity through their introduction. So thank you to
them. They have been amazing over the years. Drew has been on this
show as a guest number of years ago, the founder cofounder,
and, we just really appreciate them. So thank you. Thank
you. Alright. Let's talk about leadership starting
off with how you define the role of leadership, and then we can
(02:17):
go from there. Okay.
So I I see leadership as the ability
to influence 1 or more people
to achieve worthwhile goals.
Well, it should be goals normally, but I like to
qualify because leadership has
(02:39):
tremendous impact. Its its effect is outsized
both positively and negatively. Over the years, I
I've come to realize that people confuse the word
leader with the word leadership. Well, leader refers
to personalities, but leadership refers
to the concept, right, of influence,
(03:03):
the influence of 1 person on another,
right, to produce results. So, again,
in my view, leadership is the ability to influence 1 or
more people to achieve worthwhile goals.
And once we shift the discussion
from leader, from personalities to the concept of
(03:25):
influence, then we realize that leadership happens at all
levels. There are many people who want to see
the word leader or the word leadership, they just tune off because they
believe it has to do with the guys at the top. Right? Yeah.
Especially the guys in government. Right? But once
you say it's one person influencing the other, then we
(03:48):
realize that it happens at all levels.
How do we account for the influence of parents on the children?
Right? And they say the basic foundation for the values are
usually laid by the age 7. Parents
have tremendous influence on their children's lives.
In fact, what the teachers do in school is
(04:11):
actually help the parents to achieve their objectives.
Hopefully. Hopefully. Right? I know.
That's what it's supposed to be. So and
then teachers exert tremendous influence, employers
exert tremendous influence in
(04:33):
the religious space. People exert influence. Even friends
exert influence on one another. So
leadership happens at all levels.
So it reminds me of a mentor of mine many years ago. I said
to him, I always wanted to be an example. And he goes, Nicole,
you're always an example. The question is what kind of example are you?
(04:56):
Oh, wow. And it's like, wow. We're
always being an example. Even when I'm in the grocery
store and I might be rushing and I'm
not paying attention to people around me or the way I, the
way I operate, the way I treat the the cashier.
I'm an example. Even in that situation,
(05:18):
I'm demonstrating my leadership and the influence in
that. And so it's, I'm so glad that you started
off there by saying it is something that is relevant to all of us because
I've actually had people say, oh, my that show is about leadership. It's not a
not for me. And it's like, no. It is for all of
us. And I believe that we're all capable of being leaders of transformation. We're
(05:40):
always transforming. It's question is, what's the transformation that
we're we're making? Are we elevating? Are we
diminishing? Are we sidetracking? What are we doing? So, yeah, so
good. Now let's talk about this idea of heart centered
leadership because you mentioned worthwhile goals. And I know this
heart centered leadership is is near and dear to your
(06:02):
heart. Yeah. And so talk about what that is and and why
that is so important, especially right now.
Thank you, Nicole. So I have these concepts that
I call leadership stroke. And
the thing is that, sadly, when somebody has
a stroke, it's likely that one side of their body
(06:26):
does not function that well anymore. So I
say in leadership, character is
important. Competence is also important.
Character is important. Competence is also important.
And, I draw
the attention of corporate executives to the fact that,
(06:50):
they do a lot of training for their managers and their
leaders, and most of it has to do with,
competence. But then I tell them the character side is
also very, very important. Well, I was
interviewed on the TV show some time ago, and and
they quoted, you know, a prominent person who
(07:12):
said, well, in leadership, you need character and you need competence.
If you must do with only one, make sure it's character. And I said, I'm
sorry. I beg to differ. If someone
has character, but he doesn't have competence, he's
like somebody who wants to drive a car, and they say,
oh, he's such a nice person. He's so kind.
(07:35):
He won't even have to fly. Well, nobody taught him
driving. He doesn't have a driver's license. Yeah. He just
drives by the grace of God.
I'm not driving with him. Right.
I said, would you be comfortable sitting in the car? Oh, no.
So being nice is not enough. You've got
(07:58):
to have the skills, and leadership is a skill. I said,
however, if somebody has the skills but has no character,
you just have a sophisticated crook. Yes. The person
will be intelligent, sophisticated, and so but the person will use
the skills for the wrong reasons. Right?
(08:18):
So and that's where the heart comes in.
And, honestly, I would say that the the
basic thing that drives Hart's leadership
is capacity for empathy,
capacity for love, the capacity for compassion.
Now people feel
(08:41):
uncomfortable when I use the word love in the boardrooms,
right, in a leadership discussion, and I say, oh, no. No. Sorry.
It's not about romantic love. Okay?
Because I read somewhere in the Bible that God so
loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. I
said, I am absolutely certain God wasn't feeling
(09:03):
romantic. No. The kind of love we're
talking about is sacrificial love. It's the
recognition of a person's value. Yeah. To
the extent that you set you recognize it, you celebrate
it. Now how do
you value a human? A human is the most
(09:24):
valuable asset on the planet, and leadership is about
people. So leadership is about
relating with an influence in the most valuable assets on
this planet. And and what what I
know at least from the scriptures is that
God created man in his own image. At
(09:48):
least we know that of all beings on this planet,
man is at the top, is at the highest level. Okay. Fine.
So if man is the most valuable asset on planet earth,
then treat him like that. Right?
I made up my mind. Once I saw some of those verses in the bible,
I told myself, there's a beat of God in every human.
(10:12):
There's a beat of God in every human. Whatever
God does not deserve, then the person does not
deserve it. Period. Whichever way I would not treat
God, I would not treat them that way. Whichever way I would treat God, I'll
treat them that way. I found out just that basic
policy, that basic philosophy makes me to serve people
(10:34):
with excellence, makes me to treat people with excellence. The second thing
it does is it helps me to recognize
gaps in people's lives. If this is the
most valuable asset on the planet,
then no one desires to go to bed hungry.
Not having Yes. Such a basic need
(10:56):
Yes. Diminishes human dignity.
That's why I want to take out of my own food and give the person
to eat. And, you know, and there's something about that
that resonates with all of us humans.
Right? Yes. That is it's a virtuous deed. It's a
good deed, right, to meet basic needs in people's
(11:18):
lives, to give someone water to drink, you know, to to give
someone food to eat, you know, to give somebody shelter who cannot
afford it or give somebody $5 or $10 who cannot
afford to buy groceries. I
think when leadership starts from
that foundation, when it's built up from that foundation, you get the
(11:40):
best results. It sounds like the foundation for the most
powerful values on earth. Now
if I love you, I won't deceive you. Right? I won't
lie to you. So that love, that compassion,
that empathy is the basis for integrity. It's
the basis for honesty. And like we've described, it's the
(12:03):
basis for kindness. It's the basis for generosity.
It's the basis for patience. It's the foundation
for forgiveness. Right? I can write
off an emotional debt because I know you are
worth more than that. Yes. So,
today, we do a lot of things that are plastic. Yes.
(12:26):
We've read the books. They say this is how a leader should
behave. This is what a leader should do, but
if the inner motivation is not there,
the capacity to sustain those things will not last. We cave
in. Yeah. Right? We we break under pressure
because people can't really stretch you when you're a leader.
(12:48):
Right? They can task you. But
when you see potential in a person,
then you decide to make whatever sacrifices you can to
bring the best out of the person. Now that's the highest level
of leadership, helping other humans to be the
best they could be, to become people even they did not know
(13:12):
they could become. Right? Yeah.
Well and I love that that your explanation of
that and how it's so simple and yet so
profound to think that that issue of love
filters out and actually influences
all the other and determines how we will,
(13:36):
approach all the rest of the topics of leadership, if you
will. In terms and I love what you said there about character and
competence. And I think if you have enough character and you realize you don't have
the competence, you all should should set that step down. I've had
clients being a business coach and saying, look, I'm an asset to your
business. Right? We helped grow your business asset on
(13:57):
several levels, but that that asset and I said enough,
I'm not, I should fire myself because it goes against, you know,
like that's where that character also comes in there. It was interesting that you're saying
that, but, by the time that this is released, we'll know the
next president of the United States. Right. And now
one of the things that as we as we vote,
(14:19):
I hope that people vote from a place of character
and competence. I actually did a post about this a few months ago. It's character
and competence. Some other things as, you know, policies like
and that's but that all is tied into what you're talking about here.
And, the challenge with that, of
course, is and when we look
(14:42):
at why leaders don't do that. I mean, I think everybody wants to love
and be loved at the core of who we are. And yet there's so
much brokenness. There's so many leaders that are
that don't have that capacity. So when
you go into organizations and you're working with
leaders, and I'm sure you've been in rooms, if you've
(15:05):
worked with that many leaders, you've got there's going to be a good percentage of
them that don't have the capacity for that when you
start off working with them. How do you create that
capacity in them when
perhaps it was somebody else that that was not a good leader and
did not foster that in them? Like, how do where where
(15:28):
is that turnaround, that transformation in them so that
they can actually go out and and
share that with others. Thank you.
So, interestingly, the foundation
is in the is in the invisible parts.
Yes. It's in the mind. Right? It's in the mind.
(15:53):
I love the book atomic habits by James Grant.
And just for the fact that it actually presents
a step by step model for
cultivating new habits. And he says, well, the way it
works, something gets into your conscious mind.
If it stays there long enough, then it goes into the subconscious
(16:16):
part of the mind. And that that's the
basic thing that leaders actually have to be able
to create sheets down there in the inside, that
subconscious part. So the basic tools for us as
leaders are, first, the vision, you
know, the vision of of the organization. I repeat
(16:39):
the vision of our organization over and over and
over and over because the beautiful thing about it is it's a
picture actually of the future. It's the picture of a future
reality, and when we place ourselves in that picture, all of us
are better people in that city. That's
it. All of us are better people in that picture. So I I wanna
(17:01):
sell an idea to someone that
I see a picture of them that is a future reality,
and I'm seeing possibilities. I
define vision as the ability,
to see people, places, and things
(17:23):
not just the way they are, but the way they could be.
People, places, things, and you've got to use your
imagination for that. Right? That's why I believe vision is so
critical to leadership. It's at the heart of leadership.
So so this is important that
I keep in mind the vision of our organization. When
(17:46):
I look at the people that I have, I see them in the light
of that vision. It it's they've got to be better people in that
vision. Our mission statement is important. I
repeat it over and over. That's what we do every day to get to the
fulfillment of that vision. That's the reason why we got to wake up in the
morning and show up at work. I repeat it over and over
(18:08):
and over and over until it sinks in. Right? Then I
repeat the core values of our organization
over and over. These are principles and standards that
we have adopted to control our
decisions and our behavior. I
find stories, right, that demonstrate those values
(18:31):
because they've got to buy into those values, and to buy into those
values, sometimes people have to make paradigm shifts.
They have to make shifts in their thinking. They have to shift what they believe,
right, what they believe about other people, what they believe about people of other
races and other genders and or the other gender
and what they believe about
(18:54):
somebody who belongs to another social class and things like
that. People have to make adjustments in the process
of adopting those values.
So I repeat the values more than that. I model the values. I model
the values. I make sure that our policies
(19:15):
reward alignment with those values and
and react to nonalignment with those values,
it has to come from everywhere, even the environment.
Right? It's it's got to speak the vision, speak the values
because it always has to start from that shifting
(19:36):
of people's minds. I also make sure
that there is a defined training program.
Defined. Because there's got to be consistency of thinking
Mhmm. With the organization. So So there's got to be
it's a basic training program. I pay attention to the staff handbook.
I pay attention to, our onboarding process.
(20:01):
Right? You know, the onboarding process. And then finally, I should
say, actually pay attention to the recruitment to make
sure that some yeah. That somebody has at least
some basic alignment with our vision, that somebody buys into
the vision and buys into the values. Right? Yes. Or they even come
in in the first place. Mhmm. And in
(20:23):
extreme cases, if somebody is struggling, we pay
attention. We adjust maybe adjust their roles. Maybe
their talents are not best suited for their roles and so on. Sometimes we
go to the extent of appointing a mentor to work with the person for 6
months, help them to make adjustments. But then in extreme cases, we let
someone go Yeah. For our own good and for our own good.
(20:46):
Yeah. Mhmm. Well and I love
I love that you started off with vision because, you
know, where there is no vision, the people perish. And when we talk
about capacity, there's a lot of a lot of times and
issues of the heart. We can talk about
past wounds going into that. Business
(21:09):
is not designed to be a environment for therapy.
Right? You go and you do that and then you come here. But what
can we do as leaders? Right? And even for ourselves to
increase our capacity, we might go on and and deal with some of those
things. But coming here into this conversation,
what you're talking about is creating the space, the
(21:31):
habits, the vision. What I hear is planting
seeds. You are planting seeds. You are there may
be some weeds in there Mhmm. In the mind, but you are
planting seeds and you're planting seeds that are and,
and creating the environment for that, for that,
those seeds to be planted in good soil. Sometimes it's
(21:53):
not, sometimes it's not gonna work out. Somebody refuses it.
Mhmm. That's a choice, but you're creating that environment for
them to thrive. Absolutely.
And sometimes, yeah, we need to have those private conversations.
Yeah. You know, someone, you know, I'm at a
moment of something. If somebody is, you know, serving
(22:17):
with me in our organization, I never want
them to doubt the fact that I love them
because it it gives them peace of mind.
Mhmm. It builds trust. That's a huge
seed to plant is that seed of love, that seed of trust.
Mhmm. Thank you. Right. And and it makes it easier
(22:40):
for them to be vulnerable when they need help. Exactly.
So sometimes, actually, I have to call someone into my office
and have a private conversation, you know, maybe to help
them deal with something they're struggling with. And, interestingly,
I usually start those conversations by being vulnerable myself.
(23:01):
Yes. I tell them when I was dealing with the same thing before, and it
makes them relaxed enough to be able to open up.
Yeah. That's good. You know, this is the
type of thing that we need, and I know you're based in the US. I'm
based in the US, this is global, right? But especially
here in the US, this is something that is needed in
(23:23):
organizations and I think there's still a lot of I've
mentioned on this show that there's so many leadership consultants
out there. Right? But we still have so many messed up organizations. And the
reason why and I say toxic organizations. I
think one of the reasons why that is is because a lot of what we're
doing is behavior modification. And there's a
(23:45):
subtle difference between the behavior modification
and, like I say, not it's not about going into therapy, but, you know, and
having therapy sessions throughout the day. It's
about what you're doing is you're it's you're in between
that where it's like we're create we're
planting those again, planting those seeds,
(24:07):
creating the environment for someone
to thrive in that environment, and you are calling out the
best in them. You're calling it out. You're seeing it.
And one of the one of my favorite scripture in the bible
is life and death is in the power of the tongue. It's actually death and
life. Right? It's in the power of the tongue. Right. It's we
(24:29):
speak we can either speak life over something. We can
speak death over something. I remember something that Joel Osteen said
once. Don't use your words to describe your
situation. Use your words to transform your situation.
If we knew, if we really understood the
the the power of our words, You mentioned
(24:50):
about us being created in God's image. Well, God
spoke the world into existence, and we speak. And
I know some people don't believe in in God. Okay. We still we
speak the we speak our world into existence around us. If
I say I'm hungry, I'm gonna be
not just hungry if I keep saying that and thinking about that and
(25:13):
reinforcing that, I'm gonna be famished. Right? If I we
all know what it's like to have somebody who says something harsh towards,
towards us. Perhaps that person, we had a certain perception of
them. And they totally surprised us with something that they
said that was hurtful. And it changed our reality.
It changed our perspective. And so our words have so
(25:35):
much power. And what I'm hearing in all of what you're saying is
those principles applied, practically
speaking, in business, you know, and speaking,
calling out the greatness in others. In order to see
that, we have to first we get to first love
them and care about them as human beings. And so I just I love
(25:57):
how you built that you built that up. Thank you so
much, Nicole. You know, interestingly, when some
people also say, oh, I have a difficult boss. How
do I deal with a difficult boss? My boss is just difficult.
Right? I say, you know what? Your boss is a human.
Why don't we start with you actually caring genuinely about
(26:20):
your boss? You know? I said, look
beyond the facade. Look beyond the job. K?
If you see your boss sad, why don't you just ask, excuse
me? I hope everything is okay.
I tell them, you'll be surprised how the boss's attitude will change to
(26:41):
you just to know that you care. Right?
But once you believe, oh, this person is a bad person,
it will begin to show your own attitude. Right? And that's not
gonna get us anywhere. Yeah. So
love is the highest law. It's the greatest
law that governs human relationships, and leadership
(27:03):
is about relationships. Yeah. So
good. I talked about your first book. You
also have another book coming out. And, actually one
little thing about that I wanted to highlight that I did enjoy,
there was so much in your first book. I was literally copying and pasting things
into for preparation for this. And there's we could
(27:26):
spend hours talking about the different things, you know, the
the ways to demotivate, the ways to motivate. Something you
said stood out, which is it's you
are building a brand, not an ego. And that's what you've been talking about here.
Right? It's that difference. There's so many leaders that are
building an ego. Again, one of my mentors said, you know,
(27:48):
mission has to come first. Right? That vision. Mission first.
Mission first. Team second. Individual third. If you get those
mixed up and somebody puts himself first,
the team is probably not going to get served. The mission is probably is,
is most certainly not going to be it doesn't work. So
we have to have those in the right, in the right order. And so
(28:11):
I am going to encourage our listeners to get a copy of
your book. We're going to make sure it's in the show notes, dear leader.
And, but now you have another book coming out and you're talking about
these shifts. Do you want you wanna unpack that a little bit further
and and, share with us what you know, because I know that book is actually
on preorder now already. Yes, Nicole. Thank you so
(28:33):
much. So I wrote the book out of a
burden. When I see the
shifts going on in our world right now, it's like we're not
changing fast enough to catch up with the change or with the
changes. Disruptions happening everywhere,
literally. So when I what I
(28:55):
realized is leaders are responding
with behavior modification, like you call it.
The changes are not deep enough, and I'm saying
we humans are creatures of habit. Organizations
behave like living things. That's
(29:17):
the why they are organizations. Right? They behave
like living things. It's every organization kind of
has a soul. So what habits are to the individual,
that's what culture is to the organization. Right?
Mhmm. Or any community of people. So
and I'm saying, you're not gonna create sustainable
(29:39):
changes until you can shift culture. Period.
Right. Culture is so powerful.
It's default mode when it's because it's default mode.
That's what habits are. Right? We call them second nature. Yes.
So culture is default mode for the majority of people in
a community or group 14. That default mode is
(30:02):
going to overwhelm any new changes you're trying to bring in.
That's why people's new year resolutions don't work.
Right? Because if if you don't pay attention to
your programming, to what's habit already,
and you deliberately or intentionally change it,
you'll end up doing exactly what you were doing before. So that's what
(30:25):
culture is, and I'm saying leaders are not gonna be able to
create sustainable changes until they can shift culture. To
shift culture, you've got to be able to change mindsets,
period. Mhmm. Mhmm. To be able to shift people's belief
systems. Yes. You've got to be able to then shift
their values and then their behaviors and its
(30:47):
behavior consistently over time that forms the culture.
Yes. So, many years ago,
once I realized, okay, do you
deal with what I'm dealing with is internal. Right?
Because I read, keep your heart with all diligence for out
of it are the issues of life from King Solomon In in
(31:10):
Proverbs chapter 4. I said okay.
Okay. Then I saw Jesus Christ himself also
spoke about it in Matthew 1235. He said a good man
from the storehouse of his heart brings out all the
treasures of his heart brings forth good things. An evil man from the
treasures of his heart brings forth evil things. In fact, when I read it in
(31:31):
the Amplified Bible, it said a good man from the storehouse of
his heart flings out good things, and an evil man from
the storehouse of his heart flings out evil things. I said, oh my god.
I've been flinging my life out of my heart.
If you don't like what you've been flinging out, you've got to go change
something there in the heart. And I read
(31:55):
from, the focus driven life by Rick
Warren. He said the heart of the matter is a matter of the
heart. Yes. Okay. How do I change
my heart? That was like a big research
question. How do I change my heart? And one day, I was reading
Matthew 13:15. Jesus Christ was explaining the parable of the
(32:17):
sower, and he said, the hearts of these people
have grown dull. I said, oh my god. If somebody's heart is
dull, then their life's gonna be dull. He said their eyes, they have
closed, and their ears are dull appearing, lest they should see with
their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should
understand with their hearts and tone. I was
(32:39):
reading it then in the King James version of the Bible, he says, and be
converted. He said, so that I should heal them.
It was just like boom in my mind. I said,
wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. So that I should heal them? That's the physical
change. That's the the healing is the physical manifestation. I said, look at all
the things that happened before that. With less they should see
(33:02):
with their eyes and hear with their ears, less they should understand with
their hearts. I said, wait. Wait. Wait. That's another dimension to this, the
heart. Oh, wow. Okay. So it is what you
see and what you hear eventually that enters your heart. Like wow,
wow, wow, wow, oh my God. Can I prove this principle elsewhere in
scriptures? Then I remembered Proverbs 4.
(33:25):
Where King Solomon spoke. If you read from verse 20, it says
my son attend to my works. Incline your
ears to my sayings. Don't let them depart from before your
eyes. Keep them in the midst of your heart. I said, that's it. Same
principle again. The eyes, the ears, the heart. Then I remembered
1st Corinthians chapter 2 verse 9, eye has not seen,
(33:47):
ear has not heard, neither has entered into the heart of any man. I said,
that's it again. Wow. There's a connection between the
eyes, the ears, and the heart. I took time to reflect on
it and came up with this principle. Whatever you see and hear
consistently over time will enter your heart. Yes.
What enters your heart puts your life on autopilot.
(34:11):
So I went back to that verse again. Wow. Okay. Let's look
at these 5 steps that I actually began to teach
the model in at our leadership school,
the Digital Leadership Academy. I called it the process for transformation.
Seeing with the eyes, hearing with the ears,
understanding with the heart, internal conversion,
(34:35):
and physical manifestation.
However, when I was writing the book, my editor said,
okay, can you help us to use words that would help us to form
an acronym? Because that will make it memorable for people. I
said, okay, the s is for seeing.
The h is for hearing. Yeah. The I is for
(34:57):
insight. That if you meditate,
if you reflect long enough on what you're
seeing and hearing, you will gain understanding. You will gain
insights. You will be able to connect dots. You will see cause and
effect connections. Say, oh, wow. Okay. So this thing
that is happening, this is what is causing it. That gives you power.
(35:20):
You can now be intentional, so that moves you to the next level,
which I call formulate for the f, decision
making. Okay. Good. Good. Good. From now on, this is
what I'm gonna do to get this result, and
then the t is transform. That's where you take
action, and then you repeat the actions, you
(35:43):
form habits. And then I added an
s for succeed. Nice.
You get the results you want, and
you get to repeat them over and over and over.
And I also talk a bit about succession
there, that you can actually continue to succeed after you've
(36:06):
left the position and even after you've left this vault.
So that's what I have in the book. I apply the shift
model to the individual for transforming your own life, then I
apply it to teams and organizations. So as a leader,
you can actually help your team to go through this process by influencing
what they see and hear consistently over time. And then
(36:29):
I apply it to nations that we can actually
do this with all nations, sharing our
vision, leveraging the educational system, the
media, the entertainment industry, music,
because what happens what makes all those platforms powerful
is the fact that it is what people see and hear consistently over
(36:51):
time. Yeah. Chips their hearts. So
good. Oh, I love this. I love this. And and I love
the fact that you talk about, like, personal, like the individual, the
teams, and the nations, because it really is. It's like going
out from an inward outward. And I think so
often we think capacity wise, do we
(37:13):
focus on ourselves? But that's just the beginning point.
Right. It's the beginning point where then it's our
it's like micro, macro global. Right? It's that
process that, that we're called to. Right? So
transform the world, transform nations. We
are we are called to that. I love this. This is so great. And
(37:35):
I look forward to reading your book when it comes out. One last
thing, and maybe you can tie this tie this in
to everything we've talked about because it applies to, you know, the the
long distance leadership. Because I know that at some point,
you know, back in Nigeria, you had, I think, a bunch of churches
and then you weren't able to be because of the pandemic. You weren't able to
(37:57):
to be there. So we're talking about
proximity, but it's also something that is applied even virtually
because we have so many virtual teams and long distance teams right now. So,
how is it the same? How is it different? How do you how do you
instill that culture so that it actually,
(38:19):
is able to to reach the farthest ends of the
of the organization? Thank you.
Yes. So it was an unusual scenario. So we we
have a church in Nigeria that my wife
and I founded some 29 years ago, and we have
about 40,000 members. So
(38:42):
and after COVID, we just found out we had to stay in
the US. Now there's a lot of intuition,
you know, at play there because we we got
the messages intuitively, you know,
dreams and different things, different things like
that. Any intuition does play a
(39:04):
big role in the life of a leader.
Everything is not linear in our world. Everything is
not rational and logical. And leaders learn to
listen to their inner voices, to their gut feelings as long as we
keep our consciences clear. Anyway, we found ourselves
being in the US for 3 straight years.
(39:27):
3 straight years away from Nigeria,
from the church, that was hard.
However, the positive side to it is the fact that the
church continued to run. Right? And now
leaders ask me everywhere, what did you do? How did you
do it? What are you doing? What made it possible?
(39:50):
And I say culture. Culture. Culture.
The seeds that we had sown consistently through the
years. 1st, the leadership dimension to
it, the fact that we actually had
empowered thousands of people through the years.
We we had this shift in paradigm at some
(40:13):
point. Where we said, wait, wait,
wait, wait, wait. This idea that it's those of us
that hold the microphone on the stage, that are the ministers
is not in line with the New Testament. In the New Testament,
every member is a minister. So we had to
(40:34):
train short members, and then we
just shifted the load, the weight of,
the ministry on them. Right? So we we
created small groups. So and we
had thousands of those small groups. We had
thousands of leaders there. So we
(40:55):
shifted from being an event driven
church to being the purpose driven one, where it wasn't only what
happened on Sunday that determined the life of our church. Oh, no. In fact, it
was what happened outside of the building. Right?
And we empowered the leaders. So
when we then were not there, things just continue the
(41:18):
way they went. And we studied systems.
We we actually we studied systems both from the business
sector and even from the biblical point of view. We found systems in
first Corinthians 12 where all the apostles said
that the church is like the body of Christ. Now the human body
runs on systems. Reproductive system, digestive system,
(41:41):
respiratory system. A system is a group of parts that carries
out a specific function. So with that, we
we structured our church in such a way that each
area focused on achieving excellence in some
important area, whether it's in fellowship, ensuring church members
love one another, or it's in soul winning, or
(42:03):
it's in ministry identifying unique problems in the
community and then training church members to serve, to solve
those problems. So you have those visiting prisons. You have those visiting
hospitals and all that, you know, and then the worship
and so on. So all those running at
the same time, and then we have our management team, and we have
(42:25):
our board of trustees, and we allow the boards to run.
So even when you took us out of the system, everything was
working. I'll say here, when
did, the basic principles come to play,
the love. Right? Yeah. Because with it comes
(42:46):
the commitment, comes the loyalty, comes the
trust. Yes. With the distance, it becomes difficult to
maintain the trust, but if you have made enough deposits, you can
make withdrawals. Stephen R. Covey said that in the
7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and I love it. He said
we all have emotional bank accounts with one another.
(43:08):
With Yeah. With positive acts, we make deposits. Then when we
offend or hurt, we're making withdrawals. He said, but if you've been if
you've not been making deposits, you make a withdrawal, the check is gonna
bounce. That's when relations break, and you have big problems. So,
gratefully, we did not have a crisis because of how
much investments we had made, how much seeds we had sown. I'll
(43:30):
recommend that in this day, this post COVID
era where people do remote work.
Now managers don't see their subordinates sometimes for
weeks, you know, some for months.
That foundation, it's more important actually for
that foundation to be laid that we genuinely
(43:53):
care about people. So even though we're not in the same space,
we can actually still show that care. And those times when
we meet virtually or on the phone should not only
be for running tasks. We've got to care for the
person that we're not seeing regularly. Right?
Yeah. Exactly. So good. That is
(44:16):
this is so good. My my goodness. We could talk for, like,
hours. I know there's so much here. We're going to finish it
off and I'm just going to encourage our listeners and viewers to
go get copies of your book. So the one that is out right
now, Dear Leader, Your Flagship Guide to Successful
Leadership, and then your newest book, Shifts, is,
(44:38):
on pre order. And so your website, so that's
sam and then your last name,
adeyemi.com. We'll make sure that's in the
show notes too for people that they can go there and they can access
those books, follow you. You have a huge following online.
I think you said like 3,000,000 people following you, leaders following you
(45:00):
around the world, online. And so they can follow you there
as well. And, doctor
Adeyemi, I think did I say that right? Yes. You did.
Okay. And thank you so much for
being here and, for sharing your heart with
us and for sharing these, very
(45:23):
they're, like, simple yet profound. I think we were talking about this actually
on our pre chat about the, you know, genius takes the complex and
brings it down to the simple. Simple takes the the complex
complex that makes it, you know, more complicated or whatever. I I forget what it
was. We were talk my favorite quote. I don't know why I can't I can't
think of it right now. Okay. Let me try it again. Mhmm. Because
(45:45):
genius takes the simple and, that's that takes the
complex and makes it simple. Yeah. A fool takes the
simple and makes it complex there. Okay. I got it.
It's been a full day. Wonderful conversations, and I just
am so blessed, to be able to have these conversations,
to learn from from you, to learn from, you know,
(46:07):
people that are creating such massive transformation in the world. But
starting off with not just structurally and system
systematically, but also from a heart centered
standpoint, transforming lives 1 person at a
time, 1 organization at a time, you
know, and and that's the it's one team at a time and that's the way
(46:28):
it goes. So thank you again, Sam, so much. Appreciate
you. Thank you so much, Nicole. I've had a
great time. And by the way, you're looking really beautiful today.
Oh, thank you. Thank you. Right. And
I wanna say I identify completely
(46:49):
with your mission, you know,
transformation, not just behavior and modification, but
transformation. So thank you for having me on your show. Awesome. Well,
thank you. And I always say that leaders of transformation
take action. And so you mentioned it earlier,
as well, Sam. So I'm just gonna tell, you know, for our
(47:11):
listeners and our viewers, you might need to listen to this one over
again a few times just to be able to get all the concepts.
Take the scripture that is is that has been shared here,
the concepts, write them down, and then meditate
on them for yourself. How do they how have you
seen them applied in your life? How can you see the
(47:34):
how they can be applied in your life? And you say your life, but also
your business and your and your leadership role, whatever
that is. And take action on
something. Maybe it's stopping the next time when you're
passing somebody, in the office or you're on Zoom
and rather than just jumping into the tasks is to stop and
(47:56):
check-in. I'm a task oriented person so I needed to learn this
and remind myself on it regularly is to stop and check-in and
say, how are you? And wait to hear and literally let
people know that you actually do care. And then from
there, then you can go so it's like you're presencing yourself to each
other and what's going on. And then you can go
(48:18):
into tasks and what needs to get done. Maybe that's for you is is a
big deal and just starting there and continuing to
develop it from there. Plant the good seeds,
increase the capacity of your team, and you'll see
transformation happening, culture shifts happening. And,
and all the things that you've been looking for, the profitability and
(48:41):
the productivity and all the things flow out of that.
So I encourage you to do that. We'd love to hear your stories. You can
go on leaders of transformation.com. Reach out to us there. Let
us know how this has impacted you and what you're doing and how you're applying
it. And if there's anything we can do to support you along your journey, let
us know that as well. And, again, thank you for being
(49:02):
here, and we look forward to seeing you next week on another
episode of the Leaders of Transformation.
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