Why Brilliant Executives Fail After Promotion | Leadership Psychology w/ Navid Nazemian

0:00 We are at a leadership paradox right now, which means the tech is ready and in most of the cases, the tech is far more advanced than the leaders who are supposed to adapt that tool into the organisation who are supposed to bring that in and use it in a meaningful way. But if you were to look at how many of those companies consider themselves to be mature in AI deployment, it's 1%. So the biggest barrier is not the employees or technology for me, it's leadership alignment and vision and making sure that those leaders were supposed to enable this technology and make those decisions are really comfortable using that. Hi there.

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1:14 If you want to present like a pro, Sign up today using the tool stack link in the description below and start creating smarter with Gamma App. Real life ladies and gentlemen, you once again welcome to the Kingdom's podcast and Diary of a CFO. And today I've got will be a very important guest fighting out of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Make welcome David Nazer, me and how are you, David? Thank you so much, Adam.

2:10 Well, I'm, I'm well and I am super stoked has this conversation with you today. Oh wow, of course myself, I'm super stoked as well. OK, so we have so many connecting dots. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another powerful episode of The Kingdom's podcast in Diary of a CFO. Today's conversation is 1 for leaders, founders, executives and ambitious professionals navigating pressure, transition and high performance environment. Our guest is globally recognised as one of the foremost voices in executive leadership and transformation. He has coached senior leaders across industries, cultures, and continents, helping them navigate some of the most critical transitions of their careers with clarity, resilience, and strategic

2:59 precision. Ranked by CEO today as the world's #1 Executive Coach, he is also the author of the acclaimed book Mastering Executive Transitions, A groundbreaking framework exploring why even brilliant leaders struggle after promotions, role changes, and increased visibility. This conversation goes far beyond traditional leadership theory.

3:25 We are unpacking the psychology of pressure, the emotional cost of leadership, organisational politics, identity shifts, and what it truly takes to try at the highest levels of leaders and influence. Whether you are a CEOCFO entrepreneur, emerging leader, or someone preparing for your next weekly this episode or to learn the way you think about leadership, performance and legacy, please join me in welcoming to the podcast Naveed Nazanir.

3:58 Wow. Thank you so much, Adamola. Yeah, this is a warm and very lengthy introduction. I was not expecting that, but I do appreciate it. You're you're welcome. You're welcome. Definitely your career has been, has been a globe fool. It's been a handful. So definitely you deserve that recognition. And Speaking of recognition, you you've actually been ranked as the number one executive coach by CEO today in the world. What does that recognition mean to you personally? Yeah.

4:30 Look, I mean, I want to be perfectly honest with you and your listeners here in that I would love to use the example of my time in HR. I spent 20 years working for some of the world's most admired companies in five different countries. And I, on the day I announced my retirement from active duty as a corporate HR executive, I received my very first award as an HR leader.

4:58 And it was a surprise to me because, you know, all these years I had done all this, you know, quite, quite meaningful work. And Despite that, it took 20 years for me to, you know, receive my first award. And it was a special 1. I actually got it back in the UK in the year 22 because it was a peer Recognition Award, meaning I had a lot of HRDS and CHROS who put in a nomination form on my behalf and, you know, talked about the, the value that they saw that my work had created. At the time I was working for Vodafone, which is one of the largest international telecommunication companies in the world.

5:37 In South Africa where you're based that called Vodacom, it's the same organisation. So that goes to say that you know, when I started my coaching practise exactly 12 years ago, I did not have a single award up until four years ago. Probably all these awards are nice and I've collected 10 awards just in the last four years.

5:59 These awards are nice and A and a nice way to recognise the work that you do. But for me, the real recognition comes from the executives that I do the work with, and sometimes from the organisations that are so happy that they signed me up to work with them. What a journey and I think people watching us today, people listening to us, they should take a cue from this, should take some inspiration from this, right? When you're in the trenches, when you're putting on the work, know that the work will definitely pay up in in the process, right?

6:33 It feels like nothing is changing, but when you keep going and you have a good sense of direction, definitely hard work definitely pays up. So, so I appreciate you being authentic, being bored and of course being vulnerable as well in terms of sharing your journey. And when you reflect on your journey from corporate executive to being a globally recognised executive coach, right, What would you say where the defining moments that shaped you the most? Yes.

7:07 So firstly, I will share a little secret with you and your audience here, which is I actually sign up to become a coach. This is in the, you know, 12 years ago. So in the year 2014 with with a very different intention. So my intention was not to go solo and set up my coaching practise and do what I do love doing full time, but I actually wanted to become a more effective leader. That was my sole intent.

7:36 I felt that after spending more than a decade working in the human resources function, I had reached what I call functional technical limits. As in there wasn't really much more left that I could learn to become a more effective HR individual. And that's why I decided that I needed to go into what I call vertical development.

8:00 So horizontal development is you add 1 technical degree or skill next to the other one, do the other one, and then you have ten of those. And by the time you do the third one, you can't quite remember what you did in the first one. But vertical development is really expanding the size of the container. So I felt that for the position that I had held at a time and the level that I had reached, growth would come vertically and not horizontally, which is why I didn't pursue an MBA or something, just to have another 3 letters, something next to my name.

8:34 It was one of the best decisions I could have made in hindsight as well. I mean I did my three-year coach education training across 3 continents, but the middle part of that I actually did in Cape Town. So I did do that Gyps at UCT, and it's a lovely time that I will cherish for a long time because that really reintroduce me to South Africa, to Ubuntu, to all these various things that are existing in that part of the world, and I'm incredibly grateful for that. Wow.

9:03 And they did, they did. Of course, you know, it's, it's amazing to know that you, you definitely had a good time in South Africa. And of course, just on a lighter note, right, you were attacking, you were attacking me when it comes to the, the three letter designations, you know, I do have an MPA and be the chartered accountant.

9:20 That is ACA, right? Yeah. I've got like those 3 letters. Yes. And you probably needed those for KPMG, for PwC, for all the other various companies used to work for. I just felt that at a certain point in time growth becomes more vertical than horizontal. That was the point I was. Trying to make? Yeah, exactly.

9:49 I like for you, even given the fact that you're an HR person, right? I like for you to pick each other on what people who feel like or who know they have actually plateaued in their career should do because it comes with a lot of confusion, right? And I think so for some people did not feel like, oh, they're going to like a big life crisis. But it is not uncommon.

10:14 So I like for you to address that. Put it on your HR. Absolutely, yes. Look, this is the actual project that I did at one of the companies I used to work for. At the time, that was a big question mark as to OK, at the time, we had roughly 1600 HR professionals around the world. How can we develop them in the most meaningful way and how can we help them to accelerate their careers and grow their careers in a meaningful way?

10:44 And so that's when I embarked on this global project. I interviewed the top most senior 100 HR leaders out of the 1400. I went after the first, second and third layer of leadership and what then became as a result of interviewing those, my intent was, and you know, this is over a decade ago, so there was no ChatGPT at the time.

11:09 I could have just fed those interview excerpts and hoping that something in interesting comes out. It was all manually done. But what I achieved as a result of those 100 interviews was to be able to distil the 12 most formative experiences that would help to grow an HR person's career, no matter what level of leadership they are AT.

11:36 And those 12 experiences, by the way, the, the, the, the, the survey did not result in, oh, you need to do your MBA or you need to go to this HR course or you need to study this HR course at this university. It was really centred on experiences, so the first four were in the business focus area. So that meant that there are 4 experiences that HR people could do and so can do to grow their HR level of leadership by.

12:06 And these four things were business related by working in and with a variety of client groups. I myself have worked with commercial leaders, I've worked with finance leaders. This is the last five years of my career where I worked with the group CFO, Vodafone and her entire finance organisation scattered around the world.

12:24 The second experience in the business section is international experience living and working in more than one country. And again, I did that in five different countries. The third one is to work in a variety of different business scenarios, meaning you know, if I, and that was my biggest challenge when I grew up in HRI was in Europe, right? I came to Europe as a young child and that's all the experience I had.

12:48 And you know if you have looked at the European economies at the at the time, it was either growing slightly, shrinking slightly or staying flat. So that was the business scenarios I was used to. And then I had my first international assignment into the Middle East where we grew the organisation from 70 people to 1000 people in a 2 1/2 year time period. So we had like massive growth plans and I just had never experienced that before, which meant that I had to work in a very different business scenario. Then slightly growing, slightly shrinking or flat kind of established.

13:23 And then the last experience in the business section is to move between head office and country type roles. And that was also something that I really benefited from because once you have sat on both sides of the fence within the same organisation, that really gives you an appreciation for how it what it takes to work with the other part of the organisation in a meaningful way. So those were the first four.

13:46 The next four were what I call the people dimensional people focus. First one is manage and work in large projects, meaning I actually have led and been part of big projects in every single company I've worked for just because it gives you a different level of exposure. The second one is lead directly, meaning yeah, well you, you need people leadership skills in order to grow your people focus.

14:15 The third one is a surprising one for many. Leading indirectly, meaning I don't have to be the line manager of all these people. If I'm interested to learn more about how to lead people, I can become the leader of people through different things, such as, you know, being the project lead for a particular project and then having those people in the project sense leading up to me.

14:38 Or as I did get my very first people leadership experience back in Adidas when I was working for the world famous Three Stripes, my line manager gave me the day-to-day management of the two management trainees we had in our department. Although in the system they reported into Herb. So you can get those people experiences also indirectly. And last but not least, this is what GE did very well. I worked for GE back in the year 2005 and they were really remarkably, you know, sharp on when it comes to accepting stretch assignments.

15:12 So my boss who was an HRD, she had spent two years working in the quality function and going to factories and looking for defects. And so those stretch assignments really stretch you above and beyond your HR skills and really gave you a different edge. And that brings us to the 4 exeriences that makes U the complete 12 key development exeriences for HR leaders. The last four are categorised as selfimrovement. First one is seeking and accepting feedback from a mentor.

15:46 This is someone who is more senior than you was been there done that and someone you look up to and and learn from. I'm sure in the in the big four experience you had, this is working with senior partners and really sometimes just being a silent observer in the meetings and and in those conversations just to learn from their skills. Absolutely.

16:06 The second one is undertaking external studies or attending internal leadership development programmes and the study could be an MB AA study could be something that is beneficial for your development as an HR individual. The third one is surprisingly to many HR leaders, building numerical and financial awareness.

16:26 Meaning as an HRD I'm not only comfortable talking about the people part of the annual report, but I'm equally comfortable to read the PNL and have a conversation with the CFO on cash flow. Now he or she is not expecting me to give them advice on how to optimise the operating free cash flow, but if I don't know what cash flow is and how it's derived at, I will not have the same level of development and capability at the the table when I'm having those conversations with them as an ex core peer. And last but not least, the fourth and last of the self improvement dimension is all about building and developing professional networks.

17:10 I happen to know that you have one of these networks that you have set up yourself, but there are many more networks where people can take part and start to add value before then eventually extracting value and learning also things from how other people go about doing things. So these are the 12 formative experiences that will help any HR leader to develop themselves no matter whether they are the first, you know, level of juniority or if they are as a Chr at the highest level of seniority anywhere on those levels of leadership. You can look at these experiences if you have not ticked any of these 12 experiences to have a meaningful conversation with your line manager and make sure that it becomes part of your individual

17:54 development plan. Amazing. This is super amazing, right. I'll tell you something that I think would interest you, right. I am actually scheduled to deliver a keynote, our presentation for the Chartered Institute or personnel management in my country. It feels like looking, you're looking into my slides, right?

18:21 And trying to try to try to tick off some things. But I'll ask real quick. The the topic I'm, I'm gonna speak on is AI people and performance, right? So if you could give me one or two golden Nuggets to add to that slide, to add to the deck, what, what would you say regarding AI people and performance?

18:46 Right. Yeah, wow. I mean, just the AI topic, right? I mean, it's a big one, I will tell you that. And so again, I do not consider myself to be a deep expert on AI, but I am, I'm a regular user and I'm an early adopter. So few things I can share with you as key Nuggets and you're welcome to use any of this or completely ignore them.

19:13 Is that as we speak, as we speak right now? I mean today is the 11th of May 2026, which is a very special day by the way, and a special week for me and coaches because this is the international coaching week. So this is where all the coaches celebrate the world of coaching and those non coaches and leaders can take part in various other freebie sessions, webinars and so on.

19:38 So leadership is being rewritten Ademolo as we speak right now. And I'm not talking about incremental change, right? It's the biggest shift in leadership expectations in decades. And if you were to look at what CE OS say themselves about this, the role has changed more in the past year than in the previous 25 years.

20:01 This is according to Economic Times, which is the largest magazine and and publication in India. The second key takeaway I would like to share with you is that there is an adoption shock happening right now as well, which means AI is already everywhere without people necessarily noticing that. And so you may or may not remember those. Robot devices that, you know, roam around your house and do the vacuum cleaning almost entirely independently, right. So if I look at, yeah, the latest statistics, just to to make the point there, 78% of organisations now use AI in at least one of the functions and 94% are exploring or deploying Gen AI in some form or shape.

20:46 And 71% already use Gen AI regularly somewhere in the business, which also means that this is not a future leadership topic. It's a current leadership reality and we all are encouraged to learn how to work with it. The second thing, the third thing I can share with you is that I find that we are at a leadership paradox right now, which means the tech is ready.

21:14 And in most of the cases, the tech is far more advanced and the leaders were supposed to adapt that tool into the organisation who are supposed to bring that in and use it in a meaningful way, which means a lot of companies are looking to increase their investment into AI. But if you were to look at how many of those companies consider themselves to be mature in AI deployment, it's 1%.

21:42 So the biggest barrier is not the employees or technology for me, its leadership alignment and vision and making sure that those leaders were supposed to enable this technology and make those decisions are really comfortable using that. And so I think it's very obvious for me that, you know, I call this the exposure effect that AI reveals leadership gaps as we speak. Because again, this is another study that was done by The Economic Times. 47 of the executives that they surveyed said that their companies are moving too slowly on AI due to leadership misalignment.

22:21 Meaning the CIO or the CTO is having one idea, the CFO is having a completely different idea, and the DHR isn't entirely sure how to actually use that in a people sense. Which also means that over 50% of those organisations that The Economic Times of India surveyed report that there is no real measurable value from the AI investments they have already made. And you know, you have this podcast also for CFOs, that is that those are the worst investments, right? Where you spend the money and you don't have any measurable impact as a result of that. 0 Retail investment. Yeah, that's a poor one.

22:59 The translation of all this is that leadership capability, not technology, determines the impact of this new fantastic tool called AI. And so again, if I wanted to use a more modern example, I think there are boardrooms right now in this, you know, year 2026 that are already leveraging AI. So 86% of the corporate leaders use already some form of Gen AI either in M&A decision making or in making sure that the minutes of the boardroom are captured. The sentiment is measured at the minutes are, you know, gleaned for insights and what have you.

23:39 56% of companies adopt AI primarily to improve decision making quality. And so leaders are not no longer decision makers alone, they are decision architects with the support of this, you know, call it a machine or AI technology. And so that leads to an interesting phenomenon, which I reside as the confidence fracture, which means that there are leaders who do trust AI, but they are also leaders and, and sometimes the same leaders who also are fearful of AI and what it actually can unleash in their organisation.

24:18 Which means if you were to look at at Investopedia, which is one of the citations I use sometimes, it's almost half, nearly half of the CEOs that surveyed believe that most of the role could be replaced by AI. And at the same time, 77% say that AI is already disrupting strategy, which means this is the very first time leaders are simultaneously feeling empowered and threatened by the exact same force. And so again, AI can create performance, AI can create friction.

24:58 And which is why I call that, you know, the reality of our productivity right now. So AI can raise productivity by 15% in knowledge work settings, in, in, in, in the most specific way. And yet employees who spent significant time correcting AI outputs means that they are losing again, 40% of the time that they have saved is lost to reworking and rejigging and making sure that those things before they're presented, for instance, to leadership or customers are are legit. I won't mention the name of the big 4, but one of the big four recently had to pay a double digit $1,000,000 fine to a government because the the document that they had produced for that particular government had a lot of AI hallucination baked in.

25:46 And that is really the worst case, right? So that means that as a leadership and as leaders, they must manage the AI illusion versus the AI value gap. And this is something real and something very important to work with. So to kind of sum it up, I find that we are facing what I call the capability divide.

26:07 So we see that there is a new leadership elite that is emerging. If you look at the latest generations entering the workforce, they are digital natives. They are used to all sorts of different technology solutions as a very normal tool to come to the work. And, and that being said, I remember the time vividly when I was working for the famous Three Stripes where a particular board member would refuse to use emails because they said no, no, no.

26:34 That's why I have my EA and, and she can type it all in. I would just use my voice recorder and I will not learn this technology anymore. So it's real and it's here. And executives with AI driven investment decisions show measurable productivity gains at the firm level, which also means that younger executives are significantly more likely to adopt AI. And that's what I call the capability divide, right? So the longer the workforce, the less likely they are to want to use these tools or just learn it at the surface level. And then there is the new generation entering the workforce and kind of being very confident with the application of that.

27:17 So if I wanted to sum it up, you know, leadership is of crucial essence. So for me, it's not a question whether AI will or will not define leadership. It's it's really a question for all the leaders listening to your podcast right now, which is, are you defining AI right now? And that's, that's kind of the last thing I can say about the topic of AI.

27:39 And, and just the caveat is I do not consider myself to be an expert on AI. I'm just an early adopter and a regular user of it. Amazing, amazing. You don't have to be an expert to be able to what I say, read the book when it comes to what what is happening, especially in leadership. And of course, I appreciate how you broke down the Generation Awards.

28:02 It's it's something that I have spoken about on the forecast a lot. You know, being a millennial, I feel like I'm in the middle that generational war because the Gen X, the jet access, right? And of course the Gen Z and of course we have the Gen alphas coming up, right? And it's amazing to see what I say the way each of these generations, right, adopt technology.

28:27 And of course, even within generational sets, right, you have like the guys that are the early ONS and the later on within the each generation. And of course, I think that the way they adopt technology is quite different. But Speaking of leadership, right, while I was just PwC, we have this framework for our prison professionals.

28:51 So it starts with whole leadership, whole leadership, business acumen are global acumen. That is your ability to work with cross functional teams. You also had the technical competence and building relationships. So I used to I used to make a joke with my colleagues at PwC. I'm like these guys gave you they've literally given you the cheats code to succeed as a professional, right? But you've been a HR leader, right? You would have seen that a lot of executive transitions break high performance even pre at leaders. So what is really happening beneath the surface? So the failure rate is 40%, which is a shockingly high number, meaning if you were to be appointed CFO of KPMG or any other notable organisation, you

29:52 have a 60 perc percent chance of succeeding and a 40% chance of failing. And the 40% is very well established because Hydrating Struggles, which is one of the largest search rooms on the planet has placed over 20,000 executives in several thousand organisations. And when they over a 10 year time period, by the way, and when they went back and started to look at OK, from these 20,000 that we have placed, how many have actually succeeded and how many have left the role and the company or quit or were fired sadly. And they found out the 40% number. And then again, there are other studies by Howard Business Review, McKinsey and Company, Centre for Creative Leadership. So they all come to a very

30:35 similar conclusion. So that brings us to the question of, Oh my goodness, how can this be? Because I can tell you Alamola, as someone who spent considerable amount of time working in the HR function, there is a lot of attention, energy and focus that goes into those top level appointments. I mean, it's essentially never happening that someone just gets hired to be the CXO.

30:59 In any organisation, there is typically a search firm involved. They do their own background checking, their reference checking their own set of interviews to make sure that the candidate is legitimate to be put forward on the long list. Then the company screens all their backgrounds and then you know, shortens the longest to a typical shortlist with three to five candidates typically the case. Then these three to five candidates will get invited for interviews.

31:26 Typically not just a single interview, but multiple interviews with a number of key stakeholders. Always part of the the game. Sometimes there is additional tests that they have to perform, such as a psychometric or something on top. And despite all of this, 4 out of 10 don't make it. Which then brings us into your brilliant question as to how can this be like what gets in the way? And in my book, I speak about exponentially challenged executives that are finding themselves in a crisis state. It's just one crisis after the other, after the other, after the other that is getting in the way. I worked with a CEO not not too long a time ago. He was based in Switzerland and that was a division of a part of a large enterprise group.

32:18 And they decided to carve out that division and do an IPO. So bring it into a different state and have it to be a standalone company listed on the Swiss index. And of course the first time it didn't work out because at that time there was a shortage of CPU's globally and this was an electric type business, meaning that they could not do the IPO without having secured those chips for an ongoing basis.

32:45 The second time that they tried to attempt to do the same, the war began between Russia and Ukraine. And then the the investment banks told him that the the market isn't really a good one to do an IPO. So see, these are two things that are completely outside of his control. He did not, you know, cite this as an issue. He did not start the war on any country. But the reality is that he and his business were affected by that.

33:10 So there are external factors. And you know, if you, I wanted to use two recent examples, the tariffs that were put in place by the Trump administration is can be a very hurtful thing for, for businesses outside of the US. And then the last one is the, the, the conflict that has begun in the region that I am based in, in Dubai here again, entirely without the doing of, of the, of the country.

33:33 So that means that there will be factors that are outside of the executives control that can affect on their performance in the role. But more concretely, if I wanted to look at what are the things that are inside the executive leaders control, then the top three reasons for aggregated transition failure are to do with people, culture and politics. So as I say it on podcast like like yours, it's the functional or the technical skills that gets your heart into the C-Suite.

34:03 And it's the lack of the so-called soft skills that gets you fired pretty quickly on the back end of that. Wow, interested now your book is actually titled Mastery and Executive Transitions. What What really inspired you to write it and what gap were you trying to fill with that book? Before we dive back into today's conversation, I want to share something important. This episode includes a paid partnership with Better Health, a platform designed to make starting therapy easier. I know from my own journey as a leader and entrepreneur that life can sometimes feel overwhelming. There are seasons where stress, uncertainty, and pressure build up, and you need a safe space to process it all. That's where therapy comes in.

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36:16 If you've been thinking about it, sometimes the best investment you can make these in yourself. Yeah, look, I mean, despite the fact that I did work for some of the world's most admired companies, I I can't really put my hand on heart and say this one company did this process justice in the most pure way. And so I felt that this even companies that are generally considered best practise when it comes to employee onboarding somehow fall short of making sure that the general onboarding, which is perfect for 99.5% of the total population, is translated correctly for the top C St executives. Because it's a whole different league and it takes a whole different approach to make sure that those guys and girls get appointed into those top

37:11 positions and are having a decent chance of succeeding. So that was the the intrigue. And another time, this is you know, 20/13/2014 I did try to educate myself. I did look on Amazon and other places to find the books that speak about the topic only to find that there isn't a single book written and dedicated to this particular topic.

37:35 There were a gazillion generic on generic on boarding books like the first 90 days is the most popular one and there are about 100 copycats books of the same. There wasn't a single book dedicated to and you know the 1st 90 days just to use this concrete example, had a subtitle that the author dropped a few years ago.

37:58 Critical success strategies. Critical onboarding strategies for leaders at all levels. And I have worked in the HR domain for too long to know that if something has been written for any leader at any level, it clearly is not fit for purpose for the top level leadership. So when I saw that there isn't a single book written on the topic, I thought to myself, you know what? I might as well start to do the research to then write the first book on the topic.

38:24 And I'm really delighted to see that, you know, since my book has launched, there have been three additional books written on the topic, always with the CEO in mind. So the life cycle of ACEO or the new CEO are just two of those 3 newly published book that look at the same topic through ACEO lens. So I I think it's fair to say that in a way I opened that category of books to top level leaders because no one else had thought of writing a book about it. Amazing.

38:57 And of course, what a great way to say with my next question. Speaking of the 1st 90 days, what would you say are the most costly mistakes that C St executives make during their first 90 days in the new leadership? Role So the first thing I would say about the 1st 90 days is that it's nowhere near sufficient for anyone at the top of an organisation to really want to hang on to just that.

39:27 And the reason I say that is because I find in my coaching practise and in my 20 plus years of HR experience at the senior level, transitioning at the very top is a 12 to 18 months job. It's never a 90 day job again. It's beyond me. Adamola while an incoming CEO must be sitting on their hands waiting patiently until day one to then start to run like crazy and then drop the ball again on day 90.

39:54 It's just does not make sense to me, which is why if you look at the double diamond framework that I gave to the world, you know in my book is a 12 plus months journey and it consists of seven unique phases of which only one looks at the 1st 90 days. I would like to go back one step and and it's interesting because the 1st 90 days I call that face immerse in my double diamond framework.

40:21 It is only the second phase of the seven phases. There is a. The very important phase that is oftentimes missed because the book of this other gentleman sadly didn't quite reach the same level of fame as the first 90 days. And that book is called before onboarding. Imagine, Adam Ola, you are the incoming CFO of a company called X, right?

40:46 And the company has announced your appointment, but you have another six weeks until you're actually starting your new job, right? You're still in your old company. You have, you're about to leave that company, but the company X has already announced your arrival, let's say on the 1st of July. Yeah, that roughly gives us six weeks from now.

41:08 There are many concrete things you can do between now and the 1st of July that you do not want to wait for the 1st of July to start doing. First one is educating and grounding yourself in your new organisation, meaning reading all the material that can get your hands on going. If it's a public listed company, going on the website, logging into an investor relations portal and watching all the analyst and quarterly results announcements where the analysts are grilling the CEO or CFO and what they expect of the company.

41:42 Reading strategy documents that they may make available to you because you have already signed your new contract of employment. So you know you're you're Privy to confidential information at this stage. If there is a predecessor in the position, if it's deemed appropriate, you can reach out to the CFO in the role who you will replace in six weeks time to have a conversation about what sense they make of this position, right? If they were to help you prepare your SWAT, what would be the SWOT that you would want to put on this slide deck of yours? If it's deemed appropriate, you can reach out to the finance leadership team that you will be inheriting in six weeks from now and introduce yourself to them.

42:20 Give them a bit of a flavour about you, your style of leadership and what you expect from them and at the same time learn about them and what they expect of the incoming CFO and the the future line manager. And one last example I want to use is every company has at least one leadership team off site that they sometimes do externally, sometimes supported by someone like myself. If that event is about to take place in the next six weeks, it will be foolish for you not to make sure that you attend that event.

42:50 Because guess what? That event is going to set the stage for the next 12 to 24 to 36 months to come. Which means that you want to make sure to have a seat at that table, even if it's not possible to give your input, at least as a silent observer. So you know what the CEO wants, what the board members want and all that.

43:11 So you see, there are so many things that you can do even before you are technically on your day one in the role. And This is why I I say often on podcast that the 1st 90 days is a myth. And so it's only one seventh of the total equation. If you wanted to look at the double diamond framework as a success formula, it's only one out of the 7th of the equation of what makes a an executive successful during the first 12 months.

43:40 Not amazing. So you you briefly touched on organisational politics, right, and cultural failure in terms of factors that influence, you know, whether an executive, you know, is successful in their role or not. But this is a burning question that is on the leaves of a lot of people in the corporate space, right?

44:09 So why do technically brilliant leaders sometimes feel politically or culture and even when they achieve strong results? Yeah, see at the more I don't know about you, but have you come across a course that teaches people how to become better politics or how to become better culture? There isn't, right?

44:33 Which means it's one of those things HR keeps banging out to managers and individuals and leaders. It's one of those things you have to learn on the job and of course you can work with someone like myself or other people who can help you to reflect and make sense of it. But allow me to use one particular aspect of the double diamond framework. And so I call that the 5C's, right? I mean, you are currently dialling into our episodes from South Africa and I know South Africa's an incredible country and great for many things.

45:07 One of them are diamonds. So if you wanted to buy a diamond as an investment, let's say, or you wanted to gift it to someone who's close to you, the 5C's that make an outstanding diamond are carrot weight, colour, clarity, cut and certification. So it's a combination of those 5C's that you will want to make sure that you get the best diamond for the budget that you have available for this present of yours. Now if I wanted to use the same 5C's in the sense of the double diamond framework, the 5C's are context, arguably the most important CFO because it looks at the circumstances of the organisation, of the competition, landscape of the government and society surrounding this role, this company and the wider say called

45:57 landscape. The second C looks at culture. This is looking at organisational culture. What are the leadership traits in this company? And they may be different in PwC than they are in EY, right? And it also looks at values. What are guiding principles? What are our beliefs in this one organisation here that may or may not be similar to whatever else I am used to.

46:22 The third C looks at commitments. What is this company or firm committed to achieving for its customers, clients and society at large? What are the ambitious ambition levels in this one organisation? And it says a lot about what is expected to be also commitments from you as the incoming C-Suite executive.

46:42 The 4th 1 looks at circles. What are the circles of influence, power, but more importantly, informal decision making? I won't mention the the name of the company, but there was a very famous CTO who had to be let go of because they went for a technology solution that made all the sense in the world looking at the analysis that McKinsey prepared for them. But they failed to check this with someone who was considered to be the deep subject matter expert in the same organisation. He unfortunately did did not have the most senior job title next to his name.

47:22 That's why he wasn't even on the radar of this particular CTO. But with that choice that he made essentially had to be let go of. And so informal decision making means who are the go to people in your organisation for the topic that are crucial to your mission success. And and last but not least, the fifth C looks at confidence levels. What are the levels of employee engagement in this company? What is the description of a leadership DNA here? And so the way I use the 5C's is I give them, I give the executive leader, if I'm coaching them a very brief explanation of what they stand for. Then they take it as their homework to sit down and think about what about the context of this new position and if it's a new company, even more important

48:11 that I want to think about. And more importantly, that is different than the context of the other role in the other company that I was hired to do right now. What about the culture? What about the commitment? What about the circus, what our confidence? And I want them to think about mitigation strategies ahead of the of the coaching conversation.

48:33 And when they come to the coaching conversation, I will coach them around every one of these five CS. And by doing that, what I will do is I will equip them to the best degree possible to not walk on all these landmines that are laid out for them around people, culture and politics in the new position slash new organisation. So what what would you say is a role of emotional intelligence right in executive leadership today? Is is it teachable?

49:08 Of course, like anything, you can learn things, right? I mean, IQEQ are, you know, considered to be important to anyone that wants to grow their career. I would actually want to add a third one to this at the danger of creating a new acronym, but I call that Transition Intelligence TQ, right, which is OK.

49:32 Just because you have been successful in the past transitioning from one position to another, it does not guarantee whatsoever that you will be continuing to be transition ready and successful in your future transition. Which again, you know, doing the work with someone like myself. And I have trained up 72 coaches by now who are certified transition coaches. So everything I use in my coaching practise has been made available to those 72 coaches.

49:59 And they're already working for companies just to give you some names like ABP, Adidas, Louis Vuitton, Hennessy, LVMH, the largest luxury company in the world and many, many more others to who are deploying these tools in their transition coaching practise. So again, IQ is important, EQ is important, but TQ is equally important, if not probably more important because chances are at the MOLA if you are considered for the CFO position in company X, you have already demonstrated high degree of IQ EQ already. Now the question is can you do the TQ on top? That is very, very important.

50:39 And of course, I think bringing it back to what I say outside of the leadership, let's talk about real life scenarios, right? Amelia wanted to host a webinar, but the tool couldn't deliver. Zooming out, she turned to Webinar Key, an expert solution for webinars. With seamless setup and intuitive design, she delivered the perfect webinar.

51:00 Webinar Key host webinars like a boss. You've been a tough guy in the UK, doesn't transition to you being a tough guy in South Africa or in Nigeria or in the US for example, right? So same thing with organisations, right? You being a high performer software does not mean that you would necessarily, you know, just come in and plug and play. But I think a lot of people do not realise that they come and I think it's probably like a mindset thing. So what would you say in terms of adjusting the mindset because of being a lot of people don't realise this about me. I used to be, did I say teacher?

51:46 I used to be a lecturer for professional students, right? So I've trained a lot of Chartered Accountants. I've treated thousands of Chartered Accountants, right? Recently, a post on LinkedIn was what reminded me of my past life that oh wow, you used to lecture, you used to train Chartered Accountants, right? But it's interesting to see how from the people that I trained, people who had a finance background, right tend to underperform compared to people without a finance background. And when I had a seat back to think about it, it's mostly because the guys without a finance background come with the mentality of I need to play catch up. I don't know this thing, I need to know it, but a lot of the guys with the finance or admin

52:36 or management background, they come with the ideology of I know it's what I know already, but they now get outperformed right by the people without a finance background. So I'd like for you to to to shed some light on that. So two things come up for me. I mean, firstly, and that's, that's the easy of the two. So let's get that out of the way. Every organisation has their own beliefs, sometimes not even captured anywhere.

53:06 And so I can tell you when I used to work for British American Tobacco BAT, the most GM/CEO appointments were made of leaders who had a marketing background. And you may say that's right or that's wrong, but the reality was that more than 65% of all GM/CEO appointments were made of former managing directors, sorry, made of a marketing directors. And it was never a written rule anywhere. We never considered that to be the norm. The reality was though, that that was where the most appointments were made from.

53:46 Now Fast forward to Vodafone where I worked with the group CFO and then the finest leadership team and the 27,000 finest leaders all around the world in 24 markets. Most of our GMs and CEOs were former FDS and CFOs, right? Again, it was one of these organisational beliefs that wasn't captured anywhere. And nobody said, oh, but I will not accept this GM appointment if he or she does not have a finance background. But these are the beliefs that sometimes colour our decision making right, whether we like to admit it or not. So that's the first thing I want to say. So what you said, I can't universally say that's true or not true.

54:28 I just don't have a big enough sample size to be able to say, yes, people with the finest background outperform the other peers. What I can say though is what you said initially, which is when I describe the most common executive transition challenges, and I cite 12 in my book, I speak about challenges like the new organisation challenge, right? If you have been appointed in a new company, that's already one transition challenge you need to take care of. The second one is the big promotion challenge. If you have never been ACFO before, you may have been a head of finance or a finance target, but never AC suite finance executive.

55:06 That's already your second transition challenge. The third one is the leading former peers challenge, meaning or you would just appear to all these people for whatever reason, the company has decided that you are now the PAC leader. And that in itself creates a whole different level of dynamic with all of your peers because guess what?

55:31 That's what you have to live up with up to right now. The 4th 1 is what Michael Watkins very politically correctly refers to as the Corporate Diplomacy Challenge, which I think is a nice word for what I call politics. Again, no company likes to admit that this thing called politics exists in their company. It's always some competitors problem there, but the reality is, and I've seen that first hand, as soon as you move from a country position into a regional or into the global head office role, which I have done multiple times over, you get to be exposed to a high degree of politics. And if you cannot deal with that, well guess what? That's why it's one of your transition challenges to overcome.

56:15 The fifth one is what you referred to as the international move challenge. I moved from Germany to the German speaking part of Switzerland and you could argue it's pretty much the same thing. The reality is if you were to move from Dublin to London, although technically all these are English speaking kind of cities and countries, the reality is you will face a very different cultural challenge.

56:38 The 6th 1 is the turn around challenge, meaning you have always been the captain of ships that have had sunshine and steady, you know, performance. Suddenly you have to deal with a ship that is about to sink or hit the iceberg. And so the question is can you do that as well? You know, in German, we say to them, shouldn't better capitate, meaning nice weather captains who have always been riding the the waves somehow, you know, through luck or whatever circumstances. But now that the ship is about to hit the iceberg, do they have what it takes to stir the ship away from disaster? The 7th 1, which is 1.

57:18 I have faced myself oftentimes. I've been headhunted many times in my career and often times the mandate that I was given was to make sure that I repositioned the HR function towards what the company expects of the HR leaders. Meaning I had to realign the HR function around more commercial targets or more closely with the business goals.

57:41 And the last one out of the 12, the top 8 is the so-called business portfolio challenge. Think of Walt Disney as one of these examples. Walt Disney, the biggest revenue and profitability driver for them is the theme parks, a fish. They have, I don't know, 8 or so around the world, but they also have an IPTV proposition, which is called Disney Plus.

58:04 But they also have merchandising articles, which is like, you know, mugs and and and and cups and toys and what have you. Now managing an enterprise that has all these various businesses underneath is a whole different complexity. And so these are just eight of the transition challenges I wanted to share with you office. You touched upon one or two.

58:27 And what really gets those executives to fail 40% of the time at the moolah is the fact that it's a stacking of these challenges at the same appointment level. So if I use my own little example, when I was hired by Rush to move from Germany as a HRD for Europe to become the global head of HR for HR and Communications, that meant that I was faced with five transition challenges all at the same time.

58:57 I had the new organisation challenge. Rush was a new company. I had never worked for them before. Actually, if I wanted to add another one, it was a new industry. I'd never worked for pharmaceuticals before. Then. I had the big promotion challenge. It was the first global role that I was hiding to. I suddenly had 140 country footprint to work with, not 8 European countries that were almost in the same time zone anymore.

59:20 I also have to face and deal with the corporate diplomacy challenge or the politics. Because I was working out of Basel, which was the global headquarters. I also had to work with the International Move Challenge, which was something I had experienced before, but not quite in the same level because Switzerland was new for me as a new destination. And last but not least, they created the position as a new position and hired me into.

59:44 Which means that although I did mention that that was a new challenge for me because I had to own my space, that was newly created space for me and for the position, which meant that some of the established HRDS who didn't want to let go of their beloved projects and their beloved budget. I had to force my way into those and, and, and get those to be transferred to me because that was part of my new remit.

1:00:08 So you see how it's like you want to eat a burger that has five patties and you're trying to eat this thing all at the same time. And of course, the more you start to stack up, the more challenging and tricky it becomes. Amazing. Like at this point I feel I feel really envious for the audience. Of course we have delivered a lot of value today.

1:00:34 But why are you speaking about those transitions? You know, especially from a regional role to a global role, right? But I think within the last two months we had the ex president of Coca-Cola International, Ahmed Boza on the podcast, right? And he was ACFO before he was made president. I think, you know, American companies called the CEO's president, but he spoke about that transition from the CFO role to the president role and spoke about the transition from regional roles to now the international roles.

1:01:17 But one thing that really stuck for me from his, from that conversation with him moving from the CFO role to the CEO role was being a CFO, you're more buried in the numbers, you're more buried in the technical details. But moving to that CEO role, he now had to be more of a people leader, right? So I'd like for you to speak to that transition from, you know, one level of C streets to another level, especially, you know, if you're probably moving from the CMO to the CEO or CFO to CEO, we really don't see how it affects these individuals, right?

1:02:02 You it's more like you're moving from a specialist role to a generalist role. So what are the guard rails that help with executive success? Right? Making those transitions, yes. So the short answer is the double diamond framework is what I would recommend that particular executive to also utilise, ideally with someone like myself or one of the 72 coaches I've trained because that really gives them the highest degree of a success.

1:02:29 Now if I wanted to unpack maybe one or two additional tools, one of them is not based on empirical research. You know, my book is very well researched. I spent five years just researching the topic. I have 156 citations in my book, so the appendix is 22 pages long. This particular framework is something that I have created on my own without necessarily basing it on an empirical framework.

1:02:56 It's, it's based on my humble experience of and the sample size of 350 executives I have coached in the last 14 years now in the last 12 years. So I called them the six essential qualities of extraordinary leaders, OK. And for this particular CFO switching into the CEO role, these are the six qualities I would want them to consider and rank themselves on a spider web to say what is my current state as a leader, honest assessment and what is my desired state as a, as an incoming international CEO.

1:03:38 So that the first two are having the confidence and a high degree of self-awareness. OK, I won't mention any particular names, but there are many very famous walled politicians who have a tonne of confidence but aren't necessarily very good in taking a look. And the hard look in the mirror to determine is any of what I'm saying actually landing with my audience or is it a bit too much? So these two out of the six help the leader to expand their identity.

1:04:10 I call that self leadership. OK, the next two are being connected. Imagine a Wi-Fi signal and being an, an inspiring leader. And again, I know many leaders who have a tonne of inspirational leadership. They go on a big stage and they, they make the, the, the most incredible speeches, but they fail to speak to the individual that is swiping the floors late in the evening in their office because they just don't know what to say or how to connect with that level of individual. So it's the combination of the two that enhances the impact of that executive.

1:04:46 And I call these two the combination of two team leadership. And that brings me to the last two qualities of extraordinary leaders. The fifth one is courage and the 6th 1 is clarity. Again, stereotypical. I know a lot of executives who have a tonne of courage. Let's go, go, go, go, go, but do not necessarily provide the necessary clarity around why we are going this direction. What is the what's in it for everyone, not just for me or for the board, if we were all to rally behind this one mission and and really achieve this target here. So it's a combination of the two that elevates the results of an executive leader.

1:05:31 And I call these two business leadership. So to sum it up, it's about being confident, self aware, connected, inspiring, courageous, and having the clarity to make sure that you align yourself leadership with team leadership, with business leadership so that you can expand your identity, enhance your impact and elevate results.

1:05:53 And that's one particular toolkit is something that I can work with a leader, for instance, also to do a qualitative 360 interview with people that are the boss, their peers and the dark reports to gather their meaningful input and wise I download that for the leader. They will then do the self-assessment as to what is the current state of mine when I look at these six qualities and what is my desire to be. And that then becomes our road map for success. Amazing.

1:06:25 But behind the courageous faces in public, right? We know that a lot of leaders struggle with the imposter syndrome at the highest of levels, but unfortunately, the stakes are the highest. So how? What's your recommendation for how to deal with imposter syndrome? Yeah, I mean, look, I, I think, and I do just briefly allude to this in in my book, right.

1:06:58 I speak about the imposter syndrome in, in my book very briefly, because I really, again, I, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a psychotherapist. I do not claim to know too much about the topic. What I can say, though, is that a lot more executives than they would admit actually have faced impostor syndrome, right?

1:07:24 That's the real truth. I cite a particular study that looks at what is the actual percentage, right, of leaders and people who have cited that they have come across this phenomenon previously in some form or shape. And it's it's quite shocking because that number is 70%. So 7 out of 10 people have experienced these feelings at some point in their lives. And I cite the International Journal of Behavioural Science from 2011 here.

1:07:57 And so why is I say that? Yeah, I mean, you know, impostor syndrome can be a challenge and can stand in the way of the leader and their mission and probably what whatever is the the success that they want to achieve. But we also need to bear in mind that there are real upsides of impostor syndrome. And again, I think that that's sometimes neglected or unexplored, but there are some real benefits to be had if, you know, you wanted to look at that as an actual upside. And I think there are scholars more famous than I am and more deep on the matter that have pointed out those upsides of coming across and facing impostor syndrome. And some of them are things like because you are so worried that you may not perform right, which

1:08:55 is a real thing if you have impostor syndrome, you over and over prepare for whatever you are going to do. So if it's a keynote presentation, you really want to make sure that you have researched the topic and you have taken enough attempts with your family and friends to really get comfortable and a little more confident at presenting this topic. If it's about, you know, meeting and attending in meeting boardrooms and so on, you are more likely. If you're not quite a confident in your contributions yet, you may reach out to someone who is more senior than you are in the same boardroom and ask them to give you proper feedback on the back end of each meeting.

1:09:41 Meaning again, you are taking very valuable feedback on board. And not only that, but you're actually listening for improvement suggestions here, and you are not dismissing the feedback because you think you're above it all anyway. And what, what, what really is there for you to improve on? And so there are real reasons. And this is actually called as the Dunning Kruger inverse, which means that sometimes competence correlates with doubts and that doubt drives the behaviour that compounds into more competence.

1:10:14 So for me, I want to take it out of this imposter kind of title and bring it to humility, right? I mean, this is one of the profound things that I learned from one of my mentors. His name is Doctor Marshall Goldsmith, who said that, you know, he was in a conversation with a particular leader and he asked the leader, what is your development edge?

1:10:35 What, what topic would you like to develop on? And the leader actually turned around and told him, look, I'm, I'm complete. There's nothing left for me to improve on. And this is where Marshall said, may ioffer you a humble suggestion. He said, sure, yeah, go ahead. And he said, how about humility, right? Because for me that that seems to be a development area to you. So humility is a learning posture and certainty is not, which is one of the reasons if you look at the research that's been conducted by a doctor, Robert Hogan, the founder of Hogan Assessment Systems, is that if you look at CEO performance over a longer time period and you look at the total shareholder return, the CEOs

1:11:18 that have demonstrated humility are outperforming their peers who have demonstrated a lot of charisma or charismatic leadership. This is. Really amazing. And you know, I love that correlation between confidence, sorry, competence and doubt, right? But for me, I believe that confidence comes with competence.

1:11:44 So I don't know if you agree with that. Of course, the more competent you are, the more confident you become. But I also love that humility that you spoke about, right? Because humility actually helps you to have, or would I say helps you to become teachable. And the moment you stop being teachable, it puts a ceiling on your growth, right? But a lot of people don't talk about the mindsets. And on this forecast, we have a philosophy, mindset, skill set, tool set.

1:12:20 That is, before we collaborate with anybody, we want to evaluate where is your mindset art. All right, but believe that for you to be successful at anything, right, you need to first of all, have the right mindset, then develop the right skill sets, then adopt the right tool set, then you can actually achieve success.

1:12:41 So while Speaking of the mindset on the pressure, right, you talked about the fair weather captains. It's very easy to to achieve success on the, you know, Clemence weather conditions, right? But what role does mindset play when you're navigating uncertainty, restructuring organisational politics by contingencies? What role does mindset play?

1:13:04 You know when you're under pressure. Yes, and actually I wasn't quite successful trying to explain that. I think you and I are saying the same thing. So the honest version is. But when I look at, you know, someone even coming to me with the imposter syndrome as one of the issues they want to overcome. Feeling like a fraud is often a feature, not a bug. OK.

1:13:27 Which means that you only feel like an imposter when you're in a room, when you feel that you're stretched to get into. So people who feel perfectly entitled to where they are usually, in my opinion, aren't growing, right. So the discomfort is the tax on operating above your previous levels or above your what, what you thought to be your competence levels, right? Which also means that again, if I wanted to look at it that way, imposter syndrome tends to make people better at the thing that they are insecure about, which means that they tend to over prepare, they tend to double check, they listen harder in meetings and with, you know, taking feedbacks more seriously instead of dismissing it and

1:14:15 saying, well, I'm a complete product, look at me right, what more can I possibly learn? And this is where the Dunninger Kruger inverse is. Real competence correlates with doubt, and that doubt drives the behaviours that compound into more competence, which also means that humility is a learning posture and certainty or competence per SE is not.

1:14:41 It also keeps you decent to other people. Let's face it, if you have some degree of impostor syndrome, you tend to read the room, you tend to assume others you know know things that you don't and avoid the kind of confident, you know, steam steamrolling that wrecks teams and conversations. And so again, for me, it's not a good or bad thing.

1:15:05 You can look at it through different lenses. But yeah, of course mindset plays a big part because if if you had that, you know, a grotesque mindset that you're a complete product, well then then you have done, you have outdone your learning curve that there's nothing really you can learn. And that in itself is is not a good sign.

1:15:24 Amazing. So have you actually seen AI and digital transformation increase leadership pressure for executives and how should they respond? Of course, I mean, it's another one of those unknowns if you are not a deep technical expert and and everyone is looking at you to come up with the brilliant solutions that you know, they're also waiting for it. But for me, again, it's not necessarily about having the deep technical competence.

1:15:55 I mean, if every executive had to develop deep technical competence on every trend that comes the way they, they would never finish their learning and they would still be stuck in some formal university degree and training. So again, it, it comes back to what I said before, which is, you know, if you are open enough, if you have a learning curve where you don't consider yourself to have all the answers to all the questions that are coming your way.

1:16:21 If you work with people who do are deep subject matter experts and help you to prepare those decisions in a more meaningful way, that's all you need to do. And of course, you, you know, as we say, you need to start drinking your own champagne. I mean, how many times have I seen that in HR where we, you know, some of the better initiatives that we rolled out, whether it was an ERP implementation or something technologically related. You, you experiment with it first with your own population before you start to roll it out into the wider organisation. And those critical learnings must be embedded in the final rollout of the tool or whatever the solution is before you do that.

1:17:04 Wow, interesting. So when I look at the data in terms of the demographics of this forecast, we have a highly educated audience for Refonique. I think I saw that more than 40% of the leasters of this forecast have more than a first degree and I think about more than 20, about 20%, they're about have a master's degree or higher now. But that means that we, we have an audience that is predominantly made-up of professionals and entrepreneurs. So I'd like for you to speak to the founders, to the entrepreneurs, right?

1:17:48 What can they learn from these corporate executive transitions that we have been talking about? Like what are the transferable skills, right that they can learn from in terms of transitions that can actually help them to save years of costly mistakes? Yeah. I mean, look, if they are leading organisations that are large enough to have executives hired and working for them, well then the topic applies to them universally, right?

1:18:20 It's the same thing. And if they haven't quite reached that level yet, my advice to them is, and this may be a punchline for you, invest in preparedness, not in prediction. That is my ultimate kind of key takeaway that I want to share with them. And, and again, Adam, what I really enjoyed our conversation and I really hope that this was what you had in mind when you reached out and said, let's, let's have a have a podcast recording together. Oh, wow, amazing, amazing.

1:18:50 And of course, you know, we had the number one, number one feature is #1 ranked features in the world on the podcast a few weeks ago. And it's like you guys are saying the same thing. She talked about preparedness instead of predictions. And this is the number one futurist in the world. Futurists are known for predicting future trends, right? So preparedness is actually very important. And of course, you know, we appreciate that. So before we let you go, I definitely we need to do a part to you because we, we've had a lot to to speak about. And of course, we have a lot of value to still provide to the audience, right?

1:19:32 So before we let you go, we we do have a tradition, right? Like you tell me what name you would like to see on the podcast. I mean, one name I can recommend to you because I found him quite interesting is a gentleman called David Pope and he's a communications and presence trainer and guru. So if you if if you have an audience that is interested in how they can enhance the presence and the voice and the whole thing, I think that's that's going to make for a very interesting conversation.

1:20:07 Wow, interesting. So you know the guy, you can invite him. So what guy should should should I invite? Give me a name to. Invite. Yeah. David Pope. I know him. Yeah. I'm happy to make an introduction on your behalf. OK, amazing. But what guy is it that you don't know? That you think I should reach out to you?

1:20:25 That I don't know. Well, maybe some deep AI expert, someone who has been in the machine room training those algorithms on what they are capable of that you know, may or may not be as as known as Sam Oldman or someone of that nature. Oh wow, interesting. You know what? I have had somebody that fits that same description on the broadcast and they leave in your neck of the woods. So I think I might make an introduction. His name is Doctor Elias Meno, very, very brilliant Russian, Polish AI experts.

1:21:06 I think you, you'd, you'd love that introduction. Please just remind me after the port. So quick fire route questions, right? So quick questions. Just give me the quickest answer you can give me. So #1 would be what is your best leadership book? Yeah, it's a it's a it's not a new book, but I loved reading that book.

1:21:28 It's called the Coaching Habit by Michael Bunge Stanier. What I loved about the book is it's written for a non coach audience. And so this book really teaches you as a leader, as a line manager, if you wanted to use the instrument of coaching more often without necessarily training to become a coach. The Coaching Habit is your must read book. The coaching habit by.

1:21:53 Michael Bunge's tenure. Thank you. What would you say is the most underrated? Skill. The most underrated executive skill. Humility. Amazing humility. I knew it had to be a soft skill. So AI, do you see it as an opportunity or as a trek? Where does AI see it in the analysis on boards? Can be both, depending on your worldview and your attitude towards technology innovations.

1:22:27 OK, so #4 is what is the biggest leadership myth that you disagree with? The 1st 90 days is enough to on board at the executive level. OK. And of course, last but not the least, what is one word for leadership? That is one word that defines great leadership, and why that's word is above the authors.

1:22:52 Wow. I mean, for me, it would be, unsurprisingly, TQ or transition intelligence that that for me really defines the cream of the crop. Because again, you could have done this several times over, not exactly knowing how and why you were successful before. But if you're able to articulate that, if you're able to be an inspiration to your peers, be a mentor to others who want to, you know, learn more about this and how they can be more successful, that for me, is the real ultimate leadership quality, I guess. I'm basin I do not disagree with you from me to you, it's a very big thank you.

1:23:34 I always say it is that gratitude is good attitude and when a person shares their time with you, they share their life with you because the SI unit measuring life this time. So love and massive respect to you for joining us today for the insides, you know, gives you wealth of knowledge that you shared today, right? It is super, super amazing.

1:23:55 And of course, to the audience, right, guys, do not forget to subscribe, share, like, you know, comment support and also always go for something in your life. Conceive, believe, strive to thrive and of course, go achieve. For me, it's goodbye. And of course, back to Naveed. Do you have any final words before you leave us today? No, just to say thank you for having me on your show and that I can't wait to get my hand on the actual episode. Oh.

1:24:25 Wow, it's just coming to you soon. OK. Bye, guys.