transformational leadership symposium transcript, saturday

Transformational Leadership Symposium TranscriptSaturday, November 21

Audio starts at [0:19:15]

Karen Wilson: Good morning. How is everybody on this beautiful day in Ravinia?

[Applause]

Karen Wilson: We'd like to welcome back those who were here last night and those who are joining us today. Welcome. We have a wonderful day. We had a beautiful night last night and lots to look forward to today and Tom's going to give you a briefing on our day.

Tom Terry: Thank you, Karen. Let me just start with this. So Karen and I are sitting down here and I'm going oops, I pulled out my phone and I put the darn thing on a silent and she says yes, you know, when my ring – my ring just goes into a Calypso dance. She says, “I better shut this off now or if it goes off when we're up there, they're going to think it's part of the program.”

Karen Wilson: Then we'll have to dance.

Tom Terry: So just a reminder for everybody. Well listen, good morning. I echo Karen's welcoming remarks, glad to have you all here. You know, how many of you has been to a Ravinia Festival event in a summertime? Isn't it cool to come back here at this time of year? It's just awesome. I walked through this morning, I walked across in a parking lot and I thought, oh here's where we are. Wasn't last night magical? It was really terrific walking through all the candles and the music coming out. I thought where are we? It's just like we're in another beautiful place. So it transformed this morning into something that we were much – obviously much more familiar with for those of you who had been here before but this is a wonderful venue and a wonderful setting. Wasn't breakfast terrific as well? Excellent.

[Applause]

Tom Terry: Well some of you probably missed last night so I'm just going to give you a 10-second overview of what you missed and we're glad you're here today. We obviously have a full house and we have a full day ahead of us. I'm going to give you a little bit of an overview

Transformational Leadership Symposium Transcript 1

but let me just touch very quickly in last night. We had two speakers last night. Judith Wright framed for us I think very beautifully the context of the times that we're in which are fast moving, fast changing and indicative of that which we can all expect going forward and so a beautiful states there in terms of why it is any of us would think about transformation. And then we had a keynote address last night by Brad Anderson, CEO of – a former CEO of Best Buy who I think blew a lot of us away and was able to convey to us what transformation and action really looks like and told some very compelling stories about in the phase of dire circumstances doing something that was just unthinkable and it was – I think it touched a lot of us. I know that it conveyed and infused conversations at our dinner table last night in a significant way.

So that was very, very cool. Well but the best is yet to come because today – let me just give you a quick overview. We're going to go from now until noon and we're going to hear this morning from Ron Riggio who's going to be – who has written the book in transformational leadership and Ron is going to sort of share with us the dimensions, the many dimensions of transformational leadership. Judith and Bob Wright are going to come on back up and they're going to talk about personal transformation and how that can infuse organizational society transformation but that it starts with the individual. We're going to have lunch.

We're going to break for lunch right at noon and then right after lunch, we're going to go right into a presentation by Don Beck who's going to really convey to us a sense of organizational or almost systemic transformation and share with us his change theory and how organizations and systems in societies can be identified and how change manifests in them. And then we're going to wrap up with Brad Anderson yet again and Brad is going to go through a question and answer process. We'll talk more about that a little bit later and we'll wrap up by 5. So that's our day. So is everybody ready for a good day? All right.

[Applause]

Tom Terry: So let me turn it over now to Bob. Bob Wright is going to come back up and get us kicked off. Bob.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: Good morning transformers! Give yourselves a hand.

[Applause]


Bob Wright: You know, whether you know it or not, you are transforming. Humanity is transforming. We only have one choice to make. Will we do it consciously and responsibly or will it be forced on us? Will we be run over by it like a steam roller or will we be able to stay ahead of this steam roller and creatively find new ways to become who we could become. And how many of you are willing to engage in that adventure today? Good. Give yourselves a hand. Thank you.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: You know, I think we're going to develop momentum through the day. So I'd like to acknowledge some of the people that have put this event on in addition to the ones that I acknowledged last night. At the Wright Leadership Institute, one of the things that our groups do is they're charged with putting on an event like this once a year. So they work on their own personal transformation and then they work on their team building and they have something like this to do where they're giving each other feedback like very few corporations or organizations in our country give each other feedback. They do that in a safe environment because nobody can fire them.

So when you don't risk your pay, you don't risk your bonus, people will tell you things that they would never think of telling you elsewhere. So they do this to help themselves learn and develop. So I'm not going to actually call them up but you've seen all these people walking around, they're all on various teams. They're here as part of their leadership training which begins at being an engaged team member and empowering team member and an empowering team lead. Those are the first three levels of our leadership development. So if you could just give them a hand and even if they don't hear it, we'd like to have them get it.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: And I talked about MedEd Architects who had been putting this altogether for us. They helped Jon Fieldman find the location – negotiate with a location but I didn't have Randy stand up. Randy is the man with the yellow tie back there. Give him a hand please. Thank you.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: And we've had huge contributions from designers and people who have just cared about what we're doing. One among them is


Flutterby Design. Where are you? Would you stand up from the back there? Just give her a hand.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: This is over and above and Ken Wright Communications. Where are you folks? They've done tons of design. Give them a hand. Thank you.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: So in order to have a transformational day, we need to do a few transformational things and we use a methodology called accelerated learning. You’re going to be doing a lot of listening today. If you don’t digest what we talk about, it’s not going to go very far. The truth of the matter is in an event like this, if you leave with one good idea, that’s a pretty successful even but what we want you to be doing is making the material yours during the day. So at times, we’re going to do something we called the paired sharing. This is part of our accelerated learning methodology. You have to step out of social politeness. We’re going to ask you to turn and face somebody.

You can introduce yourselves to each but that's it. The rest of it is we want you to talk because a lot of times you don’t know what you’re really thinking until you start talking. How many of you are like me? I don’t know – yes. Okay good. So we’re going to give you a chance to find out what you’re thinking, what the so what of what we’re talking about is and how you’d apply it for yourself because we’re going to ask you over and over again today to think about how you’d apply if for yourself. So we’re going to ask you to do this paired sharing. You’re going to make eye contact with somebody. If you don’t have somebody near you that you made eye contact with, raise your hand and we’ll have an assistant come over and join you. It’s really critical but you talk for yourself. You don’t need to explain yourself to the other person.

Explaining ourselves is simply making ourselves what we have always been all over again. That’s not transformation. That is an attempt to stop transformation. You want to allow yourself to think out loud the thoughts that you maybe haven’t thought yet and some of the daring things and that person can’t fire you. You can say all kinds of things that you wouldn’t have said otherwise. So we’re going to do this paired sharing. It’s part of our accelerated learning. And now it is, you know, this is a massive pleasure for me to introduce our next speaker.


In addition to being a consummate academic with over 100 articles and books that he has written, he’s a leading thinker. He has written – I was talking about the fact that there’s a real problem that too often in the United States today, we’re fixated on the leader and we don’t deal with good followership. So I’m talking to him and I said I’ve got this idea for a book. It’s got to come out and you know – and we got to have a book on how to be a good team member, what’s an engaged team member because a lot of people lead things but they really don’t know how to be good followers. Now I’d be darn to – I didn’t say, “Would you like me to send you a copy of my book on followership?” A cutting-edge thinker.

He has also written a book on multiple intelligences in leadership. One of the beautiful things about our speaker today is that he is a very humble man. He embraces other thought which is a sign of a transformational leader. He is truly a transformational leader as an academic. I have never heard him need to put any other idea down. For him it's all pulling them together, what's the best of it. We are going to be very, very blessed today to be with him as he talks to us about one of the things he knows more about than most anybody in the country of the world about transformational leadership. Would you help me welcome Dr. Ron Riggio.

[Applause]

Ron Riggio: Thank you, Bob. That was a terrific introduction. Thank you.

[Applause]

Ron Riggio: Thank you. Well I want to thank Bob and Judith Wright for inviting me here for the organizing committee and I thank all of you for being here. I'm going to talk to you about something that I'm very passionate about and that's transformational leadership but first, what I want to do is I want to briefly go over the history. Bob and I were talking about this, a little bit of history of research on leadership and just sort of give you the Leadership 101. So if we kind of move to the next slide here and we'll talk about the search for leadership.

If we go back to the early days of leadership research, there was what we call the great man theory but the burning question of the great man theory is, are leaders born or made? And I'm sure that lots of you have probably wondered about that or thought about that and you may have your own opinions. Well through – I was


going to say through the miracle of research – through research, we actually know something about the answer to that.

So – but I'm not going to have you do that. I was going to say how many people – about two-thirds of leadership is made. About one-third is inborn, okay? We know that pretty well because in the last several years in the methodology, I will just really quickly go through this but if you want to catch me after and discuss the methodology but basically there are studies of identical twins who share genetic material and so the studies are of twins read together and twins read apart. So you control for the genetic material, you control for the environmental effects and then you look at leadership and that was just done recently and the best estimate is about one-third inborn and about two-thirds learnt.

It then moved into a discussion of traits. What are the specific qualities and that dovetails very closely with this idea about the inborn qualities and there are a number of traits that are actually related to leadership. One is extroversion. So generally, leaders tend to be extroverts but not always and so again, we get this idea that we can't completely predict these things. We move then into the concept of behavior.

So those of you who had – think back to your organizational behavior courses and talk about the history of leadership, we're really talking about 100 years here in very quick time. But some of the behaviors that were focused on would be task-oriented versus relationship-oriented behaviors, right? So we all know leaders who are very task-focused. My leader, the president of my college is one of the most task-focused people I know. She gets lots of things done and she'll tell you that relationships are something that she has to work on, the relationship behaviors. Other leaders, they're relationship-focused and they need to work a little bit more on the tasks.

The management perspective comes into play and starts to talk about – well we know that there are task-oriented and there are relationship-oriented leaders but what's the real situation? So in what kinds of situations do task-oriented leaders lead better and in which kinds of situations do relationship-oriented leaders do better? My early research was on charisma and that's how I came to transformational leadership and one of the issues around charisma is if we talk about charismatic leaders and we're going to see lots of charismatic leaders because I'm going to talk shortly about the overlap between charisma and transformational leadership.


But those of us who worked in the study of charisma and charismatic leadership, we got stopped with what we commonly called the Hitler question, all right? So we talk about charismatic leaders, we have the positive charismatic leaders and many of them also transformational but then we get to the charismatic leaders who are the negative side of things, right? The Hitlers, right? The Solons, those folks. And that was always the problem and so when I began my work in transformation leadership with really the founders and I've had the good fortune of working with the people who came up with the construct and develop the construct, it was like my eyes were opened because I thought we had moved to the next level and that's why I've embraced transformational leadership because I see transformational leadership as charisma plus, charisma plus the rest and so we are kind of dealing with the Hitler problem.

So what we know from this 100 years of research is we do know which characteristics are most important and I'm going to talk about this characteristics and most of the characteristics that are important for leaders are components of transformational leadership. Just so you know and if you want to sort of follow along with me, about 8 months ago, I started – I was asked by Psychology Today Magazine to do a blog on leadership and so it's called Cutting-Edge Leadership and if you just want to go to Psychology Today, you can find it. But what I'm trying to do and in fact yesterday, I posted – my post was 100 Years of Research. So it was basically sort of setting the stage for this. So if you want to find out more about sort of the history of leadership research, you can go there but feel free to follow me along there and discuss because what I'm trying to do is kind of put up a little course up there, so the little mini-course and little 400-word bytes. So I welcome you to that.

Okay. So what is transformational leadership? Well it occurs when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality and the morality issue is important and we'll get to that a little bit later but those are the words of James MacGregor Burns who in 1978 wrote a book and James MacGregor Burns is a presidential scholar of political sciences, a biographer. His primary work has been on the Roosevelts on FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt and won the Pulitzer Price for one of those books.

But in 1978, he wrote a book that really did launched a lot of work in leadership generally but it was really the beginning of this construct as we now know it today, what he called transforming


leadership with leader transformational leadership. And Jim Burns was a friend to JFK so he was able to study transformational leader and just what you know about my intersection with Jim, there was a group of leadership scholars across a variety of disciplines who met for many years and I was asked in the later days to join that group. It was called the General Theory of Leadership group, GTOL group. We met about twice a year and we discussed this. Is there a general theory of leadership?

Now Jim Burns had the answer. He knew what the answer he wanted to come to that the answer was transformational leadership but when you put a lot of scholars together, you get very little agreement and so many of them stopped and said, “Well we just got to stop this whole process because we're never going to really agree.” I mean the idea of one overarching general theory and as all this was going on, I said I think I found my overarching theory and I'm in agreement with Jim Burns. I had the fortune at that time. I was working with Bernie Bass and Bernie took in the 80s – he read leadership and he took Jim Burns' ideas and was able to get it down to something that's measurable and so I had the good fortune of working with Bernie and with Jim Burns.

Jim Burns is with us today. He's 91 years old. Is that right, Sean, 91? And still producing books and still working in the area of leadership. My good friend, Bernie passed away about 2 years ago and so really what I feel like I'm doing is I'm carrying on the work of Bernie and also Jim and that was really funny because I was sort of the intermediary. I was going to the General Theory group and meeting with Jim Burns and reporting back as Bernie and I wrote the Transformational Leadership book.

So let me get right down to the specifics and talk about what is transformational leader. So transformational leaders are charismatic. It's charisma plus, they're visionary, they're able to transform organizations but they do it through followers and so they are the interest in followership. What do transformational leaders do? Well they bring out the best in the followers and part of the transformation is this idea of developing followers into leaders and you'll see this when we get into the components. But they're not – it's not just that. These are not just relationship-oriented leaders. These are leaders who are able to motivate and to challenge teams and I'm here rephrasing the title of Bernie's book, they're able to get groups to perform at levels beyond expectations. So they’re truly transformational and they're very performance-focused. So transformational leaders are not easy leaders to work for


sometimes. They're very satisfying leaders to work for but they're always pushing. They're always challenging.

Okay so this is Bernie's model. These are the components of transformational leadership and we're going to see this and we're going to spend some time with each of these and I'm going to right now spend some time going through each of them to help you better understand them. And you have to realize something about academics. We are masters of jargon. So you will see there these are not easy terms. I've sort of renamed them before our eyes but these are the components. And the first is idealized influence, a little difficult to try to figure out what that is but idealized influence is the part of the transformational leader, that behavior, that element where the leader is a positive role model.

Transformational leaders are leaders that we look up to. We admire them and we admire them because they're consistent. Transformational leaders with true idealized influence as we say they walk the talk. They're not the people – they're not the kinds of leaders who are going to ask people to do things that they themselves wouldn't do. These are leaders that are willing to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty and pitch right in.

The second element of transformational leadership – oops, where did we go here? We got to go back a little bit, sorry. The second level of transformational leadership is inspirational motivation and this is the ability to inspire people, to provide meetings, to provide challenge, to establish a vision and those two elements, the idealized influence, being able to walk the talk and being able to inspire and motivate people, those are the elements of charisma. This is the part of transformational leadership that is very similar to charismatic leadership.

The third component is intellectual stimulation and intellectual stimulation is the transformational leader's ability to push followers, to stimulate followers, to be creative, to be innovative, to question assumptions, to think outside of the box and like I said, transformational leaders push people. They push people in a very positive way and try to get them to be creative and innovative.

And then finally, the individualized consideration and I think Bob mentioned this last night and this is really the transformational leader's ability to pay attention, to be in tuned with followers to truly understand their needs, understand their feelings, their orientations, and there's a genuine concern in the transformational leader in terms of developing individual followers. So think of it this way. The


transformational leadership is about leading change and leading transformation in groups, in organizations, in collectives and nations but it's also transforming individual followers and helping them reach their highest capacity. And so when we take a very broad view of leadership and we talk about leadership in broad terms, essentially they're transforming followers into leaders.

Okay. Let me go into each of these and so idealized influence being a positive role model and we've got some examples here. Okay. So now one of the things and Bob and I were – as we were discussing, Bob is always saying okay, who is a truly transformational leader and I think we've seen one, we've seen Brad Anderson, those of us who were here last evening and I think Brad is a very good prototype of the transformational leader but we all have transformational qualities and sometimes we have strengths in one area or strengths in another area and so the idea of idealized influence being able to walk the talk. And so here are some leaders and some quotes that typify this dimension of transformational leadership.

So we have Jeffrey Himmel from GE and he talks about you know, I'm always talking about this company. I'm always concerned about this and we're transparent. You know, we have nothing to hide. It's right out there. We put it right out there. The issue of transformational leaders being willing to work hard not asking followers to do anything that they wouldn't do. It typifies here with Vince Lombardi and I love this quote because he says, you know, leaders are made, you know. They're not born and they're made through hard efforts. So transformational leadership is not easy leadership.

I discussed with Bernie. I said one of the things – years ago I said to really be a transformational leader, you've got to work very hard. You've got to connect with individual followers. You've got to be this role model. You've always got to be thinking about the impact that your behaviors having on followers and I said, “Isn't this really hard work?” You know, the transformational leaders work harder than other people and so I came up with a hypothesis. I said let's test this. My wife actually is working for a work family institute and I was looking at the balance between work and family and so I came up with a hypothesis and I said, “Bernie, I think the problem might be the transformational leadership is such hard work that maybe your home life suffers.”

And so my hypothesis is that transformational leaders put all of their energy in the work and then their home life suffers. And Bernie


said, “Well that's not the case because if you have transformational qualities, you would be able to transform those relationships in much the same way.” And so he had this sort of counter-hypothesis. Unfortunately, we never got to test that but so idealized influence, being authentic in a sense.

Okay inspirational motivation is ability to inspire, this ability to energize people and Murthy, the founder of Infosys and he's actually an amazing philanthropist. His wife – we have a Kravis Prize that we created the methodology for Kravis Prize that we give every year in non-profit leadership through the Kravis Leadership Institute that I'm associated with and the Murthys have been very involved in this through their philanthropy. But here's a quote from him, “Great leaders raise the aspirations of their followers. They make people more confident, energetic, and enthusiastic. So this really embodies that idea of energizing people.

I think Judith spoke last night about the emotional contagion, being able to infect people and that's a big part of inspirational motivation. For Howard Schultz, we want passion for our business, workers who can interpret and execute our mission. So another part of this is it's not just generating enthusiasm. It's not just getting the energy level up but it's directing that energy level, directing it towards commitments to the organization, toward values, toward an alignment of values, alignment with the organization's goal. So through inspirational motivation, this is the alignment process of the leader and the followers.

Intellectual stimulation, the ability to challenge people, to innovate, to get people to think outside of the box in your task. Don't limit yourself. You can go as far as your mind lets you, what you believe, remember you can achieve. So you can achieve anything. So pushing followers again to be their best, to be innovative, to be creative. Knowledge cannot be merely a degree or a skill. It demands a broader vision, capabilities in creating, thinking, and logical deduction without which we cannot have constructive progress. The wealthiest man in the world.

Individualized consideration. Our recent research is showing us that this is probably the biggest driver of transformational leadership. What we're doing is we're looking at literally tens of thousands of people who have been assessed on transformational leadership and looking at how each of these components contribute to the overall outcome and what we're finding is the one that really seems to be the driver is this individualized consideration and this is where the leader pays specific attention to individual followers, develops


relationships with followers, empathizes with them, and when we talk about coaching and mentoring, we're really talking about this element.

If there's one secret in success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view, to see things from other people's perspectives. Now I put Henry Ford up there because Henry Ford was transformational in that he transformed an industry, transformed the auto industry. Henry Ford though I would think would fall short of a truly transformational leader, right? But this is the point. The point is that we have transformational qualities, right, that people have transformational qualities in specific areas, right?

So everybody can demonstrate elements of this and someone who I think is on the transformational side, Muhammad Yunus says, “Each individual person is very important. Each person has tremendous potential.” So it's this idea of realizing the potential individuals. Okay. So does this matter, all right, to the research and just really briefly I put up some correlation coefficient here from – and those of you who have seen the book. This is not light reading or our book is not light reading. Just to give you a sense, to give you a sense of the size of the effects, so these are summaries, this is all in the book but clearly the biggest effect of transformational leadership is on followers.

Followers of transformational leaders report much greater levels of satisfaction with their organizations, with their jobs, and with their leaders and those effect sizes are pretty large. Transformational leaders lead more effective work groups and we looked at that in two ways. We had looked at rated performance. One of the problems with rated performance is who's great in the performance of the leader whilst the people around the leader and so that's going to be a little bit inflated. If this is a person who has a lot of charisma, you're going to inflate those ratings a little bit and so we get larger relationships when we have rated performance but we also looked at objective performance measures at bottom line outcomes and found that transformational leaders actually lead groups that are more productive in a very, very sort of hard numerical sense not just in a feel-good sense.

The other element that's important and I'm just going to touch on this briefly is that transformational leaders seem to be able to inoculate in a sense their followers. So the followers of transformational leaders will report if they have less stress and less burnout and those effects are pretty large effects. So we're not just seeing leaders pushing followers to do more, to be innovative, to


perform at levels beyond expectations but these people are for greater well-being. The followers of transformational leaders report greater well-being. So that's important.

Now the question is how does transformational leadership work and what's the process? Well through research, we know a lot about the process, about what's really going on. First, transformational leaders enhance the followers' self-esteem and I think we heard a little bit about this, the concept of self-efficacy. So transformational leaders are able to persuade, convince, inspire followers in a way that makes them feel like they can do it, that they have a sense of self-efficacy that they can get the job done.

Transformational leaders are empowering leaders. They allow their followers to take on responsibility but it's guided empowerment, right? The hardest thing I think that leaders do is delegate, right? Delegating, deciding exactly how much, deciding how much people can take and so what we're finding is if you develop a relationship with a follower, if you're truly in-tuned with that follower with their abilities, their desires, their needs, you're going to be much better able to determine exactly what they can handle. So there's the empowering element.

Transformational leaders also align leaders, values and align, use their vision to get people on board. And so there's an increase in the followers' identification with the leader, there's an increase in the followers' identification with the organization and the alignment of goals and values. Now Bob had asked me to just talk briefly about authenticity and this is work that we're doing in a very serious way but let me just talk a little bit about the adding ethics to the mix here in transformational leadership.

For James MacGregor Burns, the moral element, the ethical element was critical for transformational leaders. So Jim Burns said that this is critically important. We need to – a leader cannot be truly transformational if that person is not a good leader, is not an authentic person. Bernie came at that and I have – I can relate to this being a psychologist. Psychologists don't deal well with issues like morality. You know, there had been very few psychologists who have tackled that. That has been the realm of philosophers, right? So we have Cole Bergen, some of these – a few psychologists who have studied the ethical dimensions of human behavior but pretty much throughout most of the history of psychology, psychology is the sidestep, the moral issue.


One other reason psychologists have sidestepped it is because psychologists focus often on behavior or the outcomes of cognitive processes in terms of behaviors. And when we talk about ethical behavior, you get into some very difficult terrain when you're trying to measure that. So there's a couple of reasons. First, we sort of sidestepped ethics as psychologists because we believe it's the realm of philosophers but it's very hard to measure too. So when Bernie Bass went forward and developed this model that you saw of the four I's, he left out the ethical component of Jim Burns' model and said, “Well that really doesn't matter because what we're really talking about is the pattern of behavior.”

But of course he ran into the Hitler problem which you know, charismatic leadership knew about this and Bernie butted up against this. And so he talked about well transformational leaders who are not truly transformational, there's something missing what he called pseudo-transformational. And so in the book that we did together and essentially the revision of one of his earlier books, I persuaded Bernie to put some of these back, to start putting in the authentic elements and so one of the things that we were working on was okay, if we're going to put this back in, if we're going to put in authenticity or we're going to put ethical leadership back into the mix, we have to be able to measure it.

So our latest project and a little bit later we'll give you an opportunity to maybe just get a taste of that but what we've been working on for the last couple of years is developing a measure of ethical leadership, a measure of authentic leadership. There are some other ones that have come out. So it's finally psychologists and measurement specialists have crossed over into that territory but what happened too was as the intermediary between Jim Burns and Bernie Bass, between these two great thinkers, I was carrying that message back and forth. I was conflicted by this. I agreed with Jim Burns that ethics is critical, I felt very much that we had to solve the Hitler question and eventually was able to persuade Bernie to move over to that side and so there was a reconciliation.

So now when we talk about transformational leadership, we talk about authentic transformational leadership incorporating the ethical component. And so as I said, that's our new step is we're moving that in. Let me stop because I've gone through this all very quickly. This is an awful lot. As I said, 100 years of research but let me take some questions and discussion for just a minute or two. I think we have time for that. Don't we, Bob? Just some reactions. Yes?


P: Going back to the why this transformational leadership [Indiscernible] [0:58:32], could you explain what those – I'm sorry.

Ron Riggio: Oh okay. What the R's mean?

P: What the R's mean, yes.

Ron Riggio: Okay. So R's, those are representatives – I should have done it. Those are representative's correlation coefficient. So actually if you square those – so we saw a lot of 0.6's which are very large effects. If you square it, you get 0.36 and so that represents the amount of variance that can be accounted for by that predictor. So in other words, transformational leadership in terms of how much of follower satisfaction and satisfaction is measured often very much in a broad way as organizational satisfaction, how happy are you with your job and your organization and your leader, the whole thing. Thirty six percent of all that variance can be attributed to the leader. So that's what that means which is huge because we never predict 100%, right? So with about the most we can ever really measure is about 70% of the variance.

So from that, you can sort of extrapolate and say about half of a person's satisfaction can be directly attributed to the fact that, that person works for a transformational leadership which is huge. That was a high estimate, right? You saw that they got down to 0.2, 0.2 is 4% of the variance which doesn't sound like much but when we get 0.3's, 0.25's, 0.3's; psychologists get very excited in the measurement. People get very excited because it means we're having a significant impact. Yes.

P: Some of the adjectives you used inspire, stimulate, and challenge people to think and innovate, a lot of times the discussion you need to have with people in order to inspire them forward is actually a little bit negative. It's a discussion about the limitations of the organization right now and some of its weaknesses but all these quotes are so positive and happy about moving forward. Can you say a little bit about how you talk when – a transformational leader would talk about challenges?

Ron Riggio: Talking about challenges? Well in a lot of ways and this may relate to the fact that followers of transformational leadership report less stress is that transformational leaders tend to do exactly what you suggested. They tend to take what people considered to be a negative thing. So this is the stress. We're in an economic downturn, right? And then focus on the challenges associated with that. So focus on the positives, right? So you know, how can we


overcome this whether you know, this is one of the opportunities, that sort of thing.

So I think a lot of probably what's going on with transformational leaders is how you frame it. It is you know – and so yes, this is a setback but what can we learn from this and how can we move forward and how can we even be better than we were before? So it's clear that a lot of this is changing followers' perceptions. Where else the effects would be so high? I mean you know, it really is – I think what – and Bernie called his 1985 book where he laid all this out, he called it Performance Beyond Expectations because when he found truly transformational leaders, they were leading groups that performed well beyond what people had expected of them to do.

A colleague of mine, Marty Chammers [Phonetic] [1:01:57] did a study and it's an interesting study just very quickly. He studied – we're in division three in the NCAA. So he studied basketball teams and volleyball teams and he went to the players and he said, “Who's your leader?” Right and very often it was the coach but sometimes it would be the team captain or whatever. And then he got their ratings, the precedes in ratings of where these teams should finish at the end of the season, okay? So the coaches do these polls and by measuring the transformational qualities of that leader, he was able to predict the outcomes of the ends of seasons, okay? So you know, I mean that's really the kind of amazing. I remember Marty presenting this in a room full of CEOs and it just sort of stopped the conversation and probably because CEOs, lots of them were in the sports but also this idea that you could actually have that kind of effect, right? Yes.

P: I think transformational leadership is obviously very important but it runs the risk of becoming jargoning because suddenly any change that is not transformational doesn't really count and everything that anybody claims things are transformational. The thing that I'm hearing about what you're saying is that what's transformational is really transforming the nature of followership in a way.

Ron Riggio: Exactly.

P: So I'm wondering if that's the definitive piece and also if there is – it might be also a piece where transformational leadership might [Indiscernible] [1:03:30] dimension where you're really raising the ethical level of an organization. If you could speak to those two issues.


Ron Riggio: Yes. Well now the reason Bernie sidestepped the ethical issue is he thought that idealized influence had that. So in other words, if you're authentic, if you're a positive role model then he just sort of assumed that, that carried over into the ethical arena, right? The problem is that we can have these sort of pseudo role models, right? So people who you know, in their public lives and when they're in front of their followers, they're displaying ethical behavior but in their private lives they're not, right? So these inconsistencies. So it was there in the original work but now we're sort of putting that element back. Okay. Now your other concern is – yes.

P: Speaking to that one point because Brad Anderson used the word integrity about a leader. I think the word authentic also has a sort of ambiguous terminology ...

Ron Riggio: Right.

P: … because it can sort of be an ethical term or maybe not.

Ron Riggio: Right.

P: So why not just go with include integrity as part of the model?

Ron Riggio: Well and I think when we use the term ethical, we are using that idea of integrity.

P: Am I correct also that the idea of transformational really is about the transformation of the followership and relationship? Is that what you're defining as transformational?

Ron Riggio: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely and that was why we started looking at followership, right? So – I'm getting a signal from Bob. So we stop this quick Q and A and start going to our group exercise. Okay. All right, good. Thanks a lot. Okay. So what we're going to have you to do, Bob is going to come up here and help me and we're going to have you and if you turn to your workbooks and if you get to the end of the slide show here, there's a couple of pages and we're actually going to – the first one says small group task, discussing the components of transformational leadership, we're going to change that. We're going to let you take that part home and deal with that and then there's a quick test leadership assessment.

Let's set those aside for now. Are we all kind of on the same page here?

P: Oh yes.


Ron Riggio: Okay. So at the end of under my tab here, at the end of the PowerPoint, there should be a small group task. We're hoping these are all core, so just set that aside and set aside the quick test leadership assessment. You can do that later and then you'll get to the transformational leadership dimensions and that's the worksheet we're going to work on now. Okay. We got a signal [Indiscernible] [1:06:10]? Okay good. Okay so Bob is going to come up here and what we're going to do is we're going to have you break up into groups.

So you're going to break up into groups of about five or six people. Those you know and we can move the chairs around. We'll put the chairs back. You're going to choose a spokesperson for the group eventually because we're going to have your report out and we're going to be recording some of your output and we're going to have you get into the discussions and so some summarization but we're going to do it this way. We're going to have each of you take one of the components. So we've got the next four sheets here, idealized influence, inspirational motivation, so we got the four I's and I think we're going to do it this way.

We're going to have – we're going to sort of cut the room into quarters but we're going to do it lengthwise. And so we're going to have – well let's just do it right now. So idealized influence will be this quarter of the room. So from about here down, so go ahead and we can start forming into five or six-person groups. Those students and the folks on the side will help us. Idealized influence and if we take the sort of the midpoint from this sort of three quarters to the midpoint, inspirational motivation. We're going to have these groups discuss inspirational motivation. So you can go ahead and turn to that page and this third quadrant, intellectual stimulation, so to this quadrant and over here on the end, individualized consideration. Okay. So it turns to the fourth page and we hope they're in that order of this but you'll find the right page.

Bob Wright: Yes. So turn your chairs and form groups so that you can communicate together.

Ron Riggio: I thought the Q and A – I mean there were lots of – I can see lots of questions.

Bob Wright: Okay. See if you can get this done pretty quickly because we want to get the most out of this time.

P: How much time do we owe?


Bob Wright: Well we'll give you directions in just a sec, so you just get your groups. Okay you should be lighting in the group. As transformational leaders, you're going to make sure everyone gets included. Okay quickly – okay, would you raise your hands? Let's start a normal – we raise our hands to trying to get attention back again. So okay. I'm going to give you about 60 seconds to introduce yourselves to each other. Would you please do that? Okay you should be finishing up. Take the next 30 seconds to finish introducing yourselves to everybody. Okay so let's pull it back together. Hands up please. Help us out. By the way, are we honored to have Ron with us? It's pretty good.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: I don't know whether you know – I think a good sense how lucky we are. The treasured probe of data and his ability to be a friend and be respected by experts who were generally seen as polarized on an issue and to be the primary person tying it altogether and helping bring them to resolution. That is a mighty man of extreme decency. So give him another hand.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: Okay. Well so now we're going into the applied part. We're going to want you to go into your data banks. We're going to want you to think about leaders you know and what they did. How did they act because you know, this morning is about how do leaders act? The next part of the morning is going to be about what goes on inside of leaders and then the afternoon is what happens in organizations. So this is what’s unique about what we're doing here is we're trying to give you a broad perspective of what's going on.

And so what we want you to do is to go in your data bank. By the way, how many of you are humbled by this and we're doing an inventory of all the ways you fall short? Every time I go, you know, we're discussing an ideal against which we measure ourselves for it which we want to grow. So I think we need to have a little self acceptance and forgiveness. At least I do or I wouldn't be up here. So what we want you to do is you're going to take the one that you have. Now how many of you have idealized influence that you're doing? Okay raise your hands. Thank you. That's exactly what we wanted. What was our second one?

Ron Riggio: Inspirational motivation.


Bob Wright: Inspiration motivation – oh you folks are good.

Ron Riggio: Okay.

Bob Wright: And that's by the way …

Ron Riggio: Intellectual stimulation and …

Bob Wright: Yes.

Ron Riggio: … individualized consideration. We got them into perfect.

Bob Wright: Oh perfect. Okay good. So now what we want you to do just so you have an overview of what's happening, you are holding your area for the room. You're going to be putting together, you know, characteristics and what a leader does. What we want you doing is imagining, you know, how you do what we're talking about and how you could do it better and – but you'll be talking about characteristics, you're going to put together the behaviors, characteristics, habits, anything that you could put onto a video tape. This is about the transaction between the leader and the follower.

So what is it that they do and then we're going to go on what goes inside of the leader later on and then the leader in the organization. So you're going to be doing it for everybody then what we're going to do is we're going to come back together. You're going to – so a few of the groups in each area are going to report the characteristics they come up with and we're going to ask you to listen to that personally for what you would want to do and we want to finish this segment with you having one area that you're going to focus on and one behavior. Too often we come up with huge grandiose plans and none of it happens because speaking of integrity, there's no way we could do it. So we're going to ask you to boil it down to one area, one behavior you're going to focus on coming out of here. So we're giving them how much time, Ron?

Ron Riggio: About 10 minutes actually.

Bob Wright: So you're going to have 10 minutes. Pick a spokesperson who is going to record for your group and report for your group. Okay you've got 10 minutes.

[Music playing]


Bob Wright: Okay. Sorry to pull you back. This is like stopping a speeding freight train.

Ron Riggio: You're just getting started, right? So they're …

Bob Wright: Yes.

Ron Riggio: … yes.

Bob Wright: Another part of accelerated learning is the 80-20 rule. We tried to get 80% of the results and 20% of the time. The truth of the matter is, is you can only get so much. We're trying to actually plant into your unconscious mind expectations that will help guide you forward in your life and remember, we're going to boil this section down to just one area that you're going to focus on as a leader and one behavior that you're going to focus on implementing. Otherwise, you'll say things that will destroy your integrity and your authenticity will suffer or you'll end up apologizing all the time falling short.

Okay. So we're going to get to groups to report in. We're not going to try and get everybody in. We're going to actually – we may be asking them for clarification so that each one of us can be really grasping what they're talking about and we have our wonderful – Vanna White is insulting. Who are you? You are our scribes. Let's give them a hand and thank them.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: They're going to be scribing for us. So we want to go to …

Ron Riggio: Yes. Let's start with idealized influence that's over here. There, over here on the …

Bob Wright: Okay.

Ron Riggio: What are some of the …

Bob Wright: In the backyard? Take the mike.

P: So for the behaviors that manifest as dimensions, we had roll up sleeves, that's one of the things they do, jump in and get involved and not afraid to be vulnerable to make mistakes. Demo weight, demonstration is a big aspect of a force. They demo it live not just to tell you how to do it. One of the characteristics our team talked


about was lack of victimhood that they take it on. It's not – that it's not a sense of victimhood around it.

Ron Riggio: Actually, how did they have this lack of – instead of a lack of victimhood, what did they have?

P: Well they take responsibility …

Bob Wright: Because there's no such thing as a lack, right? So we know there isn't victimhood in there as …

P: A little. We talked about responsibility and probably the ownership as they took ownership with the whole group and the results that they wanted. So that's how they tackled it. They helped analyze their own mistakes and they teach other people about their mistakes so that other people can learn from theirs. The one characteristic that we felt strong about is that they tend to work harder than other folks around them and that's how they influence them to work hard. They not only do the very minimum but they do also with optional.

Ron Riggio: Very good.

Bob Wright: Oh, it's wonderful. Wow. Give them a hand. Thank you.

Ron Riggio: Yes.

[Applause]

P: Okay.

Bob Wright: By the way, clapping is another part of accelerated learning and keeps you physically involved. Judith may actually tell you a little bit later about the neuropsychology of learning but you don't learn if your emotions are cut off from you. Your emotions are essential for learning and your body is where your emotions come from so we try to keep you physically involved. It was a group in the back.

P: Some other behaviors we had are they ask a lot of questions.

Ron Riggio: Okay.

P: They're curious.

Bob Wright: And what is it about questions that make this idealized influence?


P: Well we also had that they engage their team and listen to them and that's part of the asking questions just taking their input. It's not I've got all the answers. It's engaging the team and the mutuality with the team.

Bob Wright: Okay great.

Ron Riggio: Okay.

P: They also have knowledge and expertise so they know – they're not asking people – their team to do something they went through themselves. So they're knowledgeable and they know what they're asking them to do. They lead with vision, principles and values and they consistently communicate from that. So any plan they derive or anything they do is based and stem from that.

Ron Riggio: Now what about that – it facilitates idealized influence?

P: Well because idealized influence is to me that was – that whatever vision they created, that's their ideal that they're working towards. So that's the kind of influence that they're leading their team with.

Ron Riggio: And if there was a gap between those two things, we wouldn't idealize them.

P: Right.

Ron Riggio: We would look – we would have seen them as extreme hypocrites.

P: Right. And so they're – and then consistently communicating. That's their team at a higher frequency and engagement of having rapport with their team. That also gives them credibility with their team.

Bob Wright: Give them a hand. Thank you.


[Applause]

Bob Wright: Shall we get one more?

Ron Riggio: Okay. We do got some more.

P: We augmented what we just heard by saying a couple of other things. One was that influence derives from the consistent


application of principles to new situations and the leader has to live large meaning that to live in an obvious way so that people can see that they're painting a picture for how they will react in the future and others should follow.

Ron Riggio: And that's very important, the issue of visibility, right? We talked about you know, management by walking around, making yourself visible and that's really what you're getting, yes. That's great.

Bob Wright: Okay give them a hand. Thank you.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: It's exactly what we want to do when you've got one to add otherwise we'll move onto the next group.

P: A couple of other ones is walking the walk is that we get to see and sharing who they are. They're honest, their humility, they admit the things that they might need to improve so the other people and their followers can approve as well.

Ron Riggio: That's good. That's the – and I know we had some conversations last night about level five and the humility and so this is really where the humility comes into play, right? I mean because it's authentic, right? Good.

[Crosstalk] [1:31:14]

Ron Riggio: Okay perfect.

Bob Wright: Okay. Let's move to inspirational motivation. That's this group.

P: Okay. Our group, we looked at the behaviors and then some examples of what we thought the ideals would be and some other behaviors and looking at challenging ourselves with. The first piece is just meaning and challenge, these people who are involved in motivating and inspiring are willing to question more in terms of looking at how we typically do business kind of like Brad Anderson talked about yesterday of looking at what's impossible to do and thinking outside the box. Also they talked about the vision repeatedly that referenced to the GE person who's constantly out there saying this is what we're about, this is what we care about. I just keep putting that kind of message out to people, the dedication to the cause.


I believe that there are people that are capable of more than they think they are. Constantly, the good leaders that we saw had really brought up the best in us and made us think about something beyond what we had thought about we could do previously. And also they are less invested in ego and more into results. So it's not who did it or whether I did it or what but did the results get accomplished and you know, what are the examples of that? So we asked, what are some of the leaders that we have that we admire? Gandhi was one example that kind of embodied all of that totally transformational and also able to kind of use his motivations to be able to change the whole nation.

Brad Anderson is a good example. It's exactly what we saw. Martin Luther King, Herb Brooks from the 1989 hockey team that the US beat the Russians was an example we came. Wilbur Forrest who – in his help in the slavery in England were all examples that we came up with. And then in terms of our own personal steps that we need to take, one of them was getting beyond our feeling that we can do it better than our followers and being able to say you know, let's look to what they're capable of and kind of getting our egos out of the way. Also, having the courage to put out our own vision. We talked about how scary it is to be out there as the leader and how you're subjected to – you become a target when you become a leader. So there's a lot of risks involved and I think there was also for at least for me personally the idea of taking fear and comfort and being able to transform fear into the excitement of leading as opposed to hiding and what's comfortable. So …

Ron Riggio: All right, another way of looking at transformation, right?

P: Yes.

Ron Riggio: So that's good.

Bob Wright: That was great.

P: Okay.

Bob Wright: Terrific.

[Applause]

P: A couple of things to ask from our group is good communicators, inspiration and motivation leaders who are terrific communicators. We got Churchill in a motivation to victory and then a sense that each person matters and being able to instill that sense of


individual capability and mattering and then we did – we run up against the Hitler problems if you're certainly inspired and motivated but we didn't exactly want to put them on our list. So …

Ron Riggio: That's the problem.

[Applause]

P: We just said a couple of other things. One thing in our group that was very important was truth. So there was a starting with, you know, the inspiration starts with the truth about the situation. So actually putting that out there right away. Another thing was intention. There is an intention that was very important and intention in why we're doing these things which help keep the focus on a purpose and keep people's eyes on the purpose and directing that anarchy in the right way with that strong intention.

And then we also – and just to underline ahead a lot of the questions around why and the so whats and then you know, why are we doing it? So keeping with that clarity of the task, keeping it focused on where we're going. So and then we had some other personal traits just you know, being attractive, having energy, being inclusive. We had a conversation about being emotional, you know, really getting people behind you and inspiring them.

Ron Riggio: Right and you've touched on the critical elements about inspiration and motivation. It's not just the energizing, getting people up and getting them, you know, round them up and head them out, it's where we're going and why, you know, why should we be motivated? Then you ask you, double that question.

P: Okay..

Ron Riggio: Good.

[Applause]

P: Hi. Just to add to a few things that the other people said, we also said that we were thinking about people that actually have these qualities. So this individual really speaks in plain language and translates that vision to something that people can relate to very directly. So language is very important. Also really as a basis, you have to be really good at connecting with people. So this is critically important to you know, everybody said really seeing you as a person, being able to pull you out from the crowd and inspire. We


also talked about not being afraid to talk about the realities of the business. Being challenging yet also seeing that as an opportunity.

Also interestingly enough, we were comparing two people that are – actually I'm from Best Buy so it's our past and current CEO that both have this quality but they do it in very different ways. They actually have very different styles so I thought that was really an interesting point to pull out.

Ron Riggio: And you're bringing in the point that we think about inspiration and we think it's all emotion and so both, the last two groups here brought out the sort of cognitive aspects of it. You have to, you know, you have to be for the vision, you know. It's not just ra-ra here's the vision, it's articulating it for the audience so that they can understand it in their own terms, right? And so that's very important. So good, very good.

[Applause]

Ron Riggio: Okay. Let's move on to our next group which is intellectual stimulation, right? Okay.

P: So when we look at the behaviors that manifest intellectual stimulation, we talked about inspiring creativity in your followers and empowering them when they're curious. The word trust came up for us a lot because if you're inspiring intellectual stimulation, people are going to think differently. They're going to come back to you with ideas and answers that may be different from yours and you have to be open to letting those ideas come forth. There was also a sense of feedback, being open to a rigorous evaluation. We had the example of the leader who said, “Tell me, this is what I think and tell me where you think I'm wrong. What am I missing here?” So that was that kind of tough evaluation.

Humility was the word that came up a lot, a commitment to a continuous learning, education, and training. Knowing about resources either providing them or being mindful of where they are and encouraging people to go find out. So when we thought about behaviors, you could add you know, personally one of them was not rescuing, not directing that, not wanting to lead and then solve things for people but saying what do you think? How would you go solve this? Being vulnerable and asking for the feedback.

Also there was an element of training your staff how to present problems to you like okay, come in and teaching them how to talk about things so that you really could have a good inquiry about


what was going on not just your problem. Don't just come in and throw the problem on my desk but come and tell me about it and tell me how you might go about solving it. What do you think the aspects of it are? And really training and encouraging people to think for themselves, use their own minds.

Ron Riggio: Great. That's very good, very good. One of the things – and you mentioned to that idea of the sort of getting the feedback and getting the criticism and so we're often afraid of upward feedback. I'm planting a seed here because we're – one of our assessments will involve your direct reports as Bob told you yesterday. And so you know, it takes courage to do that but you know, you want to encourage that and particularly with today's workers, I mean as we're going into this kind of you know, technology age where the younger workers probably know more than the leaders, you've got to be able to you know, deal with that – to that you know, vulnerability and say, okay tell me you know, what you think you'd do, you know, which may be very different than what I would do. Very good.

[Applause]

P: Hi. This is – yes. A couple other things we mentioned were to be a good listener and accepting as new ideas and the importance of including diverse voices that so often it was the solution that came from bringing in people who were thinking differently than yourselves from a different department or a different perspective and encouraging people to make mistakes by also making mistakes yourself and being accepting of that. Some of the behaviors that we are committing to, listening more, being open-minded, creating teams, reframing, restrained tongue, that discipline about what you say and letting people make mistakes.

Ron Riggio: Good.

[Applause]

Ron Riggio: That our scribes working over time there and keep up.

P: Yes, we just stay at that. Listening came up a lot in our conversation as well and it's a critical behavior and challenging as well to make people think. I had a leader that always asked – he always – when he presented something to me he said, “So I'm confused and you really thought this through?” You know, which meant go back and think about it. Come back with a – you know, you haven't – come back with a great new idea and they think out


of the box. They force other people; look they've got out of the box and challenges their ideas.

People we talked about that had this or see jobs and really trains forming his company, getting people, his employees to think out of the box and one I really like was Phil Jackson with his team and Zen. I mean getting basketball players …

Ron Riggio: Right.

P: … to read Zen.

Ron Riggio: Yes.

P: … and get them into a different place intellectually.

Ron Riggio: Right, very much challenging. That's definitely outside of the box, yes.

P: Exactly.

Ron Riggio: Good. Great.

[Applause]

P: Okay. So a couple of things to add to that list. I think carrying a new touchdown is a little bit too but just a restless curiosity to continue to never settle for you know, the way things are just because something has been done a certain way doesn't mean it's right. You can continue to look for what other ways to do things. This ties into the fourth area a little bit but define what excites people. I found recently talking about a lot of the Wright Institute where you know, you talk to the guys about emotions and they're oh emotions, you know, but you mentioned neuroscience that you know there's a benefit of oh neuroscience, oh yes.

Yes and just to kind of put the hooks into them in a way that gets them engaged and excited. So you know, I think he was talking about you know, how you frame it or Bob have mentioned that and there's a lot of potential there. You know, looking to and listening and you incorporate other people's ideas to play devil's advocate, you know, to take a contrarian point of view to just sort of see what happens. We were thinking of the guys at Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page in that idea. You spend 20% of your time on innovation to feel like that's part of the culture that you can take risks and see what happens and to have more of sort of an open source


perspective that the ideas – the decisions don't necessarily come. The ideas don't come from the top down of that, you know, each person has an opportunity to say something that will contribute and potentially change the company.

Ron Riggio: Yes, that's great. The Google example of actually setting aside time to be creative, to be innovative. That's a terrific example. Great. Very good.

[Applause]

P: These are great. We just have a couple of things. One is vision. You know, when everybody is aligned on a vision, that stimulates a lot of creativity and the other thing is accountability. Accountability is usually thought of as results but what we talk about is when you have a goal and you're not making that goal, the creativity that comes out of okay, what do we do now and everybody wrapping their minds around that can create a lot of intellectual stimulation.

Ron Riggio: Okay, very good. Okay.

[Applause]

Ron Riggio: Let's move onto the individualized consideration.

P: We had three or four themes that emerged from our conversation. One of them was you know, to be individualized, you need to have a relationship. So you need to build your relationships with people by listening to them, by building trust by asking them a lot of questions and getting to know them well. So that was kind of like the foundation. Second is support, this overlap with some of the other groups; support, feedback, giving people things – challenging things to do. Another part of support is vision. Now we just heard vision, you know, building people into an overall vision but also their individual visions and how it relates to a broader vision. And always particularizing what is going on in the organization and how it relates to them and what their opportunity is.

Ron Riggio: That's a good idea. One of the ways of individualizing the vision is to say well, you know, here's my vision. What is yours? What's your interpretation of that, right?

[Applause]

P: Great [Indiscernible] [1:45:37] themes across all four which is interesting. In addition to that, I think a major one is not assuming


your answer is the right answer. Big part of it is not over-assuming and investing in the followers' development rather than your own desire to get a task done and open to getting to a desired outcome in different ways. So we thought President Obama is actually a very good example of this type of leader as well as Warren Buffett 1.46.11 and Animo Keehie [Phonetic] [1:46:12] and Mr. Kelleher. We're calling him Mr. Kelleher because no one could remember his first name.

Ron Riggio: Sure.

P: There we go. Okay. Thanks.

[Applause]

Ron Riggio: Okay, one more.

P: A couple other ideas. We have included that – those included, the ability to assess individuals what their skill levels are, what areas within themselves that they want to develop and what it is that they're capable of. And also being someone who really fosters an environment where people seek feedback or they provide feedback and that you know, you yourself go to them and solicit their ideas and then one other that we had really strongly is that the leader is someone who holds the vision for you and has your clear that they have your – she has your best interest in mind and they want you to grow and develop.


[Applause]

Ron Riggio: One of the things that we're seeing is that these are – it's very clear that these are interconnected, that there's overlap, there's pieces where the themes of these four components come together, right? And we've seen that across the same themes. Okay.

Bob Wright: By the way, give yourselves a hand. That was great.

Ron Riggio: Yes.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: I'm asking you to spend 60 seconds in silence reviewing the areas picking the one that you'd like to focus on. You can do whatever else you want. I'm suggesting one and then thinking about the one


behavior that you want to increase and also think about the results that you want in your organization. Area, behavior, and the results you want with 60 seconds of silence to think about that.

Okay. So now we're going to give you 3 minutes to share it around your group. By the way, people who succeed at what they want to implement, tell other people what it is then set measures up for it. One of the measures you can use is to take Ron's transformational leadership self-assessment and then have your direct reports assess you and you could do it now and then later on as a post-test 6 months or a year to give yourself some feedback about how you're doing and you don't have to let anyone know what the rating was but you. However, you may want to and I've seen CEOs do that very successfully. Three minutes to share with this group and then think about sharing it with others.

You're getting done in the next 30 seconds or so. Make sure everybody has the chance to report. Okay. That's it. Come on back. By the way, we're going to have these transcribed and put on the website if you want to go back and use it as a resource, you know, please do that. If you want your workbook, please put your name on it because Ron's going to do a summary and then we're going to ask you to actually take your personal effects and put them over on the side because the assistants are going to rearrange the room back the way it was. We're going to have a 15-minute break after Ron gets done.

Ron Riggio: Okay. All right just very quickly, okay? So what we're talking about, the transformational leadership is really the very best qualities. We really do know what will work, okay? So I think a lot of times my colleagues – well there's all these theories of leadership but we actually do know what works. The other thing and I think is we're sort of getting into; this represents a model for leadership development. So you can work on your own personal leader development and so understanding a little bit more about the four I's is going to help you in that regard and you've written down something to work on.

And as Bob mentioned, the next step is this online assessment of your transformational leadership profile. Now what we've done is it's actually sort of three steps. There's a very green version of one of our instruments in there, that one page. So you can do that and they were in order. They're in the same order so you could score the four items. So they're individualized influence, inspirational motivation in that order. But if you want a more detailed assessment and a much longer instrument, it takes you only about


10, 15 minutes to do is online and it's actually multiple instruments online so that you can go on and take it. Then the third level is to get your direct reports or those around you. We could use sort of a 360. Have them go online and assess you.

The bonus there is that we're going to roll out our ethical leadership scale and that's always another reported measure. So your direct reports will also complete that and we'll give you some brief feedback on that too. So those are the last steps and thank you so much for your participation and for all of these terrific ideas. I think and as Bob said, this is going to be a terrific resource on writing and to do websites. So thank you very much for your time, attention, input.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: That's Ron Riggio.

[Applause]

Tom Terry: Thank you, Ron and thank you, Bob and now we're going to get going again at 10:00 but we're going to take a brief break. We've got coffee and refreshments right over to this side of the room and as Bob said, please take all your personal effects with you because we're going to reset the room as it was when we came in this morning and just as you know, this facility's – the restroom facilities outside in the quarter around up here as well. So we'll be back at 10:00.

[Music playing]

Tom Terry: Okay. Welcome back from our break. Well that first segment this morning was terrific. Wasn't it?

[Applause]

Tom Terry: Thanks to Ron for that. Thank you very much. You know for me, it just dawns on me you know, what am I going to do next? What is the one thing I'm going to focus on? It really is about me and like it's about all of us and some of the chatter I had about the morning session and the break absolutely brought that home. And the next two speakers are folks who've been talking about leadership for a long, long time and their particular entry point into leadership is personal transformation and Bob and Judith Wright, many of you know, many of you don't know them, Bob and Judith Wright who we introduced last night and you became acquainted with last night are


going to connect the dots here. They're going to talk to us about leadership from the inside out and so with no further adieu, let me just introduce Bob and Judith Wright.

[Applause]

Judith Wright: Thank you, Tom. Thank you. Oh I'm seeing you. I've just been seeing you from the sides and the back but it's really good to see your faces. So just good morning and how was it so far? Yes? All right great. That's good. Thank you. That's great.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: Well so we're here to talk about Judith's research. I told you I was going to carry her bags. Yes, it was absolutely fantastic. She decided to study people who had great lives. Studying people who had great lives, she discovered that they were all leaders. You can't have a great life without influencing other people. You can't have a great life without expecting other people to influence you and so what we're doing today is we're talking about the inner world of transformational leadership, the inner journey of transformation and it's going to – it's something that she calls the model of evolating and evolating, it comes from – it's keeping you and your company current and competitive.

You know, Brad talked about – I don't know if you caught it when he said that people didn't like having him be CEO. Did you know that? It's true. You see, Brad do that he had been through many, many near-death experiences with Best Buy. And they were on the brink over and over and over again and suddenly, he finds that they're very, very successful. People are making an enormous amount of money and he realized that his primary job was to help them understand the urgency and the danger that they had lived with.

So being the nice guy that he is, being a pain in the butt to so many people was a serious challenge but it keeps you and your company current and competitive. It keeps you and your staff on your cutting-edge really, really important. We're going to be talking about how to do that. We're going to also help you understand what happens when you get stuck because we all have a brain that wants to sit back and take it easy and it is only by understanding the nature of your brain and that it wants to sit back and take it easy, that you will be able to overcome that urge and keep yourself and those you lead on a cutting-edge.


It keeps you and your staff learning and growing and stretching. You're going to understand why that's absolutely necessary for your organism to be satisfied and to do well. You'll be avoiding the traps [Indiscernible] [2:17:12] said, 'You'll maximize your ability to move and adapt to your world.” You see, too often we expect the world to adapt to us because it is desire to take it easy if you're going to enhance your growth and the growth of those that you lead. So we want you to be here listening to this segment and every segment with huge expectations for the quality of your life and the quality of your organizational life and this is a really important subject we're going to talk about because too often when I'm coaching executives, they focus on the externals. You can measure the externals.

People look at you and talk about your external results but what makes you a winner is the internals and I think you all know that otherwise you wouldn't be here today talking about transformational leadership. Now this model of evolating is going to give you a map so that you can understand what's going on inside yourself and it's also going to give you a diagnostic tool when things aren't going well. You know, I sold one business and I started a new business and the hardest thing was to not do what I'd always done in my old business, yes.

So we're going to talk about the neuroscience of that and how you use this model of evolating to keep yourself moving forward. You're going to understand why some people break down. You're going to understand why others succeed and why still others just fail totally. Now a breakdown everybody has. Every success has ups and downs but you're going to understand how to minimize the downs and maximize the ups. There is serious, you know, research in economics and in psychology that shows that no matter how much you say you want to do great, you're unconscious mind doesn't want it to happen. By understanding this process, you will be much better able to stretch into greater pleasure because the hedonic studies of economics and psychology show that you have a set point. It's called the hedonic treadmill.

No matter how much your conscious mind says that's horse manure, I really want to have more pleasure in life. What they've shown us is that you become a quadriplegic and within 12 to 18 months depending on – and occasionally 4 years, your experience of the [Indiscernible] [2:19:34] of life is exactly where it was before. If you do not understand what we're talking about today, you will continue to live the same amount of enjoyment you've always had lying to yourself, remembering the ups and forgetting the downs


and living a very flat existence. So we're talking about you being able to live an existence on the up and lead others to live an existence on the up. That's a big part of what we're talking about, evolation.

Judith Wright: Evolation. I'm going to define the term. What it really means is a non-gradual upward movement flying out up and away. So you can get that sense that this is something that's not static at all but let's compare that then to evolution. Evolution is a gradual adaptation to the world that already exists. Evolation creates a world that doesn't exist. It creates a view that doesn't exist. It's not just adapting to what's there. It’s changing what's there and changing with them and we're going to understand what that means as we look at this.

So it's this discontinuous change or transformation to a more advanced stage of being and a more advanced world, more advanced structures and we're going to look at what that means and I want you to be – we're setting up kinds of contacts for you but as we get this more grounded and experienced, I want you to apply this to yourself so you can map yourself. And how we define an army search and getting – well Bob says we're studying great lives and really want to see what is that sense of satisfaction? Who are the people that really getting more out of life? What makes a life great and what makes a life great across different areas not just great at work and then really poor in personal relationships or one thing going well, others not. How do you get that sense of greatness? Who were our heroes? What do they have in common?

And all of our studies showed that yes, they were leaders. Not all leaders live great lives but people that live great lives are all leaders and that's the distinction that I'm going to be working with today. So if evolating for us did we define in our studies with consciously engaging and wants evolution with the intent of conscious transformation and continual transformation realizing that evolators and as we talk about this process, they never stop. They don't get like oh, that's it. I made it. Let me just sit back and they might do that but I think they're pretty bored pretty easily and realize they have to reengage with this continual process of growing and changing not just making it and coasting but how do you keep reinventing and recreating yourself. And evolating means is the process by which one lives a great life and the catalytic power, listen to that, the catalytic power that causes one to become a transformational leader and also facilitates the evolation and transformation of others.


Bob Wright: Okay. So I'm going to give you an overview of the model then we're going to take each one of the phases of the model and go in-depth into what it is and then you'll learn some of the science behind that and some of the neuroscience behind that. We want you to be thinking about the so what's in your own life and in your own leadership. The first stage of the model and these stages are reciprocal is yearning. Most of us confuse yearning with salvation. If I can only get enough money, if I can get the right wife, get the right house. Yearning is a deep urge that comes from within you that has to do with genuineness and you're going to learn how transformational leaders are genuine because they tend to have more genuine yearning that allows other people [Indiscernible] [2:22:00] with them.

The next phase is engagement. Engagement isn't just doing something. Oftentimes, we do things actually to suppress our yearnings. You know, I do something to make something go away but when my yearning is informing my actions and I'm engaging in life from my yearning, then I will do automatically what comes next which is I will revelate. Revelating is the learning, the awareness, the aha about myself, commonly known as insight but insight is a cognitive function. You can also have visual insight. I saw something I'd never seen before. You can have emotional insight. Wow, I felt something. There was something that came through for me.

So revelating is much more than what we call insight but it is – you'll learn how this is the beginning of you developing numeral pathways to move yourself from where you are into your potential and that doesn't mean that where you are into your potential doesn't necessarily mean more money. There are a lot of people who stay exactly the same who make more money, more money, more money, more money; they found their money crank and it worked.

The beauty of this is you get the more money because you're being more you and you're leading the people that you lead to be more of them. So it starts with revelating but the next phase is called liberating. Liberating, you must act on that revelation. That's why insight is not worth much. It's the booby prize. Insight is understanding, liberating is taking that into action and you're going to see how for you personally and for the people you lead, they must be liberated. Your job is to liberate them into behaviors oftentimes they never imagine that they could do and that was a huge part of what Brad saw his job as and will be tying a lot of this back into our conversation with him at the end of the day.


Once we liberate, we're now in a position to move to the next level which is rematrixing. They had a study of rats and mice actually in a maze. Now they can do these micro-studies of mouse brains and they found that the mice actually created the maze, recreated it turn for turn in their brain not as something they figured out but the wired – the maze became wired in their brain and they could watch where the mouse was by how – where it fired in their brain. So you're developing massive experience that cause you to go down the same arm of the maze over and over and over again.

So once that you have engaged and revelated, you're now in a position. Revelation let's you know what your matrix is that lets you understand where your neural wiring is. They're now finally starting to realize that Freud really had something going for himself that he had people free associate so he could start seeing what their neural firing patterns were and what the gangs and what the direction – well how everything had been put together. What was mainstream in your thinking, you know. What was the second avenue or third avenue? And he did that by letting people free associate. They now can actually watch this happen through the things that Judith is going to talk about.

Rematrixing is the real challenge. If you want to change the functioning of your organization, rematrixing is critical. I used to get mad and I still get mad. I used to get madder more often and employees, when I had them – tell them something a second time and then some brilliant trainer told me, “Well don't you understand? You have to tell people seven times.” Be prepared to tell them seven times. Why do you have to tell them seven times? Because they are rematrixing.

When you're developing something new, you work really hard to get them doing what they're doing and then you expect one time you're going to tell them to do something different. It doesn't happen. So on a very minor level, you're rematrixing. If you want to make a major shift in who you are in your organization, you have to rematrix at much, much deeper levels and you will only rematrix if you do this next level which is called dedicating. This is turning your rematrixing into a lifelong endeavor. Now we presented this in a linear fashion but once you're dedicated, you're reengaging, you're reyearning, you're re-revelating, you're reliberating all the time.

So this is not a linear model as you can see by the line. It is actually – it is a flow model and we can't tell what's going to come up next for you. The beauty of it is when you have dedicated, you fluidly


move through these levels knowing all the time that you are rematrixing, able to recognize when you have revelated and how you can liberate in the next step and how that liberation is moving to a next behavior and we'll talk more about that later.

Judith Wright: As we go through this, we're going to go on more in-depth and we're going to be using some examples and the science behind it once you look at that but the yearning is really the motivation that gets the whole thing going. If we don't want something, we don't do anything and we're going to look at that and then we want something. We need to do something about it because the engaging takes place and then to really get this new understanding of the world so we can learn and grow which happens in revelating and liberating.

These in themselves are really powerful but – and I can only say but, however, they're powerful to make a huge difference for people but really what happens, all these on this side helps you grow. Transformation only takes place after rematrixing and dedicating because you're adding good things to your life, your business, your leadership solar, whatever it needs which is important but it doesn't become who you are or part of your life till these last two are – until the rest of these are informed by these last two phases. We'll know more about that as we go.

Bob Wright: And when I said that you'd be able to use this for diagnostics, if you think about a really good seminar, it engages your yearning. There's something that you yearn for that they're engaging. You – they may even have you do an exercise and you may have insight from that exercise and you may even do something that you've never done before but if it doesn't fit into a larger pattern of rematrixing that's fueled by your dedication, you had a wonderful experience and then you have what we call airport amnesia. By the time you get to the airport, you don't remember what happened in the seminar.

Judith Wright: Who can relate to that one? I can. That's great. Good.

Bob Wright: Okay. So we'd like you to actually listen to something here.

Matt Booty: I get invited by the guy who is the head of sales for Google who runs all their salespeople to talk. He's got his 60 top sales people together here in Chicago for an afternoon and I got it – they invited two speakers to come and talk to this group so I was one of them which is interesting and he basically – because I met him at lunch and he said why don't you come talk to my group about sort of the


you know, the fable of Midway and it was interesting because I went in there and it was – I said in some ways I'll be very humbled today and other ways you're going to think I might be sort of you know, swinging around some brass balls because I'm going to compare Midway to Google and Google's one of the greatest – the biggest companies there is and Midway isn't anymore but I said you know, I started in Midway. We were at the top of the food chain, at the top of the ecosystem and I kind of gave this talk and ended up being about – he wanted to – he had these five operating principles for his salespeople and it's like operational excellence that you have to generate sales pressure internally not, you know, because somebody's gaudy about it but I was just talking about how by the time Midway was so arrogant about where we were on top that we weren't using that time to figure out what needed to change and I had since internalized that at any point that you're starting to feel self-satisfied about how well something is going, it almost needs to trigger automatically an investigation of either why things are going so well or what are you doing next and you know, we got into this with Google and then he was talking about transformation and reinvention and eventually, it came back to me seeing that I don't think that reinvention is the CEO's [Indiscernible] [2:31:16] saying that Google's going to know how to make phones instead Google making the search engine instead you know, reinvention happens in every person everyday and that the, you know, Steve Jobs saying that Apple's going to make music players or you know Eric Schmidt saying that Google's going to make phones, that is the culmination of people thinking about how they're going to reinvent themselves everyday not the starting point of reinvention. So, through the Microsoft on Sunday and kind of the recap of Microsoft, that's interesting and some of the highlights. They definitely have their seat together the most in terms of interviews compared to the other people. In terms of just how the interview went and just what they, you know, I mean it's like they were the only ones that they just – the accommodations and the levels that they sort of took care of me during the interview was miles above than anybody else. But my impression of Microsoft so far is they were the only people that were actually thinking, right? When I went to Activision, they were industrialists and they were hung up on money and it was all about who's making more money than the other guy. When I landed at Microsoft, it was the only place that they were actually engaged in a question about where they are, who they are, where they are, what they need to be doing next and people are asking me questions about what I thought about things as opposed to sort of cookie-cutter questions like what's your management style or you know. So a woman – the game Halo which is kind of the big space video game, I mean it sounds like the cups at 7-Eleven and it's all over


the place. It's run by a woman which I don't think anybody knows. I mean it's one of the biggest video game franchises, is this woman, Bonnie and she was talking – I either impress her or to continue to piss her off. She goes, “I want to make my game more of a cultural touchstone. It has to be more than just a game. I want my game to be like you know, Lord of the Rings or Star Wars.” And I said, “Yes, it's never going to happen.” I said the problem is the main character in your game is all about projecting his power into the world and all you've done with all the things in your game was different places for him to project his power in different ways to project his power. I said and tell you make it up the game about the hero's journey is never going to be different. I said Shakespearean Mythologies, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, they all – it doesn't matter where they take place it's because it's about a person looking inward and taking sort of the Carl Yam-Yin, Hero's Journey. We need to see him go into his dark places and transform. That is what makes these things lasting and she just sat there and I go, and until your game does that, it's never going to hit that level because I said things that transcends society and become like Star Wars, like Shakespeare, like the Greek Mythology, I said it's all about the hero's journey. So I said make the next game not about him going to some new planet and fight a new alien. It's got to be about can – it's the whole hero's journey. I mean at some point it's like you open the story with you know, we need to learn about the hero by how he reacts to the outside world but at some point, all those stories are about the hero retreating from sort of the, you know, the fray of battle and have him to go through either to circumstance or choice, have him to go through some journey in retrospection. I mean it's, you know, it's like Frodo decided he was going to go to the mountain. It's like any number of the Greek myths. It's like Jason and the Argonauts was basically a metaphor for him marching through his psyche is really what he's doing, right? And it's like the whole Star Wars thing, the whole middle movie in Star Wars is Luke taking himself and retreating to some swamp leaving behind ostensibly a lot of other things that he should be doing, right? But deciding that he's got to go, that it's time to you know, he's got to go through his own dream before he can go help other people there.

Judith Wright: Wow.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: You were just listening to Matt Booty, CEO of Midway Games. Would you stand up, Matt?

[Applause]


Bob Wright: That was him briefing me on his previous week and we cut out so many juicy things. I mean it is such a blessing to do my job and get to work with so many really cool people and I think he just summarized the entire seminar before we got started. Isn't that fantastic? And is it – you know and he practices everything we're talking about. I mean I won't been able to coach him since he headed up a game team at Midway all the way up and he learns and he grows and he practices what we're talking about but if you look at it, you know, he was talking about – he had yearning going – actually let's have you do a paired sharing on this. What did you hear him say?

Judith Wright: But tell them – instruct them how to do a paired sharing.

Bob Wright: Okay. So what we're going to do is you're going to have to turn and face somebody. I'd rather have you say what you heard rather than have me take a sword because I think you're going to get more out of this and we may shorten some other sections so we can spend some time on it. But we want you to digest what you heard, what stood out for you and how that makes sense for you as a leader and what part of that you might like to apply for yourself.

Judith Wright: And the way we'll do this in the paired sharing is you're picking A and B. A, your job is to just talk and just let yourself think out loud, connect the dots, see what's there. B, your job is to listen and just be a space for them to just explore it. It's not a conversation, it's not a discussion, it's just really a space for the two of you to have a chance to just think out loud and put some things together for yourself and inquiry about your …

Bob Wright: It's going to drive you nuts. You're going to want to say yes and, and, and, and when the other person's talking. But we really want to give them space to think about what the implications to that were and if you can also be thinking about how it defines how this model works. I think it's really in there. So pair up with somebody, make eye contact with somebody.

Judith Wright: And you're going to – we will time you.

Bob Wright: But we'll tell you – we'll tell you what to do and how to start it in a second.

Judith Wright: So does everybody have a buddy?


Bob Wright: If you don't have a buddy, raise your hands. Okay. I need somebody. I – no, you got buddies. I need – you don't have a buddy there in the middle? Okay.

Judith Wright: Okay great.

Bob Wright: Okay. Now raise your hands for silence. Okay come on. Now we're going to let the one with the longest hair talk first, short hairs, you'll listen. We're going to give you a minute and half to actually analyze and apply that to yourself or just a minute. I got …

Judith Wright: I have a timer.

Bob Wright: We'll actually make it one.

[Music Playing]

Bob Wright: Okay switch. Switch.

Judith Wright: Short hairs.

Bob Wright: Short hairs, you're up.

[Music Playing]

Bob Wright: Okay. Come on back. It's obvious we couldn't end it right there but I'd actually like to get – remember to use the mikes. I'd like to raise your hands – I'd like you to sum up what's coming up for you and I'd like to start grounding it with the model so we can actually make this hero's journey ourselves as part of our everyday life and so that we can also instill that inspiration in those we lead. By the way, one of the major accomplishments I think of Matt's leadership is I think all of you know that because of financial issues, the fantastic job he did of pulling the entire company together was kind of destroyed with selling off sections of the company because of years' earlier finances.

Not only did they achieve the holy grail of gaming which – game development which no one else could which was to put together a unified platform so all the ego-oriented designers wouldn't redo every gun, every car, and every roadway that they had. He got that entire company aligned to do what all of the others left and then remember Fulton's Folly you learned about in school, well they considered this Midway's folly, Midway did it. They were turning out consistently with the highest-rated games with an absolute you know, impeccable on-time record under his guidance. The tightness


of that company was so great that in the upheaval that was going on, his staff believed in him so thoroughly that not one of them jump-shift and they were being heavily recruited by every other game company because they knew the best in between people were at Midway and that's leadership. Give him a hand.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: Okay. So what did you hear? What's coming up for you? Yes, back there – mike.

P: Well first of all, Matt, that was beautiful the way you consolidated all these great myths and movies, all these things that are like icons into – and just boiled it down to the essence. I love that. It was so inspiring. And you asked us to look into our own lives with how that connects. So I mean I think about like Frodo and going – and making the decision to go to the mountain to get the ring and you know, it's like that saved the world from its darkness and how he was just like this little guy, you know, without all the training of these great warriors but he committed himself to doing it. And I looked at what I'm about – what juices me and how you know, my yearning is you know, to bring joy to celebrations and so I've got this really desire to do that and to make celebrating, you know, event in people's lives really special and really meaningful.

And so then to engage with that – so I got the yearning and engage with that because I need to build my company. I need to – I want to and need to just create something that can make that – allow me to manifest that in the world. And then revelating like today just realizing in the group earlier, you know, where I commonly also think that I could be doing way better than I'm doing now and the ways that I'm you know, it could be asking questions and pulling out the best in people and wanting and mentoring and wanting to work with you. I mean – and I could go around the whole circle and talk for a long time about what I'm getting out of this day so far but it's just – I'm excited, I'm juiced and I'm humbled all at the same time.

Bob Wright: Let's give him a hand. Me too.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: Okay. Other ways that you're thinking about that, that were – that touched you. Yes.

P: I just thought …


Bob Wright: Stand up so everybody could see you.

P: … excuse me?

Bob Wright: Stand up so everybody could see you.

P: I thought the vulnerability of yearning was you know, apparent as well as the potential satisfaction like it's not about the destination, it's about the journey and to be a hero to lead, it's around committing to that and then all of the above which I thought was you know, just really revealing to me around how I orient myself and the vulnerability into it. I mean it was – it just brought up emotion to me to a point, you know, to joy, to sadness, everything that goes along with that journey.

Bob Wright: Me too.

P: Yes.

Judith Wright: Great. Good.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: Okay.

Judith Wright: You know – and it is part of it, the whole thing about yearning, it is – it does involve your feeling and people with more emotional intelligence, you really need to have access to your emotions to know what it is that you really yearn for and to accurately identify that. This is great.

P: The previous speaker had mentioned a lot of what I thought of as well but the other that was interesting to me being a bit of a Star Wars geek and that's two and also Lord of the Rings is the Lord of the Rings is a 2,000-page book. Star Wars if you put them altogether, 7 hours of the movie but it was not only about the journey but keeping people engage throughout that. You know at the beginning was the endpoint is what you want but it can be a long process and keeping you know, the goal for me here coming out and looking is just keeping the people that I work with engaged throughout the entire process even in the middle of it.

Bob Wright: Right.


P: When you no longer can see the beginning, no longer kind of focused on the in possibly but making sure that there's still a lot of excitement moving forward.

Bob Wright: Right. Give him a hand.

Judith Wright: Great.

P: Yes.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: And transformational leaders do that because they tap in yearning and I think we'll move right onto yearning and start getting deeper into how is the transformational leaders manage to make these heart to heart, mind to mind connections.

Okay. So when we talk about yearning, it's the deepest motivator that there is. It's marked by an undistinguished longing. It is a genuine urge. We've got yearnings for connectedness. We've got yearnings to contribute. We have – the yearnings that we have are actually much more basic and simple than being the best in our industry. That's why so many purpose statements that you see in companies are hollow and stupid because you're talking …


Bob Wright: … because what happens is they say we want to be the best in our industry. Being the best is not a yearning but doing something so great that you feel great about it is yearning and how do we tap these yearnings? To be understood by others is a yearning. A transformational leader wants to be understood and therefore wants to understand others. So these are profound, basic human urges, these yearnings and we oftentimes forget them in our everyday life. We come to work everyday wanting somebody to see us, to know us, to acknowledge us, to value us, and then we translate that into a company to be seen, known and that was what Best Buy was doing in spades because everyone of their young people wanted to – they had a yearning to mastery and 2 years you could still be heading up a $25 million plus business. That really is a hotbed for yearning. Yearning, you know, for the technical parts, yearning for the leadership parts, the environment supports yearning of every type. It is honored and actually you know, highlighted in what you do. Okay. And so …

Judith Wright: The distortions.


Bob Wright: … distortions of yearning.

Judith Wright: Yes.

Bob Wright: No wonder I didn't want to go there. No, this is why when we make a goal because of work, it's hollow to us. It's duty calls and I think they call it miswanting in neuroscience. We have things that are magical solutions to problems we don't want to define and look at. And so we misyearn and we crave. If you crave it, it's not yearning. If you crave food, you crave your newspaper in the morning; crave your BlackBerry, that is not yearning. That is misyearning.

Judith Wright: That's a soft addiction.

Bob Wright: Craving is insane.

Judith Wright: And you need my other book, The Soft Addiction Solution we'll talk later but you can notice the difference. Craving is very different than this deep yearning that's very satisfying.

Bob Wright: And much of our activity is what they call addictivity in William Nelson's book, Do It Now. It's something we're doing to actually avoid ourselves. That is one of the major problems we're facing and transformational leaders tap the yearning and they allow the engagement to fulfill and satisfy that yearning. They support that yearning and that's where we start seeing the individualized concern which Ron – I don't know whether you said today or not. He says it's the most telling aspect of a transformational leadership.

Now one of the other pieces that's critical is loss aversion. Seventy five percent of the planet spends more of its time trying to not lose something than to win something even when you're declaring fantastic goals and everything else. Your unconscious mind wants to not lose. Loss aversion, we’ll go into a little bit later with the neuroscience is perhaps the biggest problem here. Loss aversion in your executives who don't want to lose their jobs, so they don't tell you the truth. Loss aversion in everybody in the company who doesn't want somebody else to get mad at them because they're stepping into somebody else's territory even they know that territory thing is mismanaged. Loss aversion is what's killing a lot of our businesses. Loss aversion has caused people to make a lot of the mistakes that we're living under in our economy right now.

So you want to understand loss aversion. We all have it. It's a challenge to every one of us to recognize when we are operating


from loss aversion which is fear-motivated behavior. There are times to minimize losses. Absolutely but probably 60% or 80% of the time that we're doing it didn't have to be done and we could have focused on a wind rather than avoiding the loss.

Judith Wright: Loss aversion is a Nobel Prize winning research by Daniel Kahneman. Also there was another Nobel Prize winner; I just blanked on his name. I'll find it. Actually he came up with prospect theory and really like how to invest and he had this wonderful formula. He won the Nobel Prize for it but he could not use his own formula in his own investing because of his own loss aversion. So – because the loss or perceived pain looms so much greater to the human mind than the potential of gain and possibility. So we're going to learn some things about how to reorient that so we really can see how do we get motivated by that and not so much looking at what losses because we all do it relationships, business, everywhere. Speaking of science, should we do a little science right now?

Bob Wright: Okay.

Judith Wright: So we'll give you a little more background now. We're going to be talking about neuroscience related to somebody's things, another scientific study. It's not a research but in order to get into that for the rest of these phases, we're going to do a little neuroscience 101 so that we all have a common base of looking at this. So neuroscience has to do with the brain. See, you know so much already and what's the word that sounds like neuroscience? These little things in the brain?

P: Neurons.

Judith Wright: Neurons. See, all right. You're doing very well. So I think we can go from there. So the thing about neuroscience that we want to talk about is there's been some huge breakthroughs in neuroscience particularly in the last 25 years and a lot of it is because we're able to see in the brain in ways that we never could before. We had CAT scans and EEG's but now we have Functional MRI's and we have – they're able to do localizing, what happens in the brain, they can see what happens, where and where things exist, it's fascinating which is as burgeoning as the feel. It's awesome. But it's also these discoveries that have given us a whole new outlook into human beings in human behavior and our growth and potential because it used to be believed that our brains were just kind of the – once we grow up, that was it. That was a nog in your head about teenage


years, early adulthood, you know, but you can't teach an old dog new tricks thing.

Well it's just not true because what they realize is there really is neuroplasticity that our brains are constantly capable of learning and growing. We literally generate new neurons so grow within possibilities and transformation is literally wired in possibility for us and the people that discovered that in themselves for transformational leaders because they had to go that gives a lot of push-back in the medical society that they were [Indiscernible] [2:53:46] out there. It was quite a time but they kept fighting and kept fighting and now that's accepted as common wisdom.

So we do have this neuroplasticity and what they realize is that how our – actually literally how our brains get laid down as they don't come fully formed at birth, you may have noticed that you don't start doing Calculus at day two, you know, they think that we're literally putting together. So what happens in our – as we do this, our neurons fire together and this have – fire together, wired together and then this connectivity happens that starts being the basis of our neural pathway. So I just want to look at that for a second, let's see. Yes, there you go. So that's just an example of these neurons firing. There's a lot of productivity that communicate between the neurons. So when they fire together, let's look at another one. You could see that spark between the neurons because you don't know all that was going on in your brain. Do you feel smarter now to know all that electrical activities happening?

What happens is they fire together. You have an experience; something happens that you notice something in some way. You have an emotion with it that starts to get related in laying these neural pathways and you can see now because we're fired together, wired together. You can see and let's see if I can use that. Yes, you can see these – the wiring starts to happen. So that's kind of these basics of what happens. So we get wired in through our different experiences in life, through our perceptions, through our emotions, through our experiences, we capture that in some way, wire it in our brains and that's why all of our brains are so different because we wire differently. We don't see things the same. We don't experience it the same. They have different roles and if it's important to us depending on our early experiences but this is how we're building these pathways, these neuropathways however, yes we get these pathways down which we call our matrix and we'll be looking at that a little bit later.


But what we can do is we can build new neuropathways even at whatever age you are right now and this is – and we're looking – and what it takes to do that because that's where transformation takes place. It doesn't take place without building new neuropathways because that's how we change, grow, and turn into someone we hadn't been before and it requires the deep practice that's repeated for a long time. We can't just do something once. How many of you like tried to play the guitar once and you were just a virtuoso, you know? It's not likely for that to happen. It takes us long, deep practice in order for us to become masters at leadership, masters in our craft, masters in living and without that, we just go through the time. We don't develop the skill and develop that kind of mastery.

So how do you do? We got neuroscience 101 now. Are you brilliant now that we talked about that? Great. Good. But now I want to just briefly look at the neuroscience and a little bit of foundation of yearning because this helps explain the very things we're talking about. It just gives us another way to look at that because the neuroscience of yearning is very, very interesting. Oh that one goes, that's we're building these neuropathways. So I loved it. All right. So there we go.

There's two different parts of what we're talking about. When Bob talked about before kind of the yearning and craving, they find that that's actually what goes on in our noggins. We have two different centers. The different researchers call it different things but it's the wanting center and the liking center. The wanting center is the thing that gets us motivated that starts it and we want to go get something, do something, buy something, eat something, check your BlackBerries whatever it is. There's something that starts there and that's more of that – the part that's exciting to us at a level, that's one center of our brain. There's another center of our brain though that's what they call liking and we don't always like what we want.

Liking is what actually gets you satisfied. Your deeper yearnings are related to this liking. This is the wanting (panting), liking is (sighing), you know, you get that sense of satisfaction. You hit that deeper yearning underneath that and they have these very different circuits; I'll just show you that so you can see that. All right, if you can see, there are different circuits. We have the wanting circuit and the liking circuit and they're different. Dopamine is the wanting and opioids are the liking. Yes, wanting is the dopamine cycle and liking is the opioids.


Now you don't really need to remember that but I want you to know just two things are going out at all times and what happens oftentimes is the wanting cycle hijacks the other liking cycle and we get more focused on these cravings then going after the things that actually give us its sense of dissatisfaction, the things that really provide the fuel for our transformation, the fuel for great living, the fuel for satisfaction. And also when we also interact with other people which is part of what – that needs to go back. When we interact with people, we also get – you didn't know it but you're getting shots of oxytocin right now being in this room with other people that there's other things that bring us satisfaction. They're just through this interaction and [Indiscernible] [2:58:45] transmitters.

Bob Wright: And remember that transformational leaders people even though they may work harder, they're not as burned up and I think part of the reason they're not as burned out is because they've got this cycle in better balance. They're not just always going after something draining them, they have moments of replenishment.

Judith Wright: Okay. You get that sense of satisfaction, not that drivenness which is really what fills us for the long haul. The other studies I want to point out in the wanting versus altruism, this is really interesting too because what they found is this wanting center of the brain with just like that but we have also talked about it last night, we have this altruism center of our brain, a part of us that lights up, they can actually see the lights go on when we're doing something that matters. When we're contributing to a cause or people or something that's bigger than ourselves and just think about this for yourself. Let's say a friend asked you to help them move their apartment on a Saturday night. I mean you might have an initiative grown but how many of you might probably show off for the pizza party and help your friend move? All right. Now imagine this, the friend says “Hey, I'll pay you 10 bucks if you come help me move Saturday night.” How many of you want to do it for 10 bucks?

You'd be much more likely motivated to do it to help your friend than when it gets – this activate different centers and when the wanting and that altruism, they cannot activate at the same time. You either going one or the other but oftentimes if they come head to head and you'd actually – the wanting center hijacks the altruism and it backs off. So this is something for us to be aware of is that deeper yearning we have to contribute, to matter, to be part of something, to create something, to innovate is very wonderful to us and it literally shows up in our brains.


Bob Wright: So how many of you have been really disappointed to find that your bonus system didn't work or the extra money you were going to pay people didn't work the way you wanted it to? Okay because transformational leaders don't go after that. First, that's actually a by-product, that's secondary. They had people that did crossword puzzles out of pleasure. It's okay [Indiscernible] [3:00:56] and started paying them to do crossword puzzles. What happened? Their production in crossword puzzles went down. The very act that you would tap – now we're not going to into the reasoning behind that and try and analyze that but as leaders, you need to understand that you need to tap the true yearning. Money is not a true yearning as a by-product of yearning activities, very useful.

Judith Wright: And the other thing that I think helpful for us is wanting is a really high fuel. It really takes a lot of fuel. That altruism, the liking center doesn't take as much fuel. It doesn't take as much energy which is interesting. It fuels itself and I think many of us know that that's where we don't get so burned out. It happens that way. There's also – they were actually literally wired for this wondrous seeking, curious part of ourselves that we are – we're designed to want something. We're designed to activate. We're designed to learn, grow, to innovate and create. Our human brain is actually at its finest when we're in that activity.

When we get stuck in this wanting-craving, it hijacks these other systems. They may lose access to that depth of satisfaction. There's another study I think that would be helpful for us relevant to this and it's in Daniel Pink's new book that's coming out next month and he's working – it's called Drive but he's talking about the difference between extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic [Indiscernible] [3:02:18] money or punishments or whatever and then it has its use. What the study show is that, that extrinsic motivation works well for mechanical tasks, things with really clear rules, things are pretty understandable, it works very well. However, it does not work well for the kinds of tasks that are more – what our world is now from more complex problem solving, creative kinds of work doesn't work well. In fact it goes the opposite. If you give someone let's say a monetary work for more complex kind of task, productivity plummets. It's the opposite of what we think.

So – and most of the things that actually where an extrinsic motivation is good for the things or outsourcing right now and the things that were developing and the things that we're working on, the relationships and the kinds of things that matter to business now really require more the intrinsic motivation. The study shows


this over and over and over and over and over again. And I think this is really important for us to understand that really that yearning and that deeper hunger, we all have to contribute to matter, to feel part of something, to create things together, to innovate. This is really hard-wired into us and the rewards of that are of course monetary but the rewards of that are even greater for us and that brain science and the neuroeconomics of this underlines that.

Now I want to look at then just first – how do we do that because some of you are thinking how do we get it? How do you keep the yearning going over the long-term? What happens? So let's look at what activates it and then let's look at what might be able to feed that. How many of you could feel like you could use a little more fuel yourself? Can I see that? How many of you don't have enough energy to raise your hand and even tell me that right now? So all right. We want to look at what happens. So this kind of yearning is ignited. It actually – you can just catch on fire. How many of you can remember getting kind of turned on by an idea or something or innovation or possibility or a new job opportunity? Great.

So that – we can [Indiscernible] [3:04:14] that is but that ignition is a really – it starts with a spark and it takes that and that's what starts this system and activates us. However, that spark is – well let's look at what sparks us. There's a thing that's – Daniel Coyle calls the primal cues. So let's talk about this as primal cues and we'll give you a hand. Any recognize who this is? This is Roger – yes, Bannister. Why do we know him?

P: Four-minute mile.

Judith Wright: Four-minute mile. He broke the four-minute mile. Nobody had done that. He broke the four-minute mile. Do you know what happened after that? Six weeks later, another four-minute mile. Weeks later, another four-minute mile, another one. It never happened before and it wasn't that all those people changed their diet in those 6 weeks or worked out differently or got a new gene pool or – it wasn't that at all. What happened is that this Roger Bannister served as what we call the primal cue. Wow! That can happen. You can do that. You mean that's possible? That then is one of those activators for primal cues that really helps us see the vision of possibility. Oh wow! You can do it; perhaps I can do it which is very important as we talk about transformation.

Now let's look at some other examples of this so I think now – look at these dudes. Manet, Bazil, Monet, Zola, Renoir, these are some dudes, you know, impressionist painters. Think about that. They


hung out, there were together, they stimulated one other, they painted together, they gave each other feedback. They tried each other's technique. These cut beds are really important for supplying primal cues over and over and over again. It's like whoa, I want to do that. Wow! That's cool. I can do that and that creativity having other people around is a really important part to keeping this motivation.

I was thinking we're going to bring in a painter today and just paint you like this and they'd put all of our names on this at the end of the day. I thought that would be good. Also how about Hemingway in the Moveable Feast? F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, these people who – and The Inklings with Tolkien and Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, so people that stimulated one other, gave cues to each other, yes you can do this. This is possible. Then that's a part that keeps that yearning and now it's so important to even have an event like this, we're around other people to really keep that going for us.

And the biggest long-term fuel is really the transformational urge and that's what – it can keep us going so it starts as it sparks and goes to fire long-term – oops, let me go back; long-term we get on fire but I can't find that slide. So – but that long-term is informed, that long-term fuels informed by dedicating and when we get to that, you'll be able to see more fully how that keeps us going.

Bob Wright: Okay. So I think that's a great deal. We're going to do another paired sharing. We want you to digest. I mean I actually going to give you 60 seconds to just go into your daily life and think about ways that you can tap your more genuine yearnings and ways you can tap the genuine yearnings of others. I'm going to give you 60 seconds in silence then we're going to go into a paired sharing for you to digest this.

[Music Playing]

Bob Wright: Okay. Now if you'd pair up with somebody. Use somebody different if you can and if you don't have a buddy, raise your hand. If you don't have a buddy, raise your hand. Okay. Okay so …

Judith Wright: Who do you want to go first?

Bob Wright: … hang on, come on back. I know this great social convention, we're going to add – okay I'm going to give you 10 seconds to introduce yourself to each other. Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, okay back. Okay this time, the one with the biggest


hands goes first. You're going to talk for a minute and a half to digest this for yourself. Small hands, you just listen.

[Music Playing]

Bob Wright: Switch, switch.

Judith Wright: Small hands, your turn.

[Music Playing]

Bob Wright: Okay come on back. Okay. So let's just integrate things. How many of you could see how yearning fits in with inspiration? It's right at the heart. Idealized influence, you've got to be living it and help them live it. It's a little harder to see. Intellectual engagement. How many of you see that? Everybody wants to talk about what they're doing if they don't have a chance to do that they cannot own it, it cannot be theirs, and you will not be a transformational leader at the level you could be and individualized consideration, I think we've all got that one. So we're going to go onto the next level which is engagement.

The thing I want to underline about engagement, it's not activity. It must be activity-driven by yearning, genuine yearning. You know, most of our activities today are not engagement. We are not in what we're doing. We are not engaged. We may be sweating, you know, we may be groaning but we are not engaged. There are many kinds of activities in which we may have peer engaged but we are not and I won't go into enumerating them.

Judith Wright: Well Bob, they have a new term. They call it CPA.

Bob Wright: What?

Judith Wright: It's continuous partial attention. It is kind of half there so it's not fully engaged.

Bob Wright: So if it is engagement, you will be more present. By definition, you must be coming out with some part of you and your staff must be coming out with some part of them that they would not have come out with otherwise and there's almost always risk. If it's real engagement, there's some level that you are at risk. Someway, you could lose something, someway that you are stepping into your potential self. We like to think of the transformational process as an emergent process and boy, are you going to hear about emergence when Don talks. You are emerging into your potential that by


yearning and engaging, you are actually burfing an aspect of yourself that would not otherwise have exist and that's the cornerstone of our transformational leadership and existence.

Judith Wright: And also related to this risky thing, we're going to risk – we risk making more mistakes. So Babe Ruth, what do we know him as?

Bob Wright: Strikeout king.

Judith Wright: He's both. The Home run king and the strikeout king because it really is what happens, there's realism and so – and high performers and leaders who are high performers really need to embrace risk and have that – and allow mistakes because that's how we become masters at things. We're avoiding – how many of you are perfectionist like I am? Oh, this is a real groaner for us because you're really having to embrace making mistakes. They conceive as being humiliated doing something wrong yet the only way we can really transform and the only way you can be of high performers who develop mastery is being making mistakes.

So how many of you screwed up at least once today? Great. Excellent. I applaud that. That's awesome. We're on our journey [Indiscernible] [3:15:32]. Maybe take a little bit of science of engaging because it just underlines what we know in our own experience and it won't be a big surprise but I'd like to have it validated for us and this is what we found in our studies and everywhere. You know, how like – how many of you ever bought a color of a car and then every car you see in the highway is the same color as yours and you know, it's like – so I feel like we do our research and like everything is engaging. You know, everything is just engaging. It's like that.

So let me tell you some of the things that it's on a positive psychology studies since the beginning of this new millennium in zillions. I think that's a technical term, zillions of studies and all of them showed the same thing and Martin Seligman is the father of process psychology summarized all these things about people's happiness and satisfaction and they cost into three things: pleasure, meaning, and engagement. And meaning and engagement are really very much what we're talking about is transformational leaders and the study showed over and over and over and over again.

Happiness isn't escaping and moving to the, you know, to the islands or just going on vacation. It's not getting away from it at all. It's getting into it is what makes us happy and satisfied and all the


worker productivity studies, the same thing. Employee satisfaction – those employees that are satisfied, the most happy, that have more – high motivation are those who are intentionally engaging at work. They're asking questions, they're solving problems, they ask for more work and they want more. That's where their productivity is up, they're also happier.

Also some of the workplace studies are as presenteeism as opposed to absenteeism. It started out as a word that described people that were sick but still were at work but now, presenteeism means something else. In addition to that, you're at work but you're not present. You're not engaged and what the studies are showing is that that's a huge loss of productivity. At least 61% of loss productivity and $250 billion a year and I'm not measuring all of that. I think there's much, much more.

But to let you know how critical engaging is to both happiness, satisfaction and productivity. Success studies, tons, again there are studies now that [Indiscernible] [3:17:38] studies in grit. I don't – that one doesn't turn me on a lot of grit but I do get the guts behind it and one of the studies I was looking at like what West Point cadet – they're trying to figure out who makes it and who doesn't. What makes a difference between those that stayed through it and that are successful. What they found, they looked at everything. Their SAT scores, physical fitness, their family background, SCS, all kinds of things, nothing predicted it. The only thing that predicted it was what they call grit. This ability to persevere, to get through some barriers and get back at it to keep me engaging.

Another – oh this one is fascinating. Lewis Terman was the inventor of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test because they thought intelligence obviously was a thing that would predict future success. So he invented it, he had all this data, he studied people with high IQ's for decades had nothing to do with success and we still do it because the test is so easy to do. I mean we're not taking in, it's really not about how smart you are, it's about how engaged you are and the studies show that over and over and over again.

I want to give you a kind of another story that I think can help us kind of see this that this ability to – this grabbing that there is a – do you do that one? Let me show you this. This will tell us a story. I'll use it to tell us a story. Now, what do you see here? The game is …

P: Basketball.


Judith Wright: … basketball. Do you see any discrepancy between these two girls? [Indiscernible] [3:19:02]. Okay good catch, very good. You're engaged enough to catch that. This is a good sign for us today. So this represents – there is a fellow that came from India and he was an IT developer and his daughter want to play basketball. Well he has never even seen the game of basketball. He played cricket and soccer and then they asked him to coach and he said okay. And his daughter is a 12-year old, kind of chubby and her actual dream was to be a marine biologist, not exactly the basketball type but these little girls are joined by basketball.

So then most of these girls are – even like the little blond valley girl or they were these little chubby kind of nerdy intellectual girls and they're going to play basketball. So what do you think some of the other basketball teams were like? They were girls that really love basketball or really good at it. They had the physiques or are tall, you know, just so – but they're in this league and the dad who's now coaching, he'd invented this whole thing of real time processing as opposed to batch processing and he watched the game of basketball that he never played and said you know what, this is batch processing.

I mean the team that's really still goes in and out or that one is just waiting around and waiting around for the talented people to go shoot this basket against this. This is really a loss or resource. Something is missing here and he realized his girls had no chance of whatsoever of competing with these tall, fiery basketball girls but he said wait a minute, if we didn't batch process, if we were real time processing, if we use the full court the whole time, what could happen and he let those little girls loose. They didn't have the skill, they didn't have the talent but he ran them like heck and they ran and they sweated and they broke the rules and they kept engaging, they did the full court press and with full court press, these little chubby nerdy intellectual girls beat these big tall talented basketball players over and over and over again. So let's hear for chubby nerdy girls, okay? I was one.

[Applause]

Judith Wright: So this full court press is what they find is that engaging has a lot of benefits. It can beat talent and in fact they're often and almost always every time beats talent. There's being willing to engage, to sweat, to go at it, to use it and is very – it's really important for us to see. You go back – oh there we go. Another thing related to this are the tons of studies now in talent. So anybody [Phonetic] [3:21:28] have seen the Talent Code or talent is underrated or out large from


Malcolm Gladwell. All these things are looking at and a lot of it from Anders Erickson's work about on talent, high performance, what people develop – how people develop skills, what happens because we all – how many of you grew up like it's telling you either had it or you didn't? Oh look, I don't have that talent so I'm out of that and that's – what they're finding is talent is the overrated. It's quite actually not even the point.

In fact, there's a lot of so-called talented people that don't develop their potential because they don't consistently engage and what they're finding is that talent and intelligence is not what makes success. It's engaging, being willing to do the long and hard and deep work and consistent engaging is what makes people good. But if you think about it and go hire somebody, we usually look for talent or intelligence or experience. What the studies show, experience doesn't count. I mean kind of counts but let me tell you the bad sides of that. If someone is just doing the same thing over and over and over again for years and not growing and developing mastery, it doesn't matter how many years they'd been on the job, they're not an engaged human being and they're not learning and growing and developing and transforming.

So what's more important is for us to activate engaging and look for engaged people that can learn and grow and appreciate that opportunity and to spark the engaging of those that are just kind of – how many of you know – how many – we've all done that. We've done the same thing at our job over and over and over again at such certain times. How many of you wish you could do something over again because it's so new all the time or the other way too. I know that one as well. But it really is a very important thing for us to be looking at that this engaging is way more key and the studies show it all over the place. But I think all of us know that and part of where engaging gets a bad wrap is that it sounds so hard. I have to be on all the time. I have to engage all the time. Yes, it's good for me. It's like medicine.

But what they show – and yes, these little girls in the basketball court, they sweated more, you know. They did run more. They were in better condition. There's some truth to that but the studies show that hard work and effort is one of the hugest keys to satisfaction and happiness and that the kind of – where we get confused about hard work and Jeffrey Calvin speaks about this is that the hard work – we imagine hard work that's engaging, we imagine all those times we've spent cranking out the same stuff we've always been cranking out. That's exhausting but when we're engaged and learning and growing, the very different experience is fueled very


differently and that's where the burnout doesn't happen. So there's a real distinction for us to look at that.

And just related to this about the neuroscience behind engaging, you could see what goes on in your noggin when you're learning and growing. It's quite fascinating. We only learn when we're engaging. We don't learn passively. We only – we learn by what we put our attention on, what we're present to and it only occurs with intentional engaging and it takes in for learning and developing skill and mastery and high performance. It takes long, hard and deep practice in order to build this skill that we need to build. The myelin sheaths on these neuropathways that actually ingrained this kind of mastery but it's that kind of engagement where we learn, grow, and transform. So how many of you are tired just thinking about engaging, can I ask that? How many of you – you know, how many of you are engaging the material? Oh well great. Let's applaud you for that. That's a good [Indiscernible] [3:25:01]

[Applause]

Judith Wright: Because it’s actually very important to reward effort rather than just talent or seeing someone smart or you did such a good job. It's way better to reward people for the effort, for their going for, for their persevering and that tends they have much greater results in performance than just saying good job or you're so smart. So good job, way to engage. Way to work your noggins. You guys – yes, yes. Would you clap at somebody next to you and say yes, give them a little – boy, good engaging. That's great. Good. Great. Wow, you're hanging in there. Boy, you're working that noggin well. It's great.

[Applause]

Judith Wright: So then move to another …

Bob Wright: Okay. So I'm going to give you 30 seconds to think about the implications of engagement for you. Where – because by the way, would you just talk about being tired? A pretty good sign you're not engaged. You know, I worked some pretty long hours and coaching people. Sometimes it's really hard to stay awake, you know. I've done two all-nighters in a row with max, an hour and a half sleep between the two nights and I can stay with somebody if they're there that makes me there. And my big tell about whether they're in the room or not is about whether I'm in the room. If I'm daydreaming, I know they're not there because I know I wasn't there. Okay. So it's a mutuality of being there.


So this is really very significant. You can make micro-assessments during the day about whether you're there or not then, you ask yourself, what was the last time I was there? Oh, I checked out when she talked about this and it caused me to think about a piece of unfinished business that pulled me out of this conversation and this conversation was so darn boring it was easy to leave it. You're with me on this? So you want to be able to go back and we want to play the game and the existentialists would be celebrating and dancing a jig here saying we've been telling you all along. It's about being fully present in here and now. So I'm going to give you 30 seconds to think about you're engaging and the engagement of the people that you lead and then we're going to do a paired sharing.

[Music Playing]

Bob Wright: Okay. Now pair up. If you can pair up with somebody you haven't talked to yet then please do that and introduce yourselves. You're going to get 10 seconds to do your pairing and intro. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. I guess it's just [Indiscernible] [3:28:17]. Okay. Now come on back. Intro is over. The one with the darkest eyes is going to go first and I'm just going to give you a minute to talk about engagement for yourself. Digest it.

Judith Wright: To engage and then talking about engaging.

[Music Playing]

Bob Wright: Switch. Switch.

Judith Wright: Switch to light eyes.

[Music Playing]

Bob Wright: Okay. Come on back. Okay. So if you could take your seats again.

Judith Wright: There's a lot of engaging going on there, Bob.

Bob Wright: Yes. Okay. Now we're going to talk about revelating.

Judith Wright: We hope you just did a little revelating on engaging and through these other ones or you want to look at how these work.


Bob Wright: Okay. It requires a dramatic shift in perspective. So what is it that you see up here? Okay, a rabbit. Who saw the rabbit? Okay. Raise your – rabbits, rabbits. Raise your hands.

Judith Wright: Raise your hands.

Bob Wright: Okay. So how many can see the rabbit now? Okay good. So it's a dramatic shift in perspective. So you're looking at the same object but it's a dramatic shift in perspective. So what is it that you see here? How many saw the vase? What else is there?

P: Two people.

Judith Wright: Two people.

Bob Wright: How many saw the two people? How many saw them both simultaneously? I doubt it but it's nice to think about it. It's nice to think about it. I think our neuropsychologists are going to tell me it was a rapid flux between back and forth between the two and there's …


Bob Wright: … ideas on it.

Judith Wright: There's really between revelating and hallucinating. So I think that's what we're working on.

Bob Wright: So this is really critical. This is where insight happens. Human beings should be living with the excitement of insight all the time once you're yearning and you're engaging, life is an adventure of discovery. How do we keep that alive in ourselves and how do we keep that alive in our staff? I have a feeling that it's a mutual journey. It's the mutual journey of discovering ourselves in them and then discovering themselves in us. It's really critical. One of the reasons Judith called it revelating rather than insight or revealing is because it also reveals you. You yearn, you engage, and a part of you comes out that you never knew before and you have an environment, a work environment where people are discovering potentials, they're discovering things about each other. We have that intellectual engagement that we're talking about when we're talking as transformational leaders. It's really, really important to understand this. So we've got – oh I supposed to go back to that. Now I got another one. Yes.

Judith Wright: No, you do. Insight.


Bob Wright: Bingo!

Judith Wright: There you go. Yes, yes.

Bob Wright: You get – now this is going to be really important. So you have a bit of insight. That actually leads to you having beginning to have something happening in your brain. It's like when you have new dirt, it's all been you know, smoothed out and there's a little rain and a little rivulet get started. That little rivulet gets started. That's all this is. We have our revelating dyes over and over and over again and until we learn to catch these little rivulets and then discern which rivulets are essential for our rematrixing. Until we learn to do that, then we are going to continue living the same script over and over and over again. So revelating is really critical to recognize and I almost went to the next phase. I got so excited there.

Judith Wright: Well it does lead to that but let me look at this for a sec. So I want to let you know – so another part of this – and this is really important. This is all kind of self-awareness, self reflecting part for leaders but revelating is where you are able to see your blocks, your blind spots, your resistances. You're able to see that darker parts, the kind of that dark journey that Matt was talking about. You're waking up now more to see what's going on inside and you're more willing to be more revealed not just trying to keep it together and look good or perform in a certain way and it's becoming more authentic and more real.

Bob Wright: Now if you ever want to have a great revelating, ask your staff to discuss how good the last meeting was and engage them in the continual improvement of what would a meeting needed to be to be satisfying to them. So you can actually have group revelating. As a leader, you can have corporate revelating. There are people who genuinely do this. I think Jamie Dimon. We got to watch somebody who really got serious revelating going when you know, with Bank One and a leader for whom I have huge respect.

Judith Wright: And that is a condition for revelating is truth, being willing to tell the truth, hear the truth, be the truth, hang around with people that tell the truth, get feedback, disclosures are very important for this aspect. And there are some key kinds of revelating that happen [Indiscernible] [3:35:43]. What do we search? So do these people live these great lives and great leaders, these are the kinds of common revelations that they reported on that really is on programs, that I am a creature of my programming my past, my


beliefs or whatever and if I am that, then I can do something from that.

Bob Wright: How many of you know you're programmed? Okay. I'm not going to ask those that you don't. You will learn.

Judith Wright: Well there are two programs that I know right now to revelate about it.

Bob Wright: Right. Well we're not supposed to know we're programmed. It's against the societal rules, you know because we'll step out of the norm but if you want to be a transformational leader, you have to help your people realize that and invite them to help you be bounced out of our program.

Judith Wright: Well adopt belief systems and things that aren't necessarily conscious beliefs for us or we don't challenge them. So what evolators do is they realize I'm programmed, I operate from beliefs that are not necessarily true and they limit my possibilities. They also revelate, you know, things can be different. What I thought was impossible was possible which is also helped by the Roger Bannister type primal cues like whoa, that's possible. If they can do that, I can do that. You start to see possibilities and to really – things are not always as they seem and [Indiscernible] [3:36:52] for and I create my reality. I'm responsible because I'm – this is something that I create through who I am. It's not – I am not a victim. This had to do with a lot of personal responsibility.

They also had an awareness that emotions are important and powerful, not something to be that they needed them. Great evolators, transformational leaders need access, appropriate access to their emotions and they also recognize the power of truth and these same kinds of beliefs came up over and over and over again as we're studying them.

Then I'll give you a little bit of the neuroscience of revelating. On the bottom, we kind of did that anyway because we're just talking about is that insight is a really interesting thing. Insight, there's a huge electrical burst that happens in our brain. Our brain loves this novelty. It loves this new whoa! I'm awake because wow! Wow! Okay I could have a beginning [Phonetic] [3:37:40], that kind of thing that goes inside the brain. It's so happy when that happens and there's a huge spurt of energy that can be used for motivation and in engaging although it doesn't last long. So if we don't do something with it, it just dies or just a little rivulet.


So if we understand though in this revelating, we need more than insight that actually – our matrix is laid down from our early experiences. Whatever it is that we experience, the feelings we had or perceptions, what we saw, what happened to us and from that, it kind of lays this track for us both of our implicit memories, those memories were not consciously aware of and our explicit memories, those things we are consciously aware of. Then all of these as these neurons wired together, fire together and wired together, it forms these literally a matrix of perception and beliefs through which we view the world and that matrix is of our own program and our own creation. It's like hard-wired information in us that drives our perceptions, drives our beliefs, and ultimately our identity.

We are creature of the wiring that's hard wired into us and information that we've locked in through these different life experiences. So what happens then is that we are – and our brain loves shorthand. It loves to just work with what's already there. It tries to fit the fins with the patterns we already have. It's a pattern recognizer. It says yes, that's it. And the brain is sloppy. It doesn't look for big little distinctions. Yes, close enough. Putting that fire or doing yes, it's there. Yes, yes I've heard that before. Yes, yes that's good advice. You know, it doesn't have a lot of conscious discerning power with that or turning that on.

So revelating though with this insight that kind of breaking this possibility of this programming that we have, it actually starts the beginning of a new neuropathway. Let me see – so you can see that again. That's the neurons spiking there and it starts then so we can build new neuropathways with the matrix and Bob and me have you going to that more. We think we need it but with the matrix that we have, once you're wired, you can't really unwire it. Very, very difficult to unwire it. What you can do is add new wiring but we have to understand that the old wiring, the old beliefs, programming, matrix that's been in there, we've been repeating these patterns of beliefs, ways of being thought patterns, the way we are, over and over and over again, those neuropathways are pretty deep.

So if we're – we can build new ones but they're a little weaker than that other matrix. So we have to build those consistently so that we can then operate by new beliefs that are more empowering and help us fulfill our potential. And I want to show you a couple of other images on this if you can see. This is your brain on insight. So what happens is this little electrical burst that we have with insight, it doesn't look like that pre-insight. So they're literally – you can see


the activity and this starts the possibility of building something new for us.

But the other – part of this is what we want to be looking at is with this revelating, we're starting to wake up. We start to see whoa, I have a matrix. Wow, I am programmed. Gee, I'm just like – I believe that my whole life. Maybe it doesn't have to be that way. Maybe there's another way to do this. Maybe there's another way to orient for this problem we're having at the – maybe there's a new product we need to be doing. Wow, maybe it could be different. Revelating helps with that but it doesn't know I can until we go to the next stage.

Now however, what we want to do is to – another thing, the other studies show is that – we talked about that, emotional contagion, mood contagion but positivity really facilitates insight. In fact, we're all kind of [Indiscernible] [3:41:28] when we got the blues and we're kind of down or we're kind of cycling down, you literally cannot have insight in that state and what happens then – and when you are in that more vision-oriented state, the yearning is activated, much more creativity comes in, problem solving, your brain looks like this, things can happen.

And how many of you know that sometimes you look at something there's just no answer, it was just a dead end, you can't go anywhere, it's hopeless. How many of you know that? Then you might have a revelating or somebody reminds you of something and whatever and all of a sudden, yes we could do that. I mean they had the other side of it. So you know those differences and those are things we can cultivate so we can activate more revelating, have more creative problem-solving more than innovation. It's in us, there's just things we need to do to activate it. And what we want to do is to be – have revelating become a way of being well, you know, light you up and have you light up the people that you lead so that this is what you're going to be like. So you are turned on and lit up. All right.

Bob Wright: Well I'm going to do things a little differently on this one because I'm going to ask you to review yourself. I have found myself most wanting on this one. I had just been doing an inventory of the number of meetings I run where I'm running my agenda and I'm not really asking or thinking about am I tapping this revelating power of my organization. You know, I had thought about – I was doing okay with engagement, I was doing okay with yearning. So I want you to think about this revelating. I'm going to ask you to do something – so let it be different this time. On a scale of one to 10; 10, you've


got your organization firing on all 16 cylinders, a very high level car. You know, you've got everybody totally engaged thinking about it and you know, say that would be a 10.

A five is you know, we're doing awful lot of these and this is – we have pretty significant session weekly which I haven't come up to yet and very humbled about it and you know, three is we do it once in a while and do, you know, three and down is we do it when things are near death and absolutely urgent, we decided to really think about what we're doing and follow the process. So I'm going to give you about 15 seconds to rate yourself one to 10.

[Music Playing]

Bob Wright: Okay. I know it's getting harder and harder to find somebody new but if you can without having to go in the other end of the room to find somebody new, pair off and then I'll tell you what to do. Introduce yourselves, you have 10 seconds to introduce yourselves and get paired up.

Okay so now, raise your hands and would you come on back? Come on back. The one with the lowest score talks first and I know I get to talk before all of you but go on.

[Music Playing]

Bob Wright: Switch to high scores. You're up.

[Music Playing]

Bob Wright: Okay, finish it up. Okay. Everybody, take your seats. How many of you like me were below five? Yes, this was the most humbling one so far for me although I probably should have been more humbled on the other one too.

Judith Wright: No, no, no, Bob. This is great because you just had a revelation about revelating.

Bob Wright: I did?

Judith Wright: You just did it. You know what your brain looks like right now?

Bob Wright: Okay. Let's go. No. I want you to notice these.

Judith Wright: Let's get us back.


Bob Wright: What is this? And this? George Washington crossing the Delaware and this, Brad Anderson and these have in common.

Judith Wright: This is a revelating exercise.


Bob Wright: … a couple.

P: Can we do it?

Bob Wright: They believe they can? They're doing the impossible. They're stepping into something they'd never done before. They are liberating. Okay. You know they are. Okay. They're liberating. They're evolators act on awareness of revelating. We have great insights. I've been wanting to lose 15 pounds for 3 years. It was more than that before. It was more than that before. I have huge insights repeatedly about how to do it. Those are those little rivulets that died there. Every once in a while I actually act on it but you have to act on it to be liberating. It's breaking free from something but most importantly, it's moving into freedom to do things. Most of our lives we think of liberating as getting out of prison, getting away from authority. We miss the existential, the exquisite opportunity to step into an unknown that is driven by our yearning, not by our resistance to reaction against something else. So liberating in its finest form is stepping into a new unknown that is simply generate out of us having nurtured our yearning, engaged, having revelated and stepped into a new behavior. That allows that to keep going.

It requires risking and being audacious. If you think about it, all of the figures in the pictures were audacious but those little girls, by the way, made it to the national level of competition. They did win a lot. I don't believe they won the whole thing. There are manifestations of liberating than really critical self-expression. So if you as a leader going to really have your people liberating and your people become like the wind in your sails, then you have to take the risk that they're going to be expressing themselves and you're going to hear stuff you don't want to hear. That's one of the absolute fantastic things about Brad.

His capacity is willingness to lose, his willingness to be unpopular, his willingness to have people express themselves at his own expense authoring. What starts happening is we own our own experience. We realize that we are creating our own experiences' individuals and we realize that, that which our staff is saying that cause as their liberating and they're stepping into expression is


actually something we author fantastic insight about Brad we'll get later on. His capacity to value action, to value everyone else's vision and to value their action in a direction that follows their vision and to be big enough to expand around them was absolutely – you will hear a lot more about it and we have expansion and we have flow.

So when we are liberating, we are flowing. We are not editing anymore. Something is coming out of our mouth and we go, oops! You know, it's something that would have been hitherto on acceptable. Okay. So it happens when we have insurgence, positive deviance, intransigence …

Judith Wright: No. It's intrapreneurship.

Bob Wright: Oh this is different. Our friend of ours, Gifford Pinchot, I kind of classed and outliers. Too often, companies don't value these people and I had a company that asked me to go talk one of their – they had 28 or so regional offices and they said, well we got this one regional director who won't come to meetings but we can't fire him because he makes almost twice as much as any other region. And so I went in there and I said well, you know, what's going on? And have you ever walked into somebody's office where it's eerily – there's nothing on any surface except the bowl of candy.

He pays his assistant over $100,000 a year to run the operation and he sits there as people come in to get candy and he talks to them and he finds their problems and he sees his primary job as being a resource to help his staff have the best plastic surgeons, divorce attorneys, entrance in the school that their kids need to get into. His entire job as far as he's concerned is just to support his staff and he's freed himself up and made a totally new structure.

I go back to the home office and I say, well I don't blame him for not coming in because you're not doing anything that relates to what he does and there's no way you're going to help him do it better until you understand what he does. They fired me. They fired me and anyway, so one of the people that really got this thing going and coined the term intrapreneurship is Gifford Pinchot. And Gifford Pinchot has his rules for intrapreneurship. How – you know, the stickies that we use all the time from 3M, that's part of intrapreneurship. He's one of the first people to say how do we lose the creativity of a company towards what can happen? He put together 10 rules. We're going to look at three of them.


Remember, it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. What if you let your staff go on that way? I'm cringing. Okay. Keep the best interest to the company its customers in mind especially when you have to bend the rules or circumvent the bureaucracy. I was an insurgent at a company I worked at and when I got my four-year pin, the president kissed me on both cheeks and he says, “This is the only person in the whole company that's honest with me and the reason I don't fire him is because I know that he has the best interest of me and the company at heart and he listened to all kinds of stuff he did not want to hear.”

So keep the best interest to the company in mind, come to work each day willing to be fired. In other words, your tenure does not matter. If you are going to be an insurgent, you have to own the mission of the company otherwise, you're just a jerk. And insurgent in the terms that we're using, an intrapreneur must own the mission of the company and have the courage to stand for what you see is right for that mission until someone sells you on another way to be. Very, very tough way to operate.

Judith Wright: I want to give you those little girls I was telling about the basketball. They broke the rules. They did literally break the rules but they played differently than everybody played. They're sweaty, they were messy, they you know, and gotten people's faces and they had a lot of grit for it because you're not playing basketball. That's not how it's played. They had a lot of resistance, bad press and a lot of things because they were breaking the rules and they were winning and it was threatening to the status quo but insurgents, liberators, iconic class, all of them, they're willing to break the rules or is it come across the social norms for the sake of something greater, bigger, different, something more innovative to happen.

Bob Wright: Okay. So you know, we're going to talk about this. We actually want to talk about Best Buy. I hope this afternoon, we go into a bunch more because Best Buy actually walks this talk as well as anybody. We talked about 3M which was the first company to embrace intrapreneurship. You all know about Google and the 20%. Atlastian is an Australian company and they have what they call FedEx days for their engineers. They have FedEx gets everything there within 24 hours. Their engineers get Google time, they get a 20% or they get time off and they must deliver a deliverable that will make a difference in the quality of the company within 24 hours. So they put a huge value on this. They've institutionalized this and it keeps them you know, way ahead in their industry.


Judith Wright: So you really have to experiment, break the rules, be willing to do things differently in order to have some liberates. Liberate from how things had been to what could be. So let me talk to you a little bit more about the science of liberating and this sounds really interesting. Let me show you how this works. This represents two kinds of mindsets and we have one or the other. The one on the left is a fixed mindset, kind of clear and the one on the right is a growth mindset and this is from Carol Dweck's work and this is really interesting because what the studies show, this makes a huge difference in how we live, not only live our lives but our performance are productivity or how much we learn and how we grow and they're finding huge impact for this from companies that also working with children with this earlier on. So let me tell you how this works.

So what they show is that a fixed mindset, he said you know what, this is how I am. I've got this talent, I don't have these things, my intelligence is fixed and that leads to a desire to look smart which does not help us liberate. Now a growth mindset on the other hand believes that I can grow. My intelligence, my talent can be developed and that has – it leads to a desire to learn. So let's look at how this plays out, what the studies show.

A growth mindset embraces challenges. A fixed mindset avoids them. Growth mindset persists versus giving up early. Growth mindset seeks and learns from feedback. A fixed mindset ignores useful negative feedbacks. It's very clear. Growth mindset is inspired by other's success and this is interesting because people with the fixed mindset says I'm smart, this is how I am, feel threatened by other people's success and don't use it for those primal cues to activate that yearning.

Growth mindset has a greater sense of self-will. Fixed mindsets have just more of a deterministic, you are the world. This is how it is. But ultimately in terms of our work environment, the growth mindset has ever higher levels of achievement. These are more evolators because they always keep going, learning, developing more skills, developing more mastery as opposed to fixed mindset with a plateau early and achieved less than their potential. This is really critical because what we found is that this is – they're also related to those studies on talent because once you decide you're smart or talented, that becomes your identity and you don't want anything to threaten it.

People that actually believe, hey I'm learning and growing and they're doing this to children, they're saying – they've given them a


little lesson about your brain is like a muscle that you can develop. It's not just fixed. You're not like smarter dumb. Your brain is something that you can do something with. The kids did get that. Their performance is wild. It's getting very different feedbacks to how – there's a nurture shock has these studies and there's lots of things that you can find more of this data. But – and again, that's when you praise someone for their hard work and effort and that ability to grow rather than reinforce yes, you're smart because the minute you're told you're smart, what happens is people, children and adults stop performing because they don't want to make a mistake. They don't want to look dumb so they actually keep themselves from growing.

And it's really interesting, a very important part and the studies show this. When you really understand this about liberating, we don't liberate with a fixed mindset. We only liberate when we're willing to grow and try new things. And the neuroscience of learning is related to this as well because again, we know this is related to engaging kind of – liberating is like engaging on speed I think because it takes the engaging with more purpose and experimenting more but you have to do new things in order to learn. You just do not learn by doing the same things over and over again and your brain loves novelty. That's when it's at the happiest.

You can see how it lights up and we are at our best when we're at the edge of our abilities not when we're practicing what we've already know but more stretching, more like oh, almost can't do that. That ah! That level when we start stepping into something we haven't done before is where true learning takes place and it's out – it stretches this from the comfortable to the uncomfortable and outer familiar territory and that learning again only happens at that time. So let's look at this next slide. Let's see – yes. That's your brain loving novelty. This is liberating. So it's threatening, it's scary whatever, at the same time it's actually when we are at our best. It's what – we're actually designed to do is to learn and to grow and to develop not to get to a static place.

Bob Wright: Oftentimes in business, the best liberators live at what we call the bleeding edge. They're always out there. They're thinking, they're doing something and one of the key problems is they don't formalize what they're doing. Brad and Best Buy were at the bleeding edge. They were all the way up to 6 and 7 billion dollars a year and still they weren't making money and that's when they brought the consultants in that he was telling us about last night and they found that they had to formalize what they were doing. They couldn't just continue to empower everybody to be out there


at the bleeding edge because they were bleeding money and that's when they started you know, bringing you know, systems in and giving people a foundation.

They now had the trap. They had the money crank and we tend to fall in love with the money crank. This is the real challenge about whether we're going to be evolators or not. It's not that hard to be an evolator if you're always living at the bleeding edge but that tends to make you starving. I understand that one a little. You know, it's when you can routinize it and then at the same time continue to be a liberator, that's when you're really making a significant difference.

And we want to talk about – now the next phase we're going to – because the other one doesn’t matter that much without rematrixing. Rematrixing is where the robber really hits the road. Are you just engaging new behaviors or are you truly building a new system of behavior. Most of us spend our time, you know, kind of like they – we talked about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, you know. We're within – if you know set theory, we're operating in the same set. We're not doing anything new and it wasn't allowed within that set. Well if we're going to be really rematrixing, then we have to be looking at can we fly and get off of the Titanic altogether. We have to be willing to actually create a new way of thinking about what we're doing and it has to be a systematic redeveloping of how you think.

This is really the hard part of the game. It's where we start going into our matrix and going into the matrix and changing the matrix is kind of like trying to redirect the Mississippi. What we've been doing, we may think it's new because we've got a new car, we've got a new house, we've got a wife, we've got kids, we've got things we never had before but that matrix was set down a long, long time ago. And if you want to start a new channel for water to flow from the Mississippi, you have that revelating that happens. You engaged, you revelated, you liberated, you did something. You now have a little bitty rivulet and if that little bitty rivulet is going to become the significant stream that can continue to pull energy off of and water off of the mighty Mississippi; you have to consciously engage in that.

Judith's going to start talking with you about the neuroscience of that conscious engagement. You can do the things that the Buddhist monks are doing and she's going to talk about it but this rematrixing requires that we see the matrix, that we know we're programmed, that we understand the core values that are running


our basic program, that we'd be able to articulate the new variations of the police and the values that we want to be able to operate on so we are literally building a new matrix on top of the old one. That's what Brad understood. He understood that his job was to disturb Best Buy when he became CEO. His job was to continue that rematrixing because he knew that it was going to be very easy to fall into the same spaces they had fallen into so many times in the past.

Judith Wright: That rematrixing that – this is where that starts to make the difference between growing and transforming because you can grow with your somebody's different things that we're talking about and that's all good. But it doesn't become part of how you are and how you're doing your business, a part of who you are unless we lay this new track and this rematrixing. So you can have a new idea, you can have a spurt in your business but you don't lay down the track, the structures, the foundations to make that part of the fabric of the business and it loses it. This is explained at both internally but let me tell you a little bit about the neuroscience behind it.

The neuroscience – give me the next slide. Now we'll go ahead. There we go – that this neuroplasticity we talked about, we can develop this rematrixing. We can add this new matrix on top of ourselves which is a good thing. We can lay these new neuropathways. We can't really unwire what's there. We have to kind of remember that. Those habits are locked in there and they're very deep for all of us. Our habits are thinking how we do things that we can. The good news is we can rewire us. The bad new is, it takes repeated activity and conscious engagement to do it. We have to pay attention to it and we have to do it over and over again so it actually builds that track.

The other thing that's interesting about this is there's competitive plasticity. How many of you have heard the whole thing use it or lose it? About same here too, use it or lose it. You'd start and you'd get them revelating, you liberate a little, you do this thing and then you kind of not do it for a while. Well guess what? It's gone. It's just gone. That little rivulet is not strong enough because what happens in the brain, the plasticity is competitive. So if you're not using that mental real estate for that, it's taken over by something else, something else moves in. So we think – I think this, oh developed this thing, I'm not going to work on that for a while, I'll come back to it later.


I come back to it later, well then someone moved in to that spot. Some other skill – because another facility moved in there. I don't have it anymore and that's why it's so hard to feel like start over again with this. So – but what this does take for rematrixing and we're going to relate this back to skill and mastery. It takes long, hard and deep work but those are not dirty words. Those are really the things that actually help us how great satisfaction, develop mastery in high performance.

How many of you – and these talents of this are everywhere now. It's in Outliers and you get in Talent Code and Talent Is Overrated. So what do Bill Gates and the Beatles have in common? They put in 10,000 hours of developing their skill. So what these studies show is that it takes 10,000 hours of certain kind of deep dedicated practice in order to develop mastery. Tiger Woods – who studied [Phonetic] [4:08:02] Tiger Woods? Great. Thank you. [Indiscernible] [4:08:04].

So Tiger Woods, we think he's like this child prodigy. No. He started playing golf when he was three. He put in his 10,000 hours before anybody else. That's all. It's not this – it's what he did with that time but that's kind of laying down this track but it – we've talked about this for the [Indiscernible] [4:08:21] it's like yes, I've spent 10,000 hours on whining and complaining so that's bad strategy in there. What have we spent our 10,000 hours on because that's a little upsetting when you think of what's in there but we can lay some new tracks and it is hard work but remember, it's the kind of hard work that isn't burnout. It's the hard work that's engaging and stretching. It's doing that new things. It's like where you learn the best that takes what – these are called depractice or deliberate practice where you're actually paying attention to what is it that you're doing and you're working on it over and over and over again to develop that sense of mastery that becomes a new matrix and becomes who you are.

And what we want is we look at this. Rematrixing is very important. This is how we transform. This is how we go from who we were to who we could become and where businesses go from what they had been to what they could be by laying this new matrix. So this time it's in colors, see? We demonstrate, this is the, you know, with the brand new thing of language, new matrix but also what we need to do is just consciously take on the rewiring of ourselves which is something – the good new is we can do that. We're not stuck anywhere. They are new yous that don't even exist yet that can out of this whole part of rematrixing. So I want to work consciously on rewiring ourselves and rematrixing ourselves.


So I don't know what the happening is but I did like the knitting the thing together there. It's really understandable, rematrixing. So in that way, we become an agent of our own evolating. We've become an agent of our own transformation as very exciting. It's a little daunting but it's exciting to know that we can become. We're not stuck with who we were, who we've been or how we've thought. Those are all things we can change if we choose to and that's the nature of transformation. Okay. Now this is a juicy thing coming up here. Do you remember what that next, that sixth phase was?

P: Dedicating.

Judith Wright: Dedicating. Great. Perfect. Dedicating.

Bob Wright: That's good. Good.

Judith Wright: Dedicating is getting out long-term fuel now in order to activate all these other phases of yearning and engaging and revelating, liberating, rematrixing. Dedicating is where really this whole thing for people evolators, people that have great lives and transformational leaders. This is really – this is not dabbling anymore. This is oh I'll try this. Oh we'll have a little creative innovative day once, you know. This is no longer how it is. This is something different now. So do you want to go into the beginning of that and then …

Bob Wright: Okay. So dedicating is really devoting ourselves to evolating is a way of life. We have to set up systems. We're going to talk about this very, very specifically. People who are dedicated, set up systems. They have coaching, they have accountability, they build ways to keep themselves moving. They set up situations that force them to rematrix. They also know it's not a destination, it's a process and then it doesn't – it's not going to happen if they don't make a life commitment and go at it fully and for that, you saw Judith's book, The One Decision there. So we want to see a little review of some people.

Judith Wright: Of dedicating.

Male Speaker: She's too shy to put her best foot forward. Turned down by the Decca Recording Company who said, “We didn't like your style. Your guitar music is on the way out.”

A failed soldier and farmer and real estate agent. At 38 years old, he went to work for his father as a handyman.


Cut from the high school basketball team. He went home, locked himself in his room and cried.

A teacher told him that he was too stupid to learn anything that he should go into a field where he might succeed by virtue of his pleasant personality.

Fired from a newspaper because he lacked imagination and had no original ideas.

His fiancée died. He failed in business twice. He had a nervous breakdown and he was defeated in eight elections.

If you've never failed, you've never lived.

Bob Wright: Oh you know, they missed the other one that was supposed to be in there.

Judith Wright: Who's that one?

Bob Wright: He's one of them. Give yourselves a hand.

[Applause]

Judith Wright: Well let's try this on. Try to repeat after me. I must be living. Try that one.

P: I must be living.

Bob Wright: I must be living.

Judith Wright: Because I've failed a lot. How do you feel that way when you say that? Yes but to really see that as really an aspect of living life fully, it's really to see the piece of dedicating. Dedicating has to do with resilience. It has to do with giving back at it not just giving up. It's that grit and perseverance that we talked about before and that's what actually helps people become great, become these transformational leaders and help other people to do that. There's an aspect of dedicating that I want to help you understand a little bit more. Do you want to go see the properties, Bob?

Bob Wright: Yes.

Judith Wright: Yes. Okay.


Bob Wright: I want to talk about this because choicing is one of the terms that Judith came up with and choicing is the act of setting up situations that force you to rematrix. It's the conscious establishment of circumstances that will force you to rematrix and one of the best examples of that is actually Dick Smith at Best Buy. He said …

P: Schultz.

Bob Wright: Schultz. Thank you. Dick Schultz at Best Buy – because he set up a game. Now he and Brad, by the way, had a debate. Brad insists that Dick Schultz said they were going to grow to 50 million. Dick Schultz insists that he said they were going to grow to 500 million when they were just three stores and Brad had started out but he set up a game. There was no way out of that game for him. His entire life was dedicated to that and one of the cool things was he was a man that also believed people could do anything and Brad was one of the first people that he fully empowered.

And just to talk a little bit and tie some of these back in with. So Dick Schultz set that up. He persevered. Brad persevered with him but you can't talk about Best Buy without talking about Dick Schultz investing. He invested in people. He had trouble. He came down and he said – well he asked actually the way Brad got his first promotion was Dick Schultz came down to Brad and he said, “Who should I hire?” And all the people who's considering weren't Brad. What Brad mentioned last night that he did something that was out of character. He says, “You should hire me.” And then he was allowed to run half of the seven stores or eight stores depending on how you look at that they had.

So I mean Dick Schultz really needs to be honored for having supported Brad. The combination between them, we may or may not get into, but Brad and Dick had all kinds of marketing ideas that Brad was supposed to follow. Brad consistently said, “Dick, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do this.” You know and so he was an insurgent in his own business and Dick Schultz was a big enough man to tolerate somebody who went against his plan and said, “I’m going to do something else.” And Dick was big enough to allow that to happen. So let's give Dick a hand. I think that's noble. So the Best Buy story starts with Dick's dedicating.

Judith Wright: Great. Thanks Bob. There's a part of investing here is the paying the price. Literally [Indiscernible] [4:16:24] time, money, energy but also being willing to buck twins to be able to have people not believe in you, have people make fun of you, be ridiculed, that's stupid, being willing to be that you're dedicated. So what you're


going to do is more important to than the kinds of things that come across that way and you're willing to persevere through that. It's very important. And what happens when people really get to this place of dedicating is that they sort of living with more of a sense of purpose. It's no longer just of some things you're trying out but really having this deeper sense of purpose and I think all of us are hungered to be more dedicated.

It's one of those things, the bigger yearnings and we want to dedicate ourselves to something greater. We're part of something bigger. And it's these evolators and the studies we saw, people who have great lives, dedicate themselves not necessarily to a cause or a mission and that may have come out of this also but they dedicated themselves to learning and growing, becoming greater, developing their potential, transforming, helping other people transform. It wasn't just having a cause. It was having and living this way which we're all capable of doing and it's actually where that passion comes from and that juice.

So I'm going to test you a little bit to see what you've – let me show you this. Let me go to this, this next slide. Oops, I go to this one. There we go. Now look at this slide, this little boy and this little boy. Now what's the difference? Well the obvious difference is what?

Bob Wright: Instrument.

P: Instrument.

Judith Wright: Instrument. However, there's a huge difference here because the first little boy decided you know what, I kind of want to buy – I don't want to play a trombone. That would be kind of fun. I want to make some noise. Blah, blah and he did and he just kind of you know, he decided he was going to kind of play it for a while and try it out, try it out for a band for a little bit and see.

This little boy decided I want to be a violinist. I'm going to be a musician. This little boy got 400 times as much out of his practice as the little boy with the trombone. Long-term commitment, dedicating. The studies show he has a huge increase of performance and in fact this study is on music students, there's many studies done with music students, is it's the 400 times more of the practice that the kids decided before they even bought an instrument that they wanted to be a musician where the kids ended up being great musicians and it had nothing to do with any talent and prodigy or – nothing, was they decided before they even went


to the music store. I'm going to be a musician rather than I'm going to dabble. I'm going to try it out.

That's the kind of power that dedicating has for us to be able to develop and for our performance and then the violinist, he doesn't even have to practice as much as the trombone player to get more out of – because – more out of his practice time. In fact some of the people writing about this [Indiscernible] [4:19:21] kids practicing the musical instrument and says I don't care if they practice for 10 hours. They practice 10 minutes with that kind of deep, intentional, engaged, practice where the stretching is and learning something you hadn't learn before, that's it. That's the power of it and this is the kind of really the huge impact that dedicating can have.

So we kind of – sometimes we want to wait till we perform something and make sure it works out well before we dedicate because 22 is if we don't dedicate, we won't get the results. So it's really something for us to look at for ourselves and for the people that we lead. There's just a little more I want to talk to you about this because I think it really helps. So this long-term commitment has phenomenal results and there's another part of the brain that I think it can help us kind of – literally it's a metaphor but it's really true for us.

Transformational leaders live and lead from their frontal lobe not their limbic system. So let me tell you about this. So let me show you what this is first if you don't already know. If you take your hand like this, put your thumb in here and then put your fingers down. This is your brain. So inside the low thumb is your limbic system, this part in the front knuckles here, that's your frontal lobe. So – and let me show you so you can see it there. So I'm going to show you this next slide.

And our evolution as human beings, the first brain that we developed is the reptilian brain. The second brain is the limbic system. The third brain is the neocortex. So this is frontal lobe. This neocortex is the most recent part of our evolution but our limbic system has to do with our kind of primary primal kinds of feelings that we had and the way that we process the world before we evolve so much. And what the limbic system is interested in is protecting us. It's the part – it's the seat of our – when we're scared, what are the responses they say our fear responses? Fight-flight and now they've added freeze. How many of you are freezers? Yes, so either one of those comes up.


Then limbic system is just interested in protection and these basic things. So what happens when you get afraid or whatever, your limbic system reacts like 100 times faster than your frontal lobe and you're like – and you've lost your higher functioning and you're just a nut job. How many of you can relate to that because you're just going to lose your thinking when that happens. But the limbic system is primary but – and it's importance but let me tell you the questions of the limbic system. Questions of the limbic system are how. How are they going to talk? Isn't it lunch time yet? I think I can smell that food. I am so hungry. My butt hurts. So those are the kinds of questions that the limbic system. They have to do with you comfort, survival, that kind of thing.

The frontal lobe though given this beautiful part of our neocortex's new part of our evolving is so magnificent. The questions of the frontal lobe are what is my destiny? How can I become someone I haven't become before? How can I fulfill my potential? What is the vision of possibilities and you can feel literally, feel the difference when you're engaged in those kind of questions. It has that up the thing and there's the focus in this part of our noggin and this whole frontal lobe is what evolators do and what transformational leaders do.

They learn to exercise the flabby frontal lobes that most leaders have is they're serious to be reflected. They're living more in the concerns of the limbic system and from that, this frontal lobe is really this – it's magical because this is – it's like the crowning glory of the human being. It's the seat of our consciousness. It's the seat of intent. It's the seat of vision. It's what makes this the magnificent people that we can become. It's what's the highest of human nature is driven from this concern with the frontal lobe, this beautiful thing that's wired into us to lead us into our transformation and our next evolution.

We have the raw materials. It's here all the time just waiting to be activated so that we can use that and activate that in the people that we lead because we all, all, all of us respond to that kind of vision and that kind of invitation and that's our job as transformational leaders to keep practicing living from there so that we then can lead those around us to do that as well. And then this is what we would look like. This is your brain on frontal lobe activation. This is one happy brain that's lit up and taking this. So then I'd go – what do we have here? So evolators – just look at this, all the things we’re talking about. Quick quiz, what are the six phases?


P: Yearning, engaging, revelating, liberating, rematrixing, dedicating.

Judith Wright: Yearning, engaging, revelating, liberating, rematrixing, dedicating.

Bob Wright: Yearning, engaging, revelating, liberating, rematrixing, dedicating.

Judith Wright: Perfect. And all those who inform one another and they're not sequential, they're quite something but evolators go through those phases as a way of living and they transform themselves and the world. They live great lives. They reject simple fixes and easy solutions and they continually step into the unknown. They courageously create their next most radiant selves. They engage in full lives of meaning and purpose. They create an ever expanding consciousness. They live into an ever greatening potential and they set the possibilities for themselves and the world. This is the invitation for transformational leaders to live with this kind of passions and live with that kind of visions, to do what we can to be around other people doing that so we spark those cues and that passion that we all have to support one another to do that, to be our best and encourage other people to be our best.

This is our calling. This is what we're designed to do. This is what every human being has within them. It's not about where you came from or what your IQ is. It's about activating the things that are in each of us so we can become the very best person we could become and naturally then help the others around us to do that. And then the more we do that, the more they spark those primal cues in us and recede one another and that passion becomes a way of living and that is the invitation for all evolators and this is how we do become as we start back at the beginning, the heroes of our own journey.

And what Matt was telling us about by doing those through those phases that we live the hero's journey and that they're so inspiring. Why do you think we like all those myths and all the things from Star Wars, our theory and legend is because it's this. It's evolating. It's these kinds of aspects of ourselves that are part of that. It is our opportunity to live that way. So this as you look at it, this is how you create yourself as a hero not a puff-tough [Phonetic] [4:26:05] ego hero but someone who has gone to these dark places and leads from this and fulfills potential that you didn't even know that you had and help other people to do that as well and inspire them.

And let's look at this, this living from yearning and engaging and revelating and liberating and rematrixing and dedicating, let's look what this looks like as it manifests in the world. Buckminster Fuller,


Albert Schweitzer, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Madame Curie, Oprah Winfrey, Mahatma Gandhi, Anita Roddick, Nelson Mandela, these are transformational leaders and this is the destiny that each of us has within us and all the people that we lead and that's our invitation for each of us to become our own evolators and that catalyze our evolating in the world around us. So that's our invitation as we're here today and if we're speaking together that we inspire one another to step into our own destinies and help all those that we lead to see that for themselves.

Bob Wright: So we're going to feed our limbic system, I'm going to say. Well thank you. Yes. So yes, limbic. We can eat. It's been great. We're going to ask you to do some exercises over the first part of lunch. We want you to look at the so what's and the takeaways. We want you to digest this just as we have done our paired sharings. We want you to take all this into the so what the first half of lunch. So talk about this, feed your bodies, and your souls at the same time and then we're going to interrupt lunch midway and give you another exercise to do that will lead into Don Beck's work this afternoon. Thank you very, very much.

Judith Wright: Thank you. Okay.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: Thanks. Thank you.

Tom Terry: Thank you, Judith and Bob. We are going to move to lunch right now. Lunch is across the way where we had breakfast. You can leave your notebooks and things right here in the room. You won't need them for lunch. Any materials that we'll need will be passed out at lunch. So what we want you to do before you get up is to first check the color on the bottom of your name tag and find the table inside there with the corresponding color and we'll fill in the tables accordingly. Once we filled in all the tables, we'll just call tables up to the buffet line one by one. So job number one is to find the table and job number two is to go to the buffet line in an order of the session. Okay? Thank you.

Lunch break started at [4:29:15 to 5:42:10]

Tom Terry: Okay. We’re going to be moving back into our seats now. Listen, while we’re getting seated, if anybody has a question on a piece of paper for Brad for this afternoon on that form, raise your hand. We’ve got people ready to collect those questions. So, finish them. Great. Keep – keep your hand up and we’ll come to you and grab


those questions. Terrific. Okay. Any last questions? Just hands up if you’ve got any questions. Okay. There’s another couple of hands in the middle here. Excellent. While they’re finishing that up, let me just ask this question, how was lunch? How was the lunch discussion? Yes, the room was buzzing, wasn’t it? It was really fun.

Well listen, thanks very much for coming back in such a timely fashion. We’ve got a full afternoon. I’m very excited. We’ve got a great lineup and to kick things up this afternoon, I’ll introduce our primary speaker this afternoon. Let’s give it up for Bob Wright.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: Thanks, Tom. Thank you very much. It is a super honor to introduce our next speaker. One of the common threads that we have both with Ron Riggio and Don Beck is they have honored and respected what’s gone before them. Just as Ron was free to talk about Bernard Bass and his work and honor that.

Not only is Don Beck very gracious as he gives credit to Clare Graves but he kept Clare Graves alive. Clare Graves had had a number of heart attacks which we’re about to hear is Clare Graves’ theory as applied by Don as an architect of post-apartheid in South Africa. Currently, helping Great Britain and Tony Blair in the policy committee there as I said earlier, President Fox in Mexico. He’s worked with NFL teams. You never know what he’s going to talk about.

But what he’s really talking about is the emergence of humanity and he is a human being of the First Order. I’ve never heard him judge another person. I’ve only heard him speak about who that person was or who that group of people were and what that group or that person needed to continue their evolution. He practices what he preaches. He travels around the world. It’s not about money for him. It’s about serving humanity. And I’m very honored to talk to you a little bit about him. In talking about his academic credentials, the books he’s written, and the things he’s done minimizes the importance he has in his profound belief in humanity. His profound belief that we all must evolve and emerge together. His profound belief that every individual and every group is an important part of all of us.

He is going to teach you how to appreciate these groups. He’s going to teach you how to take the things that you normally judge and to understand them in an objective way so that you will better


be able to help serve humanity in everything you do. Would you help me welcome, a heck of a human being, Dr. Don Beck?

[Applause]

Don Beck: Thank you. Thank you very much. I have a special tribute for Bob and Judith at the end of the presentation and you will recognize what it is and what you ought to do after you see it.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: It is after lunch, which means the blood goes elsewhere than the brain.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: So, I thought I speak as long as I can hold your attention. I enjoy the afternoon session. Oh, gosh! They’re so slow.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: Food and tummy. Blood and tummy to process food. Blood leaves brain. You go to sleep. So, I thought I’ll speak as long as I can …

[Laughing]

Don Beck: You’re not off to a very good start. I hope that picks up if I figure out how to do this thing. I got no idea. Okay. Well, that’s what we’re going to do. Now, we were going to do an activity at a table but we didn’t have time to do it so I’m going to do it quickly. I want to ask you this one question. Which of the following appeals most to you? I like a job where my personal freedom and confidence take out more than money. We remain sensitive to the needs of all human beings. I develop my potentials, strength, and my competitive edge and win the global. We inspire by strong leaders who will protect us from danger. I don’t take anything off anybody and can kick ass a challenge.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: We honor our traditions and uphold our basic principles and do what is right. We affirm the presence of integral [Phonetic] [05:49:06] whole and mesh with natural flows. Now, you got to pick one of them and you got to pick it and raise your hand up. How many picks this first one right here? I like a job where my personal freedom. I can see the hands. Okay. How many picked the


second? We remain sensitive to the needs of all human beings. A few of those. Okay. I develop my potentials, strength and my competitive edge. Well, I’m not at all surprised at that with this group. We inspire the strong leaders who will protect us from danger. This is Chicago. I forgot.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: I don’t take anything off anybody and can kick ass a challenge. How many really seek that we want to pick that one?

[Laughing]

Don Beck: That’s – that’s what I thought. You’re alive after all. We honor our traditions and uphold our basic principles and do what’s right. Good. We affirm the presence of integral whole and mesh with natural flows. Oh, my! You’re all just alike, aren’t you? Look at the great diversity that’s already in this group. And then I ask you if you are manager of people or a leader, what care you provide to those that you lead and manage? Are they like you or not like you?

Here’s another one. I prefer to work for an organization that treats everybody about the same rules and goes by the book. Let’s me cream what I can off the top and it gives me the respect I deserve.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: Oh my! Adopts to his natural environment or functions dictate to form. Connects to energy feels and makes decision based on [Indiscernible] [05:51:07] order. Preserves our traditional customs and protects our [Indiscernible] [05:51:12] groups. Tends to the inner and outer health of all his people. Thinks strategically and acts competitively to be successful. Now, you got to pick one. Who is going to pick this first one? Treats everybody with the same rules? Let’s me cream what I can off the top.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: Adopts to his natural environment or functions and dictate to form. Okay. A few of those. Connects to energy feels and makes decisions based on [Indiscernible] [05:51:47] order. Preserves our traditional customs and protects our [Indiscernible] [05:51:55] groups. Tends to the inner and outer health of all his people. Quite a few of those. I’m not surprised. Thinks strategically and acts competitively to be successful.


Well, I’ve done my audience analysis, Bob.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: I will now quickly change my PowerPoint presentation.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: In order to speak to the urgencies and concerns about this audience. I will – I will keep that in mind. Well, it’s clear that we have a different world emerging. And just exactly what that world is going to be, I’m not quite sure but the cross to the old one is dissolving. The problem is we have not yet discovered the codes of the new one. We’re in between. We’re in limbo. And because of that, there’s a great of frustration, uncertainty, fear, new wine but all wineskins. What would be the nature of the new wineskins? May I suggest the theme of this event? The transformational leader might have encoded in it precisely what it’s going to take to managing [Phonetic] [05:53:21] this into environment?

Well, here’s what I believe. You can never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. My first name is Don. My second name is not Quijote.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: I’m through chasing windmills. And you must be too. As long as we fight the old system, it controls us. The challenge today, the what I called natural design, is to figure out the new world ahead and become architects and design engineers of that new world, the new organization, the new government, the new healthcare system. Time to stop whining and start designing. The population undergoing drastic change is a population of misfits and misfits who live and breath in the atmosphere of passion, imbalance, explosiveness, and are hungry for action. That’s why there’s so much turbulence. That’s why there is so much violence. That’s why there are so many challenges even in Chicago where children are killing children.

I’ve done a lot of work in Chicago at Paul Robeson High School in South Chicago for a number of years reducing the dropout rate from 60% to 10%. I worked for years with Amical, designing all their executive management training systems for the Marble Tower when John Schwanger [Phonetic] [05:55:27] and his wife were there. I love Chicago. I was here to see Papa Halas years ago to


stop the NFL strike in the early 1980s. So, I have a very strong feeling about this city of yours and I think now is time for the kind of leadership that can respect the past and Carl Sandburg’s famous poem about it, and project for the rest of the world, it didn’t matter that you lost the Olympic bid. You were destined to lose it. The challenge today is to create the kind of city for which our children and grandchildren would be proud.

Now, I have a picture here of Clare W. Graves, who I first read about 1974, the article in the future, it’s the publication of World Future Society. “Human nature prepares for a momentous leap,” he wrote. Oh my gosh! I read that down in Texas. Full professor, [Indiscernible] [05:56:44] of North Texas, tenured. I said, “Something is unusual about this man.” I called him. He says, “Come see me.” I did. And that began a 12-year relationship. He’d had five heart attacks, open heart surgery. I just told him, “Clare, I need at least 10 years from you.” His wife, Marian, said, “Well Don, Clare has been sick.” “I know. I need 10 years.” I saw quickly how valuable his thinking was. How unique it was. How powerful it was. I got 12.

At that point, I had a chance to speak in South Africa from the Value Engineering Group. I went, first of 63 trips to Johannesburg. We cast in my faculty retirement money. I could not, not do it because I thought we could play a major role in a relatively peaceful dismantling of Apartheid. And that’s precisely what we did but I honor my friend, Clare Graves, because it was his thinking, his theoretical model that made the difference and understanding how to shift out of a race ethnicity based culture into one based on value systems. Official title is the Emergent, Cyclical, Double-Helix Model of biopsychosocial system of adult.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: Now, you know why we call it spiral dynamics. It is an extraordinary attempt to define human nature. Not based on speculation, not based on some kind of wild theory that occurred to him while he’s playing golf at Ben Hogan or playing football with Gerald Ford at Michigan. I asked him, “Clare, did Gerald Ford play without his head gear as Elbie Jay [Phonetic] [05:58:49] used to charge?”

[Laughing]

Don Beck: He said, “No, he did play with it.” A massive new conceptual system that just so overwhelmed me. I decided to spend the rest of my life in finding ways to popularize it, to do further research, to validate it


in multiple languages, and that’s what I’ve done over 35 years. I want to talk to you about that trip and tell the story but particularly, I want to share with you the application of it within the context of leadership particularly transformative leadership so it will become very practical for you.

The PowerPoint that I’m using, I made up this morning after I got here yesterday and listened to you last night. I wanted to change the number of the visuals. You have to pardon me for that. But I don’t want to answer questions that nobody is asking. So, I thought I’d update it, upscale it and so you’re going to see some of the same graphics but also, a whole new set of them. So, I want to be sure I’m speaking to the issues that concerned you the most. Is that okay? Is that fair enough?

P: Yes.

Don Beck: Okay. I’ve got a couple of articles in the manual that talked about the whole conceptual system so I invite you to read those. Now, a word of caution. This is a whole different way of thinking. Some of you will recognize it instantly and say, “Don, that’s common sense.” And you’re right. Others during the presentation will get a glimpse as clouds come in and clouds go out and you see the landing lights and then you’ll come to clouds again. Others tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, next decade, maybe never. “Gracious to say Don, the problem is, how can I explain the system which itself predicts. The people I’m trying to explain it to won’t get it.”

[Laughing]

Don Beck: So, be patient with me and with yourself. It is a way of thinking and I ask you to withhold judgment until you see the whole ball of wax particularly, a very concrete pragmatic application of it. That’s when it comes alive for most people. Is that fair enough too? Okay.

So, a sparrow then as you see here is an emerging levels of complexity. The ABCDEFGHI represent life conditions, living in the rainforest, living in enchanted forest, living in the jungle, living in the cathedral, living in the marketplace of Adam Smith invisible hand, living in a collective commune of consensus, living in a natural habitat. So, the first letters represent the life conditions. The second letter here, represents the awakened value systems, the complex, adaptive intelligences that are calibrated to solve their problems in those life conditions.


So, rather than a Calvinistic script that’s predetermined that unfolds on queue, our coop circles in the human psychic, these rather are adaptive intelligences, coop-existent to unique life conditions. That’s why these are letter pairs and that you can’t simply look at an isolated system without figuring out what life conditions produced it.

So, the first thing that we would do about gangs in Chicago as we did sometime ago, is look at the life conditions that are generating those behavioral patterns and as long as life conditions exist, the gangs will continue. So, what this concept represents then is a way to see how these particular codes, adaptive codes, value systems are activated by life conditions. That’s why I warned the World Bank before we went into Afghanistan. I spoke at the World Bank on culture dynamics for nation-building in Afghanistan by explaining precisely what’s happening today. I tried to get [Indiscernible] [06:03:33] before they went into Iraq to pay attention to what I was saying. He called me and my system social battle. I doubt if he calls it now because two of my students were the ones who engineered the surge that brought a lot of that nonsense to end using this concept.

So, I’m serious about it and I spent 35 years field-testing it so I could show to people. And we just launched a major brain research activity at the University of Cologne in Germany in the Brain Research Laboratory is validating the existence of these systems in our neurology. And that’s the kind of evidence that hard line psychologists and others need to see in here and they soon will. But the concept then is if I have problems, say, living in the rainforest, the system E has the codes to solve problems A. Thus, we have Bushman [Phonetic] [06:04:44]. If I live in problems B, system O or the tribal system is what comes out of it. It’s logical. If I live on State Street in problem C where I have to eat my way each night and fight all predators, that I’m going to use system P because that’s how I survive.

So you see, each of this value system doesn’t occur in isolation or vacuum but is in response to the life conditions that have to be met one way or the other. So, that’s the basic concept and you have them, the half page which we gave you. You have color-rendering of these systems as well as the organizing charts and forms that rise from them.

Now, you can remember seven numbers so you know your telephone number, don’t you? Can you remember eight colors? Beige – survivalistic, mystical purple – tribal, red – egocentric, true


blue – absolutistic, high-energy – orange, soft gentle – green, illuminating systemic – yellow, embracing – turquoise. Now, the colors have no meaning. It’s not a color-scheme at all and too many academics think of Crayolas on this thing. Bless their hearts. They can’t think out of that.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: I was once one so I can say I do. But the colors are simply a device to communicate so I could talk to Mandela and said, “Sir, you need to give a blue speech.” And sure enough that next week, he’ll give a speech on discipline. So, using it as a shorthand. See, I’m able to communicate lots of information quickly. It also lands itself to nice graphics. That’s the only reason for the colors.

So, what we’re looking at here are systems and people, not types of people. These are like musical notes that we are musical chords. A company has in its cultural DNA an assortment of these systems rather than single colors. A complex culture like Chicago, like Illinois is sometimes picks interesting governors.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: I’m afraid that you probably have learned from Texas about that.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: I’ve known George W a long time. We used to play baseball games with him and Laura. I was writing sports values columns for the Dallas Morning news. Now in Dallas, sports value is the oxymoron with Jerry Jones in town. And I talked with this George and none of us called him W and none of us thought he was religious. I don’t know where all that came in. He swears like a sailor. He said, “Beck, we know you’re bright. We don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

[Laughing]

Don Beck: Well, that was obvious.

[Laughing and applause]

Don Beck: But I Lord, I tried and let them know. One of these I’m going to talk him again and I’ll ask him one question, “President Bush, let’s go back to a day after you were inaugurated in 2000, right? The day


after. Let’s go in a time tunnel knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently?”

Now, I don’t know if he can handle that question or not. I may be a hoop of combat secret service at that point. It’s a question I often ask people when they look back at knowing what happened since. What would they have done differently then? I thought about asking it to Brad last night but I didn’t have the heart to do that.

So, that’s where these codes come from. Today, we’re dealing with the seventh level set of problems right here, which I’ll be defining. We have all these systems still alive and well with billions of people moving through these zones. That’s why there isn’t a single future for human species, different futures for different folks at different levels. It’s like a logical development. So, the question is how do we manage billions of people moving trough systems that many of us have vacated? It’s like every human who has ever lived reappears in a value system when they died. Now, if you think straight to crowd today, just imagine 120 billion earthlings walking around. Imagine that complexity. Hundred gatherers, agriculturists, early entrepreneurs, all out there in the street. I ask you how would you manage them?

Well, that’s our issue today. Not that number of people but that complexity. As far, the UN constantly is under stress and strain and our multilateral systems can’t handle Iran and North Korea because we’re dealing with visitors from the past. Many of whom are quite gruesome characters both Attila the Hun and Attila the Hand. Well, I got to be sure that my language is sex-free so …

[Laughing]

Don Beck: But I know Maggie [Indiscernible] [06:10:58]. I started to say Hillary but I didn’t need to. So, we’re coping today at a cutting edge. We’re coping with these new life conditions here. That’s why speaking of a transformational leader is extremely appropriate because we’re in white water and therefore, the kind of leadership at all levels require a flexibility, an integrity, capability to shift gears quickly, to put together new alignments like overnight, all those things become critical because of our life conditions.

Now, that’s – that’s the basic concept. And so, I’ve just announced recently the formation of a new branch psychology, that’s American Psychological Association called Psychology at the Large Scale. So, many psych majors are taught chasing rats or dealing with micro clinical one on one because they want to save the world. But


the psychological models that we’ve got are not adept like the range and perspective to handle large scale. And so, we are literally creating a whole new branch of academic psychology around the large scale.

So, you’ve had some wonderful input here regarding anterior development within people and I’m extending that along with the very fine presentation on organizations and pushing that further into societies. So, your experience here on transformation covers the range, anterior organization, society, culture. So, my focus is on that third category of transformation that requires anterior capability on the part of leaders as well as the capacity to craft organizations of various kinds. But something else is needed. The ability to work at the large scale.

So, I use all kinds of language, the world views by which we live, our built-in [Indiscernible] [06:13:30], our value systems, our new term, mimetic codes in order to talk about these large scale into this. These world views shape black priorities and values in a person, impact culture beliefs and bottom lines in an organization, and influence economic, political, religious, social, and technological behaviors in a society. So, we move from the micro to the miso [Phonetic] [06:14:01] to the macro.

Now, there are three that are important to us. One, I’ve already mentioned, the role of problems and challenges of existence as framing events. Second, I’m talking here about priority codes, value systems and world views. And here, these little color blotches represent those, survivalistic, animistic tribal, egocentric empire, absolutistic, truth-driven achievement, materialistic, social centric, consensus models, integrative systemic flows, and holistic kind of patterns which are emerging. We think of these then as priority codes.

The third category are beliefs and behaviors, the manifestations of priority codes. What people think and what people do? My focus is on how people think. I was in Bethlehem with Hamas. They came to discredit me. They filed in like Old Testament prophets, beards and all. They wouldn’t shake the hand of my partner, Elza Maalouf because she’s a woman and they don’t shake hands with women. They told me. So, at lunch they took me aside and said, “Now Dr. Beck, we have a [Indiscernible] [06:15:27] here.” And I said, “What is it?” “I have the key to my grandfather’s house that the Jews took in 1948. If I can’t get that house back, I’m not a real man.” “Oh!” I said to myself. Not wishing to offend. I’m being outnumbered.


[Laughing]

Don Beck: And not wanting to be kidnapped for ransom. All of my friends say, they will throw me back.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: So, I was hearing a rare blue combination, honor, egocentric, absolutistic. That was the value system that I was hearing. I honored it having been with team psychologists for the New Orleans Saints when [Indiscernible] [06:16:15] was coach. I mean, what else could you than that. I mean, he’s such a real man he wouldn’t let any of us buy cowboy boots with a rounded toes. Those were city boots.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: Your cowboy boots had to have that pointed toe or you’re not … So, I honored that but I said, “What if I could show you the list of behaviors a better way to express being a real man? Would you be interested?” They said, “Well, yes.” “So what if you design education for your grandchildren? Thus, as being a real man.” You see, I wasn’t changing how they think. I was switching what they think. Fully accepting the legitimacy of how they think. What I’m saying to you in terms of change, three where we have to work. Work on life conditions. Even some of those young kids in the gangs may not be able to change their priority codes. We can find safer ways for them to communicate them which are nonviolent through sports, music, art, painting, other kinds of activities. But I think that we’re going to be able to change their codes when they live in jungles. Even at Robeson, we often had to take up their guns at the gate and hand them back when they went home or they couldn’t get home in a projects safely enough.

So, when I speak of a value system, I’m speaking here of these priorities. And you’ll see these colors often. But also, we have to pay attention to this. So many in the green environmental movement who love to build those gardens on the rooftops in Chicago have found out that many Evangelicals in a blue system will likewise support the environment but to keep God’s earth clean. Do we care why? No. So you see the opportunity here. To stop attacking each other in our very polarized society where both sides are calling each other fuscous, which is inexcusable because we’ve yet to understand the nature of our value structures. Red state, blue state, Fox TV, [Indiscernible] [06:18:51], or whatever you call it, it shows how immature that we are and have become and the drastic


need, and I say drastic both for transformational leadership in government in particular. Okay? Other than that I’m not very opinionated.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: So just quickly. The first code, survivalistic lives in bonds and clans and sometimes on the street. The second code, animistic bonding, lives in tribes with taboos like in Kenya today and in Iceland. The third code, impulsive and tar-driven [Phonetic] [06:19:37], lives with empires with instant rewards. From that comes the fourth code like in Afghanistan because of warlords. The fourth code, purposeful and truth-driven, lives in orders with future rewards. And I was just engage with USAID operation. I’m embarrassed to tell you but maybe I’m not, giving Viagra to Afghanistan warlords. Viagra. You know what it is in Chicago, don’t you?

[Laughing]

Don Beck: You don’t need it here. Is that …

[Laughing]

Don Beck: Shall we ask the women on that one guys?

[Laughing]

Don Beck: I mean it had quite an impact on the warlords. A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do sometimes to understand the value system like in marketing. What’s appropriate to him? Handing out American flags was not very appropriate as we have finally learned. So, egocentric-red, warlord gangs, what’s next for that is an absolutistic system that contains the impulsivity. Kicks the hell out of them. Puts them in jail. Protects society from them. Thus, you have the rise or a blue code. So, each of this system rises in response to the problems created by the previous systems. So, out of the heavy red egocentric, will come an absolutistic. Maybe a [Indiscernible] [06:21:24] or maybe a more right wing religious system is going to be an ism with punishment and guilt to contain the heavy red impulsivity.

Nature has a way you see, for it to emerge. And all Clare Graves did was absorb it, uncover it. He didn’t create it. And he used massive research instruments. Some psychophysical missions were there [Indiscernible] [06:21:54] this topic, a major speedy recognition to symbols as opposed to the verbal self-reporting


questioners, which a person could lie in order to be something that he or she is not. That’s why I became so interested in his research methodology. Out of heavy blue system that still dominates the United Kingdom, they’re still graving the loss of empire. And since I’m from the colonies, I apologize for all the tea we dumped in the harbor in Boston. I was at the House of Lords doing a tea everyday. Little strange for a Texas accent there.

The fifth code occurred in the enlightenment, the shift out of isms into pragmatism into the age of science and technology and affluence. And it certainly a dubbing at value system in the American society. But there are many trapped back here. I’ve just been in Romania with gypsies. And let me tell you, there’s nothing beyond these systems right here. The fourth code has not yet emerged in their cultures.

Out of the fifth level system, emerged humanistic sensitivity. Hell no, we won’t go. We’ll come out of my shoes. He isn’t heavy. He is my brother. And how many have you got on the peace train? Remember those glorious days? When I was in Chicago when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. I was in one of the hotels speaking when all the sirens came off. I remember poignantly that experience in your city. So, from a heavy materialistic emerged a sensitive humanistic system. That’s normal and that’s natural. You won’t find any of that in Afghanistan but a whole lot of it in Scandinavia.

Out of the humanistic system that produced political correctness and dominated so many of our arts and music and other forms is emerging a new system. A systemic, that’s the yellow code here. Ecological, authentic, lives within natural flows. Thus, the importance of transformational leadership. It’s the wave of the present and of the future. As these value systems are unfolding right in front of our eyes required fresh new approaches in healthcare, in education, in politics, in business across the entire spectrum.

Now obviously, I don’t have time to do this in detail. I’m back sometime in February, I think 4 and 5 with a much longer presentation with testing systems and the whole acts. Well, it simply a matter of what’s important. Staying alive, safety security, power actions, stability, salvation, success, material gain, community, harmony, quality and responsibility of living, and harmony with the life force. After 9/11, we saw regression. All of a sudden, our flags came out. Our families mattered because of


changing life condition that suddenly woke us up that morning. You remembered it, don’t you?

So, rather than societies having fixed systems, we have been inflow. We brightened them down. As life conditions get better, get worse. Under certain conditions, a new system is born. And we’re the midwife of it. And that’s what’s happening today. And putting stress and strain on all of our social forms. Now, that’s the basic theory and I wish I had more time to be explicit with you but that will have to do from now.

So, a survival system produces a bond. A tribal system produces a tribe with a chief in the middle. An empire produces the feudal age, big boss, work boss. None of that ever in city management in Chicago of course. When the blue code hits, we have a hierarchy. A higher authority gives the second authority the right to rule. We have prisons and we have punishment and we have duty and we have guilt and all those good things. And out of the fifth level code enterprise, we see a delegated authority system. In turn, the sixth level, circle of equals. We spent hours emoting. We’ve done that too. But now, new forms are starting to appear. New life forms or organizations. And later, I’ll speak to you about that in terms of natural design. So, rather than a single system like a carwash, it turns out there are multiple systems. Even in the same company, you find variations in the various functions inside the company.

I got two more strings [Phonetic] [06:27:10] feeling like we’ve just been going in circles.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: So we call McKenzie and Company and I say them more. Have we sold our problem? Have we? No. Oh, we get better or high tech ors. Has that solved our problem? No. We have a team-building session with a trust walk. Remember those things?

[Laughing]

Don Beck: Is that – or we build air-handling hot over to keep it warm when its cold and cool when its hot. Is that going to solve our problem? Is it?

P: No.

Don Beck: Or we put all these people over here and all these people over here and call it transformation?


[Laughing]

Don Beck: Can you see there’s something wrong with the design of the system? Shipwreck or not, Brad Lee, we must maintain the chain of command.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: Why are some of you laughing?

[Laughing]

Don Beck: What if Brad Lee knows how to fish and he didn’t? Has there been a power change? See, we often hold on to the old forms because we lack the transformational leadership to realize it’s time for something different. In terms of leadership, here’s our equation how, what method should who, who’s the leading person or group, how should who lead whom, who’s the follower to do what, for which people living where? So, you apply the formula. How should who lead whom to do what or which people living where? And based on that, you can begin to design the appropriate leadership system that matches those people doing those things. You simply connect the dots. And that would generate the appropriate form of leadership for those people doing those things who come from those places.

Now, here are the five bottom lines. Noble purpose and transcendic goals. I challenge Eli Lilly to take responsibility for the immune system of the species Homo sapien. He said, “Don, we’re just a little pill company.” I said, “Don’t tell me that.” He rose to that challenge. The only way you motivate people who work for you especially in your laboratories where you capture the imagination of people around the world that you’re dedicating your hearts and minds and resources to build immune systems, not sell us pills after we’re sick. The big challenge today is meaning and purpose. And in your company, you can be very creative in connecting people to something larger themselves, that’s transcendent.

A second bottom line and we have ways to measure this, sound principles and efficient processes. Thank you, Deming. May we need to dust him off again. But this time, not just expecting people to work harder and smarter and then the executives share the bonuses from their hard work. Not that any longer. But because of this difference in par racials today like this – this new book on – on the difference between a spider web and what’s the other – starfish. Have you seen starfish and spider? Anyone? Well, spider is a


hierarchical system with the spider riding the core in a command control system. Starfish, if you break off a piece of it, it reproduces itself. Starfish is the metaphor for a distributed intelligence. So, more and more because of informed workers and technological power, organizations are more like a starfish than a spider web. If you want to hold your key people, you better do things like that today. And I think many of you who are seasoned in management and leadership realized it. It’s called starfish and spider.

Responsible profit with multiple usages. That goes without saying. A sensitivity to people and societal needs, and respect for the natural ecology of planet and systems. All five. Now, I’m going to show you examples from places where I worked. How many have flown Southwest Airlines? How many have flown American Airlines? Are they the same kind of company?

P: No.

Don Beck: No. I start working at Southwest when they had three airplanes. They went and turnaround where they had to take airplane offline for a while. Herby Kelleher that you see here is a wonderful executive. Everybody calls him Herby. He hired – gone and hired Putnam who was Senior VP for marketing at United and he came down to Dallas and Texas and ran Southwest and he was the one who hired me. Then he Phil Guthrie – I was in South Africa, decided to go and try to save [Indiscernible] [06:33:06]. Huge mistake. So, I suffered with Putnam through Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and shark-like bankruptcy attorneys like I’ve never seen before.

The [Indiscernible] [06:33:19] had ruined the company. He had promised too much in the regulation and there weren’t any to turn that company. I wish I’d been here until Howard – because they lied to him about amount of cash available and everybody owned the airplanes except Brandon [Phonetic] [06:33:34]. But Southwest, there are many flight attendants who are multimillionaires today. Flight attendants. And to my knowledge, they have never laid off a single person because of financial even at 9/11. They’ve kept everybody on payroll. There are 10,000 people trying to get jobs at Southwest Airlines to this very day. Why? Because of the culture.

All of Europeans, Ryanair and others, easyJet had tried to copy. They can copy the business plan. They don’t know how to copy the culture. Now, back in those days, flight attendants had hot pants and as they got a bit wider, that disappeared.

[Laughing]


Don Beck: But still they lounge the lizards. The guys will sit at the back and gulped. How disappointing. They also didn’t look very good on boys.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: I remembered. Well, a second was Whole Foods Market. John Mackey use spiral dynamics the internal management of Whole Foods Market. The man never had a course in business. He studied philosophy at the University of Texas. Started small, had the passion, had the vision, and built the company based upon selling organic food. Here’s the sequence. Who will buy organic food? Second, what kinds of people will they like to buy it from? That’s who he selected. How can I find those kinds of people? Even though they – they wore beards, they were knowledgeable. Then how do manage those kinds of people who can sell food to those who want to buy organic food?

So, the whole system was built on the very beginning of what they’re basic function was rather than export some model from Harvard who got knows where else. He built a natural design. And today, in spite of difficulties that all companies have had, in spite of controversies which always appear, the guy has done extremely well. You know, he takes no salary. I think $1 a year. No. But he talked to his employees and they are totally convinced that he walks on water. It’s the kind of culture, let me tell you. And now, his new stores are entirely energy self-sufficient. Bears looking at if you want to see a model of how to connect to generation Y in particular.

And for years, I worked for Mickey – Mickey [Phonetic] [06:36:31] Mims. This was in Florida in the traditions program. These are the people who wear the uniforms and operate the rides and theme parks and those on how to read the value systems of the people in the – in the park of they respond to them? So, if a little kid is big enough this year when that finger points out, his head touches it, then the ride attendant will say, “Oh, you’re really big. You’re becoming – becoming quite a young man.” He said, “Yes!” His daddy goes, “Yes!” His mommy cries.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: Which means – I know its [Indiscernible] [06:37:15] but it’s recognizing what’s happening authentically in the custom by picking up quickly on the value system and speaking that language to him.


It is quite simple. So, I had a lot of fun time working with Mickey Mims, I call it.

Here is one more. This is a little McDonald’s in Santa Barbara on a street not far from the beach, Millsaps. But there’s something quite unusual about it. And here it is. We take pride in offering our guests extraordinary service, fast and friendly in a natural way. We will serve only the highest quality products in immaculate surroundings, and all the great value. We feel blessed to be a part of this special community and are constantly seeking ways to return to it a part of our good fortune. Our priority is people where that satisfies guest who come from head and satisfy co-workers. We recognized our role to build character and values that please God first. Our McDonald family cares about matters of the heart, honesty, loyalty, respect, joy, patience, and love. We build our family on this [Indiscernible] [06:38:33] and understanding the most important aspects of life are not always visible. We strive for balance and healthy lives where we can prosper creatively, intellectually, financially, and spiritually. We will teach and listen. Allow each room to stumble as well as the opportunity to succeed. We’re individuals working for a common purpose, not pushed by problems but led by dreams.

As my grandma used to say, “How about them apples [Phonetic] [06:39:02]?” Now, this is not McDonald’s worldwide. This is McDonald’s Santa Barbara. So just to find out if it works, I’ll grab a couple of people and said, “Is that the straight skinny [Phonetic] [06:39:16]?” He said, “Yes. We all memorized it to take it to our hearts.” Oh! Furthermore, when a big boss comes, if we can recite it, he’ll gives us a $100.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: The pot just thickens. You see, that’s jam-packed with value systems. Not these bowl or plate vision-mission things that many of your guys go off to a nice retreat to play golf and consultants come in and give you this vision-mission and you go back in term I despised, drive change down the organization. Of course, no one here has – have done anything like that. [Indiscernible] [06:40:00] and do likewise. Speak to the hearts and minds of people for God’s sake. If ever there’s a time on this necessary is now. If you’re truly a transformational leader, you will. I expect some Amens [Indiscernible] [06:40:24]. Okay.


I worked with Dr. Kenneth Sawyer, a craniofacial surgeon who separated the Egyptian twins and I want you to watch this very carefully.

[Video Playing 06:40:42 – 06:50:50]

Don Beck: So, what do you think about that?

[Applause]

Don Beck: The boys now had their second and third surgeries. They’re now living in Cairo, just very normal kids. They’re from a village 300 miles from Cairo. Poor Muslim kids. Pro bono surgery, Dallas, Christian, Jewish, Atheist doctors and nurses. You see any symbolism in that? Just look what we can do. If you talk about transformational leader, Kenneth Sawyer. And I’ve been pleased to be his top coach and consultant for years. I trained all the nurses. The power of technology with the kinds of mindsets but you see, his wife, Lucy, did the massage, cranial sacral massage of the two boys. They have the same DNA, the same blood but the physics of their system were different, requiring different kind of massage. So, by the time surgery, they were in prime. The brain surgeons from the Children’s Medical across town were amazed at their resilience to handle the surgery. Thousands of people in prayer and intention. A model now for all of us to the search they look at. It’s okay about it. I have a number of times. I can guarantee you.

Just quickly now, I will show you a couple more applications. Here is one I made with colleague, Elza Maalouf, who is from Lebanon, a very brave, courageous woman, new eyes, new lenses, New Palestine, a spiral dynamic perspective on culture emergence and nation building. Of course, what we found was Israel and Palestine are different levels of psychological development. Now, Palestinians did this one. You see the heavy red system? Heavy red purple? Some blue in religion, not much. Some blue, forming a GNY in work. Some orange here. And contrast that to the Israel with the Diaspora. You see, it’s a very complex cell of DNA value structures.

So, because of the asymmetrics between the two, which is why the Oslo occurred or the [Indiscernible] [06:53:36]. It didn’t work. It can’t work. It cannot be negotiated. And I’ve only made five trips there. But on the fifth trip, we were on a major conference in Bethlehem with 700 Palestinian leaders. We spent the entire time designing the new state of Palestine. No speeches talked about Israel or the occupation. We challenged them. Someday the occupation will be


over, do you plan to start building your culture then or now? And our recommendations have now been approved by the PLO Prime Minister.

Palestinians did it but we were behind it. And they were making the spiral dynamics presentations. Just two of this, funded by American business leaders, no government, no foundation. We were working pro bono. John Mackey was one of the founding and funding sources. He had no interest in neutral Palestine other than he’s a global citizen. What can be done today with very little resources. There are 4,000 NGOs in Palestine alone, competitive, wrong messages, bring in viruses. It’s a shame because we haven’t yet learned how to help people.

They had a huge investment conference there in Palestine recently, invest $7 billion. Well, we sent word that what they want is a cement factory. Cisco sent back. “No, they want a Cisco assembly plant.” I said, “No, they want a cement factory.” Why cement? They can own it, 8 to 5 jobs, a steady market for concrete to build Palestine. It doesn’t have to go through Israeli checkpoints. It could stabilize community. Blue-colored jobs are next. American computer assembly jobs could vanish tomorrow. Dumping people back on the street again. We understand value systems and our Palestinians tell us what’s next for them is a blue system, not an orange or green, not a human rise system. A blue system like we have in our past. We are out of sync and probably, in my view, Afghanistan should have been calmed down by Chinese. They are closed to it and who’s value systems are closer to their patterns. We produced these mismatches and our kids get butchered.

So, here’s Elza and me training these Palestinian leaders in a three-day event. All these young men, college degrees, no jobs. Of course, they all fell in love with Elza. Her husband’s name is Said. He is also from Lebanon and they live in San Diego. She had to confront some of the Arab men in the session which is not allowed but she did it. I just sat back and watched her. I wouldn’t go and rescue her. And we got in the taxi to take us back, she just broke down crying. And she was sobbing. And said, “Don, I want to go home to Said and make cookies.”

[Laughing]

Don Beck: That very soft, gentle, feminine nature. She is the reason why we were so successful. It wasn’t me. It was Elza. Willing to risk so much. We could have been kidnapped at anytime. We dodged bullets at [Indiscernible] [06:57:49]. Our driver had to come and get


us out of there. But we have to do these things. If we don’t do it, who will? No one appointed us to do it. You can’t ask permission. You may have to ask forgiveness. It’s what we call a transformational leadership.

Just – just quickly now, let me show you Iceland. Last Saturday, November 14th, Iceland had a National Assembly, 1,500 Icelanders picked at random cross section to represent Iceland. They’re fishermen, they were truck drivers, they were teachers, they were ministers, a cross section, not the elite, not the experts, Icelanders. And spent the day designing the next Iceland. It was a remarkable event and now, the Cabinet has adopted their recommendations and have asked us to get deeply involved in their implementation. A whole nation-building exercise using spiral dynamics.

Well, we’ve done research in Iceland using our global values monitor. Iceland, heavy purple, heavy orange. They believe in invisible people. They’re all Vikings. They’ve tracked their DNA back five generations. They named their children after them. Tightly woven family structures. Heavy purple system. But recently or the last five years, they became very orange, making a lot of money investing pension plans from UK Police and Fire at 8% interest. They are making a killing with their derivatives buying paper.

Well, we were very concerned about it and when we saw our data and saw the direction of change, heavy red, heavy orange. A decline in blue, very weak blue, which is what happens with our economic financial system. The regulation and accountability suffered. And the red and orange systems flourished. And you combine that with pressure from green to fund housing for people even though they can’t pay mortgage, produced the mess that we’re in. Serious imbalance between the value system codes produced this mess. We’ve written widely on that. If you’re interested, I’d be glad to send you the documentation about it.

So, we went to the Prime Minister and said, “You got problems.” And sure enough, we know what happened. Well, we also have a way to profile. I know you can’t read that. The capacities in the society in order to see where we can take them. And we have a way to look at stages of change. Everything is A okay, 13.6, serious troubles brink beneath the surface 36.4. Of course, they live in volcanoes. That’s where it comes from. Societies, they were hobbling gradually. So, we solve this. Uh-uh. Early warnings. We just put in Singapore. It was called Risk Analysis Horizon Scanning, data mining, web crawler versus the software programs with a vital signs monitor. Because Singapore being taken down by the SARS


virus so they said never again. So today, with John Peterson of the Arlington Institute, we’ve installed a state of the art scanning devices to pick up on weak signals. I don’t know how any city [Indiscernible] [07:01:53] can manage without a vital signs monitor where you overlay on top of GIS, Geographic Information System software allows you to put data on top of neighborhoods. You’re able then to see the patterns in healthcare, in crime, in education and see the mixture or matrix of those patterns. If Chicago doesn’t have one at City Hall, it’s a shame. Large companies likewise. When I worked with Kinoko, I found that to be the case.

Values monitors allowed to see early signs of trouble. The technology is there. It’s inexpensive and it’s beyond me why companies don’t use it. Because you don’t have time now. You have to act quickly. You have to have real data that’s dependable. You have to see early signs of trouble. Without that technology, I don’t know how we can keep up. So, I strongly encourage you to move in that direction.

Just quickly now, the anatomy of a conflict. What you have in a conflict like this, I won, no, I won, or Israeli reaction, Palestinian reprisals, Israeli reaction, and on and on it goes. So what we’ve done is look at the spectrums of intensity from flame throwers, aggressive, violent, predatory, zealots, [Indiscernible] [07:03:42], evangelical, [Indiscernible], true believers, absolutists, rigid boundaries, [Indiscernible], softer beliefs, these other options, pragmatists, very practical beliefs, what works, advocate, or the possible, and conciliatory.

You see the issues in the Middle East are not about religion. Did you hear me? The issues in the Middle East are not about religion. The issues in Chicago are not about race. Did you hear me? If we think they are, we’re in trouble. That’s why we can’t solve them. When you see deeper into the core value structures, beneath those categories, you see differentiations in Muslims and even Jihad. You see the whole spectrum of beliefs about race from Jesse Jackson to Bill Cosby to a whole assortment. [Indiscernible] [07:04:42] Brown, [Indiscernible] Washington Sr., Black Caucus, Stevie Wonder, Bill Cosby, President Obama. You see the spectrum? And which one is black?

Because we don’t have the language of difference, we trap ourselves and polarizing dynamics that are becoming very dangerous in our society because when you have both sides, left and right, whatever it is, you see how the middle disappears. So, Bush were seen as a fuscous and Clinton was seen as a


communist. It’s called contrast effect. Ego-involved system, so you slide down the slipper slope into the radical either for me or against me. So what caused our civil war? I did a peace study on that. I didn’t have a chance to get Abraham Lincoln but I did get to South African leaders and that’s how we stopped the civil war in South Africa using this. Otherwise, you have extremism on one side here, not able to see differences here. So the middle disappears. When both sides do it as it’s happening in this country today, look what happens to the mid range? And if you need a graphic example, here is one.

On one side, he’s a socialist anti-Christ. Other side, he’s fuscous and baby-killer. Look at him. He’s getting it from both sides. That’s called polarization. Why do we let it happen? So, the key is building super ordinary [Phonetic] [07:06:47] goal that over arch. That’s what we’ve done in Palestine. At the same time, you get moderates on both sides and we worked in Eastwood as well as Palestine to reject their radicals at the same time. Then build the future. Hong Kong or the Middle East is our future design. And using natural design processes. That plan is on the books. It’s ready for operation when men won or Guti [Phonetic] [07:07:18] gets out of prison who is thought to be the Mandela of Palestine. Watch it and you’ll see that we’re there. His son and his wife worked with us. And I mean, he’s been thoroughly briefed on this entire strategy. It may happen before January.

We spoke with the United Nations. Again, here are those little color dots. That’s the class, tribe on tribe, gang, empire on empire, red versus red, blue versus blue, [Indiscernible] [07:07:56], holy wars, involvement of orange in the contest. So, these are the classes here. Our strategy is to use these same value systems in order to bridge all of them. So, what we had is what’s called stratified democracy. Different versions of democracy based on the value system displays when this is, is a heavy red system, warlords. What’s next is something like the Taliban. That’s why it’s so punitive. It’s Old Testament, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.

So, seeing these patterns here means we can now be much more realistic about the form of democracy that becomes possible. From authoritarian democracy to multiparty to social democracy to stratified. But to take the package is here in social democracy like in Scandinavia or Canada and impose it back here, you got no chance at all. Zero.

One final example. A couple years ago, the Dutch film critic was assassinated in Amsterdam by a Muslim radical. I called my friend,


Peter Murray and said, “Peter, we have to do something.” So, we organized three Dutch summits on fundamentalism in order to show the Dutch and Muslim leaders why they’re in conflict and what to do about it. We’re doing the same thing now in Great Britain and in Germany. It’s a real threat to Europe because of the decline in population growth among Europeans. But expensive entitlements in the union and social security maze, they got to find workers. Where are they going to come from? Northern Africa. A real dilemma. But until we understand the codes of culture and how to mesh them, we have a serious, serious problems all over Europe. In January, I’ll be in Copenhagen because third generation Islamic youth are forming gangs and the sponsors from the dying youth, it could get bloody. In Copenhagen.

So, the final summit we had in Netherlands, we had 900 Dutch leaders. There’s my spiral. We even color-coded the raptors here. Amazing day. Today, the Dutch government that was trapped on the left from the right couldn’t form a coalition, is now based on spiral dynamics. The first country that has embraced this concept at the top level.

Thank you.

[Applause]

Don Beck: This is our culture scan and I note it in your manual. There’s an invitation for you to respond to the online package if you choose to. I strongly recommend it especially for companies because it shows the way to identify the value systems, they are the colors and there is the five bottom lines, here are the stages of change. And this question especially when we ask, what kind of organizing structure you want to work in or do you now work in or what would you like to work in is most revealing to executives. What they find like in the case of that boat, the difficulties in the structure of the work itself. Not attitudes, not motivations. In the structure of the flow of the work and that’s where we, as transformational leaders, we have to do major work today.

Well, I’m just about finished. Here is my final piece on it. So, those again, are bottom lines. And this is some of my favorite quotation by Emerson. “Finish each day and be done with it. You’ve done what you could. Some blunders …” Some [laughs] a lot. “… are blunders and absurdities that cropped in. Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You should begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to encumber with your old nonsense.”


[Applause]

Don Beck: Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. This last – this last five-minute piece is in tribute to Bob and Judith. Are you ready?

P: Yes.

Don Beck: And I’m through.

[Music Playing at 07:14:04 to 07:18:54]

Bob Wright: Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Don Beck. Come on back.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: Oh, thank you.

Don Beck: I think it’s appropriate for you to give three honks to your leaders here.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: Ready? Honk, honk, honk [laughs].

Bob Wright: What am I going to go fast now?

Don Beck: [laughs]

Bob Wright: Thanks. Okay. The break is – is really an opportunity for you to digest with each other. So, we’ve got refreshments over here and we’d ask that you be back in your seats in 15 minutes and we’ll have Brad back on to start tying things together. Thank you.

In the other room. I need a mic – okay. The refreshments are here and in the other room. So, you shouldn’t be jammed up here as you were last time. It should be easier.


Bob Wright: Okay. So, welcome back. Now unfortunately, I understand we’re losing some of our Minnesota folks at 4 so I want to thank – thank you for being here. There you are back there. Thanks very much for coming down and I wish you a great flight back.

So, this is our question-and-answer and we had about 40 very thoughtful questions. I tried collating them, sorting them in different


ways but knowing that Brad wanted the most challenging questions …

Brad Anderson: No.

[Laughing]

Bob Wright: That’s what he said. I though we would start out with one that – what was his name? Don Beck …

Don Beck: Oh no.

Bob Wright: … said he was going to ask.

Don Beck: No, no.

Bob Wright: It seems to me that he want to know if you could go back to your first day at Best Buy, what would you do differently?

Brad Anderson: You know, I heard that.

[Laughing]

Brad Anderson: And I figured you to ask that. That is a – you know, I was talking to few people over here on the side about after hearing Don now just talked, and I got a chance to talk to him at some like yesterday afternoon. So, it’s frightening experience [laughs].

If I could take nothing but what the – what I just learned and go back at – you know, I said I failed at – at customer centricity and I hope the next generation does it successfully. I think I might have succeeded because I – some of the things that he talked about, I tried to do in a more primitive way, which is figure out how to get everybody’s interest aligned so we all wanted to do it. But there was a place at which I kind of gave up and it was with the most senior leadership in the company where we – we had a – we – the construct for customer centricity, the way we did it which was to really – the only one I could find a system for it was where the innovation had to come from within the organization at line level was given to us by a professor at Columbia called Larry Sullivan. And it was a – I thought an elegant, beautiful abstract strategy, not too different from the spiral thing in a different place.

And so, we brought Larry Sullivan in to talk to our senior leaders and there were nine of them at the time. And Allen Lenzmeier was the president and I – we’re the co-conspirators that we’re bringing


Larry in. And we – we present – Larry present the idea of customer centricity and we had a vote from the senior leaders and it was 7 to 2 against and you might guess who the two were for favor it was. So at that stage, we just muscled it. We told them, “You’re going to do it or go.” And I don’t think that probably was too smart [laughs] [Indiscernible] [07:48:53].

[Laughing]

Brad Anderson: There is a – I kept thinking as he was presenting this, there’s a musical on Will Rogers’ life and includes a quote from Will Rogers. Well, Will Rogers talks about the difference between say, the way he – his right side of it is heritage, looks at somebody which is you greet somebody and you look him in the face person to person and he said, “In the Indian side, it’s a little different because you greet somebody and you look him face to face and then you walk around behind them.” And the reason for the construct of walking around behind them was to look at the world the way they saw the world.

And so, I was – I was thinking that so much in terms of the – and I only did that in a lazy way with the – and then I basically tended to demonize so most of those leaders wound up getting rid of, that leadership broke and I think I have to admit was not brilliant work [laughs] based on what I understand now but didn’t understand then.

Bob Wright: Give him a hand [laughs].

[Applause]

Brad Anderson: That is nice to get applauded for other’s stupidity. Thank you very much.

[Laughing]

Brad Anderson: Can I interrupt this for a second because I can dodge one of those questions by maybe doing this.

Bob Wright: [laughs]

Brad Anderson: I got – I got to tell you a story, a personal story because I just – I needed to tell the story. As you know, I’ve been – as I mentioned last night, I’ve been in a lot of pain, back pain and as I came here, I had – I know two things would be true. One of which is my brain would ache from the testing here and that I learned at a time and that my body was going to be in substantially more pain than it was


when I came because of the standing up and traveling and all [Indiscernible] [07:50:36]. And one just proved to be true and the other one has proved to be false because of – last night, Dr. Tony Brightback [Phonetic] [07:50:45]. I can’t believe I screwed your name up Tony.

Anyway, he came to me and described what he thought was going on wrong and that he thought he had a solution for it and he asked me to go back to the hotel and do some exercise. And I went back to the hotel and I was in so much pain, I couldn’t do the exercise. So, he showed up this morning here with a full chiropractor’s table and – and put me through a routine this morning to begin – and it was completely the reverse of all the physical therapy I’ve been told to do. It completely flips it. The opposite of what I’ve been told to do, he tells me to do. And unlike the physical therapy I got which feels good, this stuff hurts.

[Laughing]

Brad Anderson: So – but I feel like a thousand times better tonight.

[Applause]

Brad Anderson: So Tony, I just want to thank you.

Bob Wright: Tony, stand up. Tony.

[Applause]

Brad Anderson: Unbelievable gut. I don’t know how big the bill will be but whatever it is, I’ll pay it.

[Laughing]

Brad Anderson: Anyway, sorry.

Bob Wright: Okay. That’s great, that’s great. You didn’t dodge this one.

Brad Anderson: Okay [laughs].

Bob Wright: Where is Best Buy falling short on empowering employees?

Brad Anderson: Oh, well that was the other reason I said I was a failure. The abstract construct that most of the years that I was in leadership at Best Buy, I wouldn’t have really tried to do what we tried to do in the last seven years because you couldn’t structurally figure out


how you build the big organization and be able to hear from everybody in the organization and especially when you couldn’t communicate to them details. So literally, back in the ‘80s when all those business books were written about go talk to your people and you’ll get insights to run the business. I went and talked to the people in the field and the insight I got was terrible. It was just terrible. And it wasn’t because the people were stupid but they didn’t understand any of the stuff we know at the center office. And so, without that they sort of developed things that just functionally couldn’t work because they didn’t know the other side of the story.

Well you know, today, we got video magazines that go every department. We got – if you’re interested, you will quickly know more than the CEO does about whatever issue you’re interested in because it’s all basically pretty much an open book. So, most of the time when I talk to somebody about an issue they’re passionate about, they know more about the corporate side of it as well as what they know from the customer side. So, the dif – the hypothesis there is that technology is literally that revolutionary that even in a large organization it could function like a small organization in terms of – because we started, the story I told last night, we had 65 people when we started so everybody knew everybody’s kids, everybody can know everything. If you want to, at least, within sections of the business, it’s now possible for an employee in China to have great detail about the operating company and come up with a hypothesis that it’s better than we’re getting from the center and the top of the organization.

And so, that was the hypothesis to be able to get everybody involved. I think we made huge progress and we’ve got also – I think we got 21 websites that employees have either designed for themselves or we’ve designed for communication between employees. Most of the innovation now coming to the company is coming from the line level. Some very, very thrilling things – I just – I was at the office of this week and hearing some really wonderful stories about what’s transpiring. But compared to – but I think if you still went out and talked to employees, you’re going to find also that this affected people and people who haven’t been invited in because the biggest challenge of the whole thing is find – you can’t do this without – without on the ground leadership that touches the individual. I mean, it is at – you have to have a leader that cares about the individual they manage, each individual they manage. And without that, the invitation doesn’t get to the people. They might – you might find some from the entrepreneurial [Indiscernible] [07:54:56] through the walls but it un-replaced what the potential is.


And I think the big challenge for those leaving at 4:00 o’clock back to the Minneapolis is to solve this puzzle.

[Laughing]

Brad Anderson: Since I quit.

[Laughing]

Brad Anderson: But to – to get – to get a consistently across the board leaders that have that kind of capacity to be and that kind of interesting.

Bob Wright: Okay. The next one is even with the success of Best Buy, what would you do differently? Pretty similar to – you said you wanted the challenging ones so I sorted …

Brad Anderson: No, no, that’s great. I love the que – the trip. I really do actually. I really love these questions. I think – well obviously, we’ve talked about some tangent – I’m trying to get this to more of an abstract in terms of what I do differently. One of the things that I was never affected that is explaining to shareholders what we were trying to do. Literally, one of the first meetings I had in New York as a CEO, I went out and describe something like what I just describe now to you. And the stock went dramatically down.

[Laughing]

Brad Anderson: And we – I tried and we tried to explain what the impact of this would be to – overtime to a shareholder and there were few people I think in the community did accept but it really go so much against the grain that – and we were so ineffective at communicating it that it – we never really broke through with the side of the story. And I do think at some stage, if we continue to develop what we started the road we’re on, at some stage, people will look us with a little like I say, Google and say, “Well duh, of course, this is really good idea.” But at this stage, it’s just – it’s not seen as – it’s seen as soft instead of hard. And I think it’s actually hard logic.

Bob Wright: Well so, if we apply Don’s model to this …

Brad Anderson: Yes.

Bob Wright: … how would you go about doing it differently?

Brad Anderson: Don’s model is unbelievably empowering because it means it – what you had – if you can look at GE which was the best example,


probably the business in the last century and you look at the corporate reports. Some professors in Michigan, had me read 20 of – the 20 corporate annual letters that Jack Welch wrote to the shareholders. And Jack – the one thing you noticed is that all of the leaders in all 20 years are look like Jack in a bolt.

[Laughing]

Brad Anderson: And I don’t – I think that’s – that was – to be honest, I think that was sort of – I think the world of Jack Welch. And I think that was sort of the state of the art. But you had to conform to the construct of what Jack have learned in his life working in the plastics division, which was real and learning from that was an enormous being over – over what a lot have. But you couldn’t come at it from a whole variety of different perspectives and do variations on the theme. You really had a theme. And I think that’s – this next stage is a much more like a flower instead of a sort of mono colored device that we’re going to find much more texture and it’s going to be much more interesting and many more people with different experiences are going to be invited in because it’s technically possible. I think to a large extent, the reason that it exist that way is that that at the state of our - or what we understood in the ‘80s, that’s about what you could do.

Bob Wright: So, in Don’s model, level 7 and level 8, or those – the yellow mean, it’s interesting the organizational structure starts looking more like a flower. So, it’s interesting that you’re saying that. So, it seems to me that you had a pretty serious values conflict because most of your investors were level 5, wanting next on return while you’re trying to operate at green on overall well-being.

Brad Anderson: Yes. But this is something I’d love to talk to Don about but – because I think if you’re – if you’re talking about return on investment, I think – I think the level we were trying to get to absolutely maximizes return on investment.

Bob Wright: Don.

Brad Anderson: Is Don here?

Bob Wright: Come on.

Brad Anderson: Oh, he’s there. Oh, there you are, Don.

Bob Wright: Come on. Come on up. I think this is going to be more interesting.

Brad Anderson: Would you mind?


Brad Anderson: I don’t have a mic.

Bob Wright: We got a mic.

Brad Anderson: You can have mine.

[Laughing]

Don Beck: What is this? What is this?

Brad Anderson: Okay, Don. The question I was asking was my hypothesis would be that if you’re – that if you’re right about using your tools, you’re – from a financial standpoint, you will produce much bigger financial returns when than somebody who best needed the tools.

Don Beck: That’s right.

Brad Anderson: And I think you had several examples of that too in your presentation.

Don Beck: Yes, I’m sure. Yes.

Brad Anderson: So, I don’t know whether – is that green, is that yellow? What – can Don just join us?

Bob Wright: That’s what I brought a chair for.

Brad Anderson: Okay. Great. Would you mind? I’m sorry, Don.

Don Beck: Am I paid overtime for this?

Brad Anderson: No.

[Laughing]

Brad Anderson: I think you get the same check I get, Don.

Don Beck: Good [laughs]. I’ve been in your stores before in Texas, of course. And the way I was treated was just wonderful. There’s a …

Brad Anderson: I’m glad to hear this.

Don Beck: Well, it’s in Texas. I mean, and we do things different in Texas.

Brad Anderson: I know that. That’s the problem.


Don Beck: [laughs] Yes. I mean, that sensitivity to customers were done out of a green mood or an orange mood. It didn’t make any difference.

Brad Anderson: And I wonder if on the spiral, and I know I’m supposed to answer questions but if I can just ask him one more.

Bob Wright: We should have fun. It should be fun.

P: Yes.

Brad Anderson: On that spiral, it seems to me that you – first of all, all levels of that spiral are legitimate, right?

Don Beck: Yes.

Brad Anderson: And were – and were developed because they were useful. So, you should be able to go between levels on this. In other words, you should be able at some point to be able to use an insight from some other place on the spiral …

Don Beck: Sure, yes.

Brad Anderson: … in a different space.

Don Beck: Yes. The key is – is that matching your people to job functions where they naturally do what they are.

Brad Anderson: What they are start off as human being.

Don Beck: Yes, that’s right. But they may change so you have to move them elsewhere.

Brad Anderson: Yes.

Don Beck: That’s a natural design process as opposed to any other criteria for hiring.

Brad Anderson: Yes. That was the other core thing we tried to do at Best Buy was do this from a strength based because I do think people can change within a range but I’m not going to develop – I’m never going to be able …

Don Beck: Yes, in a range.

Brad Anderson: Yes. I’m not going to change too far.


Don Beck: No, you’re not.

Brad Anderson: And really, what we wanted to use at Best Buy and this was – this was actually unbelievably hard to do and we haven’t really accomplished it yet, which we will at 4 is …

[Laughing]

Brad Anderson: … is really get the organization as strength-based as we dreamed and it’s still in front of us.

Don Beck: That’s what Mackey does at Whole Foods. Very careful selection and placement into five teams in the store.

Bob Wright: You know, let’s actually put the two of you on this one. So, the question is to Brad. Why do you think you were a failure? And let’s have Don, once you’ve answered it, pick it apart and help us hear it from his perspective. So, why do you think you were a failure, Brad?

Brad Anderson: Well [laughs] there’s – there are many people who love to answer that question for you.

[Laughing]

Brad Anderson: I think – I always thought that you – I’m like a seminary student and I have a Biblical training and I have a Biblical bent because my dad is a minister. So, I always thought that basically, lives are stories and – that one of the best things you can do with your life is imagine what the story will be and dream for what you’d like to achieve in the story. And so, when I set – when I took on the job of being CEO, it was – I thought in service of the story. And the story had a different ending. It didn’t – it didn’t have a different ending for me personally because I personally, I got more joy, satisfaction than anybody has any right to ever hope in any given life. So, there’s nothing in terms – nothing in terms of personally that I didn’t get out of the story but I didn’t realize the dream for what we could achieve because we just didn’t get there.

Don Beck: And the there that you didn’t get to was?

Brad Anderson: A consistent enough, embedded enough practice that it was strong enough that it was going to live on. It’s in jeopardy. Even the – as far as the got it, it’s still in jeopardy. It had – there’s a point and we were just talking a little bit yesterday about – about the sort of


South Africa versus [Indiscernible] [08:04:32] and there’s a place of which I think a sort of a social organization gets such a tensile strength that it’s hard to disrupt. And I know realistically, that was never going to happen in seven years anyway. But that I was hoping for more foundation to be built underneath that to deliver that.

Don Beck: But what turnover did you have with people who worked there?

Brad Anderson: When we started it, we had – this is – we started with about a 100 and 30% and we’re down to 40 but part of the 40 has to do with the economy.

Don Beck: Yes.

Brad Anderson: But we intentionally got it down from – to 65%.

Don Beck: But a younger workforce, that’s transitory.

Brad Anderson: Yes.

Don Beck: It means, they carry the stuff out [Indiscernible] [08:05:11] that’s why sometimes it’s hard to implant it.

Brad Anderson: Well that was also part of the exciting thing about the job actually because our average age of the workforce is 22 and a half years.

Don Beck: Average?

Brad Anderson: Yes. So, lots of people in our workforce will go on to different kinds of groups in their lives.

Don Beck: Yes.

Bob Wright: So doctor, we’re still waiting on your diagnosis for why he was a failure.

Don Beck: Oh, I don’t think he was a failure that’s why I don’t quite understand.

Bob Wright: Well then, analyze his success for us.

Brad Anderson: I’m glad we got him on the stage.

[Laughing]


Brad Anderson: Thank you.

Don Beck: Even the Israelites had six years of famine. I mean …

[Laughing]

Don Beck: Systems have a way of starting to run down because often, if we continue doing what made us successful, we’re in trouble because being successful means you move the goal post. You raise the expectations outside, inside, and sometimes you can’t maintain that if you keep doing the same thing. So, that’s why you have to market as we’ve learned here from transformational leaders or staying a head step beyond, which is our approach to it.

You probably got burned out too.

Brad Anderson: There’s a part of that. Well, part of it was – actually, I started to think it was almost got a biblical lesson with the back pain which I really got severe when I quit [laughs]. So, it was kind of like I woke up right to the edge of the precipice in terms of how long I did the job.

Don Beck: Yes.

Brad Anderson: But physically and emotionally, it’s unbelievable …

Don Beck: You were there what? Seven years?

Brad Anderson: Seven years.

Don Beck: That’s quite enough.

Brad Anderson: Yes. I thought – many people buy that. That’s true.

[Laughing]

Bob Wright: Okay.

[Laughing]

Bob Wright: So, let’s see how the two of you deal with this next one. Brad, how do you reward people for their disruptive innovation? Does it matter if the innovation is successful or not?

Brad Anderson: Oh, great question. There is a – he wrote – one of the worst thing I ever have is pulling up needs in this kind of context. But the former


CEO of Medtronic who is now teaching at Harvard and who is a neighbor of mine, wrote a book about authentic leadership. Yes, Bill George. Thank you. Well, I’m glad [Indiscernible] [08:07:36].

[Laughing]

Brad Anderson: Who knows what I’m going to say before and this is very helpful. Anyway, Bill George wrote a book and on the tour for the book which I got a chance to hear him speak, he talked about that what he did at Medtronic was when he came in, in the morning is he went out to look for the people who are hated inside the organization that were the dissonant voices and he spent he paid attention to keeping them alive and when he turns the lights off at night and went home, he was still trying to keep them alive. And that was the primary job of the CEO is to keep the dissonant voices alive and thriving. And that they take enormous energy to keep going. And I came up to him afterwards because I was hoping he would tell me that there was – this was very early on in my being a CEO, that there was a system to keep them alive. That he’d figured some science in terms of keeping them alive and he said no. That he had – he had – I didn’t either.

And was – but probably the most embarrassing single thing that happened to me in my career at Best Buy and there are many but the worst was probably – I went into a meeting and the most senior executives and one of the executives decided to praise one of these dissonant voices at Best Buy. And profusely thanked him and left in just joy. And the whole rest of the executive team – it was a complete con. I had no clue. I so wanted it to be true that I believed that he had actually seen the value of this person and it was – I was just snowed. So, I think that’s – there’s a – anybody at Best Buy has been through this horrible [Indiscernible] [08:09:16] thing I do which was some research [Indiscernible] 10 years ago.

Yes, sorry for that you see, which basically – which was – it’s much like talking to you is an eye-opener for me where essentially, it was some research [Indiscernible] [08:09:34] did in the – about t10 years ago, 12 years ago that looked at human behavior. And essentially said, we’ve all got – everyone of us as people, there is hypothesis is we’ve got a certain number of strengths, certain number of weaknesses. And that the one thing about the things that are strong that we’re – either way, that we’re gifted at for instance is nobody really quite understand what they are, right? If you – most of these, if you think about the thing you feel you know the most and you believe the most intensely is the hardest for other people to understand.


Well, that premise they then took into research which the – and what they found is the bigger the organization you work in, the more it compresses people to the middle. It’s like a gravitational pull and it pulls the dissonants out of us into the middle. And so, I think that’s why large organization is historically. The last sorts of data of the big organization are on their way to death. And I think this is why because the customer wants the [Indiscernible] [08:10:29]. We want the restaurant that’s different and better than anything else we’ve ever tasted before. We don’t want the something that everybody can appreciate.

And so, organizations pull and destroy the very thing that we generate [Indiscernible] [08:10:42]. And that was – that I’ve had a zealots ever since I heard that construct.

Don Beck: The State Department has an annual award for constructive descent, someone who shows descent, [Indiscernible] [08:10:59]. My good friend, Dick Harris [Phonetic] [08:11:02] won it a couple years ago.

Brad Anderson: Congratulations to him.

Don Beck: I’m very close to it. I found that we’ve been able in Southwest Airlines to diffuse a lot of that descent by simply showing value systems. And so, you’re being red, red as I am. I mean, it exposes the game quickly. So that’s one way that we diffused it but still, its clear that you want descend, you want alternative points of view. You want diversity generators, not just conformity in the forces.

Brad Anderson: You know, but even with that, there – for us at least, there was an issue which is that if you – actually, some of the worst problems and actually, we talked about this a little last night, some of the worst – the most difficult people to deal with on that were our values team or ethics team because the dilemma with someone who thinks outside the organizational box that we’re currently in is that that they want to change the rules. And when you got an ethics team, and oftentimes, the ethics that you got there is designed to protect us from somebody else. Something doing something for their own purposes that’s damaging or fraudulent to the organizational structure. But I would find the very best people in the organization in trouble with the ethics team because they were actually pursuing the interest of the customer from mile ends and had to go around the structural rules that we put in place. And so, there is the – there was a perverseness to that sort of – sometimes to that logic.


Don Beck: Well, ethics by their very nature is to minimize harm and limit things.

Brad Anderson: Yes.

Don Beck: So, you’ve now ended up with ethics and where you started was I think saying, it’s an oxymoron to institutionalized something to keep marginal people going in strong in an institution.

Brad Anderson: Absolutely. It’s completely irrational but it is – but it is completely normative and – but with your spiral, we’ll figure out a solution to it. I hope.

Bob Wright: Any comments on that, doc? Okay. So, we’ve got another one here. Individual development versus organizational development. If you manage to push yourself into creative evalation as a regular practice, what strategies are effective in helping the organization as a whole do the same thing?

Brad Anderson: Well, it’s – actually, I think it’s full circle with the same argument. That there are people that are really, really good at figuring out how to tear down policy and figuring out why to tear it down existing policy and they’re hard to understand and there are people who are really good at developing and moving things across the huge base. And sometimes they are as difficult to understand especially by the same parties because one thing you can’t do is take the aberrant voices and put them in a room and have them work together. So, there are people who are gifted scaling and part of what – like things like values are shared across the large base, who are good at explaining things and helping people share learning across the large base and to play it across the large base.

So, it’s – there were – in my land, it’s variation on the same theme. And what Best Buy has an instinct to do is scale. So, it’s easier to protect the scalers than it was to protect the people that sort of tear down the existing structure.

Bob Wright: Well, in fact …

Brad Anderson: I bet there are other organizations could do the opposite.

Bob Wright: When they tear down people, we’re threatening the scalers.

Brad Anderson: Yes.


Bob Wright: Why don’t you tell them the story about the [Indiscernible] [08:14:43] situation, which would give them a real concrete picture of what could have been a huge win.

Brad Anderson: There are so many stories. I’m trying figure out which one.

Bob Wright: The early release …

Brad Anderson: Oh, this was one of the most – this kind of involves all of this. This is a – this was one of the – this was a place where I probably were the – for me, the [Indiscernible] [08:15:01] place where I lost part of the war at Best Buy and leads to the failure comment.

We had – when we started doing customer centricity, which was basically the insight coming from the stores. We had some – we had some leaders in California that this just lit them on fire because they were looking for a way to really personalized the capability they had in those stores and the personnel they had in stores in California. And we had literally, a number of 8-year-old stores camp up 35%. In other words, they did 35% more than they did the year before using the principles that we got from Larry Sullivan. But basically using the ability to customize their off – the Best Buy store to the community and neighborhood it was in and using the talent of their people to do it.

Well, they – when they got the camps of 35, imagine how – if your camp was 7 and these guys was 35, what do you think about the guys that got 35? Even though you – you’re going to make tons of money off, it doesn’t matter. You hate these guys. And at the same time, we had just started our China office. And the China team had this huge ambition and they said, “How come you’re not inviting us into the customer centricity work?” And they were contentious already enough because people had wanted us to open a China office to begin with. So, they weren’t getting invited in to the customer centricity work because they thought they could have tremendous value.

One experience I had was my first trip to China and I visited our office and they had a solution to each of the segments that they had. That they had individually trying to solve the problems they had identified, had actually acquired for and had set up in their office without being authorized to do any of these. Well, they co-conspired with the team in California to bring in – for the first iPod, to bring in accessories for the first iPod that arrived before the first iPods did.


So, because of the – you know, the networks they got in China and everything else. Now, the problem with that obviously is we have no legal right to sell those stuff and [laughs] and we hadn’t go on to Apple where we had to get approval for the – we probably could. We didn’t – we hadn’t gone to Apple to get approval for the accessories. And so, we hadn’t cross the ice and dotted the cheese we need because they didn’t have the expertise that was there in the full company. But the intent was so brilliant and the work was so marvelous but by the time I heard about it, everybody in that system that did that had been put on final warning by the ethics team because they violated policy.

So – and the ethics team reports straight up to the board. So as CEO, I was you know, except after the fact, I can go around and many of those people [Indiscernible] [08:17:46] but tell them that I was going to do everything I could for their career because I couldn’t really undo the damages done.

Bob Wright: So, what we’re getting at is these people were at the margin leading the company theoretically. They were fulfilling all of the aims of the company …

Brad Anderson: Yes.

Bob Wright: … in a nontraditional way.

Brad Anderson: Yes.

Bob Wright: And tradition ends up squashing them. So, it seems we’re several rounds now into this issue about a transformational leader’s responsibility to keep the fringes alive and to reinforce the positive deviance. Now, are you all familiar with positive deviant research?

Brad Anderson: I bet this one exist [laughs].

Bob Wright: Raise your hands if you are.

Brad Anderson: Yes.

Bob Wright: Okay. Good. So, for those of you that don’t know. If you think three standard deviations from the mean, okay? Those are the people that accomplished the aims of the organization in nontraditional and unacceptable ways. For example, the district manager I was telling you about where I got canned as a consultant because I said they should listen to him. So – but this is an interesting tension we’re saying because as a transformational leader, you almost by


definition have to be defeated and you have to keep going and refuse to accept that defeat because you are the champion for the French.

Brad Anderson: Yes.

Bob Wright: That’s counter-intuitive.

Brad Anderson: One of the huge lessons out of this and this was really big for me because it’s over a seven-year span, and it really is part of the reason spiral logic is so important for me, is that the very people that instituted doing that, some of those people are the people today I count on as delivering customer centricity in the future because they learned and changed their point of view. They thought they were protecting the company and honestly, they authentically thought they were protecting the company from damage and they learned they weren’t and because they flew like [Indiscernible] [08:19:42] to Damascus, because they inhabited the other point of view, they’re the most powerful people for delivering on the new – delivering the new promise.

Bob Wright: Okay. So, it’s starting to sound like as a transformational leader, you had an educational responsibility. Rather than squashing them, you did something that helped bring them around to understand the damage they’ve done.

Brad Anderson: Yes, I had to do both. If it was completely – if they were just going to do damage, more damage, I had to find a way to squash them. But I had to recognize the difference between the two. And if the intent was authentic, in other words, if their intent was politically was just kill these guys and violated the values we were trying to get at then it was a clear [Indiscernible] [08:20:24] and I don’t think that those people would have wound up being on the other side. But I had to recognize the difference between and others had to help me recognize the difference.

Bob Wright: So, you went back to discussion with them individually or as a group?

Brad Anderson: Individually.

Bob Wright: Okay. And so, you did a value assessment and conversation with each one of them?

Brad Anderson: Yes.


Bob Wright: So, as a transformational leader, you’re champion of values and you’re an educator in values and you ended up having other champions out of that process. Okay. Great. So, we’ve got – oh, here’s a good one.

How did you prepare yourself to hear difficult feedback? And how did you train employees to bring problems to you?

Brad Anderson: There was a – this is something I’d partially credit to Dick Schultz, out of the learning I got out of Dick Schultz because we talked about him quite a bit last night. One of the things I found with Dick was that at the end of the day, trust meant more than anything else to him. And I think part of the reason I wound up in the job I was in as CEO at Best Buy is always – when something was wrong, I got to Dick first with it so that he knew that – he knew that we were taking accountability for it and that he knew the mistakes we were making and he knew – and we weren’t – it was as naked as possible in terms of what the problems were, which had to be two things. He had to be receptive, willing to hear it even when he didn’t want to. And then he had to not fire me for the mistakes.

Bob Wright: Why don’t you tell them about that first major time you went against Dick when you made the determination that the game was about loyalty not margin.

Brad Anderson: Oh! I’m actually – there’s a bunch of stories in my head about that.

Bob Wright: Oh! What you were talking to me about was that he wanted everybody marketing in a certain way and …

Brad Anderson: He still does.

[Laughing]

Brad Anderson: Well, sorry. I’m trying – marketing in a certain way. You should probably tell them the story now.

Bob Wright: This is you as a deviant. This is you as a deviant.

Brad Anderson: Well, that’s always the case.

Bob Wright: Because you decided you were going to go with volume and you would get more pot people buying more product because your game was – this is again, how you transformed the industry because the industry was people are always going to go somewhere else. And you actually determined that you were going


to shift the industry, that you were going develop relationships with the customers.

Brad Anderson: Well, that I think actually goes back to the story I told last night or part of last night, which was when, you know, the strategy we talked about in terms of the – at the very beginning where we saw – we told the customer the truth about the product. I mean, that – that takes for – Dick had been in the business and had – and it was his company so when – it was relatively easy for me to say, “Let’s tell him the truth and sell the stuff for cost, reduce our margins dramatically and we’ll figure that we’ll make it up in volume.”

And so, that’s the – so, for me as an employee who, you know, I can go and get another job and get paid as much as I was getting paid, it’s pretty easy to recommend that. It’s pretty tough to be the guy that says yes to that. And Dick said yes to it. He didn’t – you know, he struggled with it tremendously but he – again, this has to deal with these huge components were there in terms of putting faith in individuals. And partially, individuals who maybe wrong to figuring they’re corrected if they are wrong. But the faith to leap that far in terms of kind of the decision because that’s – when you’re making the decision that’s fundamentally changes the paradigm of the industry you’re in, it – there is – it’s going to be horrendously hard to do and it’s going to – it’s going to have a huge price if you’re wrong.

Bob Wright: Well, and the faith you earned by being the loyal opposition and telling him that you wouldn’t do what he wanted you to.

Brad Anderson: Yes. That happened quite a bit over the years.

Bob Wright: [laughs] Okay. I think we’re at a point where what we wanted to do is thank these two gentlemen.

P: Yes.

Bob Wright: Yes.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: Okay. Thanks. And what we want you to do is right now, we’re going to do a paired sharing. We want you to just talk about what’s standing out for you, what’s top of mind for you, what you’d like to apply for yourself. So, see if you can look at somebody that you don’t know that well yet and pair up again. Okay.


Now, I’m going to pull you back. Okay. If you don’t have a buddy, raise your hand. Raise your hand anyway first so I can get you quiet. Okay. I’m going to do something a little different than we’ve done in the past. I’m actually going to go back and forth twice because I want you to be able to hear that other person. What are the so what’s for you? What are the takeaways? What are the things that are standing out for you that you want to take away from today?

Now, we asked you this morning to think about what area, which of the four I’s you wanted to focus on, and what skill you wanted to focus? Then Don has given us a huge amount of insight into organization and how that happens. And Judith has covered what’s going on inside of us and we’ve gone back and we’ve had some question-and-answer. What I want you to do is I’m going to give you a chance to just kind of let your mind wander back over the day, talk about what’s standing out for you and we’re going to go one minute, one minute so each of you gets to deal in and say something. We’re going to go back again one minute and another one minute and let the other person listen to you again. And then I’m going to suggest that we actually take a couple of minutes for you to be silent and take notes and see what the so what of this is for you. And so, we’ll do that with the light hairs going first.

Tom Terry: All right, switch.

All right, that’s a minute. Now, back to the first person. One minute back to the first person.

And switch. One more minute.

Bob Wright: Okay, that’s it. Come on back. Okay. So, we’re moving in to takeaways. So, now we’re going to give you – you’re going to stay with this partner again but right now, we’re going to give you two minutes in silence to envision the future into your life. A big part of having a good takeaway is to envision yourself doing things differently, applying what you’ve learned. So, we’re going to have two minutes in silence to take notes and just think about yourself.


Bob Wright: Okay. Come on back. And we’re going to give you one minute, one minute. Light hairs again first to just say what you’re thinking about again. We’re going back over this and then dark hairs, you’re going to go second. No hairs, I guess you’re light hairs.


[Laughing]

Bob Wright: Light hairs, just one minute to say what you’re thinking about.

Tom Terry: All right, switch dark hairs. Dark hair, one minute.

Bob Wright: Okay. Come on back. Remember that 80/20 rule. Okay. If you’d have a seat. So, how many of you are tired? How many of you are good tired? Yes, yes. Well, there’s a little neuroscience Judith has to share with you about how to help deal with that. And then we’re going to close up.

Judith Wright: Oh, yes! Thank you.

[Laughing]

Judith Wright: All right. Take your right hand over your left hand. Lock your fingers together and bring it up like this. Take your right ankle and cross it over your left ankle. You are now participating in a neuro-integration exercise that’s going to make sense with everything that you just got. [Indiscernible] [08:37:34] and it actually helps you. Can you imagine – this feel – just breath …

Bob Wright: Why do I feel like I’m going to need Tony’s services after this?

[Laughing]

Judith Wright: Just breath it up for a second. That’s a neuro-integration exercise. It actually helps you get yourself kind of centered.

Bob Wright: Eyes close?

Judith Wright: Yes, I closed for a moment. Just to center and kind of ground all the experiences that you’ve had and this actually helps to integrate your neuro circuits and all the learning and growing you’ve been doing. And just breathe. Remember to breathe. And you maybe able to feel a little more grounded, a little more centered, a little calmer. I don’t know how to do this in a board meeting but if there’s conflict in a board meeting, this would be a really good thing for people to do [laughs]. So, just be with it for a moment. And take another deep breathe. All right. Now, you can open your eyes and come back and it feels comforting. We won’t think you’re weird if you keep doing this for a few more minutes because it actually is a very good thing. How does that feel?

P: Good.


Judith Wright: Yes, it’s a good little trick.

Bob Wright: And they thought we did weird stuff in the ‘60s.

[Laughing]

Bob Wright: So, how many of you have a renewed commitment to move into greater transformational leadership? Raise your hands. Give yourselves a hand. Thanks.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: We are absolutely honored and pleased to be your partners in this and we will be sending you reminders and opportunities and some inspirational pieces to help you with that. We’ll be reminding you about the four I’s. We’ll be reminding you about some of Don’s stuff just to help this come back to mind for you.

Judith Wright: Well, to overcome your airport amnesia that Bob talked about. So, you don’t lose it by the time you get to the airport again.

Bob Wright: A big part of accelerated learning is reviews. And we’re going to try to help you stimulate and we’re also wanting you to take those next steps. In the back of your book, you have a December 3rd activity where you’re mining the wealth of your transformational leadership assessment. It’s a webinar with Don Beck. I don’t know – so, this is – get online. Take his assessment. When you see it, your eyes will cross. You will go huh? But when he tells you what it means, you will go ah. And it makes a ton of sense. It will help you understand your readiness for change. It will help you understand of all the colors he’s talking about where you operate from.

Judith Wright: And let me say, there’s two place in the back of your book. There’s one that more detail in the online assessment and then you have a thing on transformational opportunities. If you take that, that has the schedule on it with the little blue stripes across it so you can arrange it right now.

Bob Wright: Okay. And then Monday, December 7th, we’re going to have another webinar. We’re going to be talking about transformational leadership, mapping your success for 2010. We’re going to talk about some of the nontraditional ways about thinking what you’re doing. We’d love to have you join us. How many of you already have your 2010 plan developed? Good.


Now, how many of you – no, it’s not there. How many of you have ever done your leadership plan for a year? Because that’s what we’re going to work on. A few of you have done it. We’re going to talk – we’re going to ask you to take a look at where you want to be at the end of the year as a leader because it’s absolutely impossible to apply everything that we’ve talked about today. But we’re going to ask you to think about the qualities you want to develop and the results you want in that. You can use your consultants or your coaches for your tangible money goals and structure and organizational goals. We do that too.

But we’d like to really keep this transformational flame going and see where you go after your analysis with Don and we’re going to keep that one up because after that, on December 10 th, we have another webinar. This is the one with Ron Riggio where you’ll go online. You’ll do an assessment of yourself as a transformational leader and this is the one where we’re inviting you to have your staff assess you as a transformational leader. It will give you huge information.

It’s been very humbling to me to realize the areas where I thought we were strongest, we rated weakest with our staff. And it caused us a great deal of introspection but you’ll be able to integrate into your plan. And then in January, January 14th, we have your organizational transformation with Don Beck. This is the time that he’s going to take you into a composite of what your staff’s assessment was. He’s going to help you understand the culture of your staff. You will take all the things he taught you about today and you’re going to be able to begin seeing your staff differently. As a transformational leader, you’ll learn to start speaking red, blue, green. You’re going to start learning to speak, you know, purple and yellow. And you’ll start learning to under – assess their system, is their system open to change or is a close system? Really, really important.

And then, January 22nd, we’re going to be having a webinar. How leaders get stuck and what they need to transform? We haven’t spent a lot of time on how we got stuck today and what we do. And by the way, we’re all stuck all the time. Absolutely all stuck all the time in some realm. The only question is, are we in the habit of vigilantly watching for the domain where we’re stuck and dealing with that, getting coaching and whatever else you need to do that because you remember, part of evalating is paying the price. It’s money. It’s time. And the most difficult price to pay is neither money nor time. It’s the personal upset you go through in becoming who you could be.


And so, we’ll take a look at that. Then, we’re going to have February 4th, mastermind your change. Don will be back for a day and a half and we’re going to go in depth. How many of you would like to join us on that day and a half with Don Beck? Yes. Let’s give him another hand. I think he was absolutely fantastic.

[Applause]

Bob Wright: You will never see yourself or your world the same again. You got a taste of it today. You saw the difference he can make in the world. Just think about the difference that we all can make in the world if we’re all operating that way. If we’re all understanding our world with that level of respect, with that level of precision in our ability to assess and strategize and architect our futures.

After that, we’ve got March 10th, we’ve got a webinar with Ron Riggio. I told you he’s going to start talking about his authenticity research, well, he’s going to do a webinar on authenticity. Then, we’re going to have him do and evening seminar. We’re actually going to bring him back to Chicago to really take people in depth with this because there are some cases that you might be able to make that authenticity takes care of the four I’s. And so, it’s a very important – I didn’t overstate that too much. No. He’s – okay. Good.

Judith Wright: Great. Good.

Bob Wright: I like hyperbole and grandiose things and he’s precise. So, I got to make sure …

Judith Wright: But that one works. You agree.

Bob Wright: I said you could make a case. Okay. So, we’re going to look at that. It’s really, really important in our growth and development. And then in April, we’re going to have the transformational leadership awards dinner. Brad and Don and Ron are going to be part of our nominating committee. John Fieldman is managing that committee with me. John, would you stand up? Please, any transformational leaders you know that you think that we should be honoring who we would also like to have at our symposium. Please suggest them. John will talk to you. We’ll be explaining the committee process and how the committee is going to look at things but we’d really like to get as many eyes in the world as we can.

We are considering a few levels. We’re thinking about major scope transformational leaders. What we’re calling emerging leaders and


may even do an NGO and people who are out in the hinterlands doing amazing type leaders. So, we would like to hear all of the above. But we would like to hear you give us nominees for all of the above for that.

Judith Wright: So don’t – you don’t need to remember all these right now. I think you have a few things on your mind. We just want to let you know that this is there and part of our – what we want to do is continue the dialog on transformational leadership and that’s what these webinar have been – are just the gifts of all the presenters here in order for you to be able to keep this dialog going. So, it’s really a wonderful way for us to keep flying and flapping together and to really encourage and inspire one another.

Bob Wright: Yes. Let’s give each other a honk. Honk, honk, honk.

Judith Wright: Honk, honk, honk. That’s awesome. That’s great. We’re just so thrilled. I mean, this is just really – and I – I don’t know about you, although I’ve been seeing it and looking at your faces and seeing your heated exchanges and this, your eyes lighting up, I feel like I am with a bunch of geese and I mean that in a very high level of compliment by saying that how many of you feel heartened by the wings flapping here? Oh, great. Let’s applaud everybody for that. Very good.

[Applause]

Judith Wright: And I really love the honking from behind as encouragement instead of get out of my way. I thought that was a really good metaphor for us. So, we really want to thank you. We will be – we’ll email you because we know that you need reminders as we all do but to keep it fresh in consciousness. That’s also part of the whole neuroscience. It’s re-bringing things to our attention, that focus attention to bring that back for us so that we can keep talking. How many of you have some things to talk about perhaps out of this? Yes. Excellent. How many of you have some things to do out of what we’ve been talking about? Yes. Don’t overwhelm yourself. Pick a thing or two. That’s what we’re looking at right now to really continue to dialog.

So, I’m going to ask that everyone stand up if we would. And I actually like you to look around this room and see these vast resources. I have been sharing this during every transformational leadership, what do you think about all these people?

P: Good.


Judith Wright: Yes. I think so too. Awesome. Good.

[Applause]

Judith Wright: Yes. Here, here. And we want to obviously thank all of you for participating and being here. And we’d like to thank our speakers. Could we ask – thanks again for Ron Riggio and Brad Anderson and Don Beck. Thank you so much.

[Applause]

Judith Wright: And while we’re at it, that whole big of flock that’s been helping. All the people that’s been assisting and in volunteering and supporting and adding their energies, could we applaud them as well? We’re so thankful to all of you.

[Applause]

Judith Wright: And to all of our sponsors who made this event possible for us and particularly our Platinum sponsors who’ve been hosting us, Karen Wilson and Tom Terry. Thank you so much. Thank you.

[Applause]

Judith Wright: We are indeed blessed. Thank you. So, I don’t think any big old thing like this with all these energy and all these rich resources will just kind of pewter away. I’d like to really like make sure that we keep this transformational leadership dialog going. And I’d like us to feel the energy and inspiration of one another. So, we’re going to do a little symbolic thing, okay? So, what I want you to do is I want you to make some contact with someone around you as if we are all putting our hands in the middle of the big huddle. All right? So, as if your hands and you can touch someone who got their hand – yes, why don’t we come – yes, yes.

Bob Wright: Oh okay. We’re down here.

Judith Wright: As if we’re huddled.

Bob Wright: Oh, this is guy’s …

Judith Wright: So we’re like – guys you know how to do this.

Bob Wright: It’s a guy thing.


Judith Wright: This is a guy thing. So you really put your hands on top.

Bob Wright: Make some circles.

Judith Wright: Yes, you can make some semi – make some circles around where you are and then we’ll connect those. Some circles. There you go. That’s great. Great. All right. Good. Everybody hooked up with somebody? You got your hands – the women are going, “What are they doing?” All right. Just get your hands in there. That’s good. That’s great. All right. Now, what I want us to do is all the inspiration, all the energy, all the ideas, all the good people, all the goodwill that was here, all the lessons we’ve got, and we’re soaking it all in here. And we’re going to take these inspirations, and these lessons and these possibilities, and this hope and conviction for transformational, we’re going to combine our energy right now and then we’re going to take it out to the world. All right? Are you ready?

P: Yes.

Judith Wright: All right. Take it out. Take it Bob.

Bob Wright: [Shouting]


transformational leadership symposium transcript, saturday

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