My values are connection, learning, curiosity, and growth…and this week I had a chance to meet all 4…in one 90-minute session! Hang on, let me explain…

This week I had the opportunity to go to see a live talk/debate, hosted by Steven Bartlett and Simon Sinek at the Southbank Centre in London. Now, as someone who doesn’t listen to many podcasts (yes, I know that may sound odd as I do run The Wild Clarity Podcast!), Steven Bartlett’s ‘Diary of a CEO’ is one of my go to podcasts – usually when I’m lifting weights in the gym or on the commute if I’m travelling (and not reading and note taking, because that’s always my preferred method of learning!), so to say I was excited about this opportunity is an understatement, and for those who saw my lives on Instagram this week (@zoespoulton), you probably felt the excitement jumping out of the screen…but anyway…

I was disappointed.

Controversial? Possibly. True? Definitely.

I don’t say this to take anything away from these 2 incredible people who bring a lot of brilliant information into the world…but during those 90 minutes, I felt like I’d heard it all before. The same stories, the same topics, the same sound bites…now don’t get me wrong, it was all still really interesting, and I made notes to digest later, but I didn’t come away thinking I had learnt anything new, anything that I could go away, research and get my teeth into. And it left me pondering about why…

Often, we know more than we think we do.

The reason I was disappointed was nothing to do with their talk – they were brilliant, as were their stories…my disappointment was all to do with me. I often find myself underplaying how much knowledge I have built up over the past 20 or so years that I’ve spent in employment, in education, talking to others and making connections, learning from others, being curious and researching topics that have piqued my interest…the topic that were spoken about on that stage are ones that I know intimately…through learning, experiences and teaching…so, did I learn something on Wednesday night at the talk with Steven Bartlett and Simon Sinek? Yes, I did. I learnt that you must cultivate belief in yourself, while also keeping yourself open to learning from others, not relying on them to introduce you to a new world, but to give you seeds of information that you can use to reflect on, do research, and find your own pathway…

Like I said, these 2 are brilliant and the way they managed to hold their conversation whilst keeping up interaction and engagement with the audience was a huge lesson in itself! I did take notes (of course I did, it’s me – sorry to the lady next to me as I scribbled away!) and I wanted to share my reflections with you:

Sometimes people don’t want to be helped out of the mud.

Simon talked about Steven’s constant desire to fix things…to jump in and offer solutions when people come to him with a problem. Have you ever experienced that from the other side? (not with Steven I don’t expect, but just generally!) You go to your friend with a problem and have a rant…when they jump in and try and fix it, how does it feel? Sometimes it’s what we want, but sometimes we just want them to sit in the moment with us. To be there, without judgement and just ‘be’ with us. How do we know what that person wants? Ask. Simple but makes all the difference.

For those of you who have done some coaching with me, you’ll know that ‘dancing in the moment’ is part of my approach – finding out what you need and moving with you in it.

Great leadership and great followership are the same.

This.

I have a masters in leadership studies and for years I taught leadership at the Officer training school for the Royal Air Force. To be great at either, Leadership and Followership work together. For years, we were only interested in leadership BUT, how do leaders get better? Through feedback, through constructive challenge, through radical candor…and don’t even get me started on psychological safety (the link takes you to my blog on this). Simply put, leaders, work with your teams, get to know them, find out what motivates them, build a team culture in which you can leverage honest and open feedback loops to improve, both as a leader and a follower.

Random note – it’s funny how the universe listens – on my way home on the train (at 2230), my neighbour got on as he’d been at an event in London. He’s currently on a course, had recently written an assignment and happened to have a copy of it with him. Knowing how much I love the topic, he asked if I would like to read it…of course, I said yes…and so he pulled it out of his bag and handed it over…the topic? A critical examination of the relationship between followership and strategic leadership. Yep, that happened.

Uncertainty is harder than negativity.

This one really hit a nerve. When I was in the military, I went through a period where I was surrounded by toxic leadership, had a break down in my mental health, and was in a constant fog of negativity. But still I stayed. For years. Because (in my head) the uncertainty of what came after the military was harder than what I was currently experiencing.

I see this so often with those I work with – amazing women who are stuck in their past stories but the uncertainty of what the next chapter looks like stops them from taking the leap. In all of my coaching and training, I use my A.C.E. framework to help individuals work through this process of unpicking uncertainty, highlighting fears and working through them.

Analyse - Your past decisions, your stories, your lessons, you dreams, goals, values (and more.

Create - Your next chapter, so that you succeed on your terms, with your goals, and with your values underpinning the direction you go.

Embed - Make those dreams reality. We work through the steps and implement them to keep moving you into that new chapter.

More about the work I do soon…but another point Simon made that I fully agree with – the more we can rely on other people, the better it gets.

As I finish this blog, there was something that was said in the talk that reaffirmed my whole purpose for carving out this new chapter, for leaving the military and then the corporate world to jump into the life of an entrepreneur…and it was to do with my core value of connection.

As someone who started their journey into education with a degree in psychology, I have revisited Maslow and his hierarchy of needs throughout the last 20 years in various courses (I even now teach it as an APMG Change Management instructor!), BUT, Simon said (yes, I actually said that) that connection should be on the bottom of Maslow’s triangle. I’m not going to expand on that as it would take pages…but if you haven’t heard of Maslow and his hierarchy of needs, let that be your seed of information for further research. Suffice to say that I wholeheartedly agree.

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts so please feel free to leave a comment or even email me at zoe@zoepoulton.com