How Great Leaders Handle Pressure and Uncertainty

I was born in Tehran, Iran. I moved to Germany at the age of 13. Boys aged 14 and older are not allowed to leave the countries. I did not speak a word of German. I felt that I had been drawn into the cold water. Welcome, Navid. Certainly most executives don't fail because they lack intelligence. They fail because they basically misread pressure. And you've operated at the highest level of corporate leadership and built and scaled organizations. So I'm very interested in speaking to you about that.

And you now work with executives navigating the most difficult moments, I suppose, of their careers. You know, I'm really glad to have you here because, like, we've, you know, exchanged the emails and that our worlds do overlap. And, you know, basically pressure just uses a different uniform, either business or sport. And so I think this is going to be a fascinating conversation. So let's get straight into it and just give me a like a movie trailer of your life and and what shaped you. Wow, OK. You want to go right in the deep end that I, that I love.

So David, I was born in Tehran, Iran, and I moved to Germany at the age of 13. It was an overnight decision by my parents. At that time, the war between Iran and Iraq was ongoing for about 6 years and it had started to move from what used to be the western border of the country into the capital and further to the east. And the government announced a new law that week that boys aged 14 and older are not allowed to leave the country by legal means because it was a precautionary step to make sure that they don't run out of troops eventually.

So I remember that day very vividly, David. I came home from school, and the first question I asked my parents is if someone had died because that's how it felt like being home, which is very different than the warm and cozy and nurturing and nourishing home that I used to know. And so my mom said, no, nobody has died, please sit down, have your lunch. But we need to talk. And this we need to talk eventually LED into this, you know, news broken to me and the fact that my parents had decided, having thought about it for the last day and 1/2 that Germany is the best place to send me to now.

It was interesting because I did not speak a word of German. I had been to Germany once as a six year old on holiday, but that was it. And so, yeah, well, that's, you know, talking about defining moments in your life and sometimes without you doing that was one of the first defining moments because I felt that I had been thrown into the cold water without necessarily being able to swim properly or having had any real instructions before. And that's really how it felt like for me to move from Iran to Germany in the first year, and things really started to move up from there because my.

Did you? Go to a boarding school or how did that work? I went to a regular school and it was bizarre, David, because I had, for instance, you know, French being taught to me and explained to me in German. Neither of those languages I did speak at the time, so I was pretty good at school. In Iran, the Asian system is very competitive. I was one of the best in the whole country and that gave my auntie and my parents back home the confidence that I would eventually come out succeeding. It took me 3 years to get there, but hey, you know, I will look at it as one of those lives lessons and one of those resilient moments where I had to perceive the year and just manage through.

And I'm really happy I did that. But that was like an early, early moment in my life where I really saw that nothing is really predictable the way I had gotten used to it. And then later when I finished my school, I did not want to study immediately. And that was a big surprise to my parents because both of them had academic degrees. My mom had a PhD, my dad had a master's degree. And the fact that I had a very good, you know, diploma, as they say, I'd be taught so I can listen German to show I could have studied anything essentially.

But the fact that I did not want to study was a bit of a surprise to them. But I, you know, at that time, I felt that after 15 years of going to school, I, I was done with learning and books and, and reading, really wanted to get into. The added strain of having to learn basically 2 languages, yes, just phenomenal from such a young age. But that, that really was a blessing in hindsight. I mean, I had French and German that I had to learn. English was the only language that I speak a little when coming to Germany.

So and, and that's the German system. You have to learn 2 foreign languages if you want to go for higher education. And so that's what I did. And anyhow, so I wanted to get right into the world of work. That was really my fascination. And I did that for about four years before I then came back and studied and then went on to embark on an international career in the human resources function for 20 years, spanning across five countries and, yeah, seven companies at the time. I mean, an amazing story.

And obviously he ran very much a topic at the moment. Yeah, I remember that whole time very well because growing up in South Africa, the Shah of Iran actually sent students all around the world to get an education. And South Africa was actually a very big target for what we call Persian students at the time. In fact, my my sister dated one of these students. So, you know, Iran was very, very topical in quite a lot of conversations at the time. So you missed the whole revolution thing as well, having left that early.

So looking back, I mean, you obviously forged a huge growth mindset very, very fast. But did this mindset ever actually cost you before it helped you? Yeah, I'm not sure I would put it like that, but I really saw that early on. I believe that, you know, performance alone will carry me. You know, this is this is the rookie mistake I made when I started to to work eventually and at a fabulous start. I started with Adidas, a fantastic company and that was my very first HR role. I really fell in love with HR and that's why I wanted to move into HR.

But I really learned over the years that, you know, if you really want to grow and the coaching school that I went to is also based in South Africa, they called the Centre for Coaching. I really learned that and they speak about horizontal versus vertical growth or horizontal versus vertical development, that if you want to grow vertically, you need to expand the size of the container. So it's not really about functional and technical and all those good things that we sometimes have to learn to get good at something.

But really my belief is that, and I had to learn it the hard way, that you know, vertical developmental growth requires adaptability, it requires self-awareness, it requires resilience. And so over time, I have come to appreciate traits like curiosity and discipline and the ability to stay calm even though the world seems to be on, you know, constant pressure all around you. So these have been far more important to me than raw capability or functional technical skills. Yeah. And I think the calmness certainly in sport comes from two things.

One is having the confidence that you can deal with anything that's thrown, you know, any adversity that's thrown your way, which allows people to be calmer. If you're pretty confident that you can deal with anything that's thrown your way. And then secondly, learning how to manage your thoughts and I'd say and manage your emotions when stuff goes wrong. And that allows you to, to stay calm and think the emotion will hit and maybe you, you'll be a bit uptight or something like that. But then very quickly to reset and start to think, OK, what's the pathway forward?

You know, what's the next? Yeah. And if you can, you know, get to the experience and get to that place where you can do that quickly, it's hugely valuable. Am I really speaking the same language there as you? Absolutely, Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, what you just said reminds me of some of my clients and some of my own experience of just before stepping into the boardroom to have a very difficult conversation about something that you know, is going to be rattling the nerves and, you know, creating a lot of emotions.

So, you know, I find it more helpful if you are grounded in the way you articulate the case and, and let it to be voted on rather than being emotionally taken by it and kind of transcending this, this nervousness and the energy. And that certainly is not going to make for a great conversation and a great decision, which is the ultimate, you know, gain in a boardroom. Yes. I mean, it's always very dangerous when you speak from emotion, but it's very interesting sometimes emotion and you got to kind of get the instinct for us.

Sometimes emotion can carry the day, like it's just an injection of something that moves people, but you've got to be very careful it, I think when you inject emotion, it's to move people rather than to try and influence them. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah. Yeah, it does. So what kind of drives you now you've got so much experience in you working, you know, with with I'm sure some very good people and maybe I know you've spoken about this is what did you kind of used to chase that you've outgrown now?

I guess see I qualified on a psychometric called the Hogan Assessment which was set up by Doctor Robert Hogan many, many years ago, many decades ago. And there is one of the 28 scales in this diagnostic that is called ambition. And my ambition scale score is 100, which is the absolute maximum you can score. Now, I would say, David, that the way I put this is over the last two or three decades, it's not that my ambition has lowered by in in any form or shape, but the how to get to that has really fundamentally shifted for me.

So if I wanted to give you a very silly example and you you will relate to that. It was during my coach education training in Cape Town, South Africa at the Gyps UCT where we were given the task to just for a month try out this thing called meditation. And you know, mind you that at that time it was not quite so hip and unfoke as it is these days. And so I thought to myself, Oh my goodness, I mean, 30 * 20 minutes, right? If I wanted to look at it as a time contingent, how many emails would I be able to to ship?

How many books would I be able to read? How many different things would I be able to do? Because I really looked at it as a task that is stealing time away from me. Now. That was 12 years ago, 12 years in, I have not given up my homework of this one month long experimental meditation, but it has become a daily habit of mine. So I think that that is a very simple example of me explaining that I have come to appreciate things that I just couldn't comprehend at the time. And over the years I've learned things that really helped me to.

Yeah, be at my best and so that I can serve everyone around me, whether it's my family, whether it's friends or whether it's my clients, to the best of my capabilities. If I'm understanding correctly, you're linking that very much to a daily meditation practice. Absolutely, yes. Yes. Very interesting. I mean, there's so many elite performers who meditate regularly or daily and they attribute so much to that. How how long did it take you before you start to really feel the benefits? Because 20 minutes is a long time to start with.

Yeah, yeah, I guess you could say that, but I, I think for me the switch came 2 1/2 weeks into the daily thing. So it really, I mean, the first week I was essentially brainstorming wise. I was pretending to meditate, right? I had all these thoughts and I, I was, you know, I was very happy that I found a way that I could be compliant with my homework and still get my, my stuff done. So I would start with, you know, obviously with my eyes closed and the sound in the background, thinking about what I need to get done today or tomorrow, depending on the time of the day I was meditating and whether I had everything I needed, whether the presentations were ready, whether I had this done this.

I've spoken to this person and so I really, you know, did it the wrong way for about a week. And then I came back because we were asked to report back. How is it going? And I said, I, I have to be honest, I, I, I don't think I've meditated a minute of those, you know, 7 * 20 minutes because I have been brainstorming. And so this is where my coach, education trainer said, OK, there are several techniques. How about you try any one of these? And one of them was you literally visually open a window, take your thoughts, put them out and close the window so that you can come back to what really matters at the time, which is nothing.

And so it took me another week or so, week and a half to really get to that point, to be able to really sit still and just do nothing. I mean, just breathe. That's it. And then and then the shift came for me where I really saw, Oh my goodness, this is not a waste of time at all. As a matter of fact, I mean, it really grounded me in a way that I wasn't able to do with exercise or anything else, nutrition and so on. So, so it became a daily habit of mine and it's been a daily habit for 12 years plus since then.

Very interesting. I love the analogy of the door because I think that's something that I have struggled with a lot where, you know, you try to focus on the breathing, but you know, keep having the, the planning thoughts, the like you say, the brainstorming thoughts. The logical brain taking over, yeah. And, and very, very difficult to, I had a period in Mexico where I had a guided meditation and it was on the beach. And I did that for a week solid. And that was the first time I really started to feel the benefits.

But I do find it really difficult to do on my own. And I think it's something that, having spoken to you, I need to persevere with for longer and get to that place where I can do it for myself. For sure. And if you don't mind, David, two more routes to the solution. So that was one of the examples that you shared with me. The second one was to use a guided meditation app, which means that you're just paying attention to someone else who's speaking. But it's similar to what you said. You do not have just to sit still by yourself, but you're listening to someone following their instructions.

And the app that I use is called Inside Time Up. It's, it's one of the early meditation apps. It's a wonderful app. And I have used that app, as I said, for all these years and they have. Inside time. Inside Time Up and it's a wonderful app where you can both. There's also a paid version, but the basic version usually does it if you don't want to, if you don't have to listen to your meditation when you're on the plane where you don't have Wi-Fi and so on. And then the third method, which was another way I tried, it just didn't work for me so well was to name what comes up for you.

So if it's a thought without speaking, you just name it, say, oh, a thought came up and just come back to where you were before. And then if it's like a concern or a worry, you just name it and say, oh, another worry. And so by doing that, you call yourself in the moment doing things you're not actually supposed to do. So those are the three routes. The window open, folds out, window closed. Second one is follow a guided meditation in an app or anywhere else. And the third one is to name what comes up for you and just do not be judge mental about it just to name it and carry back with whatever you were doing before briefing work or just sit still.

That makes absolute sense because in coaching, naming something is very, very powerful. So give me the one person who probably changed how you think the most or one idea that really changed how you operate. Obviously the meditation is is a huge part of it. Is there another idea that changed how you operate? And is there a person who really, really influenced how you think? Absolutely. I think I have too many, far too many to mention. But if I wanted to pick one of my earlier best mentors I had, but this was a guy called Michel Klein in Germany.

So I had a six year career in sales. Those, you know, four to six years. I dipped my toe into work before going to study and coming to HR. And I had literally no clue as to how to sell. And they hired me as a sales associate in a retail outlet. You have to imagine this to be something similar to Foot Locker. It was just called differently. It was international sports trading. And so I had the the easy task of selling, you know, trainers, shirts, trousers, all sorts of different things to customers.

And I approached him in my first week and said, Misha, in all honesty, I mean, you guys have hired me as a, you know, earliest, lowest level junior salesperson. I really don't know how to sell. And so I'm looking for advice. And he said, Hey, great. I mean, some, some associates never approached me to, to, to get advice. They just tried to wing it. So it's great. It's a great sign. You're actually coming to me to asking for how you can be more effective in selling. And he said, there's only two things you need to do.

And I guarantee that if you follow those two advices of mine deeply, you will be one of the best sales people we have in this in this film. And so the first one was. You don't have to be great at anything, really. All you need to commit to is to do a little better tomorrow than you did today. So for him it was all about incremental improvement. There was no single big lever like a magical something, like a pill you take and then suddenly you become the Super sales agent. No, but it's really having the ambition and the motivation to do a little better tomorrow than you did today.

So that was the first one. And the second one was, and he cited a very famous example at the time. This is a very popular guy, I forgot his name. He he's the best car sales person on the planet, American guy. And he wrote, yeah, maybe, maybe or or someone else of that importance. But anyhow, so he said you have to put yourself into the shoes of your customer, truly. And by that it means if a customer walks up into our store and they want to buy, let's say, a lacrosse polo shirt and we do not have lacrosse polo shirts listed.

We have all the Polo Ralph Lauren and I don't know, Hugo Boss and what have you. Your task is to tell them where they can get that polo shirt and not to ask them what colour would you like to have in them. If they say black you, you just pull out a black polo shirt from a different band and say, hey, this would look really good. Only why don't you try that or not. And so believe it or not, I had customers that I sent away because they wanted to have the New York Yankees hat or something and we just did not have in stock.

They would come back and buy through me something else because they really felt that the honest advice they received at the time was so rare and so positive in their opinion that that warranted some kind of a loyalty on the back end. So I became very quickly one of the best. And this is what I loved about the world of sales. It's very transparent. It's like the world of sports. You know how good you are every single day, every week, every month, every year. You look at the rankings, you know the sales leaderboard, you know how good or how terrible you're doing.

And that really set me up for a wonderful career in sales that lasted for about 6 years. That's, that's some great advice there. I mean, again, getting back to authenticity, you know, by giving them the information that they needed pays off in the long term. My next question for you is, when stakes are really high and you don't have, obviously you can never have complete information. So you're having to kind of go by information and instinct. What actually runs in your head, the reality, So you're faced with a difficult decision and you don't have all the information.

How do you kind of process a decision like that? I mean, if it's a big decision that requires a lot of data, I I run my life when it comes to important decisions on Excel spreadsheets. Sounds a bit boring, but but that's just does it for me, whether it's purchasing a new home, moving to a new country, choosing the school for our son or something of that nature that really warrants for me more than just, oh, my heart tells me I I should do this. And then maybe I had a bad day and my heart told me the wrong thing.

And so why is I believe in the power of intuition, I think big decisions, important decisions, hard decisions require thinking time and require also some reflection. And so that's, that's how I usually go about making those choices. And you know, if I wanted to use a concrete example, this is the year 22. I at the height of my career, I was the global head of HR working for a company called Vodafone, which is called Vodacom in South Africa. And I looked after 27,000 employees in 24 markets. So I was really like, you know, there was only one more role I could aspire to in the company, my book launch and to my success.

And I think it's fair to say also much to my publishers surprise, it was such a sensation of success that I had all this energy coming in my way. David. I mean, random people sending me emails and sending me LinkedIn messages to say, hey, I've got these 10 leaders who would love to be coached by you. Would you come and consider them to be your clients? We have our Global Leadership conference coming up On this date and this month. Would you be happy to come along and be a speaker? We have this, we have that.

I'm a podcast host. I would like to invite you to be a guest on my show. And I realized very quickly, David, that I was very successful as a corporate executive HR leader and it more than paid for the bills, the mortgage, the the lifestyle and everything you had.

But this energy that I sense as a result of this book was a unique moment in time. It's not something you can put on a back burner and say, hi David, no problem. I will come on your show in three years time. How about we schedule that now? It's either now or never. And that was really a hard choice for me to make because I was successful. I had a highly paying, you know, position. I had a, a fantastic resume. And Despite that, I, I really had to think about whether there is another career ahead of me, one that I didn't even think about two years prior.

And so that's what I ultimately decided to do, which is I, I resigned at a six month notice period in January. The book had this incredible success, I resigned. So I rolled off in the summer of the same year, decided where to move with my family, which ultimately became the UAE in Dubai. And it's been almost four years, you know, in, in two months, in three months, it will be 4 years. And I never looked back. I never looked back. I mean, that's so interesting, but would you say the data of the book sales and and the incoming requests and that was the main driver or was it your intuition that you know?

Obviously, it wasn't really the. Fact that you obviously knew that you could make a living doing this. Yes, well, I I didn't even know if I can make a living. That was the hard choice I had to make, right? And in our family set up, I'm the only breadwinner. So I didn't have the luxury of saying, oh, you know, what if I don't have an income for two years, that's also fine. We just, you know, use my, my wife's income. And so that was the hard thing. And, and you know, I have shipped what, 10,000 copies in four years.

So it's a lot, but it's not enough to live from, no. No, no, no. So living out. Yeah, so exactly. I mean, I I have the privilege of owning the copyrights of my book, so I make a decent margin on every single sale. But Despite that, it's you. You will not be able to buy houses with 10,000 books old. So that was a hard choice I had to make, which is OK. I had been coaching on the side for about 8 years at the time. For the first three years I gave away my coaching entirely for free to Vodafone leaders all around the world.

And then when, when I moved, Rose moved into London, I decided that I wanted to give this to external clients for money. And so I knew that could be successful. But again, between thinking you can be and actually being, there's a, there's a bit of a gap. And that's what it all resulted into. I mean it, it really took off quite quickly. And as I said, I never had to look back. But that was a choice that I may have regretted a year or two in to think, Oh my goodness, I had the most amazing career I had.

I was one of the highest paid executives in the company. I put it all away for this amazing book, but it's just not enough and the coaching is not enough and everything else is not enough. And maybe I made the wrong choice to come to the UA. Maybe you should have stayed in the UK. And so those are the hard choices you make. But but as I said, I'm I'm incredibly grateful that it all worked out very well for me personally and professionally. Well, I'm pleased given that this is your 100th podcast as a guest, it's an honor to to be that 100th podcast for you.

But I think having made that decision, your expertise and knowledge can be shared to so many more people than just purely in one company. Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, on my vision board at the time, David, this is, you know, in the middle of the pandemic, you have to remember there was very strange times, right where I had 12 Zoom calls every day and it just was not a not a great time. And it gave me time to reflect on what I want to do next. It gave me the book in a very nice way, forced my hand around, OK, what, what would I like to do for the next 20 years to come?

And, you know, I was about to turn 15 that year as well. And so it coincided nicely with all those, you know, life's critical moments. And I had on my vision board one statement which I had, you know, cut out from a, a magazine at the time. And that statement said, if not now, when? And I really, I really sat with that statement for a few days and a few weeks until I realized it probably. The meditation helped with. That absolutely, yeah. I mean, the meditation really grounded me in whatever I was doing.

But but yeah, having a vision and having an inspiration and and an idea around what might what the next 10 of 20 years might hold for you is also important. Was there, was there a specific moment where it just clicked and you went OK? Yes. Yeah, I guess it was the, you know, that's what I learned at Vodafone. Actually I partnered with the finance function and those finance folks were very smart, So smart that most of our Chief executive officer appointments came from the finance leaders, which is unlikely.

I mean you any other company I've worked for CE OS, most common are hired, hired from the commercial functions, sales, marketing, sometimes from technology functions, occasionally from finance. But in Vodafone, most of our CEO appointments were finance leaders previously. And what they had agreed with the commercial teams was that because, you know, commercial teams have a gazillion great ideas at any given day, right? That's what they're paid to, to come up with. And So what if one had this hard rule that whatever the suggestion is that the marketeer is suggesting or the commercial leader suggesting to be discussed and agreed upon in that table of what is the expected revenue, the expected profit, the market share, what have you, is also a column called the do nothing scenario, right?

Which is a very wise thing by the CFO who put it in place at the time. Because, yeah, I mean, if you went down the rabbit hole or every single marketer's idea, you're probably not going to get fired because you're running down a gazillion different holes in different directions. And the doing nothing scenario really was for me the ultimate, you know, information I needed, which is like, OK, life is good right now. I really wouldn't want to change this thing other than maybe probably working a little less, spending a little more time with our young son at the time.

But that other approach can give me all that. And if it doesn't work out in a year or two years time, I can always go back to corporate, which was like, if I did nothing, well, I know already what it's like, but if I did this and it worked out, what is the upside? And if it doesn't work out, well, what is the scenario looking for me? And the scenario was very, very manageable. And so that's why, you know, went in without really thinking too much more about it. Brilliant. What piece of leadership advice that maybe sounds smart that you've heard a lot but is actually dangerous or or just a myth and nonsense?

That you can transition successfully at the executive level in a 90 day period, which goes back to this wonderful book that was written by Michael Watkins, The 1st 90 Days. It suggests that you you just sit on your hands, do nothing, then start running like crazy on day one, and then you can drop the ball on day 90 and you're good. OK. Do you have a a little example of that backfiring badly? Oh yeah, I mean, I I to. Solve it. I tried to implement that advice myself. You know, in the year 2008, when I came to London, I was having my big promotion came with a company called BAT to to London, which is partly owned by the Rupert family in South Africa.

And you know, the the operations director gifted me that book and said, Hey, this is a great book. He had like 20 copies of this book on his shelf. And he said, every time we have a new senior leader, I just give them a copy. And and I loved the the idea of the 1st 90 days. It just doesn't work, David, because, and this is what compelled me to write my book because I think the first 90 days is the fantastic is a fantastic book that's written for a first time manager or an individual contributor, right?

If you wanted to be more structured, more intentful about your role, fabulous the first time you did is what absolutely do it for you. But if you are the CEO, the CFO, the CMO, the CHROCTO or whatever C-Suite leader title you hold, do not expect to transition successfully before a 12 to 18 months time period. And when I then started to do the research and I then came up with my own framework, which ultimately, you know, you know, forms a major part of my book, the Double Diamond Framework. It consists of seven phases that last four to 18 months.

Only one of those 7 phases is the first 90 days. So that is one of the biggest myths that I am trying to bring a bust, let's say in in an American way, and that many of the other authors who have now published books in the same arena are also trying to to bust at the same time as a myth. Brilliant. Where do executives, in your experience, lie to themselves the most?

I guess I'm not sure I would call it a lie, but I would say sometimes there is this inherent belief that if you have been successful previously in some magical way, it, it guarantees your success going forward. And it, it really, you know, resonates with what one of my mentors, Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, wrote in one of his books. I mean, that gentleman has published 42 books, 45 books. I don't know exactly what the number is, but that single book, David has outsold all the other books of his. And that book is titled What got you here Won't get you there.

And there's something really fundamentally true about that, which is what I know as an HR leader to be true, which is past success rarely guarantees future success. And that's, you know, one of these piece of advice I would like to to share with any executive that may believe that. Oh, they have figure out the playbook, and if they draw the playbook and just play it all over again, they will just be automatically successful. Unfortunately, it takes a lot more effort and a lot more thinking than that.

Yeah, I mean, that's very, very interesting. In sport, I talk a lot about this is so many athletes will make it and they basically create their success formula. But of course, sport constantly evolves and it comes a point where decision has to be made. Do you actually throw out your success formula and build a new one? Which is very, very scary because you know, if you're, I don't know, you know #10 in the world highly successful and you have this success formula of a way of operating and you want to get to top five.

And clearly your success formula is not good enough to get there. You have to then make that decision is, am I kind of happy staying around 10 in the world or do I really want to go for it and throw out my success formula and try and create a new one? It's interesting. I mean, there are athletes who have done that. I remember Nick Felder, after winning one slam, one major, reworked his whole swing because David Ledbetter said you're not going to win. You're not going to be a multiple major winner with the swing the way it is.

And he chose to take that risk. But then there have been others who don't take that risk. And yeah, but it, but it, you know, people think of course take the risk, but it, it's actually not that easy because you, you could take the risk and everything could fall apart and you end up, you know, 40 in the world. So you know. And of course, you know, that's a lot of status, a lot of money, a lot of, you know, things that that go with that. So it's not as easy a decision as people think. For sure, for sure.

And what that brings up for me is a documentary I watched on this basketball player called Stephen Curry. And he did something as a young boy. His dad, who was a basketball coach, told him that if he really wanted to up his game, he needed to, you know, rework his entire, like, shooting technique. And he spent weeks trying to learn it's the right way only to failing to, you know, hit those balls into the net. And so his mom was interviewed as part of the documentary. And she said, I saw how frustrated he was every single day because he was trying to get it right.

And he was like the old way that wouldn't allow him to do it entirely correctly and the new way not fully embedded yet so that he couldn't just see the results. And you know, it would have been easy for him to say, you know what that I mean? I've done this for two weeks or three weeks. It clearly is not getting anywhere. And so why don't I go to the tried and proven tested that still gets me great results, Maybe not outstanding results, but that's still better than this crap that I am seeing as a result of you, you know, showing you the new thing.

And so, yeah, there are many, many examples like that. Yes, I often say that the best are the most relaxed and bravest and and I think sometimes these really brave decisions are what distinguish, you know, the very top from the rest. Again, in everything that you've seen, what behaviour do you think kills trust fastest in a leadership team? Yeah, I think trust is a real can be a real game changer in a positive and also in a negative way. And I use a particular instrument when I work with entire leadership team.

So I do. But if I look at the 100% of my coaching time, 80%, I coach executives to carrier transitions as and when they land a big job or as and when they land a job that's bigger than the previous one they have. And then the other 20%, I work with entire leadership teams and I call them intact teams. So there must be an intact leadership team A-Team that interacts with one another on a daily basis. And there I use the Hogan instrument. And the other instrument I use is from a gentleman called Doctor Patrick Lencioni.

And he wrote the other great book that I would recommend to your listeners, which is the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. And he has this pyramid, which you know, is his high performing team model framework. And the core element like the, the, the, the lowest layer of that pyramid is it consists of five layers is trust. And believe it or not, David, I mean, I have done this exercise with probably 10 executive leadership teams so far. Trust is one that we always have to work on either because it's deep in the red, which means it's clearly not established well in this particular leadership team, or because it's yellow, which means there are at least a couple of the members of this leadership team.

We're not completely trusting either the rest or sometimes individual members of the same team. So trust is a game changer both in a positive and or in a negative way. You spend a little bit more on the negative. Is that the lack of trust is the big negative? Absolutely yes, yes, you could, you could say it's a lack of trust and, and, and again, it's difficult. I get it right. I mean, trust is not something, you know, you, you may think of trust to be there and that's perfect. But if you have your very first sign that your trust has been, you know, broken or not done properly, the lack of trust, that's what is the downside of it, right?

I mean, you have, you know, see, you see this in leadership teams where someone has joined and he or she is very hesitant to ask for help because the vibe and the energy and the, the, the kind of tone that he or she is picking up from the essence, like just do, just get on with your stuff, right? Don't don't bother me at all. You sometimes see a lack of trust when team members have difficulties to admit their own shortcomings, right? And again, I've seen that in in particular settings. And I think there's a bit of a dynamic with the line manager being in the room.

But Despite that, even peers not admitting their own, you know, shortcomings to one another. And you see sometimes a lack of trust resulting in top team members avoiding one another. So they always see one another in the boardroom, in the steerco meeting, in the whatever monthly leadership team meeting, and there is 0 interaction above and beyond that. I recently worked with a gentleman who thought of himself. He was the chief sales officer of an industrial business to be too senior to socialize with his peers.

And when he his boss gave him that feedback with me in the room, it was really embarrassing for him to even admit that this is the reason why he's not, you know, mixing and mingling with his peers because he thinks of himself to be far too senior. And so there's all sorts of different aspects and signals you can pick up. But a lack of trust is is really the greatest hinderer or the greatest hindrance to a top team trying to get into the high performing zone? So that might have answered my next question where I was going to ask what do high performers get wrong when they step into leadership and is that not establishing trust?

It can be trust, but but according to research, and I have to start the research of my book here, the top three group reasons for executive transition failure are down to people, politics and culture. And so it's not the functional or the technical or the lack of those that gets in the way. It's to do with what we in HR often time refer to as the soft skills that are so hard to learn. And of course, trust touches upon all three aspects of these. And if you had one sentence for leaders under pressure to help them, what would that sentence be?

I guess it would be to invest in preparedness, not in prediction. Oh. I like that. Invest in preparedness, not in prediction. Which, by the way, is not my own. It's from a gentleman called Nassim Taleb. But I really like the idea that every single transition is like a like a new task. And so you have to approach it with a curious mind, with, of course, you may have embodied experience that will serve you well, and that's great. But never assume that. Oh, well, I know already how that's going to work.

I know already how this board meeting is going to go. I know already how the voting is going to turn up. Well, you may be surprised. Well, I think that's a a wonderful note to end end off on unless there's anything specific message, last message you'd like to to give the listeners before it's your turn to put me in the hot seat. Well, I, I just wanted to say, I mean, you, you were speaking, so I didn't want to interrupt you. It's my true honour to be a guest on your show, David, as a loyal fan and and being able to be a guest is a is a is a real honor.

And I just wanted to thank you for hitting the one hundredths, you know, spot. I really, really appreciate that. Good. Thank you very much and sure if anybody you know, really wants to reach you, I know we've got all your handles and everything like that. Where can they, you know, just audio now, just. LinkedIn is the best place to find me and it's my first surname Naveed Nazemi and that's usually I manage my own LinkedIn account. I'm very friendly and I do not use bots or Virginia's to respond.

So people want to to reach me, they can easily do that. Fabulous. Thank you. Very OK, thanks for watching Locker Room Power with David Samuel. If you enjoyed the episode, hit subscribe and leave a comment on your favorite platform. See you in the next one.

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