December 19, 2023 • 38 mins
If you do adult life well enough, eventually you’ll be considered such an exemplar of adult behaviour that your boss will ask you to lead other people, or you will naturally end up being a leader by virtue of having more skill or knowledge. But promotions don’t usually come with an instruction manual, and too...
The post How to Be a Leader (Ep. 10) appeared first on The Morpheus Clinic for Hypnosis.
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(00:00):
People are taking
abuses of power
to represent
all power. Do you risk the wisdom of
the crowds pointing and saying
wrong, shame, go away. We should want
thoughtful people
who are philosophical
about power
to then be in positions of power.
(00:21):
Welcome to How to be an Adult,
a podcast created by the practitioners at the
Morpheus Clinic For Hypnosis
in Toronto, Canada.
This is a show for people just like
you who've inadvertently become adults and don't know
what to do about it. I'm Luke Chao.
And I'm Pascal Langdell. Now whether you're 18
or 80, this is the trail guide to
(00:42):
life that your parents never gave you when
you finally reached the age of majority.
Now we share these ideas and perspectives in
order to democratize
good thoughts, more worthy thoughts, more worthy perspectives
so that you can go forth into this
world,
in the fullness of your adulthood.
In this episode, we're gonna speak about some
(01:02):
principles for leadership that they probably didn't tell
you when you achieved the corner office.
Leaders are kind of the
adults in the room
in society in that we imagine the leader
to be more responsible
more thoughtful
more ethical
more conscientious
(01:24):
than the average person is
so our episodes up to now have kind
of accumulated
in this point
where if you've done adulthood well enough then
eventually they want you to lead a
team at least to do public speaking once
in a while in front of a group.
And unless your self-concept
matches your recent achievements, then too often we
(01:46):
don't feel prepared for it. So the first
thing that comes to mind when you sort
of talk about leadership is often its relation
to power. And as soon as you say
the word power,
you hear the things like, oh, you know,
there's the power of the strong over the
weak. It's the lording it over. It's the
unfair
allocation of power of one over another. So
(02:07):
why do you think that we associate leadership
with power and power being a negative thing?
Well, I think it's 2 separate questions
where on one hand leadership actually
does involve power over those who follow you
but the negative connotation
is something else because having a leader
when you don't want to lead is a
(02:27):
good thing that's not bad at all
applying a flat hierarchy
to a group of a 100 people
is gonna result in that group getting absolutely
nothing done
Making decisions by committee. Mhmm. Even a committee
of 4. Well, you see this a lot
in, like, fierce companies. If you if you
have a, group developed piece, it's a really
(02:49):
tricky thing to do. And still there are
hierarchies that occur, and it's from this fundamental
fact which is,
you know things that I don't. I know
things that you don't. Mhmm. And that instantly,
in certain context, if I know how to
mend a car and your car breaks down,
suddenly I'm the person with more power extensively
because I know something that you don't and
(03:09):
that you need to know or that needs
to be done. Yeah.
So really, in a sense, leadership is
having the authority of knowing things that other
people don't. That's one thing. And the second
thing would be to feel that they have
the authority
to step forward almost in an act of
service to share that with others. So even
someone who's just straight up telling their employees,
(03:30):
here's how I want it to be done.
Mhmm.
If that authority comes from knowledge
and you know the employee doesn't know how
to do the thing until the leader shows
you that is actually good that exercise of
power
produces a better running organization or workplace.
So back to the topic of why does
it have a negative connotation?
(03:51):
I believe it's because
people are taking
abuses of power
to represent
all power
and that's to be scared of a chef's
knife because when you are 6 you cut
yourself with it.
That's to be scared to drive a car
because you had a fender bender last week.
(04:11):
Power
like the chef's knife and like the car
in itself
is not good or bad.
It's
a means to get things
done. Right? So the chef's knife is a
means to make delicious sushi.
The car is a means to drive your
child to soccer practice. And that's not good
or bad. It's just the way the tool
(04:33):
is used.
But it's the abuses of power that cause
people to shirk from it. Even good people
who we want to be in positions of
power, they often shirk from that power because
they think it's going to corrupt them and
I want to say that's not the case.
The chef's knife, the card doesn't corrupt the
person who's using it. Do you think there's
also something on the other side as well
perhaps that if you if you don't have
(04:55):
a learner's mindset, if you don't have a
certain degree of, well, humility about the limits
of your knowledge, then you see power of
somebody telling you what to do. You can
go, well, you know, you disrespect the power
and you find the power disrespects your,
sense of self, your ammo property, your sense
that you know the answers, if you see
what I mean. It's kind of like the
class know it all.
(05:17):
Mhmm. Distracting everyone else's attention
from the professor who's done the research for
the past 30 years.
Someone's narcissism
shouldn't be encouraged or validated
when it's distracting everyone from someone who has
legitimate knowledge. But if you're actually the professor
(05:38):
and that's who I hope to be speaking
to, If you're the professor in front of
the class, if you're the lawyer presenting the
case, if you're the doctor
doing the rounds, then your authority is legitimate.
Or aspire to be those things
as well. So it's not if you're already
there. If you aspire to be these, to
to step into that role of authority.
If you aspire to it, then of course
(05:59):
a proportion amount of humility will be less
than if you've already achieved the thing. Yeah.
So like the articling student is not going
to get sent to the courtroom and they
would be out of place if they got
sent to the courtroom
usually I find that impossible
impostor syndrome where people are thrust in the
in these positions of power and that they
feel like they're faking it it's because they've
(06:19):
actually achieved an actual position of authority and
power and superior knowledge
but because their self-concept
is out of date
They see themselves as like an overgrown adolescent
who's being asked to present the case to
the judge or the overgrown
child who's asked to lead the 900 person
department but I want to wrap up this
(06:41):
point that the made up hierarchies like in
a theater company
do not reflect innate qualities
of the members of the hierarchy.
It is a socially constructed hierarchy to better
organize a theater company, and the hierarchy is
not valid at the local pub. It's not
valid at the neighborhood barbecue.
(07:01):
It's only valid in that theater company that
momentarily
needs some kind of hierarchy
so that things can get done.
Often we we feel like our place in
a hierarchy. So if we're at the top,
we get egotistical
or if we're at toward the bottom,
then then we feel shame.
We we often feel that our position in
this hierarchy is innate or that it's
(07:24):
fixed. But I promise to you that people
higher up in whatever organization that you're in,
they were probably just born at
a time before you were born.
Give yourself
more years and you will probably be higher
up in the hierarchy
not because you're anything special innately,
(07:44):
but just because you have the experiences come
that has come with time. You've made the
connections that have come with time. There's a
an example of this where when I started
working in motion capture,
a lot of the people that I met
were like me were at the very sort
of
beginning of their career in this journey. But
it happened to be the same time as
the technology was also beginning to,
(08:05):
really
speed up in its development.
And it's interesting because students might come to
me and say, well, you know, you're, you
know, you've done so much and you know
all these people. And I'm sort of, yeah,
I do know them. It just happens that
we started at the same time. It just
happens that 10 years have passed,
and we all worked very hard at what
we did.
But really that just that length of time
(08:26):
in and of itself lends itself to a
a progression or an accrual of knowledge. And
with that comes authority, and with that comes,
you know, promotions and going up the going
up the hierarchy. But that's earned over a
period of 10 years. But to an outsider,
it can look like, well, it was just
like like that. Well, we we've taken a
few stabs at defining leadership,
and I'm gonna take another stab at defining
(08:48):
leadership.
Leaders are the people
who would go first in an endeavor
often the endeavor is more
physical analogy. And it's a very Canadian analogy.
In the wintertime, right, when when a pond
ices over,
(09:09):
someone's got to be the 1st kid on
the ice.
You don't have the other kids holding middens
and skating in circles
until someone
has first skated onto the ice and then
around the ice to show that it's not
going to break.
And then the other kids follow.
The person who's first on the ice is
(09:31):
admittedly brave, but they're not a tyrant.
This is not the illegitimate
use of authority. The point I want to
make is that the kids around the pond
can see the same pond but they lack
the leadership qualities
that would have them be the first to
be on the ice
so sometimes it's the first person to speak
(09:51):
an unpopular idea that is the elephant in
the room at a meeting sometimes it's someone's
got to give the presentation
in front of the 400 people so I
mean who's brave enough to step in front
of the 400 people
but these people who put themselves in leadership
roles
they're not fundamentally different from you or I
the first kid on the pond is not
(10:14):
less susceptible to falling through the ice
they're just the ones to have done it
first. I guess what I'm trying to say
is that leadership
is within reach
for everyone. Anyone can be the 1st kid
on the pond.
Obviously, the 1st kid on the pond is
risking getting soaked
or worse, but someone's gotta be the 1st
(10:36):
kid on the pond and it it can
be you.
Which brings me on to the next point,
which is
the kid that's going to step onto the
ice and be the first
is going to have to make an assessment.
It's gonna be probably a relatively lonely one.
Right? But that means that as a leader,
perhaps
(10:56):
that's a good analogy that you have to
really rely on your own resources, your own
perspectives,
your own accrued wisdom. And
with that
in mind, make the boldest
choice that you care. It doesn't have to
be the boldest choice. Sometimes the conservative choice
is an exercise of good leadership. But the
(11:17):
boldness aside, one defining quality of leadership is
that you follow your own inner guidance one
way or another, and you're not following the
guidance of others.
It's important that our listeners get this this
point because as long as you're following the
guidance of others, you're not really a leader
in that situation. You are a follower and
someone else is the leader. If you follow
your inner guidance and you get on the
(11:38):
pawn or you don't get on the pawn,
you're acting as a leader if you follow
your inner guidance.
The kids who will not be the first
on the pond because no one else has
done the first their followers.
The defining quality at least in my view
is that leaders do and they have to
follow their inner guidance
to stay leaders.
We just hope that by the time someone
(11:59):
reaches a leadership position that they have the
knowledge
that they have the experience, that they have
the wisdom,
that their inner guidance is well informed enough
that they're not leading the kids onto the
thin ice pond they're leading the kids onto
the pond where everyone's going to have a
great
time
there are a couple of sub points I
(12:20):
want to make to this
and one of them is that leaders must
therefore,
in their own heads,
be self validating,
self respecting,
self caring, and self loving.
Whoever
you allow to judge you
is taking power from you. If you only
(12:42):
allow your own judgments of yourself
to stand at the end of the day.
If you take other people's opinions of course
but
they're not the arbiters of your worth and
if anyone is it's you.
Then you can make decisions independently.
Earlier I claimed that leaders are the epitome
(13:03):
of adults.
That they're the adults in the room when
everyone else is over the age of 18
and they're ostensibly an adult those we count
as leaders are the most adult
of of the adults in the room.
It is because
for you to follow your inner guidance
and consistently
be right or to make sound decisions
(13:26):
it does require worldly knowledge and wisdom and
experience.
Some people achieve a lot of this wisdom
when they're in their 20s and some people
live such repetitive lives that they could be
80 and no less than the 25 year
old.
But one way or another
leaders
have to follow their inner guidance, their inner
validation,
(13:46):
their inner encouragement
even while they sometimes have outside people who
counsel them or else you are gonna turn
to a follower. You're gonna have someone else
willed power over you.
And is this something which is
tempered by experience?
As in, you mentioned the 80 year old
who has had a repetitive life and not
(14:06):
been faced with the same challenges perhaps. But
is there an aspect where we make ourselves
leaders because we go outside our comfort zone,
because we
state uncomfortable facts
in in situations that may socially damage us
or what and so on. Yeah. Well, to
to to go back to to the example
of being the first kid on the pond.
It's not the other kids appointing a leader
(14:28):
to go on the pond first. It's whichever
kid is brave enough or whichever kid feels
authoritative enough to test the ice that person
has de facto become the leader of that
group in that
situation. Or the first person who raises their
hand in a meeting to say well I
I want to give a dissenting view.
(14:48):
I've done this before and often I've put
into words what everyone was thinking but no
one was willing to say.
Even this podcast in a way I'm kind
of doing my best to put into words
what some people are thinking and that is
not talked often enough about.
But yes that there is no central authority
appointing some people to be leaders and other
(15:09):
people not to be leaders. So someone has
the title of CEO
but they always have to ask someone else
on the team for decisions.
That's not really the leader in that dynamic.
Right. If if you look on LinkedIn, you
see lots of people with the title CEO
of, you know, the company of 1. They're
also the director. They're also the secretary.
(15:32):
They got lots of board meetings inside their
heads that, you know,
play play those games internally.
I'll move away a little bit from the
the ice pod example
and maybe I'll cast my mind back to
Florence,
during
the Renaissance
in Italy.
Let's imagine
(15:52):
that
you're a young man,
and
you become an apprentice under a painter.
Throughout your entire apprenticeship
you aren't just using your own eye to
decide if your work is good.
You are going to check-in
with the Maestro to ask is it good
enough? Should I have done it this way?
(16:13):
Should I have composed a painting like this?
Should I have chosen this pigment for
this thing and this other pigment for this
other thing?
And then when you've had enough years of
apprenticeship you become a journeyman. And then when
you're a journeyman you can start to make
your own decisions.
You can start to part ways with your
master
because you have the experience and therefore the
(16:34):
authority to start making your own decisions and
using your own eye.
By the time you become a master yourself
and you're teaching other people, you can definitely
make your own decisions and use your own
eye, and it will be out of order
if the master asks the apprentice,
Do you like the way this looks?
Even though the medieval guild system is kind
of dead these days,
(16:56):
we have authority that is in proportion to
how much knowledge we actually have
informally.
So if our listener
is in whatever profession they're in
no longer junior,
if they're like a vice president, a director,
if they're like a senior software developer,
(17:17):
they can consider themselves to be more like
the master and less like the apprentice.
I have a lot of clients who've actually
achieved quite a lot with their lives
and suddenly they're asked to do public speaking,
to share original ideas,
to set a strategic direction
and that's where they get the feeling like
they're a 13 year old asked to do
(17:38):
these adult things which is an out of
date feeling.
In these situations
I don't have to alter my client at
all. They've achieved. They've done.
They have the job title. They have the
job. They have the direct reports. They have
the responsibility.
My job is to describe them as they
are
the day they walk into my office
(17:59):
and with a clear enough description
of them as they are with the team
that they
have with the actual knowledge that they possess
they're not afraid to address groups anymore.
The fear came from this out of date
self-concept
that they're just a student, they're just an
apprentice
after that they've actually reached mastery. I think
there's also sort of a mis
(18:22):
understanding
perhaps about
what being a great public speaker is in
the sense that you might think of, you
know, Tony Robbins or you know, any of
those charismatic
sort of braggadocio
hugely larger than life. You know, they they
exude confidence in in what they're saying.
And I think that
that can be a bit misleading in the
(18:43):
sense that just like the apprentice, you know,
starts off maybe by copying something, eventually they've
they've got to break, to make their own
work. And I think that if you update
your self-concept
to being an authority in your particular field
and having that authority to,
share or educate
or direct, then this is gonna come from
(19:03):
a much more authentic place where actually you
don't necessarily
need to be a version of Tony Robbins
or any idea you have of what a
confident public speaker is. Because you just will
be and will come from your authentic version
of you as the confident
authority figure that you are. The reason that
public speaking is coming up I think, is
(19:25):
that by the time you reach a senior
enough role,
you absolutely
have
to speak to groups.
You have to speak at meetings. You have
to lead meetings. You have to speak at
the AGM.
It comes with a territory.
Another marker of having done well previously in
your adult life is that you're often operating
(19:46):
on the edge of knowledge.
And this gives a lot of people that
sense of imposter syndrome
or a sense of not
knowing what to do or what to say.
But here's the kicker.
When you're operating on the edge of knowledge,
there's no one on the planet who knows
exactly what to say or who knows everything
(20:07):
or who can absolutely do the thing that
you're doing.
So I'm imagining the surgeon doing the experimental
surgery where we don't know what the outcome's
gonna outcome's gonna be, but they gotta do
it anyway, and no one's more qualified than
you. Right? Well, the the the, open heart
surgery, for example,
those
first operations were on the edge of knowledge.
(20:27):
Yep. And they must have been the people
who are having these these, surgeries done, they
were obviously told
this may not work. In fact, we just
don't know if it's gonna work. Exactly. This
is, you know, to have the authority to
step into
the unknown, I think it's possibly why why
we like astronauts and explorers
is because it's sort of analogous of going
(20:47):
into
unknown territory. And certainly,
going into what hasn't been done before or
going in directions which haven't been tried before,
you really are the first person on the
lake and you risk the wisdom of the
crowd pointing and saying wrong, shame, go away,
you know, we're right, there's more of us
kind of thing. Here's the point that I
wanna leave my listeners
(21:09):
with. If you have that feeling that you're
like the astronaut in outer space, and who
knows whether you're gonna survive?
Or what if all the kids laugh at
you because you fell through the ice since
you dare to be the 1st to come
in? If you have this feeling, it absolutely
comes with the territory of being a leader
and without this feeling you're probably not you
know a leader to that many people. And
(21:31):
and this is why it also comes down
to a certain level of self regard,
and self love and self reassurance is because
you have to be able to withstand
that. Your personality, your sense of self of
value
needs to be able to withstand
both praise but also condemnation. And that's Failure.
That's why self validation
self respect and self love are utterly essential
(21:52):
for the leaders of the world because if
your feelings of being validated, loved, and accepted
depend on what the last person said to
you, how are you gonna be a bad
president of the United States of America?
Even if we imagine
that the lawyer
representing
the refugee
who's trying to gain residency status,
(22:15):
They don't know what the judge is going
to decide.
They don't know what the outcome is going
to be, but they still have to show
up and present to the best of their
ability anyway.
You don't wanna be in a situation
later on in adult life where you're only
solving solved problems.
You don't want to be in a situation
where you're never at the edge of knowledge
(22:35):
and then you never get this uncertain feeling.
Our clients who at least I see in
in my practice
and I imagine many of the listeners to
this podcast
are at a point in their lives
where they have to tap into their self
authority. They have to in their own heads
and hearts tell themselves they can not that
they can't
since they've done well in life
(22:57):
and others see them as an authority.
To bring this point to a conclusion,
you're not doing adult life badly.
If you have impostor syndrome it's usually the
opposite.
All of this is to be embraced
in adult life
especially when you rise up high enough that
others want to follow your lead.
(23:18):
Along with the problem of being on the
edge of knowledge,
here's another fun problem that leaders have.
You're often presented
with trolley problems.
So if you don't know, like, you know,
basically
The wheels wiggly and,
Well, so
here's the trolley problem from moral philosophy.
(23:39):
You've got an out of control
trolley. So so like like like a cart
on
rails.
And it's going downhill,
and
you're at a switch.
In the current trajectory of that trolley, it's
gonna kill 5 people
right they're oblivious they got their headphones on
(24:00):
and if the trolley keeps going and you
don't do anything 5 people are gonna die
If you flip the switch though the tracks
change and the 5 people are saved
but you're gonna kill
2 people and one of them is the
mayor.
What do you do? Well, you don't ask
(24:21):
AI.
You you could. I mean, you could flip
a coin. Yeah. But this is a question
where you can make arguments
on both sides. You could say, okay. No
life is worth more than any other. So
you're gonna save the 5 lives and you're
gonna kill the 2 people.
Or you could say well that mayor has
done so much to feed the homeless
(24:42):
let's save them and then the person they're
with
and let the 5 people go under the
wheels
so that there is no absolute
right wrong or correct answer but this could
be debated
Problems where there is a clear
mutually agreed upon answer,
those are for
your direct reports.
(25:03):
By the time you reach a position of
leadership,
you're at the switch a lot trying to
decide which of 2 bad outcomes
is gonna happen.
So leaders often end up then getting a
lot of criticism and flack because 2 people
died.
If it's not that 2 people died, it's
5 people died. This is metaphorical of course.
So, you know, it could be jobs not
(25:24):
not lives. If his life is corporate manslaughter.
But it's similar to like the the epistemological
problem
of being on the edge of knowledge and
you've got to figure it out for yourself
and that you're on the edge of morality
and you got to figure out for yourself
And one way or another, you are probably
gonna get criticism for your decision.
Anyone who claims that if they were only
(25:45):
in your shoes, they would have pulled the
switch.
They'd never been in your shoes before.
I think there's something else about being on
the edge of morality for a leader too
is that to me, one of the one
of the heights of leadership
is to be so secure,
so wise in your position that you can
actually turn around to your subordinates and say,
(26:06):
do you know something that I don't know?
Mhmm. You know, you don't have the ego
in the way that stops you from actioning
something that somebody else knew that you didn't.
All the greatest leaders
were able to hear and listen even to
their
detractors,
not punish them necessarily for even getting something
wrong or going in the wrong direction. And
(26:27):
we were talking about
the CEO of
Magna.
Yeah. What's his name? Frank Stronach. Frank Stronach,
yes, who who,
installed
like a hotline telephone in his manufacturing plants
or a system that was anonymous. Anonymous and
anybody could put anything in saying what they
thought could be done better, what was going
wrong,
(26:47):
something that, you know, an HR thing. But,
and he said that the,
the feedback from everybody was This is brilliant
because it ended up meaning that the people
further down the hierarchy were being heard.
And it's not that they were considered
useless appendages to this great machine,
but instead, you know, to me that's great
leadership.
(27:08):
There's a concept called servant leadership. Mhmm. And
I think that's what you're talking about. Oh,
yeah. Okay. Where the leader is not the
tyrant at the top,
the leader serves his or her
workers so the workers get the job done
and there is much merit
I think
in this view that
(27:29):
just like the minister
in front of his flock is is no
tyrant but is serving his flock that
a leader to a corporation
is
Never to be a tyrant but is instead
serving the workers and giving them the knowledge,
the tools, the resources that they need to
do their jobs excellently.
And that's very much the attitude that allows
(27:50):
you to speak publicly with authority.
Is if you see it as an act
of service,
less a question of ego and and being
potentially, you know, being seen as being arrogant.
If you're doing it as an act of
service
and you see it as that, then you
are essentially being the servant leader. Absolutely.
Teachers for example. Yeah. Teachers
(28:12):
are very much serving their students. Yeah. I'm
sure there's there's there's plenty of people out
there who have memories of teachers. Perhaps that
were pivotal
to their career path even. And if you
think back at them, you should think, well,
they showed leadership qualities as servant leaders. And
you things you don't remember the times that
they stumbled or coughed or was sick or,
you know, you don't remember any of that.
(28:34):
But you do remember their charisma, their passion.
You remember probably as a result a fair
amount of what it is that they taught
as well. And so, in some ways looking
to good teachers as
the adults in the room that perhaps are
good to to look at, to think of
as leaders is is probably a good reference.
Well, there there are a number of themes
that we seem to be coming back to
(28:55):
during today's episode and one of them is
that
the good kind of authority that leadership
or power wielded well
is the authority of the teacher or the
professor
not the authority
of the tyrant.
So rounding out this list of things that
come with the territory
of leadership that are rather unfortunate
(29:18):
is that
when you are seen to be the person
at the front of the room who's talking
you are
definitely
going to be attracting envy and resentment
not because you're necessarily an enviable person
not at all because you are innately a
resentable person
but because
there's something in the human heart
(29:41):
that seems to envy and resent those who
seem to be one step above oneself.
So if you do attract envy and resentment
if people start sniping at at you if
sometimes friends demonstrate they're jealous of you if
you know sometimes people feel like you've gotten
too good for them even though in your
eyes you've done nothing wrong.
(30:02):
I would back up this view you've done
nothing wrong because sometimes this comes with the
territory. Well, when you have kids who are
vilifying you and saying, you know, treating you
very badly,
as a parent you still have to
say no that's not right.
And you have to be able to express
that and not join in the, you know,
the rage and not make things worse, right?
(30:24):
But
it's quite a natural function. I think as
you said, you know, there's this thing which
is this,
need to kick against authority, which in some
ways is is a healthy
thing too. It's it's not necessarily a bad
thing. In some situations, it might be quite
necessary. And I think the very function itself
is perhaps also wrapped up with
the frustrations of ambition, the gap between where
(30:46):
you are and where you want to be.
And that in
being unable to control those emotions I would
associate more with, should you say somebody who
hasn't just hasn't quite grown up? Well, I'm
an anti authoritarian. Mhmm, yeah. Very much so.
I'm the way more punk rock than some
people seem to think I am, but I
have no problem with earned authority.
(31:09):
So if someone else knows how to tie
their shoelaces in a really cool way and
I don't, I submit to them when it
comes to how to tie my shoelaces
the way they have.
What I push back against
and what I think people should push back
against
is taking these made up hierarchies
way too seriously
(31:30):
where you think the made up hierarchies point
to innate qualities in people
I push back against unearned authority,
abuse of power, of course,
or people with less knowledge
being in positions of authority
above
people with more knowledge.
So I push back against all of that.
(31:52):
You know, I'm not against all authority, though
I do very much identify as an anti
authoritarian.
I just think these are the ways that
authority is often misused. That power is often
misused.
But there is a legitimate use of power.
So if I know how to do a
cool thing, then please sit at my feet
and I'll show you how to do that
cool thing.
Yes. So so you're anti authoritarian
(32:12):
and
a good proportion of that is basically anti
tyranny. Yeah. I guess if anti tyranny were
more of a common word that people used,
I'm an anti tyrant. Anti tyrant. I think
everyone's an anti tyrant.
But but Unless you're a tyrant. Right. I
think you're just anti other tyrant. I'm a
rebel with a cause. I'm not a rebel
without a cause. You're tearing me apart.
(32:34):
Sorry
Lisa one thing I'll say to wrap up
that point is that we should want
thoughtful
people
who are philosophical
about power
to then be in positions of power We
don't want people who just gratify their ego
(32:54):
or who love to power trip to be
in positions of power. Whenever I have client
in front of me and they seem thoughtful,
intelligent,
humble, and they want to do well,
I wish for them
to pursue positions of power. I hope they
become the chief executive officer one day because
I don't want this world to be ruled
by power
(33:15):
hungry egomaniacal
tyrant the way it often is.
I want it to be ruled by thoughtful
people who are careful with power like I
want chef's chef's knives to be wielded by
people who are careful with chef's knives. And
I think
that in some ways, much of life is
currently characterized by power more than perhaps is
accurate. In the sense that I do believe
(33:37):
that
most people
aspire to gain authority through wisdom, who aspire
to be able to share direct, educate, or
whatever it is from a position of
authority that is earned, that is is, you
know, is trained.
When I think about
myself, when I think about the clients I've
worked with to get them acclimatized to a
(33:59):
position of power,
They are generally
thoughtful people who mean well and who don't
want to cause harm because they've been elevated
into a position of power.
These are the people who should be on
condo boards.
These are the people
who should try to climb up the corporate
ladder. These are the people who should run
(34:20):
for public office. Oh, hey, finally.
This is why I'm making the podcast
and this is why I'm saying it on
the podcast because at least, you know, insofar
as I'm able to make some ripples,
I very much want the people who are
somewhat uncomfortable with power to then become the
people in positions of power, just like you
should always respect the power of the car
(34:43):
you're driving on a public road.
Power should be wielded in a similar way.
It should not be avoided.
It's not innately bad,
but it should be wielded carefully.
And so with the idea that
wielding power and authority requires
the wisdom to be able to do it
well. The wisdom to be able to to
(35:03):
direct, to educate, to share.
In in many situations,
you're going to be faced with having to
do that quite literally. To actually stand in
a position of authority
in front of a whole bunch of people.
And just that very dynamic, if you think
about it, a bunch of people looking at
one person, well, we we know who is
being placed in the position of authority. And
(35:24):
all it really is, when you think about
it is, somebody knows something
that all the people watching may not.
Right? That's that's really that's really the basic
of the transaction.
Now, this is public speaking and for about
80% of the people out there, they don't
feel that they have the confidence to
speak publicly.
(35:44):
And while you and I have been working
on a master class to try and create
the best, most comprehensive
public speaking master class we can. Well, our
listeners have had a preview in this episode
as to the kinds of things that you'll
be in stealing as an attitude in your
students. Right? Yeah. So the idea that they're
not the 13 year old even if they
(36:05):
feel like it or actually the CEO of
this, the VP of that, they're actually the
founder of their firm
and ideas like even just that being on
the edge of knowledge and not making everyone
happy and having some people be resentful when
you speak all of that adds up to
a much more confident public speaker because you
know it's not you if someone coughs over
(36:27):
there in the audience.
Why don't you tell our listeners
how they
can think like you
when it comes to the presentations that they
have to do?
So, January 20th
2024,
we are starting our public speaking master class
at, the Morpheus,
Clinic For Hypnosis,
and it's a series of 5 4 hour
(36:50):
classes
where we will cover everything that you need
to know from
vocal techniques,
different ways to calm your nerve system,
different approaches to actually interacting with the audience
and how you should approach speaking to an
audience.
Every class
has an element
of of hypnotic suggestion, which you can just
listen to. You don't need to actually be,
(37:12):
hypnotized.
But these are good and worthy suggestions that
do the work of helping you to change
your mindset
to having a more accurate self-concept, both of
who you've arrived at in your life at
this point, as well as your role and
the better ways and more useful ways of
looking at the act of of public speaking.
(37:32):
This workshop is designed that by the end
of it,
not only do you get a little certificate
of course, but you'll be stepping into your
role as a leader
with the full authority that you've already got.
If this sounds like the person that you
wanna be,
then feel free to get in touch through
the website.
And if you missed that date, just check
(37:53):
out our website or get in contact because
we will have workshops as long as
we are still in business. Absolutely.
Thank you so much again for listening.
It's been a pleasure having you on board
for this journey and if you want to
engage with us more 1 on 1 in
private
please reach out to the Morphis Clinic for
hypnosis at
www.morphisclinic.com.
(38:14):
At heart we are practical philosophers
we are in
not just the business of spreading good ideas
we're actually trying everything we can do to
live out these good ideas and to spread
these good ideas in any way. So again,
thank you so much for listening.
If you are interested to hear more of
these, please subscribe at YouTube on Morpheus Hypnosis
(38:38):
or Spotify, of course, and anywhere that you
get your podcasts
as we continue to talk about other,
subjects all about how to be an adult.
People are taking
abuses of power
to represent
all power. Do you risk the wisdom of
the crowds pointing and saying
wrong, shame, go away. We should want
thoughtful people
who are philosophical
about power
to then be in positions of power.
(00:21):
Welcome to How to be an Adult,
a podcast created by the practitioners at the
Morpheus Clinic For Hypnosis
in Toronto, Canada.
This is a show for people just like
you who've inadvertently become adults and don't know
what to do about it. I'm Luke Chao.
And I'm Pascal Langdell. Now whether you're 18
or 80, this is the trail guide to
(00:42):
life that your parents never gave you when
you finally reached the age of majority.
Now we share these ideas and perspectives in
order to democratize
good thoughts, more worthy thoughts, more worthy perspectives
so that you can go forth into this
world,
in the fullness of your adulthood.
In this episode, we're gonna speak about some
(01:02):
principles for leadership that they probably didn't tell
you when you achieved the corner office.
Leaders are kind of the
adults in the room
in society in that we imagine the leader
to be more responsible
more thoughtful
more ethical
more conscientious
(01:24):
than the average person is
so our episodes up to now have kind
of accumulated
in this point
where if you've done adulthood well enough then
eventually they want you to lead a
team at least to do public speaking once
in a while in front of a group.
And unless your self-concept
matches your recent achievements, then too often we
(01:46):
don't feel prepared for it. So the first
thing that comes to mind when you sort
of talk about leadership is often its relation
to power. And as soon as you say
the word power,
you hear the things like, oh, you know,
there's the power of the strong over the
weak. It's the lording it over. It's the
unfair
allocation of power of one over another. So
(02:07):
why do you think that we associate leadership
with power and power being a negative thing?
Well, I think it's 2 separate questions
where on one hand leadership actually
does involve power over those who follow you
but the negative connotation
is something else because having a leader
when you don't want to lead is a
(02:27):
good thing that's not bad at all
applying a flat hierarchy
to a group of a 100 people
is gonna result in that group getting absolutely
nothing done
Making decisions by committee. Mhmm. Even a committee
of 4. Well, you see this a lot
in, like, fierce companies. If you if you
have a, group developed piece, it's a really
(02:49):
tricky thing to do. And still there are
hierarchies that occur, and it's from this fundamental
fact which is,
you know things that I don't. I know
things that you don't. Mhmm. And that instantly,
in certain context, if I know how to
mend a car and your car breaks down,
suddenly I'm the person with more power extensively
because I know something that you don't and
(03:09):
that you need to know or that needs
to be done. Yeah.
So really, in a sense, leadership is
having the authority of knowing things that other
people don't. That's one thing. And the second
thing would be to feel that they have
the authority
to step forward almost in an act of
service to share that with others. So even
someone who's just straight up telling their employees,
(03:30):
here's how I want it to be done.
Mhmm.
If that authority comes from knowledge
and you know the employee doesn't know how
to do the thing until the leader shows
you that is actually good that exercise of
power
produces a better running organization or workplace.
So back to the topic of why does
it have a negative connotation?
(03:51):
I believe it's because
people are taking
abuses of power
to represent
all power
and that's to be scared of a chef's
knife because when you are 6 you cut
yourself with it.
That's to be scared to drive a car
because you had a fender bender last week.
(04:11):
Power
like the chef's knife and like the car
in itself
is not good or bad.
It's
a means to get things
done. Right? So the chef's knife is a
means to make delicious sushi.
The car is a means to drive your
child to soccer practice. And that's not good
or bad. It's just the way the tool
(04:33):
is used.
But it's the abuses of power that cause
people to shirk from it. Even good people
who we want to be in positions of
power, they often shirk from that power because
they think it's going to corrupt them and
I want to say that's not the case.
The chef's knife, the card doesn't corrupt the
person who's using it. Do you think there's
also something on the other side as well
perhaps that if you if you don't have
(04:55):
a learner's mindset, if you don't have a
certain degree of, well, humility about the limits
of your knowledge, then you see power of
somebody telling you what to do. You can
go, well, you know, you disrespect the power
and you find the power disrespects your,
sense of self, your ammo property, your sense
that you know the answers, if you see
what I mean. It's kind of like the
class know it all.
(05:17):
Mhmm. Distracting everyone else's attention
from the professor who's done the research for
the past 30 years.
Someone's narcissism
shouldn't be encouraged or validated
when it's distracting everyone from someone who has
legitimate knowledge. But if you're actually the professor
(05:38):
and that's who I hope to be speaking
to, If you're the professor in front of
the class, if you're the lawyer presenting the
case, if you're the doctor
doing the rounds, then your authority is legitimate.
Or aspire to be those things
as well. So it's not if you're already
there. If you aspire to be these, to
to step into that role of authority.
If you aspire to it, then of course
(05:59):
a proportion amount of humility will be less
than if you've already achieved the thing. Yeah.
So like the articling student is not going
to get sent to the courtroom and they
would be out of place if they got
sent to the courtroom
usually I find that impossible
impostor syndrome where people are thrust in the
in these positions of power and that they
feel like they're faking it it's because they've
(06:19):
actually achieved an actual position of authority and
power and superior knowledge
but because their self-concept
is out of date
They see themselves as like an overgrown adolescent
who's being asked to present the case to
the judge or the overgrown
child who's asked to lead the 900 person
department but I want to wrap up this
(06:41):
point that the made up hierarchies like in
a theater company
do not reflect innate qualities
of the members of the hierarchy.
It is a socially constructed hierarchy to better
organize a theater company, and the hierarchy is
not valid at the local pub. It's not
valid at the neighborhood barbecue.
(07:01):
It's only valid in that theater company that
momentarily
needs some kind of hierarchy
so that things can get done.
Often we we feel like our place in
a hierarchy. So if we're at the top,
we get egotistical
or if we're at toward the bottom,
then then we feel shame.
We we often feel that our position in
this hierarchy is innate or that it's
(07:24):
fixed. But I promise to you that people
higher up in whatever organization that you're in,
they were probably just born at
a time before you were born.
Give yourself
more years and you will probably be higher
up in the hierarchy
not because you're anything special innately,
(07:44):
but just because you have the experiences come
that has come with time. You've made the
connections that have come with time. There's a
an example of this where when I started
working in motion capture,
a lot of the people that I met
were like me were at the very sort
of
beginning of their career in this journey. But
it happened to be the same time as
the technology was also beginning to,
(08:05):
really
speed up in its development.
And it's interesting because students might come to
me and say, well, you know, you're, you
know, you've done so much and you know
all these people. And I'm sort of, yeah,
I do know them. It just happens that
we started at the same time. It just
happens that 10 years have passed,
and we all worked very hard at what
we did.
But really that just that length of time
(08:26):
in and of itself lends itself to a
a progression or an accrual of knowledge. And
with that comes authority, and with that comes,
you know, promotions and going up the going
up the hierarchy. But that's earned over a
period of 10 years. But to an outsider,
it can look like, well, it was just
like like that. Well, we we've taken a
few stabs at defining leadership,
and I'm gonna take another stab at defining
(08:48):
leadership.
Leaders are the people
who would go first in an endeavor
often the endeavor is more
physical analogy. And it's a very Canadian analogy.
In the wintertime, right, when when a pond
ices over,
(09:09):
someone's got to be the 1st kid on
the ice.
You don't have the other kids holding middens
and skating in circles
until someone
has first skated onto the ice and then
around the ice to show that it's not
going to break.
And then the other kids follow.
The person who's first on the ice is
(09:31):
admittedly brave, but they're not a tyrant.
This is not the illegitimate
use of authority. The point I want to
make is that the kids around the pond
can see the same pond but they lack
the leadership qualities
that would have them be the first to
be on the ice
so sometimes it's the first person to speak
(09:51):
an unpopular idea that is the elephant in
the room at a meeting sometimes it's someone's
got to give the presentation
in front of the 400 people so I
mean who's brave enough to step in front
of the 400 people
but these people who put themselves in leadership
roles
they're not fundamentally different from you or I
the first kid on the pond is not
(10:14):
less susceptible to falling through the ice
they're just the ones to have done it
first. I guess what I'm trying to say
is that leadership
is within reach
for everyone. Anyone can be the 1st kid
on the pond.
Obviously, the 1st kid on the pond is
risking getting soaked
or worse, but someone's gotta be the 1st
(10:36):
kid on the pond and it it can
be you.
Which brings me on to the next point,
which is
the kid that's going to step onto the
ice and be the first
is going to have to make an assessment.
It's gonna be probably a relatively lonely one.
Right? But that means that as a leader,
perhaps
(10:56):
that's a good analogy that you have to
really rely on your own resources, your own
perspectives,
your own accrued wisdom. And
with that
in mind, make the boldest
choice that you care. It doesn't have to
be the boldest choice. Sometimes the conservative choice
is an exercise of good leadership. But the
(11:17):
boldness aside, one defining quality of leadership is
that you follow your own inner guidance one
way or another, and you're not following the
guidance of others.
It's important that our listeners get this this
point because as long as you're following the
guidance of others, you're not really a leader
in that situation. You are a follower and
someone else is the leader. If you follow
your inner guidance and you get on the
(11:38):
pawn or you don't get on the pawn,
you're acting as a leader if you follow
your inner guidance.
The kids who will not be the first
on the pond because no one else has
done the first their followers.
The defining quality at least in my view
is that leaders do and they have to
follow their inner guidance
to stay leaders.
We just hope that by the time someone
(11:59):
reaches a leadership position that they have the
knowledge
that they have the experience, that they have
the wisdom,
that their inner guidance is well informed enough
that they're not leading the kids onto the
thin ice pond they're leading the kids onto
the pond where everyone's going to have a
great
time
there are a couple of sub points I
(12:20):
want to make to this
and one of them is that leaders must
therefore,
in their own heads,
be self validating,
self respecting,
self caring, and self loving.
Whoever
you allow to judge you
is taking power from you. If you only
(12:42):
allow your own judgments of yourself
to stand at the end of the day.
If you take other people's opinions of course
but
they're not the arbiters of your worth and
if anyone is it's you.
Then you can make decisions independently.
Earlier I claimed that leaders are the epitome
(13:03):
of adults.
That they're the adults in the room when
everyone else is over the age of 18
and they're ostensibly an adult those we count
as leaders are the most adult
of of the adults in the room.
It is because
for you to follow your inner guidance
and consistently
be right or to make sound decisions
(13:26):
it does require worldly knowledge and wisdom and
experience.
Some people achieve a lot of this wisdom
when they're in their 20s and some people
live such repetitive lives that they could be
80 and no less than the 25 year
old.
But one way or another
leaders
have to follow their inner guidance, their inner
validation,
(13:46):
their inner encouragement
even while they sometimes have outside people who
counsel them or else you are gonna turn
to a follower. You're gonna have someone else
willed power over you.
And is this something which is
tempered by experience?
As in, you mentioned the 80 year old
who has had a repetitive life and not
(14:06):
been faced with the same challenges perhaps. But
is there an aspect where we make ourselves
leaders because we go outside our comfort zone,
because we
state uncomfortable facts
in in situations that may socially damage us
or what and so on. Yeah. Well, to
to to go back to to the example
of being the first kid on the pond.
It's not the other kids appointing a leader
(14:28):
to go on the pond first. It's whichever
kid is brave enough or whichever kid feels
authoritative enough to test the ice that person
has de facto become the leader of that
group in that
situation. Or the first person who raises their
hand in a meeting to say well I
I want to give a dissenting view.
(14:48):
I've done this before and often I've put
into words what everyone was thinking but no
one was willing to say.
Even this podcast in a way I'm kind
of doing my best to put into words
what some people are thinking and that is
not talked often enough about.
But yes that there is no central authority
appointing some people to be leaders and other
(15:09):
people not to be leaders. So someone has
the title of CEO
but they always have to ask someone else
on the team for decisions.
That's not really the leader in that dynamic.
Right. If if you look on LinkedIn, you
see lots of people with the title CEO
of, you know, the company of 1. They're
also the director. They're also the secretary.
(15:32):
They got lots of board meetings inside their
heads that, you know,
play play those games internally.
I'll move away a little bit from the
the ice pod example
and maybe I'll cast my mind back to
Florence,
during
the Renaissance
in Italy.
Let's imagine
(15:52):
that
you're a young man,
and
you become an apprentice under a painter.
Throughout your entire apprenticeship
you aren't just using your own eye to
decide if your work is good.
You are going to check-in
with the Maestro to ask is it good
enough? Should I have done it this way?
(16:13):
Should I have composed a painting like this?
Should I have chosen this pigment for
this thing and this other pigment for this
other thing?
And then when you've had enough years of
apprenticeship you become a journeyman. And then when
you're a journeyman you can start to make
your own decisions.
You can start to part ways with your
master
because you have the experience and therefore the
(16:34):
authority to start making your own decisions and
using your own eye.
By the time you become a master yourself
and you're teaching other people, you can definitely
make your own decisions and use your own
eye, and it will be out of order
if the master asks the apprentice,
Do you like the way this looks?
Even though the medieval guild system is kind
of dead these days,
(16:56):
we have authority that is in proportion to
how much knowledge we actually have
informally.
So if our listener
is in whatever profession they're in
no longer junior,
if they're like a vice president, a director,
if they're like a senior software developer,
(17:17):
they can consider themselves to be more like
the master and less like the apprentice.
I have a lot of clients who've actually
achieved quite a lot with their lives
and suddenly they're asked to do public speaking,
to share original ideas,
to set a strategic direction
and that's where they get the feeling like
they're a 13 year old asked to do
(17:38):
these adult things which is an out of
date feeling.
In these situations
I don't have to alter my client at
all. They've achieved. They've done.
They have the job title. They have the
job. They have the direct reports. They have
the responsibility.
My job is to describe them as they
are
the day they walk into my office
(17:59):
and with a clear enough description
of them as they are with the team
that they
have with the actual knowledge that they possess
they're not afraid to address groups anymore.
The fear came from this out of date
self-concept
that they're just a student, they're just an
apprentice
after that they've actually reached mastery. I think
there's also sort of a mis
(18:22):
understanding
perhaps about
what being a great public speaker is in
the sense that you might think of, you
know, Tony Robbins or you know, any of
those charismatic
sort of braggadocio
hugely larger than life. You know, they they
exude confidence in in what they're saying.
And I think that
that can be a bit misleading in the
(18:43):
sense that just like the apprentice, you know,
starts off maybe by copying something, eventually they've
they've got to break, to make their own
work. And I think that if you update
your self-concept
to being an authority in your particular field
and having that authority to,
share or educate
or direct, then this is gonna come from
(19:03):
a much more authentic place where actually you
don't necessarily
need to be a version of Tony Robbins
or any idea you have of what a
confident public speaker is. Because you just will
be and will come from your authentic version
of you as the confident
authority figure that you are. The reason that
public speaking is coming up I think, is
(19:25):
that by the time you reach a senior
enough role,
you absolutely
have
to speak to groups.
You have to speak at meetings. You have
to lead meetings. You have to speak at
the AGM.
It comes with a territory.
Another marker of having done well previously in
your adult life is that you're often operating
(19:46):
on the edge of knowledge.
And this gives a lot of people that
sense of imposter syndrome
or a sense of not
knowing what to do or what to say.
But here's the kicker.
When you're operating on the edge of knowledge,
there's no one on the planet who knows
exactly what to say or who knows everything
(20:07):
or who can absolutely do the thing that
you're doing.
So I'm imagining the surgeon doing the experimental
surgery where we don't know what the outcome's
gonna outcome's gonna be, but they gotta do
it anyway, and no one's more qualified than
you. Right? Well, the the the, open heart
surgery, for example,
those
first operations were on the edge of knowledge.
(20:27):
Yep. And they must have been the people
who are having these these, surgeries done, they
were obviously told
this may not work. In fact, we just
don't know if it's gonna work. Exactly. This
is, you know, to have the authority to
step into
the unknown, I think it's possibly why why
we like astronauts and explorers
is because it's sort of analogous of going
(20:47):
into
unknown territory. And certainly,
going into what hasn't been done before or
going in directions which haven't been tried before,
you really are the first person on the
lake and you risk the wisdom of the
crowd pointing and saying wrong, shame, go away,
you know, we're right, there's more of us
kind of thing. Here's the point that I
wanna leave my listeners
(21:09):
with. If you have that feeling that you're
like the astronaut in outer space, and who
knows whether you're gonna survive?
Or what if all the kids laugh at
you because you fell through the ice since
you dare to be the 1st to come
in? If you have this feeling, it absolutely
comes with the territory of being a leader
and without this feeling you're probably not you
know a leader to that many people. And
(21:31):
and this is why it also comes down
to a certain level of self regard,
and self love and self reassurance is because
you have to be able to withstand
that. Your personality, your sense of self of
value
needs to be able to withstand
both praise but also condemnation. And that's Failure.
That's why self validation
self respect and self love are utterly essential
(21:52):
for the leaders of the world because if
your feelings of being validated, loved, and accepted
depend on what the last person said to
you, how are you gonna be a bad
president of the United States of America?
Even if we imagine
that the lawyer
representing
the refugee
who's trying to gain residency status,
(22:15):
They don't know what the judge is going
to decide.
They don't know what the outcome is going
to be, but they still have to show
up and present to the best of their
ability anyway.
You don't wanna be in a situation
later on in adult life where you're only
solving solved problems.
You don't want to be in a situation
where you're never at the edge of knowledge
(22:35):
and then you never get this uncertain feeling.
Our clients who at least I see in
in my practice
and I imagine many of the listeners to
this podcast
are at a point in their lives
where they have to tap into their self
authority. They have to in their own heads
and hearts tell themselves they can not that
they can't
since they've done well in life
(22:57):
and others see them as an authority.
To bring this point to a conclusion,
you're not doing adult life badly.
If you have impostor syndrome it's usually the
opposite.
All of this is to be embraced
in adult life
especially when you rise up high enough that
others want to follow your lead.
(23:18):
Along with the problem of being on the
edge of knowledge,
here's another fun problem that leaders have.
You're often presented
with trolley problems.
So if you don't know, like, you know,
basically
The wheels wiggly and,
Well, so
here's the trolley problem from moral philosophy.
(23:39):
You've got an out of control
trolley. So so like like like a cart
on
rails.
And it's going downhill,
and
you're at a switch.
In the current trajectory of that trolley, it's
gonna kill 5 people
right they're oblivious they got their headphones on
(24:00):
and if the trolley keeps going and you
don't do anything 5 people are gonna die
If you flip the switch though the tracks
change and the 5 people are saved
but you're gonna kill
2 people and one of them is the
mayor.
What do you do? Well, you don't ask
(24:21):
AI.
You you could. I mean, you could flip
a coin. Yeah. But this is a question
where you can make arguments
on both sides. You could say, okay. No
life is worth more than any other. So
you're gonna save the 5 lives and you're
gonna kill the 2 people.
Or you could say well that mayor has
done so much to feed the homeless
(24:42):
let's save them and then the person they're
with
and let the 5 people go under the
wheels
so that there is no absolute
right wrong or correct answer but this could
be debated
Problems where there is a clear
mutually agreed upon answer,
those are for
your direct reports.
(25:03):
By the time you reach a position of
leadership,
you're at the switch a lot trying to
decide which of 2 bad outcomes
is gonna happen.
So leaders often end up then getting a
lot of criticism and flack because 2 people
died.
If it's not that 2 people died, it's
5 people died. This is metaphorical of course.
So, you know, it could be jobs not
(25:24):
not lives. If his life is corporate manslaughter.
But it's similar to like the the epistemological
problem
of being on the edge of knowledge and
you've got to figure it out for yourself
and that you're on the edge of morality
and you got to figure out for yourself
And one way or another, you are probably
gonna get criticism for your decision.
Anyone who claims that if they were only
(25:45):
in your shoes, they would have pulled the
switch.
They'd never been in your shoes before.
I think there's something else about being on
the edge of morality for a leader too
is that to me, one of the one
of the heights of leadership
is to be so secure,
so wise in your position that you can
actually turn around to your subordinates and say,
(26:06):
do you know something that I don't know?
Mhmm. You know, you don't have the ego
in the way that stops you from actioning
something that somebody else knew that you didn't.
All the greatest leaders
were able to hear and listen even to
their
detractors,
not punish them necessarily for even getting something
wrong or going in the wrong direction. And
(26:27):
we were talking about
the CEO of
Magna.
Yeah. What's his name? Frank Stronach. Frank Stronach,
yes, who who,
installed
like a hotline telephone in his manufacturing plants
or a system that was anonymous. Anonymous and
anybody could put anything in saying what they
thought could be done better, what was going
wrong,
(26:47):
something that, you know, an HR thing. But,
and he said that the,
the feedback from everybody was This is brilliant
because it ended up meaning that the people
further down the hierarchy were being heard.
And it's not that they were considered
useless appendages to this great machine,
but instead, you know, to me that's great
leadership.
(27:08):
There's a concept called servant leadership. Mhmm. And
I think that's what you're talking about. Oh,
yeah. Okay. Where the leader is not the
tyrant at the top,
the leader serves his or her
workers so the workers get the job done
and there is much merit
I think
in this view that
(27:29):
just like the minister
in front of his flock is is no
tyrant but is serving his flock that
a leader to a corporation
is
Never to be a tyrant but is instead
serving the workers and giving them the knowledge,
the tools, the resources that they need to
do their jobs excellently.
And that's very much the attitude that allows
(27:50):
you to speak publicly with authority.
Is if you see it as an act
of service,
less a question of ego and and being
potentially, you know, being seen as being arrogant.
If you're doing it as an act of
service
and you see it as that, then you
are essentially being the servant leader. Absolutely.
Teachers for example. Yeah. Teachers
(28:12):
are very much serving their students. Yeah. I'm
sure there's there's there's plenty of people out
there who have memories of teachers. Perhaps that
were pivotal
to their career path even. And if you
think back at them, you should think, well,
they showed leadership qualities as servant leaders. And
you things you don't remember the times that
they stumbled or coughed or was sick or,
you know, you don't remember any of that.
(28:34):
But you do remember their charisma, their passion.
You remember probably as a result a fair
amount of what it is that they taught
as well. And so, in some ways looking
to good teachers as
the adults in the room that perhaps are
good to to look at, to think of
as leaders is is probably a good reference.
Well, there there are a number of themes
that we seem to be coming back to
(28:55):
during today's episode and one of them is
that
the good kind of authority that leadership
or power wielded well
is the authority of the teacher or the
professor
not the authority
of the tyrant.
So rounding out this list of things that
come with the territory
of leadership that are rather unfortunate
(29:18):
is that
when you are seen to be the person
at the front of the room who's talking
you are
definitely
going to be attracting envy and resentment
not because you're necessarily an enviable person
not at all because you are innately a
resentable person
but because
there's something in the human heart
(29:41):
that seems to envy and resent those who
seem to be one step above oneself.
So if you do attract envy and resentment
if people start sniping at at you if
sometimes friends demonstrate they're jealous of you if
you know sometimes people feel like you've gotten
too good for them even though in your
eyes you've done nothing wrong.
(30:02):
I would back up this view you've done
nothing wrong because sometimes this comes with the
territory. Well, when you have kids who are
vilifying you and saying, you know, treating you
very badly,
as a parent you still have to
say no that's not right.
And you have to be able to express
that and not join in the, you know,
the rage and not make things worse, right?
(30:24):
But
it's quite a natural function. I think as
you said, you know, there's this thing which
is this,
need to kick against authority, which in some
ways is is a healthy
thing too. It's it's not necessarily a bad
thing. In some situations, it might be quite
necessary. And I think the very function itself
is perhaps also wrapped up with
the frustrations of ambition, the gap between where
(30:46):
you are and where you want to be.
And that in
being unable to control those emotions I would
associate more with, should you say somebody who
hasn't just hasn't quite grown up? Well, I'm
an anti authoritarian. Mhmm, yeah. Very much so.
I'm the way more punk rock than some
people seem to think I am, but I
have no problem with earned authority.
(31:09):
So if someone else knows how to tie
their shoelaces in a really cool way and
I don't, I submit to them when it
comes to how to tie my shoelaces
the way they have.
What I push back against
and what I think people should push back
against
is taking these made up hierarchies
way too seriously
(31:30):
where you think the made up hierarchies point
to innate qualities in people
I push back against unearned authority,
abuse of power, of course,
or people with less knowledge
being in positions of authority
above
people with more knowledge.
So I push back against all of that.
(31:52):
You know, I'm not against all authority, though
I do very much identify as an anti
authoritarian.
I just think these are the ways that
authority is often misused. That power is often
misused.
But there is a legitimate use of power.
So if I know how to do a
cool thing, then please sit at my feet
and I'll show you how to do that
cool thing.
Yes. So so you're anti authoritarian
(32:12):
and
a good proportion of that is basically anti
tyranny. Yeah. I guess if anti tyranny were
more of a common word that people used,
I'm an anti tyrant. Anti tyrant. I think
everyone's an anti tyrant.
But but Unless you're a tyrant. Right. I
think you're just anti other tyrant. I'm a
rebel with a cause. I'm not a rebel
without a cause. You're tearing me apart.
(32:34):
Sorry
Lisa one thing I'll say to wrap up
that point is that we should want
thoughtful
people
who are philosophical
about power
to then be in positions of power We
don't want people who just gratify their ego
(32:54):
or who love to power trip to be
in positions of power. Whenever I have client
in front of me and they seem thoughtful,
intelligent,
humble, and they want to do well,
I wish for them
to pursue positions of power. I hope they
become the chief executive officer one day because
I don't want this world to be ruled
by power
(33:15):
hungry egomaniacal
tyrant the way it often is.
I want it to be ruled by thoughtful
people who are careful with power like I
want chef's chef's knives to be wielded by
people who are careful with chef's knives. And
I think
that in some ways, much of life is
currently characterized by power more than perhaps is
accurate. In the sense that I do believe
(33:37):
that
most people
aspire to gain authority through wisdom, who aspire
to be able to share direct, educate, or
whatever it is from a position of
authority that is earned, that is is, you
know, is trained.
When I think about
myself, when I think about the clients I've
worked with to get them acclimatized to a
(33:59):
position of power,
They are generally
thoughtful people who mean well and who don't
want to cause harm because they've been elevated
into a position of power.
These are the people who should be on
condo boards.
These are the people
who should try to climb up the corporate
ladder. These are the people who should run
(34:20):
for public office. Oh, hey, finally.
This is why I'm making the podcast
and this is why I'm saying it on
the podcast because at least, you know, insofar
as I'm able to make some ripples,
I very much want the people who are
somewhat uncomfortable with power to then become the
people in positions of power, just like you
should always respect the power of the car
(34:43):
you're driving on a public road.
Power should be wielded in a similar way.
It should not be avoided.
It's not innately bad,
but it should be wielded carefully.
And so with the idea that
wielding power and authority requires
the wisdom to be able to do it
well. The wisdom to be able to to
(35:03):
direct, to educate, to share.
In in many situations,
you're going to be faced with having to
do that quite literally. To actually stand in
a position of authority
in front of a whole bunch of people.
And just that very dynamic, if you think
about it, a bunch of people looking at
one person, well, we we know who is
being placed in the position of authority. And
(35:24):
all it really is, when you think about
it is, somebody knows something
that all the people watching may not.
Right? That's that's really that's really the basic
of the transaction.
Now, this is public speaking and for about
80% of the people out there, they don't
feel that they have the confidence to
speak publicly.
(35:44):
And while you and I have been working
on a master class to try and create
the best, most comprehensive
public speaking master class we can. Well, our
listeners have had a preview in this episode
as to the kinds of things that you'll
be in stealing as an attitude in your
students. Right? Yeah. So the idea that they're
not the 13 year old even if they
(36:05):
feel like it or actually the CEO of
this, the VP of that, they're actually the
founder of their firm
and ideas like even just that being on
the edge of knowledge and not making everyone
happy and having some people be resentful when
you speak all of that adds up to
a much more confident public speaker because you
know it's not you if someone coughs over
(36:27):
there in the audience.
Why don't you tell our listeners
how they
can think like you
when it comes to the presentations that they
have to do?
So, January 20th
2024,
we are starting our public speaking master class
at, the Morpheus,
Clinic For Hypnosis,
and it's a series of 5 4 hour
(36:50):
classes
where we will cover everything that you need
to know from
vocal techniques,
different ways to calm your nerve system,
different approaches to actually interacting with the audience
and how you should approach speaking to an
audience.
Every class
has an element
of of hypnotic suggestion, which you can just
listen to. You don't need to actually be,
(37:12):
hypnotized.
But these are good and worthy suggestions that
do the work of helping you to change
your mindset
to having a more accurate self-concept, both of
who you've arrived at in your life at
this point, as well as your role and
the better ways and more useful ways of
looking at the act of of public speaking.
(37:32):
This workshop is designed that by the end
of it,
not only do you get a little certificate
of course, but you'll be stepping into your
role as a leader
with the full authority that you've already got.
If this sounds like the person that you
wanna be,
then feel free to get in touch through
the website.
And if you missed that date, just check
(37:53):
out our website or get in contact because
we will have workshops as long as
we are still in business. Absolutely.
Thank you so much again for listening.
It's been a pleasure having you on board
for this journey and if you want to
engage with us more 1 on 1 in
private
please reach out to the Morphis Clinic for
hypnosis at
www.morphisclinic.com.
(38:14):
At heart we are practical philosophers
we are in
not just the business of spreading good ideas
we're actually trying everything we can do to
live out these good ideas and to spread
these good ideas in any way. So again,
thank you so much for listening.
If you are interested to hear more of
these, please subscribe at YouTube on Morpheus Hypnosis
(38:38):
or Spotify, of course, and anywhere that you
get your podcasts
as we continue to talk about other,
subjects all about how to be an adult.
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