Pause, Notice, Choose; Why Conscious Relationships Fuel Leadership Success

Hello, hello. Greg's lover joined me today on Hot Habits with Dr. Tamsen and we had an amazing conversation which really thematically coalesced around relationships. His relationship with himself, he goes on multiple silent retreats every year to reset and listen and learn to pause and notice and choose. His relationship with his children, his wife and his clients and the building trust and connection and really values driven action in all of his relationships is what drives Greg. Keep listening for an epic conversation. Your nervous system sets the tone. Your energy speaks before you do. How you show up is the culture. I'm Dr. Tamsen Aster and this is Hot Habits Conscious Leadership in Action. Well, hello, hello. I'm super excited today. Today I have Greg Slava and I am absolutely delighted to introduce him today. He is the president of Westwood International, the founder of Hopemakers and a nine-time Amazon best selling and international best selling author whose work has touched some of the world's most iconic organizations from Johnson and Johnson to Volvo to Intel. A TEDx speaker, MSN's top 10 visionary entrepreneur and business educator of the year, Greg brings rare depth energy and heart to the intersection of high performance leadership and authentic transformation. He also walks his talk in the most beautiful way. He commits to regular silent meditation retreats, multi-day retreats, bringing that same stillness and intentionality to everything he creates. When Greg and I were introduced via LinkedIn, he sent me an immediate counter link and within 20 minutes of conversation, I booked a flight to go and join one of his Hopemakers events. That will give you a little insight into who Greg is and how he projects himself into the world. Get ready. This conversation is going to light you up. Welcome, Greg. Thank you so much for joining Hot Habits with Dr. Hampson. Thank you, Dr. Tansen. I don't quite know what to do after that introduction, but I very much appreciate it and it's been a joy being in your life and being connected. So the way I start every Hot Habits conversation is that I ask my guests to bring an object with them, something that represents a Hot Habit in their life. I think it is a way of bringing leadership out of theory and into everyday reality. This podcast is also on YouTube so people can see your object too. For those of us who are not able to see it, will you explain what object you're bringing with you today and why did you choose it? The object I have is this is a bag and it holds a bunch of little notes in it. And in some of the programs that I run, what we do is we hand out little notes to people in bags where people can drop notes about, here's what I saw you do, here's your, here's what I appreciate. Thank you for that. Like just place and appreciate. And I mean, part of our work with the different communities we're in and the ability to appreciate is such an important skill. And so this bag is just a representation of notes I've received and notes I've been able to give, which is really a lot of fun. That's awesome. I love that real time because I think so often when you do this sort of work, it's a little bit like parenting. Sometimes you're thinking, are people really getting it? Like what's the actual impact? So having a space where people can give you feedback in real time is so lovely for everybody around you and everybody involved. That's awesome. So I was rereading your resume, your CV, like your, you know, your LinkedIn before our call and, you know, thinking about, you know, all of these powerful companies and CEOs you worked with. But what I'm curious about actually is who, like what led you there? What sort of broke you open and made you obsessed with helping leaders become more human? Was it like, did you have a kind of a pivotal moment or was it sort of an accumulation of things that you noticed and you thought, this is really where I want my life to go? People ask me like sometimes was there a switch that was turned on or was there like a moment like you're asking. And I think it was just an accumulation of things over time that could you build up and reinforce each other and just keep nudging me forward on this path. And essentially path is working with groups and teams. Like for one reason or another, I've always been involved with coaching, teaching, facilitating, leading, running. It's just in my almost way back even to childhood. And if I think about it, it probably came from my parents who literally raised the neighborhood. And we would, they had over 30 different people live in our house, separate from just blood family. Over the years, my childhood, high school, college years, people they took and people they helped, people they supported. We had big neighborhood parties at our group. Our house was two blocks from my grade school, two blocks from our high school. So all the through I had three younger brothers. We all played sports together, all the sports teams showed. I mean, it was just, it was kind of chaos. And but it was fun. It was beautiful. My mom and they were always so welcoming. And I think that was probably the start of it. I love that. I mean, what you're really, it's a sort of like a sort of like your childhood was almost a laboratory for leadership, sort of watching all these people come in and out and how your parents interacted with them. And you know, the paths that all these people chose and what happened. How fascinating. I was also thinking a little bit about home makers. And you know, I moved to this country 24 years ago, a couple of days ago. And I remember being very excited during the Obama years. And you know, the use of the word hope, right? But I feel like hope, like the kind of, you know, whenever there's a sort of big disaster, whether it's a school shooting or whatever, we get the sort of trite thoughts and prayers. And I sometimes feel that hope is a word that has become weaponized by politicians in toxic positivity culture. It's like just like, I just just hope like it's a sort of white knuckling, right? Or by, you know, wellness grows selling like three thousand dollar retreats. So, you know, I love hope makers and, you know, and just to, you know, for the sake of honesty, like in, and, you know, a transparency, I'm on the board. And I love what hope makers is and what they stand for. But I'm curious about how do you protect the word from becoming, you know, a bullshit word, a word that doesn't really mean anything. And so that you can, so that people in hope makers and interacting with hope makers really feel the embodiment of what you really mean by it. I mean, you've been to a couple of events, so you know, I mean, I can't put anything over on, you know, what we do because you're on there, right? So part of what I do in terms of the design is my belief is there's a few things to create hope. One, the biggest is the belief that I can figure it out, right? If people feel like they can't figure it out or they don't have a way, there's no hole. And that, you know, that whole story of the elephant that has a rope around its leg to a stake. And for years, it has that. And all of a sudden, you take the rope away and it feels like it's still caught to the stake, right? So it could be true or it could be untrue. But that belief that I can't move or I'm tied up to a stake is really the problem. So the first thing is believing. Now we make that practical. Most of the time, if you just help people remember their past, they're like, oh yeah, I can't figure this out. Right? I was just with the leader this past week who said, I'm stuck here. This my manager doesn't believe me. I don't know where to go. I think I've got to leave. And I just kindly asked them. I said, look, when in the past, have people not believed doing what did you do? And they have three or four examples. And I said, okay, how can you take that lesson and apply it now? I had two or three ideas. I said, okay, that's great. If you could do it over again, and here's a magic question, what can you do more of better or differently this time? Now what's interesting is all of a sudden that person had hope because they had a belief. But there's a very practical thing that we can do for people, ask them questions about their past when they face similar situations. What do they do? What they learn? What can they apply now in what you do more of better or differently? And all of a sudden, what hope? And I think the other thing that you're alluding to, two things I think that I want to draw attention to. One is we so often interact with leaders who are fixated on data, right? KPIs numbers. And actually, what you're encouraging people to do there is lean into the story, is lean into the narrative, their narrative qualitative experience of having traveled a particular path or learned a particular thing or gone through a particular experience and what that has done for them. And that also very much fits an alignment with appreciative inquiry, which is something that you and I are trained in and the community, another community that we're both part of. It's like these overlapping Venn diagrams, which is about looking for what has worked, what is good, what is positive, which we know from neuroscience is not the way our brains are designed. Our brains are designed to scan the savannah and go where is the woolly mammoth and how am I going to be safe rather than pausing and going, what have we done in the past that has worked, that has been positive, that I can pull learnings from and apply to in the future? Exactly. And I think the other thing is, when we design leadership programs or we design hope-makers or we do different pieces, we want to have people actually experiencing it because it doesn't make the change, what the visceral physical interaction experience does. So the other thing I might do with someone is I say, look, put yourself back in that time and you solve that problem. Just close your What did you see? What did you hear? What did you feel? What was the physical experience? I don't ask them where to show up in your body. What does it feel like when it shows up in your body? You don't have to tell me. Don't tell me. Just feel it. Notice it. Now, if you double that feeling, what would it be like? Right? And all of a sudden, they now only have the memory that they can get through this, the belief they can through it, but now they have the physical experience, the emotional experience they can get through it, or the emotional energy. And when you were saying it's about the reframe, it's about the story we tell, it's about the story we tell and the emotion that goes with it. And if you can help people create a new story or a different story, especially based on their own experience and give them a new emotion with it, now people have hope. So it's very practical. It's not some airy, fairy ring. It's like there are certain steps that we can do. And then the other piece with hope makers is the network. Right? So there are times I'll get stuck and I need someone to help me out. Like I'll need someone who's not emotionally caught into it, trapped in it, to give me the objective perspective. And the more I trust that person, the better that can help me see another angle. And so the other thing in hope makers, which I encourage and even in the leadership programs and things we put together is, can you find people that you trust and that you love and who love you and trust you, we can be non-colluding partners in life. Right? Because most in a lot of friendships are around collusion. Right? Okay. I think, you know, take a present politician. We don't need to do any names, but say as a particular politician, I like or don't like. If I share that view with you, the first expectation is you're going to say, oh, yeah, you're right. You're right. You're right. Which is many collusion, but a form of bonding, the healthiest, most mature relationships we have, are ones where you can do that if you want, but there's also space and maturity to not do that. To say, look, if I have another way of seeing the world that will help you be more resourceful, you'll be open to it. If I collude with you right now in this story, we're both going to go down the hole. So I love this idea of collusion. And I was thinking about thinking about this, thinking about the sorts of questions I wanted to ask you. And one of the things that occurred to me was, one of the things I appreciate about the way you're structuring hope makers is that it's a ego-free, zero solicitation, invite-only framework. So you interview everybody before they attend and get a read on them. And I love that. And I love that energetic exchange that you are looking for. My question for you, which I think is something that can be applied or can be a lesson in many places in our lives. Has anybody snuck through the vetting process and turned out to be exactly the wrong person? And then what did you do? How do you break up with somebody in a business setting, personal setting, whatever? Because I feel like those difficult conversations or that the ability to own up to ones like oops, and model that as a leader and then navigate the way through that. So I would love it without, you know, you know, being, you know. Well, there's been a couple. So one, I can talk about which was fun. And actually you were at this event. So Brandon showed up. I never even knew he was coming. Right? Now Brandon, former NFL player, film producer, movie producer, big in the entertainment world, working up with a lot of post, you know, professional athletes, etc. He snuck in. I was like, oh, he's actually the one that came in that I can think of that I never even talked to. Right? And he showed up with Moses who I talked to and at least I vetted Moses. Now they become dear friends and it's worked out quite well. And that was a blessing. But for the most part, you're right. I vet and talk to every single person comes in through the room. And in the goal is just quite simple. Do are they listeners? And do they want the relationship first? Because as much as we talk about that, it's really difficult to do. All of us are looking for more work, more path back, more, you know, money in the bank account to press people. It's just the natural inclination. So it's always going to shop is even as much as I may vet people or try to practice not doing that myself. It still shows up. But can we take the edge off it? And the vetting process is taking the edge off it and helping us tip the scale. So the room is more like listening, appreciating what's working, finding ways to serve each other than right. So that's that's the big thing. And there have been a few people who have come through the door, who I just haven't invited back. Because, you know, they they used to defend. Do you think of it as an alignment of values? And what you're really looking for is is I mean, it's it sounds me almost like it's a it's a service oriented kind of approach to life and relationships and business. So when you feel a mismatch, do you feel like it's a values mismatch or a the way that you move through the what like is there a particular way that you might define them like what the mismatch looks like. So people can really feel it. Yeah, the miss the mismatch is this. And look, you kind of mentioned it earlier. If anyone's willing to own up to their mistake and work on it, there's a long leash, right? Because we all make mistakes for willing to work on it, help each other and get better. That's fine. There's a long leash for that. But for someone who is inherently triggered, always being defensive over a real strong opinion and won't move on or consider another position or is not a listener or doesn't have any interest in serving the world needs to take from the world. You know, either because it's there's a wound there or there's some fear or something else. Those are the people who really don't fit. You know, sometimes some nice people are really good at being polite and being nice and slipping through the cracks, which is cool. But then if you spend two and a half days together, you're like, uh, now I'm seeing real thing, right? Right. It's like you can't you can't fake it for that long, right? I had a friend whose whose mom said, you know, you shouldn't think about, you know, moving in with somebody or getting married to somebody or, you know, buying a place for somebody until you've gone through four seasons. Because if you can watch them navigate through four seasons, you've got a, you know, a sense of who they are. Yeah. No, I mean, I love what you said. I was at I just joined the Rotary, the Brooklyn Bridge Rotary here in New York. And um, I was having a conversation with a woman who's fascinating. She was at um, Kurdish refugee from Syria lived and moved to Germany. She's now in the US and she's about to go to Tokyo to do a piece of masters and peace building that's supported by the Rotary. Fascinating woman. Um, and she was talking about, um, which I, which made me think of what you're saying is this, is that there's a word. And I love learning like different languages of it. There's a word in the German culture for people who, um, that just are elbowing everybody else out the way to get to what they want. And they don't care who's in the way. And it's, and it's basically literally they call the person somebody who like has sharp elbows. It's the person who just walks through the space and they don't really care who's in there. It's like all about them. And it's like this sort of antifaces of outmakers as well. I was having that vision, right? Exactly. And it's, well, it's funny because I have a phrase and hope makers and I'm gonna recall if I share it in our last meeting or not. But I say, look, our goal is not to be big, right? Our goal is to be significant with each other. And don't invite anyone to the group who you wouldn't go camping with. Yeah, right. Because if you're willing to go camping, set up a tent, do the cook out, handle whatever weather shows up, and you're able to pitch in and help out and support and keep the camp going. Those are the kind of people who, um, you know, who belong in hope makers. Like, that's, that's our goal. That's so true. I have a, I have, I have, I have two tests I do for relationships, like friendships and, and love relationships. One is cooking together. Can you collaborate over how to cook the meal? How? Who's doing what? Whether the onions are diced right? How much salt is put in and how that process works? And then travel? How did, how does the person you're traveling with negotiate, navigate, lost bags, delayed flights, all of that? And how that, so that similar to the camping thing, it's watching how people deal with, you know, things that are not predictable with stress with unplanned and how they communicate their wants and needs with you and the sort of that chemistry for whatever word. Yeah. No, I love that. So, you know, as somebody who is, you know, really committed to community building, when, um, when you bring people into one of your communities or you go into a community like exchange that we're both in and, and I actually have interviewed John Berghof and Adair Cates for this podcast, Hot Habits. So find there episodes. Um, what's the thing that most people in the communities that you're in that you either create or you are part of are afraid to say out loud. And what happens when they finally do? Yeah, I think there's two things people are afraid to say out loud. One, anything that rocks the boat, like rocks the team or rocks another individual or who'd look disparaging or difficult to handle or anything that would disparage themselves or make those look bad. And I think those two fears are big fears in a group. And people are always testing. What can I say? What can I do? The interesting thing is when I ask groups when I'm working with executive teams or whatever and I ask people, do you want feedback? Everyone raises their hand. Everyone wants to get feedback. And I say next question, if the feedback is difficult and not what you want to hear, would you rather the person not say it or say it? And everyone's like, no, no, tell me, tell me. I'm like, you sure? Yep, please tell me. I don't want people hiding things. Okay, everybody wants that. But crossing the chasm to doing it, opening that interaction is very difficult and creates a lot here. A little exercise where I actually got one of the charts sitting up here, where I have you put their names on a chart. And I say, look, the missing conversations you need to have are the things you need to say. On a score from one to five, with five being a lot, one being a little, how painful do you think this conversation will be or saying this thing will be? And I have them put up the scores. And I say, now go ahead the conversation and then put up the score of how painful it actually was on a scale from one to five. And just about everyone is either equal or less. So, you know, in a lot of ways, giving people that nudge or that experience and to have those conversations and build that muscle is really important because we all say we want it, but it's really difficult to do. And so practicing and building the muscle is necessary because one of those things again, it's difficult to think our way into. Right. And I think there's two things that that occurred to me as you're speaking. One is for years I found when I, you know, returned 365 reviews to executives. And for those of you who are not completely with it, it's an assessment tool that executive coaches will often use where you ask the person to have people around, all around them. So direct reports, people above them, peers, people are in relationship with the report on sort of their social emotional intelligence in effect. And what's always fascinating to me is how people will immediately go for the most negative comment. And it might be that 99% of everything that said is fantastic about what a great leader and listener and all of it, but they'll just find that one comment. Right. Which again, like the brain is looking for the thing that's not right, you know, so that. So I love that you push people to address it and give them a concrete quantitative measure. But it also makes me think a lot about anxiety, right. And sort of I've always thought in a sort of very crude way of like the distinction between anxiety and depression is anxiety is like fear of the future and what might happen and depression is fear of what happened in the past or regret about what's happened in the past in a sort of very sort of crude way of thinking about it. And for me, you know, I have ADHD and anxiety is part of that, particularly with things like rejections, sensitivity, dysphoria, which I'm and then also the joy of very men and falls in the anxiety that all of those formal mental disruptions bring. But for me, you know, understanding that there's a basis for it has been really helpful. And like you, I'm a long term meditator. And for me, meditation is one of the most important tools, if not the most important tool for managing anxiety because, you know, you sit with your mind, you become friends with your mind. And you know, when your mind starts to disappear down a rabbit hole, instead of following it, you come back to the breath. And so it's this constant practice of letting go and returning to center, letting go and returning to center. So I was thinking about you and your, you know, your repeated meditation retreats. When you go into the space of silence for many days, what comes up in that silence for you? Either things that you're like, oh, I have not given that attention. I need to orient and face that. And if so, you know, do you do you when you leave the retreat, take action on the things that you notice that comes up when you're not, you know, filling your brain with all the things you're constantly doing on a regular basis. Yeah. I mean, too, too funny or interesting story. So I just did a recent extended retreat. Just about a month ago. And it was fascinating because on the previous retreats, I had spent time, I would sit down and I would find what I'm angry at, what I'm resentful about, the people I don't like, or places they've been unfair to me. People who didn't call and ask my side of the story, like all these different things come up, came up. And I can tell you there were like two or three, like five, seven, 10 day retreats where I was spending the majority of my time just sitting with that feeling and trying to forgive someone, trying out their perspective, trying to let it go, trying to hours. I was so just ingrained in just an outfit. But I had this wonderful experience in this last retreat where I sat down and I automatically went back to those stories. And it was like, oh, they don't live here anymore. I was like, wow, it was really cool. Like, oh, I can still think of them and I can still conjure up them. So it's not like they're completely gone, but they don't live here. They don't have a piece of furniture in the room. That was a beautiful, like, just a wonderful freeing experience. I was able to say, okay, who am I? Like, who am I with all those stories now? And who am I going to be? Or who can I be more of who I want to be? Both those stories aren't in the room anymore. That has been a lot of fun to contemplate and to sit in. And at the same time, I remember there's in my son, Daniel, who's wonderful, love the kid. He, we've done several signler retreats together, which has been just a joy. And now one of the retreats, we did, I don't know, seven or eight days. It wasn't extended to treat. And we got out of the retreat and we're in the parking lot waiting for the taxi to come pick us up. And I call because the guy's five minutes late and we have to catch a flight. I'm like, hey, you know, we're here in the parking lot. You know, it's where you drop this off. You're supposed to be here. He's like, oh, man, I'm sorry. I've got to get some gas yet. I've got this. I've got that. I'm like, dude, come on. And I hang up the phone. I'm like, I turned Daniel. I'm like, Daniel, I can't, why don't you just gas up the car before you come? What? And he looked at me and he said, we just finished an eight day signler retreat, letting go of things. And your 10 minutes in the parking lot. And you're already true. I was like, oh, the wisdom of you. And I was like, okay, oh, no, it's hysterical. Like, that's amazing. This is how fallible we are. It's been eight days in signler retreat, just letting go, being present, being one with the world. Then 10 minutes in the parking lot, I'm with back to normal. Where the hell is that guy? I love that. I mean, I think the other thing that this is making me think of is that I use a lot in my coaching, the pause notice choose framework. So when you feel that, the shortness of breath, the tightening of the muscles, the I'm about to rip into one, the pause, the kind of notice, oh, I'm feeling angry, sad, confused, resentful. And then making a choice that is in more alignment with your values, with the relationship you're in, with the situation. But just what you said there, that's the big piece, right? The big piece is noticing it and pausing. Like most people don't even notice, right? And then to notice and then pause and take a different point of that little piece, huge. Exactly. And for me, like meditation has been the biggest tool for teaching me that. Like, I mean, when I'm explaining meditation to somebody who's never done it, or who thinks it doesn't think it's a value or thinks it's sort of a strange religious prayer thing, you know, I'll often use the the Victor Frankl framework of like, you know, one of the ways to think of meditation is the gap between stimulus and response, whether it's a thought or somebody honking their horn or the dog barking, right? So whether it's an internal or external stimulus, that gap and what you do in that gap defines your freedom, right? That's where you have freedom. And Victor Frankl, for those of you who haven't come across him, was an Auschwitz survivor, who came out and found that everybody he knew all of his family had died. And he dedicated the rest of his life to working with, you know, the parts of, parts of ourselves that we can control, we can't control the external world, i.e. our mind and what we're doing inside ourselves. And for me, I feel like that's one of the most powerful things about, you know, about meditation, about journaling, about therapy, about having time alone, is to really get comfortable with cultivating in a place where you are not stressed, right? So I define it as a difference of teen, like, when you practice these things regularly, they become, they're intentional, so that when you are in a state where you get triggered, you've got this tool that you can activate. So one of the things I'm curious about with you is all the work you've done, you just gave a little story, but I'm curious in work, whether there's a place where this might come up is, is there a place where you still struggle to pause? And is there a particular trigger that can still patch you off guard? And then you react and you think, oh, I should have paused. I mean, just this week, I said to my wife, I'm like, well, I said a couple of judgmental things about people that we were in, like, some different groups, et cetera. And this TV show we're watching this reality show. I'm like, I can't believe that some of these people are so stupid. It's so dumb. And then there was another person, I mean, a comment about, and I, in this morning, my meditation, I'm like, wow, a few judgments showing up this week, a few judgments. And I'm like, I don't know their story. I don't know where they came from. I don't know the constituency of what makes them up. I don't even know the full context of what they were in and why they're what they're doing, right? And the ability to pause is like consider all of that, but at least consider that there's 99.99% but I don't know, right? Which takes away a lot of judgment. Just knowing that factual reality. And yet, this week, a few times, I was quick to make a judgment, you know? And so, I kind of chuckled about it and said, let's watch that. Let's watch. So again, so sometimes what you're describing, which I think, you know, also sort of plays into, you know, cultivating the sort of leadership skills is the, even if I don't do it in the moment, I'm willing to pause and look back and go, oh, I mean, and that's one of the things I love about the, the sort of the the journaling component of a lot of what you and I do with people, which is to sort of get people to write down because I think there's something really interesting. We get stuck in our kind of subjective, emotional, intellectual swirl, right? Like you were describing in meditation, like in your retreat, the thinking, the thinking is going on. And sometimes just the act of writing something down and creating a little bit of objective space creates this, this energy of, oh, right? Like a gap that allows you to do that. So whether it's describing it to, you know, your wife, describing it to a friend, writing in a journal, reflecting in some space, giving you that container to do that. And I think that, you know, one of the things that I think is so important in leadership is cultivating the habits of reflection and not making it being about where did I fail? Where did I fuck up? Where am I bad? Where did I do wrong? But more of using it as a lens of what, how can I learn so that I can do better in my leadership and in my relationships? So sort of on that note, has there been a place where you, you know, dropped the ball in a, in a sort of epic way from ego or from anger or from a fatigue or from, you know, COVID stress, et cetera? And what did that teach you that success wouldn't have taught you? Like just this past week, no, last two weeks, I've missed two appointments with a key client because they weren't on like calendar and some of them are not connecting and I should have taken the extra step to connect them, didn't and I didn't quite figure it out or I might have been like, on my phone getting on a plane or something, I'm a traveling a lot and I go, I'll get back to it and I didn't, I don't even recall all of that, but I blew it. Like I've blown up two meetings in a row and then I'm meditatious where I'm like, oh, I missed that meeting again because I helped them like somehow my mind clicked in. I think I missed it again and now I've got to go back and apologize and if I can make amends and fix it. But the other thing that I also have do is two weeks ago and I was with a global leadership group, I was teaching them, don't create another layer of pain by beating yourself up. But get the full lesson, don't let yourself off the hook, but by keeping yourself on the hook, don't make it so painful that you're beating yourself up. But not too much. Like I don't know what the point is for a person and I'm feeling it this morning, but not much where I get paralyzed or I get stuck because in what I tell people, you're now creating another layer of interferonostatic for you to grow if you beat up too much. And the goal is to eliminate as much static and interference as possible. That makes me think I've done a lot of group therapy with my kids, family therapy with my kids. And one of the things that was really interesting and I learned very quickly was how easy it is when they're sharing something that's really painful, either from their own experience or because of some situation that I've had some, you know, role in, is one of the things that I learned quickly with one of their therapists in these sessions was that if I made, if my guilt, my shame, my fear, my regret about them feeling that way or this thing having happened to them, became too dominant, you know, the therapists would say that you're making it about you. You know, and it was a real like moment, you know, mirror in the face moment of, you know, my child is sharing this dramatic thing and I'm feeling so guilty and ashamed about this that I'm not then allowing them to have the space to process it. And that for me in a similar way was a real sort of light bulb moment in terms of my leadership. Yeah. Right. You know, it's funny. My son, was talking to me this week about his relationship with food and he's like kind of lamenting it. And he's like, I think I got it from you, Dad. And I, but I wanted like to jump in and fix it, but I was like, but I find you said, yeah, you're probably right. You know, because I love ice cream. I'm addicted to sugar. You know, I eat things that aren't so good for me and I was like, you're probably right. And let me know how you work it out. Right. Right. And doing it without feeling guilty. Like I think that's, you know, that's a big thing too, right? Is like how we, how we own up to our foibles, our habits, our unconscious leadership, right? What an every walks out of every family was some kind of they get to support out as the family wasn't perfect. So right, right, right. There's like, there's a classic poem written by a British poet laureate. And it's entitled, they fuck you up your mum and dad. They don't mean to, but they do. Like, it just happens. So we're going to head towards the end of our GC conversation, but I'm going to ask one sort of big kind of final one that's been brewing in the back of my mind, given all the work you've done. And there's sort of the large companies you've worked with. If you could blow up one thing about the leadership development industry, one a tired trope, you know, a sacred cow, right? One thing that we all think that we need to keep doing, but that actually isn't working is not backed up by data or results. What would it be? Well, I had, I had a, like, both a personal experience in this and in a couple different settings. So I just went through a training power and systems training because I'm constantly on just learn things and try new things, et cetera. And in the whole situation, I set up as top medals and bottoms or in top as executives, people are in the middle as managers, people on the bottom doing the work. And it's a little simulation. And they walk you through a full week in this one day training. And each day is 13 minutes. So you get five, 13 minute days. And it was fascinating because I have, I was randomly chosen to be in the top. And as soon as we started, I was like, gang, this is going to be chaos. You're mind if I facilitate. No, no, we don't feel the way. So I facilitate and try to do the best I could of delegate and keep things calm and moving forward. And I didn't do anything that I teach. Like I didn't say, let's just stop and get together. Let's build some trust. Let's build some relationships. Let's figure out what our skills are. What people are good at. It was 13 minutes customers were coming into our meeting room. There were people on the bottom asking for resources. People saying, how come I haven't gotten my check? You know, it was just constant chaos. And I just jumped into do mode. Well, contrast that with I just, I was telling you about a global leadership group I was working with. And it's fun because I've been doing this with this particular client started 13 years ago. It's gone so well. They've had us back 13 straight years to run this program for the high potential people moving into VV positions. We had alumni come back who were in that very first group. Oh, it's so cool. And they got up and they talked about how they still meet every week, 13 years later, the relationship they built, the two half for each other, and how they help each other through very difficult tricky situations or decisions. To give context, this particular group. In one situation, every day there's a delay of getting a product to market costs a million dollars. So it's not small. I mean, big decisions, big companies, big product, and yet the personal relationship getting to know each other being through this is so important. So blowing up the myth, somehow, even when I feel there's now enough time to get to know people, know their skills and build trust, I've got to make it because it's still the most important thing. And I would dare say, even with AI coming in now, it's become more important to know from personal direct experience, who I contrast how much I can trust I would want. And so how do we build those kinds of relationships? So it's then to do more and more, we're making good decisions for each other, for our people, for our customers, for our clients, for our patients. It's going to become more paramount. And with the pace, we're going to feel that pressure that I felt to just do when really we need to also step back and reflect with people we can trust in non-colluding relationships. So this to me is the core theme of our conversation Greg. The thing that really stayed with me is relationship that is navigating strengthening, evolving, committing to nurturing relationships, whether they're personal friendship with your children, with your wife, with your clients is really the thing that you prioritize. And what I loved about our conversation is the way you reflected on the difficult conversations, the prioritizing time, the prioritizing connection, the the energetic exchange, the role of values. I think that's one of the places where you and I overlap. And I think where we sort of felt a sort of co-pacific connection was that relationships are really what drive me to. And I feel that being really cognizant of that in the way you move through the world is beautiful. And I love that about you Greg. I love that you are so focused on relationships because I feel like as somebody who has not worked in large corporate, as an employee, as an employee, I've always predominantly worked for myself, that you have this idea of this sort of the monolith of people not being deeply connected. And I love the way you are just blowing up that concept. If our listeners of hot habits could take away just one thing from our conversation and incite a shift or an action, what would you want that to be Greg? Yeah, I think a few things. One, find a habit that's going to help you be able to pause. What exercise, walking, listening to music, I mean for you and I, meditation is big, but there's a lot of different things we can do to learn how to pause. So that'd be the one thing. And then two, when you pause, just consider who would you be without that story, which is a wonderful question from Byron Katie, the whole of the work, just who could be without that story. And what other stories are potentially true that would help you be more resourceful? Like that would be just a great habit to develop. And if you're looking for a group of people and you fit the values of hope makers, give us a call. We'd love to consider that, right? But find your people, find your non-cruelting folks so that one thing's get really tough and you need some help, you know, you have a hand to reach for. And there's hands you've helped so you're probing that relationship. Those are people, those are the two things and that's both in personal and in business. Thank you so much. I really appreciate this conversation. And the sake of brevity, I'm going to wrap it up, although I would love to keep talking. So thank you so much, Greg, for joining us today on Hot Habits with Dr. Tams and Esther. Thank you, Dr. Tamsam. Thanks for being here and thank you for taking the time to listen. Until next time, remember that the way you lead your inner world shapes how you lead on the outside. I'm Dr. Tams and Esther. Thanks for listening to Hot Habits.