Speaking and Communicating Podcast

[00:00:00] Roberta Ndlela: Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast. I am your host, Roberta Ndlela. If you are looking to improve your communication skills both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

[00:00:18] And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review. Now let's get communicating with our returning guest today and a friend of the show, my friend Ian Hatton joining us from South Africa, also known as Morpheus. And he'll explain to us why he has that name and how it relates to leadership.

[00:00:41] Ian is returning today because he has developed an EGG Based Leadership Matrix and he will talk to us about the three states of leadership, and I bet that's the first time you've heard that. And before I go any further, please help me welcome [00:01:00] him to the show. Hi Ian.

[00:01:03] Ian Hatton: Hey Roberta. It's so good to be back with you and to be speaking to a fellow South African on an international podcast.

[00:01:10] Roberta Ndlela: Absolutely. Welcome back. It's good that you're here as well. We had a fantastic first conversation, but today you're bringing us so many, many new things. But first of all, being the bestselling author of the book 'Lead Like Morpheus', what does Morpheus mean and how did the name come about?

[00:01:31] Ian Hatton: Yeah, great story.

[00:01:32] Let me start off with what it means. So Morpheus Greek god of dreams, also later a character in a comic book. And, and then of course a character from the movies, the Matrix movies. And you know, in that sense, Morpheus is not the hero.

[00:01:46] He is the one who raises up the hero. He's the one who believes and others have stopped believing. He's not the political or, or a military leader, but he does support them and advise them and that kind of thing. So that's a little bit

of the [00:02:00] background. So where did the name come from? We had a bunch of friends.

[00:02:02] We got together and we were saying, so who are we? Mythically or mystically? You know, who are you? kind of thing. And we, we came away. Different people had different names. When they got to me, I said, I don't know. I've got no idea. And one of my friends said, but it's obvious. I said, what do you mean it's obvious?

[00:02:18] And she said, but Ian, you are Morpheus. And I said, oh, I'd love to be Morpheus. I could never be Morpheus, but I would love to be Morpheus. And she said, no, no, you are Morpheus. And then the other friends all chimed in and said, of course you are Morpheus. You are the one who raises up the other leaders. And,

[00:02:35] And so, that took me a while to then fully accept that and integrate it. But today I'm quite comfortable being called Morpheus.

[00:02:45] Roberta Ndlela: I absolutely love that, especially when you say you raise up other leaders. 'cause that's been your mission and you've worked in over 107 countries with thousands of leaders, and you are very much on a mission for [00:03:00] conscious leadership.

[00:03:01] What exactly does conscious leadership mean and where are you taking your mission?

[00:03:09] Ian Hatton: So this is a, such an interesting question. And, I think people, not everybody loves the, the idea or the, the name conscious leadership, but really what it means is it's, it's an, it's a self-aware leader. A leader who's aware of who they really are.

[00:03:23] Who they are in their essence. And they've been on an inner leadership journey. You know, John C. Maxwell is quoted as saying, everything rises and falls on leadership. I add to that and I say, leadership rises and falls on self-leadership. And so for me the key is the inner journey.

[00:03:41] And that's really what the, the sort of definitions are out there, is that a conscious leader is one who's been on the inner journey and is continuing 'cause you never end that journey, but is on the journey of learning to lead themselves because how do we lead others if we don't know how to lead ourselves first?

[00:03:59] Roberta Ndlela: Very true. [00:04:00] It all starts with self-leadership. Now let's talk about what you call the three states of leadership. What are those?

[00:04:08] Ian Hatton: So, as you mentioned, I have worked with leaders now from 107 countries and counting. It's growing all the time. And what I discovered is that as I'm working with these leaders and these managers, we are finding that they, they don't all seem to be thriving. In fact, a very small minority are actually thriving as leaders. And what we found is most of them are either in what we call a survivor state of leadership or a striver state of leadership. And, the problem is that neither of those are optimal.

[00:04:40] And in fact, I've even done work with organisations where over 60% of their leaders, are in a survivor state. Then I say to them, so how are you gonna grow as a business? How are you gonna increase those revenues or profits or market share or customer service or staff engagement that you're looking for?

[00:04:57] If your leaders are only in a [00:05:00] survivor state, or maybe even in a striver state, but they're not in a thriver state. So those are the three states of leadership I talk about. and I often position them in a triangle, a survivor, a striver in a thriver state of leadership. And it's so important to realize the incredible benefits of having leaders in a thriver state.

[00:05:19] They don't burn out. They're much more self-sustainable. They have a higher impact on staff engagement and customer experience and profitability. They have capacity for dealing with change. So the ideal is the thriver state. But there's no judgment if somebody isn't in the thriver state, because guess what?

[00:05:39] We move between all three states all the time.

[00:05:43] Roberta Ndlela: Hmm. So we have survivor, we have striver, and we have thriver. Now Ian, you said almost 60% of some organisations are survivors.

[00:05:54] Ian Hatton: Yeah.

[00:05:54] Roberta Ndlela: A survivor leader works in what dynamic, for instance.

[00:05:59] Ian Hatton: Hmm. It's a [00:06:00] very interesting dynamic.

[00:06:00] It's quite people-centric, which you think could be a very positive thing. And of course we do believe in people-centric leadership. It's so people-centric that it's all about just surviving every single day. So my team are demanding things from me. My clients are demanding things from me. Maybe my bosses are demanding things from me.

[00:06:18] And so I'm trying to meet and please all these people demands all the time. And I often don't have very strong boundaries and I don't have a lot of clarity about seeing beyond today and thinking for how do I bring about the changes that'll take me out of a day to day just trying to survive state?

[00:06:38] Roberta Ndlela: Just trying to survive. Does that mean if your team is demanding? Do you just rescue everybody? Do you just do damage control all the time so you don't have time to think of the bigger picture?

[00:06:52] Ian Hatton: It's very much exactly that. And, and you know, there's a beautiful saying and it's a saying about boundaries.

[00:06:58] Because I mentioned they don't particularly [00:07:00] always have strong boundaries. And, what happens is the saying is this, that does helping always help? And it is such an interesting thing because you can create dependency by helping too much. And I'm not saying that great leaders don't help, of course they do.

[00:07:16] But if they're helping in a way that creates a dependency, what they're doing is perpetuating that survivor state of leadership because everybody in our depends on them. rather than taking their own ownership and responsibility for their tasks.

[00:07:32] Roberta Ndlela: So that's the survivor. The next state, which are both at the bottom of the triangle is the striver.

[00:07:38] Now, for the purposes of viewers and listeners, I did take the free assessment and we are gonna share details on where everybody can participate and take the free assessment. And I found that I was a striver.

[00:07:50] So what kind of leader is a striver? And we talked about this with you.

[00:07:56] Ian Hatton: Maybe you should describe it, seeing that you came up there.[00:08:00]

[00:08:04] So what I typically say is that the motto of the striver is try harder. And so the solution to every problem is more effort, more work. It's not necessarily a zoom out and try smarter. it's not necessarily a try softer because sometimes that's a good way to go. and all of those are kind of excluded because everything is about effort and focus.

[00:08:25] And let me just try harder and try harder. So my solution to everything. So quite goal-driven. I mean, there are a lot of positives around a striver as well. Very much, you know, thinking about how do we get to where we're trying to get to, but sometimes resulting in burning out their people, and not creating a very sustainable environment of high engagement.

[00:08:45] So the answer to every problem is let me just work longer hours, let me just try harder. And sometimes my family suffers. Sometimes my people suffer.

[00:08:54] Roberta Ndlela: Hmm. And here's the, one of the things we talked about, 'cause we started [00:09:00] working in the nineties where the idea of people-centered leadership and soft skills has been a conversation in the last decade or two.

[00:09:09] But back then, this was not an idea. But yes, we thought, we were told the more that you work hard, the more the potential for promotions and bonuses and climbing up the ladder. We all want to climb the ladder. So work ethic, work ethic work harder, longer, harder, longer, because I want to get to the top.

[00:09:29] And that's what we were told. That is the formula.

[00:09:31] Ian Hatton: Mm-hmm. So what's really interesting about that is, that absolutely was true, but we ended up then with organisations that were driven by command and control. And the problem with command and control is that you're not engaging the hearts and minds of all the people.

[00:09:47] And so it's very much, the leadership is focused around one person who is driving everything. Even Steve Jobs said this. He said, there's nothing more stupid than hiring smart people and then telling [00:10:00] them what to do. And that sort of striver leadership has a lot of command and control in it to kind of, let me tell you what to do. What he said is, we should actually be hiring smart people and asking them what we should be doing.

[00:10:11] And so the striver leader finds that quite difficult often. And therefore what we are looking for is a bit more emotional intelligence. And what's fascinating in the research is that. In the longer term, the leader that's more likely to be promoted is the emotionally intelligent one, not the one that puts in the longest hours.

[00:10:32] The hard work and long hours is often great for an individual contributor, but not necessarily for building great culture, great organisations, highly engaged staff, people who take a lot of ownership themselves. And that comes much more from a thriver type of leader.

[00:10:49] Roberta Ndlela: Right. And the difference between EQ and IQ.

[00:10:53] You shared one very beautiful story about your brother. Would you like to do that for us again?

[00:10:59] Ian Hatton: Well, I have [00:11:00] two very intelligent brothers and a very intelligent sister, but the brother just older than me was very much a bookworm growing up. He loved his books. He spent a lot of time on his own, and then went into a very technical IT career and in fact became one of the top, enterprise architects in South Africa.

[00:11:17] So very intelligent. and what he did was got so focused around the technical parts, and it doesn't mean he didn't have any people skills, but it was so interesting that he was in his fifties and he said to me one day, you know, Ian, it's so interesting. I'm starting to watch a lot of podcasts around emotional intelligence. Because what I'm realizing is I was such a bookworm growing up, and I was so technically focused in my career that I didn't develop emotional intelligence. And I now realize that I was be being left behind in that way. And so he decided to grow his emotional intelligence. And in fact, the research says our emotional intelligence sort of [00:12:00] peaks in our fifties or sixties.

[00:12:02] He was on schedule in a way of, suddenly developing these, these skills because it is a skill. It's not, it's not a character trait, it's a skill.

[00:12:11] Roberta Ndlela: Right? I'm about to turn 50, I guess there's hope for me as well. So we've discussed survivor, we've discussed striver.

[00:12:19] Now let's talk about the thriver, which is sort of what we are all hoping that the kind of leadership that we are hold hoping to reach. So what is a thriver and how is it different from the last two states we've already mentioned.

[00:12:36] Ian Hatton: I'd like to just suggest, because when we do the assessment, and there is an assessment for this, that most people come out as either survivor or striver the first time they do it. And it's a current state, there's no life sentence or whatever.

[00:12:51] We have this assessment which helps people to understand and it's a variable thing.

[00:12:56] So before I go and pitch that a thriver is utopia or something like that. [00:13:00] 'cause it's not. I do want to just say that we've literally had somebody in the course of, I think it was six or eight weeks, who did the assessment three times and came out in three different places. And the first one was thriver.

[00:13:14] The second one was survivor, and the third one was striver. And we were doing a debrief from this whole leadership team. There were, I think about 12 leaders in the room. And they were doing, we were doing a debrief. And she said, you know, she can totally explain why she shifted between them as she did the assessment.

[00:13:31] And the assessment, by the way, is a free assessment for discovering whether you're in survivor, thriver or thriver. And she said she could completely explain what her mindset was, where she was when she got the thriver result, what was going on when she got the survivor result, and what was going on when she got the striver.

[00:13:48] And so the reason I'm putting that in place is we often talk about thriver status being the state of conscious leadership. So it's the place where we are very aware of [00:14:00] ourselves, we know our genius, we know what our people's genius is, you know, the strengths that are an advantage over everybody else.

[00:14:08] Those kind of strengths. And we kind of know all of those things about ourselves and we're also very aware of our people and how to develop their strengths. And, and we are very self-aware. We developed our emotional intelligence. We've got clear boundaries in place. We've been on an inner leadership journey, this kind of thing.

[00:14:28] It doesn't make us immune to dropping what we call below the line into a survivor or a striver state. In fact, this sort of idea that we can have this perfectionism where we are always in this thriver state, is a bit of a myth. We do move between them. What's very good though, is a truly conscious leader when

they do drop below that line and they find themselves maybe behaving like a bit of a victim or not having the boundaries in place or whatever of a [00:15:00] survivor or the Try harder, try harder, try harder of the striver, they go, oh, that's what's going on.

[00:15:06] I know what to do to get myself back to the thriver state. And so the thriver state is not a destination. It's kind of a dynamic where we go, it is the optimal, but we are gonna have moods, we are gonna have crises, we're gonna have all sorts of things that can happen. And it's okay. It's not about perfection.

[00:15:26] Roberta Ndlela: Mm-hmm. Right. Like you said, 'cause you states are, like you said, a parallel to that would be mood. One time you're happy, one time you're sad, and one time you, and it's like a state is how you know, the person you just mentioned when they took the assessment at different times of their lives, they came out differently because the state they were in.

[00:15:50] But the key thing is the consciousness. That is knowing that the reason today my leadership is at this level is because [00:16:00] of it's the consciousness.

[00:16:02] Ian Hatton: Yes, indeed. Indeed. And Roberta, what's so exciting about that is that, you know, we often think of things as a life sentence. Oh, I'm just a low EQ person, or I'll never be good at setting boundaries.

[00:16:15] Actually, that's not true. They are skills we can learn and we can apply and we can get ourselves into a more conscious place, and especially the these skills. I mean, one of my favorite things is I keep saying to people, as a leader, your number one job each day is yourself. Not your only job. Of course you want to serve your people and grow your people and engage them and get the results that you're aiming for and fulfilling your vision and building your culture.

[00:16:42] You wanted to be doing all of that. But how do you do that if you haven't first built the capacity here? If you haven't first gone, let me lead myself, then I can lead others. Let me put my own oxygen mask on before I try to help the person next to me with theirs.

[00:16:59] Roberta Ndlela: [00:17:00] Mm-hmm. Which means that then keeps your state at a much higher level.

[00:17:06] But also you talk about the genius zone, your unique genius. Why is that so relevant, and why is it so crucial when it comes to leadership? Because

we always think, wait a minute, okay, I got promoted because I'm good at my job and the best engineer there is, or whatever the reason is. And now I have to lead people.

[00:17:27] So if I'm leading and building a team, how does the Genius zone part kick in? Because we're just doing our jobs.

[00:17:37] Ian Hatton: Right? Right. So there's a couple of things that come up for me while you're asking that question, but I'm gonna start with the core thing of what you're talking about. And that is that we are all unique.

[00:17:47] I mean, if we just go into the research on the neurons and the brain and the synaptic connections between them, there are so many infinite possible combinations of wiring that there will, there never have been two [00:18:00] people completely alike just in the brain, let alone fingerprints and voice tones and, you know, our retinas and all the other stuff that we makes us unique and skin tones and all of those other things that contribute.

[00:18:11] But just in the brain, the statistics of you, there's ever been anybody like you and that there ever will be anybody like you is so infinitesimally small that it's just not gonna happen. And so what we're saying is, okay, so if we're all unique... Does that mean we all have different strengths and weaknesses?

[00:18:32] And let me define quickly a strength and a weakness. so many people think a strength is something I'm good at, and a weakness is something I'm bad at. Actually, a better definition is a strength is an activity that makes me feel strong, intelligent, in flow, energized, you know, focused, time just whizzes by, you know, this, this kind of thing.

[00:18:56] And a weakness is an activity that kind of drains, that kind of [00:19:00] weakens that, that makes me feel stupid. And I have to admit, every day I encounter things that make me feel strong and encounter things that make me feel just a little bit slow. And that uniqueness, you want to leverage the strength.

[00:19:14] And some people say, oh, no, no. Well, I'm just gonna fix my weaknesses. I'm gonna work hard on them. The reality is, why would you want to work hard to be better at something that drains you? Surely you want to invest in something that strengthens you, that energizes you. And of course the neuroscience then backs that up and says, our potential for growth is infinitely bigger, in an area that is already a strength.

[00:19:40] And it is totally limited. If in something that is not a strength, something that is a weakness, that you, there are just certain things you're never gonna get beyond. Because yes, we believe in neuroplasticity, we can change our brains, but we grow much faster and much more effectively in the area of our talent, in the area of our [00:20:00] wiring, the area that energizes us than we will ever do in a non genius area.

[00:20:06] Roberta Ndlela: Hmm. Because think of the effort you exert if it's something that is, consider it a weakness or you slow in versus, you know, I think when it's something that threatens you and gets you excited, do you want to wake up in the morning! It's not about money. You know, those people who work in the, in those industries, like, doesn't even feel like work.

[00:20:26] We all want to be in a situation where we feel like our work doesn't even feel like work. And therefore, that means your genius, your creativity, your talent, your strength comes out much more than putting effort into fixing yourself in an area where you're not very strong.

[00:20:44] Ian Hatton: You know, there's some research that says that, in certain industries, they haven't universalized the research, but in certain industries, they found if the person spent 20% of every day in this sort of genius flow state, 20% was enough [00:21:00] for them to have incredibly higher job satisfaction, lower burnout, you know, just much better contributions in the, in to their colleagues and their clients and all of this kind of stuff. But the particular one was burnout was like 35 times lower in these people versus the people who spent less than 20% of every day in a flow state.

[00:21:20] So it's really massive. But I know a lot of your audience are quite technical, right? And, I want to use this very specific example where we combine these ideas of kind of emotional intelligence and, and strengths and genius. and it's the research that they did amongst engineers specifically where they got the engineers to rate each other as to who was the best engineer.

[00:21:46] And there were 300 people as it was multiple groups of engineers that they studied. And consistently the highest rated engineer on their engineering skills. So they were not asking them about their leadership skills, they were asking about their [00:22:00] engineering skills. Consistently, the highest rated engineers by their peers were the ones with the highest emotional intelligence, the ones that scored the highest ...

[00:22:09] Roberta Ndlela: ...got the best engine

[00:22:11] And the question wasn't who's got the highest level of emotional intelligence.

[00:22:16] Ian Hatton: Or best leadership skills or anything. It was who is the best engineer and it was the ones with the highest EQ. You know, our IQ peaks at about the age of about 19 on average. It does vary from person to person. Our EQ, as I said, peaks in our fifties or sixties.

[00:22:32] So the thing that will might get you into an organisation might be your IQ, but the thing that will get you to the top is actually your emotional intelligence ultimately.

[00:22:42] Roberta Ndlela: It reminds me of, I don't know if you know of the Google Oxygen study where they researched their top leaders. But they found that a lot of them actually, the reason they were on the top of the leadership hierarchy at Google [00:23:00] wasn't the software engineering skills.

[00:23:03] Ian Hatton: Yeah.

[00:23:03] Roberta Ndlela: They listed about soft skills, about seven of them.

[00:23:06] And those are the common traits that those Google leaders had, not because they were the best at coding and every software related, kind of work. And it got me thinking that even in engineering where we talk about this, they also find that those are the skills that get them to the top.

[00:23:27] Ian Hatton: Exactly. And that study, I mean there's all sorts of studies about the most successful CEOs. So there are a lot of very successful CEOs who don't have high EQ. But what they found is over time, the ones that succeeded for the longest time were all ones that had invested in growing their EQ. And you know, we started this piece of the conversation around genius.

[00:23:48] And so when I talk about investing in your genius, so maybe you do have very, very good technical engineering skills. A great way to invest in more flow is [00:24:00] to grow the EQ that accompanies that, that takes the engineering skill to a perceived higher level.

[00:24:08] Roberta Ndlela: Absolutely. So then back to the assessment, which we mentioned earlier, that then decides whether you are in one of the states, survivor, striver or thriver.

[00:24:19] Ian Hatton: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:21] Roberta Ndlela: We are talking about self-awareness. First of all, in taking the assessment, what have you found just in common, and on average, what have you found, especially with the clients you work with, have been the, "Oh my word, this is what I was doing and this is the reason!" The self-awareness, but would you care to share maybe one or two stories from that?

[00:24:46] Ian Hatton: Yes, indeed. So, so maybe just to say, the assessment is called the EGG3 Assessment, and I'm gonna, you know, hold up an EGG here. It's called the EGG3 Leadership Assessment. And I'll put up a QR code in a moment if [00:25:00] people want to take it.

[00:25:00] It's free to do the assessment and it'll give you that result of, am I currently in survivor striver or thriver? And you could redo it as much as you want to.

[00:25:09] But what's really interesting, I'll tell you two stories. The one is that, somebody who came through as a survivor leader.

[00:25:18] And what was happening is they were taking so much responsibility for all of the tasks that their people were assigned, that their people didn't have a sense of ownership of those tasks. They kind of went, oh, well the leader's owning this. And this is a senior leader. This is a seasoned senior leader. But what she found, we've got these little videos. And so she watched these videos and she went, oh my goodness. I realize what happened. I reached a certain age and just took responsibility for everybody and everything.

[00:25:52] She made that her default leadership setting, that people don't feel ownership of their tasks because she owns them. She said [00:26:00] this even carried through to her son. She's a single parent, and it carried through to her son where she discovered that she was making all the decisions for him and wasn't empowering him to make his own decisions.

[00:26:13] And so she shifted her parenting to go, okay, so what would you like to wear today? And her son was like, you know, "Whoa, I can choose?" And then she talked it through with him. And he was so proud next day when he went to school and he had chosen exactly what he's going to wear.

[00:26:30] And then she said, a trauma based decision that she had taken, she was about 12 or something when she took this decision, had carried through and impacted all of her leaders. And of course when we assessed the rest of her leadership team that reported to her just over 60%, came out as survivor. Because she was owning everything and she's now busy rebuilding the team

with a new mindset, a thriver mindset where she is generating ownership. She's not, dominating all of the [00:27:00] conversations, making all the decisions.

[00:27:02] By the way, the second time she did the assessment, she came out as a striver, but this was before we'd done the intervention. And then from the intervention, she's just gone like this. She's watched all the videos and says, but I can see exactly where I went wrong. So that's one story there on the survivor side.

[00:27:20] Roberta Ndlela: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:20] How many times have we said these skills, if you develop them, they will benefit you professionally and personally, even in your own personal life? That showed the difference.

[00:27:30] Ian Hatton: You know what that's about, to such an extent, Roberta, is that why we do the self-leadership is because true leadership skills become embodied. They impact everything., They impact our families. I've literally had people come to me and say, you know, I learned such good skills and I practiced them on my team, and my team has developed and it's wonderful, but you know, the biggest impact is it changed my marriage or it changed my parenting, and that means everything to me.

[00:27:59] And that's [00:28:00] true leadership, is when it is, it's 360 degrees. It's impacting everything. It's even impacting the way I respond to my boss. It's, you know, that's all part of that deal.

[00:28:12] So, yeah, let me tell a striver story, something very similar in the sense that there was somebody who came out very dominantly as a striver and was kind of blind to the, there being another way of leading.

[00:28:24] And again, watched these 15 free videos that we have and then came back to me, she sent me an email and just said. "This has been life changing. I suddenly see where I've been going wrong and I take myself quite seriously, but I now want to grow it. And you mentioned emotional intelligence. Give me resources."

[00:28:42] We pointed them to our podcast episode about it. We gave them a book reference where there's an assessment and various things that they could engage with. But it was so interesting. When people look in the mirror and go, "Wow, now I see what I've been doing, and I [00:29:00] don't want to be that leader anymore. I want to shift it."

[00:29:03] And I realize that there are many strengths. For example, in her case, she was on the finance side of this particular organisation, the leader of the finance department. And she said, you know, there's a lot of the striver drive, which makes a lot of sense in that area. But she's being limited by only having a striver solution to everything and not growing her emotional intelligence. Where in actual fact she deals with clients, she deals with staff members, people come to her with all sorts of issues, and if she isn't emotionally intelligent, she's limiting her impact.

[00:29:36] And so she's embraced this journey and is now going far down this road of growing her emotional intelligence and loving it. And she's about to redo the assessment.

[00:29:46] So the jury's still out, but I have a suspicion that when she does the assessment now, she's gonna come out as a thriver too.

[00:29:53] Roberta Ndlela: One of the reasons I love that stories you illustrate, that the bottom line gets affected. Because I think [00:30:00] sometimes, you know, we talk about leadership and being people centered and being conscious, some of the leaders might think: "All the mushy stuff, Ian, like, seriously, we have a business to run!" But it actually shows that the bottom line...

[00:30:16] Ian Hatton: Yes. Yeah, exactly. My favorite story of that just literally happened in the last two weeks. Where, we've done exactly this kind of work where we did the assessment.

[00:30:26] And we redid the assessment with doing no intervention and everything stayed about the same.

[00:30:30] There was one small change where one person had totally embraced it and run with it of their own accord. And that was the only significant change from the first to the second assessment.

[00:30:40] But then they said, hang on, Ian, let's encourage everybody to take these new videos you've now created and let's work with the team to actually roll it out in the whole organisation.

[00:30:49] And he just sent me a video he shot on his phone, last week to say that this 30-year-old company, he's the founding CEO, nearing retirement [00:31:00] age, but not yet retiring and trying to build his succession of leadership. And he concluded it by saying that it's their best financial results ever.

[00:31:10] And it was, he believes, built on the back of significantly shifted leadership. The whole culture of the organisation is shifting. And we've had person after person retesting and coming out as thriver, coming out as thriver, coming out as thriver. And that those two are now aligning that we are actually seeing those financial results.

[00:31:30] Another person pointed out, and this is something that I've always believed in and it's one of the reasons we created the assessment and what he said to me, 'cause it was so good when the client says it to you, you know, I know that this is what I was trying for. And he said, these leadership states are a predictor of organisational performance.

[00:31:51] Whereas last year's financial results mean nothing about what's gonna happen this year. There's no ways that, because last year's financials were [00:32:00] good, you've got any guarantees that that's gonna project into the future. And typically they lag as well. So the last year's financial results come out, you know, six months after the year ended.

[00:32:11] They're reflecting actually the previous year, and they're not a predictor of what might happen.

[00:32:17] Imagine this, you've got an, you've got these, this triangle where you've got survivor, striver and thriver, and 60% of your people are in survivor and maybe another 20% in striver.

[00:32:27] But imagine taking that and now 60% of your people are in thriver. It's a no brainer. Your organisation is going to thrive. Customer service, profit, revenue. Everything shifts.

[00:32:41] Roberta Ndlela: And so that you don't have excuse of, oh, we're gotta focus on people. The business will fall apart.

[00:32:47] Actually, they go current concurrently. Now back to the EGG.

[00:32:52] I see that on your logo, you know when an EGG hatches, you actually expect either a chick or a [00:33:00] duck. But yours is a dragon, which I love. 'cause I was born in 1976, which in Chinese view is the year of the dragon. Why a dragon? I was fascinated by that.

[00:33:12] Ian Hatton: The idea behind this was we took it to our designer and we said, in the EGG imagery, survivor has a particular EGG with a Band-Aid

on, and the striver has a EGG with the feet sticking out and it runs, but it's blind, and the thriver is now hatched out of the EGG and is free.

[00:33:28] So that's the imagery. And we went to my designer and said, what becomes of that chick? Can you maybe give us a design, a little bit like this kind of thing. But we thought of maybe an eagle or something like that, because everybody knows, the eagle is the leader and all this kind of stuff.

[00:33:45] And she came back with the dragon and I just loved it. And of course if you look up dragon symbolism, it's got so much. And I'm sure you know a lot because being born in the year of the dragon, it's got some incredible symbolism.

[00:33:55] In the book, 'cause we're gonna talk about the book in a moment.

[00:33:59] Roberta Ndlela: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:59] Ian Hatton: But in [00:34:00] the book, you get to decide what that is. So we've got a dragon on the cover. So we've got, the EGG Based Leadership book and it's got a dragon on the cover. Yeah. You've got a copy. And what we are saying there is you are the co-author of the book. And as the co-author of the book, you complete the story.

[00:34:23] What is your thriver that is hatching, maybe for you, it's not a dragon. Maybe it is an eagle or a falcon or something like that. I know somebody, one of my friends who's very nautical and he wants his to be an albatross. He thinks that's the maturity of his leadership. And of course, some people might want to be an owl or a dove, or, I mean, who knows?

[00:34:46] I know somebody said to me that one of their favorites is the tern, t-e-r-n. And these birds can pretty much fly from, I think from, New Zealand all the way to Antarctica and back.

[00:34:58] Birds are incredible. And [00:35:00] I'm not saying that it could only be a bird. I mean, maybe yours is an ostrich, I don't know. But maybe different people, different things.

[00:35:05] And you can design your own life around what the kind of leader you ultimately want to be.

[00:35:12] Roberta Ndlela: Hmm. So you co-author the story. Is that the reason? Because this is an actual journal. It's not a book, it's not an online course or an ebook. Is that the reason you actually wrote it as a journal?

[00:35:30] Ian Hatton: Exactly that.

[00:35:31] And so there's a matrix diagram, quite early on in the book. I'll show, I'll actually hold it up and show a little bit. Where we actually talk about a whole lot of the aspects of how the book actually works. But fundamentally there is, if you did five days of journaling a week, in other words, if you, for example, only chose weekdays, and different people will do it in different ways, there's a lot of flexibility.

[00:35:55] It's got 50 different topics, five days per [00:36:00] topic. and those 50 days, those five days per week, therefore it's 250 journal entries that you can make in a year, which is 50 weeks is almost a year. So, if you started on the 1st of January, you could finish just before Christmas.

[00:36:14] And the idea being that you write your own story. We prompt you with questions, but you write your own story. And we've actually got a place right in the front of the book. I'm gonna show you this quickly. Oh, this one's already got writing in, but it actually has a place where you can put your name in, where you can say, I am the co-author of this, of this story.

[00:36:33] And, and that's what a thriver state does. We, we know everybody has a unique genius. So as you're developing that unique genius, your book is gonna be unique. It's not gonna be like anybody else's. So that's the structure of it. But because we've got that little matrix, you can also pick and choose topics if you want to.

[00:36:51] So the way it's structured is we have a model, which is, we deal with all the mindset issues, we deal with all the clarity issues, all the genius issues, all the wisdom issues, [00:37:00] and all of the ability, the competency issues as well. But at the same time, the EGG Assessment actually has 10 different facets to it in three dimensions.

[00:37:10] And so you can say, oh, self-leadership is my issue. I want to go and do all the self-leadership stuff. And so you're not bound by the sequence of the chapters as it stands. You decide what's gonna work best for you as the co-author.

[00:37:25] Roberta Ndlela: Right. Co-author. And my favorite word, clarity, because I think as we've been talking about these three states and the assessment, it brings clarity to you that consciousness will come as you get clearer.

[00:37:44] Ian Hatton: Totally. And it's amazing, Roberta, how often I say to people, what do you want? And they'll either not be able to answer me, that's one possibility, or they will answer something like, oh, I want millions of dollars, or whatever it might be. But [00:38:00] when you really start to drill in, what do you really, really want?

[00:38:04] Clarity there is often lacking. People haven't done that. They know what their business tasks are or they know, from their family or from their children, but they haven't actually stopped to say, what do I really, really want? And, you know, that's the thriver leader, you know, do I want to be an eagle or a tern or an owl or a dove?

[00:38:24] You know, what do we want to actually be? And of course, you know, I'm just mentioning some possibilities. People are gonna come back with hundreds of ideas that we haven't even thought of... Or do you want to be a dragon? And if you are a dragon, which dragon do you want to be?

[00:38:38] There isn't only one type.

[00:38:40] Roberta Ndlela: That's absolutely true. And here's the thing about that question, what do you want? I have found that we are very quick to know what we don't want.

[00:38:49] Ian Hatton: Yeah.

[00:38:49] Roberta Ndlela: If you were to ask me, Roberta, what is it that you want? I'm like, I don't want this, that, this, and this and this and this and that before... listen, I'm happy for those who say I want [00:39:00] millions.

[00:39:00] Yes, we always recite the same thing, but I find that we are very passionate and we are very quick to list the things we do not want.

[00:39:08] Ian Hatton: Right.

[00:39:09] Roberta Ndlela: Before we get to what is it that we are to be clear about? What is it that we actually do want to see happen?

[00:39:16] Ian Hatton: Exactly, exactly. And I see this left, right, and center.

[00:39:19] And for me personally, I mean, my journey was, the one part of leadership I had neglected was self-leadership. And it was only when I started to make myself my number one job every day where I started to learn the practices of learning to love myself and accept myself and invest in myself and to become a self leader first.

[00:39:37] Suddenly my impact on the world increased dramatically. I was shocked. It wasn't like I'd changed my techniques. It was like something inside of me had a bigger impact outside of me because yeah, it's gotta spill over. You know, that's, that's kind of how it works. But one of those awakenings is what I really want and, and what I want is to see a new kind of leadership in the world, you know, to raise [00:40:00] up a new kind of leadership in the world.

[00:40:01] That's, that's what really excites me. And it's gonna be different for each person.

[00:40:07] Roberta Ndlela: Absolutely. And speaking of that, I remember in our first episode you told us about an assessment that your team did where they first rated you very high on your leadership, and then later you, you scored yourself like a 90%, but they scored you around 60 and you were very devastated.

[00:40:25] Would you say that when it dropped, it was a lack of self-leadership? What do you think was going on there?

[00:40:34] Ian Hatton: Yeah, so actually it was even worse than the scores you mentioned. It's went from a hundred percent to 50% and it was the Trust Score. My team stopped being able to trust me. And that was devastating for me because I was always thought of myself as a person of integrity.

[00:40:49] But you're absolutely right, it was a self-leadership issue because what happened was my boss was pressurizing me to be a kind of leader that was like [00:41:00] him. I could have resisted, but I was then trying to fit into that. So what do I then do? I come across as inauthentic to my people because they can see, but this isn't Ian. This isn't the way Ian normally leads.

[00:41:11] And so that inauthenticity then, well, if he's not being authentic, how can we trust him? And so that lack of self-leadership was actually the big key where I could have gone to my boss and said, I want to try another way. I don't

want to do this that way. I want to do this because this is who I really am and this is what's gonna make a bigger difference.

[00:41:30] And I can take some truth from what he was saying, where maybe I hadn't been clear enough with my people or whatever, and that would've been very valuable, but that I didn't try and be him, because that would be very inauthentic, and that was effectively a break of trust with my people.

[00:41:47] Roberta Ndlela: It's a very great example of consciousness and being self-aware.

[00:41:52] Now we've been keeping our listeners in suspense when it comes to the EGG Assessment. I've even mentioned that I've [00:42:00] taken one, and I'm becoming self-aware of my leadership state right now. Where can our listeners get the free assessment? The one that will tell them whether there's strivers survivors or thrivers?

[00:42:13] Ian Hatton: Right.

[00:42:14] So there is a QR code. The code is on the screen. It's also gonna be in the show notes that people can go and have a look there and that will take them straight to where they can do the free EGG3 Assessment. And they actually get three things straight away.

[00:42:27] So they can do the assessment.

[00:42:28] They'll get what we call the Instant Report, which immediately gives them a whole lot of things that they can work on. So they get the assessment result, they get the Instant Report, and then they get to sign up for those videos I mentioned, that Pathway. So let's say if they've got the survivor report, they can then sign up for the Survivor Pathway and that will then give them this flow, and this growth that I'm seeing.

[00:42:51] And you know, I've never launched a learning program before where I've had as much feedback from people that said, this changed my life. It's been [00:43:00] incredible just to see when people say, I did the EGG3 Assessment, I signed up for the Pathways. I've even had people saying, I just watched this 2-minute video and I suddenly realized where I've been going wrong as a leader for the last 20 years. And now I'm gonna shift that. And that kind of thing. So I've had incredible feedback. So all of that is free. You get the EGG3 Assessment, you get the Instant Report and you get the Pathways. That's all free.

[00:43:23] Roberta Ndlela: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:23] Ian Hatton: There is another level that you can add to that. This one year program of workshops. And you know what, Roberta, why don't we give one away to one of our cl, one of your cl one of your, audience.

[00:43:36] Roberta Ndlela: Yeah. We love freebies. Yes. So the first audience member to respond to whatever Ian is going to give away, you'll be the winner please, Ian, go ahead.

[00:43:45] Ian Hatton: So all we need you to do is to sign up using the QR code or the one in the show notes. That's essential. Then you complete those 15 videos and at the end you send us a screenshot with a little note of what did you [00:44:00] learn by watching those 15 videos.

[00:44:02] So it's gonna take 15 days because it's one video a day as they come out and you show us the screenshot afterwards. And then that very last email that you get from us actually says, tell us what you thought. And you reply and you mention this podcast, you mention the Roberta's podcast called the...

[00:44:21] Roberta Ndlela: Speaking And Communicating Podcast.

[00:44:24] Ian Hatton: There we go. The Speaking and communicating podcast. And the first person to do that, to watch all the videos and send us that reply, we are gonna give them the one year program, where they will get signed up and they will then get, workshops through the year around those five things that I mentioned, the mindsets, the, the clarity, the, the genius, the wisdom and the abilities.

[00:44:47] And, they can attend interactive workshops, live workshops through the year on that.

[00:44:52] So that's what we're giving away. For anybody who does want to, there is another level above this, which is, where they can do, get what we [00:45:00] call the Focus Report, which is a very detailed report, which gives, other dimensions from the EGG.

[00:45:06] And so that's a, that's an additional possibility if anybody does want to sign up and we'll provide that information once they're actually fo following it. But there is so much value for free, then there's these workshops and then there's even more of people want it.

[00:45:20] But you know what, Roberta?

[00:45:20] Roberta Ndlela: Absolutely, yes, Ian.

[00:45:23] Ian Hatton: What about somebody who says, well, can I do it myself? Is there a DIY option? A Do-It-Yourself option? And the Do-It-Yourself option is of course the EGG Based Leadership Journal. You can still do the assessment for free, you can go through it as much as you want to.

[00:45:44] It's your own pace, it's your own. You write your story, you get the feedback, and some people are looking for that option, that DIY option and all it's gonna cost is the book and we will give you details of that. If you sign up and do the assessment, we will give that and we'll put a link [00:46:00] in the show notes as well.

[00:46:02] Roberta Ndlela: We definitely will. Thank you so much. First of all, for the free gift, the first listener who will be able to respond and do exactly what Ian said will be the winner, and we'll win all of what is mentioned plus the one year program. And if you want the DIY, the book is available, the journal, so you can be the co-author.

[00:46:23] Now, Ian, when it comes to the assessment, as you said, that there's this self-awareness, I remember when I did mine and I was striver, which is the work ethic, work harder or longer, it made me realize, especially after my discussion with you, that the reason I'm very much that way is be, and I remember asking myself, am I a hypocrite?

[00:46:46] 'cause my podcast is mainly about people centered, let's be more focused. But I'm I'm a different person. What is going on? You know, when I ask one of my team members [00:47:00] something to do and the, did you finish the deadline? Everything. And I came to realize that it's because I was literally brought up in that workspace of your value comes from doing more, harder, delivering more faster than your colleague.

[00:47:21] More recognition will come from working hard. That work ethic. Work ethic.

[00:47:25] And even though I talk about this verbally on the podcast, I found that at first I wasn't implementing these things when I had a team member and I was very task driven.

[00:47:39] Like, oh, I feel like such a hypocrite. I'm preaching one thing.

[00:47:43] I'm practicing another.

[00:47:46] Ian Hatton: So Roberta, you know, you and I have had a conversation about your detailed report and so on, and nobody that I've ever assessed is right in one of the corners. A hundred percent survivor or a hundred percent striver. [00:48:00] A lot of people are much more towards the middle. Maybe not that many thriver, although I've recently worked with an organisation, we nearly a third of their people were in the thriver state already, but they were very keen to get the others there too.

[00:48:13] But most people are somewhere, if you think of it as a continuum between survivor at the one extreme and thriver a striver at the other extreme, this way, nobody's really completely in the corner, 100% striver or 100% survivor. And remember, the survivors are quite people focused and the strivers are very task focused or results focused.

[00:48:33] Most people are not at the extreme, there's somewhere in the middle. And so even though your dot landed on the striver's side, it, I remember very clearly it wasn't that far from the survivor's side, but maybe would need a bit of work to get to the thriver's side. And that's where the videos come in.

[00:48:52] And so if somebody, for example, like you comes up as a striver and then you later go, you know what? But I've got some strong survivor elements too. You can do [00:49:00] those videos for free as well. You can do the survivor videos for free. And so you could actually do both sets to try and see how you can elevate yourself.

[00:49:08] So nobody's right at the extreme, and you certainly weren't. But it's this modus operandi, it comes through conditioning. And that's why. and our business values when we take people on the journey is the second value is freedom because when freedom from the conditioning, freedom from all the shoulds and the aughts and the musts that we've, taken on board to liberate the genius, to be the thriver genius.

[00:49:33] And so really what we are talking about is, is this idea that we want to develop our awareness, as you said, and from the awareness we can say, oh, I see this element in me and I see that element in me. But that's not really who I want to be. I want to be up here. I still want to be me. I'm still gonna be authentic to my essence, my core, who I really am.

[00:49:55] But these traumas and conditionings and things that have [00:50:00] influenced me, I want to start shedding some of those so that I can be free to deliver my full potential as a leader.

[00:50:09] Roberta Ndlela: Absolutely. Now, Ian, I know we've discussed so much, there's been such a rich resource that you've, talked about today, but I'm sure there's one last thing you were hoping to share with our listeners today that I probably didn't ask you.

[00:50:23] Do you have any last words of wisdom?

[00:50:27] Ian Hatton: I think it's really comes down to this, and this is the theme. I mean, we are talking about this whole thing being EGG Based leadership, doing the assessment, the various programs, the book, all of these things. It's all around that. And what for me is this idea that every single one of us is unique.

[00:50:43] We have something unique inside of us in our essence. I love that word essence. And it's often been clouded over our lifetime through the shoulds and the oughts and the musts. And what we want to do is take that essence self-lead to make [00:51:00] that the sage that we bring to the world, the wise leader that we bring to the world, the leader of capacity.

[00:51:06] And this is the big thing, is that when we are chasing "try harder", we, we are gonna start running on empty at some point when we are chasing, you know, "let me help my people, let me be there for my people", the survivor mode, we are also running out of energy at some point.

[00:51:22] The thriver state says, the essence of me self-led going on the inner journey gives me a capacity to lead in a way where I can apply wisdom to the people demands, wisdom to the results demands, and that way build a much more successful organisation. Not just, in terms of the people being happier, and the customers maybe, but actually the bottom line. And the bottom line, I believe comes from Essence Based thriver leadership.

[00:51:56] Roberta Ndlela: The word essence. Does the word [00:52:00] EGG, is it an acronym for something?

[00:52:03] Ian Hatton: So the EGG, you know the answer to this question. Thank you for asking. So the EGG came from what we call the essence growth gap. And thank you for asking that question. The idea is that there is a gap

between the unique essence of who we are and the way we are arriving or showing up as a leader.

[00:52:26] And that growth gap is what the EGG assessment actually measures. That's where it came from. We wanted to measure the gap between who we really are and the fullness of our potential and the way we are currently showing up, the Current Leadership State. And therefore, with that awareness from the EGG3 Leadership Assessment, we can then take ourselves a path to becoming thrivers.

[00:52:53] Roberta Ndlela: Mm-hmm. I'm wondering, just one last thing, Ian, do you think that if a leader is on this path, [00:53:00] does it then, when it comes to their team, does it bring those things out as well? Or each team member should be on their own individual self-discovery journey as well?

[00:53:14] Ian Hatton: Well, leaders, good leaders, great leaders lead themselves first and then lead others. And so for example, this, CEO that I mentioned, who's suddenly had the best financial results ever in their business. He's been on that inner journey this year himself. His staff are going, what has changed? This is, this is different.

[00:53:39] You know, and where can I get it?

[00:53:42] And now I'm getting emails from the staff saying that we are experiencing the same, we are experiencing that same growth. And it's that thing of your own oxygen mask first. Then you help the others. And by self-leading, you build self leaders. And that [00:54:00] becomes a perpetuating thing that changes the whole culture of the organisation.

[00:54:05] Roberta Ndlela: Which is what you do, liberate leaders and help them build the next generation of leaders.

[00:54:12] Ian Hatton, also known as Morpheus Best-selling, author of Lead like Morpheus, the developer of the EGG Based Leadership Journal and Assessment.

[00:54:25] This has been such a rich conversation. I don't even know where to begin, but we just want to take the time to thank you so much for the work you're doing and for being here today.

[00:54:35] Ian Hatton: Thank you, Roberta. It's always a pleasure to have conversations with you.

[00:54:39] Roberta Ndlela: I always love it as well. And before you go, please give us the details again of where to get the free EGG3 Assessment. And also if anyone wants to reach out to you online?

[00:54:53] Ian Hatton: The easiest way to reach out to me is through LinkedIn, and it's just Ian Hatton. If you go through LinkedIn and just search [00:55:00] for Ian Hatton I'm pretty much the top of the list all the time, so you'll find me very easily there. And over here you'll see the link to do the EGG3 Assessment, completely free of charge. And you can get all the videos that follow from what comes out of it.

[00:55:14] Roberta Ndlela: Yes, and please for the first listener who will respond to what Ian has described as our free gift today, thank you so much, will win all the prizes that I mentioned. I appreciate you, Ian. Thank you for being here today. Again, this has been such a pleasure.

[00:55:28] Ian Hatton: Thank you. Thank you. Always a pleasure.

[00:55:30] Roberta Ndlela: My pleasure indeed.

[00:55:32] Don't forget to subscribe, leave a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify and stay tuned for more episodes to come.