August 2022

This is the Humble Inquiries series. In this episode, Leslie joins me as my co-host to humbly inquire into how to keep oneself motivated as a leader. If we are not motivated ourselves, it shows its impact on everything we do and every responsibility we have. Leadership starts with finding and staying connected with our own motivation first.

In each episode of Humble Inquiries, we are deliberately going to put ourselves in the uncomfortable space of not knowing the answer and humbly inquiring about these challenges – with the aim to provoke new thoughts, actions, and practices – to help us better serve our coaching clients, and also to help the leader in you navigate the biggest challenges – at life and at work.

Show Notes

• Sumit – “if we get our body moving, it lifts our moods, it lifts our spirits.”
• Leslie – “my personal practice is sitting with coffee and enjoying a bit of cosy time and journaling, and that helps me reflect on yesterday and set the intention for what today is.”
• Sumit – “another practice which works very well for me is to just highlight three or four areas where I want to complete something today”
• Sumit – “anybody can build a new practice, even if that is uncomfortable for them.”
• Sumit – “motivation is  it’s it’s connecting to that fire, which is within you and then giving it a little bit of air so that it becomes like a flame”
• Sumit – “You don’t have to do anything as an obligation. Because that’s, again, going against motivation, right? Motivation is when you are free to choose and do something.”
• Leslie – “Some other ways are just taking that time to pause and maybe asking for help, as a leader that could be. An opportunity, not only for yourself but the team as well ask for help. “
• Sumit – “sitting in silence or sometimes taking a break allows all of those matters, which we deeply care about, but we don’t really address because we are so busy, just having that moment of peace allows them to come up and then we can listen to them and actually put it into our actions and practices.”
• Leslie – “going for a walking meeting together is a great way to combine a lot of what we’ve talked about when it comes to finding that motivation”
• Sumit – “I think an overcrowded mind sometimes can stop us from being motivated. And once we empty our mind, either through reflection or through journaling, it allows us to touch those deep levels of feelings, which actually is motivation. Motivation is not a thought process. It’s not something you can reason yourself into it. It’s a feeling that you already have. But sometimes the mind is so cluttered that you get lost or you’d lost touch with it”
• Leslie – “it is different for everyone and the leader can’t take sole responsibility for motivating each person on the team. It’s each of the individual’s responsibility to find that too, but there is value in communicating what motivates.”
• Sumit – “there is no such thing as a motivated or a demotivated person. There are only moments in which you are motivated and demotivated. And then every moment is a new opportunity,”
• Sumit – “every moment is basically telling you that if you’re demotivated, that something is missing, either you need to say no to something, or you need to do something differently that you can make the experience fun”
• Sumit – “Motivation is not something which you can design or control. You can only create the conditions for motivation to happen, but not really directly motivate somebody. You can direct somebody or force somebody to be motivated.”
• Leslie – “One of my suggestions, which I got from another organization was let someone from the team lead, let them bring a topic, let them change the format. So again, creating that space and really injecting some air back into it, to give motivation and really the opportunity for that motivation all over again, as a team.”
• Sumit – “if you don’t take a shower, that doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person or something is wrong. You just take a shower, if you wash your hands and they become dirty again, you simply wash your hands again. Similarly with motivation, right? If you’re not motivated or if you don’t feel that energy, it’s not like something is wrong or something is missing. You just shift. Connect with something and then you’re motivated again.”

As quoted by Edgar Schein in his book Humble Inquiry, an humble inquiry is recognizing that insights most often come from conversations and relationships in which we have learned to listen to each other and have learned to respond appropriately, to make joint sense out of our shared context, rather than arguing with each other into submission.

This is the Leadership Journey series on the Choosing Leadership Podcast.

I believe we all have a lot to learn from each other’s stories – of where we started, where we are now, and our successes and struggles on the way. With this series of interviews, my attempt is to give leaders an opportunity to share their stories and for all of us to learn from their generous sharing.

In the interview, Arturs shares his vision for the future and how he plans to take his company from 15 to 50 people. He is a leader who is not afraid to get his hands dirty and he is ready to do any job in his company. He has no false pride of being a CEO, and yet, at the same time, takes time to step way from the day-to-day to focus on the long-term strategy for his company, and then supporting his team to execute on that.

You can find Arturs at the below links

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/aburnins/
• https://atommobility.com/

In the interview, Arturs shares

• I always wanted to do things my way. And do the things that I believe it’s the right thing to do.
• Nothing happens in weeks or months. it usually takes years. Or at least half a year to see some initial result. You need to work hard and at least for some time you need to work on idea on a project before you see any reasonable results.
• Energy is a limited resource. You cannot utilize your energy forever without any recharge. you sometimes to recharge your battery to get new energy and new ideas.
• The thing that’s helped me probably the most, I think it’s doing sports. I personally play football. During this one to hour session with the team, you physically cannot think about the business. You cannot think about the problems you just focus on the ball on the team, on the situation on the field. So basically the moment when you basically recharge your mind.
• That’s probably challenge number one. How do we keep everything on the same page? When we have 15 people versus when we have 50 people in a team. 
• So how you communicate, how you make a decision. So that’s one of the challenges to making it very transparent. And not over-micromanage everybody to achieve that.
• I feel comfortable doing any work which is good for the company. Some people think that okay, the CEO should only basically lead or show the vision and don’t do some not CEO stuff. In my opinion, like as far as it’s a company if it helps. I can do any part of the job as far as it helps

This is the Leadership Journey series on the Choosing Leadership Podcast.

I believe we all have a lot to learn from each other’s stories – of where we started, where we are now, and our successes and struggles on the way. With this series of interviews, my attempt is to give leaders an opportunity to share their stories and for all of us to learn from their generous sharing.

In the interview, Bhav shares not just his leadership style but also the madman part of him. He talks about the incredible role luck plays in our journeys, and how he uses drawing to bring a deep focus to his work – and how that helps him stay balanced as a leader.

You can find Bhav at the below links

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/dodonerd

In the interview, Bhav shares

• I’ve always put a lot of my journey down to luck. Like just having been at the right place at the right time with the right manager who was able to guide me into the role.
• I certainly try to think about decisions I make that impact the company that impacts the team. Just like the bigger picture, as opposed to always just focusing on the team.
• I talk about this with my team constantly when we have career development conversations generally. What gives you energy? Like, what is it that gets you up? What do you enjoy? 
• Energy is like a balance. There’s gonna be things that give you energy and things that drain you on an adventure. 
• A large part of like my early influence has always been maths, science, and believe it or not, art. I feel like between those three subjects, you kind of get to see the world with different lenses. So from the math and science perspective, you get to see the world from a very quantitative matter-of-fact, point of view, then from art, you kind of have this very abstract interpretation of what things mean and how people interpret them.
• Everyone’s different. And people react to situations very differently.
• I like to paint and draw when I’m not working. Obviously I’ve got two kids, which means that my free time is limited and precious. Sitting down and painting or drawing helps me take my mind off things and just focus on being in the moment.
• When I focus, I can, I’ll put myself into almost a meditative state where it’s nothing but the problem I’m working on.
• I’ll split my week between like being really close to the problems and what my team working on, but also then taking a huge step back to actually, are we as a team heading on the right track?
• If you don’t want to be misinterpreted or you want to get to some outcome. You have to recognize who you’re speaking to. Adopt and adapt the way you talk to their style.
• If you adopt the right style for your audience. You at least minimize the risk of something being lost in translation. 
• I think there is this distinct lack of training in all organizations, even in education, which prepares people for these non-technical skills. That’s also critical as you progress into leadership positions. 
• We communicate in so many different ways that people sometimes forget.
• If I’m being completely honest. I don’t know what the answer is, what the future holds.
• I use the expression we’re so focused on the gravestone. We forget the graveyard.
• It’s easy to be a good leader when things are looking great. It’s only when you know, you’re staring down the barrel of a gun and you have to make like big decisions and know, you have to prioritize ruthlessly and you have to, you’re going to disappoint people that actually your skills as a leader and your authenticity and your concept communications, they really started to show themselves in you your true character is revealed.
• I’ve said it before and I’ll say again, I think people often forget. Yes, of course you’ve earned your right to be, uh in a position of leadership, but there’s an incredible amount of luck for every person who makes it into a management position, probably like 10X who don’t.
• It took me a while to recognize that I can’t solve every problem. I can’t, I’m not supposed to. I’m supposed to be the advocate. I’m supposed to have the hard conversations when I need to. I need to motivate them when I need to. I need to praise them. 
• All of the skills that got me into this position are not going to be the skillset that will make me successful moving forward.
• I think having a network of peers, people who are at the same level as you don’t have to be in your discipline, Talking to them, understanding what the challenges are, reaching out to people, and understanding what you need to develop a service mindset sooner. It’s going to be super helpful. 

This is the Leadership Journey series on the Choosing Leadership Podcast.

I believe we all have a lot to learn from each other’s stories – of where we started, where we are now, and our successes and struggles on the way. With this series of interviews, my attempt is to give leaders an opportunity to share their stories and for all of us to learn from their generous sharing.

In this interview, which is one of the longest ones I have done because both of us were having so much fun, Bart talks about his goal to offer meaningful and fun work to a thousand people. We also talk about the value of stopping and celebrating and what all happens under the surface of spoken words when it comes to people, conversations, and leadership. You do not want to miss listening to this one.

You can find Bart at the below links

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/snijdersbart/
• https://www.sprintsandsneakers.com/
• https://twitter.com/Bart_Snijders

In the interview, Bart shares

• A big part of my life is my family. So it’s definitely worth mentioning. And, uh, yeah, there’s no book words written how to raise a kid.
• I try to create like a unique company culture and create a legacy with it can inspire other companies as well, how we work together.
• I believe that people can do everything if they want it bad enough.
• We don’t really judge on what you can do at this point, but we look at people at the potential. Like the learning capacity, how fast can they learn something? How willing are they to go the next mile and, and to really push towards the result? And I think that’s failure is a big part of our culture here. 
• I am nothing more than anyone else here. It doesn’t matter if you’re like, if you have a hundred million or not, if you have super smart, super, pretty like rural people. And I think that’s the base of the culture here under leadership, uh, how we try to do it and try to help each other.
• I want to offer a thousand people meaningful and fun work. ’cause I think for a lot of people, work is something you need to do to get paid for. And I really believe that it should be a lot of fun and it should be meaningful.
• Psychological safety is one of the most important things for high-performance teams.
• I don’t offer people work, but offer people meaning. I give them the opportunity to do meaningful work and contribute like, if you look back in 10 years or 20 years, and even like at the end of your life, you can look back and say, Hey, you know, this is what I left behind. This is how I changed the world a bit. 
• Most people in my team understand that having fun and meaningful work is way more important than having a high salary.
• You can never put revenue in front of mental or like even physical health in any way.
• I think we’re the top 50 fastest-growing companies in the Netherlands. And, uh, this is something that we can really be proud of. So I’m really thankful.
• I try to be a good example. So to my teams, uh, I tried to walk in the office like at a different time. Just to, to, to show them that you don’t have to be at nine, like nine to five now, please. Now. And I go to the gym in the middle of the day to show them, and I try not to send slack messages in a weekend or evenings, but to give you the example as well, and, and to, to have that flexibility and to, to be in control of your own life.
• Working for 14 hours straight – that’s the stupidest thing you can do.
• I think in general, like if you can do six hours really productive work a day, and I think you’re very busy and then you can do some like email stuff around it. Please like go to the gym and then work because you will be way more effective and. Yeah, which I do try to support that in older, all the way we can similar as mental health.
• Life is – you cannot, you can never put a filter on everything. I thought it was also stuff that you need to deal with. And people that say that they don’t have any issue. Like. They’re lying because everybody has their own sort of shit.
• I think being a, being a parent is kind of very related to being a leader. because it helps you, first of all, focus on something bigger than yourself. It helps you focus on long term rather than just thinking of short term, uh, many times the way children deal with things. It teaches you a lot.
• If you really look at communication, then words might be the least important thing. You can feel so many different things when you communicate and when you’re leading. And I’m very aware of that energy that I bring.
• Recently I went to a colleague and, and when I was at a desk, she starts crying and I just, I, I saw it. I felt that I needed to be there, but in the past I would never have been capable of doing this because I was not aware of, uh, I was just listening to words, looking at people.

This is the Leadership Journey series on the Choosing Leadership Podcast.

I believe we all have a lot to learn from each other’s stories – of where we started, where we are now, and our successes and struggles on the way. With this series of interviews, my attempt is to give leaders an opportunity to share their stories and for all of us to learn from their generous sharing.

In our interview, Sandeep talks about his career as a series of base-camps on the way to the summit. He spoke about his learnings from his father, shared his views on leadership – and how leadership all starts with being authentic. He also gave some advice on trust, building relationships, and putting down the weight or burden we unnecessarily put on your shoulders – as a leader. Those who are listening, this is going to be an inspirational listen for you.

You can find Sandeep at the below links

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandeepbsharma

In the interview, Sandeep shares

• You believe in people they believe in you and that’s when great things happen. And that’s when trust builds.
• People recognize me for my smile and I keep smiling, even during the toughest of my days.
• A lot of times in leadership, people say that to hide their emotions, they need to read a mask. And I don’t think so. Those times are there right now. Post the pandemic, you need to be authentic, you need to be truthful.
• I’ve always, probably been in the background, not confident about myself. To now be in the foreground um, is been conscious of not being it’s taken a lot of hard work and effort work.
• When people are able to express themselves, that is a validation of a leader. I think that’s what we need to be. 
• You just be what you are. I don’t think so. You need to fake it. Because people will see it if you fake it.
• Fundamentally, if you do three things that 1) give people clarity, 2) enable them to do the job and 3) keep motivating them, you will be successful in anything which you do. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. 
• I’m happy at the end of the day when you yourself are happy and the people we’re supporting are happy. 
• Nobody’s perfect in this world actually its imperfections are what makes us so human beings.
• What got you here will not get you there. we had to shed some weight because when the oxygen would be less, the lighter you are, the better you walk.

This is the Leadership Journey series on the Choosing Leadership Podcast.

I believe we all have a lot to learn from each other’s stories – of where we started, where we are now, and our successes and struggles on the way. With this series of interviews, my attempt is to give leaders an opportunity to share their stories and for all of us to learn from their generous sharing.

In the interview, Thomas opens up about realising how he was living a life that was not what he really wanted. We talk about the importance of focusing on yourself first, and the importance of happiness, friendships, experiences, and relationships. He shares the wisdom of doing nothing, and the important role sports and exercise play in his life. In addition to leading his company, he climbs mountains, does kickboxing, races cycles, and has plans to make a movie. He knows he is more than what he does and doesn’t let work define him.

You can find Thomas at the below links

• https://twitter.com/thomasvles
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasvles/

In the interview, Thomas shares

• I realized about myself that I was living a life that was actually the life that I thought I wanted, but not the life I really wanted.
• Later on I realized that’s actually it’s more important to also focus on yourself. Having the quality of life, happiness, friendships, relationships, experience and yeah, that, that sort of you have changed the whole ambitions that I had.
• If you ask people, then they would probably describe me as being very ambitious, but for me, work is lower on the priority list 
• I think it’s very important to live your life like that you take, most of life gives you, and I think that’s the responsibility to everybody, as you can not change what happens to a person, but you can still change the way you respond to things that happen.
• In the weekend, I really try to focus on not working. I tried to keep the weekend really private.
• My team gives me a lot of energy. everybody takes ownership. Everybody feels as if you’re on a mission and that’s, I think very special.
• I believe that every person is interesting and has a story, so I always am keen to hear about that.
• I’m currently here and enjoying it, so there’s no need for me to really look ahead in life.
• I really enjoy doing something for the first time. 
• I try to put myself in places where I can really take everything out of myself and full myself and grow a lot
• He basically helped me out in a very difficult period of my life by sharing with me his wisdom about doing nothing and letting everything go for a while in order to to find what you need to do. that advice is advice that actually led to where I am today.
• I think it’s going to sound very egoistic, but let’s say this, the first thing you need to worry about is yourself. If you are not in touch with yourself, then how can you love work? 
• People would describe me as being super ambitious. So it’s, I think it’s about seeing the relevance in it and also not letting things define you. Like it doesn’t make me a better person to have a great job, but it does put me in a position where I can have an impact on leadership.
• I think gratitude is key in life, for sure. I’m really grateful for the people around me for the blessings because I’m very privileged in life. And also I was lucky sometimes. But mainly also about let’s say how amazing I’m healthy. I have a beautiful wife and a good life. Everything is really good. 
• I do think that if you can create an environment in your office where you have the feeling that you were friends with everybody and it’s a fun experience for everybody. And I think that’s very important also for your success as a company. 
• You need to be basically naive enough to believe in your own dreams. And then really go for it.
• If you have a product start selling it before you have it and see if people like it.