In this episode, Jenn DeWall talks to Simon T. Bailey, Crestcom faculty member, author and Breakthrough Strategist.  Simon is one of America’s top 10 most-booked speakers on change, leadership, and customer experience. He’s shared his wisdom on cultural transformation, personal and professional leadership development, relationship building, and creating platinum service opportunities across six continents. Join us as Jenn and Simon explore how to shift your brilliance, sharpen your focus and harness your individual and organizational potential.

Full Transcript:

Jenn DeWall:                    00:10                     Simon T. Bailey is a breakthrough strategist who’s life purpose is to teach people how to be fearless and create their futures. He has more than 30 years of experience in the hospitality industry, including serving as sales director for Disney Institute and has been named one of the top 25 people who will help you reach your business and life goals by Success Magazine. Simon has authored 10 books, including his most recent release, Be the Spark – Five Platinum Service Principles for Creating Customers for Life. Simon challenges individuals to dig deep to find and release their inner brilliance and become Chief Breakthrough Officers personally and professionally.

Jenn DeWall:                     00:56                     Hi everyone and welcome to the Leadership Habit Podcast. I am here with Simon T. Bailey and I’m so excited to have him. He is one of our faculty members for a training that we developed called “Develop Effective and Devoted Employees”. Now, for those of you that don’t know Simon, he is a Breakthrough Strategist and he works with organizations to create cultural transformation. He is really passionate about creating an environment where employees can thrive and engagement is high, which can lead to amazing customer service. So he does that, but we’re also going to be talking about a few of his books today. One, in particular, called “Shift Your Brilliance”. It’s an amazing topic that I was really excited to talk to Simon about. And so without further ado, I just want to introduce you all to Simon T. Bailey,

Simon T. Bailey:                01:45                     Thank you so much for having me. Good to be with you.

Jenn DeWall:                    01:48                    Yes, we are so happy to have you. So Simon, for those of you that don’t know you, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Simon T. Bailey:                01:54                     So I grew up in Buffalo, New York, go Bills!. Well, I live currently in a little small town of Windermere, Florida, which is a suburb of Orlando. And moved from Buffalo to Atlanta to Orlando, Florida. Been here for 20 plus years, used to work at Disney, left Disney a number of years ago to now do this work around the world. I have two amazing children. My son is 20, my daughter is 17 Daniel is in college. Madison is a senior. And both of them doing incredibly well. And when I’m not working, I’m a big movie goer. So you’ll find me at the movies with a bucket of popcorn, my feet kicked up. And if it’s a comedy like “Wedding Crashers”, I am laughing out loud!

Jenn DeWall:                      02:47                   That’s a great movie too, by the way! Let alone, I mean, the movie theaters where you can put your feet up to where they have the reclining seats, those are the most amazing part about going to the movies in today’s world.

Simon T. Bailey:                02:58                     Yes, absolutely.

 

Shift Your Brilliance

Jenn DeWall:                     03:01                     So Simon, the topic that we’re going to talk about today is Shifting Your Brilliance. What does that mean? What does it mean to Shift Your Brilliance?

Simon T. Bailey:                03:10                     It means letting go what has worked, in order to embrace what wants to emerge. Sometimes, individuals, they want broadband results, but they’re using dial-up methods in how they do what they do. So when you Shift Your Brilliance, you’re literally understanding- how do I see how I fit tomorrow- see how I fit tomorrow and make the shift. So it’s inviting people in that journey to do the deeper work, to say, how do I ensure that my head is aligned with my heart? My heart is aligning with my hands so that I can make the shift into where the world is going.

Jenn DeWall:                      03:50                     I love that, you know, just connecting and really leaning into your heart and what you’re more passionate about. But why is that important for today’s leaders?

Simon T. Bailey:                04:00                     Well, in a world of algorithms, autonomous cars and automation, we have to realize that soul intelligence is faster than artificial intelligence and social intelligence invites us on that journey to say when I shift my brilliance, what do I personally need to do? How do I begin to think about engaging my team and a fresh new way? And then, from an organizational standpoint, how are we creating a culture where everyone matters and everyone can step into their brilliance in the midst of disruption and change?

Jenn DeWall:                     04:34                     Great! So it’s giving them the tools essential to make paradigm shifts and see their value, to be able to, you know, achieve greater heights or achieve different goals and solutions. Would that be right? Absolutely. Okay, perfect. And you know, I guess when I think of a leader, would the example be something as simple as, you know, shifting your mindset, just thinking, what’s another way to look at it?

Simon T. Bailey:                05:00                     I really believe and I teach in the book, Shift Your Brilliance. What is the mindset and skillset that I need to have based on where I am, where my team is, and where the organization is going? So you didn’t have to unpack that and look at what are your behaviors? What are your habits? What are the skills that you need to acquire? What are the skills you need to polish and shape? So for instance, the number one skill being taught in Silicon Valley right now is empathy. How do I walk a mile in the shoes of everyone else? And how do I really practice conscious inclusion and realizing I don’t have all the answers, but when I come from an empathetic standpoint, I’m looking to engage everyone in the conversation for where we need to go, who we need to be, and what needs to be accomplished.

Jenn DeWall:                     05:54                     Empathy. So powerful. Just think about our ability to see the other person and see their needs and understand how to, you know, transition or to change and adjust your style to be able to build that inclusive environment.

Simon T. Bailey:                06:09                     Absolutely. And when you build that inclusive environment, everybody matters. Everybody is important, everyone has a contribution that they want to bring to a culture where they are seen and heard.

Jenn DeWall:                     06:24                     Right! We want to feel that we matter and that the work we do has an impact. Whether it’s something grandiose or something small, and not to say we have to judge them by small or grandiose, but it’s just knowing that you being here, your actions, your work is really, really significant to us, because it’s part of what makes our success happen.

Simon T. Bailey:                06:46                     Absolutely.

Jenn DeWall:                     06:47                     Can you tell us a little bit about your story with shifting your brilliance and what that path was like for you?

Simon T. Bailey:                06:53                     Yeah. For me professionally, I’ve worked with 6 different companies, I’ve had 10 different jobs over a 30 plus year period. And what I recognized when I was moving up the food chain as a manager, leader. I realized that leadership is both caught and taught, so you learn to lead or learn to manage based on how you’ve been led or what you’ve seen. It’s not just theory that’s in the textbook, it’s actually what’s been modeled for you in the environment. So where I failed as a leader, is I told people what to do. Instead of asking what do they think? I would have selective hearing instead of authentic listening. And I was a boss with an agenda instead of a leader with a vision. So what I quickly discovered is that you can never take people to a place you’ve not been yourself, and coming to the place to say, “I don’t know what I don’t know,” is now that leader- coming to a place of vulnerability, being honest to say, how do I engage everyone around me and moving quicker, faster towards a solution. And recognizing this, and this is how I really began to understand how to shift my brilliance. Years ago, leaders and managers were taught that you need to know everything. And in fact, I ran an adult daycare center, at best as a leader. And what I recognized is I hired smart men and women, but I would say, you know, bring me your hands and your heart, but coat-check your brain at the door. And the discrepancy, or the failure in that we were not getting the solutions that we wanted. So what I discovered in my own journey is that I had to come to a place where I released the need to be right. Number two, I had to understand saying that I don’t know, doesn’t mean that I failed. And number three, I had to understand letting go of that old mindset where I had all the answers to embrace the new mindset. And that is how do I ask the right questions in order to evoke brilliance coming forward in the environment.

Jenn DeWall:                    09:11                     Yeah, it’s, you know, it’s all about suspending ego, right? We don’t have to have all of the answers and be right all the time. But in the traditional sense, I would say the ways that the pressures of a different time. I would say now, I think we’re in a different time in the workforce. We were expected to be perfectionists, to work really, really long hours without making any type of mistake. And we were also expected to keep it all together, even though I think it’s that example where it’s like looking at, you know, you’re just staying above water. It’s a duck that’s on water but its feet are just going rapidly underneath and you can’t see that. And you know the consequences of having that type of, I would say passion or philosophy about work is there’s the burnout. There’s not feeling like you’re having the impact. There’s the opposite. There are people not connecting with each other and worse- really irritating each other. So then that causes those things that I’m sure you’re familiar with turnover and retention challenges. But really it’s all about learning how to suspend that ego and look at every person you meet as your teacher in your student. Right? We’re all on this journey together to figure out how we can do something and how we can do it the best way possible.

Simon T. Bailey:                10:26                     Yes. That is so spot on.

Jenn DeWall:                     10:29                     And like you said – asking the right questions. What are those types of questions? How does that communication style have to shift? When we’re thinking about the type of questions that we asked to get the most out of people.

Simon T. Bailey:                10:42                     So I think there are three questions that every leader or manager or team member has to begin to ask themselves every single day. Number one, why are we doing it this way? And that’s not to say that it’s the wrong way, but it votes. It then evokes question number two, is there a better way? And then question number three, what are we going to do today better than we did yesterday? And when leaders and managers begin to ask that question, it really encourages people to move towards a journey to look through the windshield of what’s possible and instead of the rear view mirror of the way it used to be. And those questions become the GPS coordinates that allow you to accelerate until tomorrow instead of being stuck in yesterday.

The Vuja De Moment

Jenn DeWall:                      11:34                     Perfect. Now in your book, “Shift Your Brilliance”, you talked about the Vuja De moment. It was something that I actually hadn’t heard about until I had read your book. So I’m going to go ahead and assume that some of our listeners haven’t heard of it either. So for those that aren’t familiar with Vuja De, what is Vuja De and why does matter?

Simon T. Bailey:                11:53                     So we have to start with Vuja De is the opposite of Deja Vu. Deja Vu is been there, done that. But Vuja De is going there, doing that. So here’s the backstory. When I started writing “Shift Your Brilliance”, the book was actually called “The Vuja De Moment”, and after 3 title changes, 25 rewrites over a 2-year period. What I discovered is that Vuja De happens when you let go of what is comfortable and convenient, to embrace what needs to happen in order to move forward. Let me say it to you a different way. Change is your friend, not your foe. Change is a brilliant opportunity to grow. So Vuja De is the invitation to embrace the change. It’s the salmon swimming upstream to discover something different. So modern day examples of Vuja De- which might be overused examples- certainly Uber is one that comes to mind. They looked at the taxicab industry and they Vuja De’d it. So they went the opposite way of the way it had always been done. AIRBNB, they don’t own any real estate, but yet they’re in 190 countries around the world and they’ve grown faster in less than a decade than the normal hotel tourism companies that you know of, right? It’s Vuja De. It’s going the opposite way. If you even think of Zipcar, as compared to Hertz, Avis, Alamo, National- Zipcar creates a different model where they take a car and they put it in neighborhoods, certainly around college campuses where people can access it by a code. It’s Vuja De. So Vuja De is the opposite of Deja Vu and it invites you to say, how do we go the opposite way of the way it’s always been done?

Jenn DeWall:                      13:54                     Oh, I love that. I think that we see that example in terms of business here. Denver has really embraced the electric scooters and so looking at, you know, how do people get around? It doesn’t have to just be a bike or walking or a bus. You can also pick up an electric scooter and you can get from A to B and then you can leave it wherever your destination is. Sounds like that might be a Vuja De example.

Simon T. Bailey:                14:18                     Oh, totally, totally.

Jenn DeWall:                     14:20                     You know, what are the benefits of thinking about things in terms of the Vuja De or Shifting Your Brilliance? What are the benefits of doing that both personally, organizationally?

Simon T. Bailey:                14:30                     Yes, so the number one benefit personally, it allows a person to assess their skill set and their mindset in order to spark a way of doing things in a fresh way. So that personal benefit is, I get to kind of clear my lens to move quicker and faster. The second benefit as it relates to the organization is that in times of change, the learning organizations are going to be the organizations that thrive. Organizations that hold onto the way it’s always been done- their market share is going to erode, talent is going to leave- and they thought they were valuable- but they won’t be as valuable as they were in time past. Point in case, Eastman Kodak. When you look at Instagram was sold to Facebook or acquired by Facebook for $1.1 billion and they had only 13 employees. Whereas Eastman Kodak had thousands of patents, but they’re out of business. So it’s that whole thing of the organization thinking about how do we embrace this Vuja De or shift mindset? Which then leads to the third thing, which is we attract a team that creates talent and that talent that creates a team. That says you know what? I want to be a part of that organization that’s on the cutting edge, that organization that sees the old and the new and the new and the old, and then personally, I get to benefit and not just make money but make meaning and make a difference in the community.

Jenn DeWall:                      16:08                     Great. Which you know, meaningful work is also something that’s very important. I think it’s important across all generations, but you see it very heavily in millennials, right? Wanting to work for those organizations that are innovative and disruptive and are giving and have meaning and so it’s so important to embrace Vuja De. If you think about who or what the composition is of your workforce. These are things that a lot of people want and can make you very attractive to want to do business with.

Simon T. Bailey:                16:41                     Yes, absolutely. And the thing about it, millennials can do more research online now more than ever before through Glassdoor.com to kind of get the 411 on an organization even before they get there. Just think about if there was a website that existed called “Rate My Manager”, kinda like “Rate Your Professor”. I think managers and leaders would step up! But currently Glassdoor has all of that data right now and people who have left the organization- good, bad or indifferent- they post their feedback. And talent- millennial talent- is assessing what does the world say about you before they invest their time and energy.

Jenn DeWall:                      17:28                     Right? Because who wants to start a career in an organization where you can tell based on maybe some of those reviews that they may not have a strong investment in learning and development, which is something that’s really important. There may not be a work-life balance. They may have poor managers, which you know, to your point, people don’t typically always leave organizations, they leave bad managers.

Simon T. Bailey:                17:51                     Yes, absolutely.

Jenn DeWall:                      17:54                     I would love to see if there’s a way that we could come up with a business idea to do “Rate My Manager”. People would really appreciate that and it would build in a level of accountability to say, “Hey, even if someone else around you sees this as you being amazing, these other people also feel it in a different way. So how can we merge those to make a better impact?”

 

See Differently

Jenn DeWall:                      18:15                     So we’re talking about shifting your brilliance and I wanted to talk about the seven steps or the actions that you can take to shift your brilliance that are from your book. So you know, we’re going to start with action number one. It was See Differently.

Simon T. Bailey:                18:30                     Yes. See Differently is to look at what you have always seen with a fresh set of eyes, asking those questions, is there a better way? Why are we doing this? What are we going to do about it? So seeing differently gives you permission to totally disrupt what’s happening. So let me give you an example. I was working with an organization not too long ago and once a quarter on a Friday, they take all of their employees and all of them go and work in different departments. Now two-fold benefit on Monday morning, they go back to that previous place where they work, the department they report to, but they come back with a fresh set of eyes because they saw something differently on Friday and they say, “On Friday I did X. What if we do Y and Z here in our department?” The second benefit is it stretches men and women to begin to see things differently and not do it the way it’s always been done. So that’s how you begin to see differently. How do we give individuals a different view of what’s been done? And then ask them, how do we improve it? How do we do it better? Because your answers are in the organization. It’s in the hearts and minds of men and women.

 

Harness the Power of You

Jenn DeWall:                      19:51                     I love that first example about you know, going and working with the different department on a Friday. That’s a really unique way to break down the silos, or people operating in a vacuum, which can create a whole host of issues by people not having exposure to other things. That example. So the second action that you talk about is to Harness the Power of You. What does that mean to Harness the Power of You?

Simon T. Bailey:                20:18                     So in my travels around the world, what I’ve discovered is now organizations are inviting you to take ownership of your career. So here’s the way to think about a career and we’ll use a kind of like a Wall Street portfolio investment portfolio as an example. Every company when they hired talent, they make a bet on that talent. A “BET” stands for their Brilliance, their Energy, and their Time. So when an organization brings in talent, they’re believing that talent brings their brilliance, their insight, potential, their ability, right? And they’re going to put their energy, show up every single day and go the extra inch, right? And then over time- 5, 10, 20 years- that person is going to become more valuable because compounded over time is everything that they learned. So when I started seeing that and thinking about that, I said, wait a minute, if I have a portfolio of experiences that I show up to company X, how do I keep my neck and my job off of the guillotine of cuts, right? The only way you increase your portfolio value is you’ve got to invest. You’ve got to be seen as talent that is worthwhile investing in. In other words, when you harness the part of you and incorporate it, you are a person that the company cannot live without. You are the SME, the Subject Matter Expert. You’re the go-to person that they say, we’ve got to have this person. And the only reason that happens is because a man or woman sees themselves as the CEO of Me, Incorporated. So I am thinking, how do I take my portfolio and increase the value of the BET that’s been made on me over time so the company can’t live without me?

Jenn DeWall:                      22:17                     All right, so it’s personal branding, right? And that confidence piece, owning who you are and knowing your value. I know I’ve had, I’ve been working with people in my coaching practice- and what’s so interesting- is that when people have a competence issue, they’re really reluctant to focus on competence. Not because they don’t see its value, but because they’re so concerned with being and coming off as cocky or arrogant, but really it’s not about arrogance and cockiness. I like to say if you have that filter already, there is a check. You’re not going to go that far down. But it is about recognizing and seeing your value, seeing your strengths, seeing how you make everything better just by being you.

Simon T. Bailey:                23:02                     Yes, absolutely.

Jenn DeWall:                      23:03                     Oh my gosh, I love that Yeah, it’s leverage the power and harness the power of You. I think that’s so important and I wish everyone would do that. I can’t picture what that would look like if everyone did that in terms of how the happiness that people would have at work and to be able to come back home to their families and in their communities. Just really understanding that they matter and that we are so happy to have and see them. I love that whole- I just love that belief- and I think it’s super important.

 

Ignite a Fresh Vision

Jenn DeWall:                      23:28                     So let’s talk about your third action. which is to Ignite a Fresh Vision.

Simon T. Bailey:                 23:38                     It really starts with, how do I create a strategic life plan? And begin to think about where I would like to be in my career and in my business profession – and 90 days out, 180 days out, a year from now- how do I take ownership to take what is the vision and actually execute it?

Jenn DeWall:                      23:59                     When do you think – or how far out should people be looking for a vision? Should they look one month out? Should they look one year out? What do you think works best for people?

Simon T. Bailey:                24:08                     I believe it all depends on where you are in your career. We know that they are, you know, right now on the planet, six generations in the workforce, we know it’s predominantly Gen Xers, Millennials, certainly Gen Z is right behind them. Baby Boomers are there. So it depends on where you are right now personally and professionally. If you are a Boomer, I would certainly be looking at, you know what, if I’ve got another five years to work, what does that plan look like? If you’re a Gen Xer and you’re saying, I have about 10 to 15 years in front of me, what does that look like? If you’re a Millennial just getting into the workforce within the first five years of your career, I would invite you to create a 25-year plan. To say, okay, how do I think 25 years out, in 5-year increments, 18 months within that 5-year cycle. And then we say, begin to say, what are the skills I need? What are the relationships I need to have? What difference am I going to make and is the organization where I’m currently working, is the organization going to help me meet my longterm goals? So, depending on if you’re a Millennial, Xer or Boomer.

Jenn DeWall:                      25:20                     Perfect. Yeah, it’s thinking about the- you know, it’s having a plan- but actually thinking about what the plan is versus saying, in 10 years I want to do this. It sounds like it’s more of a robust process, really think it out. Where do you want to be in five years? What type of skills do you want to have? Is the organization that you’re currently at going to be the one that will help you move to the next level? Or are there opportunities that you could be looking at within your organization to help support and move you to where you want to be?

 

Fuel Your Mind

Jenn DeWall:                      25:49                     You know, your fourth action to take to shift your brilliance is Fuel Your Mind.

Simon T. Bailey:                25:55                     Right! So the greatest advantage that everyone listening to this right now is to actually grow how you think. Right now, the greatest thing that parents- parents have to think about as their children enter the workforce. The question is no longer, what do you want to do? What do you want to be? In a world with algorithms and automation- the most important question you have to ask, in fueling your mind is, what problem have you been created to solve? Because if you’re not solving problems in this economy, then a job can be automated. So when you ask the question, what problem have I been created to solve? What it fuels within is how do I unlock creativity? Critical thinking. How do I truly become empathetic as we’ve already said? How do I become that storyteller? How do I look for the little nuances and the intangibles that are needed in moving my life, my business, my organization forward? So fueling your mind is how do I create a surround sound of learning? For instance, podcasts such as this one, books that I’m reading, conferences that I’m attending, putting together a personal board of directors, thinking about how to like upskill and creating a cornucopia of things that challenge you to fuel your mind to move forward.

Jenn DeWall:                      27:26                     Yeah. So it’s investing in yourself and seeing where those investments can leave you. Whether it’s your time by listening to a podcast and maybe it will spark a new idea or just a different way to look at something or reading a book. And you can practice different skillsets like empathy once you see things from a different way. But I know in one of your blogs you said, “Readers are Leaders”, I believe, and I really believe that. It’s all about how can we invest in ourselves because it’s not as if there’s some amazing gift that all of us have built-in where we have this maximum potential of what we can ever get. It’s that within us we can develop ourselves and we get to determine our potential. It’s not fixed. And so by fueling your mind, that’s the way that you can do that. Thinking about how you can continue to grow and evolve.

Simon T. Bailey:                28:18                     Yes.

 

Take the Wheel

Jenn DeWall:                      28:19                     So the next action you can take to shift your brilliance is to Take the Wheel. What does that mean to take the wheel?

Simon T. Bailey:                28:28                     Taking the Wheel, is finding that inner Madagascar or finding it and move it, move it, get to it. In other words, the best hand that will feed you at the end of the day is the one at the end of your risks. So taking the wheel is the invitation to say, what am I going to do to execute, move into action, get it done. Not wait for the tap on the shoulder, but how am I going to get up off my blessed assurance and make things happen?

Jenn DeWall:                      28:56                     Yeah, it’s taking the wheel. It sounds like with that approach, you don’t have the opportunity, if you really want to shift your brilliance, to live in what some would call a victim mentality, meaning everything is happening to me or it’s their fault. Taking the wheel is truly taking responsibility for what you can control and making it happen.

Simon T. Bailey:                29:15                     Absolutely. No one can stop you but you.

Jenn DeWall:                      29:18                     There’s a lot of different examples within media of how people have really taken the wheel. There have been opportunities- or not opportunities- but moments that they’ve had to overcome adversity and they really had to decide if I want it to be successful, it only comes down to me.

Simon T. Bailey:                29:36                     Absolutely.

 

Engage Your Gears

Jenn DeWall:                      29:38                     So your sixth action to take to shift your brilliance is to Engage Your Gears.

Simon T. Bailey:                 29:43                     Yeah! So engaging your gears is looking at all of the resources that are available to you. Obviously, with just a few clicks away, you can log online, find out just about anything you want to know. Google has become a deep fault of research way to find something quick and fast. But then also how do you leverage the resource of relationships? How do you begin to tap into organizations that can help cut down your learning curve and help you expedite where you’re attempting to go quicker and faster? So engaging your gears is asking yourself the question, what do I already have? What is missing? What do I need to know and who do I engage in order to get to the solution?

Jenn DeWall:                      30:32                     So an example for maybe a new leader would be, how do I learn how to motivate and inspire and engage my team? What would they do if they, if you are a new leader, what are some examples of some ways that they may engage your gears?

Simon T. Bailey:                 30:46                     Yeah. So three ways managers can engage new folks that they’re working with. Number one is to find out through a learning style, are they visual or auditory. The second thing is to recognize everyone likes to be recognized for the contribution that they’re making, but they want to be thanked in the way that suits them. So for example, do they want a handwritten note, do they want a text, would they like it face-to-face, would they like it publicly in front of a team. So a manager really understanding that person’s appreciation language so you recognize them accordingly. And then the third way is to celebrate what they’re doing right. So many times people are told what they’re not doing, but a manager that really wants to establish emotional equity with new team members tells people what they’re doing right. And as the equity begins to accrue in that account, that person says, wow, my manager, he or she gets me. I’m going to go above and beyond for that manager because they understand who I am.

Jenn DeWall:                      31:52                     Yeah, they see you, they support you, they understand your strengths and look for opportunities for you to best utilize your strengths. You know, you said that it really great phrase there that some people may not be familiar with, but it’s an important part of their relationship that you develop with your team. And that was emotional equity. What does that mean?

Simon T. Bailey:                 32:12                     Well, I talk about emotional equity is everybody has an emotional bank account. As Dr. Covey taught us in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Think about the equity you have in a house. You pay your mortgage, your mortgage that you pay over 30 year period. Eventually, you have built up equity in the house if the House has appreciated. So if you think about that in the context of business, when a manager works with the team and they build emotional equity, what’s happening is you’re telling that team member what they’re doing, right? They’re celebrating the wins. They are looking not at just the losses, but they see the losses as an opportunity to learn and grow. That creates emotional equity that allows, that person is saying, you know what? Oh my goodness, this is amazing. Let me anchor it in a little research. And I’m going to make a sharp left-hand turn from the right lane to make the point. Gallup says, in their research, 70% of human decision making is emotional, 30% rational. Gallup says, when people emotionally connect with the brand, they spend more, pay a higher margin and tell others about it. Now let’s come back to the point that we were making earlier. So if the decision is made emotionally and that manager has connected with that team member, that team member will show up before its time, they will go the extra mile and they will Yelp about that manager because of the emotional equity that that manager has invested in the relationship with them.

Jenn DeWall:                      33:47                     Right? So when you invest in emotional equity, there are long term results that are associated. There are positive consequences, but if you ignore it, I think the results are the cultures that are created where people are trying to flee them and they’re leaving because they don’t feel like what they’re doing, their contributions matter. They have leaders that don’t respect them and see their value. And so it’s so important to have emotional equity built in. Absolutely. That’s great. Thank you for just taking that one step further. I just, I myself was very interested in hearing about that. So thank you. You know, the last action was to restart your engine.

 

Restart Your Engine

Jenn DeWall:                     34:25                     So the last action of shifting your brilliance – So what does that mean to Restart Your Engine?

Simon T. Bailey:                34:30                     Yeah, as you can tell, the book Shift Your Brilliance is built on a car metaphor. So it’s staying in line with restarting your engine stops, get stuck or it won’t turn over. And so borrowing that thinking, what if we step back and we look at where we are in business, in our career, in our organization, and we simply write down, what does the behavior I need to stop doing? What is the behavior or habits I need to start doing? And then what are the behaviors or habits that I have been doing that have allowed me to be successful? How do I accelerate those quicker, faster, right? So park, start, accelerate, it really invites you to assess – if I’m going to restart the engine, how do I now look at this tool of how to do it?

Jenn DeWall:                      35:27                     Yeah. It’s a way of you taking control back. To say that I’m not at the mercy of a situation, that I actually do have the power of my own individuality and mindset to determine how I want to show up and how I want to be seen. I know for myself, earlier on in my career, I know one of the biggest challenges that I had was getting feedback right. When I had feedback, it was completely a shutdown. I would get it, I would personalize it. I would say, oh my goodness, you’re awful. I can’t believe you did this. And then you go into, you know, just judging yourself and being angry at yourself and then you might be angry at your colleagues because you did something that got bad feedback. As I’ve grown up and into my career, I really started to think, how do I really want to approach feedback?  Do I want to shut down and just go into a corner and put my tail between my legs? Or do I want to say, Hey, what is this like, this feedback, one- thank you so much for giving me feedback that requires your time and thought and two, I’m going to assume positive intent and say if you’re giving me feedback, it’s to figure out how we can do this better. So I love the notion of restarting your engine because even if we did go far down one path, we still have the opportunity to start again and go in a different direction. We get to change the programming.

 

What is Your Leadership Habit?

Jenn DeWall:                      36:49                     So I have really, really enjoyed our conversation, and you know we’re going to be wrapping up our podcast for our listeners, but one of the last questions that we like to ask is what is your leadership habit? I know that action number four was to Fuel Your Mind. So I’m going to assume it might have something to do with that, but what is your leadership habit that brought you to your success that you’ve created today?

Simon T. Bailey:                37:14                     It’s understanding it’s one thing to be a public success, but a private failure. And what I mean by that is the leader- the job of a leader- is never to motivate people to do more things. Even though that’s popular theory out there, you’ve got to motivate and inspire people to work harder. I believe that the habit every leader needs to have is the job of a leader is to invite people on a journey to discover the leader within themselves while they’re following you. So a leader can never take a person to a place that they have not been themselves. So the habit for me that I’m constantly working on is self-assessing my journey because I recognize that people might be following me unbeknownst to me. And how am I showing up in the world? Being flawed, being perfectly imperfect, and being okay with that because it’s the journey of leadership. So it’s that habit to put the mirror in front of your face every single day and to say, you know what, I’m not all that and a bag of chips. How do I move from me to we? How I begin to understand that I am because you are- that I can’t do it without you. And to your earlier point about the word ego, the habit of self-assessing your journey is understanding that EGO means Edging Greatness Out. So having the ability to be on a journey and to be honest with yourself and say, you know what? I don’t know what I don’t know. And when you reach that point, you practice what I call intellectual humility.

Jenn DeWall:                      38:50                     Oh my gosh, and intellectual humility is a perfect place to end it on. It’s thinking about what is our journey? We are all on one and what do we want our journey to look like? How can we shift our brilliance to make that journey as amazing and beautiful and messy and you know, perfectly imperfect as it can be. Simon, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today. I really, really appreciate it! Not only your book but your energy and your passion for development and really helping to make the world a better place via leadership. So thank you so much for just taking your time to share your wisdom with us today.

Simon T. Bailey:                39:32                     Thank you for having me.

Jenn DeWall:                      39:34                     Thank you for joining us. For today’s interview with Breakthrough Strategist, Simon T. Bailey, for additional resources and information on booking Simon, you can visit his website at www.simontbailey.com. You can find a link to the website in our show notes. Be sure to check out his blog and pick up a copy of his new book, Be the Spark: Five Platinum Service Principles for Creating Customers for Life.

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