Lessons - Unlock the Hidden Power of Conscious Leadership | Talia Fox - CEO of KUSI Global

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All listeners can save 30% off their first order. Just head to cornbreadhemp.com slash success and use code success at checkout. That's cornbreadhemp.com slash success code success for 30% off your first order of these amazing gummies. In this lessons episode, discover the transformative power of conscious connection. Learn for practical habits to enhance self awareness, align with your values and master the art of listening, observing and engaging with others to create meaningful change and influence in any setting. Some of the some of the work that you've done in the past has been on DE and I, but I'm very curious as to how you sort of took lessons from working in that space for a period of time and then it's sort of led to what you're working on right now, which is communication. So conscious communication because I'm sure there's some threads from conversations you've had about DE and I psychological safety in the workplace. All the different sort of leadership lessons that you teach over to organizations and then how that's led you to actually focusing on communication and you have like a framework for communication now and that's just not just between companies. It's more interpersonal. Yes. So let me just track back a little bit. So our company is we say the DEIA space because it's a it's a hot word right and however it's cultural transformation. We do strategic plans, communication plans and we do mass training one of our big trainings that we do is called conscious equity. So it's a two and a half hour virtual training. We've also done it live. We've trained thousands and thousands of executives on how to how to get really sharp about making decisions when they don't know what to do right and how to deal with all the complexity that is in the social, political, the organizational space, the diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, reside right really important. So culture transformation is what we are about a Kusaiwa mission and that is to improve the condition of humanity once skill at a time. I do truly believe that when we know better as Maya Angelou has said we do better and so being able to know and understand better right we can do better. So the book that I have written it's called the Power of Conscious Connection and there are four habits to transform the way you live and lead. So these four habits have taken if you can imagine 10,000 hours of leadership training if you can imagine reading every leader from Mandela to Alexander the Great leading all these books. I have spent my life I'm a reader there's probably 223 books a year. I'm constantly reading I wish I could show you a picture of my bedside right I love reading I always have and all of the books have all these stories and there's so much information to take in and I have had the luxury I feel just like the blessing of being able to invest that much time I realize people don't have that much time. And so similar to what we did with Kusai that stands for knowledge understanding strategy implementation I turned all of my life experiences and my leadership experiences all those hours of reading and time that I spent at Harvard and all these different things into four simple things that we can do on a daily basis that can change everything and this is also something that is connected to what you were just sharing about how companies are pushed yeah and then we see like this this lacks so the four habits require us to and and for you the four habits it's the conscious connection is not necessarily communication that's why I was actually just going to say I totally misspoke because I was I had communication and I had again again again but connection is so much more yes and connection this is about being conscious so aware of what's going on in the world and what's going on around you and connected to your power to change it so within that it is about connecting with each other but it's really about being so present in the world that you tap into this goodness in you and this power in you are where you can influence an impact change the reason I want to quickly before I give you the habits track that back to what you were saying is that it is a daunting thing to see you know change happen and then change go flat I know a lot of people in organizations are exhausted by trying to push and push and push and then things just go flat priorities change on a regular basis the the goal here is to be conscious of what's happening so that you can develop a strategy to tap into your power to influence that change and so the more people that can do this not only do you become the sharpest smartest person in the room which is can be fun but you become this highly intelligent strategic person that is the I will I promise you this is a promise if you can master these habits I'm about to tell you you will be the sharpest person on your team whether you're at the CEO level is an entrepreneur but the sharpness that you will get will nobody will be able to kind of live in your light but the goal is to get everybody to do is that we have more light together right so it's so this is a massive amount of self-awareness it's that we're focusing on well that's one piece let me give you the habits okay I don't have it don't get away from this yeah so self-awareness is important but that's kind of an internal thing that's that's great to do and and it's also I know people talk a lot about self-awareness it's it's good but it you only wanted to look at yourself for wearing a silly extent that it's going to help you do something of course so some people like they kind of say yes I'm I'm rude yeah maybe the self-awareness is like there but they're not worth they're not doing anything good with it yet so it's like today if you know you're an asshole it's not wealthy anyway you're jerk you just say something nice like right now yeah um so let's go here to habits right so it's listen a huge shout out to federated computer for supporting today's episode let me explain why I love federated computer why they are friends of success story they are changing the way businesses buy software because we all need software to run our businesses I don't care what kind of business you're building but the best business software doesn't have to cost thousands of dollars each month so federated computer replaces a lot of the software that you're using right now let me the average typical federated computer customer save 75% or more on their software built and gets great software top notch customer service and support and a software solution that is uniquely installed for your business without any sort of surveillance or breaches of privacy for example if you use google for email sales force for CRM slack for team chat list monkey for customer acquisitions and air table for data management with a team of 10 you'd save $9,000 per year on software costs by switching the federated computer they replace all of those and what's wild is that the cost of federated computer doesn't grow as your team grows you can use federated computer savings to grow your business rather than feed the woke Silicon Valley software companies the federated computer team literally invented cloud software they actually have the patents to prove it and they are taking a hammer to the ridiculously high prices of business software that all entrepreneurs are suffering from federated computer they've been a long time supportive success story they're offering 30% off they're already low prices when you use a coupon code freelance so go to www.federated.computer to begin saving 75% or more on your monthly software costs that's www.federated.computer these folks are going to do you a big favor check them out so listening goes far beyond just what we think about active listening it's being able to tap into your intuition and listening to what's going on in yourself but it's also giving the world a gift of your listening attention and what that is is for you to be able to come out of your mind and really listen with this clean slate in your mind right so really be able to take in everything that someone is saying without any plans around it right no plans around it listening is actually connected to your mental health so if you are spending too much time in your head if you notice my uncle he suffers from schizophrenia and so the final step of is when you hear voices in your head and you're trapped and you can't connect with other people and so listening is not only a strategy for being more strategic and understanding things listening is also a strategy to keep you well right your mind must take in it's the only portal to wisdom so many people they enter experiences where they just want to they want to be heard so badly but they forget that they are accessing this amazing magical portal wisdom where you get to take in so much information and so much stuff to help you strategize your life it's magical so listen the first habit the second habit is observe so observation is this opportunity for you to be completely and totally present in the world and it's connected to a skill called systems thinking so you're not just observing stuff right I'm not just saying oh sky you're a great looking guy right just not but I'm observing the connections right so I'm observing you have such a connectedness in your eyes right I'm looking at the world and I'm seeing how you know how is this ocean view connected to a business strategy now how as I'm looking at if anybody's ever heard of bio mimicry so you can look at a bird if you look at a bird how how could human beings create flight from the observation of a bird you have to really observe the bird and the wings and the shape and so how do we use that same intense connectedness right in order to to expand how we think so if you go to I'd like to give everyone a challenge from next time there are any team meeting I want you just to pause and really look at things listen to what people are saying observe and and just just really pay attention like never before we are in a world where people are so distracted that by just listening and observing the edge is going to be just exponential because so many people have completely stop listening and they're not observing because they're stuck on their phones stuck an email or they're worried about what they're having for dinner and so the presence is important and then two other skills so that by the way this these habits make up the word love L-O-B-E that was on accident really yes that that was not at first it was made into this word like olive and then my young son said that spells the word lamb oh that's very funny oh you're on accident that amazing good I don't know if it's on accident but okay so two more habits so value so value is aligning with your values so that means allowing what's important to you drive your choices right and I I say make bold decisions about your values um if you're in an organization and you see something that doesn't sit well with you you speak up make some choices around that strategically speak up right fine find a way where you think they can hear you if you want to be a champion for change um align with who you are what what your identity is there there's this movement in the world and Renate Brown talks about it about being authentic and I love the movement about being authentic the only caveat I have to say about authenticity is that I think a lot of people are still trying to figure out who they are without kind of their trauma and different things going on and so who we are I think our authenticity is when we sit in those quiet moments and we say what's important to me and then after you decide what's important to you do you make choices aligned with who you really are which is like what what is important to you like I love people and and I love connecting with people and I love goodness and so I make a lot of business decisions based on that that inner knowing that when you're good to people that things will work out right and then the last strategy which is aligned finally what you've been waiting for connection is engagement so engagement is this ability to master asking critical questions and even having small talks so you know Scott we might talk about what's important for you in the world what are your values um what do you see as a couple of ways that you think you want to be in this world right so I love talking about the weather I love talking about sports don't know as much about sports that I'd like to but um I use sports analogies all the time in my company and they wish I would stop because they don't they don't make any sense but I refuse I will use them and so the end of time because they're so sports are so great I argue my my I need to better if they don't make sense yeah they're better one time I said we're batting a hundred but I realize this should be batting a thousand you're like that's not very good it's not good at all but it's fun it's fine but I learned right so engaging is being able to tap into the kinds of questions that you want to ask the powers not always in the answers but the questions and so just being this curious person that inquires um and engaging around how we inquire and get to know who people are and what they're about in the world thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation check out the links in the description to watch the full episode see you in the next one