Colin Hunter 0:07
Hi, folks, and welcome to another episode of the leadership tales podcast. delighted today to be joined by Bill treasurer. Bill is a good friend worked with him on a number of projects with an organisation called iaasa. We met through that is just one of these rare characters who has energy, thoughtfulness, and the ability to get messages across very clearly and succinctly. And he’s the chief encouragement Officer of giant leap consulting an organisation that works a bit like we do potential squared with different organisations teaching leadership. He works right across the Americas, and an organization’s he’s worked with including NASA, Saks Fifth Avenue UBS bank, and he brings a different styles from his background, where he was a high diver. So we talked about that in the podcast today. He’s a cancer survivor. He’s a father, and with his work in his authoring of a book called courage, because work is introducing new practice called courage building. But he’s also through leaders open doors, which became a number one bestseller in the leadership training category. All royalties from that book, I donated to programmes that support kids with special needs. And that tells you a lot about where bill comes from, in terms of his gifts to others. And today, you’re going to get a chance to have a gift from Bill treasurer to hear his story. So enjoy.
I’m delighted to be joined all the way from North Carolina from a place called Asheville, which is not too far Black Mountain with not too far away from where I wrote part of the book that’s coming out in September. But it’s a beautiful part of the world. And I’m delighted to be joined by to link that to one of the beautiful people in my life who I’ve met through iaasa, Bill treasurer of Bill, welcome to the show today,
Bill Treasurer 2:00
Kyle and how terrific it is to be able to spend time with you patching in from Asheville, North Carolina, here in the beautiful mountains on a beautiful day with beautiful folks like yourself. So I look forward to catching up.
Colin Hunter 2:11
Good bill, we’re gonna we’re going to take a journey around a number of things into your background, maybe just do some joint views around leadership and particularly around the courage piece of risk taking that is the heart of your work, but give the listeners a bit of a history about yourself a potted history.
Bill Treasurer 2:31
So I was born 18 miles from New York City. I grew up in Westchester, New York, born and raised there. And if you cut me off in traffic, you’ll still see a little New York come out of me. And then I went on to school at West Virginia University where I was a springboard diver. And we I’m sure that some of that will factor into what we talked about a little bit later because you learn a lot about being wrong when you’re diving because it’s the way you you learn how to get things right. From there. I went into my career in a roundabout way I’ve got a sort of unusual career background, but and I am in the area. I’m a practitioner for the last 30 years of leadership development I designed develop deliver comprehensive leadership programmes for emerging and experienced leaders. And oftentimes that involves executive coaching along the way. I’ve worked with small boutique consulting companies like high performing systems. And then I went on to a company called executive adventure where we did outdoor experiential team building facilitated some 300 experiential team building events that often involves failure, by the way, yeah. And then I got some big consulting experience by working with Accenture in their human performance practice, and became their first full time internal executive coach 911 happened and it was an existential crisis in my life, and I decided to go out on my own. And now I’ve had my business giant leap consulting for about 20 years. And we are it we are courage building consulting company, we do it in three ways. We help companies set a bold future, if you want to have a bold culture, you got to start with bold goals and we set a bold future. Through strategic planning, we call it courageous future. The second thing that we do is design develop and deliver comprehensive leadership programmes because it’s the leaders that are going to be instrumental in moving you towards that bold future. So we build courageous leadership. And of course, leaders don’t get things done by themself. They have to mobilise teams of people that act in a courageous like way in order to be able to execute on the strategy. So strategic planning, leadership development, and team building courageous future courageous leadership and courageous teaming. That in a nutshell, is my potted history. And along the way, I’ve written some books on leadership, and I’m a dad, I’m a dad of three teens so that it’s courageous and, and that’s where I get most of my things wrong is my parents and my kids.
Colin Hunter 5:14
Me too. Me too. I’m gonna hold my hand up and say I am in there. So let’s I mean, giant lead consulting, let’s link it back to the the high, high diving in there. And when you’re talking Hi, this is where my fear of heights comes in. When you’re talking to high diving, how high are you talking? And for those listening in the UK and metres, or is it a you converting a defeat? What are you to do?
Bill Treasurer 5:36
Maybe I’ll do both. So I, typically so and keep in mind too, for your listeners that I’m a high diver Who’s afraid of heights. It’s unusual to me that a lot of times the very thing that pokes you in the chest and says, You’re afraid of me, becomes your challenge. It’s like what are you gonna do about your fear, buddy? It’s like a bully, right? Like, it’s like, Hey, man, you’re afraid of heights? What are you gonna do about it? And, and I’ve seen, you know, podcasters I’ve seen radio personalities that started out as stutters same thing, it’s like, you know, somebody poked him in the chest saying, and you study where you’re going to do about this. So I went in the movement of my, you know, fear of heights, and here I am, I became a high diver. And we were diving from 100 feet, that’s about 27 metres while travelling at speeds in excess of 50 miles an hour. I don’t know, maybe that’s like 70 kilometres an hour. Yeah. Into a little pool that was 10 feet deep, or about, what about three? Less? three metres? Two and a half metres deep? Yeah.
Colin Hunter 6:39
So you got to you got to stop pretty quickly. When you hit that water that basically what
Bill Treasurer 6:43
do you do? It’s, it’s a sensitive trick, actually. And if you don’t stop, you’ll jam your feet. I in fact, I joined a troupe of athletes, the day after a guy broke both of his ankles. Wow. And then if you do it too quickly, that water is going at 50 miles an hour fast where it doesn’t belong. So you’ve got to get the you got to get iving has to be done. Exactly right.
Colin Hunter 7:07
I’ve got a visual image it up. There. Yes, that’s great. So I’m taught to move by that because that poking the chest, and I’m a big believer in that there’s certain things you face and I’ve got a massive fear of heights. But I went and did a bond bungee jump off 125 minutes, in a bridge in New Zealand. And at the time, people were saying why? Why did you do it? And I said it was a change in my life, and a point. But I spent three days in a complete high afterwards. It was just incredible.
Bill Treasurer 7:37
So write probably spent three days in a high on that, because it was a limitation of yours and you had confronted it. And then it was like a wow moment like I I really did this I confronted something that was limiting me holding me back. And maybe to some degree, I felt a certain sense of shame or embarrassment or humiliation because of this thing. And now I went through it work through it. For me. Same thing. I was a pipsqueak diver. And but I was afraid of heights. I remember when I was a little kid, my dad took my brother and I to the top of the Empire State Building. And the two of them were looking down at the city and I was pressed up against the wall. That would be me. I was a good low board diver. I won the Westchester County diving championships three times but as I went got ready to go to college colleges would dangle scholarships in front of me and they’d say, ability are great low board diver, tell us about your high board list of dives. And I didn’t have a high board list of guys because of my fear of heights. And a lot of times risk taking is a decision will I won’t die Can I can’t I should I should I get off this platform of safety. But a lot of times the platform is I’m stuck in fear am I going to stay here on this platform and safety because I’m afraid but I had a coach who would take me down to Iona college nurse show in New York. And to this day con I’ve never seen another diving board anywhere in the world. Like this diving board this this diving board was special because it was built on a hydraulic lift. So now he could take me from one metre and just move it up to one and a half metres. And and that so that was enough to push me outside of my comfort zone. Yeah, and we don’t learn and comfort as you know we learned in discomfort and you get a lot of things wrong on your way to getting things right and and at one and a half metres. I’m upset with him. I don’t even want to go to practice my heart’s racing. I feel like a failure and getting my dives wrong, even more wrong than before. But after 100 200 300 dives, I get used to it and I build competency and I gain competent confidence as a result. And that’s his time. That’s as cute when I start getting a little bit bored and maybe a little complacent. He moves it up to two metres Yeah, same same process. I’m upset with him. I don’t want to go to practice I’m doing screaming belly Whoppers and getting well on my back, and then eventually I get confidence and competence. And he moves up three metre and that process of modulating between comfort and discomfort eventually led to me getting a full scholarship to college, I wouldn’t have been able to go to college if it wasn’t for the scholarship that I got. But then I carried on that tradition and became a high diver by doing that, you know, incremental ism on the way, the journey up to the top. What’s interesting, I think, is I also when I later worked for executive adventure, and we would take senior executives in the outdoors, a lot of times like, overweight balding man, like I look today.
Colin Hunter 10:41
That’s a lie, folks, by the way, just.
Bill Treasurer 10:47
And we’d give it we’d make them uncomfortable. We, you know, create a level this environment playground, like you say, and we put them through experiential activities where none of them had done them before. Sometimes they were 40 feet in the air, doing like a pamper pole, or doing a high ropes course. And moving them purposely into discomfort where they’re all awkward together, they’ve not done it before they make some mistakes. But you get to the backside of it, they have the elation that you have, that they they did something that they were really afraid of petrified of. And then they’re walking on air for three days, like you did when you did your bungee jump. And I
Colin Hunter 11:24
knew the incremental pieces of fascinating analogy. And I love that I’d love to go see that diving board just to see it, you know that there’s that piece because I when I was growing up, we had the high man as we call it in the swim pool, which was wasn’t a spring loaded, it was just an edge and you drop, you know, but that was and when you looked at you saw people going, I can do I can just jump and then you get up there. And it’s like, no way. Am I going anywhere, anyway. But when we think about leadership, one of the questions I have my mind, because there’s a few listeners are going to be saying okay, so that sounds like you’re being pushed out of it. You’ve been poked to do something. And as leaders, there’s some times nowadays, that it it seems like leadership is about pushing people to do things they don’t want to do. But there was something about the way you talked about that, that was engendering lighting a fire inside you as well, as you know, under your backside Then what’s your view on leadership and courage?
Bill Treasurer 12:20
Yeah, well, the so I think that a leader has two responsibilities when it comes to courage, and can bear in mind, I also think that there’s two kinds of leaders when it comes to courage. There are people and I think that this is the most common way of leading, and that is to inject people with fear and anxiety as a way to motivate them to get things done, or as a way to keep them conscientious. It’s like whatever you do, go drop that ball. If you drop that ball, you realise it’s gonna be a glass everywhere, and you’re gonna be in big trouble. So don’t drop it. Yeah. And we work through fear to motivate people, which actually displaces their courage, and I call them spillers versus the leader who’s like, alright, it’s really important, we keep the ball up in the air. And here’s some ways that we keep the ball up in the air, I know you can do it, I’m right here, I’ve kept the ball in the air. And we’re going to try to keep this ball up in the air together. And that’s an encouraging leader, they put courage inside of you. And I call them a filler because they’re filling you with courage versus displacing your courage. Now back to the two responsibilities that leaders have first is if they want to get people to have initiative to try things they’ve not done before to experiment and innovate, then they’ve got to be the first ones to do it. So they’ve got a role model, right? Like they’ve got to be the first ones up and off whatever high dive platform, they’re asking people to jump off of, they’ve got to have occasionally a leader needs to make sure that they’ve got sweaty palms, that they’re doing something that causes their insides to, you know, let them know that they’re not in Kansas anymore, physiologically. And that’s job number one, role model courage, but Job number two for a leader, and it may sound crass, and it may sound overbearing. But the second job of a leader is to make people uncomfortable. Now, I don’t mean it in a fear stoking way. And I spent a lot of time in our courage building workshops, talking about the negative impacts of fear based leadership. But I do mean it in a way that a leader holds you accountable to your own potential. Sometimes it’s latent potential that they see before you see, and they believe in you before you believe in yourself. My coach took me down to Iona college, because he wasn’t going to let me turn away from the probability and possibility of becoming a high diver or at least getting a high board list of dice because he could see the value of a college education for me when I was like ready to be like, well, I guess I’ll have to give up another sport. We’re going down I go to college, right because he cared about me not because he was being punitive. trying to make me purposely afraid. But it does require nudging you out into discomfort and a leaders got to pay attention. How much absorbability of discomfort can this person withstand? I don’t want them to choke, and feel fight, flight or freeze and get petrified. But I do need to get them a little bit out to this comfort where they experienced their courage zone. You could also call it their learning zone.
Colin Hunter 15:23
I love that. And what I love is that your definition make people uncomfortable, because we have a definition of leadership, which is agitating for the future. So as long as it’s towards a purpose, as long as it’s towards something, that they can see a value in what they’re doing that that’s that’s greatest when people are pushing people towards something where they’re going, so why am I doing this? All the time, goodness,
Bill Treasurer 15:46
I love this. There’s a quote by Ginni Rometty, she Virginia Rometty is the CEO of IBM. And she said, comfort and growth don’t coexist. So it’s the sort of like if you want to grow and progress and evolve and develop and learn, learning involves discomfort learning involves being uncomfortable. And you know, it’s almost maybe cliche, but it’s learning to be comfortable, becoming comfortable with discomfort.
Colin Hunter 16:14
And I listening to a book called Peak Performance the other day, and it was that stress plus rest equals growth. So it’s not just continuous stress, it’s that ability to reflect, to purposefully practice as you were doing at a certain level and then to grow and working in there. So that
Bill Treasurer 16:32
yeah, there’s there’s another great self help book, one of the best self help books I ever read. And it was called The Power of full engagement by Jim lair. And Tony Schwartz. And Tony Schwartz is the co author of The Art of a deal with Donald Trump. Although they had a schism, they had a break off. But but the powerful engagement has that same idea, you know, stress and then rest. It’s this idea that they call strategic disengagement, like, you’ve got moments of furious engagement, where you’re intensely engaged on the thing that you’re doing that is outside your comfort zone. But then you need moments of strategic disengagement to replenish, rejuvenate, get some perspective, before you go back into the heavy engagement.
Colin Hunter 17:16
So there’s go back to the sailing the ship out the harbour, and I think we’re onto something here around, there’s a there’s a stretch piece stretching, it’s a bit like going to the gym, you’re not going to do a heavy heavyweight straightaway, you’re going to work up towards what you’re trying to do. And what you’re trying to do is get your mind used to through purposeful practice, almost practising something till it becomes a habit, and then pushing something else in the practice. So if you were to define the the leadership that you do, and how you teach leaders, what are the purposeful practice pieces that you put into your programmes that you would you would have over any others? What would they be
Bill Treasurer 17:57
that I’d have over any others? Well, I will say that I still, even though it’s been 25 years, since I worked at executive adventure, I still do experiential activities in a workshop now. Whereas back in the day, when I worked at EA, we called it, it would be a full day of like, eight experiential activities, one after the other, and then processing activity. Now with the ins, you know, internal concept of teach people a framework, move into experience or breakouts, and dialogue, and then maybe do one, possibly two experiential activities outside of the room. So it’s still a great way of knocking people off balance a little bit. And the way that we call it is to help them catch themselves being themselves by moving into discomfort, because you can stay you know, so imagine you’re doing a leadership workshop. And, and lately, I’m doing more workshops, that have some elements about managing stress, managing anger, you know, it’s attached to emotional intelligence, if I want to be a leader, I don’t want to be freaking out and transmitting my anger at people and such. So let’s talk about self care. Let’s talk about your own ability to manage stress. And it looks great on paper. And you can look some PowerPoint slides in here the lecture and talk about it your table. But now let’s put you in a stressful environment through an experiential activity. It’s harmless, it’s actually fun, it’s actually engaging. But suddenly, we amp up a little bit of safe stress. And these contorted behaviours, this current behaviour comes out. And then we can help them catch them, then we after the activities done where they probably have failed a little bit, then we can hold up the mirror and say, you know how to the way we react in the simple, fun, innocuous activity in some small way reflect how we act back at work when the deadline gets accelerated, or when a client gets upset with us or when the revenue and margins gonna be lower on this project and respected. You know, what do we do with that stuff?
Colin Hunter 19:53
Yeah, and I, I love what we’re talking about, because I know we’re also dipping into the world of VR together Gather because what we’re talking about here is immersion, aren’t we? And when you immerse somebody in something, and I’m not, you know, when I look back, and people say, Oh, experiential learning, learning is or outdoor learning, as it’s called in the UK, it’s passe. And I’m like, No, it’s not. No, because, because for me, it’s still an emotion, it’s still an experiential piece. So even if we’re getting the likes of VR and other things coming in, there’s nothing like either falling out your thinking in the middle of nature, or falling out, you’re thinking when you’re suddenly surrounded by an issue, a problem we need to solve with people and humans. And leadership is the human element. So when we come to that the emotion piece, you know what the courage piece is an interesting one, because the courage is about overcoming something, what do you think the biggest barriers are that you’re seeing, particularly at the moment in leadership,
Bill Treasurer 20:53
in leadership now, what I see, you know, the common most common barrier that I run into relative to leadership, and, and a lot of the work that a lot of the leadership, folks that I work with, are new leaders, which I really love. It’s a it’s a very open audience of people who’s who are eager to learn. But the most common malady, I’d say, of a new leader is, you know, we, first of all, we let’s remember how we get into a leadership role. We get in there, through self performance, we do a great job at something ourselves, we’re really productive, we knock a lot of items off the to do list, we can shovel more stuff than somebody else. And the bosses say, hey, that person, let’s put them in a leadership role, because they did so good by themselves. And And now Now we put them in a leadership role, and we hardly ever do we give them a playbook, much less a leadership development programme. And there’s groping with how to do it. And what do they do, they fall back on what made them successful in the past, trying to do everything themselves. So now they got a team of people. And and the most common malady I find is the inability to delegate. And they get subsumed in trying to do everybody else’s work, or at least know everybody else’s work and tell everybody how to do their work. And it because they get mired down in the thin, the thick of thin things, right? They get stuck in the week.
Colin Hunter 22:16
Some things I love it. Well, that Yeah, I can’t
Bill Treasurer 22:18
claim credit for that. That’s Stephen Covey. Right?
Colin Hunter 22:21
Yeah. Yeah, that was why I was resonating.
Bill Treasurer 22:27
They get stuck in the weeds and, and then I find that a person there, their career will plateau right there if they don’t learn how to leverage the people around them. And and by the way, delegation serves two purposes. Yes, it’s good for the leader, him or herself, because it frees them up to be more strategic. But it also is, it’s the way that you develop your people is by giving them more substantial tasks to do. So the idea of, of inability to delegate and then I find that the most common way that they learn to delegate is capitulation, they get so subsumed and so double booked. And you know, that they have at some point, they just cry awful, they’re like, Okay, I have no choice. I’m gonna have to delegate and I’m gonna have to trust that this is going to get done. So that’s one big malady I see.
Colin Hunter 23:15
Yeah. And it’s interesting. I have an old client friend who used to talk about I give my people rope. And they choose to whether they hang themselves or not. And I thought, well, that sounds a bit like your capitulation. PC. You know, it’s, it really is. But but that ability to have space is a core thing. Talk to me about the the definition of the giant leap and why you named it I get its courage. But then you talked about incremental learning yourself and the giant leader. Yeah,
Bill Treasurer 23:42
so giant leap. When I started the business, I just I wanted to, you know, build Treasury doesn’t know so much about so many things. But the one thing that I did learn is this unusual experience, having been a person who was afraid of heights and stood at the edge of a risk 1500 times, and I learned the cadence of that risk of how to stay present, when you’re fully immersed in fear, and still get off that platform somehow. And I thought there must be something in that, in that in that one second to get off that perch that could be shareable with other people. So I wrote an article got published in training magazine, a different version of the article got published in TMD. Magazine, and I thought it might be on to something. I wrote a book called write risk 10 powerful principles for taking giant leaps with your life. And then I thought this, this metaphor of the giant leap, like you mentioned in the you know, the local community pool, there’s the high board. There’s actually a Norman Vincent Peale. A Norman Rockwell sorry, Norman Rockwell painting, of a guy peering over the edge of the high board looking down at the little pool below. That’s almost a metaphor for for people of fear of of the challenge of excitement. that mixture of excitement and fear at the same time? And will I won’t I get off this platform. And I thought that that would be the metaphor for my company giant leap consulting, I used to take giant leaps for a living. But now I want to help people take their metaphorical high dive, whatever it is. And when we do our courage building programmes, and I show them my high dive at some point, the next segment we move into is what’s that person’s high dive for this year for 2021? What’s the high dive, you know, you’re going to need to take the platform of safety you need to get off of and then they they do reflection on that. And then they die. Like they get into group and pairs sharing their high dive their giant leap that they’re going to be taking. And they give encouragement to one another that, you know, the other person is allowed to ask them What fears they might need to confront in order to get this thing done, what resources they might need, what what past experiences can they draw upon. And then after they have that peer coaching, then they can offer some guidance and advice, but not criticism. And so so it’s a metaphor, giant leap, consulting for getting off the bat platform and helping people take you know, pretty big leaps through incremental ism. As an aside, I did start a another company in 2018, little leaps, press, and I press company. So I’ve got the little leaps of a giant leaps cover, but somebody else is gonna have to do the mmediately
Colin Hunter 26:25
made huge leaps, it doesn’t sound so good medium leaps. So I wanted to pick up on something you talked about, because then on the little leaps and giant leaps, one of the people that you introduced me to, through iaasa, which is the organisation where we met was the amazing Gloria delicious, Gloria, and what she did, because there’s a piece in here that everybody thinks leadership, delegation, you know, whatever it is, but but there’s a conversation to be had around certain things, and she is in to use her words delicious at the ability to bring a different level of conversation. How did you meet her? And how do you how do you use her to help you work?
Bill Treasurer 27:05
Yeah. So Gloria cotton is who we’re talking about. And as many of your listeners will know, certainly, in the last five years, more prominently in the last two and a half years, companies have really started to amp up their intensity of focusing on the idea of inclusion. And, and there have been, you know, obviously, certainly in the United States, but not limited to the United States, there have been a number of instances and instances that prompted that Michael Brown, first Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, others. And so my client, one of my clients, we with our leadership programme, one of the things that we’ll do is mobilise strategic action teams, and that action team. So imagine you have a cohort of 30 people. And then you take the cohort and subdivide them into, say, six groups of five. And that group of five will be a Strategic Action Team for some duration during the leadership programme. And that group of five will research some opportunity for the company or something initiative that the company really needs to be paying attention to. And it’s a way for the company to extract value from the Leadership Programme, before these people move on to senior leadership roles. So it’s good for the company. It’s like their own internal consulting company. Yeah. So one group was working with one of my companies and they, they were focused on the idea of diversity and inclusion and coming to the recognition that their company hasn’t done enough in this area. And then they went through their own struggles, by the way, they had, you know, people from the South and the north on this team, and people rejecting the idea, there’s not even racism in this country where you’re talking about, I mean, they really had to evolve themselves. They came to the conclusion that they needed to do more in the area of diversity. They put a diversity programme together, but they didn’t know anything about diversity, right, except that there, because it was a very non diverse culture. And then they they found this resource Gloria cotton, in, you know, in Chicago, and where this company is based, and this company let you know, it’s in the construction area, and it’s mostly white males. And here comes Gloria caught this African American woman, and nobody knows what to expect, including us who brought her in, and she goes right into the belly of the beast, right, like right here in the middle of white people whose arms are folded with scepticism. Then who’ve earned their I’ve earned everything myself. I did it all by my own merit. I don’t want to be told that I need to hire certain people. And here she comes. And not with a finger pointed in anybody’s face. Oh, but through her own personhood, the story she shared the value she communicated some of the experiential activities she did with us she just disarmed everyone and won the group over in the same way that she want to, you know, our group of When we got to meet her, and the good news is I brought her into another client since then. And she’s come back to the first client since then, and has now been introduced to iaasa. So it’s an important subject, talk about discomfort, right? Oh, yes, the uncomfortable conversations that are necessary, and it’s way easier to avoid them, and let’s stay status quo, then let’s have hard conversations in a respectful way, and figure out how to leave this world a better place and leaders have to be involved in that conversation can’t be on the sidelines on that.
Colin Hunter 30:33
No, I would agree. And I think this is what she was able to do was she was able to put some principles out here about being welcoming, she was able to put some principles of equity. And I wanted to put that up, because the conversations we need to have with our people, as leaders are tough. And there’s no tougher conversation, as you say, then that conversation around diversity and inclusion. So how, if we take glory, and we take an example of that, and you’re, you’re talking to a leader at the moment, who is struggling with conversations, that courage of having those conversations and changing particularly, let’s take the topic now of hybrid working, and moving back, which you and I know is going to shift the change and change the way we work is going to shift and change the way people are working. What are the conversations you think that we need to be having? in there? I’m gonna put you on the spot, because it’s it’s a tough one. I’ve got the answer. You do
Bill Treasurer 31:32
is a tough one to Gloria, you know, for a second, that I even keep the words that she taught us. Because I think they’re so important, right about making people feel welcomed, valued, respected, heard, understood, and supported, that every human being has those basic needs to feel those things, know that leaders need to do this, I think in the hybrid world, the that leaders need to first recognise that we’re not going back to 2018. And so their own sentimentality and romanticism of the past, and gravity may want them to move in that direction, you know, we just need to get everybody back to the office that way was there there needs to be some recognition that some population of people there might be some departments that don’t need to come back in that way. And or there that there will be some people who will have a preference, maybe not all the time, but for some limited amount of remote working that we have to recognise that this becomes the legacy. Partly, hybrid is the work right that and I don’t even think that the hybrid is temporary, right? Like, I don’t think it’s just as a temporary condition. That gets us back to 2018. And 19. I think it’s a semi permanent position that, that and that so the leader, the conversation first is with him or herself. How was this experience for me? What did I learn about my own productivity? During the pandemic? When I couldn’t be in the office? Did it hurt my ability to get things done? Was I still able to be effective with my team? In all likelihood, their answer is going to be yes, yeah. And then they have to have an honest conversation about with the team, about, you know, with the recognition, we still need to stay. And this becomes the primary thing we need to set parameters for the conversation. And that the first one is that in whatever we land on and decide that we need to remain a world class commercial enterprise that, you know, we don’t get in the way of that, whatever we decide, and then with the team start talking about, how, how can we honour that principle, and still honour the various wishes of the various people on our team? What do you want? What do you know? What have you learned in the pandemic about your own work? And what would we lose in not, you know, at least occasionally getting together face to face and in person, what would be lost if we didn’t, you know, like, if we had to continuums, I don’t want to be on a zoom or a Skype or a team’s all the time. On the other hand, I don’t want to go back to, you know, in room and meeting after meeting all the time, you know, so where is the place that we want to reside on this continuum between all virtual and all in person? What does it need to be in order to satisfy that, you know, being a world class commercial enterprise.
Colin Hunter 34:31
And I’d love to go back to your analogy about the platforms in the leap off because I think going back before COVID When people were on their individual platforms, they were diving into different pools. The virtual world was for the younger people with families was almost one version of a nightmare for some with young families that have dis homeschool, for others who are single going back to a house by themselves and being pumped by themselves and having to work in there. So they were they were coming off a joint platform, which is the work environments and the office. Now they’re coming back from that virtual worlds. And they’re diving into multiple platforms with no clear idea which pool they’re diving into how they’re doing, and working in there. So I think your analogy is interesting. What was interesting is when you pull that piece of the Gloria paper out with the words on it, I wonder it is there’s almost as an answer, in her words of welcome. And other things and heard and understood. So I valued and respected and supported right. Yeah, yeah. Which, which I love about the the PC said about the conversation with people. So for those people listening from the UK, tell me about where they were, your view of the US is at the moment now and where the work is gonna go. This year coming up? I know, that’s a tough question. What’s your view? Is it going to be hybrid? Is it going to be virtual? Is it going to be office once you
Bill Treasurer 35:59
for the folks in the UK? Once again? Yeah, no, no, in the US? What’s
Colin Hunter 36:03
it going to be? We’re looking in there. Yeah.
Bill Treasurer 36:07
It’s, I do see that, you know, so I was on a call yesterday, where it’s funny how different clients responded differently. During COVID. I had one client that we moved everything to virtual. And and we now delivered this two year programme that we were doing was halfway through the last year was done all virtually. And, and in fact, we did more for the participants in the cohort than they had if it would have been an in person session, we met more frequently. For one we met every two weeks, versus every two months. And, and it was intense. And we were developing things on the fly. And it was great. I had another client who was in the midst, in the halfway point of a great first time programme for them, they had never done leadership development for we just launched a programme six months early, it was really enthusiastic inspired. We did one virtual training, and they said, it’s just not the same. Let’s hold it until you know, it’s only going to be another month of COVID. So you know, it’s gonna be over in July. So we’ll just wait a month. And then it was like, well, they might go into August. So we’ll wait another month. Well, they, you know, they waited the whole year they so we, we just started kicking off our conversations about reinstituting. That programme. And the decision was made that we need to do it live for one, many, not enough people in the United States have gotten vaccinated. Yeah. And there is sort of this, you get vaccinated, and you feel like Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, like, you start strutting around and like, take your mask off, and you’re like, oh, yeah, I could do it again. Right. And so they had already met once in person and now decided that their programme is going to be in, in person. And I have another client I’m working up with in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, I’m getting ready to do something this month. It’s funny, though, that I have a client that I’ve already been working with, even in the heart of COVID. In Alabama, face to face in person, you know, that we had to we were masks that they had protocols, space and distance and such. So I think it’s going to be hybrid. And I think that the struggle is, you know, COVID was bad. And I know, you may know people I know people had it. I know someone who had it mildly and someone had a bad I didn’t know anybody who died. I know people who know people who die. And you know, I don’t want to minimise COVID. But for a lot of people, including me, I kind of like being home a lot. And and people now I think have decided, okay, I can have both right, I can be a present parent, I can be somebody who is involved in my home life and have a career. And I don’t have to be on the crazy train that I was on in 2019. And I think that, you know, a lot of people are making these unusual life choices the same way I did in 2001, after 911 People are having an existential existential moment, do what is how much do I want to spend time in a commute an hour each way to work? You know, how much what is this idea of eight to five and the regimen of that? You know? And can I be just as productive, you know, at least a few days working from home. So I think we’re it is hybrid, and that we’re still figuring it out. But I don’t think we’re going back to what was
Colin Hunter 39:28
no and I think some organisations are looking at certain operational functions and saying, if you’re trying to work with Asia, you’re trying to work with you’re trying to work with us, it makes sense to avoid the commute and be there certain functions, it’s going to be in there to be, as you say, in a group and a certain sales function and saying, you know, we want to be together because that’s how we been some Wait, we riff off each other. Well,
Bill Treasurer 39:50
that’s true, right? There’s some groups that kind of need to be in that high performing team environment where there is like a marketing group. It’s got to be I want the ideas going right. But I was talking to a few people that are in estimating, right? They estimate the work for their construction. They’re like, I love working alone. I love the data in my spreadsheet. And I can toss that spreadsheet to somebody else and get on a zoom call afterwards. And I’m just as productive. And these are good loyal employees who never would have said that before the pandemic.
Colin Hunter 40:19
It’s interesting. So I’ll go to two questions for you that I always ask and, and I think you’ve hinted at one but I might be assuming what your answer is. So one is sailing a ship out the harbour what’s what’s the time that you really pushed yourself sailed your ship out the harbour that resonates to you in your life?
Bill Treasurer 40:37
I’ll give you one that was recent. And it may not be a gigantic thing, but it was I realised during COVID, I realised that there was a whole side to build treasure that hadn’t been introduced to the social media community, that every time I went on LinkedIn, if I posted something, or even if I did an occasional video, it was like, let me give a lesson. So I could interest people in my business. It was always like, you know, it’s like a motive. It’s like I’m getting you more so in order to get you into my business, and I realised in COVID, I started reconnecting with a lot of spiritual literature and other books that had inspired me along the way. Whether it be Anthony de Mello or Richard Rohr, or Joseph Campbell, or Carl Jung, and I started connect with that stuff again, and realise there’s a whole side to build treasure that people just don’t have never met. And so during this masked moment, I created an unmasked series of videos, it was 10 videos, called unmasked, where and by the way, my hair had got longer and grown, you know, hair on my face. And this is my Beatles moment. And I shared stuff, right? I mean, I shared about how I came came close to a divorce, I shared the story about that. I shared stories about insecurities that I’ve had along the way, and stories about my true feelings about the stuff my story about how too much rationality too much head thinking and not enough hard thinking can be a road straight to hell. It’s actually sort of out of Dante’s Inferno. And so I shared stuff that was not really so businessy. And I didn’t know and you put that stuff on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is pretty business. Yeah. And, and the reaction, initially, first of all, there was hardly any reaction like, like, No, nobody’s clicking on this stuff. Which also became a contemplation for me, like, why is it important for anybody to put their selfie or whatever out there? But then over time, it was first of all, it’s more vulnerable. It was billed treasure exposed. Yeah. And coming out of that experience. I I stopped the series I did 10. And, and I said that from now on, I’m going to be in communion with my followers, but not just followers, just people and in conversation with a more authentic, here’s me, sometimes it’s going to be pungent. Sometimes it’s going to be vulnerable. Sometimes it’s going to be, but it’s not going to be me selling something to you
Colin Hunter 43:17
pitching. With my eyes. That’s that’s refreshing bill, because, you know, we’ve met through the warmth and on committees and, and the engagement. That’s the bill I knew. And the bill I started discovering now and actually that just that moment, there is a bill that really I want to hear more about, because that’s you’ve got a great deal of experience in the background that will is valuable. Yeah. So that’s
Bill Treasurer 43:41
my safe harbour. Yeah, you know, here I am. 58 years old, I have a courage building company. And now I’m finally getting enough to
Colin Hunter 43:50
cover the cobblers children, as they say, UK is exactly
Bill Treasurer 43:55
one. Here’s a story that one of my clients is a construction company in Chicago, so different one than the other one. And they they’re my longest running client. I’ve worked with them for almost 17 years now much of it on retainer. And I was, and I and I really love them, right. Like I’ve grown to love my client. And along the way, I kept hearing that they wanted to, you know, we need our people to be more accountable. Yeah, people aren’t accountable enough. If we just hold them accountable, leaders doing this accountability to people, and so I heard it enough times, and I was like, You know what, I’m going to develop a accountability class. And I’m going to roll it out to this VP level group that I’m working with. So I pulled together the stuff I surveyed the VPS. I did a session with them. And nobody, I just my thinking was I’m going to do this for the good of my client. They didn’t ask me to do it, but I love them so much. I’m going to do it for them. So I surveyed the senior, you know, the VP group did a session with them. The VPS liked it. It was a useful session. They evaluated it very Strong. And then I thought I’m gonna bring this information to the senior executive team that I also work with the CEO and his senior VPs. And they’re gonna love it. Because I’m you know, and so I revealed the data about the VPS that had some questionable things about the senior executives. And the end, the survey itself was one of these oddball things where, you know, this question was rated one to five and one to five means right to left. But in this question, we actually have to reverse our thinking, because it goes five to one. And, and the CEO got, he’s finally Well, women to say that want to get it. But that was in reverse. And then he stopped and he said, Bill, Bill, you, this isn’t your work? This isn’t what you this, is, this isn’t your quality that we’re used to this in your work? And you didn’t even ask us to do it. You just did it. And you’re telling me that the VPS are disappointed with things about us. I don’t know what to say. He was so upset. And I had underestimated the sensitivity that the senior executive team was going to get about this the VP team. And I didn’t, I hadn’t asked them. I was like, there’s a certain arrogance on my part, as a consultant. It’s like classic consulting arrogance, where you come in, and I’m going to give you the answer because I know what you need. I never brought brought anybody into that process to shape the session to shape the agenda to inform it, you know, give me a guest speaker nothing. I just did it to them, not with them. And that was a huge lesson for me. And of course, I felt self righteous. I’m like, I did it for them. I was doing what was here I went out of my way to do they didn’t even pay me extra to do this. But the more I sat with it, I realised it was my own arrogance.
Colin Hunter 46:42
Yeah. I love it. And it’s, it seems to me that quote by Jimi Hendrix, was knowledge speaks wisdom listens. And it’s that first piece of I’ve done it so many times where you don’t listen to what their exam question is in their head, then do the work was the tones were coming in? And were boring the wash to tell the time without even asking them? Yeah, it’s that piece in there. It’s interesting.
Bill Treasurer 47:02
Yeah. But I wouldn’t take it back. Right. Like I would I mean, I, I wish I could do it differently. But the, you know, you talk about Jimi Hendrix quote, one of my favourite Mark Twain quotes is good judgement, is a result of experience. Yeah, experience is the result of bad judgement. And, and that was bad judgement on my part, but I gained some experience and wisdom because
Colin Hunter 47:23
because of our pain points we learned earlier because it was fantastic for you to be on here and sharing if people want to find out more about you. Where would they go to Find? Find you?
Bill Treasurer 47:34
You know, if you Google Bill treasurer, you get to come up with stuff but Bill treasurer.com and then giant leap. consulting.com it’s easier to just remember courage. building.com. And that’ll take you to the same place a giant leap.
Colin Hunter 47:49
That’s the bill. Appreciate it all the way from Nashville. And there’s somebody let the dogs out behind you. Somewhere around the way yeah, I’ve had the fat boy Harley going in the same you’ve had the dogs in Great. Good to meet you, sir.
Bill Treasurer 48:02
Thank you. You got it, buddy. Thanks so much for having me on. Tremendous luck with your book. I can’t wait till it comes out so the world can benefit from it.
Colin Hunter 48:09
Thank you, Bill. Be good. Just
so that was built treasure or such a lovely man. Love the fact there’s been a high diving team captain. I love the fact that he’s taken that into a business called giant leap consulting. And I love that the fact he uses courage and courage building as his pillars for his business. But the man himself is is an example of somebody who collaborates with us collaborates with others and brings people into an inner circle that allows others to share his ideas, share his energy and share his thoughts. So delighted to have Bill on this this podcast today. I will look forward to seeing you are welcome you on another podcast and Alicia tails coming up soon.