Synergy IQ: 0:01

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Daniel Franco: 0:20

Hi there synergisers and welcome back to another episode of The creating synergy podcast. My name is Daniel Franco and today we had Mr. Alain Hunkins on the show, who is our first international speaker on the podcast, who's all the way from Massachusetts in the USA. Alain is the CEO of the Hunkins Leadership Group, a Forbes contributor, author of The cracking the leadership code, and TEDx speaker who spends his days helping high achieving people become high achieving leaders. Over his 20 year career, Elon has worked with over 2000 groups of leaders in 25 different countries. His clients include Walmart, Pfizer, Citigroup, genuine electric, State Farm Insurance, IBM, General Motors, and Microsoft just to name a few. In addition to being a leadership speaker, a consultant, a trainer and a coach. Alain is the author of Cracking the leadership code, the three secrets to building strong leaders, which was endorsed by leadership luminaries such as Daniel Pink, Jim Kouzes, and Barry Posner, and Marshall Goldsmith. On top of all this, he is a faculty member of the Duke Corporation of education, which was ranked number two worldwide in 2019. By Financial Times on its list of customized executive education programs. And plans exceptional writing has also been featured in The Fast Company, Incorporated, Forbes chief executive chief learning officer and Business Insider. Before the podcast, I actually sat down and actually read Alain's book cracking the leadership code, and I can honestly say it was an absolute fantastic and extremely practical guide on leadership. There was so many pearls of wisdom that I empower all leaders and aspiring leaders to rate you will most definitely learn something new that will take your leadership level to the next height. In the episode we deep dive into what is allowed mean when he talks about the leadership crowed, the three C's of leadership and connection, communication and collaboration, the importance of being a consistent leader, how to become a better communicator and building a great culture of communication. I also posed the question to learn about can an entrepreneur think about rapid growth and bring their best leadership to the table to which he gave an exceptional response to we challenged the meaning of success and discussed what leadership will look like coming out of the pandemic? Thanks again Alain for coming on the show. And connecting with some stranger on the other side of the world. It really was appreciated. I know you're all absolutely gonna love this chat. And if you'd like to learn more about some of the other amazing leaders that we've had on the creating synergy podcast, then be sure to jump on our website at Synergy.iq.com. Today you are check us out at the creating synergy podcast on all the podcast outlets. Cheers. Excellent. Welcome back to the creating synergy podcast. My name is Daniel Franco, your host and today all the way from Massachusetts in the US. We have Alain Hunkins on the show. Welcome.

Alain Hunkins: 3:41

Thank you, Daniel. I'm really excited to be here with you today.

Daniel Franco: 3:44

I am just going to let you know that I am very nervous. This is our first international podcast. So thank you very much for agreeing to come on the show you are world renowned, and very well known by your your Forbes writing, you're got over 100,000 followers on LinkedIn, you've done a TEDx talk, you've also got your cracking the leadership code book, which is doing some amazing and wonderful things. So thank you very much for coming on the show.

Alain Hunkins: 4:14

Oh, it's my pleasure. And I think that I get to talk to you from yesterday. It's even more.

Daniel Franco: 4:19

It's very true. It's very true. Yeah, two different days. We're talking on two different days which is quite amazing. What time is it over there at the moment?

Alain Hunkins: It is 6: 4:29

23pm Thursday evening,

Daniel Franco: and we are 9: 4:34

50 on a Friday morning. So that is it's very, very exciting. Now I've I've been listening to your book actually on Audible I'm about 28 minutes from the from the finish. haven't quite got to the end yet and nice hurdles or goodness right at the end of the book, but you must be very proud. It is an amazing book very, very practical. I believe that I'm listening through it and there's some pearls of wisdom, just things just ticking off in my head going, Oh, I could be doing more of that or I should be more of that. So you've had some greats like Dan Pink Marshall Goldsmith, Barry Posner, Jim Kouzes all endorsed it. So firstly, kudos well done. It's it's

Alain Hunkins: 5:20

very much. Thank you. It's been a labor of love.

Daniel Franco: 5:23

So want to ask you about the the book specifically, like the title in itself is cracking the leadership code, which really connected with me, especially because I'm a lover of all things, Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code. So that struck my fancy very early. But the one thing I want to do I want to ask is, Does every individual have their own code? Like, is there a code for each leader?

Alain Hunkins: 5:54

Interesting. So I don't think there's a code for every leader, I think the real challenge, and the book gets into this in quite quite some depth is the code is in every person that you would hope to lead. That's right, that is the code to crack is there is in fact, this most recent Forbes article that just came out today, I was interviewing a CEO of a company called CEM tech. And it's such a high tech company, they do semiconductors. And one of the things the CEO shared was that we can't have one size fits all solutions. And let's face it, humans, like simplicity, we like heuristics rules of thumb, like, oh, when you're doing this, you should just do that. And that'll work and everything is fine. And that was only option two. And if it was only that easy, then everyone would be a great leader. And again, if you're listening to this, think of all the leaders you've ever worked with, how many have been exceptional, how many have been horrible, and probably most of them have been somewhere in between. And so it isn't so much that we're going to crack this code of like, if you just do this, you will now go down the Golden Path happily ever after. As a leader, it's more of a question of leading other humans is a lot of work. And there is no one size fits all solution. However, there are a set of fundamental principles. And then when you apply them, and look at the feedback that you get, as you apply those different principles, then you can adjust and tailor your Code Cracking as it were, so that you can achieve greatness in others. And this is I think, one of the important distinctions, as you think about this idea, which is, there is a huge difference between being a high performer and facilitating high performance and others and what leaders have to be intensely curious about his others. As opposed to going, I'm in charge. This is about me. This is about my ego. This is about my status, my title, my position, my power. No, you have this role, so that you can serve others, and then you can unlock whatever greatness might be in them. And by them, unleashing that, guess what, you get the kudos as well. So that's where I'd go around this idea of can you crack the leadership code?

Daniel Franco: 8:09

Yeah, it's an important point you make, I mean, what we see in today's society is the most technically advanced, humans get promoted into the, into the leadership roles. So technically advanced and high performing from a technical aspect, they end up in these leadership positions. Therefore, they're, they're almost set up to fail, because they haven't got that skill set in leading people, nor do they understand that, to create a high performing team, the artist needs to be moved away from them as a high performer. And, you know, open the pathway for everyone else to be a high performer doesn't

Alain Hunkins: 8:50

kick. The thing about that, that is so insidious, is the fact is you if you are that high performer, you've been getting strokes all along the way for this so you have cultivated these strengths, you develop these certain muscles, to a such a fine tuning place, that they have worked for you. So the idea of jettisoning all of what's working for you and pick up a whole other set of muscles and exercises that have frankly, probably atrophied if ever were developed. Who wants to do that, right? I mean, I don't know about you, but like, I'll give you an example. Like I go to the gym relatively often. And I tend to fall into rest, like I do the things that I'm good at because they feel better when someone says, oh, you know, you should do Bulgarian split squats. No, no, first of all those I've tried that once a night they're painful and I can't I need is a big biceps. That's what I need. Yeah, whatever it might be. So the thing is, you know, we are creatures of habit, and that works well in certain closed cases, but it does not work well for making the transition from being a high performer to being a high performing leader.

Daniel Franco: 9:56

It doesn't so I want to like specifically Talking about the code again, if you are a leader and you've and you've, you're in a position that you've potentially cracked the code, you've hit high performing. And then you get promoted, and you go into a new team. Is it research into what is the next code for that team? Or is it just continue the same trait? Like, do you have to adjust every team? every industry, every department, whether it's engineering versus HR, this is it like, What is your thought process around that?

Alain Hunkins: 10:30

Yeah, I think you do have to adjust to a certain level, the good news is you don't have to completely throw out the baby with the bathwater in this situation, in that there's certain fundamental principles that are going to apply. And again, I coach and work with leaders in every single industry, you can imagine. So this is fairly, I've discovered over the years, this is fairly industry agnostic. And so as you are shifting to a new team, you're gonna have a new culture, you're gonna have new individuals on the team, if you're shifting to different industries, you're gonna have different makeups of how people think, what are their priorities, what's important, what stands out for them, that will all shift for sure. However, what we have found is that, and this is through the research and also through my own kind of field practice and research, is there are three fundamental, I'll call them meta skills that need to be in place in order to create, ultimately, high performance results in the people that you're leading. And those three meta skills are connection, number one, because connection is all about human to human relationship, because at its core leadership is a relationship between a leader and someone who chooses to follow. So you've got to create connections, number one, number two, is what are you doing to create clear communication. And the goal of that is to create common understanding. And so certain things are gonna foster clear communication, certain things are gonna get in the way, understanding is more challenging that looks in fact, I oftentimes coach leaders and say that the default setting for human communication is misunderstanding. So assume whatever you're going to say your message will not be understood the way you want it to be. So what you need to do to make sure it is, so you've got number one, connection number two, communication. The third one is around collaboration. So there are certain things that you can do as a leader, again, industry agnostic, that will foster a culture or an environment where people can thrive. And there's certain things that you do that is going to make a mediocre culture. And those transcend different industries. And I know because I've had to lead and train and work with people, you know, 1000s of people and hundreds of industries. And so what you find is, what works and take what works and then start to thin slice and recognize the patterns. And this book is really a distillation of so many of those different tools and tips that you said super practical things that people can do in order to lead with anyone anywhere.

Daniel Franco: 12:53

Yeah, it is, I really, really love the way you have broken it down into that connection, communication and collaboration. You using the same letter at the start of each word definitely makes things much easier for people to remember the Triple C method. The connection pace is the pace which i i was really honing in on. And I felt that the consistency part that you that you talked about, and being consistent as a leader, I've never even thought about it. I had never even it never even crossed my mind that consistency. And when I say I hadn't crossed my mind to be an actual thing, like I knew you had to sort of follow some sort of, you know, some sort of rulebook or guideline or so people can there is some sort of autonomy, but to be consistent. Can you explain your thought process on what consistent means and why it is? So it is so important, especially given the fact that there are so many variables that you face as a leader day to day? How consistency can get thrown out?

Alain Hunkins: 14:00

Sure. So one of the things that we talk about in the section on connection around leaders, is that one of the things that creates a sense of we'll call it psychological safety in the people that you lead, is consistency. And that is a subset of credibility, in fact, is when you show up, knowing like, I know, okay, Daniel is the way Daniel is on a regular basis and does certain things it makes it makes me relax. And obviously, the flip side of that is if you show up one way one day, and then show up completely different other way, like what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to follow? Because part of following and this is this is interesting. I don't know if you've ever do ever take any acting classes in your life, Daniel,

Daniel Franco: 14:45

if you've seen me act, absolutely not. No. All right. Well, I went to

Alain Hunkins: 14:49

I went to drama school years ago. So it's a little known fact I actually have a Master's in Fine Art three years and an acting conservatory and one of the most basic exercises which kind of gets spoofed a lot of times, is called the mirror exercise, right. And so the idea that mirror exercises, two people stand there and one person sort of initiates a movement and the other person tries to follow it as though they're in a mirror. So if you think about it, if you're leading in the mirror exercise, you want to, if you want someone to be able to successfully mirror you, you have to be consistent about where you're going. If I start jumping around, no one can follow that. And so part of consistency creates this safety and this clarity of, Oh, I see where we are. And I see where we're going next. And so around credibility, there's some things that really stand out. In terms of building consistency. Most one, the first one is super obvious. It's showing up on time, right. So if you consistently show up at the meeting is eight o'clock, and you are there ready to go at eight o'clock, boom, that says something about you, if you consistently show up late, that says something about you and people start and again, we don't know the reason. And we don't need another reason, because again, humans love shortcuts. And part of the assumptions we make is what psychologists call the halo effect. That is, if you are dependable and show up on time, people also think that your diligent hard worker may or may not be true, what we know is that you're showing up on time. But there is this halo effect that starts to come into play when we start being consistent in certain ways. And I was just talking to a leader that I coach, and he was saying how, when he shows up to the office, he got some feedback from some of the people is that pretty much he walks in in the morning from the elevator to his office, and he kind of gets in his office closes the door, and they don't see him all day. And so he has been working consistently on changing that habit of as he comes in, to walk through the office and to stop. At every point, he says I got to remember it only is taking me five minutes of time. But to stop and say, Hey, Daniel, good morning, how are you? How was your night, how was your evening, just to build some human connection relationship. It doesn't take a lot of time. But it's this consistency. And if you think about this principle of consistency and take it out of leadership, but just across the board in human performance, if you want to retire with money in your bank account, everyone talks about the magic of compound consistent investing, right? So every month, you're putting away a little bit of money. If you want to be an Olympic athlete, you have to go and train every day you don't go, I'm going to go two days this week, and then take five days off and do it. Again, I think about consistency across the board in every endeavor of humanity. Consistency is so important to growth and development. So that's where I'd start with consistency

Daniel Franco: 17:32

is such an important point, what's going through my head is is I run my own business, right? We're a management consulting firm. If you want to pigeonhole us, we do very similar work shirts to the liking of yourself. We work with companies and leaders all around. But But running your own business. We're about 20 odd, strong now. And you when working, and I'm talking really this is from my own personal perspective, you have that trade off between client and team member that you know, and so some certain clients can only meet in certain times. And when you've got a consistent meeting booked in at that, at that, at that stage, there's the consistency need to be day in day out at the exact same time, or is it we want to have a meeting, that meeting may get shifted. But we're very much going to have that meeting on that day. What is What is your thought person? And we are getting into semantics. But yeah, so

Alain Hunkins: 18:33

consistency doesn't mean daily consistency, unless that's your agreed upon expectation. And so I think what is most important, and this is another thing I coach leaders, I say this sentence at least three times a week, human beings are very good at many things. reading minds is not one of them. Yeah. And so one of the things we want to do as leaders is we want to make our implicit assumptions explicit, like how many of us listening right now have had the experience? I know I've had this experience where I you know, I've worked for many bosses in my life. And I used to have these one on one meetings scheduled. And somehow they always get pushed off. Like, oh, we have an important client, meaning you understand, right? And of course, there's a part of me understands. But there's the part of me that's going this is the third time you've rescheduled the same meeting. And so do I trust that leader just a little bit less? Absolutely. Do I understand why they're doing it? Absolutely. So the trade off here is as a leader, what is the cost and benefit around this? Now what I have found, you know, when I first started running my own business, I used to be like, Ah, it's a client, what time do you want to meet? I'll do that. You know, what I found? The clients are people and if I can't meet now, I will find a time to make it work. And so I think something for us to consider is where are our priorities. There's a time and a place to be client focused, but there's definitely a time and a place to be colleague or team member focused. And we have to understand the clients ultimately are the ones that pay the bills, but without team members, it's just going to be me running my solopreneur. Ship. And so there's that's why there's no one hard and fast rule around this. But the key is to consider what's going on. And the other thing is also, if I, let's say, for example, because look, it's this is not perfection, but it's around what is the principle? The principle is consistency works better than not? Are there times that I need to renegotiate agreements? Absolutely. But when I do so, can I be as conscientious and as thoughtful as possible? So, hey, this has come up. This is why this is how I'm feeling. Will this work for you? Do you understand? You know, as opposed to, here's the thing that really will take people off, and I'll just share an example. So I was asked, Hey, I was actually booked in, could you do these two days of work for this client? And it was November, let's say, 11th, and 12th? Sure. So I agreed to that. Well, somewhere along the way, the scope of the project changed. And it became sort of a two day thing of work, it became a one day thing of work. But no one stopped to tell me. And then suddenly, like, oh, yeah, no, this is one day of work. And so it's actually so utilized to only get paid for one day of work. There was never any, hey, we're changing this, Hey, there's an impact on you, hey, does this still work for you? Because here I am in this place, I'm a freelancer Am I coming in to do this or not. And to me, that just comes down to respect, right, it's comes down to respecting the individual, respecting that their time is valuable, their energy is valuable, their commitment is valuable. And I'm treating them as a peer as opposed to it right in object that you are a human resource to do my bidding. You know, it's a minute amazing how much of our language in organizational life still comes from this industrial age, human resources where we think of people as interchangeable parts. And you'll remember in the book I write about this quite a bit, is that this that was the mindset of the Industrial Age mindset where literally, management and leadership was the brains and did all the thinking. And if you were labor, the employee, it was your job to basically shut up and do as you're told. And that is not the world that we live in. And unfortunately, too many leaders are living out that inherited, industrial age, leadership legacy that has existed for too long, and frankly, makes for really poor leadership and 2021 and beyond.

Daniel Franco: 22:15

Absolutely, and you do touch on the old school, you know, inverted commas old school leadership style, the various Thor, Thor Torian approach to say, Rotarian, yeah. I've never get that word. Big words don't work for me. The the approach of that of the old school type leadership, what is your thoughts of that moving forward? Because it really when you talk about connection, the bad approach, just as does not work in today's day and age, does it?

Alain Hunkins: 22:50

No, it doesn't work at all doesn't work at all. And particularly, it doesn't work for people. Who are we'll call I'm generalizing here. But for millennials and Gen Z in the workplace, which by the way, they're the majority of the workforce. Now, the value system has changed, right? So the idea is that basically, old school leaders was command and control, I am the commander in chief, I will tell you what to do. And your job is to do it. And don't question Do as I say, because I'm the boss. And that's why that only worked to a certain extent, when thinking back to the industrial age, when basically you look at supply and demand and basic economics, where you had massive amounts of supply of labor. And so the demands were, you know, what, if you don't want this boring job, I got 10 people outside that will take it for you. Right. And also, we didn't have the transparency and information technology. We had no, LinkedIn, we had no glass door, we have no indeed, we had none of the tools to go, where might the grass be greener? who's treating their employees better? Where do I want to work? And also, expectations were quite different back then. So our values as human beings have shifted, we expect to find meaning and purpose. And that is a common conversation for everyone to have these days. The number one thing research LinkedIn found recently, number one reason people say they would leave their job is the inability to learn and grow. And I can tell you 50 years ago, learning and growing and your job, no, it was it was a job. It was a paycheck. And that was the factor. But we expect so much more our expectations have gone through the roof. And not just as employees, but as people. You know, just think about, you know, you have this amazing, you know, before we went on air, we were talking about the internet bandwidth in Australia, and just, and just, you know, like the fact that you and I are sitting literally around the planet from each other right now. And if the internet goes down for half a second, we're all up in arms, like, oh, I can't believe this. You know, like the amazingness of technology. So yeah, they are first world problems for sure. And so I think, as we are moving forward, the reason that people still default to command and control leadership is because of a second they're lazy. It's a lot easier. And I'll give you an example. Because I recommend I'll give you an example from my own life. So I think, you know, a lot of what we talk about around leadership comes down, you can look at a lot of the same analogies in parenting, right? Because in some ways, what you're trying to do is foster the growth of people. In this case, it's your children. So I have two kids, my kids are now my son is 17, my daughter's 14. So I'm going to take you back a few years, my son must have been about four or five years old, and he's going to preschool. And I it was my day to bring him to preschool. And, you know, generally, I was trying to get him out of the house to get him there on time. And I know that it takes x amount of, you know, it took me let's say, 15 minutes to get him dressed, get his shoes on and go, right. Well, on this particular day, it's raining. And if you know a little kids and rain boots and rain, gear and rain, everything, it took a lot longer. And as we are going and I'm seeing we're getting later and later, I'm the one getting stressed. And I'm the one who started to raise my voice like Come on Alex, we got to come on, get your get your get your coat on, get your boots, come on, we gotta go. And before you know it, and I'm getting upset. And again, this is all my stuff. This has nothing to do with him except for the fact that I'm now heightened voice let's call it but it is I'm yelling at him basically get let's get going. It's not my finest parenting moment, I will confess, we have so before you know it in this, I have a little boy who is bawling in tears. And I'm just like doing what I can I like him picking them up in a ball and basically scooting them to the car. It felt like one of the big epic parenting failures, right? It's felt terrible. And I call my wife to debrief the whole thing. And she said, great. So did you notice it was raining? Yep. Did you budget any extra time to put the put his stuff on? Nope. So here it was. So why didn't I do it? Because I was lazy, right? I didn't. When I say lazy is I wasn't thinking big picture. I wasn't being systemic and strategic. And I think as leaders, we have to realize, Wait, we can't just say you got to do this because I said so. Because that's the shortcut, and the shortcuts don't work. And so thinking about the people that you would want to lead. And I think ultimately followership is a choice, right, because people can show up. But what you need them to show up for isn't just to do a job. I mean, pretty much these days, anything that a human is doing involves some kind of creative problem solving, right? They have to clarify what's the problem, come up with a bunch of ideas, pick the best idea and implement the solution. Everything else is being automated, right? By a computer program, or an app or an algorithm. Software is doing all of that repetitive manual work, you've you've already offshored that stuff. And so what you need humans to do is be human. And so create conditions where humans can thrive and understand what are the conditions where humans can thrive, and that they need safety, they need certain amount of energy, they need purpose, like we talked about before, they need to take ownership and autonomy and have some freedom to how they do their work. If you try to just do as I say you are setting up yourself with a massive recipe for failure.

Daniel Franco: 28:05

Absolutely. Do you think that it's laziness or the lack of knowhow? Oh,

Alain Hunkins: 28:11

yeah. I mean, it's both right. And so I mean, when I say lazy, that's sort of a catch all for Yeah, I am too in the weeds, I am too head down to too much blinders on my head too myopic to actually step up and actually understand my role. You know, as we said before, is my role is not to be the high performer. My role is to facilitate high performance and others, this isn't about me doing more, it's about me doing differently. And so I think it really what it comes down to is people have to recognize a laziness is I will say laziness is defaulting to those old patterns that we talked about before the high performer patterns like oh, this is what I would do if I were you, I would just push through this well, you're not me and just telling me to do that that way. isn't gonna work?

Daniel Franco: 28:59

The the old school lady so you're obviously working as a consultant freelancer. Oh, Pacey going, Yeah, with ladies in coaching. And not only on how to become a better leader, but how to build and create better cultures? Yes, if one of those old school leaders came to you, we've all been there, where they've come to you and they said, Allah, I want to, I want to change the culture within my business. Everyone, he complains, everyone else, it's everyone else's fault. Go and do Alon and fix this place. And I want to done in six months. Great. First question. Would you accept that as a piece of work? And second, would what would you do? If you were to accept that as a piece of work?

Alain Hunkins: 29:46

Great. Well, before I would, at this point, we're not even close to saying yes or no, I would ask a whole ton of clarifying questions up front. So when you say the culture is broken or not working, tell me what do you mean by that? Right and then I would also We'll be listening to their language as they're describing it. Because the way you just briefly described that Daniel, there is what I was hearing was there was a lot of culture of blame. It's like, they're the problem. They're the fault. Okay? If someone's bringing me in, they're in a position of leadership of authority of insolence. Great, what are you doing? What are the norms you've created, whether or not norms that you've tolerated and accepted to create this culture, because every system, I'll steal this line from slight variation from Peter Drucker, every system is perfectly designed for the results it achieves. So you know, what your culture is perfect for what you're getting? The question is, if you want different results, what do you need to change upstream? And what are you willing to do first? And are you willing to do the hard work of being the ambassador being the model and being the champion, to change this culture? And, you know, because look, everybody wants to change something, whether it's on a personal level, I want to lose 10 kilos, you know, whatever, you know, run, run a five minute mile, it's like, it's great that you want that, but what are you willing to do and put in the work to get the result, and ultimately, it comes down to work. And there are ways to do this, that do work. And there are ways that don't, but I can tell you just that, you know, basically, I've seen this happen way too many times, throwing money at a problem is not going to fix it. telling other people that they need to fix it is not going to fix it. I'm usually what it takes on a certain level somewhere, is there's got to be a conversation that has enough vulnerability, where people come to what we'll call one of my colleagues, Tasha Europe, because when wonderful book called Insight, she calls these Wake Up Calls, right? So if you think about I assume US and Australia, if you drive to the side of the road, do we call them rumble strips? Do you have those there? Where you hit the side of the road? And like the road? The tires? Yeah, yes. Weed? Yeah. Where do you call them rumble

Daniel Franco: 31:54

swinging all around those strips. couldn't even tell you it. The road verge potentially is what we wrote.

Alain Hunkins: 31:59

Yeah, we call them rumble strips. Right. So the idea is that the rumble strip is feedback. It's a wake up call. Yeah. And the thing is, a lot of people never change until they have their hit bottom moment. Some people call it if I may, quote, The Oh, shit moment. Like, we can't do this this way anymore. Right? And so the question is, how bottom do you need to hit before you have your personal wake up call, whether that's organizationally, personally, professionally, etc. And if you're really serious about changing the culture, you have to think what am I willing to do? And not only what am I willing to do? What am I willing to no longer tolerate and stop doing? And what am I willing, because, you know, that means having some courage sticking your neck out, potentially being unpopular. And it's tough, because, you know, we're human. And so I've talked to so many people like, Well, I would speak up, but it's, you know, it's, it's a career limiting move. And again, how many organizations say we want our people to be innovative. But if you look at the reward structures, people are much more likely to stick with the status quo, because there's no real penalty for doing the same old, same old. Whereas if you try something different, and it fails, that could be a career limiting move. So we have to really ask, what are we doing, for example, as leaders to embrace failure, quote, unquote, failure, right, as learning and lessons and some cultures do that way better than others? And some people say they do that, but they don't do it at all. So this is tricky. You've asked a really complicated, interesting question.

Daniel Franco: 33:29

Well, it's kind of a trick question. Because first and foremost, those old school type leaders wouldn't come to someone to help fix that. So but but in the same process, what I'm hearing in that in your response there was, was really about I mean, self awareness as a leader, and yeah, growing that level of self awareness, there are some leaders who are very self aware, can take on constructive feedback and learn from it and grow and improve and do all the above. There are some that are just so oblivious to their own, at all, their own position, and what it actually means to be a leader, and then how they, as a leader can influence their writing, we all know it all starts at the top right, if the if the leader is leading by example, then we generally see that ripple down as a rule of thumb throughout the organization. How do what are some of what some of your advice for for leaders in particular, who where can we improve on our self awareness and how, you know, what are some sort of tricks and tips and ways that we can improve? Sure, more self aware more vulnerable later?

Alain Hunkins: 34:44

Yeah, well, I think you've named something so important here around self awareness, you know, so if anyone here listening has studied emotional intelligence, you'll know the basic foundational competency of emotional intelligence is self awareness, which is the ability to reflect inwards and go Hmm, what am I thinking? What was I feeling? How am I acting, some basic things like that, which, like you said, many people don't have. So I think the first step in this process is the willingness to go, I've got room for improvement, and I want to improve, right? That's number. And that's, in fact, that is the biggest step, you know, we have a line in the coaching business, which is, you can't coach someone who's not coachable. You know, just like I don't think you can lead someone who's not lievable. And so the first thing is, if you really want to develop yourself, you have to be open to changing which is, you know, shifting from this, we might call a fixed mindset, whereas this belief is like I am, who I am, and I can't change versus a growth mindset, which is, all these are skills and talents, including emotional intelligence and self awareness. These are things that I can learn and develop, and for whatever reason, I have not yet developed them. I want to do so. So going back to your question, what is the first place to go? What's the tip? What's the first place to do that? Ask other people for feedback. Because, and I love this quote, this comes from Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize. He's a psychologist who wrote Thinking Fast and Slow. And he says, right, humans are blind to our own blindness, right. And you think about how we are notoriously biased. So how you think you show up is not how you show up, it's how you think you show up. Much more useful is to get a whole bunch of data points. And maybe that's a 360 degree assessment of some kind with a number of people. So you get more than a sample size of one is no one getting a series of questions, you know, how do I show up in this way in terms of connection, or communication or collaboration? And some simple questions like, do I show up on time to meetings? Do you feel like you are listened to rather than spoken to? Do we end meetings with follow up action steps like you can get some real feedback? What else would you share it whatever the assessment is, now you have some data points to go to. And also, by the way, when you are going and trying to, and you can do this formally with an actual 360 degree assessment. Or you can just ask people informally and say, hey, I want to get better. What are some things that you think I'm doing? Well, and what do you think things I could be working on to make things even better in the future? Notice by saying even better in the future, I've not said that gives people permission to talk about it, as opposed to what do I do poorly? Because people I know, especially if you're my boss, I don't know if I can answer that question. What can I be doing even better? Great. And make sure that when you're getting your sample size of people who give you feedback, don't just ask your mom, don't just ask you for your puppy, like, ask people who will share with you the unvarnished truth because that is where the gold is, right? Again, if you think about what makes the best fertilizer, yes, you know, right. Okay, go to that place, and get all the great fertilizer, because that's what's going to help you grow. You want to hear the good, the bad, and especially the ugly, because like, oh, gosh, I tell you, I mean, I'll give you an example. Daniel, I mean, earlier in my career, you know, we were talking earlier about, do we put colleagues or customers focused, so I used to facilitate these large training programs for you know, literally, sometimes over 2000 people. And I'd have a team of Support Facilitators working with me, sometimes up to 70, or 80, support facilitators. And I was, in some ways, the manager on duty trying to like, basically lead them. But my focus, especially at the beginning, was so client centric, that I would literally like, like, go there, go there, do this do that like and people I got the feedback is, you know, Linda does want to work with you anymore, because she finishes your sessions, and she's in tears. And of course, I'd never seen that, like me, how could I know, I didn't mean that. It's like, you know, what Linda was in tears, I did something to create that I have to own, that some percentage of what's going on in this experience is due to me. And so I can do I can deny it, I can justify it, I can blame somebody else I can say, You don't understand. I'm in the client facing business. That's my job that comes with the territory. But that doesn't solve anything. And so hearing that, and not just from Linda, but hearing that from numerous people that for me was a wake up call. That was my rumble strip moment of wow, that is not look, I'm trying to teach all these people these leadership principles, and I can't even practice them with my own team. Part of me was like, That's pathetic. So that was the wake up call for me, like, what can I do differently? And, you know, and as one of my colleagues said, about six months after I got some feedback, you okay, cuz it's like you got a brain transplant, like your whole personality on sessions is so different now you're way more relaxed, because I realized people were picking off my emotional aspect and if I was coming in, stressed and uptight and intense, that was contagious on the rest of the team, because the leader sets the tone. So these are the kinds of things that we want to be aware of and do something about So the number one tip, seek feedback.

Daniel Franco: 39:44

Absolutely. And then does that get wrapped up in yummy in the book you you spoke really intensely and quite a fair bit detail on empathy as a leader. So when when we seeking feedback Is it about how do we become much more empathetic? Also, sorry, as a precursor to seeking feedback, do we need to create that relationship? First? You know, you know, at what point can you start? You know, asking for feedback? No. Yeah, that the the trust might not be there.

Alain Hunkins: 40:24

Yeah, exactly. It's such a good point to bring up which is, you know, any of these tools, tips, techniques taken out of context can actually create more harm than good feedback being great. I want some feedback. Give me some feedback, Timeout, timeout, slowdown, bucko. Think about it, right. So what we want to make sure is that we have built relationships on the basis of credibility of trust and empathy. And that, you know, my best definition of empathy is showing people that you care about them and understand how they feel. And so those are in a borrow Stephen Covey's wonderful phrase on this, that is a result of deposits you make in the emotional bank account that you have with somebody else, right. And so, over time, showing people that you care about them, and as people not as just employee X, you know, Brand Manager, why, who actually care about them as a human being, you want to make sure that you are putting those deposits in early and consistently, often over time. Because for feedback to really be effective, you want that free flow of relationships, so that people feel that they can be honest with you. Because the level of trust is so established, they know that you actually want to hear it. And if you shortchange that empathy building process, you're going to have people go through the motions of this, and like anything else, it will fall flat.

Daniel Franco: 41:45

Absolutely, is the critical piece in empathy, the ability to listen, and put the ego aside and walk in other people's shoes. I mean, it is a behavior that is not very prevalent, in many ways. What is the what is your opinion on becoming more empathic? As a leader?

Alain Hunkins: 42:13

Yeah, there's a couple of big things. I mean, people hear it, they're like, oh, empathy, show people, you understand them and care how they feel. And most leaders go like, Oh, that makes sense. I get it. Got it. Good. Move on. I'll do that. I do that. I mean, well, that's great. And the research would show a wonderful piece of data on this one. So this was a study that was done by business solver. And they found they asked people, both CEOs and employees in an organization, how many of you believe that empathy is important in the organization? Right? 93% of people of course, of course, it's important. And they said to all the employees that included the CEOs, by the way, and then they went, alright, um, how many of you in your organizations believe that your CEOs, the same CEOs are empathetic 51% only fit, right? So there's this massive gap between what people intend I want to be empathetic, empathetic leader, and what they're doing. So if empathy is certainly easier understood than practiced, what are the things that get in the way in my research, and I write about more of these in the book, but I'll give you my top two barriers to being empathetic. Again, if we define empathy, as showing people that you understand them and care how they feel, in order to do that, number, one thing you need to do is you need to take time and slow down and park your own agenda and put it to this side. And take a little time, like you said, Daniel, and listen. And really listen with no expectation of this being an agenda item to check off of your list, right. And the challenge, of course, is we don't live in a world that moves at the speed of humanity. We live in a technological world that moves at the speed of light, the fact that you can have 300 emails, fill up your inbox in an hour or less, which has happened to you, I'm sure and to me. So our work world feels like it moves at the speed of light. Now, look, I am not here to poopoo, the idea of trying to drive for business results. In fact, many organizations have driving for results and might be listed as one of their core competencies, or maybe it's bias for action. I am not anti action, I'm not anti results whatsoever. However, there is a time and a place depending on what's going on, where you're going to need to slow down, right, you're going to need to listen and actually put people and relationships before tasks. And we can't always be in task mode. And so part of leadership wisdom is knowing there's a time and a place to go fast. And there's a time and a place to go slow. And what great leaders do is they have the wisdom to know which mode to be in at what time I one of my colleagues who studied growth mindset with Carol Dweck calls this the difference between being in the Learning Zone and the performance zone when we are in task performance mode. The fact is, when you slow down to get into the learning or relationship mode, you're not going to achieve as much. But you have to recognize what I'm doing right now is I'm investing, right is just like, you can't be harvesting results from this use the farming analogy, you can't be harvesting 12 months out of the year, there's a time where you have to plant and you have to invest in what you're doing to cultivate to fertilize to nurture, and human beings are organic matter, right, we have to do that. So that's number one. It's speed. Number two big thing that gets in the way of empathy is and you know, there is the fact is human beings with all of our emotional lives. Were pretty messy. Let's face it. Numbers are a lot neater and cleaner and tidier. It's funny. It's amazing to me, how many CEOs come from CFO backgrounds or accounting backgrounds? Right? It seems like there's an eye for business. And I think there's a reason that we love numbers in the business world because they are so crisp and clean and tidy. The fact is, they're consistent every single day, I can guarantee you that the number eight is always one more than seven and always one less than nine. How are you today? Eight? I'm eight. I was always eight, I will always be eight. How are you today? Daniel, God knows what you're gonna say? Who knows what's going on? What's happening? We don't know. And so a lot of people, especially people who have not been comfortable, especially people who have this strength around the analysis or the financial side, when it comes to the people side, they are so outside their comfort zone. So they downplay the importance of it. Maybe if we just pretend like it doesn't exist, we won't have to see it. Which is why for generations, and I don't know if you ever heard this growing up, but I certainly did in some of my first jobs, where people said, oh, feelings at work, we don't do that here. See, here, we have a check your feelings at the door policy, you don't actually bring your feelings to work, because this is work. Now what I love about millennials and Gen Z, they totally said What do you mean, that's ridiculous? And it is ridiculous. Because if you stop and think about it, you cannot check your feelings at the door. What would How could you what you end up doing instead, which is what many people do is they suppress their feelings at the door. And unfortunately, and there's been lots of research on this, most recently, the one that I saw was some studies by Deloitte turns out that 61% of people, this is in North America, so I can't speak for Australia, but I would think the numbers would be somewhat similar. 61% of people feel the need to cover their identities, in some ways when they come to work, that they don't feel safe actually being fully themselves. That because they somehow will be ostracized. And you think about it. Anytime you've shown up anywhere where you've had to put on that figurative mask. It is exhausting. It is drink because you can't be yourself. And so as a year, everyday

Daniel Franco: 47:55

people saying, I'm a different person at work than what I am in my real life. You know,

Alain Hunkins: 47:59

yeah, I was just, I was just talking to a fellow coach yesterday who's trying to move out of the corporate coaching world, she's like, you know, I just feel like, you know, working with corporate clients, I just feel like I can't bring my sense of humanity and like my fullness. And frankly, I think, I mean, that's what's needed today. And actually, the corporate world, and my experience is more receptive to that than ever before, because we're realizing, you know, the rules of the game have changed. And, you know, you look at what is it going to take to engage, to attract to retain new people recruit them. I mean, I'm sure you're dealing with this in Australia, too. We're calling it here's the great resignation us, you know, we've had more than 4 million people resigning from their jobs every month since April. And the fact is, the rules are changing, the values are changing, people are not willing to put up with a lousy work experience in the way they might have even two years ago. And so this means that human centered organizations and human centered leaders are in a moment of such a competitive advantage in the workplace,

Daniel Franco: 49:05

and embrace so many good points. I think the CFO becoming the CEO is definitely something that we hear a lot of here in Australia, it's almost to the point where, you know, one of our, like, our key client market is that the chief people officer, if that's the right term, or the head of Puritan culture or something like that, sure. And you'd almost categorically say, I'd almost categorically say that every single one of them that I speak to knows that they're really that that is really not the path to becoming the CEO, you have to move into ops or you have operations or so it's really strange, but then as the world is moving forward towards towards this more human centric design to be interesting to see if that does, it does change. But I want to go back to your point about the growth in a Carol Dweck, learning and then your colleague who talked about learning There's a time for learning and harvesting. And then there's a time for actually producing and you know, actually getting shit done right? Yeah, can you do both in tandem? Can you can't like, for me personally, I have, I believe I am able to get stuff done and move at it at a particular speed. But every day I am doing some sort of learning I am reading, I am listening to podcasts I am working on myself assessing myself, I'm doing some sort of meditation, whatever it might be mindfulness journaling all the above, right, as a way to continue to improve. Is it? Is it better to do one and specifically work on one like, one day a week? And, you know, six days a week go hard? Or like what is your thoughts?

Alain Hunkins: 50:50

Not necessarily. So I mean, I think you just kind of have proven the rule here, Daniel, which in fact is can you do both? In the, I would say, in the millisecond moment, you cannot do both. However, at the same time, right? If you think about it, just in terms of multitasking, you can't be doing something and then learning about it. However, what you can do is you can set an intention of, okay, I'm going to do this thing. And it's let's say it takes me an hour, or 10 minutes doesn't matter, any length of time, what I'm gonna do is I'm going to spend a little time on the backend reflecting how did it go? What did I learn? How can I apply what I learned and do it differently next time? Right. So which is all that whole self awareness piece? Now there? It sounds like what you've already done, Daniel, as you have already built in rituals and habits into your life, where you're consistently learning and doing other things. I think that so it becomes rather than an either or it's a both. And it's like, how can you basically embrace the idea of learning and performance. Because what I have found is if let's say, for example, you want to do something and then take a little bit of time to reflect on what you've done to learn from it to do it better. And to improve from it. The actual amount of reflection time doesn't have to be very big at all. Really what it comes down to is being intentional. So one of the things that is a big part of my business these days, is I run this 30 Day Leadership Challenge where we actually have people intentionally going through for 30 days just for a few minutes per day, like literally five minutes a day, setting an intention. That is how are you going to show up today to be a better connector or communicator or collaborate, it's all done via app, right? So it's all asynchronous. And then at the end of the day, they write what are three winds you had from today. And the winds can be big, they can be small, they can be personal, they can be professional, and just taking those five minutes a day of the self reflection. And what we're doing with the app is we're giving them external prompts to build a new habit, because most people on their own, some of us have a journaling practice. But if you don't, it's really helpful to have someone say here, write in this journal, here's a pen, go do it. So what we're doing is we're creating a structure for people to create their own prompts to become self reflective. I think ultimately, where we're all would be great if we could try to get there is how can we develop rituals of self reflection, self improvement, so that we can ultimately become more effective over time.

Daniel Franco: 53:13

I want to jump into the communication piece, there was a very large contingent of your writing in the book, cracking the leadership code about communication, there is something that I've I've been really pushing for for many, many years now. And you mentioned in your book is don't, you know, treat others the way you want to be treated, but treat others the way they want to be treated. And you bought and you actually reinvigorated the Carnegie pace of giving the fish the worm, which was yeah, I loved your analogy. So for those listening, in the book Alon talks about he loves strawberry ice cream, but when he wants to go fishing, he doesn't put strawberries and cream on the end of the hook, he has to put put a worm on the end of the hook. So it is it is a really excellent analogy. Can you talk to me about communication and our techniques as human beings in it we use the word lazy before I actually believe we as a human race have become really lazy with our communication there is this, the word should they should just know what I'm talking about there is the this expectation that everyone's on the same page is it's the expectation that people are seeing it from you know, or perceiving the same scenario. We've also had a previous person on the podcast who talks about you know, thinking about imagine you're on a street corner, right where one and there's a car accident in the middle of this T section and you're on one street corner and and the other person is on another street corner you both see the same thing but from different angles. Can you talk to us really about how come There is this perception that people should know what we are talking about. And how do we get better at that?

Alain Hunkins: 55:06

Yeah, so communicating well is so much harder than it looks right. And so the research on this is staggering around just how much misunderstanding and confusion goes on, or is a study in the UK of 4000 employees. And they found that you know, that they spent an average of 40 minutes per day trying to clarify unclear and confusing instructions, 40 minutes every day, five days a week. I mean, that's a lot of time just to clarify what's not making sense. So. So that made me think as I kept seeing, you know, why does it seem that confusion is more common than clarity, which obviously, it isn't, it goes back to the whole idea of if misunderstanding is the default setting. Why is that? It's because our human brain is notoriously biased. And as you described, with a four, intersection car accident. Basically, the problem is we live in our own heads, and we have a perfect view, right? We see living through our own heads experiencing our own experiences. 24/7 365 is what we know. However, nobody else has a seat in our own brain, if at best, they are sitting way up in the balcony, you know, behind a pole, and they get a very limited view. But we're like, why can't you see this, it's so clear and obvious to me. And so there's a number of different biases, which get in the way, the biggest of them is called the projection bias. And I'll give you a I'll tell you a story that really brings this to life. This is not a work. It didn't happen at work. But it's a classic story. I'm sure many people can relate to this one. So I live in Massachusetts. And for the story, you need to know that our house does not have a garage, but it has a driveway that is only wide enough for one car to drive up to it. Toward the end, it actually comes up to the house it widens out so you can park two cars back to back or side to side, I should say. And so my wife and I were a two car family. And so that means when guests come to visit us and they pull their car behind our car in the driveway, they're effectively blocking both the cars in because it narrows out. So anyway, a few years ago, we had our friends, Pam and Charlie came to visit us in Massachusetts from Washington, DC. And Pam had parked their car behind our cars, which is not a big problem. Because when I have to leave, I'd say can you move your car and we do a little card juggling and shuffling and then I'm on my way. So I they were visiting. And then it was actually the last day of their visit. I had to leave to go to the airport to travel to go and do a keynote speech. And I said, Pam, could you please move your car? And I need to go to the airport? And she said, where do you Let me park? I said just go and park your car in front of the house? She said, Sure. I said yeah, please go go park your car front of the house. You want me to do what? Park your car in front of the house. So Penn stops and looks at me kind of funny. And she gets this real loud voice. She says, You want me to park my car in front of the house? Is that right? I'm thinking I've just said this three times. Like what is your flippin problem was Pam. Right? And I said, Yeah. And she says, Okay, I will go and park my car in front of your house. And she goes off and like, what is that with Pam. So I get my suitcase and I put it in the trunk of my car and I get in the car and I back it you know, put into reverse and I start to slowly back out looking in the mirrors of the car looking checking the side mirror, checking the rearview mirror, and I'm starting to back down the driveway. And then all of a sudden something weird catches my eye coming back. Like what is that? What is it? What is that? I realize it's Pam's car. And you know where she's parked her car Daniel, she is parked her car in front of the house, I mean, literally as close to the house as you could get as in on the flower beds on the lawn in front of the house. And as I'm looking at this, like what the hell was she thinking? Isn't it obvious that when I say park your car in front of the house, the only thing I could possibly mean is park your car on the curb in front of the house. But Pam had taken my words literally like that's why she was doing this whole weird back and forth. And those were my warning signs that I completely missed. Because I'm just thinking what's going on? So this is the projection bias. And psychologists define the projection bias, as when you unconsciously assume other people have the same thoughts that you are, how could Pam be thinking anything other than what I'm thinking? Because that's what I mean? That's must be and so the projection bias is alive and well and living at work every single day. I'll give you a couple of examples of how you know it's happening. It's happens to you, it happens to people you work with. So when next time you catch yourself saying, Well, I sent the email, they know what they need, they know what to do. It's like you sent an email doesn't mean squat. Sending an email means you sent an email whether or not people read it, or they understood it whether they acted on it totally different, or doesn't senior leadership know what a stupid process is. No, they don't you do but no one else does. So anytime you catch yourself starting a sentence with things like well, don't they or they should or why can't they guess what? That is the projection bias and it is rampant. In the world, because, again, it makes life easier if we don't feel like we have to translate and speak other people's languages, I don't know if you've ever had the experience of learning a different language and going to that country for a while, and trying to speak in that language all day. But by the end of the day, I am exhausted, right, because like, Ah, so we don't want to we want to go, you know what, I think you speak my language, or at least close enough, let's just go, hence the laziness of this whole thing. So that is how we are wired. And we're not going to change our human neural tendencies anytime soon. So that means that we have to be vigilant as leaders, and I think this is a big part of our roles is to serve as a translator to accommodate all these different languages that are going on at the same time.

Daniel Franco: 1:00:45

Yes, spot on. And, and shout out to Pam, if you are listening.

Alain Hunkins: 1:00:49

Yeah. Love you. Love you. Love you.

Daniel Franco: 1:00:53

I'm just Hi, I'm interested. And this is a silly question. But were the flowers. Okay.

Alain Hunkins: 1:00:59

somewhere, somewhere, not? The flowers that got crushed by the tires? Were not. Okay.

Daniel Franco: 1:01:06

Yeah. And we see that, you know, and it's not only at work that you see, I mean, that scenario happen every single day in my life with my wife, right? Of course, this is classic, absolute expectation. They don't know exactly what she's talking about. How do you? How do you walk? What for me? My wife always says to me, how do you walk in the room and not see the mess? It's like, how do you walk in the room and see the mess? Like I'm, you know, yes,

Alain Hunkins: 1:01:34

I know. Exactly. I mean, it's great. Well, it's also it's also this gets back to culture, right? It's like are we are the product of our cultures and like your wife, or someone else could be my me or my wife, or anyone, is, if you've been told this, that becomes a value to you. And also, there probably was some kind of emotional trigger point along the way that if you don't see that mess, therefore, you become some kind of a bad person. And therefore there's this huge stock to the fact that you can just walk in the room and not just not see the mess, but be so nonchalant about it. Like, who are, you know, like, what are you from? Right? This is the this is the challenge. And so we have to realize different values for different people. I mean, I'll give you an example from my own marriage. Slightly different, right? So my wife grew up in Texas, her background is white, Anglo Saxon Protestant. Were very soft spoken, you never raised your voice anywhere in terms of like, if you were upset with somebody calm, measured, collected, if you can already tell me, I come from a family of New York Jews, right? And so it's like, if you're not shouting, you're not getting hurt. And so it was like one of these things the first time she heard me like, you're screaming, I'm like, I'm not screaming, what are you talking about? I'm fine. You want to hear screaming at you like, oh, my gosh. And so it's one of these things that, you know, we come from very different cultural styles, we come from very different conflict styles. We've had to work through these things over time.

Daniel Franco: 1:02:58

Yeah, he loud and clear. I come from an Italian family. So if you're not allowed us, you're not getting heard. It's yeah, it is very, very much. How do we build a culture of great communication then?

Alain Hunkins: 1:03:13

So great question. So if we think as a culture is the result of the some of the behaviors in the culture, so some of the things we want to do is, we want to make sure that we are putting certain stop gaps in place to make sure that we are minimizing missed understanding and misunderstanding. And by the way, those are two different things. By the way, I'll talk about these. So misunderstanding is when you said 18, I heard at Oh, wait, you said 18. I thought you said at No, no, he got it. Okay, that's that's misunderstanding. That's easy to catch relatively misunderstanding is, I'm having a meeting and you're in the meeting Daniel. And I'm like, we know, we're thinking about going and going to this different strategy with these customers. And you're thinking in your mind, I don't think it's a really good idea. But for whatever reasons, maybe it's psychological safety, you don't speak up. And so that never gets heard, because you never speak it. That is way more troubling. And that I think, is actually the bigger issue that's going on around communication is the fact that there's a lot of missed understanding. So all of which to say is what are things that we can do. So the first thing to avoid misunderstanding would be empathy, right to build that relationship to build the trust. So people feel safe to speak up and share their input. The next thing as a leader around that is to make sure if especially if I'm meeting in teams, let's say I have a team of eight people, I can't just have two or three people who are speaking up constantly, I have to go to the quiet ones and say, Daniel, we haven't heard from you. What are your thoughts on this and making sure or also, some people need 24 hours to reflect on something before they share their input, particularly introverts, or reflective processors. So if I'm showing up to meeting and saying hey, team was everything about Right now, I'm not giving those introverts the time to reflect. I'm shortchanging them. So I may want to put that question out. We're going to be talking about this tomorrow, please chew on this digest on this for 24 hours. And please come with your thoughts. So this is leadership, this is thinking about that. So that's one thing we can do to start to eliminate, missed understanding. Another thing that we can do that's really useful that I think it doesn't happen nearly enough. I call it asking for a receipt. If you think about this concept of receipts, so receipts, why do we have receipts in life, they're proof of a completed transaction. And in general, we use them in commerce. When you buy something, you can get a receipt. And the more important the transaction, the more you want to make sure you buy it, you get a receipt. So for example, if you go to your local convenience store and you buy a candy bar that costs you 85 cents, you may say, I don't need the receipt, it's fine. However, I can guarantee you, you and I will not buy a house and not get a receipt. Right? Because it is important. So here's the thing, how many of us have meetings where we've discussed a whole bunch of stuff, we may have even made some decisions? And then the meeting is over like great. All right, everyone. Great meeting. Thank you, as opposed to, before we finish that, hey, can we do a receipt check? Let's just go around. What does everyone committing to what are the actions we're doing? Let's do some clarification around our commitments. And so if you say, oh, yeah, well, I'm going to cascade this out to my team, we're going to like you are, oh, I thought I was going to do that. So suddenly, we have this opportunity to speak now. And catch that stuff before we all leave the centralized meeting, and then take whatever next subsequent actions might be. So by taking that time and asking for receipt, we can then clarify and make sure that we avoid any potential misunderstandings, because, look, if we don't do that one it up. And I'm sure you've experienced this Daniel, where you have the meeting and the meeting ends. And then maybe if it's in person, you go out to the watercooler and you and I are on by the court, like, what did you decide who decided who's doing what, right. And we had those like eight meetings, after the meetings, eight different versions of reality. And because also people feel safer doing it one on one, as opposed to speaking up. So as leaders, we need to create an environment where people feel safe speaking up all the time. So these are some main tenants to being able to reduce and minimize and eliminate misunderstanding and missed understanding. So you can have more effective communication in your work environment.

Daniel Franco: 1:07:24

Amazing, amazing. I really want to just ask I wouldn't be I wouldn't, I wouldn't be happy with myself if I didn't ask a question about entrepreneurship. And ladies. Sure. Yeah, the two the two, is it impossible for a great leader to focus on rapid growth? And leadership? If you're in that entrepreneurship phase, you're in a startup phase? It's about rapid growth, rapid growth, rapid growth? Can you bring your best leadership to the party as well?

Alain Hunkins: 1:07:57

Oh, I think absolutely you can, I think it's a question of what you're trying to get accomplished in the timeframe with the resources that you have. It's a question of size, and in scale and scope of what you're doing. So if you're looking for rapid growth, I mean, the fact is, you know, I work on I coach, I'm coaching a startup founder of a marketing agency, right now, it's a small agency. And I'm also coaching some fortune 500. executives in the aviation industry. And the way in which they look at the world is completely different, however, because the nature of their issues and how the layers of things that have to happen, like in the in the big, large company, there's all sorts of layers and politics that have to get navigated. Whereas for the startup, she's got a team of six or seven people, if you could go go go, I think what we need to do, to think of what is best leadership, I think, what is your tolerance for, get started and figure it out as you go? Because I think, you know, one of the key things that the world affords us today, particularly with technology and data analytics, is to get a sense of okay, you try something, is it working? Like let's say you want to try a new content strategy piece? How are your followers responding? Are you getting new followers are your followers buying from you, etc, and start to notice and try see what works. If it's working, do some more of it, if it's not working, shift and pivot and try something different. Those are still involved leadership, alright, it just might be more action oriented and maybe less reflection oriented, because hopefully the impacts and there's maybe a more forgiving environment and let's say a startup environment around, we're figuring this out, as opposed to we've got these structures set in stone already. And so changing them is a lot more work. But I think the principles definitely still apply.

Daniel Franco: 1:09:45

So there's two key entrepreneurs of the world that were proven to not be if you read all their biographies and whatnot, proven to probably not be the best leaders. We're talking about Elon Musk, and we're talking about Steve Jobs.

Alain Hunkins: 1:10:05

I knew we're gonna get to Steve Jobs said that. Yeah. Yeah. And

Daniel Franco: 1:10:09

so I think that's the point I'm trying to make here is that they are super successful if you're talking from the visionary point of view. I mean, they're both absolute visionaries. They wanted to change the world. And they did. Sure the way they got there might not be the best from a leadership point of view, but from a success point of view from an outcome of cash created. Yeah, they have they've huddle huddle, the, you know, the jackpots. Right? Exactly. Do you think that people are mimicking this approach? Because they believe that is the formula we're talking about codes? Right? Do you believe that they are mimicking this approach? Because they believe that is the code to success? Yeah,

Alain Hunkins: 1:10:51

I mean, for sure. I think that's what people are doing. I mean, if that's what you're doing, and I think we should be really cautious when we talk about Steve Jobs being successful, and Elon Musk, we're being successful on certain metrics, you know, and look easy for me to say, I'm not a billionaire. Yet. All of what you say. But like, and this is and but the thing is also our cultural standpoints, you know, and our signifiers are, that means they're successful. Like, basically, when we see someone successful, what we're saying is that they're financially successful. That's true. Now. Now, again, I heard stories about people who work with Steve Jobs about him being a massive screamer and shouter. And if you are on the receiving end of that, and you were to the point where this is horrible, and like you ended up quitting your job at Apple because of that, would you call Steve Jobs success? I would say he was a financial success, maybe in spite of these things. So this is why I think, you know, this is why when I coach people, I'm very cautious to give advice, because what worked for me may or may not work for you. And again, we love shortcuts like this, tell me what do I need to do? And then I'll do it. Well, what works for Steve Jobs works for Steve Jobs, what works for Elon Musk works for Elon Musk, it may or may not work for you. And you know, the question becomes, and this is I've asked this question many times around Steve Jobs is, is Steve Jobs is successful, because of some of the way he worked? You know, what I'm thinking about how he dealt with other people and his patients or patients in that? Or was he successful in spite of that, and how much more successful no one asks that question. And how much more successful might he'd been? had, he had these other skills? And so where I come from is the sample size in the data, what we have found is, number one thing that is going to recruit, engage and retain employees is do they feel cared for by their immediate supervisor? The data says this, right? You don't have to, you can look at yourself and like, think about your own experience, like Do you are you more likely to stay and work in a place where you feel cared for than not? That sounds really soft and fuzzy. But it's true. The data supports this. So for me, I traffic in probabilities more than anecdotes, you can take any person who's the exception to the rule, right? So there's exceptions to every rule, like look what they look without, then that person lost weight, and all they ate was ice cream. Great. Go for it, if that was work for you go for it. So for me the universal principles of connection, communication, and collaboration. And by the way, I didn't just sit down and write those like these three things. I'll start with C, and they rhyme, you write a book about this. This all came out of literally hundreds of stories of being in the field, and then reviewing the stories and going, what were the common themes that kept emerging. And the common three themes were connection, communication, collaboration. So the book was organically built on the back of field research. It wasn't just an author sitting in a closet, who doesn't deal with people. So I am really convicted and passionate about this idea that these principles work for a reason. And I tried to find the research and the science to support them as well. And so I'd say, go for, you know, life's and experiment, see what works and change your approach. There's no one right way to do this, which is why we said going back to your first question, can you crack the code? It isn't your code to crack, it's the people that you lead code to crack, you know, you know, good on Steve Jobs, good on Elon Musk, if it's getting them where they're going, that's awesome. You know, who am I to stop them? And, you know, ultimately, what kind of leader do you want to be? And I think even more importantly, what is the legacy that you want to leave behind in your leadership? Because I know I talked to lots of people. And maybe I'm getting a little metaphysical on this now for a moment. But generally, when I talk to people, and they talk about, particularly their legacies, and I work with lots of leaders who are thinking about retiring or have retired, and what they most remark on our what are the relationships that they've created? How do people feel about them when they're done? Right, and I'll get real personal on this. My father passed away this past June after a struggle with Parkinson's disease. And what I really understood towards the end, is you don't get to take any of this stuff with you, you can make billions of dollars and Steve Jobs. Thank you, but he's not here anymore. And so the question does become what kind of relationships? Do you want to leave behind? What kind of legacy? How do you want to be remembered? And do you want to be that leader who's like, made a billion dollars with an asterisk, but was a big pain in the ass? You know, it's like, you get to decide, and I'm not here to prescribe any version, I just think, look at the research, look at the data, and then try stuff out. You know, it's like, if you want to be a better connector, listen with purpose, right? If you want to be a better communicator, try asking for receipt. If you want to be a better collaborator, try that platinum rule, right? Treat other people the way they like to be treated. The strawberries and cream example. Like, it doesn't matter which one you try first. But one of the things that great leaders do is they take action consistently. So take action, see what works. And if it's working, do more of it, and then add more things to your leadership repertoire.

Daniel Franco: 1:16:02

Yeah, I think those two would Steve and Elon, in particular, the stories being glorified over and over again, which almost creates the self fulfilling prophecy of that being the formula like that is the formula to build a billion dollar business, you can't do it any other way. So people are like the that mimicking is really. And when you talk about laziness, well, it worked for those guys, I must do the same thing. Right. So moving on from the entrepreneurship world, the in reference to your TED talk, what is the basic truth that most leaders neglect?

Alain Hunkins: 1:16:41

Yeah, the basic truth and that we've touched on some of the themes. And the basic truth that most leaders neglect is that at its core leadership is a relationship built on connection. And you can't have a relationship without connection. And so taking the time to build connection early and often is the basic truth that most leaders neglect.

Daniel Franco: 1:17:04

Yeah. Do you believe that all leaders first, first and foremost, should just look at building the relationship with each individual?

Alain Hunkins: 1:17:17

I think that all leaders should definitely build real authentic relationships with people that they really interact with. Now, what ends up happening is, let's say you're the CEO of a 10,000, person organization, how do you build real relationships with all 10,000 people? Right, so one thing I want to do is I want to create a culture and model and create guidelines and guideposts for what that looks like, in a kind of, you can call it an a cascade faction, so how I work with my executive team and how they work with their direct reports, etc. And also, how do I also sim create symbols and communications so that I am modeling, basically rituals in the cultural environment, so that people understand this is the type of leader that I am, even if they don't interact with me on a day to day basis. Right. So I'll give you an example of this. There's, there's a few different examples that come to mind. But one, I write about this in the book, former CEO of Campbell Soup, sent out handwritten thank you cards to every single employee. Now, they didn't necessarily meet him in person. But over the course of his 10 years there, he wrote, I think, 27,000 thank you notes. We're talking about like, this ends up being like, 12 a day, every day for decades, you know, he had a team help him like sorts throughs. But these are personalized about something specific. But you just think about that, you know, obviously, you can't build a relationship with everyone to the level that you you know, you're kind of closer circle. But I think there are things you can do to build and show people that your intentions are good. And that, you know, what are the things that we reward? What are the stories that we tell, you know, these are the things that make a difference. So another example, is one of the companies I work with, and I write about this in the book, too, is a medical device company. And one thing they do is every quarter, they have an all employee townhall, and they bring in patients that use their medical products, and the patients tell stories about how the company's products have literally in some cases saved their lives. And from I'm told there's never a dry eye in the house. It's also incredibly powerful and moving. So things that you do to show people their connection to purpose, because you may not be able to connect to you personally. But how can you create an environment where people can connect to the company's purpose overall, it makes a difference. So whether it's one on one or one on 1000s There's a lot you can do and it boils down to intentionality.

Daniel Franco: 1:19:45

Yeah, I love that. Absolutely love that. I am we are I'm conscious of your time. One last question before we will jump into the quickfire questions at the end. What does and it wouldn't be a podcast if I didn't, or a recent podcast if I didn't bring up the pandemic? What does the what does leadership look like for you? Coming out of the pandemic?

Alain Hunkins: 1:20:16

Great question. What does it look like?

Daniel Franco: 1:20:18

From from the uncertainty point of view? I?

Alain Hunkins: 1:20:21

Yeah, yeah. So I will give you four answers to this. I'll give it one overarching answer. And then I'll give the three underneath answers to that right. Overarching answer is what does leadership look like? Coming out of pandemic? be exceedingly human? That is the overarching answer. So let's talk about some things that you can do to look what that looks like. In the midst of uncertainty, people go to evacuate. And right uncertainty means unknown unknowns is a vacuum of information. In vacuums, people tend to fill vacuums, because they have to with negativity. It's how we're wired, humans have a negativity bias. So number one thing to do to avoid that negativity is over communicate. So filling the voids in with over communicating, leaning into communicating more than you think. Okay, so that's number one. The second one is related to this, which is consistent to weigh asking for feedback. And the question to be asking is, what can we do to help better support you? Right, because there's so much going on, both physically, mentally, emotionally, you know, wellness, mental health, all this stuff going on, people have been through the wringer for the last two years all around the world. And while we might all be in the same storm, we are not all in the same boat coming out of this. So number two, is asking people for feedback. And number three, and this goes way back to what we talked about the beginning, there's no one size fits all solution. So how can you as a leader, be creative, to help Person X with Person X problems, person y with person wise problem, etc, etc. So those are the three things and be you know, in that when you do those three things, which again, are around over communicating, asking for feedback. And then ultimately, making sure that you lean in you are exceedingly human as as you do that, and making sure you know, and there is no one size fits all solution, which is why each code has to be cracked on a case by case basis.

Daniel Franco: 1:22:21

Excellent. Thank you for that. That is that is good. And you've written an article actually similary to that

Alain Hunkins: 1:22:26

night, that article just came out recently, which was top of mind. Yes.

Daniel Franco: 1:22:30

Brilliant. And I did get a glimpse of that before the podcast, I just wanted to bring that in. We went in so thank you for that. quickfire questions to round? Yes, the these typically are, I call them quickfire, but they never end up being quickfire. So

Alain Hunkins: 1:22:48

and blue, then the right answer. So

Daniel Franco: 1:22:51

it could be it depends on how you want to answer it. Feel free to elaborate, which, because, yeah, I really like to get into the inner workings of the brain in these questions. But always we are very, very big readers. And obviously, your book is one that I've recommended already to a few people to jump on tonight. And I no doubt will recommend to too many, many more. Other than your own, what is a book that you are reading right now?

Alain Hunkins: 1:23:20

Book I am reading right now I am actually reading Thinking Fast and Slow. Daniel economies. That's the right word. So I'm actually going through that and reading it for the second time. Yeah. So

Daniel Franco: 1:23:30

that is a report. What is one book that you believe, again, outside of your own one book that you believe that all readers, all leaders should say, should read?

Alain Hunkins: 1:23:44

I am a huge fan of classic Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I think it has actually become a part of the consciousness of the world that we live in on multiple levels. And you know, people refer to like, oh, that's like habit for like, just just to even like you're in the club, of what's going on. I just think that what Covey was able to do is distill down so many timeless, fundamental universal principles and make them so accessible. I mean, I must have been 22 or 23 when that book came out, and it blew my mind because it just, oh, this all this makes sense. It just it makes sense. It's not complicated. And I find it really valuable. So that's a book and again, it's a classic for a reason. Go on the bestseller

Daniel Franco: 1:24:25

ladder. I'm not sure if you've picked up over my left shoulder, the right shoulder, however it looks nice. At is creating synergy, which is one of the habits of exactly Stephen Covey his book. So yeah, I'm very, very big fan. Is there any other podcasts or audio or podcasts or TED Talks that you can recommend which are also really great to listen to?

Alain Hunkins: 1:24:50

I listened to there's a guy named Dax Shepard. He's got a podcast called armchair expert. And he's funny, he's a he's a actor. He's an Hollywood actor. He does TV shows and movies, but he's wicked smart. And he has all kinds of he has celebrities on sometimes. But he also brings on like Daniel Kahneman on his show, he brings on really interesting people and asked really good questions. And it's super entertaining, too. So I really enjoy hearing a lot of these guests. And then it's a good place where I start, if I find people I like that I launch off and listen to their other podcasts. It's one of the things that I do. So another another book that all this plugs since we're talking about books, I'm a big fan of Professor BJ Fogg at Stanford and his book tiny habits. If you're really serious about behavior change, I am just I'm a big, big fan. And I use a lot of that methodology in my work with helping people with habit formation, because it just he's done the research. It's kind of the primary source and it makes a lot of sense.

Daniel Franco: 1:25:43

Yeah, I think James clears also with these atomic habits is taking a lot from that.

Alain Hunkins: 1:25:49

Yeah, James clear, has borrowed a well and James give BJ Fogg a lot of credit, James. James is a great writer, James, I love his last name, because that's exactly what he's writing is super clear. I loved his work for quite some time.

Daniel Franco: 1:26:02

If actually, this is a, so we're big Brene Brown fans here as well. My business partner spent some time over in the US with Brene. So we've come back and done the dead lead courses and all the above board that back here, but this is one of her questions. What is the lesson that is taking you the longest to learn?

Alain Hunkins: 1:26:24

Oh, that's a great question. It

Daniel Franco: 1:26:26

is why I was told , I was told shamelessly is

Alain Hunkins: 1:26:29

that the question, the lesson that has taken me longest to learn, you know, it's funny because like, all these are like layers of an onion, where you think you will learn the lesson. And then there's more there. I think the lesson that I have taken longest to learn is that people's pain and wounds don't ever go away that they are I mean, they they start to reduce and minimize, but they can be awakened and awakened and brought brought back really at any time. And it's amazing how, if something is imprinted in your emotional memory, it's there. And, and it why bring it up is I think just having compassion for what people are going through. Because you know, being human is not easy. And no one gets out of this world of life. So you know, giving people some grace and some credit for dealing with what they're dealing with. Because, you know, no one's had perfect, and there are wounds along the way. And for whatever reasons, and they may make absolutely no rational sense. And they're in for subjectively, they're real. So for me, that is a lesson that I feel like it's taken me the longest to learn because it keeps it keeps showing up. And I feel like I keep learning that lesson again and again.

Daniel Franco: 1:27:49

Yes, very powerful. If you could invite three people over for dinner, who would they be?

Alain Hunkins: 1:27:57

living or dead? Doesn't matter? Doesn't matter. I'm gonna go one is Nelson Mandela. And you know, because because what a hero I mean, reading his autobiography. I never got to meet him. Never got to hear him speak live, but just wow. Certainly one. I think Brene Brown would be great to have over for dinner, she would. She would be a lot of fun. She has got this persona that just makes you feel so like, I'm just sitting around chatting with you. She's got that thing that just makes you feel super comfortable and big fan. Thanks. Yeah, you know, gosh, and the third person, ah, my mother's father, who was killed by the Nazis way before I was born. I would just we've done a lot of family genealogy to learn more about his life. And because it's top of mind, so that'd be a little on the personal side. I'm sure there's lots of other wonderfully famous people who deserve a seat at the table. I would like to talk I'd like to talk to my grandfather,

Daniel Franco: 1:28:58

because your family Holocaust survivors. Yeah,

Alain Hunkins: 1:29:01

yeah, yeah, my mother and my grandmother, my grandmother and my mother. My grandmother was in a concentration camp and my mother was in the Belgian underground for four years from the age of eight until she was 12 she spent in hiding away from her own family.

Daniel Franco: 1:29:15

Does that come back to the lesson? That you've taken the longest to learn? Is that referring to those two?

Alain Hunkins: 1:29:22

Oh, that's all I mean, that that experience certainly informs who I am. Big time. I mean, I'm that's something I'm really clear of. And I've done lots of emotional work around it. But yeah, I mean, I think they're examples are maybe hopefully two of the more extreme, but I think all of us have versions of our own trauma, right? If trauma and it's funny when pent when the pandemic started, I looked up the word trauma in the dictionary, and my favorite definition is a deeply distressing or disturbing experience, right? It's not that quick. It's not that complicated. And I thought, Oh, this is a global trauma, like the whole world is going through a deeply distressing and disturbing experience but this pandemic because You know, this invisible virus that can kill you? That's pretty disturbing. So all which to say is, yes, certainly the traumas that my mother and my grandmother experienced are horrific. And it certainly gave me a lot of compassion. And there's no accident, I got interested in connection and empathy and a certain level of sensitivity. Because, as a kid, I was trying to tiptoe around the house to make sure I wasn't upsetting them. Because Because a kid doesn't realize this has nothing to do with you, kid. This has to do with the fact they've had this really deeply distressing experience. But kids don't know that. So, you know, the silver lining and all that is it totally sharpened certain of my, what I call my kind of empathic superpowers, but I didn't know any better. So but the fact is, we all have those experiences, we all have trauma, we all have deeply distressing, disturbing experiences. And the more that we can have compassion for others, the more that we can help each other through that because it is amazing how life is best lived in community and that sense of belonging. I'm sure you've heard, you know, in the ancient Greeks and the Romans, the worst thing that could happen is you'd be banished and exiled from your community, right? Because like that longing to be a part of something is so powerful.

Daniel Franco: 1:31:07

Basic fundamental was a part of Maslow's hierarchy, isn't it? Yeah. The belonging. Yeah, what's some of the best advice that you've ever received?

Alain Hunkins: 1:31:18

Okay, some of the best advice, some, a mentor of mine said, Hey, Alain, here's one of your problems, which is always a great way to start advice. One of your problems is you approach everything in life, like you're trying to get 100 on a test, and some tests in life are just pass fail. That was that hit me like a ton of bricks because I call myself a self identified recovering perfectionist. So all the all the recovering perfectionist in the audience right now you're nodding your head, you know, exactly. Everyone else is like, what was that? Well, all the corrections are like, Oh, my gosh, that is so profound. Yeah. So don't spend your life trying to get hundreds on tests that are just pass fail. That's really good piece of advice. And I'd say, oh, and other thing has been around I, a couple of different mentors have shared this with me, which is, if you want to change something, you need to do something. So ultimately, you can have all the beliefs and the behaviors and it comes down to action, right? It comes down to taking action. So and another piece of advice that I got in this came actually from drama school was fake it till you make it right, if you start acting as if the world will start to shift. And if you can start you know, like, so if I if for those are probably familiar with the TED talk from Amy Cuddy and her power moves. Yeah, right. So this whole sense of like, embodying, like, there is something like right now if, if I said to you, Daniel, make the biggest smile, you can go ahead, don't smile, it's gonna change. It's gonna change your physiology change your emotional life, even though it's completely contrived. Yeah, I mean, that's the fact is there's the outside in or the Inside Out approach. So those are some of the pieces of advice that have helped me I've used

Daniel Franco: 1:32:51

the all power pose a few times, snagged by some meetings. The piece around pass fail, though. Hey, I just want to touch on that quickly. Yeah. How do you know whether it is a pass fail moment? Or whether it is I need to give 100% here?

Alain Hunkins: 1:33:10

Well, I think that goes back to the are you in performance mode? Are you in learning mode? I think if you're in performance mode, you like, Oh, I gotta go gotta make it happen. Because I step back and be like, wow, like, what's that important? Like, right now? You know? So for example, let's say I'm ordering a dish off of the menu in a restaurant, you know, what, at the end of the day, or I think another way to look at is like, five years from now? How important is that decision going to be? You know, you know, it's like thinking about this, or even maybe, like, five days from now, how important is it going to be? Yeah, and I think trying to give it give it you know, because the fact is whether or not I make the right choice on my dinner, off the menu, it's all going to be okay.

Daniel Franco: 1:33:50

Yeah. Often apply the 8020 rule a lot. Yeah, exactly. If you had a time access to a time machine, where would you go, Oh,

Alain Hunkins: 1:34:00

my gosh, where would I go in a time machine, I would go a lot. There's a lot of places I would go. In a time machine, I would certainly love to go into the future. That's the first place I'd go to check things out. So

Daniel Franco: 1:34:15

I'm gonna say machine learning.

Alain Hunkins: 1:34:16

I think I would probably go I would start with like, I if I can go multiple, I'd start 100 years I had, and then I probably go 200 years ahead. And then if I go 50 years ahead, and then I kind of back up slowly, and then I might go in the past, but mostly, I'm kind of curious about the future stuff. But there's so much in the past hukum that becoming more and more as I get older, more and more of a student of history, too. Because it used to be like when I was a kid, like 30 years ago seemed like forever. And now 200 years ago doesn't seem that long ago at all. It's

Daniel Franco: 1:34:45

so relative. Yeah, if you had one superhero power, what would it be?

Alain Hunkins: 1:34:51

Ah, teleportation.

Daniel Franco: 1:34:53

Yeah. Yes, most people just go straight to flying. So thank you.

Alain Hunkins: 1:34:58

Teleportation just so much Like quicker upgrade. Go from here to there. I just want to be there. I don't want to take any time to get

Daniel Franco: 1:35:05

Yeah, absolutely. Yes, well done. And I didn't prep you on this I probably should have. Do you have a good dad joke?

Alain Hunkins: 1:35:15

To have a good dad joke? Oh my god. All my jokes are dad jokes. And I think by definition, they're all bad dad jokes. Right? He's the I don't he says they're one. I've got a couple of jokes that are so not suitable for your podcast, so I won't share those. Yeah, this is one. So why did the what was it? Oh, yeah. So why did the goose cross the road? What goose cross the road? Because he was stapled to the chicken. That's just a bad joke in general. Not not particularly not particularly good. One is is brilliant. Do you do you and I want one? Do you have a good bio, I got

Daniel Franco: 1:35:54

one that can kind of it's very similar, and is like a duck walks into a psychiatrist. Sorry. Sorry, actually, I stopped that. This is a guy walks into a psychiatrist with a duck on his head. Right? Right, as a duck knees head and the psychiatrist goes Have a seat. How can I help you? And all of a sudden the duck goes, Man, I got this bloody bloke on my eyes. It's horrible. But it's kind of a goose.

Alain Hunkins: 1:36:31

It's all it's all relative. It's all relative. Yeah. Brilliant.

Daniel Franco: 1:36:35

Thank you so much for your time today. Alain, it's been absolutely amazing. Hearing your insights and kudos to all the work that you're doing. It is it is amazing. Your book, in itself, your talks, the writings that you do on Forbes and all the other magazines and articles that you've written over the years, have pearls of wisdom in there. And we thank you for your time, your research everything that goes into it, because we're all learning from him. So thank you for that.

Alain Hunkins: 1:37:02

My pleasure. It's such a pleasure talking with you today. Daniel really, really I appreciated all your questions and just love the conversation.

Daniel Franco: 1:37:09

So where can we find you? What's the best way that we can get in touch and do you want people to get in touch?

Alain Hunkins: 1:37:15

Absolutely. So easiest place to go for all things Alain Hunkins is go to my website, which is www and I'll spell it out for you because my first name is a little interesting to me.

Daniel Franco: 1:37:25

Oh Rasul Allah,

Alain Hunkins: 1:37:27

Alain Hunkins, Alainhunkins.com, which is a alainhunkins.com. And while you're there, you can download. If you go to the Resources tab, you can download the first chapter of the book. There's also a free book called navigating trusts and ebook, you can sign up for my mailing list, I send out a leadership newsletter once a month, you can also connect with me on LinkedIn. As you know, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. And since you've listened this far, you are now part of the end of the podcast Club, which means if you have any questions wanted to reach out to me directly, I'm going to give you my personal email address really simple. It's alain@alainhunkins.com. So that's how you can reach me and do don't be a stranger. If I can be of any support to you in any way. Please do reach out.

Daniel Franco: 1:38:13

Beautiful. Thank you so much. And thanks again for your time rescue foot up for those who we actually didn't discuss this in the wind.

Alain Hunkins: 1:38:21

I broke my foot last week. So I've been doing this all with an elevated Yeah, imagine how it would have been if I had both been working.

Daniel Franco: 1:38:27

If you are watching the video. That is the reason why sitting on half an angle.

Alain Hunkins: 1:38:30

I'm sitting sideways sideways here. Yeah, exactly.

Daniel Franco: 1:38:34

Brilliant. Thanks again for your time. We'll catch you next time. Thanks. Perfect. Thank you, Daniel. Thanks for listening to the podcast. Oh, you can check out the show notes if there was anything of interest to you and find out more about us at Synergy iq.com.au. I am going to ask though, if you did like the podcast, it would absolutely mean the world to me if you could subscribe, write and review. And if you didn't like it, that's alright too. There's no need to do anything. Take care guys. All the best.

Synergy IQ: 1:39:04

Thank you once again for joining us here at creating synergy. It's been great spending this time with you. Please jump on to the synergy IQ Facebook and LinkedIn page where the discussion continues after the show. Join our mailing list so you'll know what's happening next at Synergy iq.com.au. And of course don't forget to subscribe to this podcast. And if you really enjoyed it, please share it with your friends.