#24: Fearlessly Authentic Leadership with Dov Baron

Hala Taha:00:00Hey Dov, welcome to young and profiting podcast.Dov Baron:00:03My pleasure. It's an honor to be here. Thank you very much for inviting me to add value to this audience. I'm excited.Hala Taha:00:09Likewise, we can't wait to uncover all you have to share. So let's kick it off. You are the author of a handful of bucks. You are recognized as one of the top 100 leadership speakers to hire. And I personally find it really interesting to understand how people got into their actual careers, to someone who doesn't know your history, you seem born for this type of role. You're so well spoken, you're super polished and Dapper, but in fact this isa profession that you sort of stumbled into based on my research and you really learn your way into this career. And so I absolutely love to showcase this type of change to my listeners. So can you tell us what you were like as a young man, how you gotinto your first speaking engagement and how you stumbled into your true calling and career?Dov Baron:00:58Sure. Um, all of that in about three minutes. Okay. And you said this was not my natural place. I was born in a ghetto in northern England, in abject poverty. Certainly never considered myself to be a speaker or even thought about that as an option, but I knew I was born for something different than what was around me. Making a very long story shorter. I was fascinated with metaphysical understanding and philosophical understanding andbegan to travel the world to study with different spiritual masters while running businesses in three different continents and then in 84 one of my clients asked me to come speak for his group. I did that and then I got hooked to speaking and in the process of that did a really good job of trying to make myself bankrupt. I drove my business into theground, let go of my other businesses, fell away for a while, came back into the speaking after about a year and grew enormously and then met with something that I crashed into my rightful position here on the planet to do what it is that I'm doing. So that's the reader's digest version. Without any details you can go to any part you want.Hala Taha:02:09Okay. Well let's start off with what you were like as a young man. From my understanding, you were
sort of like a buff guy with long hair and chest hair. From what I heard,Dov Baron:02:22you've really been doing your research.Hala Taha:02:24I have. So you changed a lot. You changed yourself to fit into this role. Can you just tell us the story about your first speaking engagement because I think that's really interesting.Dov Baron:02:35Well, as I said, it started in 84 and in 84 I was 26 years old and at 26 years old I was a bodybuilder. And anybody who knows who's 26 years old, if you're on Instagram, you know that every 26 year old body builder has to let everybody know how pretty they are and how muscular they are. So I willshirts that were too tight and made sure that my muscles showed at every possible opportunity. And what I wasn't wearing that I was wearing suits, really beautiful made suits. But on this particular day in question, I was wearing a tight tee shirt, ripped jeans. My hair was down past my chest, still sort of Louis the 13th look Ringler curls, big earrings that were large enough to hang parrots off.And a client of mine came in and we were chatting and he said to me, I'd like you to come speak for my national managers meeting.Dov Baron:03:28And I'm like, for what? Why? Why would I do that? And he said, I want you to talk to him. I said, about what? He goes, it doesn't matter. You can speak about whatever you want. I thought, this is ridiculous. I'm not a speaker. I don't know what you're talking about. I go, I have no idea what to speak on it because it doesn't matter. Just come and speak. And I said, for how long do you said for an hour? I was like, oh my God, are you kidding me? No Way. I can do an hour. And he finally talked me into 30 minutes, but he had one condition and the condition was that I showed up looking exactly how I looked on that day. Well, this seemed ridiculous to me because he was asking me to speak to a national managers meeting for his National Company. And my hair on that day was like a wild man.Dov Baron:04:06Like I said, past my chest, sticking out everywhere. Ringler curls, big earrings in my designer, stubble ripped jeans and a tight tight tee shirt showing off all my muscles. And I said, but you know, I wear
suits. And he goes, it doesn't matter. Show up like that. So I agreed and I showed up and when I got there, I put my head in the door and as I put my head in the door to this long ballroom, I could see all the guys sitting around the table. It's the 1980s everybody is buttoned up, tight looking, very Gordon Gecko from Wall Street looking very uptightbusiness like. And as I put my head in the, you know, they must have thought, Oh, who is this lunatic? He's obviously in the wrong room and they're giving me this nod of the head to the side, which is, bugger off, you're in the wrong place.Dov Baron:04:47But I just waited and then Steve announced me andsaid, let's welcome our speaker. Dov and jaws hit the desk. And I walked up. And to be honest, I don'tremember what I talked about. I only remember what I said at the beginning and what I said was put your hand up if you are a racist. These were very hot subject in the 1980s in Australia because of the aboriginals, the native Australian people, andwe're being treated poorly. And you know, there was trying to do something about it. And of course when I said, put your hand up, you're racist, nobody's going to put their hand up even though it was all whities so nobody's going to put their hand up. Okay. So I said, all right, fine. Put your hand up. If you were judge somebody by the way, they look the color of their skin or how they dress.Dov Baron:05:29And again, nobody put their hand up. And I said, you're a bunch of freaking liars. And that point, I figured I've done myself in and I look over at my friend who had invited me to speak and he's got a grin on his face. It looks like you can post hassles through his mouth is smiling so wide and he obviously was far smarter than I was and that was exactly what he needed. He wanted them to see that they were bias. I said the reason you judge me as cause in a way that I look and the truth of the matter, you don't realize I'm one of your customers.The reason I know Steve is cause you guys make my suits. But if I'd have walked in on this day looking like this, you will dismiss me and that wouldhave been foolish move. So it was pretty fabulous.Dov Baron:06:11You know, I was very excited and I was definitely hooked. This was an amazing experience. So walked away feeling pretty excited and about two or three weeks later, Steve came back to me and
said, hey, Allister wants you to speak for his company. Like okay, again, another national clothing company. Oh this is exciting. Great. I'd loveto do it, so what did I do? I did something stupid. I went and did the research and what the speakers look like and speakers looked like they were uniform, blue suit, white shirt, red tie and Peyton with leather the shoes. Short hair, clean shaven, Nora Mustache. So what did I do? I bought the uniform, I cut off my hair, I shaved off my beard, grew this horrible thing that looked like something had died on my top lip and we'll the uniform and and showed up for the next gig and died a complete death. Why? Because initially I succeededbecause I would completely authentic the second time, even though I had illustrated the same point, it had no dose substance to it because I was inauthentic. The good news is it only took me aboutfour or five years to work that out.Hala Taha:07:17Awesome. I love that story. I was just hoping you could tell it's so thank you for telling it. There's a handful of topics that you write and speak about that I want to discuss today. Emotional intelligence, building a tribe, authenticity, which you just mentioned being purpose driven. All of these very pertinent topics that roll up into how to be a great leader. Yeah. So since you brought it up, let's start with authenticity. You have been described as a leading authority on authentic leadership. So what does being an authentic leader mean to you? Exactly?Dov Baron:07:50That's a great question because unfortunately mostpeople don't know what it means. And the analogy Igive all the time is if you and I walk around the mallor walk around the conference and ask people, are you authentic, how many people are going to say no? Everybody's gonna say yes. So it's actually a ludicrous question because everybody thinks they're authentic. The problem is most people don'tknow what that means. So you know, authenticity in the way that we understand it as being real, being true to ourselves. But most people don't know when the not being real and they don't know when the not being true to themselves because they've never asked the deeper questions about who they actually are. So I'm going to give you a very clear definition so you can understand, not
you personally. Hello all of us. And that is if you want to understand what authenticity is, it's depth.Dov Baron:08:41That's what it actually is. It's depth and it's then showing up in that depth. And that is the depth of your transparency, your vulnerability, your values, your beliefs, and your purpose and being willing to share that, but you can't be authentic and shallow. However, again, I wanted to reiterate the people who are shallow don't know the shallow. It's not because they're stupid people, it's because they probably never asked the questions that create the level of depth. So if you and I ask people, do you know who you are? People will usually say yes, but ask them how do you know the stumble all over theplace? So when we say, who are you people usuallyanswer with? Well, my name is Fred. No, that's yourname. Who are you? Oh, I see you mean I'm a CEO?No, that's your career title. Oh, oh, I'm Catholic. No,that's your religion. Oh, I'm a woman. No, that your agenda. People have not asked the deeper questions of themselves. And when we don't ask those questions, we don't get to depths. And when we don't get into debt, we're somewhat inauthenticto the level of a capacity of what we're capable of.Hala Taha:09:55Very interesting, and you mentioned it briefly, vulnerability is also really important when it comes to this topic, so can you talk about how that is actually not a weakness but can be somebody greatest strengths?Dov Baron:10:08Thank you again for asking. That's a great question.So here's the thing, particularly for those of us who might be listening, I know your audience tends to be younger and that's wonderful. I particularly love millennials, but that being said, if you're older and listening to this, there's a pretty good chance. Or even if you're younger and you were educated by people who are indoctrinated with us, you probably grew up with the idea that vulnerability is a weakness and don't let people see the Chink in your armor. Don't let them see that you don't know all the terrible messaging. The truth of the matter isthat if you think for a moment, here's what I want you to do just to grasp the strength and the power of vulnerability for a mum. What I would like you to do is in your mind, I would like you to picture on one side of you, somebody that you know and haveknown for however long it is.
Dov Baron:10:55It doesn't matter, but somebody you know who youtrust, and you recognizes a truly trusted, loyal friend. You would go anywhere and do anything for them and they would do the same for you know, onthe other side of you, I want you to imagine somebody you've known for approximately the same amount of time, whatever the amount of timeis, it doesn't matter. But then just this is a person who is only an acquaintance. So if you've known them the same amount of time, what's the difference between a friend and acquaintance? You can't say time because we've just said it's about the same or time. And the answer is reciprocal vulnerability. The bottom line is the people who are your loyal, trusted friends know your shit. And you know that you know the history of that person. You know who they are. You know, the parts of them that, uh, less than shiny, they know the less than shiny parts of you, and that is not used against each other, but that is used in order to build a greater bond and a greater connection, greater loyalty between you.Dov Baron:11:55So vulnerability becomes your greatest strength as a leader. Letting people in. If you're older generation than you believe that mentorship went from the top down. If you're a great leader of any age, you understand that mentorship goes from thetop down, from the bottom, up and sideways. We have to be willing to be mentored and in order to be mentored, we have to admit our weaknesses. We have to say, listen, I don't know as much about this as you do your 10 years younger than me, and you've got a much better understanding than I do. Please show me. I need to learn. This is powerful. It creates a bond.Hala Taha:12:31Yeah. And I think it plays into another topic that youspeak about a lot, the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. Could you explain that to our listeners?Dov Baron:12:40Hmm. So I want you to write this down. If you're listening, this is important. So tight this out. Write itdown, tattoo it on your brain in some manner, but it's this, the three most dangerous words you'll everuse. I know that immediately you say the words, I know that you have shut down your brain. You've said there's nothing else for me to learn. That is a fixed mindset because fix mindset is driven by the
ego. The ego gets in the way. It goes. I don't want to look foolish. I don't want to look stupid. And the willingness to look stupid is the only way you grow. So what does that mean? It means this, that, and instead of the words, I know that you replaced it with. I'm curious about that. So there's something somebody shares with you. Maybe something I'm saying right now, and as I'm saying it, your ego will naturally trigger.Dov Baron:13:37I know that. Oh yeah, I know that. Then say, well, I'm curious about that. What if there's more for me to know? I wonder what, I don't know about that yet. I wonder what I could know about that. I'm curious about what I could know about that at a deeper level. I'm curious about whether I'm fully using that, whether I'm fully integrating that into my life. So a growth mindset is grounded in curiosity and for a little while you will have to kind of discipline yourself to be curious because curiosity is our most natural basic element. This is the thing you need to understand. So you went to 100 years old, between zero and four you'll learn more than you will for the next 96 years. Why is that? Because the brain is malleable. It has plasticity. That's important. But what's more important as you are naturally a state of curiosity and from then on you start building a framework of the world to keep you safe and that framework of the world, yes, more can be added to it of course. But you start building in safety and part of the safety is, I know that safe will make you stuck. You have to have a growth mindset that is rooted curiosity.Hala Taha:14:52Awesome. That was fantastic advice. And you heardit right that down. Never, ever say those wordsDov Baron:15:00if you want to swear at me. Say those words,Hala Taha:15:02okay. So let's talk about improving ourselves as individuals. Because to be a strong leader, you need to be a strong person. Something you speak about quite often is individuation, which was originated by the psychologist Carl Jung, who described individuation as a process by which the personal and collective unconscious are brought in consciousness to reveal one's whole personality. So in short, it is a process of becoming self actualized. Yes. You talk about the three stages of
individuation. Can you explain why maturing into your individuation is key to becoming an authentic leader?Dov Baron:15:40Absolutely. Thank you for asking that because that's not a question that gets asked very often. And the reason is because, um, nobody wants to think of themselves as not fully grown up. However,chronology as in the years that go by is a terrible measure of maturity. It's a terrible measure of maturity. It's one of the most mature people I've met, uh, you know, 10 or 12 years old and some of the least mature people I've met are in their seventies. So it's got nothing to do with chronology.So how it works is there's three stages of individuation. When we are born into the world, we are completely, totally and absolutely dependent and it's all about me. And think about, you know, being a baby, you want everything you need, everything you have no other way. You can't supply yourself. You need everybody to take care of you.Dov Baron:16:30And that's the first stage of development. In that stage, there is no separation between you and yourparents or you and the world. So therefore, if a baby is sitting in a highchair and drops a ceramic cup and the cup breaks and the baby starts to cry and the parent will often say, Oh, you know, the noise must have scared her or him. No, actually it didn't. It actually, they might have. But the real reason the baby's crying is because it doesn't understand the separation between itself and the world. So when the cup broke, it actually felt or presumed that some part of itself was broken. That's the first stage. There's this ultimate connection to the world, but at a very visceral level.The second stage of development is when we get a little bit older, usually around 18 months to two, two and a half years old.Dov Baron:17:22Up until that point, we not only think we're part of the world, but we actually think mum and dad are us. So therefore, if dad leaves the room, we feel likepart of us has disappeared and by the way, will never come back. It's a permanent state. That's why when you play peekaboo with a baby, the babygiggles Yogan you literally disappeared from their world and now you're back. You're gone and you're back. And that's what the kids does. Giggling, because that's what it is. It's like you disappeared
from the world. Now you're back. Oh my goodness. Wow. So in that second stage of individuation, it's I am you up until that second stage is imu. Now at that second stage kicks in, that baby suddenly realizes, Oh, I'm not you. So what it does is it tests that by leaving the room, going round the corner and disappearing for a couple of seconds, then it will come back and peek and see, oh, you're still there.Dov Baron:18:19Oh, I am not you. There's more to me than this. Andso in that stage, a kid's favorite word is no, it's not because it's been a terrible too. It's because it's thebeginning of individuation. It's separating itself from you realizing that you and it are separate beings. That's the second stage of where it starts tokick in. If we're good parents, we understand that we don't actually punish the child for saying no, we expand it and allow it just to say no, but it's the favorite word. He offer him a cookie. They'll still sayno, even if they take it, go to bed. No, get up. No, that's the favorite word. Then the next stage kicks in and the third stage of individuation happens usually in our teens and the second stage of individuation. We've all been teens. And if you penetrating, you know, you probably think your parents or an idiot or idiots, and that stage of development is because you realize that you are not their beliefs.Dov Baron:19:20So there is a natural state of rebellion that goes on for a person at that stage. If you have teenagers and they're rebelling and that doing the things you don't want them to do, that's them just trying to say I'm not your beliefs. So initially I'm part of the world phase one, phase two, I am, you know I'm notan in the third stage. I am what you believe. No, I'mnot. So now I'm not you. So now we transfer that over into the bigger picture, which is so I'm not you,I'm rebelling. Therefore I'm trying to find myself. The problem with it is human beings are also tribal. So we need to belong. If we don't belong to the family because I'm not your beliefs, then we go looking for a place where we feel like we do belong.The problem with that is we trade one family for another and very often that's a peer group and thatpeer group, we don't bother to flush that out and say, is that aligned with who I am?
Dov Baron:20:16Because I don't know who I am yet. So we're fumbling around in the world trying to discover what is us. And what's important here is to stop andsay, is this true for me? Do I have a place where I feel aligned with myself and most people will not get there? By the way, just again to remind you that many people in their seventies have never done this work, let alone in their teens, so to actually say, is this true for me? Does this evolve me? Does this bring me to a higher place of understanding of myself? And the bottom line of it is coming back to what we talked to before about a growth mindset, is to become constantly curious about yourself, your growth, and your development. Curious about who you are. Is this who I really am? Because if you look back the things that you believed in when you were a kid, maybe you believed in Santa Claus you don't believe anymore and the things you believed in. I know the things I believed in my twenties and not the things I believed in my late thirties the things I believed in my late thirties are not things I believedin my late forties and so on. There's an evolution in there. Should be an evolution to your growth. But we want to say, well, this is who I am. No, know who I am as evolving and deepening. When you find the truth of your values, when you find your purpose, that deepens.Hala Taha:21:40Got It. So can you just help me understand what individuation has to do with leadership? What is theconnection there?Dov Baron:21:47First of all, your current lead others, unless you can lead yourself, that's number one. So let's just start there. And if you've not done self-inquiry, if you've not done self growth, if you're not developed who you are, then you're going to be leading others on afalse premise. So you've got to know what are your own values? What is your own purpose in order to lead others? Because remember, every human being is looking for meaning. In research done over the last five years, millennials said the number one thing that matters to them is having meaningful work. Well, what does meaningful work mean? It means I, not only do I find meaning in it, but I'm aligned with the meaning in it. If I've not found the meaning of myself. If I'm not bothered to do that, then I have attached my meaning and what happens with that is invariably does in a lot of
disappointment because I thought you guys were this but you're not.Dov Baron:22:42Well actually we are this. You just didn't bother to actually look. So in order to lead anybody else, you'd have to lead yourself first. That's what leadership is. Self leadership first. From there you can lead others and from there you are not compromising your own value system. You're not compromising your own purpose, so don't try to lead anybody else. You can inspire people to be, you can guide people, you can do all those kinds of things, but the truth is that leadership is at a base level purpose. What is my purpose and how does this align with my purpose? An hour, my gathering people around that because when you find your purpose, you create your tribe. People will follow you anyway. Just so you understand this because people are looking for the meaning of their lives, but they won't stick with you if you're not clear on what your purpose is.Dov Baron:23:35If you can say that out loud and let me be clear, your purpose is not your passion. I realized there are people on Instagram who was sharing their passion and I'm definitely in favor of that as wonderful, terrific. They've got 100,000 followers and it's wonderful, but many of them will die on thevine and what I mean by that is many of the followers will just disappear because it's not got any substance to it. It's sexy, it's attractive, but it doesn't have the depth that we're all looking for. Every human being is actually looking for that. Even the most shallow person you can think of is looking for depth. So your passion and your purposes of separate. Your passion is transitory. It isthe vehicle for your purpose, but it is not your purpose.Hala Taha:24:18You have a really good quote in your book, one red thread that you say you find passion in your pleasure and purpose in your pain. Yup. I love that. So, so then how do we determine our true purpose in life? What is it that we should ask ourselvesDov Baron:24:35again? Great question because it relates directly to what you just gave us. The quote that you see, we go looking for our purpose in exactly the wrong place. We go looking for our purpose in our passion.You'll publish does not exist in your passion. Your
passion is transitory. So the way I like to describe it is you need to think of your passion as a vehicle. And if you're entrepreneurial, you're going to change vehicles quite a lot. But your purpose is not the vehicle. The purpose is what's transported in the vehicle. And every passion is a potential outlet for your purpose, but it is not your purpose. So get that clear. So it's an outlet for it. It's a transportation of it, but it is not it. So if the vehicle is your passion, what is your purpose? It is your pain. The reason that people don't find that purpose is because they don't want to look at that pain.Dov Baron:25:25I understand that. Don't get me wrong, nobody wants to look at that pain, but it is actually the fuel source of your life. And let me give you an exercise here right now to help you. Whatever your age is, I want you to think about what pisses you off, what upsets you, what frustrates you. And by that, what Imean is not in the last 20 minutes or even in the last couple of years, but rather what does upset you for as long as you can remember what's bothered you in the world for as long as you can remember. So when I was a little boy, I was 10 years old and I walked into the living room and I saw my mom crying, okay. And I was befuddled. I had no idea why she would be crying. And she was sitting on her own looking at the TV set, wiping tears, awareness.Dov Baron:26:15It was what's wrong, mom? And she pointed to the TV set and she said he's dead. Okay. I live to the TVset. And it wasn't a movie star, it wasn't a TV star. Itwasn't even a soccer star. I had no idea who it was. And then he listened. Okay. And the men on the TV said, I have a dream that one day. Oh, okay. I had no idea who Martin Luther king was, but I went and asked my uncle and he told me who Martin Luther King was with. My uncle was the smart guy in a family. I asked him who was, he told me, he told meabout Gandhi and about how peaceful protests and how he was fighting for civil rights. And I suddenly was moved by this idea that a black man on the other side of the world, because that's what it was to a 10 year old boy, this African American men on the other side of the world who was a Christian minister, could touch the heart of my mother, a Jewish woman living in the other side of the world in England, a poor Jewish woman.
Dov Baron:27:20How he could move her. And I was bothered by the racism that I saw around me as a kid. I was bothered by the inequity between people, how the struggles between people. I was bothered by how people want it to judge each other rather than looking at who they were in themselves. That bothered me for as long as I could remember. And there was something that bothered me as a parallelto that, which was, as a kid, I would look around and see my aunt and my uncle and even my mom dating people, and it was like there were dating thesame person with a new face, and I was fascinated by why people would do dumb stuff over and over again. People who I considered smart would repeat the same cycle. So here's this biases that was going on around race and culture and judging people, and at the same time, there's lack of judgment in a very healthy manner of saying, oh, well, let me look at this as a pattern.Dov Baron:28:18It's reoccurring. That is something that's bothered me for as long as I can remember, and he upset me. It would upset me to see my aunt dating the same guy with a new face who was going to be violent with a, or to see my mom dating another drunk or another human being. And it would botherme to see that people would be judging other people simply by their skin. So this was a fundamental challenge for me is this lack of judgment and absolute judgement and what was in between that bothered me for as long as I can remember, it caused me pain. That's how I found my purpose. Your purpose does not exist in pleasure. It exists in the things that have bothered you for as long as you can remember. And it's this desire to make a difference in the world is this desire to right a wrong, to come back to and find a way to be part of a solution. That's where your purpose is. It's not in your passion. Your passion is exciting, but it will be transitory.Hala Taha:29:18Wow, that was so powerful. And so moving. I think my listeners are going to get so much take away from that. So how does a purpose within a leader help to actually motivate their employees, their team? How does it help to attract customers to their company?Dov Baron:29:35Again, what I just want to remind you of as you're listening here is every human being is looking for
meaning. We can't help but look for meaning and we assign meaning even when it's not that. So what I mean by that is we somebody does something that you know when you go, I wonder why they did that. That's you're looking for meaning. Human beings look for meaning. That's what we have to do. We look for meaning. When we're looking for meaning, we're looking for purpose. We're looking for the purpose. The reason why we can't help but do that by being a purpose driven leader. By finding your purpose, you naturally attract people to you who are looking for. There's the simplest analogy I can give you is a little dated, but I think most people can still understand it. If you think about an old radio set, if you like rock and roll, you tune it into a certain station.Dov Baron:30:31Let's say 99.3 FM and when you get to 99.3 Fm, if you like rock and roll, you listen to that station. But if you turn the dial again over and you've got to oneoh 3.5 and that's classical music and you don't like classical music, you will turn it away. If you tune into a station has playing rock and roll one minute and classical music the next and then country music the next, there's a pretty good chance you won't stay on that station every time they play something you don't like. So that's exactly what it is. People are looking for a place to go where there's an alignment of frequency, where there's alignment of resonance between who they are, even if they don't know it themselves yet. So there's a natural pull toward something that is aligned with my purpose. I can't find that with somebody who is not aligned with theirs.Dov Baron:31:25So if your station is broadcasting all over the place and you've not found your purpose, which is your dominant frequency, then how can I tune into it? I can't. So I want to be pulled towards something when you know your purpose, because everybody'slooking for meaning. And this is the thing about it. It's one thing to look for your purpose. It's another thing to find it. It's another thing to evolve it. And it's another thing again to have the courage, the courage to speak it, to own it, to claim it. Because when you find it, evolve it, live it and speak it with courage. Other people can go yes or no. And most of us don't want to live in a world of yes and no. Wewant to live in this nice comfortable gray zone of,
Oh, you know, it's okay because we don't want people to dislike us.Dov Baron:32:17And as my good friend Larry Winget likes to say, if people don't hate you, you don't have a strong enough stand. And it's not about getting people to hate you, but it's meaning that you are so clear that this is the deepening of your truth, not from anevangelical. Um, I'm right your wrong point of view.But from a place of, I know this is right and true for me. Point of view. If you don't agree with it, that's wonderful. Find your own purpose, but if this is aligned with you, that's also wonderful. Once you do that, you become this amazing beam because it takes the hiring part of HR out of the picture because the people who work for you are aligned with that purpose. They will then tell their friends inthe talent pool, you've got to come work here. Here's why, and it isn't about foosball machines and cappuccino machines.Dov Baron:33:10It's about here's why I love going to work that because we are so committed to x, y, and zed, I'll leader is on purpose with a, B, and c and what's more is our customers know it because we are hereto make a difference in the world. One of the thingsI want to ask you to think about as a company fromthe point of view of purpose is if your company wasnot in business for money, if it was in business for something else, if money was simply removed fromthe world, would you bother doing business? Would the world miss you? If it wouldn't, you're not on purpose.Hala Taha:33:47I love that. So in relation to teams and culture, let's move on to all your philosophies related to building a tribe. My research assistant Shiv came across an article that you wrote in the entrepreneur on the hormone oxytocin. Often this is called the love hormone or the cuddle hormone. Oxytocin has a lotto do with loyalty between managers and employees. In fact, research has linked to oxytocin to trust and social attachment, vital for leaders looking to build fiercely loyal teams. So can you explain to us what oxytocin is exactly and how leaders can make use of this natural phenomenon to build trust with their employees?Dov Baron:34:25Absolutely. Yeah. Again, this is something I cover extensively in my book. Fiercely loyal. It's
something that's missed enormously. So it's a powerful, powerful hormone. It's generally associated to women and babies and so when we are born into the world, there is a flood of oxytocin. Just think about this for a moment. I'm going to be graphic here for a moment, but just to make my point, I want you to think about the birth process like if anybody was sane, nobody would have babies. I think if you think you're going to push this seven eight 10 pound, whatever it is, being out of your body through a very small hole when things are going to get ripped and torn and is going to be a lot of pain, you know, somebody was coming up to you saying, how do you feel about doing that? You'd go, ah, no thanks.Dov Baron:35:13I'll pass. Right? No thank you. I'll have a cupcake and educator and I'm out of here. Thank you very much. No interest. But we do it. Why do we do it? And the answer is because there are hormonal response is so massive. So here's the thing. When ababy is born, the mother's brain is flooded with oxytocin. The hypothalamus, which is the mood andappetite center of the brain, releases this hormone into the system and literally floods. It, floods it. It is called the bonding hormone, as you said, the cuddle hormone, the love hormone. It's the bondinghormone. It's flooded into the mother and it passes from the mother into the breast milk and into the baby. And what happens is that there's such a massive flood of it. This is why babies are so bonded with her mother. This is why mothers get very upset when their baby doesn't latch properly because there's an inner knowing that that is an important part of the bonding experience.Dov Baron:36:11Now, here's what's interesting about it is that when that happens, there are cells still left in the body from the fetus that are still left inside the mother's body for a full 26 years and mirror neurons in the brain of the mother matched the neurons inside thechild. This is why a mum phones you, your 25 yearsold, you were at college and you're doing your master's degree in your mum phones. He goes, what's going on? And you go, nothing. She goes, what's going on? My boyfriend and my girlfriend, letme, I mean, that's why it has an actual real science behind that. It's not just like your mom's intuition. This is actually the science. Well, that hormone is always present in us. When we fall in love, there
was a flood of that hormone and when we bond with somebody that homos in place.Dov Baron:36:58Now coming back to where we talked about individuation, we're going to tie these two together in the first stages of life. Remember we've got this flood of this hormone and when this first stage of life where we're totally bonded to the world and to the people that we are surrounded by our initial tribe, which is usually our family. When that happens we feel quote in love, we feel like we're in love. So what happens is once we start breaking away and individuating, we actually lose a little bit more and more and more that connection to feelingloved and there is something called reunion grief inthat we hunger for that connection again. We want to be connected at that deep, deep level again and so when you fall in love and you suddenly find yourself in the arms of your lover, in the arms of the person you've fallen in love with, there is that moment of returning to that bond, that connection again, oxytocin floods in the body.Dov Baron:37:59Now that hormone is at its most for the first 18 months of the relationship between the baby and the parent. As you're listening to this right now, I would just want to challenge you to think about your relationships as you think about your relationships. When did they hit a problem? You'll longterm relationships. I guarantee you, your longterm relationships hit the wall at somewhere between 18 months and 24 months. Why? Because the initial flood of Oxytocin, the bonding hormone, uh, started to wear off. It starts to have Taki philosophies. It wears off and when it wears off, youdon't have that hormone to bond you. You better bebonded by something more than simply the hormone. You better have values and all kinds of good stuff connected. Now, let's shift this back to leadership. If you're a leader and you're on purpose, you will attract people to you.Dov Baron:38:57When those people are attracted to you and they feel there's an alignment, there is a release of oxytocin because there's an alignment and the closer they get to you and the more vulnerable you are. Remember, vulnerability, reciprocal vulnerability creates a bond. When you do the reciprocal vulnerability, you also release oxytocin. So over that period of time, now that you're on
purpose and you've been vulnerable that people are bonding to you, they're having a release of Oxytocin, you're having a release of Oxytocin, but that oxytocin will wear off in about 18 months. Nowwhat do we know about millennials? They leave their jobs every 1.5 at 1.2 to 1.5 years. Ah, when did they leave? When the oxytocin wears off? That'sthe problem.Hala Taha:39:43Got It. So interesting how you tied all of that together and it's, if you think back to even like friendships. Yeah, they started to get rocky after like a year and a half or so.Dov Baron:39:54You're absolutely right. You see, this is the thing, it'snot about romantic relationships, it's about human beings. So it's true for leadership. It's true for romance and as you said, is true for friendships. So before you throw the baby out with the bath water, you might want to actually ask what is the alignment? Here is the challenge that I simply needto return to curiosity rather than saying this is who they are. Maybe you need to challenge yourself andeach other to go deeper into the relationship and ask the deep questions.Hala Taha:40:30Okay, awesome. So we have about 15 minutes left and I still want to talk about my favorite topic ever, which is emotional intelligence. And you actually have an entire workbook on an emotional intelligence, which I read. And in it you say understanding our emotions and knowing how to tap into them gives us enormous strength. So can you talk to us about the importance of emotional intelligence when it comes to leadership?Dov Baron:40:53So emotional intelligence. The sort of godfather of this is Daniel Goldman who wrote the book emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence was not founded by him by any stroke of the imagination. In fact, Daniel is a journalist who just did a lot of great research and bought it all togetherand did a phenomenal job of doing it. The challengeis that emotional intelligence has become a tool for leaders to use on the people they work with. That isnot what emotional intelligence is. That's a piece ofwhat emotional intelligence is. Emotional intelligence first and foremost is something you useon yourself. For Self Knowledge. Emotional intelligence allows to understand what drives
people and therefore what drives us and how to communicate with each other in the context of that. So it allows us to connect with ourselves, with each other and in the context of environments, meaning in the work environment, in the social environment, whatever it is, without self knowledge, which is the foundation of emotional intelligence, we will never be able to fully lead.Dov Baron:42:01So again, we're back at where we started here, which is if you're going to be a great leader, the number one thing is self knowledge. Self knowledgewill allow you to have compassion for yourself and others. So one of the things around is very popular now in the context of emotional intelligence is compassionate or empathetic leadership. Well, the truth is when most people that's an exercise and not a truth, well how do I be more empathetic with my people? While you do this and you do that and you do the other thing and people go away and do that. And they go, well, yeah, it didn't get the results. That's because you didn't feel empathy. Youwent through the exercise and they go, well, how do I feel it? You have to recognize it in yourself, so are going to give you a great example of it to help you understand.Dov Baron:42:47Many, many years ago, like a hundred years ago, I trained as a family counselor. That was one of the things I did in my early twenties and I learned family dynamics and family counseling and in that training I was trained in the old school way of doingit and the old school way of doing it was you must remain emotionally distant from your clients in order to serve them. That never sat well with me. I never felt that that was honest. I always felt like that was off, but it was the way I was trained. It wasquote, right? Again. So here we back in this idea of right, but it was not true. So I was like, I know this is right way to do it, but it's not true for me. I feel it as wrong, man, not aligned with this. And back in those days, I read a book called the road less traveled written by M Scott Peck.Dov Baron:43:39This is like in the early eighties m Scott Peck was a military psychiatrist. It can get much more rigid than a military psychiatrist. And yet I read in his book and one of the things he said is, as a psychiatrist, he goes, everything and I been taught was wrong. He goes, what I know is I can't help