Hayden: [00:00:00]
Well, I think that was a fascinating interview with Nick Yap, the CEO of Comfort Delgro. Really enjoy working with Nick and I enjoyed our conversation. I particularly find Nick to be incredibly genuine and caring and empathetic. He's incredibly smart and successful and yet such a humble leader as well. We are going to move on from that interview to a solo segment where I am going to explain some of the things that Nick spoke about and explain some of the evidence and research behind [00:01:00] it, but also give you some practical tips behind some of the things that came up during our conversation.
One of the first things that I wanted to talk to you about is something that Nick, uh, mentioned where I called it the imposter syndrome and, uh, a number of leaders that I've worked with, uh, sadly for some reason, uh, have had imposter syndrome. Nick didn't actually call it imposter syndrome. He really had some anxiety perhaps and some worry about whether or not he was good enough to be the leader of such a large business. And so we spoke about the, the feeling of, the feeling like you're an imposter, we also spoke about what does that mean in terms of his self confidence and self belief. And even the inverse of that is anxiety.
So something I thought I'd just share with you is really to dive deeply into that and certainly in terms of a couple of elements. One of them is the concept of the imposter syndrome [00:02:00] is such a common phenomenon that, it's good to normalise it for leaders to let them know that they're not alone, that most.leaders at some point or another, have a feeling that, perhaps they might be found out that they're not good enough. Interesting also, uh, the concepts of, anxiety and, uh, self confidence go way back for me personally, uh, to my fourth year in psychology where I did a thesis looking at the, the relationship between, uh, confidence and anxiety.
And they're, they're almost inversely related to each other. That is, the more self confident you are, typically the less anxious you are and vice versa. And so, one thing that you can do to improve upon increasing your confidence and reducing anxiety, is to use the concepts related to cognitive psychology and particularly Sarah Edelman's book, Change Your Thinking.
And there's a specific chapter in the book on self confidence where you can understand your thoughts and what are the thoughts that, Most people that, uh, have lower [00:03:00] self confidence have typically and how are some of those thoughts unhelpful to you and what you can do to change those thoughts which are leading to lower levels of self confidence and self belief.
The inverse of that you can work on as well, which is when you start to feel anxiety and anxious. Uh, what are the thoughts that lead to anxiety and what can you do to change some of those thoughts? in a previous, podcast, I've spoken about this a little bit. For those who haven't listened to all my podcasts, I think it's important to understand the framework behind cognitive psychology is all around linking together.
Uh, the ideas of your thoughts and, uh, beliefs and your emotions. And, in fact, if you want to manage your emotions a little better, one of, if not the strongest things you can do to manage your own emotions better is to actually understand the thoughts that underpin or precede your emotions and cognitive [00:04:00] psychology says...
That it's not the situation that drives the feelings, it's not what happens to you, it's not the events around you, but rather your thoughts about those events and your beliefs about those things that drive the emotional response. And if you want to feel better, then you need to not change the situation, but actually change your thoughts about the situation.
And certainly that relates to confidence and anxiety, and more broadly, imposter syndrome. Something else that Nick said that I thought was worth explaining and talking about is that you don't have to do it alone. Nick spoke about the fact that he was in a dark space and a dark hole, I think he said. I think that was very courageous and vulnerable of him to share that.
And I think it's really important that when you're in those dark places to recognise that you don't have to do it alone, that It's actually not weakness, but it's courageous ask for help, to [00:05:00] seek some help, whether it's a coach like myself, or a psychologist, or, friends who are wise. Again, provides that wise counsel.
He also spoke about one of the things that he's done is to really make sure there's some lessons learned and, and to take ownership of the challenges he was faced with. And that went with seeking help and also something he talked about, which was getting himself and pushing himself outside of his comfort zone.
So he recognised he needed help, but he also recognised that that would require him to go outside of his own comfort zone. So in seeking my help and advice, he didn't. He didn't look for me to fix his problem for him, he recognised he would have to learn some lessons and overcome his own challenges but with advice and support from somebody else.
And I think that's really important too because in this day and age we often seek someone else to fix our problems. We want to take a pill, we want to fix something quickly but it's a long journey and Often there's some level of discomfort in [00:06:00] that and Nick certainly recognised that. That also links to something else that he spoke about which is he mentioned the phrase what doesn't kill us and that reminded me of a book.
Called, What Doesn't Kill Us, dot, dot, dot, makes us stronger by Scott Carney. And whilst that book wasn't related specifically to, to mental strength, it, uh, has relevance for mental strength. So, that book by Scott Carney, I find, uh, and found a fascinating read for myself and would certainly recommend it to anyone who's interested in understanding about courage and pushing yourself outside your comfort zone and so forth.
and really what that book is about is focusing on physical health and the power and benefit of, repeated exposure to cold, whether it's cold water, cold air, and how that actually builds up what's known as, bat brown adipose tissue in our system, which actually [00:07:00] increases and enhances our immune system.
And if we can do that over time, there's a lot of evidence to support the growth of our immune system through the growth of the brown adipose tissue. but it's only through feeling uncomfortable and feeling that discomfort that we grow and develop. And that is similar to our mental growth and development. That we can't really learn and grow and develop unless we go through a feeling of discomfort.
That ability to push through the Outside of the comfort zone is what's necessary for personal growth and development. So I think that's crucial So if you are somebody who wants to grow and develop and improve yourself Certainly particularly if you're in a dark space, but even if you're not and you want to just get better have to be okay with feeling a little bit uncomfortable and in fact by definition if you're still very comfortable and you're not uncomfortable you're unlikely to grow and develop personally or professionally.
Something else that Nick [00:08:00] about which was around the motivation to keep fit physically gets you a coach or a personal trainer and he used that analogy for for working with me as a Mental trainer, I think he spoke about. So whether it's a physical trainer or a mental trainer, it's really important to work on both of those aspects.
What that made me think about was the concept of habits. If you want to learn knowledge, I can teach you knowledge. You can listen to these podcasts and you can learn knowledge. You can learn knowledge from books. There's all sorts of places you can learn knowledge, but us psychologists, we talk about the knowing doing gap, which is all around understanding that we may know something, but that's very different from doing it.
And that's why either having a coach or at least having a mindset that I need to work on this for some time to build new habits is really, really important. Similar to going to the gym and getting yourself a personal trainer. It's not about going once it's about [00:09:00] keeping fit over the longer term, which is what Nick spoke about.
When we think about habits, we have a framework at Steople that I thought I'd share with you, which shows that there's six factors that are necessary to drive long term sustainable habits. The first one of those is self awareness. It's really important that you have awareness and insight into your strengths and weaknesses, and really know yourself well.
So there's not, no blind spots there. So continuing to learn about yourself and increase your self awareness over time is, is crucial. Second factor in driving long term habits and changes is all around desire or motivation. You may know that you're not very strong at something, but you may not care. So it really is important to understand your own motivations, and those motivations need to be intrinsic, not extrinsic motivations to, to last over time.
Third factor in driving long term habits and changes is all around skills. So if you want to increase in some particular [00:10:00] area, it's really important that you not only have awareness of that need, You have a desire, but then there are certain skills in developing these areas, such as if you want to increase your self confidence or reduce your anxiety, you not only have to be aware of that and want to do it, but there are certain skills such as learning about cognitive psychology or other strategies to increase self confidence and belief.
The fourth thing It helps drive habits and changes is once you've learned something, whether it's cognitive, so let's say it's like cognitive psychology and the power of that particular, model or framework to increase your confidence, reading a book on it or learning it quickly doesn't. Change your habits.
You need to practice that, uh, for days, weeks and months until it becomes something that is much more automatic. So practice is a key element in behavior change. A fifth element is feedback. Uh, you may think you're doing it right or using it [00:11:00] well, but it's not until you get feedback. using that particular strategy well.
So having a feedback buddy or partner or a coach or a counsellor, somebody that can support you in your change is really, really important. That can give you feedback, particularly feedback that's on the job or on the spot or as soon as possible after it's happening. And the final element in behaviour change is all around measurement.
What gets measured gets done. And so, if we just have nice conversations, it's not going to cut it. We need to be able to measure where's the baseline measure and where's the future change that we want. Usually that starts with a very clear goal. What is our goal? What are we trying to achieve? And maybe a score out of 10 is very helpful as a starting point, and then we can measure whether or not we've improved or not from that.
Another element of measurement is not just yourself giving a score, but your boss, your manager, a trusted, respected peer maybe. So a couple of points of measurement are usually very helpful. The reason I [00:12:00] share that was Nick spoke about that keeping fit, it's not just about getting fit mentally and physically, it's about staying fit.
And those are the elements that we draw upon to help somebody build sustainable habits. A couple of other points to share before we wrap up, my thoughts and reflections on Nick Yap and my interview with Nick. One of those is he mentioned his why, what is my why? and one of the things that's really useful is to be aware of your, purpose and meaning, what is your why?
To overcome some of Nick's he ended up turning it outwards instead of inwards and focusing on his wine. One of his, kind of, something that's very meaningful to him, is taking care of the 4, 000 staff that work for Comfort Delgro across Australia. And he takes his responsibility very seriously in terms of taking care of The staff and their families.
It's part of a community and when he was able to focus on his why, his own anxieties, uh, were reduced because he focused [00:13:00] less on himself and more on what he was trying to achieve and why he was in the role that he was in. Many of you may have heard of Simon Sinek, who's written a great book called Start With Why.
Uh, but beyond Simon, there's many other, sort of, a lot of other evidence and research shows that people that have a clear purpose and meaning are going to enhance their own well being. and provide the sort of engagement that's necessary to drive certain behaviours as well. So a lot of literature around that.
So I guess from a practical perspective, if you don't know your why, if you don't know your purpose and what gives you passion and meaning in your life, then I would suggest you do some work around that to begin to really reflect on what is important to you, reflect on Um, what gives you a buzz, what gives you energy, and what are some of the things, if you look at the patterns in your life, what are some of the things that, um, have been helpful in, uh, giving you that level of passion, energy, and purpose and meaning.[00:14:00]
He spoke also about two other factors I want to raise in relation to wellbeing. One of them is around being present. Nick mentioned that he had trouble being present with his family at home and he really focused on trying to be more present with his wife Karen and with his daughter. And that concept relates to mindfulness.
Mindfulness could be about breathing techniques, it could be about the way you eat, it could be the way you walk. But mindfulness is about, uh, about being present. Uh, being in the moment, one of the things that causes greatest, the greatest levels of anxiety for people or worry for people is either thinking ahead too much or ruminating too far in the past, not being present, not being here and now and interesting being fully engaged and present with what you do enhances your, your wellbeing and particularly with your own family, making sure that you are able to be with your family or friends.
rather than you [00:15:00] physically being present but your mind being somewhere else. So if that's something that you struggle with, it's really important to really focus on building habits around, how do I make sure that when I'm with somebody, I'm actually listening to them. One simple strategy is just to catch yourself when your mind wanders, when your mind is somewhere else.
Don't break yourself, just give yourself some kindness and some compassion and bring your mind back to listening and not listening to respond, but listening to really hear and really understand your partner, if it's your partner at home or your children. Uh, and that is going to help them feel better, but also it's going to help you and your own wellbeing.
Probably the last thing I want to talk about in relation to Nick Yap and the conversation, in relation to wellbeing at least, is the concept of, vulnerability. And, uh, I've mentioned Brene Brown previously in relation to vulnerability, but I also want to mention in relation to grief and learning [00:16:00] to sit with.
Uh, things and linking it to a culture that you want to create of empathy and caring. So, Nick gave, an example of where he had to deal with a, uh, a death in the, uh, in the organisation of two young men, two fine young men, and he was able to, um, be vulnerable and sit with his, his discomfort and vulnerability and, and grief as he and others went through a process of grieving, uh, their, their workmates and colleagues.
And he said, instead of that being weakness, he really felt that was a strong connection to the company values, which is all around caring and all about empathy. And he felt proud to be part of an organisation that cared, truly cared for others, and showed empathy. So, I really enjoyed Nick's linking of value of empathy and caring to the concept of vulnerability that Brené Brown has made so popular in the last five to ten years.[00:17:00]
And probably the last final thing I want to talk about was, we did touch on leadership and I say touched on because a lot of the work I've done with Nick has been around leadership, but in our interview we spoke about wellbeing. He pointed to the fact that the work that I've been doing with him and his team has been quite transformative in terms of not only transforming him, but him and his team into a high performance team.
And yet what was fascinating for me is that we actually haven't done very much work specifically on Nick's executive team being a high performing team. However, the fact that we've done a lot of work around the wellbeing areas that we've talked about, and we've also, as a group, come together and been vulnerable with each other and built deep levels of trust with each other and safety with each other.
Um, particularly psychological safety with each other. And the mere fact that we 12 months [00:18:00] has actually had a true transformative effect on them as a team and they are truly moving towards becoming, if not already are, a high performing team. So I just wanted to point out the connection between, uh, well being and vulnerability and, and trust.
performance team. They're not the only factors you need to become a high performing team, but alone those things can actually make a huge difference by themselves to building a really cohesive team. Uh, so that's probably where I'd like to finish in terms of my reflections on, uh, working with Nick and the interview with Nick Yap.
So the key points, I guess in summary are lots of people suffer from imposter syndrome and you're not alone and you can work on it, particularly through, uh, tools like cognitive psychology. If you're not sure of what's going on and you're struggling or if you're in a dark place or even well before you get there, recognise you're not alone and get help, reach out to others.
That [00:19:00] is not a sign of weakness, it's a sign of courage. See your, um, coach as somebody to help you, like a personal trainer, to, to build long-term habits rather than just, uh, to learn some knowledge. Focus on your your why, uh, and understand your own meaning and purpose and what gives you a buzz, what gives you energy.
And also be prepared to be courageous. Uh, and, uh, you know, what doesn't kill us, uh, can make us stronger. Certainly. Thanks very much to Nick Yap for his time, but not only time, but his, his genuineness, his humanness and ability to be vulnerable with us. I very much appreciate that and feel that that's going to make a great listening.
and I want to encourage everyone to subscribe to this podcast, leave your reviews and share the podcast with others you think might find it interesting as well. So thanks very much. And I look forward to seeing you at the next podcast. [00:20:00]
