333 Tailored Self-Leadership: Grant ‘Upbeat’ Bosnick on Customizing Your Style, Overcoming Blind Spots, and Driving Organizational Success | Partnering Leadership Global Thought Leader

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[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Grant Bosnick, welcome to partnering leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me. 

[00:00:05] Grant Bosnick: Great to be here. Thank you so much, Mahan. 

[00:00:07] Mahan Tavakoli: Can't wait to talk about tailored approaches to self leadership.

But before we do grant, we'd love to know a little bit more about you. Whereabouts did you grow up and how did your upbringing impact the kind of person you've become? 

[00:00:21] Grant Bosnick: So I'm originally from Toronto, Canada, and then. About 25 years ago, I moved to Asia. So I spent 17 years based out of Japan and then the last eight years based out of Singapore here.

 I'll tell three stories about leaders that I had in the past that influenced me. So I had one leader that once pointed to himself looking at the group, and he said, this is majority rules. I had another leader once say to us, he said, I can do the work of 10 of you.

And I had a leader once, he said to us, if you guys don't like it, you can answer with your feet. So I had these leaders and I think they inspired me. They influenced me about what not to do. And I thought there must be a better way to lead than this. So that was what helped me get into leadership development to begin with.

And I'll tell you a story about the first time that I was a leader a team. So I used to be in the entertainment industry as a professional musician and producer, and I was producing a large event. We had 24 artists involved in it. Musicians, dancers, and visual artists visual projections. And it was about eight months work.

We had the most brilliant team. Sponsor set up the venue set up the media was coming. It was sold out. It was great. Everybody was excited about it. We did the show. It was fantastic. We got lots of video footage. It was really great. Everybody was happy. The media wrote the great things about it. So I thought it was a really successful event.

And then a month later. I hear from one of my team members. He said, Grant, you're like a bulldozer. You just come in and push anything and anyone in your way. To get to the goal. And I thought, wow, I thought this was successful. And on some levels, it was, we were successful as a business venture.

Was it successful as a human leader? I don't think so. I think maybe I learned from that and have become a much better leader since then. Hopefully other leaders to do the same as well. 

[00:02:20] Mahan Tavakoli: Yeah. What an outstanding perspective grant on the many bad leaders. Many of us had have had. And in this instance, you had, which got you involved into The space of leadership development.

Now you've written the book, Tailored Approaches to Self Leadership. I couldn't agree with you more that before we can lead others, we have to lead ourselves, but why a tailored approach? What's your perspective on tailoring and the need to tailor that approach? 

[00:02:54] Grant Bosnick: So I've been influenced by these game book genre so you would read about 10 pages of the story and you make a decision. If you choose a. Turn to the next page. If you choose B, turn to page 20. And so you would then choose your own journey through this. And there's a big company that made these books famous, that has a registered copyright, a very strong copyright for that name.

And so I was quite interested in this concept of creating a, tailored approach or a choose your own self leadership adventure. And so the book, you can read it in any order you want. I created an assessment people can take to find out which areas might be most relevant for them, and then they can dive into those areas.

 I don't think it's one size fits all. We're all on our own unique self leadership journey. And what's relevant to me now is different than what it was. a year ago. It's going to be different a year from now as well.

So that's why it's called tailored approaches to self leadership is that it's a choose your own self leadership adventure. 

[00:03:53] Mahan Tavakoli: It is important at different stages of our leadership there are different needs that we have. Now, one of the things that I see grant is that a lot of us have blind spots and in many instances, leaders, blind spots grow as they move up in organizations.  How do you make sure that there is an understanding of the need? Both from our perspective and what the reality is to the external world. 

[00:04:23] Grant Bosnick:  I think that's an excellent question.

This is one of the ones that I recently been really deep thinking about. I sum up that I think that self leadership is the practice of understanding ourselves and the impact we have on others. And the two couple of key points in one is to practice. So it's not something that we are. It's something that we be.

I am a self leader. It's something that we do. It's a practice ongoing behavior that we do. And the last piece of that is about the impact on others. And I think this is one of the key blind spots that all of us have. And I make a distinction between intention and impact. For example, that I have this, and I think all of us have good intentions for what we are doing.

However. Often we end up having what I now call unintentional negative impact. The example I gave with that bulldozer coming in for that goal, that's what I call the hard bulldozer coming in for that goal and that we're going to at all costs get there, however, that speed is not going to be the relevant the appropriate speed for everybody.

Different people have different time needs. Some people want to think more carefully to find my come up with the best solution to something a little bit more analytical thinkers. Maybe some of the people that might be a little bit more of the conscientious people or the more sensitive emotional people maybe want to have a little bit more.

time to absorb things not so fast. So everybody's got their own unique needs. So I think that the understanding the impact that we have on others is absolutely essential. And this is now that's the hard bulldozer. The soft bulldozer. This is what I'm calling it. The soft bulldozer is when we do certain behavior that It's small things, but it's unintentionally causing a negative impact for someone.

I was working with a, I'm based in Singapore, I was working on a project a couple of years ago with a project manager based out of New York. So she was in charge of the whole world for this large global project. I was covering Asia Pacific as part of this. Other people were in Europe, other people in the Americas.

And so I wanted to find out more about this project so that I could figure out how my piece fits in and get much more alignment and value for the client. So instead of giving her the context, I just gave her a series of questions. And the answer I get back was, you have enough information to do your part of this, right?

So I thought, okay, that's not the impact that I wanted to have. My intention was to understand more of the bigger picture and how my piece fits into it. So once I got into her time zone, 12 hours difference from me, I gave her a call to this was the first project working with her ever. So I wanted to clear this up to make sure, okay, This is the intention that I had.

I didn't quite explain it clearly enough that I wanted to find out more of the bigger picture and see how this thing fits in to get more alignment, more value. She understood that it was okay. Now we understand why you're asking all these questions, but she took it probably I'm using my words.

And I was like, I'm hounding her with these, I heard another leader that I was just talking to last week about this here. And she said to me, Once she wanted to respect her client's time, so she just sent the samples to get the client's feedback, but then there was no response. And then she found out that particular client doesn't like email so much, but prefers in person meetings and discussing it.

In depth. So then she set that up and was able to discuss the samples in much more detail and get the sale. But it was really about respecting that person's time, but it created a negative, uncomfortable feeling that I'm a social person. I want to meet and talk, not just like a robot or texting her through text.

Digital means only. So that's what I think one of the biggest things that I think that we, the leaders fall into the higher up we go. I think that, that we fall into this more because we do have much bigger, broader impact, right? So that gap between the intention and the impact is a big one.

I think. 

[00:08:22] Mahan Tavakoli: I love that differentiation grant in that I could say every single leader that I have interacted with and worked with over the years has had the right intentions. 

But the question is, what is the impact? And differentiating between those two can make a huge difference in people then looking at their self leadership and how they need to lead differently.

[00:08:48] Grant Bosnick: It reminds me when I took a 360 assessment once, I thought my listening was pretty good and I put it down as one of my strengths.

And then I got back from several of the anonymous 360 assessors for me. They said they didn't feel heard and it took me two years to realize that we were both correct. I was listening to them and in my brain, I knew that, but they weren't feeling heard, which means I didn't take it far enough. I only went as far as I'm listening to you.

I need to take it farther to understand that they that they feel they've been heard. And that's about understanding more about the impact we have on others is if we can take it to the step further that they feel heard, they feel acknowledged, they feel valued, they feel respected, they feel that.

whatever they just said or did has been acknowledged and recognized, then they feel hurt. And it's just a small difference, it's taking your camera and you're like slightly move it to reframe it. And that's how I describe reframing. It's five degrees. You've just moved your camera slightly and he's completely see the world differently now.

So now I don't, my goal is not to listen to people. My goal now is that people feel heard. And I hope hopefully help other leaders to get that step further as well, too. And this is all around helping us to create more of that intentional positive impact. So that's one of the things I'm trying to build more with around myself and other leaders is how can we create more intentional positive impact?

Because if I can do that a little bit with every interaction I have with every person that I know, that's a little bit more positive impact. And if everybody in the world does this to everybody they know, that's a huge amount. Intentional positive impact that we just created that didn't exist before. 

 You also talk about different things that. Leaders need to do effectively. One of them that you spend a lot of time on is goal setting and you 

[00:10:47] Mahan Tavakoli: share a great example of Dyson Vacuum's innovation process as an example of that goal setting.

[00:10:55] Grant Bosnick: Dyson vacuum, the goal that they set was to create a, Vacuum that would not lose the suction as the bag got full and he tried everything 5127 prototypes over five years and eventually realized that it's impossible to create with a bag.

So he used the centrifugal force wind. That he had learned as an engineer working in turbine engines before that, and then invented the world's first bagless vacuum. But the problem that he was solving was he wanted to keep the same suction throughout the whole thing here. So having a goal helps us to be able to get those insights.

And come up with new ways of understanding the problem. And then also those get it into flow. Once we got that goal that we're aiming for, I'll tell you another other quick story. This is another 1 out in New York as well, an organization called design that matters  they used design thinking to help them to solve some of the world's biggest problems. So one of the problems that they're working on was that in several developing countries, the incubators were expensive to build and maintain. There's a lot of dust in the air in these environments, so very expensive to keep them clean.

And a lot of babies  We're dying and they could have been saved if they had more incubators. So the question they were asking was, how can we use existing resources? To help us to create something that's viable for them. And what they realized was that there's a lot of motorcycle parts that they could use to build these.

And in a lot of these regions, there's a lot of trained on the motorcycle mechanics. So they built these incubators out of Honda parts and then they had these skilled mechanics that could fix them and it was a low cost solution and they saved hundreds and thousands of babies that would have not been saved otherwise.

And it's about having that goal that we're aiming for. And then. Using some clever ways to think indirectly about the problem and then coming up with ideas that just click in our head, these insights or these aha moments when weaker signals just form and you, Oh, that's a brilliant idea. Let's do that.

[00:13:02] Mahan Tavakoli: Those goals, whether for the individual or the team and organization in the different examples that you've shared. Are what lead to both the achievement of goals and to innovation and breakthrough. Now, you do differentiate between inspiration and motivation as we pursue those goals.

What's the difference in your mind? 

[00:13:25] Grant Bosnick: I post this question to leaders often, and I say, can you motivate other people? And they seem to think that's a yes question. Everybody keeps saying the answer is yes. I said all the answers. No, you can't motivate others. It's not like here's a motivation pill, but my house, take it.

There you go. You're motivated,, real motivation. I believe is internal. It comes from inside us and we can then motivate ourselves. To succeed as a leader. It's not a leader's job to motivate their team, but they create an environment where people can motivate themselves internally.  We still need external motivation.

People want bonuses, people want holidays, people want, whatever fringe benefits they get and other kinds of external reward. We also need to help people satisfy their internal motivation and, before I jump into internal motivation, which is the biggest piece, inspiration, we can inspire other people and we can be inspired.

I can be inspired by a great podcast like this one that you have. I can be inspired by artwork or music or inspired by great literature. I can be inspired by children around me and so on. And we can also inspire other people. Through our words and our behavior and so on. Now, I think that the motivation piece is the one I think that internal motivation is really key to this.

And there's a model that I created in there, which is, I call it the acres, psychological needs acres is an acronym. A. C. R. E. S. There's other people in the world that call, Yeah. These types of models, different things, Maslow had his hierarchy of needs and different people have called these different things throughout the years.

And if people can satisfy these psychological needs, this is going to lead to peak work experiences. And so this is what internal motivation comes from. If we can satisfy our need, the A is the need for autonomy, so that we've got some kind of decision making, ownership within guidelines for the work we do, the need for competence, that we feel valued for the skills and experience and knowledge that we bring, the need for relatedness, having good relationships with our colleagues and boss ACRE as equity, that the need for a fairness and perceiving decisions and actions as fair, and S, the sureness, this need for some level of certainty.

And if we can satisfy all of these needs, this is going to give us internal motivation, which is much more sustaining than external motivation. External motivation, once people get the bonus, the motivation drops down. I achieved my bonus. The goal then becomes getting the bonus, whereas if we help people to satisfy these internal needs, the goals become doing well, exceeding expectations, excelling at the project, that becomes the goal.

And when we satisfy these internal psychological needs, that's what creates peak work experiences for us. 

[00:16:12] Mahan Tavakoli: I love the fact that you brought up the acres model because it made me think of how many leaders underestimate some of the different factors. So I wanted to touch on the last one, that security certainty that.

People seek, which is a challenge in an uncertain environment as businesses and organizations are transitioning, transforming at a faster pace than ever. What are the best ways leaders can ensure that for themselves and the teams that they lead in an uncertain world? 

 I introduced this model one way to show that these are peak work experiences. This is our internal motivation. And that's ideal for us to get. Now, when we go through challenges, maybe adversity, changes that we go through, and, the pace of change has increased significantly.

[00:17:10] Grant Bosnick: I think that the acres model. We can use that as a change assessment tool. So on the most basic level of psychology, that everything we interpret in the world is either going to be a threat or a reward for us. And the threat response is much more salient than the reward response. You can imagine back in the old days when we're in the forest or in the jungle and you hear this, noise in the bushes and you're like, what's that?

It could be something to kill you, so that threat response, there's a good reason why it's stronger, and in the workplace, if we've got a reorg in the workplace, and some of our colleagues might have been let go. Now, our need for certainty just suddenly got threatened.

 Some of my friends here, some of my colleagues just got let go. Am I going to be let go now too? And then that sense of certainty has been threatened, even if the other four needs that we've got, the need for autonomy, competence, relatedness, and equity, even if all of these are rewarded, if one of them, for example, sureness, if that is feeling threatened, that yeah.

It's going to pull everything down., it's a nice tool for us to assess the particular impacts that they may have. I give an example a hybrid working or working from home and a lot of organizations might be in something similar to that. And, on an autonomy level, for example, that.

Working from home. Yes, you've got freedom and how you organize your time. So you might think, yes, you're being rewarded for your autonomy. Now, on the other hand, if you don't have that readily available senior leadership, your direct line manager, other mentors that might be able to help you to reach out and being able to give you some support, maybe it could be too much autonomy and you don't quite have that support you might get if you were actually co located in that moment, for example.

So it gives us a nice tool to look at how changes or challenges might impact our team members and help us to then craft strategies that's going to help us to gain more of those rewards and minimize or eliminate those threats. 

[00:19:13] Mahan Tavakoli: Now, empathy and trust grant are also central themes in your book what is your take on how to do it? 

[00:19:23] Grant Bosnick: When we feel that we are under pressure or stress, it's become like a horse with blinders on and we see what's ahead of us. And that's, What we want to get and our empathy becomes blinded, possibly the level of trust with others becomes blinded because we feel the stress and pressure that we need to do something and we get focused in on doing that.

The study, this was done, it was at Princeton University and it was in the seminary. Princeton University, I believe it was in the 1970s actually was when they did this, the point they proved was still powerful and still relevant now. So they they had these priests that we had to give a sermon on the story from the Bible on the Good Samaritan, which is for those of you that know it, you know it, for those of you that don't, it's a story about somebody who was, helping other people who needed help.

That's what the story they had to talk about. So they were in room number one, and then they had to go across the campus to another room to give that sermon there or give that talk there. And they divided these Priest into two different groups and they had to walk across one by one so that people didn't know what was really going on.

But half of the groups, they told them, you have one hour to get across to the other side of campus to do this. And the other group, they said, you have five minutes to get there. And on the way. Each of them individually happened to pass. Somebody was a runner who had fallen and injured themselves.

Now, that runner was just an actor, part of this experiment. And of those people that had an hour to get it, almost everybody stopped to help. This person, but those that were told they had five minutes. Most of them didn't even notice that person. Oh, very few, stopped to help. And most of them just walked past while the rest walked past.

And most of them didn't even notice. They were so focused on what they were doing that the irony of it is the story that they're actually telling about or giving the talk about is a story about helping those in need. And then they're walking past someone who's in need that needs help. And, They lose track of that.

And, I bring that parallel into the business environment, and we Work in industries at lightning speed, whatever you're in finance, in tech, in retail, whether in hospitality, whatever industry we're in, things move at lightning speed. And we focus on deadlines. We've got pressures on us, and as a result of a level of empathy that decreases that we've got, and I think that the higher up we go in the organization, the more responsibilities that we've got, the more this is going to happen.

We do need to take a step back in order to go three steps forward. I like the analogy of the dance floor. So normally on the dance floor, that's where all the action happens. We're there with our team. Things are exciting, moving fast. It's fun. And then, but we need to be able to get up to that balcony so we can get a bird's eye view of what's happening and how everything fits into that bigger picture.

That's what we need to do, because if we get caught up in the deadlines, caught up in the pressure, the empathy, the trust is going to go down. And that's when. Unintentional negative impact might happen. We've just got these blinders on and we're going for our goal like that. Going back to my 1st story, but that bulldozer going right through the goal with these blinders on.

And suddenly, you just. Forget that there's humans out there that have their own needs and their own desires and their own psychological needs that may not be met so I think we need to take a step back to those three steps forward.

[00:22:45] Mahan Tavakoli: It is a great example you reference grant in that it also goes to what a lot of leaders are facing right now, where. With the amount of information coming at them, amount of work and everything else. There is so much to be done. So little time where sometimes that is why then we can have the right intent, but not the right impact, including with empathy.

So I don't think I ever talked to a. Single CEO or executive doesn't want to be and doesn't see themselves as having great empathy, but our actions can be different and therefore our impact can be different, especially now that we are under so much pressure, such a fast pace of change, so much information and so much to do.

[00:23:44] Grant Bosnick: Yeah, and you reminded me I used to do a lot of executive coaching with high level senior leaders that were extremely successful for the revenue or the innovation or operational efficiencies that they did for the organization. However.

Maybe might be a little impulsive or sometimes reactions or abrasive in some of the communication, or maybe even sometimes a bit aggressive, too. And I used to say that I used to help leaders take their shoes off so they could put other people's shoes on. And I think the reason why that's powerful is that we always talk well, I can see it through their perspective.

That's what empathy is about. Feel what they feel to see what they see. I'll see what they see. But if we keep our own shoes on while we do that, we're just seeing it through our own lens to begin with. So we're not really feeling that real empathy. We got to first take our shoes off, get out of our own ego, get out of our own frame of reference.

And therefore, and only then can we see it through their eyes. 

[00:24:47] Mahan Tavakoli:  That's a great way to think about it because it's our ego that a lot of times gets in the way as well. 

Now, in addition to your book, are there leadership resources, books, practices that you typically find yourself recommending as people are going on this journey of self leadership and leading more effectively.

. There's a couple that I'll recommend because a lot of the higher level of functions in our brain, like getting into the flow where we can five extra productivity or getting into insight where we're going to have unbelievable ideas connecting that we, wow, I never thought of that.

[00:25:25] Grant Bosnick: The only way we can get into that is we got to get our brain into a particular. Relaxed state where the alpha waves and theta waves are going to be able to flourish. So a couple of things we can do for that, this is one that got here from Shrizad Sharmin, and I highly recommend, he created the concept around PQ coaching, I'm a certified PQ coach with them, and PQ reps, and PQ is going to stand for 

positive intelligence quotient. This is about building the mental muscles in our brain. And he's tested these with FMRI scanners. And if you take your index finger and your thumb, and you can do this with me Mahan, and everybody else listening, you can do this as well too.

Just make circles with your index finger and your thumb. And what you do, if I weren't talking and you do this too quietly, you can feel what is actually happening in your brain. It's actually focusing in on the muscles in your brain if you turn the, reverse the direction as well too. And it might actually feel a little bit different.

I go through a whole series of these PQ exercises. What they're doing is isolating a single sense. So you could close your eyes and focus on the sounds in your room. Maybe it's the ambient sound of your air conditioning or the light humming. Maybe focus on the farthest sound you can hear outside.

You maybe hear a dog barking or a car. And focus in on the closest sound, which is probably your own breathing. And this is something you can do anywhere, anytime.

You can be in a meeting, and you can put your hands underneath your desk, and just start doing some of those, PQ reps like this, and nobody sees them. You can , just listen to the different sounds in the room, or you see some colors or something. I highly recommend it before making a presentation or a talk to do this.

Amy Cuddy from Harvard University, she did something similar around her concept with the power poses, which is the second biggest TED talk of all time. Wonder Woman pose, you stand up, put your hands on your hips, The victory pose when we finish winning a race and all of these, and she's done research in there around how this is going to help build up our confidence.

 The one I like to promote because it's my own is called upbeat and upbeat combines the science of drumming. For those of you, if you are watching a video, there's drums back here. And if you're listening to this, I do have drums behind me and what this is it helps us to. Bring our brain up into a higher level.

So how about we do a little upbeat drumming, Mahan? Can we do that? That's another one that I recommend people to do.

[00:27:35] Mahan Tavakoli:  I don't have drums with me, Grant. I'll watch you drum and I can maybe bang on the table. That's exactly 

[00:27:43] Grant Bosnick: what it is. That's exactly what it is. And I do that with offsite with leaders out there as well, too.

And I get them to drum on their laps, get them to drum on a table. I've done it one on one coaching executives. I've done it with 500 leaders in a room before. And this is the first step I get them to do. And this is all about building up their awareness of themselves and focus. So it's very simple what we're going to do.

It's eight on each hand. So there's eight strokes with the right hand, then eight with the left. Eight with the right and so on. I'll do it first to demonstrate, then we'll do it together it's like One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, left, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, right, two, and so on, so we'll do it together, one.

And everybody at home, do it with us as well too. 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 And left, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Right, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Left, 2, faster Left, right Left, 2, 3, 4

7, 8, 4, 5, 6, and so on, like that. Now, this is just the start of it, and what this is doing is helping your brain. To get more focus and higher level concentration. And if we can get our brains into that state, that's the first step to get into the higher level states of empathy of inside of presence.

 Another thing I recommend, I'm a big fan of Stephen Covey as well too. Dr. Covey wrote a lot of great stuff around time management, which is one of the biggest skills people need to work on . . I'm heavily influenced by Marshall Goldsmith, who actually wrote the foreword for my book as well. 

One of the things that Marshall talks about is, What Got You Here Won't Get You There, how successful people become even more successful. And I think that some of the great things in there is that we are successful because of certain things we've done. Might be the P and L that we've got. It might be operational efficiencies.

It might be the innovation that we created. We are also successful in spite of certain things. This might be always having to have the last word, always needing to make sure that you check absolutely everything. Maybe it's about being too impulsive.

 And so we are successful in spite of certain things as well, too. And so being able to change those pieces, and it's just a 5 degree turn. It's not like 180 degree. Oh, you gotta be a different person.

No, you're still your same person, but just taking that camera. Slightly moving that lens five degrees. And if we can slightly move that reframing, seeing things in a better way, that's going to lead to more effective behavior and ultimately more effective results. 

[00:30:27] Mahan Tavakoli: Great recommendations and practices. 

How can the audience grant find out more about your book and connect with you and follow your work? 

[00:30:39] Grant Bosnick: The best source for me is to go to my website, which is my name, grant bosnick.com. You can find out more about me, the keynotes I do, the other solutions I've got for clients, and more about the book there as well too.

A couple of videos out there as well. The self leadership assessment. This is a free tool for anyone if they want to take whether you get the book or not. If you go to self leadership assessment dot com, it only takes about two and a half to three minutes to do. It's quite simple. Self leadership assessment dot com.

It will give you a recommended order to read the chapters in most relevant for you. It also gives you an 18 page report for free with some strategies and tips that you might apply for yourself, even if you don't buy the book, but you might apply for yourself with your self leadership journey.

So those are a couple of ways to reach out to me. LinkedIn is a great place as well, too. I do post regular content out there, weekly or bi weekly content out there, so do follow me there as well, too, and catch up on some of the Tips that I share there on leadership and team effectiveness too.

[00:31:39] Mahan Tavakoli:  I really appreciate the conversation and the insights you shared with the partnering leadership community. Thank you so much, Grant Bosnick. 

[00:31:49] Grant Bosnick: Thank you so much, Man. My pleasure.