#67. Matt Beadle: Hidden Superpowers
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What's up, everybody? Welcome back to The Honest Drink. I'm Justin. You can always reach us at thehonestdrink at gmail.com, Instagram, or WeChat. This episode is hosted by Howie, Eric, and myself. And our guest today is an author and keynote speaker. He's also a very renowned presenter, host, and facilitator. He's known all throughout Europe for his humor and charisma. You can catch him on TV or hosting all sorts of major events and media programs. But

But really, what piqued my interest with him though is his latest book about the paramount importance of finding and nurturing your natural talents and strengths. And I know we all need to work on our flaws and weaknesses, but let's be real, we're probably only gonna see marginal small improvements. However, if you just allocate a bit of time working on your natural gifts, which seems so many of us just don't do, you can see exponential growth and best-in-class performance.

This is, according to our guest, the secret sauce for high performers, outliers, innovators, industry leaders, and record setters. His book is about how we can all use the research and scientific evidence around this principle and apply it in our lives. The book, of course, is called Strengths-Oriented Leadership, The World Through B-Glasses. We had a really wonderful time talking to him. So without further ado, please give it up for Matt Beadle.

But um, cheers!

Well, exactly. It's five o'clock where you are, isn't it? It's 10 o'clock in the morning where I am. So no problem. No problem. I plead for understanding that there's only tea in this, but it's from the heart either way, right? Well, look, Matt, I want to get into a really fast, something I find really fascinating is your latest book. It's your fourth book, right? That's right, Justin. Yes, my fourth book. Yeah.

And the title of the book is "Strengths-Oriented Leadership: The World Through Bee Glasses."

And I'll have to admit, I have not read the book yet. I know it's out on paperback and Kindle, but I'm actually being a podcaster. I like to absorb my information through audio. So I'm waiting for it to come out on Audible. It says on the website, it'll be available on Audible soon. Yeah, we're getting a speaker to do it as we speak. Can I thank you for your honesty in telling me that you hadn't read the book? I've done some podcasts or I've done some marketing and people have gone, fascinating book. It was blatant.

clear that they haven't read it. So I appreciate your candor there. Yeah, but I also know what you mean. Different people like to soak up their media in different ways, don't they? And in fact, my last book

I read myself. I've got a studio here at home and I play a little bit of guitar and stuff and so I set it up and I recorded it myself and it was one of the worst decisions I've ever made in my life. So I'm never, definitely not going to do that next time. I'm listening. Why is that? You seem like you'd be a really good speaker. Well, thank you, but reading your own

words and trying to remember, although you wrote them six months ago, trying to remember the intonation and what you meant by that and where the stress is coming in the sentence and what the main point of that paragraph is and whatever. It was awful. And I ummed and aahed and hummed and hawed and...

it was, I spent more time editing it than I did actually speaking it. So, uh, I think I'm, I think I'm similar to you guys. I'm a bit more kind of an off the cuff kind of guy. If you, uh, you know, if you get me to read word for word, not necessarily where my skills lie. Well, um,

The book, I think, is actually very relevant, I think, during this time. Because to me, and obviously we're going to get into the book with you and you can explain the kind of whole genesis of the book. But just to kind of lay out the kind of context in which I absorbed the kind of summary of the book, because I looked at your keynote and everything.

was that it's really about leveraging your strengths and your talents instead of focusing on what you're bad at or what you hate doing, which are often very closely associated. And I think in this time where obviously with all that's happened in recent times, a lot of people are kind of hitting that reset button, whether they're doing it willingly or they're being forced to do so based on their circumstances.

You know, I have friends that have gotten divorced over this past year that have gotten laid off from their jobs. Business owners who can't make ends meet and have to kind of shut down their business and start over, so to speak. And I think this is a great opportunity to do some like self-assessment in terms of how we want to move forward and what the best way to move forward is. And I feel your latest book, based off of what I understand of it from the surface so far,

I think it can go a long ways in helping individuals and organizations in figuring out what the best way and most efficient and effective way is not only to move forward and be productive, but to actually be happier. Can you kind of explain, number one, I guess, how you started writing this book in the first place and what the genesis of this book really was? Yeah, of course I can. Thanks. Thank you for that summary. And

I totally agree with you. I was thinking this this morning, in fact, so I was walking downstairs to the office to record this. I was thinking, I don't know when this show is going to go out, guys, but the raid on the Capitol building was last night. Okay, so that's very present in my mind. And now I don't want to, for one minute, claim to be any kind of professional political commentator here, but...

there seems to be division in the world at the moment. There seems to be a lot of people seem to be very unhappy, whether it's unhappy with their work or unhappy with their paradigm or unhappy with their politics or with their leaders. Um, and not only does there seem to be a lot of unhappiness and, and chagrin, there seems to be, um, people seem to have developed, um,

a desire to want to lash out and, and strike each other verbally or sadly, sometimes even physically, which we saw last night. Um, now, like I say, my book is not, it wasn't planned to be a solution for those kinds of issues. Not for one minute. I,

I mainly focus on the professional world, although I do touch on how strengths orientation can have its place in education, have its place in the upbringing of children, communication between friends and family. I touch on that as well. But the B-glasses...

movements, if you like. The big glasses idea, this kind of paradigm of trying to see positivity in the world and trying to focus on people's strengths instead of always focusing and honing in on their weaknesses, I think is today more relevant than ever. And I totally agree with you, Justin, that the times seem to be moving in those directions.

To answer your second question. Well, really quickly, sorry to interrupt you, but really quickly before we move forward, can you explain to us and the listeners what you mean by B-glasses? Because the first time I read that, I was like, what does that mean? What are B-glasses? And it wasn't until I read the kind of synopsis of your book, I understood what you meant. So can you explain that? Absolutely. So let's play a little game then. So to all three of you, Eric, Harry, and Justin,

What do bees search for? If they fly around the garden, what do they search for? Honey. They make honey. They don't search for honey. They make honey. They make honey. They search for? Pollen. Pollen, right? They search for pollen and they find that in the nectar in flowers. They find it in the beautiful, growing, flourishing, developing things growing in our garden. And what do flies search for? Shit. Shit. Shit.

Right, let's be honest guys, let's call a spade a spade. I like, I love the way that the three of you didn't want to say that. And I think that's really cute. I apologize if I'm not- Someone had to say it. Someone had to say it. Well, exactly. Let's be honest. They search for the rotting, decaying, disgusting, bacteria-ridden trash in our garden, right? And then, and not only that, they don't stop there. Once they found all that dirt and that rotting food or whatever, they rub it in their faces, fly somewhere else and spread the shit around, right? Right.

And what do bees do? They land in these beautiful, developing, flourishing, growing, talented plants and flowers. And then they pick up all this stuff, stick it to their body, fly over there and spread the joy and the love around somewhere else and actually develop and make something else grow. That's where the metaphor comes from, guys. It's not my metaphor, I have to be honest. I picked it up from colleagues that I've worked with over the years. But I think it's a beautiful metaphor to...

to take a snapshot of what kind of mindset I'm going to have in any particular day or in any particular lifetime. Am I going to put my fly glasses on and look around and think that was wrong, he was late, that report had spelling mistakes in it, that presentation was boring, or am I going to put my bee glasses on and see the world like a bee would and think that's growing over there, that's developing, that's got talent, that's colorful, I'm going to pick a bit of that up and I'm going to spread that over there.

All right. That's what beeglasses means. It's the idea of having the mindset of not being fascinated and honed in on negativity, on weakness and on failure. We haven't we've seen to have developed this amazing knack of spotting failure and and error, you know, and particularly as leaders. We're under so much pressure as managers and leaders. We're under pressure from our managers.

managers ourselves to meet expectations, to meet KPIs, to meet deadlines. And if we feel that our team, for whatever reason, is struggling with that, it seems to be a natural instinct in many to go in and say, work harder, work faster, don't make that mistake, do this, work in this way. And we start becoming transactional. We start leading in a fly glasses way. And what I realized from the research that I did for the book is that there is

endless research that shows us professional scientific research, but also anecdotal qualitative research from industry that shows us that strengths orientation just works. If I go into work or like I said, also into other situations, but if I enter into a conversation or a communication with somebody in a big glasses way, and I try and find out, Justin, what are your talents? What are you really good at?

You know, Howie, that thing, that presentation you gave last week, that was absolutely kick-ass. You know, the audience absolutely loved it and it energized the room. How can we get Howie doing that kind of stuff more often? You know, Eric and those reports that he writes, they're just beautiful and informative and concise. And why are we getting him to...

doing stuff that he's not very good at? Well, are we trying to force him into some kind of pigeonhole and trying to get him to be a master of all trades? Sorry, a jack of all trades when actually he should be a master of that one thing that he's great at or those handful of things that he's great at. I hope that wasn't too long an answer, but that's what it's all about. It's about flicking that switch and thinking, am I going to

walk into the office today and look for shit like a fly would? Or am I going to walk into the office today and look for the developments and the flowers and think, how can we get more of that? That's what it's about. Well, that's beautiful. But do you think that we are kind of primed through evolution to kind of notice the bad stuff, notice the weaknesses, notice the dangers? And that's what we're kind of more just, I guess,

were genetically evolved to see more clearly than we are to see kind of like the positive, beautiful things in life? It's an absolutely brilliant question. The answer is yes. And in fact, one of the chapters in my book I've dedicated solely to that subject to try and explain the neuroscience behind this. I only had scope in my book for one chapter to talk about the evolution and how our brains have developed. But if you want a better treatise on that, if you really want to understand why,

why our brains make the decisions that they do. I thoroughly recommend a book called The Leading Brain by Hans-Werger Hagermann, which explains exactly what's going on here. These 2.6 million years of evolution that you're talking about, Justin, you're absolutely right, have honed our brains to have one overriding ability, and that is the ability to protect us.

They have developed a brilliant instinct and a chemical instinct for survival. And that makes sense because in the past, you know, 40,000 years ago, I was just telling you guys how there's a sweet factory down the road and how this is a nice little quaint town of 11,000 people. 40,000 years ago, none of this was here, obviously, right? This is all fields and trees and our forefathers and foremothers are wandering the marshland, right? Yeah.

What thoughts are going through their minds? With the greatest respect, their thoughts and their cognitive processes were not as complex as ours are today, right? They had pretty simple or basic issues to deal with. I've got to live until tomorrow so I can feed my family. And to do that, I have to stay warm. I have to find some kind of nourishment for

that's pretty much it, right? So when the saber-toothed tiger, or in fact, I was told the other day, I'm not allowed to use the metaphor of saber-toothed tiger because apparently saber-toothed tigers were longer than 40,000 years ago. But let's create an environment where some kind of dangerous animal, right, comes over the hill. And my- The one behind Howie. Yeah.

Yeah, it would look something like that, right? Some kind of predator. If my 40,000 year ago great-grandfather saw some kind of terrifying animal, what would he be thinking? A very simple thought would go through his mind, I have to protect myself. And that's where we get these three words from, right? Fight, flight, or freeze.

If I turn my head to the side here, so you see it like this. If you picture my brain like this, the sort of central part of the brain around here is called the limbic system. There's a part of the brain in the limbic system called the amygdala. And particularly the amygdala connected with the limbic system. That is the part of the brain that my 40,000 year ago grandfather had. And that part of the brain can make one of three decisions. That's it.

When the input comes in and I see the tiger, I see the danger, it goes to the receptors at the back of my brain first, then it goes to the limbic system, and my brain computes the same today as it did 40,000 years ago, will this thing kill me? If I think that it might, then I'm either going to run from it, I'm going to try and fight it and kill it, or maybe I'll freeze and hide behind a tree and hope that it goes by. Fight, flight, or freeze, right?

Now, the limbic system is brilliant, and we've had that, our species has had that for hundreds of thousands of years. And you're right, Justin, it's brilliantly honed. Now, the pushback that I sometimes get in talks and in workshops is people say, oh, yeah, there are no tigers roaming around these days. So there aren't. But our brain, as brilliant as it is, can't tell the difference between a tiger that might bite our head off and a boss who might metaphorically bite our head off.

Right. Or the bus is late and our anger, our seething anger at the bus driver who who deigned to be too late to pick me up or my spouse who complained because I didn't put the bin lid down or whatever it may be. So when this input comes in today and it bugs us and it disturbs us, unfortunately, our limbic system works in the same way as it did back then when tigers threatened our survival.

Why am I telling you this? Because we still have that part of the brain. Our forefathers and mothers didn't have the wonderful part of the brain, which again, if I turn my head, is kind of positioned here at the front of my brain, and that's called the prefrontal cortex. That's the PFC. I don't want this to become a chemistry class, guys, or a biochemistry class. No, I love it. I love it. I love this stuff. Thank you. These are the only two parts of the brain that a leader really needs to understand. He needs to understand that the first part

of the brain that computes what happens is the limbic system. Only if our limbic system says, "Ah, ah, that won't kill us," does it free up the signal, send it to the PFC, and that's where the magic happens. That's where we... The PFC is only a few thousand years old. You know, our forefathers and mothers didn't have that.

And that's the part of the brain that has enabled us to put planes in the sky and connect communication over the world and do all the brilliant artistic and creative and innovative things that we as a race have done. It's that part of the brain. And the reason why, one of the reasons is because we have opposable thumbs. The other reason why we have become the dominant species on the planet is because we're one of the few species to have a PFC. Okay.

OK, most of our animal cousins don't. Dolphins have a very small one. Some apes have a version of a PFC. But the cognitive, rational, innovative thought that is all done here at this front part of the brain. But this is the big problem. And I'm done with the chemistry class after this, I promise you.

Once the signal comes in, hits the receptors at the back of my brain, it goes to the limbic system first. If the limbic system thinks this might scare me or this might hurt me, then the signal stays there and it computes it the same way as I used to. I'm going to fight this thing or I'm going to run from this thing or I'm going to hide.

only if it frees it up and says, yeah, this probably won't kill me, does the PFC kick in. And this is the problem, guys. This is the problem, to come back to your first question, Justin, why is there this negativity in the world? Why is there this, over the last four or five years, why have we seen this penchant for awful, awful negativity

diatribes and attacks on on twitter and on other social media why do people seem to be so angry and why are they so nasty to each other irrespective of whether they're left or right or whatever why does there seem to be this frustration at work with conflict management um uh

situations going through the roof and harassment cases going through the roof at work and burnout going through the roof and all of these statistics are going in the wrong direction. Why is that? It's because when the limbic system is on, the PFC is off. Okay, if you drive a car over a bridge and you lose control, it's icy and the car breaks through the barriers and goes into the river,

Talk me through your thought processes. What are you going to be thinking? Okay, I think I was driving at 60 kilometers an hour and the ice would add to that because of the friction minus the air pressure and the reduction. Maybe that...

You're not thinking, you're not calculating anything, are you? You're not thinking, oh shit, get out of the fucking car. Right. You're in a limbic system. Right. And that's right. Our bodies are designed like that. Our brains are designed like that to save us in those panic situations. We're not in PFC in those panic situations. The problem is we still haven't developed a consciousness to put ourselves into PFC. Right.

we allow ourselves to slip into this 2.6 million year old pattern of being in limbic system and we take it on the bus with us and we take it to work with us and we take it to the queue in subway and we moan and groan because I got a latte instead of a cappuccino, right? And so these potentially trivial issues that we've got today are still being dealt with in a kind of an aggressive, nasty way because we're in limbic system, sadly.

So, Matt, that's a very useful explanation. What's the role of mindfulness in activating PFC or are there other techniques that you teach? Yeah, absolutely. I'm not a mindfulness coach myself, but there certainly are a lot of great people out there who do that kind of thing. And mindfulness is one approach to dealing with this.

The best way or the proven way of getting us out of limbic system is to create another channel. We have to, in some way, send a new signal into the brain and the brain will then process that signal instead of processing the nasty one that got stuck in limbic system. The classic example, guys, is when you see a parent...

Educating a child. I don't know if you guys have kids. My kids are a little bit older now. They're 12 and 14. But when they were two and three, they got frustrated by things, right? And we had moments where one of the children might be having a tantrum. Maybe you've seen this in the park or whatever. The kid's flailing about on the floor, screaming as if the world's coming to an end. What the...

talented parents do. You know, the kid maybe, let's say the kid wanted a chocolate bar. "I want a chocolate, I want a chocolate!" "No, no chocolate today, you can have an apple." "No, I want a chocolate!" And it flips! And the kid goes into the limbic system and freaks out. Screaming and shouting, what the talented parents do, they say, "Oh look, Johnny, look! Look, a bird!" And the child goes, "A bird! Look at it fly!" And it's gone. The chocolate's completely forgotten, the tantrum on the floor is forgotten, and they're fascinated in the beautiful bird.

That is a banal example of what we need to do with our members of staff. We have to create a new input. Now, in parenting, with the simplicity of children, it could be something as simple as pure distraction. Yeah. Waving something colorful or look at the bird. I, as a leader, have a responsibility to create a new channel for them to send to PFC.

So that might be a new project, that might be a change of subject, that might be talking about themselves, asking them a question about themselves that they have to answer in a rational way. Asking them some kind of high gain question where they have to reflect on it before they can give an answer.

Now, this is not manipulation. This is not tricking in any way. It's helping them to get into PFC. Mindfulness is one of them. Some sort of distraction or creating a new channel is another approach. Some athletes and soldiers will tell you the breathing techniques can help. I do cover some of these techniques in my book, and I recommend that people are interested in that.

you know, take a look at some of those methods. The important overarching message, though, for me, for leaders, particularly for young leaders who may be kind of shocked when they see conflict at work or they kind of panic a little bit and they think, I don't know how to help

First of all, they've got to get themselves into PFC before they can solve whatever issue they're dealing with. And they need to do that, like you say, with breathing techniques, mindful techniques, new reflection, distraction, whatever it may be. And then they have a professional responsibility, I think, to help their team try and do the same. Well, Matt, I'm not sure if you cover this in your book or not, but from one of the straightaway

takeaways or most relevant things I can see that would relate to what you discuss in your book would, I think, would be due to, would be in regards to the topic of stress. Now, because you talk about, you know, how we tend to focus and in professional life and professional organizations, especially, you know, we tend to focus on people's weaknesses and

kind of drilling them on these weaknesses until they get better at them. And the realities of it is that if someone is just not talented in a certain area, innately not talented, you can drill them 24/7 and really, realistically, the best you can hope for is maybe they get to average. Maybe, right? And

By doing that and by focusing on that and by spending your time and their time and energy focusing on something that they're just not good at and most likely don't enjoy doing, hence they're not good at it, just amplifies stress. And before you were just mentioning about the dangers in the world back in the early human days, right? And yes, there's no tigers right now eating us.

But you can argue that stress and stress-related illnesses have killed way more people in modern day than tigers ever did. So the dangers, I think, are still very real in modern society in terms of our health.

And a lot of this is related to stress. Stress is, this is through medical research and scientific data, is really the number one cause of most of the vast majority of illnesses people end up having. It all starts from stress. But because it's really hard to quantify stress and it can't really be measured, it goes kind of unlooked and unchecked.

But I think what you talk about in terms of kind of switching that paradigm, switching the perspective and focusing instead on your talents. And sometimes these talents can be hidden, but things you're good at and leveraging that and spending more of your time working on those things, that actually could go a long way in reducing people's stress and maximizing their performance.

Well, Justin, you summarise it better than I do in the book, actually. I'm knocked out. You are absolutely right. Maybe one of the problems with a lot of this material is that it sounds a little bit esoteric, right? And for the people who know me, they will tell you that I'm the least esoteric guy in Europe. That's not my message here. It's not some kind of, um, I have to

check into some kind of spiritual happiness or whatever. That's not my message. Other people have similar messages and that's fine. The message here is based on 40 years of grounded scientific research that shows us that we are more productive, we are more creative...

And we have registered fewer sick days and fewer conflicts. And we enter into less stress that is scientifically proven through study after study after study. If we focus on people's talents and strengths. If we create an environment, particularly in the work environment, where people have the opportunity to work on in areas where they like to work, where they have enjoyment, where they have some kind of intrinsic motivation, but also that they're good at.

Lest we forget, we are different, right? We're all very different. The tall guy can reach the fruit on the trees easier than the shorter person, okay? It's not that the shorter person is a worse person. They just don't have a natural accidental proclivity for picking fruit.

And the person with more fast twitch fibers in their legs was probably better in the old, you know, when we were hunting and gathering, they were probably better for hunting because they can chase after the animal and catch it better. But I don't know, one of the persons, people in our tribe maybe had softer hands. So maybe Adam better natural proclivity for staying by the fire and looking after the children. We understand and we appreciate that.

physical difference and physical talents, we appreciate those very quickly. We seem to have a very fine eye for that. Oh, he's a big guy. He's a smaller guy. He's a strong guy. She's fast. We seem to be very good at that. And yet when it comes to cognitive talent, we are awfully neglectful of that.

And we expect, particularly in the professional world, for people to be jack of all trades. You wouldn't expect the small guy to pick fruit. So why am I expecting the person who has a wonderful ability for rhetoric and performance to be crunching numbers and to be good at it? And that leads on to your point, Justin. That's where the stress comes from. The absolute epidemic of stress that we've seen in the last 60 years or so has stemmed from this situation

this business cultural fascination with creating executives who can pretty much do everything, right? You are expected today, if you work in some kind of classic white collar work, I don't know what you're doing, but if you're sitting in front of a computer and that's 90% of your job, you are irrespective of your industry, irrespective of the product or the service that your company delivers, nine times out of 10, you are expected to do the following and probably not only limited to the

Create good presentations, deliver good presentations, chair effective meetings, be a good meeting participant, write reports, crunch numbers and understand complex data and be able to find patterns in that. Communicate upwards effectively to staff, communicate downwards effectively and sideways, have wonderful customer service skills, be empathetic to the staff around you to be able to

Do you get the point, right? I could go on all night. We expect our executive to be good at all of those and we just know that they're not. And so what happens is we force people to meet deadlines and maybe punctuality is not a natural cognitive talent of theirs. And so what do they do? They stress and they fight and they bite and they scratch to meet that deadline. And what are they doing? They're investing so much energy and so much time in punctuality

achieving something that will probably, like you say, just achieve anything.

Minimum standard, right? Acceptable standard. They may be below acceptable standard at the moment in that particular cognitive trait, right? There might be one particular thing that they're quote unquote not very good at. So what do we tend to do as leaders? We tend to say, work hard at that. Eric, I saw that presentation last week. It was dreadful. Your speaking skills are poor. Your PowerPoint was ugly and the audience didn't like it. What did I- Wow, how'd you know? He knows you so well, Eric. He knows you so well.

The subtle nod was very telling Eric. You were like, yeah. No, joking aside, let's say that's the situation. Let's say I'm your leader and I observe that. What the nine HR departments out of 10 do when a member of staff comes back and is quote unquote a bad presenter? Nine times out of 10, they send them to presentation training. Am I right? Oh, we've got someone here who doesn't give very good presentations. Let's pay some consultants to come in and give Eric some presentation coaching.

Now at the beginning, last week, this is what his presentations looked like. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to... Right, really bad, right, really ugly. So he goes to presentation training, comes back after presentation training. Is he now, does he now have the oratorial skills of Barack Obama or Steve Jobs?

No, because with the greatest respect, the person who had that really low ability for something doesn't have a natural talent for it. He doesn't have a natural cognitive proclivity, just like the short guy doesn't have a natural physical proclivity. And I can flog that horse as much as I want, but it won't become a stallion. Okay, what I should be doing is investing my time and energy on

focusing and highlighting on their cognitive talents because when you work with existing talent, you get best in class performance. If I send an already talented, gifted, "Oh, he's got something when he presents." If I send him to presentation training, fireworks.

Let me give you an example. You know, it's really interesting because what he's bringing up right now is leadership, right? But what we discuss a lot of times is based on, you know, discovering all what you just said through yourself, like what you are good at, what you're...

what your proclivities are and really hone in on that. But it's interesting hearing it the other side with what he's saying of like, as a leader, you need to read into all the other people that work with you or along on top and bottom. Like, how do you get the best out of everybody? Right. Which is really interesting. Yeah.

Because I think it's a different talent too, right? To be able to look at other people, not just yourself. The last point you make is, of course, a very good point. I'll come to that in a second. But yeah, you're right. It's a two-step approach. And I cover that in my book and in our workshops. We try and lead people in that direction. That before you can become an effective leader and a strengths-oriented leader, you have to understand yourself. You have to know what your own strengths and talents are.

Okay. I can't, I can't claim to be a transformational strengths oriented leader if I haven't reflected on my own talents. And if I haven't started to think about how my, you know, spider web might affect other people. So,

So what we encourage people to do is to take assessments, right? There are a number of them. I'm not going to name drop any of them at the moment. There's one particular market leader run by a large American company, but there are others. There are interesting, ipsitive questions that have been designed or questionnaires that have been designed where you can go online normally, take about half an hour, you answer these questions, and then it will spit out some kind of

Yeah, it'll say our algorithm is calculated based on the way that you answer those questions. The one of your natural talents is blah, blah, blah. And the other one is this. And you normally get a top five or a top 10, something like that.

It'll have some keywords. My top five with one of these test agencies, for example, is activator. Okay, so my number one talent is the talent, the natural ability to activate, to stimulate, to get a conversation going or get some kind of activity going. The other one is individualization. So I have a talent, I have an ability...

Or, yeah, I'm quite naturally good at. And before I carry on, can I just segue something else in here, guys? A major issue with a lot of what I'm talking about is that we don't actually feel very happy talking about how good we are.

And that is a major issue, I find. Yes, we have a chemical problem that we're often in limbic system, but we also have sort of a social issue, particularly since the Victorian times, that talking about how fantastic you are is just uncouth. It's just not done.

You know, parents will tell their children, don't show off, you know, show humility. Be modest, you know, be humble. Yeah, I get, I see that. And I do the same with my son, who's a wonderful footballer. He comes home and he goes, hey, did you see that, daddy? Did you see how amazing I was? And I find instinctively my reaction as a parent is to say, okay, darling, calm it down a little bit.

But no, we've got to take this break off and we've got to allow people to talk about how great they are at stuff. If somebody comes out and says they're great at everything, they're just deluded. But if they recognize what they are great at, research has shown us that when they talk about that actively and openly and transparently with others, it actually gets better. And it helps other people understand what they're good at. So their interactions with them also improve.

So that's another thing for another subject to talk about another day. We've got to be cooler about talking about our talents, right? So come back to my talents because...

We've got to talk about our talents, right? Individualization. I have a talent for that, which is the ability to see the difference in people and to be able to adjust my rhetoric according to different people. So if I'm talking to this person, I might speak and act slightly differently compared to if I'm talking to this person. That's a talent that I happen to have. Another one is positivity. Okay, I'll stop here at the top three. I'm just a naturally positive, intrigued kind of person who sees the glass as half full.

And when I did that test and I had that top five, and then later I paid $50 more and I was able to see all 34 of my talents in order of their power. It was a wonderful moment for me because it put a vocabulary to kind of what I already knew. I was like, yeah, I kind of know that I'm naturally good at that. I've always found that easy. And people have given me feedback that I'm good at that. And I thought, well, surely everyone's good at that. But no, they're not. People aren't all good at everything.

And so this gave me a vocabulary and it gave me sort of the support to go, you know what, I'm going to go to work and I'm going to work on these things more. And I'm going to try and create an environment and I'm going to talk to my boss and my colleagues. And I'm hopefully going to be able to work in these wonderful areas a bit more because what's happening when I'm working with my talents, I'm fully in PFC.

The dopamine is flowing around my system. That's the fun drug, right? That's the hormone that is released when I'm in PFC. The hormone that's released, by the way, in a limbic system is cortisol.

which is an awful, awful hormone. And you talk about stress, Justin. Large levels of somatic cortisol in your body lead to all manner of awful stress-related physiological and psychological issues. Dreadful, dreadful. So we have to reduce the amount of cortisol released by the system. We have to increase the amount of dopamine released by the system.

And the more dopamine I release, the more I'm in PFC, the more I work with my talents. It's just a beautiful upward spiral. And that's where the creativity and the productivity comes from. It sounds like, I mean, this is something that everybody needs to do, right? To really start to understand themselves.

And is that something that... I mean, you said that it's a paid thing, right? So there's a resource online that we can find to be able to do that? Yeah, I don't know. Listen, guys, honest question. I don't know how open I can be about this. I don't want to name names.

a particular company and then they get loads of success with that. That's not my aim here. I'm not working for or with any kind of organization, but there are tests that do exist that do that kind of thing. But, Howie, if you don't want to spend the 20 bucks on that, that's also fine.

A lot of studies have shown that there can be great efficacy for just pressing pause and self-reflecting a little bit. I don't... That list of words, that profile that it spits out of me, it kind of helps. It starts me on that reflective journey, but I don't need that. Because my question to you, Eric, my question to you, Harry, Howie, Justin...

Honest hand on heart, if I asked you to sit down five minutes and take a piece of paper and write down five adjectives that describe things that you're quite good at, I reckon you could probably do it, couldn't you?

I feel like it would be tough for me. Go on. It would be tough for me. Go on. Why do you think it would be? I don't know why. I just feel like I'd be second guessing. Like, am I really good at that or do I just think I'm good at that? You know, like I wouldn't, you know, it's the old adage. We talked about that a lot too, right? Yeah, we're our own worst critic, right? So like everything you're saying really resonates with me. And that's why I was really looking forward to talking to you on this show is because it's the idea that

we all tend to focus on what we're not good at. And it's not only kind of the social...

social etiquette, I guess, we were raised with in terms of like not bragging or not boasting about yourself. But it's also, it actually really doesn't bring you that much joy to talk about things you're good at because we kind of take those things for granted. Now that might be wrong. But I feel like a lot of us tend to take that for granted and we really focus on our weaknesses because that's what brings us the most shame. That's what brings us the most

that bad feeling we want to avoid, right? So going back to like kind of our ancient brains and our ancient pathways of how we think cognitively, it's that we want to avoid the bad feeling. And we focus so much on that, that I never even really paid attention or thought about

well, what am I good at? What are my strengths? So going back to what you said, like if I were to spend five minutes, it would probably take me longer than five minutes for sure. You know, it'd probably take me a couple hours to come up with five things. No, the feedback I've heard from participants over the years has been similar to yours, Justin. And I agree. I think we've kind of...

We have neglected that. We've neglected our self-love, for want of another word, because of the challenges and because we've got to pay the bills and we've got to meet deadlines. We focused on those challenges

tigers on the horizon, haven't we? And so we have neglected time and energy to think about what we're good at. It's that classic, isn't it? If I tell you not to think about a flying pink elephant, there's nothing else you can think about, right? It just pops right in there. And it's the same with the rearing issue. Oh my God, you know, there's a hole in the roof. You're not going to think, oh yeah, but look, a bird. It

You're thinking about the hole in the roof, right? If you're thinking about, oh, my performance at work is not great at the moment. I made spelling mistakes in my reports. I need next time not to make as many spelling mistakes because otherwise I'll get fired. I get the logic in that. It's sad and it's fueled by cortisol and it's purely in limbic system, but I do get it, okay? And then it's compounded by this social conditioning that we've had for generations of not...

you know, one shouldn't brag and one shouldn't show off and all that kind of stuff. Having said all of that, if there's a hole in the ceiling,

And I look up and I think, "Oh, looks like the ceiling might fall on somebody's head." Okay. I can't have a strengths-oriented approach to this. I can't say, "Oh, it looks like the ceiling might fall on your head." But I'm working purely strengths-oriented today. So I'm going to look at this person over here and focus on her because she's got talents. I can't do that. Okay. There are some things in life I have to reach acceptable stand with. Agreed? Okay. I have to fix the roof.

But may one thing be patently clear to us: when I fix the ceiling, what do I have? A fixed ceiling. Nothing else. If you fix issues, if you fix weaknesses, you get fixed weaknesses. You don't get high performance. So if I fix the ceiling, I now have a repaired ceiling. I don't magically have the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

And that's where we need to start taking a moment to press pause and think, okay, I have a responsibility professionally and morally to fix those issues and to make sure that Johnny doesn't make as many spelling mistakes in his report and make sure that Sarah doesn't hold the piece of paper in front of her face when she gives a presentation. I have to get those things up to acceptable standard. But how about, guys, if I just spend a little bit of my energy and my time as a leader working on their...

talents and abilities as well. And how about I invite them or I give them the opportunity once a week, once every couple of weeks to have 20 minutes with a cup of tea just to think about themselves. We

look after high-grade sports cars you know people who have these wonderful cars they take them into the garage don't they every few weeks and they get them tuned and polished and looked after justin i see you got guitars hanging up on the wall i bet you polish them and you look after the strings you make sure the strings don't rust and uh you know these are actually highly neglected i'm sorry to contradict you but these are actually highly neglected guitars no that's

No, that's good. And if you got up on stage and played one of them, you would hear that it had been highly neglected. Am I right? Yes. It wouldn't sound like a beautifully well-kept and well-tuned machine, right? It would not, no. Exactly. And so we know that we should look after our bikes and our guitars and our cars or whatever, but we don't do the same with our bodies. And we don't do the same with our mindsets.

We don't give ourselves that opportunity to say, I'm going to have a cup of tea or a scotch or a glass of water or whatever, and I'm going to think about what I'm good at and what I would like to be doing more of for five minutes. Yes, Justin, you're right. It would probably take you. You said you don't think you could do it in five minutes. It would probably take you two hours. I totally agree. But it doesn't take five minutes to tune a sports car either. It takes time. It takes longevity. You have to return to it again and again. You have to care for it and look after it.

I also didn't tell my son to be a good person for five minutes. I've been telling it for 12 years. Okay, these things take time. Good leadership takes time. It takes investment and good self-leadership takes time and it takes investment. But speaking of investment though, like I feel like that's such, like that really fits in because when I was watching some of your keynotes and we kind of got onto this topic and

this isn't an exact quote, but you said something like, "Training works if you work the talent." And it goes back to this idea of your return on investment. Whether your investment is time or money or energy, whatever your investment is, the return on investment. And it goes back to what you've been saying

is that if you spend your investment in terms of trying to train weaknesses, the best you can hope for is getting a very minimal incremental improvement, maybe acceptable, something acceptable standard, right? Like something average, maybe. Most likely, it's still below average if this person is really not good at it.

So that's really the best you can hope for. But if you put that same investment and training into someone's talents, natural talents and strengths, that growth can be exponential.

And you get something and you very possibly can get something like a best in class performer, like you were saying. And I love your analogy when you, you know, you were talking about, you know, using kind of the education system and parenting. And you were talking about like little Jimmy in his report card, right? Yes. And he's terrible at math.

But, and, you know, he's terrible at math. So he spent all this money and time in terms of getting him a math tutor and hammering math. And the best you can hope for is that maybe he's still maybe average at math, maybe. But if he has a natural talent and interest in geography, let's say, and you were to just spend a little bit of that time honing that skill,

he might be the person to fix the tectonic plate problem or something, or earthquake early warning system. You said something along those lines, and that really struck me because it's like planting that seed. It's that return on investment, that same thing going into two different choices. One is exponential growth, and one is just measly, minimal, nothing to talk about kind of growth.

And the two are so staggered, like still like astonishingly different that it's amazing that we don't think in terms of ourselves and the way we treat other people and our own time, energy and training that way.

It's lovely to actually meet somebody who actually listens to one of my keynotes, Justin. I'm genuinely honoured. No, because I was genuinely interested and captivated and curious about it. Thank you. And I want you to kind of mention this on the show a little bit because this was a great example. Because going back to the idea of like, look,

We like positive mindset. We like all this positivity talk. But at the end of the day, you know, a lot of it can seem very squishy, like you said, soft around the edges, like you're some sort of guru, you know, and it could be just, but you're actually, you actually have research data, scientific data that

to back all this up with. And this is really kind of what I wanted to talk to you about because we can talk to thousands of people and a lot of people can say similar things in a similar way, but they can't really back it up with anything. They're just like, oh, well, be happy, be positive, you know, positive mindset, get you more productive, positive. But you're just saying that. You're not convincing anyone really.

So I want to get into the scientific data and research. And one example that you mentioned in one of your talks was the speed readers. You were talking about the speed readers. Yeah, so I tell you about that. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I'd absolutely love to. Because I think that's a great illustration of what you mean. I totally agree with you. That is a problem with this is when you start using phrases like beeglasses and whatever, people maybe think it's a bit...

Like you say, guru-like, and as long as you just be a happy person, everything will be wonderful and a big pile of cash will fall into your pocket. That's not my message here, okay? This is based on decades of grounded research and study after study after study has shown us that this just works.

If you focus on people's talents and you develop their natural occurring talents, you get better performance. Full stop. Let me give you some examples. In fact, let me go back to the metaphor, first of all, that you mentioned that I talk about in one of my talks. And that's using the metaphor of how we act as parents and parents.

for want of a better word, are leaders. They are leading and they are guiding a human being through their development process. So that is pure leadership for me. So let's take that metaphor or let's mirror that and transfer it or see the example in parenting and transfer it over to classical executive leadership. The example that you mentioned, Justin, is the example of what

and the studies have shown that 77% of parents do this. When their son or their daughter comes home from school with a report card,

and you've got A in one subject, B in another, B, A, A, B, F, B, A, A, where do the majority of parents immediately put their focus? It's on that grade F, right? Let's say it's math in this particular example. And then what do wonderful, conscientious, caring, loving parents do? Most of them spend...

investing on the child. Okay, Johnny, every Wednesday we're going to have to sit together and I'll help you with your maths homework. Yeah? Or what else do we do? We go and buy CD-ROMs or we pay for extra classes. We pay for the maths student down the road to come up every Thursday and help little Johnny with his homework. And that costs a lot of money as well. What else do we do? We have some kind of conflict discussion or some kind of...

strategic discussion with the teacher or maybe even the head teacher oh maths is a problem what can we do about this maybe he gets put in some kind of specialist class even at school for people who need particular help for maths and we know what that means um what else do we do maybe we dangle the carrot a little bit as parents and we say listen johnny if you get better at maths if next

semester, your grade is better, you get a PlayStation or whatever. Or maybe we threaten the stick. That's another classic. Listen. That's Eric's case. He got the stick. Did he? Eric, look at him. He's still reeling from it today. We can see that. Maybe the parents said, if you get an F again next semester, then you can't go to

Tennis practice on Saturdays anymore, whatever it may be. We try all of these approaches as parents and I get that. Okay, I'm not criticizing. It's a natural reaction. It is a totally natural reaction. It's a loving reaction. But what have we done? Let's take a snapshot of what we've done. We've invested time, energy, love, emotion, and not an insignificant amount of money investing on the worst proclivity of that child.

We've wasted and totally neglected so much time, energy and money. And you're right, Justin, which parent, be honest, please hand on heart, people who are listening to this now, if you're parents or if you're leaders, be honest and reflect on your decision making right now when I ask this question. Who sends their child who comes back with an A star in geography, who sends that child to extra geography classes?

We don't do it. We don't do it. And I don't know why we don't do it. We focus in on the negatives. We spend time, energy, and money focusing on those negatives. And if you polish a turd, you get a polished turd. Okay? If you want to get to best in class performance, you've got to start with talent.

And you're right, who knows what that child could, he seems to have some kind of natural ability for geography. He could turn into some kind of genius geologist, I don't know what geography people do, but like you say, he could solve the tectonic plate problem or stop tsunamis or whatever it may be. Could be incredible. Or he comes back with a great score in biology. Why don't we send him to extra biology classes? He could find the cure for COVID or whatever.

But we don't spend time and money on negativity. And what is very interesting, and this has really fascinated me, and there's a lot of studies that show the same here, is when little Sarah comes back from school and gets an A grade in music, then we buy her a violin, don't we? And we pay for extra music classes.

And when little Bobby shows talent for sport, we sign him up at a football club, don't we? Or we play football with him in the garden and we support him there and we get him some kit that he can play sports in. Or if little Andrea is quite a good performer, we sign her up for the Performing Arts Society or whatever. It's interesting. When it's artistic or sporting of nature, if that's where the talent lies with the child, then we love to push it and we love to support its parents.

But when it's cognitive talent, we totally neglect it. And that fascinates me because the vast majority of jobs in the modern world require cognitive talent. I'm not dismissing musicians and singers and artists and sports people here. They play their role and they use their talent brilliantly.

but it's the minority of professionals these days. The majority of professionals need cognitive skills, and yet we neglect them at school and we neglect them at work. That was the analogy for the first thing. Let's go to the second thing you talk about. Let's try and get some kind of scientific grounding for this. Listen, this is a podcast. I'm not going to draw out a load of scientific papers here. That would be seriously dull. But for those of you who are interested in that, for those of you who have a natural talent for learning and self-development and collecting data,

Go to Google Scholar or whatever your scientific scholarly search engine of choice may be and just type in strengths orientation. You will get hundreds and hundreds of hits of grounded peer-reviewed papers that show that strengths orientation just works. I'll give you a couple of examples today if I may, guys. Stop me or just edit it out. No, no, please go ahead. We love specific examples on this show. Okay, cool.

The groundbreaking piece of work was 1955 by an American scientist called Glock. Now, he was looking at, as you were saying, Justin, he was looking at speed reading.

So he was interested, he was an educator and he was interested in whether different educational approaches could improve the speed at which people read, right? So totally sound, interesting hypothesis. So he got groups of people and he counted how many words per minute they could read and comprehend. And then he sent them on different training courses and

and counted and then tested them again on how many words per minute they could read and tried to find out which training or his initial hypothesis was or his initial focus was to try out which training process better speeds up people's reading. Okay, that was his initial interest.

What happened to Glock and what happens to many of the great scientific discoveries of our age is that he discovered something that he wasn't actually looking for. It's the classic chocolate melting in Marie Curie's pocket. What he found was that if you want to work, if you want to get best in class cognitive performance from someone, you have to start with talent.

And the numbers are absolutely breathtaking. The first group of people were asked to read a piece of text. How many words per minute do you think these quote-unquote average readers could read per minute? Give me a number, guys. How many words per minute do you think an average reader can read? I have no idea. 150. 150, yeah, maybe. 150. Howie, what did you say?

150. 150, okay. The average from Glock study is 90, okay? It's about a third of an A4 side of printed paper. The average reader of us can read about 90 words per minute per

and understand what they're reading. So Glock sent these people to training programs where they learn how to read faster. They learn techniques and skills of, I don't, I'm not going to talk about that today, but there are ways to improve our recognition and our ability to read faster. Those people were reading 90 words per minute before the training. How many words do you think they were reading per minute after the training? Give me a number.

100. 110. Like a 10% increase? Yeah, 110. 110, 10, 20% increase. 150 is the correct answer. Okay. So what's the message here? The message is training works, right? And every HR representative in the world who sends one of their members of staff to a training course and they come back and they've gone from 90 widgets to 150 widgets, that's development, right? Hey, we're going in the right direction. What is that? 60% increase or something? Fantastic.

But Glock found an unbelievable, in fact, it is believable, but it's an extraordinary anomaly. There are some people who before the training, before they ever learned the skills and techniques of speed reading, had a natural ability to read a little bit faster. My mother is one of these people. She takes 12 books on holiday. She's extraordinary. She just has a natural talent for reading fast. She will read a book like this.

Okay, she just flicks through it. It's extraordinary. And I'm sure you know some people who can do this. What do you think? Give me a number. How many words per minute do you think an above average reader can read? You didn't expect to be tested today, did you? About 180. 180? Okay, Eric, what do you think?

300? 300, yeah. It's about one side. Is this before training we're talking about? Before training. Before training, people who just seem to be naturally good at this stuff. The answer is the average was 350. Okay, so above average readers, these people seem to have a natural talent for reading fast. They can read about one side of A4 per minute, 350 words per minute. So let's go back to the below average guys, first of all. Sorry, the average guys. The average guys read 90 words per minute and after training went to 150 words per minute.

The above average readers had a natural talent. Before training, they could read 350 words per minute. After training, how many words per minute do you think they could read? A thousand. 2,900. Holy shit. Holy shit is right. 2,900. That's half a bachelor thesis in a minute, guys.

That is extraordinary mental and cognitive performance. And the reason why they were able to get to that superhuman level is because they started with natural talent. And this study from Clark in 55, absolutely, it just dropped a bombshell in the educational and personal development world.

It was the first time really where we had scientific proof for this thing that this wishy-washy thing that people have talked about in the past about maybe it would be good to work with people's talents. And since then, study after study after study has been done. And 201, they come back and they show us that that is the case. I can improve human performance. I can improve cognitive performance with training, mentoring, coaching, self-reflection, and a lot of other things. But most of the time I'm,

making slight incremental increases. If you start though with natural ability, natural cognitive ability, and then you give the right training and the right support, you can get extraordinary performance. And again, to come back to my example of physical traits, we know this. We know that, oh no, what's the guy's name? Bolt, what's his first name? Usain Bolt. Thank you. We know that Usain Bolt didn't used to run 100 meters in 21 seconds and then he started training and now it's down to nine.

All right. He's always been fast, right? And then he's trained a little bit and he's got a little bit faster. I ran 100 meters in 16 seconds when I was at school. Okay. And I was quite a good sports person, but I'm just super slow. You can train me all day long, but brothers, but I'm not going to get to nine seconds for 100 meters. We know that because my starting point isn't based on a natural talent. And the same is true with cognitive ability.

Does everyone have a natural talent? Yeah, boy. To some degree then. Yeah, that's a great question. It's a question I hear from some kind of fly glasses. People go, I don't think I've got any talents, Matt.

Or another one I often hear when they get their profile results is, I've got this talent, but I don't really like this one. I don't want that. That's a bad talent. To answer your question, Howie, absolutely. We do all have natural talents, but my message here is not some kind of American dream. We can all become anything we want to.

I'm afraid that paradigm is a lie. I'm afraid what we've been telling our children for the last, this American dream for the last 80 years or so, hey, whatever you want, son or daughter, you just have to dream it and you can become it. I'm afraid that's bullshit, guys. I understand why parents tell their kids that. And I've probably said the same thing to my children as well. You go for it. You shoot for the stars. You can't get to the, you can think about shooting for the stars as much as you want, guys. But if you don't have a space rocket, it's not going to happen.

If you don't have that existing natural proclivity, it won't happen. But there are many ways of, many roads lead to Rome, right? So there are different ways of doing things. The important thing for me to know is what are my talents and to recognize them and then to find a world, find a job, but also find an environment where I can use those most effectively. That doesn't mean, Howie, that anyone can become, I don't know, a

head of a department or anyone can become the conductor in an orchestra or whatever these dreams are that people are having. It's not about what you can become. It's about how you achieve it. That's what your talents will give you.

So if you reflect on your talents or you get a coach to work with you and he or she helps you understand your talents or you do an assessment to get a snapshot of your talents and then you start reflecting on those, that is not some kind of roadmap to some kind of job or career or some kind of success. It is simply a starting point for self-reflection on how you will do things.

So Eric and Howie and I could all work in an IT department. Bad example. We could all work in a finance department of a big organization. We could all have the same title on our business card, but we could have and probably will have completely different talent sets. We will...

have the same responsibilities and will have the same jobs, but we will almost certainly achieve those goals in different ways. And that's what talent is about. It's not about what you do, it's about how you approach cognitive challenges. I really like you pointing out too that when it comes to physical attributes, we're so, we see it right away, right? We see like physical advantages

so clearly and we know that like not all people were created equal, right? Like we should all be treated equally, but we're not created equally at all. And you can just look at that when you see Shaquille O'Neal or LeBron James and you know, okay, we're not created equal. Being seven foot is a slight advantage when you play basketball, right? I think we get that. Yeah, a little bit. I can take them. I bet you could. But when it comes to cognitive abilities, right?

I think our tendency is to like intellectually, we know that people have different IQ, right? Different EQ, different cognitive strengths. Intellectually, we know that, but we tend to think that we all start from the same baseline. And so by way of nurture in our environment, in our surroundings, in our education, we

In our family, some people have an advantage in terms of gaining better cognitive abilities and becoming smarter and whatnot.

So it's this idea that we've all started on the same cognitive baseline at birth, but that's actually completely untrue. We're born, most likely, I mean, I don't have any evidence to back this up, but I think, based on what you're saying, like we are actually born also with different cognitive strengths right from the get-go. We are not, just like we're not born created equally physically, we are not created equally cognitively either. So it's not just about the nurture, but it's also about the nature, right?

of it all. That's exactly right. That's exactly again. Once again, Justin, you've absolutely hit the nail on the head. Yeah. I'm not going to, I'm not going to open the five for five right now. Yeah. You've had a couple of whiskeys. I'll allow you that. I'm not going to open that classic can of worms here. Nature nurture debates. Okay. What I will tell you is that a measure of a significant contribution of our mental achievement stems from

innate, genetically inherited genes

cognitive ability okay some of those pathways are existing when we are born and they will be affected by the nature and the way in which we're educated in the way in which we are brought up but yes to answer your question and again i i suggest people go and look at the leading brain books like that and other similar books the science exists and has proven that we have an existing um synaptic net of certain you know cognitive abilities when we're born and and

I think it's our right. It's our, it's our, it's our duty. I believe to know what they are and to work with those. I really do. I just think it's a, it's, it's just such a waste to not be aware of what your talents are and to work with those because they are existing. They are already there. The problem is Justin, and this kind of comes into what you were just saying. We seem to have developed a,

an idea that there are better cognitive talents and worse ones. You know, you were kind of playing with the words of IQ and EQ and intellectual. And what does all that mean? You know, who's intellectual? If I line up eight guys, if I invite eight people to a dinner party, you know, and they go home and I'm having a chat with my wife, I'm like, oh, she's quite intellectual, isn't she? And he's quite smart, isn't he? And she's a bit dull. These labels that we seem to give to people, where do they come from and what do they really mean?

And I think that we kind of have a tendency to have preferential talents, that some cognitive talents are kind of cool and some cognitive talents are a bit, well, you know, I don't know, the talent of...

authority or command, the ability to hold a room and have presence seems to be something that we respect, particularly in the Western world. That's sexy, right? That's like a sexy ability. Seems to be, doesn't it? Oh, he's a she's a good orator, you know, or she commands a room or he has authority. That seems to be something that we respect. We also seem to respect discipline. He's always on time and she's very disciplined and he's very deliberate. We seem to like things like that. And they're quite high up in the cognitive

league table for some reason. But then talents like, and I must grin because this is the top five of my wife, for example, talents like empathy, harmony, appreciation, these kinds of talents, they're a bit kind of wishy-washy, aren't they? Oh, he's a nice guy, but he doesn't really get shit done, does he? And I think that's a real problem. And I think that's where we're missing an opportunity here. And it comes back to the question that Howie asked earlier about

Wouldn't it be great if I could help people identify with their talents, even if they're quote unquote wishy-washy talents like empathy and harmony? Wouldn't it be great if I could help her understand those and appreciate those and she could use those to maybe do a quote unquote classically authoritative job in a different way using her different talents? And I think if we saw that, we would see a change in these structures that we've got. These...

you know kind of um assumptions that there is a right way of doing something because there's not a right way of doing something many roads do lead to rome there's no golden way and and anyone who counters this and i sometimes do get countenance to this in um in workshops and stuff people say no you've got to be you've got to be good at seeing patterns if you want to work in a finance department you've got to be good at uh people skills if you work in the media industry

I'm sorry, I'm calling bullshit on that right now. There is no one way of doing anything and the two perfect examples of that is look at Barack Obama and Donald Trump. They did exactly the same job. Literally their job title on their business card was the same position and they did it very differently. And they both had quote-unquote success and they both had quote-unquote failure. Doesn't matter how you're quantifying that.

Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel do the same job. They run large European economies. They do it in very different ways, and they have got to the position they're at in very different ways. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates grew up in the same period of time in a very similar geographical area in California at the same time of the last century, both college dropouts, similar backgrounds.

both setting up burgeoning computer companies in their parents' garages.

but they both led in completely different ways. They both became captains of industry, but you know, you can check out the biographies of both. They both led in completely different ways, but they both created and built two of the most powerful, successful capital companies the world's ever seen. Steve Jobs apparently was an awful

awful human being. I mean, just a dreadful man who would fire people willy-nilly, old school friends, and sat on the floor because he didn't, although he was a billionaire, never bought any furniture and estranged family members for decades. Just dreadful social skills, apparently, but an absolute extraordinary charmer and gift of the gab and the ability to somehow use this power to suck talent out of people. Amazing.

Amazing, okay, bizarre but amazing and created this incredible company. Bill Gates came out the same period, was born in a similar area, but led

led Microsoft in a completely different way. Okay, apparently he was an absolute micromanager, very kind of detailed, kind of bean counter kind of guy, you know, completely different. But they both have these extraordinary abilities to lead. So anyone who tells me that there are good talents and bad talents or talents that are better suited to leaders or talents that are better suited to cleaning or talents that are better suited to

combing horses, horse shit. That's all horse shit. It's not what you do, it's how you do it. And I think everyone who's listening to this pod today, I really hope that he or she has the chance to have a think about what he or she would like to do and how he'd like to do it. Because...

You deserve it. All of us deserve it to not take sick days and to not hate our boss because we're doing shit that we don't like. We all deserve to be enjoying what we're doing and be good at what we're doing and go home with some dopamine flying around the system and go, hey, I did some stuff well today. I think we're allowed to do that.

Well, I think what you just said really goes back to kind of what we idolize in media and pop culture, right? Like we're growing up to idolize the Steve Jobs of the world, right? To idolize these strong, you know, kind of vicious, you know, leaders, right? Like we idolize that in media. They're propped up.

But when a person who doesn't kind of conform to that same mold, then they're kind of seem as almost kind of weak, like beta, right? They're not alpha. And as men, especially, we're raised to idolize that alpha character, that alpha personality, that type A kind of that person. And that's, and then, so we're kind of brainwashed in a sense to kind of view those attributes as, oh, those are the desirable attributes, right?

And anything that's not in line with that is like, oh, that's not so desirable. Where do you think that, I totally agree, Justin, where do you think that comes from? Why are we so fascinated with this tough boss? I think it's the media. I think it's what we're surrounded by. The movies we watch, the live, the real life examples we see and the fame they kind of get, you know, they become idolized. And we fail to recognize a lot of the time that these are the one in a million type people.

And we idolize them because they're the one in a million type. But the actual more productive kind of thought experiment would be to look at the rest of the people that are successful as well, but don't get propped up in the spotlight on them. That could be equally successful, but they're just not famous.

And we don't notice those people. Instead, we want to look at the outlier, the person who doesn't conform. And we try to hone our attributes and our ideals of what is successful to that one in a million, which is almost a futile exercise because they're one in a million for a reason. And chances are, unless you are that one in a million, you can't do it the way they did.

You know, you have to find it. You have to do it the way you can do it. So what you're saying is it's Marlon Brando's fault in The Godfather. That's why we... Yes, yes, yes. That's exactly what I'm saying. Yeah, but you used the phrase one in a million, Justin. And you then said, comma, we're not all one in a million.

As cheesy as this may sound, guys, we are all one in a million. We are all one in a trillion because we all have totally unique cognitive makeups. Our challenge is to find out what they are, not get blinded by some kind of, oh, crap, I've been out of school for three months, so I've got to get a job that works.

that pressure, that crazy thing. Oh, I've got to move into the city because that's what people do. I've got to get a promotion by year X because that's what people do. I've got to, you know, all of these bizarre things that we seem to convince ourselves that we have to achieve. And all of a sudden,

click our fingers, ripple dissolve. We're 37 years old and I'm in a job that I don't like. I'm paying the bills, but I'm running the treadmill and I'm just not in a place that I want to be. And you mentioned earlier, Justin, the friends of yours who get divorced or the friends of mine in their 30s and 40s who are finally, after years of hating what they do, throwing everything up in the air and doing something different. And I

I applaud them for that. But the fascinating thing is when you talk, when I talk with friends and colleagues, have you heard about such and such who's given up their job working in office and now they're waxing boats down at the boatyard? What is the reaction that we often get? Oh, yeah. What a waste. Yeah. What a pity. It's a kind of midlife crisis. Yeah. Sorry, Justin, you wanted to say.

No, no, I'm saying it's always said in a condescending tone. Yeah. Oh, bless. They cracked. You know, they couldn't keep up to speed in the rat race. And they're sitting on the beach polishing boats now. They absolutely love it. They've got a straw hat on and whatever. Or, you know, a friend of mine gave up working in like a factory environment. He was a supervisor. Loud noises, dirt and filth and whatever.

you know, industrial environment every day of his life, gave it all up to be a diving instructor, scuba diving instructor, makes 40% of what he does make, what he used to make, but he's happy and he's got dopamine flying around in his brain and the kids that he's teaching absolutely love it and they go home and they tell their parents about it and they spread the happiness and the talents around. Um, it,

You know, it does sound wishy-washy and it sounds a little bit guru-like and it sounds a little bit like something your priest would tell you, you know, or your religious leader, whomever that may be. It's not about that. I'm not trying to send some kind of

"Let's all make the world a better place" kind of message. I'm trying to share with people the overwhelming scientific evidence that we are sick less and we perform better cognitively and artistically and creatively if we work with our talents. It's just as simple as that. You guys like scientific studies. There was a fascinating scientific study done a few years ago looking at creativity.

And can I influence creativity in somehow, in some way? Can I, can I push the creativity buttons a bit? And what they did is they looked at, um, uh, they got some professional artists to, to each paint two paintings. They would, they were paid to paint one painting and they were commissioned and they were paid a significant fee to paint, uh, a piece of art, um,

in collaboration or in communication with a client who wanted a specific look or a particular thing and then they were also invited at the same time to create another piece of art just no commands no input from outside something that just came from their heart and that they fancied doing but they weren't going to get paid for it and then what they did is blindly they showed all of these pieces of art to a panel of art experts and 86%

of the non-commissioned pieces, so the ones that were not paid for, that were painted just because the artist felt like it, 86% of them were deemed artistically superior to the commissioned work. Now, what does this mean? Well, to me it means that to be genuinely talented and genuinely creative and innovative,

I've actually got to stop pushing people. I've got to stop flogging the horse. If I dangle this carrot and keep threatening with the stick and keep saying, this is your job, you have to do it well. Actually, I get less creativity. I get worse artistic performance. I get better artistic performance if I allow people to be intrinsically motivated to do something. And I think you can do that if you've identified with your talents.

I know a number of artists and I'm sure you guys do as well. I see, you know, you're, you're a musician as well, Justin and musicians and performers have a similar kind of artistic thing running through them as happy or sad or clever or unintellectual or boring or interesting. Any of those artistic people may be, I tell you one thing the vast majority of them have is an appreciation of their talents and

And it's something that we can learn from, I think, in the executive world is that appreciation of their talent. I beg your pardon, that appreciation of one's own talent. Yeah, they may be humble and they may stand in front of the camera and say, oh, well, thank you for this Oscar. I'm so surprised or whatever. But they knew when they were 12, 14, 16, 18, that they could dance and that they got a beautiful docentage.

dopamine rush from dancing around their bedroom or from playing the guitar or from throwing paint onto a canvas okay they identified their talents relatively early they almost certainly got some kind of support from it mummy or daddy probably sent them to art classes or whatever or bought them some brushes or bought them a guitar or at the very least mummy and daddy said go and get a proper job which probably motivated them to want to be an artist even more

Right. So if I can have this kind of drive to go and do my things that I want to do, I think we can learn a lot from those kind of those kinds of professions. And we can try to identify times earlier. There's one thing I definitely want to bring up with you before I let you go, because I'm sure that.

many of our listeners might be listening to this and thinking this is that they might be saying, well, Matt, all you're saying, all what you're saying sounds beautiful, sounds great. But what am I supposed to do as a parent or as a, or even as a student to,

where I might not be able to afford to spend so much time working on these strengths, let's say, and I have to focus on my weaknesses because in the educational system that I'm in, that's what I get graded on. Like if you have all Bs and a few As and maybe a C, but then you have one F, if I'm trying to get into a good school or I'm trying to advance my academic career,

people are going to notice that F, see that F, and that's all they're going to be hung up on. You know, it's not me, but the people who are judging me, the people who I need approval from, they're going to be seeing that F and they're going to judge me for it. So what's your take on kind of what you're saying, though it's backed up by scientific research, and I believe that, but how do you juxtapose that to education systems and how they're structured? Yeah.

It's a cracking question, Justin. It's a question I've heard from a lot of workshop participants over the years, and it's absolutely justified because for better or worse, we do have educational systems where students

A certain acceptable standard in certain subjects is a prerequisite. You just have to... I don't know what it's like in China. I don't know what it's like in the States. But I grew up and I went to school in Britain. If you don't pass maths, you can't go to college. Simple as that. Okay? And science is the same. I think English... You know, there are some kind of standard subjects that we have given this prestige to, and you have to pass that. Fine.

Fine. My message here is not let's chuck the whole education system up in the air and let everyone just sit in the field and just, you know, get their knowledge from the trees. I'm not trying to promote any kind of anarchist approach to education here. What I am saying is.

Yes, if your grade is in math, for example, is an F, and if it remains an F, you can't go to the next educational level. In Britain, for example, that would be what we call college, so grades 10 to 13. And then after that, if you don't have certain what we call A levels, you can't go to X university or Y university. These structures are in place, okay, for better or worse.

My message is not forget maths, chuck it out the window, burn your maths book, focus on geography and art, and you'll be a happy person. Everything will be wonderful because sadly, the system that we have in place means that you can't go to college because you don't have that. Meet that acceptable standard.

Put that work in, buy that CD-ROM, have those extra classes so that you can get to acceptable standard. But two other things are super, super important while you're doing these. One, remember my analogy of the fixed ceiling. Be very, very clear and be honest with yourself that when you invest that time and that money and that effort on improving your F to a D to acceptable standard, you will only get to a D. Please don't kid yourself.

Oh, there's a very important point here. If the F, by the way, is because the child has no natural talent for that subject. If the F is for some other social reason, she's being bullied at class, in class, or doesn't have a good relationship with the teacher, or is having some kind of social disturbance that means that she can't concentrate in mass class.

that may well become an A one day if we can create a different environment. But if, if the F is because of a failing or a lacking natural talent, then be very, very clear with yourself and honest with yourself that you will never get to A star. You won't become the next Stephen Hawking, but you can get to acceptable standard. But the second invite, and this is my final and probably my most important message to anyone who's listening today, guys, is how about you just spend 1% of your time

Looking at your talents as well. I'm not telling you to chuck the math book out and spend 100% of your time working on your talents and on your achievements. But we don't spend any time sometimes on it.

We spend all of our time. Can I, instead of putting the whole pie of energy and effort into fixing my weaknesses, can I take a little bit of that pie and spend a little bit of that time focusing on my talents or things that I love and maybe I can develop them into talents or things that people have given me feedback on that I'm really quite good at. Can you find that bit of a time? I have an analogy for you, but it's based on what Howie does.

So my understanding, and I'm not an expert on this, but if you're a film director or cinematographer, you have like a highlight reel or you have a body of work that you show potential clients. So I think what you're saying is like, don't show them all your work shit, worst shit. Show them your good shit. That's a good one. Show the highlight reel, right? Love it. That's a good one. And I think what you're also saying is that we all have highlight reels, right?

You can use that in your next book, Matt. You have to get Eric's permission. Eric, I've already stolen it. It was my idea. His next book is going to be Highlight Reels. It's going to be titled Highlight Reels. Yeah, chapter number 13, Highlight Reels. You are so right. You are so right. I have one of those videos on my website, right, to give people an idea of what I'm like in front of an audience if you want to book me to give a keynote or whatever. You're right. I'm not going to put the clip up there where I fell off the stage, am I? You're absolutely right. Now, again, what I'm not saying is, you know...

I don't know. My American friend, my, I have a dear friend who's gone back to, we spent a few years together living in Europe. He now lives in New York again. He had a wonderful phrase. He used to say, I want steak. I don't want sizzle. Right. You know that, you know, when they walk in the restaurant with a steak and it's sizzling, I want, so, so,

you have to be able to back that show reel up, Eric, right? You can't, if you put, uh, the quote unquote good bits on your show reel and you tell the world about how good you are. And then actually when you turn up, you're useless, then be prepared to deal with those consequences. Right. I, I,

I play football and I used to European soccer. I used to coach a lot here as well. And I used to coach the youth kids at a professional club here down the road. And one of the guys was telling me there that they get sent videos all the time from, from young players or their agents. And they watch these videos and they think, my goodness, this kid is incredible. We've got to get him over. We've got to sign him immediately. And I've watched a number of these videos and they are breathtaking. And then the boys turn up and they've got two left feet and they don't know what they're doing. Right. You,

you have to back up. You have to have some stake underneath that sizzle, but yeah, how about we all create, and I'm not talking about faking or botching CVs or resumes to look like I'm wonderful. I'm talking about having the vocabulary to describe what you're good at and having the experiences and the successes to tell colleagues and potential future employers about this is my show. Real guys. This is what I'm good at. Um,

And I'm proud of that. And I stand with that. And to your point, even more importantly, is that don't show yourself the blooper reel, like yourself, the blooper reel every single day and create negativity. It's remember that you do have a highlight reel and keep working on those things. So it's more of the internal message. It's like, don't put a spotlight on what you suck at. If you're like five foot tall, you're not going to go...

try to like date like six foot women but also circling back to what he was saying i mean i think you should shoot for the stars on that i thought your analogy was going to be about basketball and i went to relationships going back to the five foot analogy right if you're five foot tall and you do really love basketball don't be a center

- Learn how to shoot a three pointer. - Yeah, exactly. Don't be a center. - Well, I think it boils down to a term we used earlier in the podcast. It's really like to process it, right? To see it clearly, it's really about return on investment. Whether it's for selfish reasons where I wanna be better myself, or you're trying to lead other people,

It's return on investment. And like we said before, that investment is really all we have in life. Whether it's our time, whether it's our love, our emotions, our energy, our actual money, our brain power, whatever resources it is that consumes us, right? It's that investment. And every day, if we're trying to better ourselves, we are looking for new places to invest ourselves in.

And it's where you allocate that time and that resource of investment. And I think that's really what you're talking about is that allocation of it. You're not saying, look,

Don't like just completely forget about that hole in the ceiling of what you're terrible at. Get to an acceptable standard because these are basic skills that everyone should have. But then again, worry about the allocation of your time and don't put all your eggs in that one basket. Spread them out and spread them out wisely according to where your talents really lie. - I could not have summarized it better myself, Justin. Absolutely beautiful, absolutely beautiful.

Justin is great at summarizing. That's all I'm good at. That's your talent. Like you, I can't write a book. I can't create this stuff from scratch, but I can absorb it and regurgitate it back. That's what I'm good at. We have found his talent, boys. We found it. That's my talent. Regurgitation. That's a good one. Good luck with that journey. Developing that into a strength, my friend.

But Matt, it was a real honor having you on the show. I think I'm not, I think I know I'm definitely really looking forward to reading your book. Well, actually, I'm going to listen to your book whenever it drops on Audible, but it's already available on paperback and Kindle. Where can people get this book, Matt? That's really sweet of you. Yeah, you can get it on Amazon in Amazon.

any country that has Amazon, certainly. You can also get it directly from the publisher. That's BEP, Business Expert Press. There's also a link on my website, which is mattbeedle.com. And

Maybe you guys will share these links as well in the blurb underneath the pod. That would be grand if you could do that. But, yeah, there's a link on my website straight to that. And obviously you can also see the other work that I do, the keynotes and the workshops I give. And I do some work in front of the camera and stuff, any of that kind of stuff. You can see that on the website. And I will let you guys know as soon as the audible drops. I'll let you know.

Yeah, get me... I want to... I mean, I think Eric might be more of a paperback guy. I don't know about you, Howie. Justin's all over the Audible, though. But I think we should have mentioned this on the top of the show, but...

From what I understand, this is your fourth book and it's really a culmination of all the decades and years of experience that you have doing seminars, talking, consulting, doing workshops and keynotes and research. Is that correct? It's like a culmination of all your past experience. Coincidentally, I happen to have my books here. It's an extraordinary coincidence that you would mention that.

That's right. It is the fourth of my books that I've written. The last one came out in 2018. It's called Leadership Insights, the 11 typical mistakes that young leaders make and tips to avoid them. So, yeah, to answer your question, I've been a management trainer for or a leadership consultant for about...

about 12 years now and before about 10 years now. And before that I was, um, I ran a series of companies myself. I was an entrepreneur for many years. I sold my last company in 2016. I also worked for many years, uh, as a department head in a university. So my experience of leadership is firsthand. It's not just, you know, from a book or anything like that. I experienced and dealt with and messed up a lot of teams myself and tried to find my talents working with them. And,

For the last 10 years or so, I've been working with, I mean, I've worked with over 20,000 participants in workshops in over 20 countries and with people from over 40 nationalities. So I've been to lots of different industries, lots of different organizations trying to help them, particularly with their young and new participants.

managers and leaders, but also with more senior experienced leaders trying to help people discover their talents. And you're right, the final book or the latest book is this one, which has a beautiful design cover, I think. You know, it's got the whole bee thing going on. It's beautiful, isn't it? It was done by a wonderfully talented designer called James Hemsworth. And

That book is the culmination of my work because I've been working with leaders trying to help them with their communication, trying to help them with their transformational leadership, trying to help them with their self-awareness and all of these facets that you need to be, that I believe in the research shows us you need to be to become a good leader. And I realized that actually the secret source is strength orientation. It's understanding your talents and how we have got to come back to your analogy or your experience from your industry as a film director and

The reason you've created the showreel that you've got and the reason that you almost always get inquiries for a particular genre and why you sometimes bulk at the idea of getting inquiries from different genre is because you've identified your talents. Okay. I don't believe that you've taken an assessment and had some kind of printout, but it

but it sounds like you know what you're good at. It sounds like, you know, the kind of genre of film that you do well, and you know, the ones that you don't do so well, because you get that funny feeling when you get those inquiries, Hey, would you come and do X, Y, Z? Oh no, that's not for me. You know, it's not for me because you haven't identified with your talents. And that I realized when I started writing, um,

my latest book a couple of years ago is that is that that is the secret sauce no matter what industry you're in no matter whether you're leading or you're being led or whether you never want to become a leader or whether you want to become a teacher or you are a teacher or an educator or sports person or whatever it may be

If you're not aware of your talents and you're not open to discussing those and developing those, they won't become strengths. And I come back to the point I made earlier. I think we're all allowed to do that. We're all allowed to enjoy what we do. We're all allowed to get quality in what we do.

And that's my invitation to you guys. And anyone who wants to talk to me about this, contact me on LinkedIn. I'm totally happy night and day to have a chat about it. It's a subject that's obviously very close to my heart, which I'm sure you've got. It's really interesting. I look forward to reading it. You think about like science fiction, fantasy, just different types of superhero movies.

often it's that journey of understanding what your superpowers are so that you can meet the world kind of head on. And imagine like you didn't know what your superpowers are and you go into these battles and struggles in your life and you don't have your superpower with you. You're not going to be very successful. And so knowing what your superpower is, and we all got to have one,

It's super important, and it's our job to find it. I feel like we really went strong today with this whole film analogy. Yeah. Film metaphor. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, we went hard on this one. What would Spider-Man be if he didn't realize that he could fire the webs? You're so right. I love it. Absolutely love it. And he didn't know in the beginning. A lot of times it's, like, hidden. Love it, Eric. Look, boys, you are... Meanwhile, he's thinking he's, like, Thor. Yeah.

And he's like, no, he does not have Thor capabilities. And then he gets fucked. Anyway, guys, anyway. Let's get back. Matt, it was an absolute pleasure talking to you. We got to do this when you're in Shanghai and we can get you here in person. Talk about a whole bunch of other stuff as well. Expand on a lot of ideas and topics we kind of just broke the surface of today.

and get a proper drink with you. I absolutely love that. I'm absolutely honored, guys. I've enjoyed the format so much. I love the relaxed style that you guys have got. I just love the concept of how you do this. It didn't feel like an interview. It did feel like a chat, even though we're on Zoom, you know. But you're right. We'll have a little bit more superpower when we can get in the same room and have a scotch together. It'll be fantastic.

Hey, cheers, Matt. Boys, thank you very much. You look after yourselves. Cheers. Cheers. You too. Have a great one. Everybody, that was Matt Beadle on The Honest Drink. Check out his latest book, Strengths-Oriented Leadership, The World Through B-Glasses. My name is Justin. I'm Eric. And once I read Matt's book, I'm going to know what my superpower is. I look forward to sharing with everyone. And I'm Howie.

Alright, guys. Alright, guys. I had too much rum. Alright, guys. Peace. Bye.