Andrew Bryant
Self-leadership Author & Thought-Leader
Self-Leadership
Episode Summary
In this episode, I sit down with Andrew Bryant to discuss his thought leadership around Self-Leadership. Andrew explains his work and his mission to “wake people up” to the power of taking ownership of their thinking, feelings, and actions.
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Bio
As a Global Influencer on Self-leadership and Effective leadership, Andrew Bryant is on a mission to ‘Wake People Up’ to the power of taking ownership of your thinking, feeling, and actions.
Andrew is a best-selling author, Certified Speaking Professional, and an Executive Coach. He has spoken for TEDx and audiences as large as 12,000. He facilitates breakthrough learning sessions and cultural change for senior leadership teams and helps C-level leaders scale themselves and their companies through 1 to 1 coaching.
Andrew Bryant is the author of ‘Self-Leadership: How to Become a More Successful, Efficient and Effective Leader from the Inside Out’ (McGraw-Hill 2012) and the Best-Selling, ‘Self Leadership: 12 Powerful Mindsets & Methods to Win in Life and Business’
With his expertise on Self-leadership and Leading Cultures, he has transformed individuals and teams to be more intentional, influential, and impactful. Through greater ownership, he empowers people to become more resilient and agile to face the complexities and uncertainties of our modern world.
Andrew is on the Women in Leadership Faculty of Singapore Management University, The Leadership faculty for IE University (Madrid), but is most proud of the work he does coaching Self-leadership for at-risk and disadvantaged teenagers through CampVision.
English by birth, Australian by Passport, Singapore by Residence, and Brazilian by wife – he is truly Multi-cultural in his approach.
Website
https://www.selfleadership.com/
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewbryant/
Twitter
https://twitter.com/SelfLeadership
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/selfleadershipinternational/
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/selfleadership/
Leadership Quote
“Self-leadership means that you, as an individual, decide exactly who you are and what you want. You write it down and make a plan – a goal – and you work on it every day. Self-leadership means that you expect complete responsibility for your results and outcomes. You don’t blame other people. You don’t make excuses. You are in charge.” Brian Tracy
Get Your Copy of Andrew’s Books!
https://www.amazon.com/Self-Leadership-Powerful-Mindsets-Business/dp/981099401X
https://www.amazon.com/Self-Leadership-Become-Successful-Efficient-Effective/dp/0071799095
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Transcript
The key to sustainable leadership lies in the ability to thrive during uncertainty, ambiguity, and change. Grand Heron International brings you the Coaching Assistance Program, giving your employees on-demand coaching to manage through a challenging situation and arrive at a solution. Visit GrandHeronInternational.Ca/Podcast to learn more.
This podcast is part of the C Suite Radio Network, turning the volume up on business.
Welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast, the podcast dedicated to promoting leadership development and sharing leadership insights. Here’s your host, The Leadership Excelerator®, Eddie Turner.
Eddie Turner:
Hello! Welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast. I’m your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact. The Keep Leading!® Podcast is dedicated to leadership development and insights. To that end, we’ve covered a lot of areas of leadership on the Keep Leading!® Podcast – Women and Leadership, Leading with Gratitude, Leadership Grace, Leadership Intelligence, and so much more.Do you know we have not covered yet, at least explicitly? Self-Leadership. Today, we will discuss self-leadership. We will do it with my guest Andrew Bryant. Andrew Bryant is a global influencer on self-leadership and effective leadership. He is on a mission to wake people up to the power of taking ownership for their thinking, feelings, and actions. Andrew is a bestselling author, certified speaking professional, and an executive coach. He has spoken for TEDx and for audiences as large as 12000. Andrew is the author of Self Leadership: How to Become a More Successful, Efficient and Effective Leader from the Inside Out and the bestselling Self Leadership: 12 Powerful Mindsets and methods to Win in Life and Business. He is English by birth, Australian by passport, Singaporean by residence, and Brazilian by marriage. Truly, a multicultural approach.
I’m excited to have Andrew Bryant. Andrew, welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast.
Andrew Bryant:
Well, hello, Eddie, and thanks for having me on.
Eddie Turner:
I just got to tell you it’s good to finally connect with you again. We’ve met and interacted with each other a few times as members of the National Speakers Association at different conferences and we’re also both coaches. In fact, you had me as a part of your thought Leader Summit there in Singapore virtually.
Andrew Bryant:
That’s right. The power of the internet, geography is no longer an issue.
Eddie Turner:
No longer an issue indeed. In fact, our friend in many cases, depending on what’s going on in the world, right?
Andrew Bryant:
It certainly is. It’s a great way to connect across distances. I mean, it’s Tuesday morning for me and it’s on Monday night for you, right?
Eddie Turner:
Yes, yes, yes. So, Andrew, this idea of self-leadership. As I mentioned, we’ve talked about a lot of different aspects of leadership here and tacitly we’ve covered self-leadership but today we’re going to cover it explicitly. So, tell us what is self-leadership.
Andrew Bryant:
Well, self-leadership is the practice of intentionally influencing your thinking, feeling, and actions towards your objectives. That’s a definition that myself and my co-author Dr. Anna Kazan came up with in the 2012 book that you mentioned, How to Become a More Successful, Efficient, and Effective Leader from the Inside Out but we’re not the first people to talk about self-leadership. In fact, the first author to coin the term was Charles Manz but the concept of self-leadership goes back to the Roman stoics, the Greek philosophers to Lao Tzu in Chinese antiquity saying that “Mastery of others is strength but mastery of self is true power.” I think, we all inherently know that before we can lead others, we have to lead ourselves. And from about 1999, I stumbled on the importance of this concept in my own life, realizing that sometimes we teach best that which we most need to learn, that we all have an element of self-leadership or self-management but it is the refining of that, it is the practice of that that makes the difference between those that are successful and those that kind of bob along through life like a leaf in the wind.
Eddie Turner:
Okay, that’s an interesting quote that you use – “Mastery of others is strength. Mastery of self is true power.” What a powerful quote.
Andrew Bryant:
Yeah, that was Lao Tzu. And in Greek philosophy, Plato had a very similar idea or concept. From the Roman stoics to the Greek philosophers, down through time, there’s always been this recognition that if we want to be influential in the world, we have to start with ourselves.
Eddie Turner:
Indeed. So many people don’t see that though, right? So many people feel like it’s just about controlling others.
Andrew Bryant:
They do. The most important piece of equipment for any leader is not very expensive and you can acquire it at a hardware store and it’s called a mirror. And if you’re not getting the effect you want from your team, then look in the mirror because that’s where probably the problem lies.
Eddie Turner:
Indeed. And we have to have a certain amount of self-awareness to be able to accept what we see in the mirror. Is that true?
Andrew Bryant:
Absolutely. And the correlation between self-awareness and self-leadership and effective leadership is very clear. Leaders that lack self-leadership and lack self-awareness clearly have problems with their people, which brings us to sort of the academic construct behind self-leadership. I’ve been speaking and writing about it for 20 years. It’s now perhaps trendy or the #SelfLeadership is out there and everybody is talking about it but they don’t agree necessarily on a construct. So, people use the term not realizing there is actually academic rigor behind it. And I have a piece of work that’s about to be published that looks at self-leadership in terms of self-awareness which we’re talking about – “What am I thinking? What are my intentions? What is my purpose? What are my values?” Self-regulation, which we often would call personal mastery, the mastery of our habits, that’s self-regulation. And self-learning. And those three constructs are anchored by context because self-leadership in North Korea is going to be very different from self-leadership in North Carolina in the sense that how we can execute our self-leadership depends on the context that we’re in. So, absolutely, everything starts with self-awareness – “Who am I? What’s important to me? Where am I going?” I mean, these are perennial questions but the self-leader spends some time thinking about them.
Eddie Turner:
So, if we are going to control others as a leader or influence them, we must be influencing ourselves for if we can’t control ourselves, we certainly can’t help anyone else. So, the big question becomes how – “How do I get to the point where I can develop this mastery over myself?”
Andrew Bryant:
Absolutely. First, before we go there, just take a step back for a moment and the permission to do that because culturally, a lot of people remember talking about the context, whether you’re in an I culture or a We culture. When I first started talking about self-leadership, a lot of people said “Well, isn’t that selfish?” So, when we talk about self-leadership, a lot of people go “I don’t have permission to lead myself. I’m supposed to serve others and it’s about the community and I’m not important.” And I think, we have to address that before we can get into self-leadership because that’s the block. So, self-leadership certainly isn’t selfish. There’s the metaphor that if you’re on a plane and the oxygen mask do fall from the ceiling, you’re supposed to put the oxygen mask over your nose and mouth before assisting others, even children, for the clear reason that if you run out of air, you can’t help anybody else. So, if you’re a doctor, a nurse, a care worker, you have to look after yourself. Otherwise, you burn out, you can’t serve other people. So, this concept that self-leadership is selfish is erroneous. When we move up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to self-actualization, we’re much more likely to help other people than we’re worried about our own survival and security, in which case we’d be the person climbing over other people to get out of that plane.So, step one is that self-leadership is not selfish and it’s not any way a lack of humility. Where I’m living in Asia, people are very concerned about we must be humble but the true meaning of humility is from the Latin ‘Humilitas’ which means grounded. So, when we practice self-leadership, we become grounded and therefore, we’re much more able to support others. so, I just want to get that out as a frame because when I teach or coach self-leadership, I often hit this limitation that people go “Well, I can’t grow myself if I don’t first help others” and I go “Well, it’s very difficult to be a philanthropist if you’re broke. Make the money. Then you can give it away.”
Eddie Turner:
Indeed. And to be the opposite of being selfish, it’s actually self-care. And if we are not in a condition where we’ve taken care of ourselves and developed a mastery over ourselves, we have nothing to give anyone else, to your point, your illustration of philanthropy.
Andrew Bryant:
Absolutely. So, that’s the first frame. So, how do we go about it is that we remove any guilt about developing ourselves because in relationship, my personal belief is that the best compliment you can pay anybody you’re in relationship with is to 100% turn up and be yourself. Don’t try and be somebody else. Don’t try and fake it. Don’t try and manipulate them. Turn up and be 100% yourself.
Eddie Turner:
And the best version of yourself too, right?
Andrew Bryant:
Exactly, and the best version of yourself. And the way we’re wired with a big prefrontal cortex in our brain which is the scenario planning piece of our brain is always about envisaging the best outcome for ourselves. So, we are outcome driven organisms. So, we are absolutely wired to visualize a future that is better. And we have memory to remind us of our learnings. And then we have this prefrontal cortex to point us in that direction. So, self-leadership is just articulating that we want to be clear about what is that best version of ourselves and that’s where self-awareness comes in. It’s asking “What’s my intention? I’m intentionally moving in a direction and that direction includes being the best version of myself.” So, this is the classic what are you being, what are you doing and what are you having. Often people start goal setting with saying “Here’s what I want to have” whether it’s a gold medal or a or a Maserati. Before you have the gold medal or the Maserati, you’ve got to do certain things, you’ve got to engage in some actions. And before that, there’s who you are, turning up. So, self-leadership starts with that inner game which you as a coach know, the inner game and the outer game. The inner game is how I think about things. The outer game is how I act out those things. So, it starts with a clear reflection. Sometimes people become naturally reflective. Sometimes people go to a cultural therapist to become reflective. Sometimes something happens in life that causes us to be reflective, what I call a moment. Sometimes you lose all your money or have a health challenge or go through a divorce or a business collapse and boy, do you get some reflection.
Eddie Turner:
Well, I’m talking to Andrew Bryant, a global influencer on self-leadership and effective leadership. He’s on a mission to wake people up to the power of taking ownership for their thinking, feeling, and actions. We’ll have more with Andrew right after this.
This podcast is sponsored by Eddie Turner LLC. Organizations who need to accelerate the development of their leaders call Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. Eddie works with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact. Call Eddie Turner to help your leaders one on one as their coach or to inspire them as a group through the power of facilitation or a keynote address. Visit EddieTurnerLLC.com to learn more.
This is Jane Anderson, personal branding expert from Down Under, and you are listening to the Keep Leading!® Podcast with the one and only Eddie Turner.
Eddie Turner:
We’re back. I’m talking to Andrew Bryant, bestselling author of Self Leadership: How to Become a More Successful, Efficient and Effective Leader from the Inside Out.Andrew, before the break we were talking about the steps it takes to develop self-leadership and why it matters. Can you talk a little bit about once we’ve identified the steps, how we take the ownership to execute?
Andrew Bryant:
Well, ownership is the key word. So, before break we talked about self-awareness. Self-mastery or self-regulation is taking ownership. It’s taking ownership of your thoughts, feelings, and actions. So, how do you take ownership of feelings is you recognize they are your feelings. Does somebody make you angry? No, you get angry about something somebody else did. And that distinction people lose because we feel the anger and there was a trigger and therefore, we blame the trigger. When you become a self-leader, you take our ownership – “It’s my excitement, it’s my happiness, it’s my grief, it’s my anger, it’s my frustration.” Once we take ownership of that and we take ownership of our actions that come out of that, then we become very self-determined. So, ownership or autonomy or responsibility are the key signs of a self-leader. They go “Okay, this happened. I’m going to take ownership of my actions and therefore, I can change my behavior.” So, the ability to take feedback or feed forward, as our friend Marshall Goldsmiths would say, is very much you need to take ownership. And with ownership and responsibility, you can impact the world around you.
Eddie Turner:
Okay. Well, there are organizations that would love to have more self-leadership among their leaders. How can organizations foster a culture where people are taking ownership of themselves, increasing their level of self-awareness that ends up with better performance?
Andrew Bryant:
Certainly. Well, you can clearly see that if an organization doesn’t have that because people are blaming and complaining, they’re not taking that ownership. With great power comes great responsibility, according to uncle Ben, but with great responsibility comes great power. So, organizations need to treat their people as individuals, give them that ownership and allow them to take action. And for that, we have to treat people as adults and not as children, which means managers have to ask questions and have to empower people to think and to act. And if they don’t, they get automatons. And with the advance of AI, if somebody is not thinking, feeling, and acting, they can be replaced by an algorithm. And so, self-leadership is never more important.
Eddie Turner:
That’s a good distinction to make, the connection between what’s coming with AI – artificial intelligence – and automation that is transforming industries of all types faster and in a more permanent way than what we’ve ever seen before. So, yeah, I really like that connection that you make to that.So, if we piggyback off that, what happens to people in organizations if they don’t promote a culture of self-leadership? Would you say that which you just mentioned with the disintermediation?
Andrew Bryant:
Yeah. I mean, I included the with and the without in that definition. And I think, it’s classic in engagement schools. If people are not engaged, it’s because they don’t feel a level of ownership with the organization. Organizations that have really blossomed, the early days of Google when it grew so rapidly, everybody was a Googler, they felt ownership of the company and they took actions as if it was their company. You and I both as entrepreneurs know that every day we get up, it’s our company and if we don’t take actions, nothing gets done. If you scale your organization, you want everybody to feel that level of ownership and everybody’s feeling as if they own it. That means every customer interaction is going to be fabulous because you feel like you own the company. If somebody sees waste, they’re going to fix that waste because they feel like they own the company, right? If somebody sees an opportunity, etc. etc. If somebody doesn’t feel ownership, if they’ve been treated like a child by their boss, they’ve been given targets that they weren’t engaged in, they’ll do the bare minimum. If you try to tell a teenager to clean the room, when you tell them to clean the room, they’ll do the bare minimum and possibly hide sweet wrappers in the closet, right? I speak from personal experience but if you help your teenagers to think “This is your room. This is your space. You own this. You live in this. This is your character, then they design the room and they decorate it for themselves.”
Eddie Turner:
Yeah, I read a fascinating article that drew a nice comparison and they introduced a new phrase that I like, based on what you just said there. The idea that companies at times will kind of run people who have an entrepreneurial spirit outside the company, they say they want innovative people and people who think outside the box but they really stifle them to the point that the people end up leaving, and it said that if you really harness the innovative thoughts, the free spirit of these individuals rather than having them leave the company and in some cases end up competing against the company as entrepreneurs, they could be used to keep that hunger, that thirst inside the company and be an intrapreneur and that’s where some of the greatest ideas can come from. And Google and some of those Silicon Valley companies are really good about that, you have a bunch of intrapreneurs running around.
Andrew Bryant:
I’m a great fan of looking at the origin of words and the word ‘entrepreneur’ comes from the French ‘entreprendre’ which means to undertake and it used to mean to undertake the risk of a journey. It was the French economist Jean-Baptiste Say who used ‘entreprendre’ to mean to undertake the risk of business. And, of course, when we’re undertaking risk, we’re making choices. And this is the key of self-leadership is the ability to look at a choice and using your thinking to go “What’s the right choice here?” And for people in an organization to make entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial decisions, they know the direction of the company, they know the values of the company. So, they have that compass to make the decisions to move the company forward without being instructed. We know that Gmail was not a command from Google “Design Gmail.” Somebody made it off on the side. We know that SMS at Nokia was not commanded by Nokia “Develop SMS text messaging.” It was designed by an engineer who actually wanted to do it for his own daughter who was deaf. So, as you say, the creative creations come when people own the outcome but they have to own the outcome in a context where they know the direction because you don’t want people working against the company. So, that ability of the leaders to articulate the vision, the mission, the values and then to empower people to get there, supporting them, giving them feedback, etc., that’s when you really get an entrepreneurial organization.
Eddie Turner:
Indeed, indeed. So, Andrew, what would you say is the message that you want people listening to our podcast to take away?
Andrew Bryant:
I’m on a message to wake up. in life you can be the driver or you can be the passenger. And it’s very easy to be the passenger. It’s very easy to go along with what’s happening, etc. but when you drive a car, in America, you’ve got big open highways and great cars, when you’re driving, you are in control, you’re making the decisions but it comes with a level of risk and it comes with a level of responsibility to other drivers on the road. The key message here is it’s your life, it’s your career. Do not just expect your boss to give you a promotion. I run a program called C-Suite Accelerator and so many people missed out on promotions because they just did good work but they weren’t saying “Well, actually, I need to take ownership. It’s my career. I want to move up. I need to articulate that.” And so, the key message is wake up. It’s your life. It’s your career. Get in the driver’s seat and navigate.
Eddie Turner:
All right. I like it. So, this is the Keep Leading!® Podcast and on the Keep Leading!® Podcast, in addition to the wonderful messages that you share with us throughout this conversation, I always like to get a quote or the best piece of advice you’ve ever heard or read. Can you share that so that we can keep leading as leaders?
Andrew Bryant:
Sure. So, as I said, I’m not the only person who talks about self-leadership. There are other books out there. There are other authors. And I was interviewing the great Brian Tracy. And I said to Brian “What do you think about self-leadership?” and he just nailed it, he said “Self-leadership means that you as an individual decide exactly who you are and what you want. You write it down, make a plan, a goal and you work on it every day. Self-leadership means that you expect complete responsibility for your results and outcomes. You don’t blame other people. You don’t make excuses. You are in charge.” So, kudos to the great Brian. He just nailed that definition.
Eddie Turner:
That is indeed a great definition. And Brian Tracy also is a member of the National Speakers Association but he is a true, true legend. So, thank you for sharing that, Andrew.Where can my listeners learn more about you?
Andrew Bryant:
Well, it’s very easy. We’ve been talking about self-leadership and I own the domain. You just go to SelfLeadership.com. And on the homepage there, it will send you in different directions. If you’re interested in coaching, there’s a button for that. If you’re interested in my C-Suite Accelerator Program, there’s a button for that. If you’re in an organization and you’re interested in putting self-leadership into your organization, creating a culture, there’s a button for that. And if you want me to speak at your conference or convention, there’s a button for that. And, as you discovered, I’m truly global and these days we do a lot of things through the internet with virtual conferences, virtual workshops, and virtual coaching. It saves on air miles.
Eddie Turner:
Wonderful. I’ll throw that in the show notes so that folks can reach out and connect with you and get to know you and use your services.
Andrew Bryant:
My pleasure, Eddie.
Eddie Turner:
Thank you for being a guest on the Keep Leading!® Podcast.
Andrew Bryant:
Hey, great to chat you, Eddie.
Eddie Turner:
And thank you for listening. That concludes this episode, everyone. I’m Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is an activity. Leadership is action. It’s not the case of once a leader, always a leader. It’s not a garment we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it to emanate in all we do. So, whatever you’re doing, always keep leading.
Thank you for listening to your host Eddie Turner on the Keep Leading!® Podcast. Please remember to subscribe to the Keep Leading!® Podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen. For more information about Eddie Turner’s work, please visit EddieTurnerLLC.com.
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The Keep Leading!® podcast is for people passionate about leadership. It is dedicated to leadership development and insights. Join your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator® as he speaks with accomplished leaders and people of influence across the globe as they share their journey to leadership excellence. Listen as they share leadership strategies, techniques and insights. For more information visit eddieturnerllc.com or follow Eddie Turner on Twitter and Instagram at @eddieturnerjr. Like Eddie Turner LLC on Facebook. Connect with Eddie Turner on LinkedIn.