Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Resources:

Our host Maureen Metcalf posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here.

Maureen’s latest book is Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI. You’ll find details about it at https://bit.ly/LeaderInAI, or check out the Kindle version at https://amzn.to/44buVz8. The audiobook version is now available at  https://amzn.to/4dTCleZ.

Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here.

Books we’re reading for fun or personal development right now include:

• Covert Cows and Chick-fil-A by Steve Robinson; it’s available in hardback at https://amzn.to/460LnmQ, on Kindle at https://amzn.to/3RVXhZs, and as an audiobook at https://amzn.to/3xPjBgn.
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Paperback = https://amzn.to/3VEl7cU, Kindle = https://amzn.to/45JGm1L, and audiobook = https://amzn.to/3RPhC2y
• Everyday Ubuntu: Living Better Together, the African Way by Mungi Ngomane. Hardback (https://amzn.to/48Doh6j) and audiobook (https://amzn.to/48YCRF4)
• Nerve: Lessons on Leadership from Two Women Who Went First by Martha Piper & Indira Samarasekera. Paperback (https://amzn.to/3tOtzg4) and audiobook (https://amzn.to/41OYdT5)

NOTE: As an Amazon partner, we may make a small commission from books you buy through these links.

Guest(s):

Guest(s) Bio:

Jorrit Volkers is Dean of Deloitte University Europe Middle East Africa (DU EMEA), one of the world’s largest consulting firms, Deloitte. DU EMEA designs and delivers a world-class curriculum to develop Deloitte practitioners as trusted business advisors and leaders. Its vision, which Volkers himself exemplifies, is to “have a ‘game-changing’ impact on clients and people, and add value to every member firm by embedding a unified culture across borders, functions and levels.” With only four years of operations, under Volkers’ leadership, DU EMEA has already offered professional and leadership programs to nearly 18,000 participants. The mission is to develop the Deloitte culture, develop skills to serve clients better, and develop people. At the heart of the curriculum is the global leader framework and the seven core competencies Deloitte leaders need: living the purpose, influence, performance drive, strategic direction, talent development, competitive edge, and inspirational leadership.

As Prime Minister of Greece from 2009 to 2011, George A. Papandreou understands leading in turbulent times. A public servant for many years, he served, among other posts, as Minister for National Education and Religious Affairs and as Minister of Foreign Affairs before following in his father and grandfather’s footsteps to become Greece’s Prime Minister. His election to office after the devastation of the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 came with a mandate to increase transparency and reduce corruption in Greece’s government while humanizing globalization and its economic effects on Greek citizens. Challenged by time and global financial markets, he made the difficult decision to implement austerity programs and cuts that appeased the Eurozone and the pressures of the global economy. For his work in 2010 of “making the best of Greece’s worst year,” Foreign Policy magazine named him a Top 100 Global Thinker.

Transcript
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Speaker 1 0:08
I’m your host, Maureen Metcalf, and today I am delighted that our guest is George Papandreou,

Unknown Speaker 0:13
delighted to be with humor in one more time,

Speaker 2 0:16
one more time. Yeah, this is the Encore, which I hope there are many more of very honored and humbled. Tell us a little bit about this journey. You were born in the US, that’s right.

Speaker 3 0:27
I was born in St Paul, Minnesota. Father and mother were married there, and I was born there, but then I soon took off for Berkeley, California, where my father took on the Department of Economics. And so I grew up the first years of my life in California, in Berkeley, but a turbulent youth also, because my father just then decided, after many trips to Greece, to go back. So we were going back and forth. And at that time, of course, the travel to Greece was very different thing. We took the car to New York, and then from there on a boat, two weeks to Greece. So it was a major endeavor to travel there. Now it’s a few hours. And of course, it was quite a big change for me from one country to another. And then, of course, Greece was going through a period of trying to bring democracy, and we ended up, unluckily, with a dictatorship, with my father and grandfather in jail, and finally in exile, before I came back, studied in college in the US. We were a refugee as a family in Sweden and then in Canada. So we lot around the world,

Speaker 2 1:24
you have been militantly committed to democracy. Yes, why the personal commitment?

Speaker 3 1:31
Well, living under a dictatorship, you can feel that our societies have potential. And of course, when they’re ruled by authoritarian leaders, militaries, dictatorships, it’s not only the brutality of oppression, a lack of freedom of speech, torture, lack of rule of law, you could be hauled into a jail for nothing. I remember growing up during those years in the dictatorship, before we were exiled, the insanity, not only the brutality, but also the insanity of dictators. So if we had sideburns, they would tell us to shave them off, because they were like the Beatles, or we were wearing bell bottoms, they would tear our bell bottoms. And if a woman was wearing a mini skirt, they would take down the hem. These were things that the dictatorship would do. I mean, those were the somewhat more benign things, because you could be pulled in and tortured, and the torture was terrible. I’ll just give you one case, because these cases were taken to the European Court of Human Rights, and Greece was actually expelled from the so called Council of Europe. Then during the dictatorship, I remember as a kid one of the stories the woman that was pregnant, they tied her feet on a rope and pulled her up on a helicopter and would dip her into the sea with this helicopter, as she was pregnant, she lost her baby. Of course, these are just things that they would do to intimidate and, of course, to extract certain information. Living through a dictatorship, you have this really deep sense of injustice, and also that there’s such a crime that there’s so much potential in your society which is being lost. Don’t forget that Europe, around 50% of the population lived in some form of dictatorship, 50% of the population that’s alive today. So Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe. We had there are many dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. So Europe today is very much a beacon of democracy. We’re still striving to make sure that it’s working. Sometimes we equate democracy simply with voting and electing a representative. Well, that is not really the concept of democracy from the ancient times. And the real meaning of democracy was you could control your faith. You had the right. You had the possibility, which was an amazing revelation at the time, in ancient times, because people were basically fatalistic. If the king would say something that would his word would stand. If it was if a tyrant, or you were in a hierarchy in a society or a high priest, that was the order that you did not question. All of a sudden, these people in the small community called Athens and so many other small cities said, Well, you know, actually, we can take our faith into our own hands. We can actually change things. We can actually imagine a different world. We don’t have to accept this. And so that’s how politics was invented basically, I mean, there’s a revelation, yeah, okay. Now politics comes from the word citizen, being a good citizen. Democracy was there to make sure that we don’t have tyrants, and we make sure that people do have the voice. So my question would be, today, in our modern democracy, do people feel that they have a voice, and not just on Facebook, but I mean a real voice and influential. Are we asking our citizens? Are they participating? Are there all kinds of institutions which are not just voting once every four years, but are there all kinds of institutions where their interests are being expressed, where they can actually shape their community, they can shape the future? And I think what people are feeding. Today is that even though there’s immense power, there’s a lot of money around, there’s great technology, people are starting to feel somewhat powerless about what’s happening in the world. Things are globalizing. This turbulent world, which we’re talking about here, makes people feel fear, insecurity and sense of powerlessness. So I think we need to rethink how democracy today is not simply electing our representatives, but it’s a whole culture of participation. And that’s what I feel, is the way we will be able to solve the problems, and we as politicians cannot solve the problems alone. We have this idea that you elect a leader, he or she is going to deliver, yes, that we have to do that also. But the types of problems we have today are so complex and they need so much innovation and also understanding of people who have been going to be affected by one solution or another, that they actually participate and see find themselves in these solutions, they actually come with ideas, because sometimes, very often, I may have a good idea, but there are so many other people that have better ideas than I do, and I want their views, and, of course, their interests also, which have to be represented. So we need to have a much more complex idea of what democracy is, but it’s basic ideas that make sure that people feel that they can identify with a system that respects them, that empowers them, that gives them a voice, and that they can actually not only share their future, but also shape their future,

Speaker 2 6:32
which seems so important as so many people are feeling disenfranchised, yes, that we return to the original

Speaker 3 6:39
views of democracy, yes, and I think that we are seeing the phenomenon like the so called Trump phenomenon. I’m not talking about him personally, but this was a phenomenon. It’s not only in the United States, it’s in other parts of the world, also as people who feel disenfranchised, and then when they go to the polls, they say, I’m going to just going to vote against the system, because it’s not working for me now is devices red divisive rhetoric and hate and racism and ultra nationalism. Is that going to solve our problems? No, it’s a dead end in a world where problems are global, we need cooperation. In a world where our societies are more diverse, we need that spirit of shared societies. And when we do that, we’re much more effective and we’re much more secure. And that’s what happens when you only have a choice every once, every four years, you just say, okay, to hell with it. I’m going to do this. But if you do have daily participation, or if not daily, but often, and you’re given that capacity, you take on a much more responsibility, but you also feel responsible for the outcome, and you can also shape your society much better. What would you

Speaker 2 7:51
like the next era of leaders to be thinking about at this point in time, in history, around the world, I

Speaker 3 7:59
think what’s the most important now? Because we have, as I said earlier, huge capacity. There is a lot of power that we can wield in the world, not that leaders who are elected are necessarily that powerful, because the power comes from different it could be from corporations, it could be from communications, it could be in finance, it could be military. Could be in many different ways, but how we use this huge capacity we’ve created, this huge power we’ve created, is a moral issue. It’s not a technical issue. It’s not an application which we’re going to find, which is going to solve all our problems. Those are good and we all enjoy our apps and so on, maybe over consuming our time and and and our daily life, if we don’t realize that this, this new power, this continually growing power we are creating, has to be used in a way that it will serve the public good, it will serve a moral purpose, and it will serve to empower, to protect, to make people feel secure, to make people respected and feel that they are worth, that there’s a worthiness in their lives and they have a purpose. If we don’t do that, then this will, this power will be misused. It will be abused. And I fear that the abuse of power. We’ve seen it in different ways. It could be, it could be the financial system selling stock, which was triple A supposedly, and it was, it was trash, and people were duped into buying it is for money and politics, being able to buy up representatives or lobby and completely or certain technologies which we don’t know where they will go. I mean, we are now talking about robotics that will replace much in labor. What will we do with society? What we do with an aging society where we have more people, hopefully more healthy people, but. Holder. How are they going to be part of society? So we are creating a society with new potential, but if we don’t use it in a just and in a one which serves everyone public good, we will see cleavages, we will see pain, we will see hatred, we will see anger, and some politicians will want to exploit that. So I think leaders have to be able to say, let’s sit down and see how we use all this potential and how we deal with all these and that’s where we I think leaders need to first of all think of their own moral purpose, their own what they want to represent in life and what their responsibilities are.

Speaker 2 10:37
And that’s true of business leaders, political leaders.

Speaker 3 10:40
Yes, that’s right. I think, I think this is general. When you have been given a responsibility, which also is powers or not more it is to also to think about what, what your purpose is, what you are. I would say, not get enamored by this power, but make sure that you and control yourself and not let it lead you, but you lead it towards a moral purpose.

Speaker 2 11:04
What is a humanly constructed divide?

Speaker 3 11:08
Yeah, well, I gave an example of what I’ve experienced, and it was a time when on the island of Cyprus, which is a divided Island, the northern part has been occupied by Turkish army and the southern part Greek Cypriot, the northern Turkish, Turkish lips, living there used to be in a united island where people would live together. But I won’t get into the history. I was trying to with my Turkish counterparts. So we have Greece, Turkey and then Cyprus, which is divided, trying to see how we could get together, a rapprochement, as I said earlier, trying to let people show their potential. And so there was a people’s diplomacy. People started meeting each other and doing things together, women to women, business to business, football teams, music and so on, art. Then what happened on the island is the teachers union on both sides, Greek Cypriots on the one and the Turkish Cypriots on the other started talking with each other. And all of a sudden, somebody, something occurred. The teachers union called me up from Cyprus, and they said, you know, we have this young boy who has leukemia, and we can’t find anybody to match his bone marrow to for a transplant. And he said, we talked to the Turkish Cypriots, and we’re thinking, Can we search in the Turkish Cypriot side? Maybe there’s a Turkish Cypriot boy that has match, but that would need permission from the Turkish side. So I called up my counterpart in Turkey, and he said, this is a good idea. Let’s do it. So they did search amongst the schools, and they found a boy, a Turkish Cypriot, that shared similar DNA and was compatible. And there was a transplant, a marrow transplant, from a Turkish Cypriot boy to a Greek Cypriot boy. Now what does that tell me? First of all, that society itself, when you give them the hope they will take these initiatives, and there’s a lot of potential, but it also gives you give me the fact that we are so common human beings. We share DNAs. There’s very little difference, really. But we construct differences. Sometimes construct our conflicts. We construct our societies. That’s in our minds. It’s in our minds, it’s in our economies, it’s in our societies. And we need a sense of community, but we don’t need a sense of community which is against somebody else. We can create communities which are with each other. If we have constructed conflicts, we can reconstruct societies to share values and to share our societies and be able to live together. We don’t have to accept that it’s inevitable that we will have these differences and these conflicts. Let’s say, take the European Union. Well, we had all these conflicts, Germans, the French the Holocaust. Greece was under Nazi occupation. There were 1 million Greeks up in the mountains, guerrilla fighters, terrible wars, war after war. And people might say, well, it’s inevitable. These people are just going to be fighting. But what we did is we said, No, we will construct. We can construct something different, and if it’s the will that’s there. We’ll construct it based on certain values, no conflict, peaceful a resolution of differences, respect human rights, respect minority rights, respect borders. Let’s share wealth. Let’s help for prosperity, democracy and on these values, we have been able to say it’s not inevitable that we go to war. We have constructed a society where we can be in peace. So it is the will, the political will, of our peoples and our leaders, that can reconstruct societies in a positive way. It’s not always easy, and in conflict, it’s not always easy, but if you have that will, there will be a way. And I think this is what we need. The more we have a rhetoric of war, the more we have a rhetoric of bashing the other side, the more we try to stereotype. We will be constructing a present or a future conflict or continued conflict. So I think this is where the hope is that we have shown that. And. Are small examples, like in Cyprus, which I mentioned. Are there big examples like the European Union, that we can construct a better future ourselves?

Speaker 2 15:07
Again, for listeners who don’t understand as much about the European Union, 26 member nations coming together in the 70s, as you said, under nations are admitted, I believe, based on their values.

Speaker 3 15:22
Yes, well, it’s it began after the Second World War, when we were in a devastated continent, and of course, Germany, France, the UK, all of the countries were devastated, and so many lives lost and so much destruction. So we said that. Then, founding fathers of this European Union, they said, Well, let us see if we can work together and become interdependent. Let’s put it that way. That was the idea, so that we are so interdependent that we don’t want to fight with each other. We don’t want a conflict. So they began with a steel and coal cooperation, steel and coal. Don’t forget, those were the basic industries for the military. So if you have them together, it won’t be one military against the other, because it will be cooperation. But it’s also to rebuild. And then it developed into the agricultural cooperation, and then, of course, a common market, and then a common union based on these values. But that was the basic thing. It wasn’t done in ethnicity. It wasn’t like I am German or Greek or French or British, whatever it is. We share these common values. We can be different. So began with just a few. Greece came in when we were 12. Then there were 15. Finally, we’re 2027, actually, now 28 but the UK has decided to opt out, unluckily, but don’t need to get into that. But what that means is that we have been able to construct a different type of society, built built on peace. And that’s, that’s, I think, is the very big importance, the huge importance of the European Union, because it gives you a sense of security. You have your identity. We each have our special identities, but they’re not against each other. They’re with each other. We have our special as Greeks, you know, good and bad, and Germans, good and bad, you know. But we’ve been able to come together on these basis of these values.

Speaker 2 17:24
I think it’s so important as a model for interdependence, yes, and one can argue efficiency and all that stuff and and that’s not the point here, but that the system continues to emerge and flex and flow. And other than Brexit, which I realize is significant. All of the member nations are cohering even during significant financial upheaval,

Speaker 3 17:50
that’s right. And in Greece, for example, we we decided, the Greek people decided that even though there were lots of sacrifices, and we had, there were major sacrifices, maybe more than needed, but there are major sacrifices in paying wages and pensions, and there’s austerity measures to make sure that our budget was responsible and that we could also convince the markets, but also our fellow Member States and the European Union that we would be a responsible member we wanted to stay in. We could have said, No, we don’t want that. We’ll go out and we’ll do our own thing. No, we said we want to stay in. We’ll follow the rules. So that sense of community is quite strong, and I think that’s why Europe is important, because it is a major Peace project. But if you think about the world as a whole, we are very interdependent, more and more so, and no one country is isolated. So let’s look how did the European Union work? Are there things we can learn at the global level, or other regions where we can actually work together? So let’s say the African Union. Now, there’s an African Union, not like European but there’s the Asia, which is the nation, sort of counterpart of of the European Union, there’s Latin American cooperation like MERCOSUR and so on. They are different forms of cooperation at the regional level, and maybe at the global level, we can see how we become more cooperative in based on certain values. So in this globalizing world, if we take the European example, how are we going to begin to share values across the planet, across borders where we can say, Okay, we have our differences, we have our different identities, we have our different traditions, but there’s a core there that is which humanity agrees with on these values, and that keeps us working and cooperating together rather than conflict.

Speaker 2 19:41
Thank you. I think that’s a brilliant note to end on. The idea that the EU is a model for what is possible for cooperation,

Speaker 3 19:51
and we do have our problems, and it’s not easy. It’s it is a possible model, and I think we should see it as that. But thank you. Maureen, thank

Speaker 2 19:58
you, George. It’s. Such an honor for me to get to have this conversation with you and to share it with our listeners. Thank you.

Speaker 2 20:13
Welcome you’re at Volkers. Thank you for taking time to be with us. Ewart, and is the head of Deloitte University, AMIA, and he’s running the Deloitte University.

Speaker 4 20:23
In Deloitte leadership is very important. What I found out there is so much out there, so much theory, so much good articles, books about leadership, of which a lot of is it’s usable even in a big professional service firm like Deloitte, leadership in turbulent times is something as a specific topic. We asked big leaders please reflect a bit on what it is to be a leader in turbulent times. So we had Mr. Van Rompuy, who was the first president of the European Union, and he spoke about his leadership effectiveness in turbulent times which he had, a lot of them in Europe. We had David Petraeus, who talked, of course, about the crisis that he had in Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali Haiti, and how he operated it. And of course, today we will have Jerome van Devin, who is the chairman of shell, or was the CEO of Shell, and he will also talk about his leadership in turbulent times. And for me, it would be very interesting, and we can only do that afterwards to compare the three and their different styles and how they manage the crisises in their companies or countries or even in Europe, and see what they needed to be successful in doing that we now already can see because we had two von Rompuy And Petraeus, which were quite different, because you could see van de rompa manage his crises by dialog, while, of course, Petraeus, as a military leader, leads much more through goal setting and achieving goals with the means that he has so much more directive leadership. So what you already could see, and I’m very interested what Jerome van de fier, who is of course, not from the military and not from the civil service, but from a company, how he did it in his crisis. So we will hear that later on. So for me, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to help organizing this, this conference and and be able to select even one of the main topic of the conference and help selecting that. So that was very nice.

Unknown Speaker 22:47
So let’s move to Deloitte University.

Speaker 4 22:49
Well, Deloitte University is basically, it’s a corporate university, so it’s only for Deloitte people, although in the United States we also have a university where it’s already also opened up for clients, and here in EMEA, we run one program, also for clients, but that is also a bit in self interest, because we do that for CFOs, and it’s for the top Fortune 500 CFOs. And after the program, which is a successful program, we ask them whatever they want, to join our industry programs and work with us on on the trainings that we do, and that works very well, by the way.

Speaker 2 23:26
You know, coming out of Accenture, we partnered with our clients, yeah,

Speaker 4 23:30
and that is what we do in, especially in our industry trainings, the trainings that we do there in, I think now 27 different industries are co created with clients, and also the trainings that we do, there are simulations. But the main interest for us is, of course, and that’s why we are here, and that’s why we are sponsoring this year’s conference, is leadership, because here in EMEA, we did interviews with all the CEOs of the 27 member firms. Now, a bit less because we had some mergers last year, but we had interviews with 27 CEOs, but also a lot of business leaders, and they said what we lack is real leadership. Inside Deloitte, there is, of course, leadership, but it’s not at all levels where we would like to have it at all levels. So what we did then is we started and basically that started after the keynote speech that I had with Professor Gil Hickman. We started with the as we call it, a leadership project. And in that leadership project, we are designing a leadership journey for people as soon as they enter the firm until they retire. So it’s not and we base that not on one theory or one leadership framework, but we are working, and that’s why it’s so interesting for us here, we are working with all the theories that are applicable in the workshops. We have done a lot of work to see what is. Specific on leadership was Deloitte. Out of the workshops came what we call a narrative, which is about yourself. What do you need as a person? What is about the other and what is connecting the two? What we did is find words around it and then divided that we definitely we made definitions of what we call the boxes. After that, we looked what do you need as a leadership skill, at what at a certain level in the void. So what do you need if you enter the firm on leadership skills? What do you need on when you are a manager, a senior manager, a director, a partner or a senior manager.

Speaker 2 25:44
So basically, the conveyor belt from lead to lead exactly a large enterprise.

Speaker 4 25:49
And what we found out that some things are the same, no matter whatever you are entering the firm or you’re a senior partner, like ethics, like ethics, but also like listening, voicing, standing up, being frank and honest. Also, what is in our firm, very important is the and it was also here on the conference, is purpose, purposeful leadership, because that’s something we think should be all over the place. Because if you really want to be a company, as we want to be, that have a shared purpose, but also an individual purpose that really makes the difference, then you have to be aware of that at all levels. So that’s also one of the examples that we work on at all levels.

Speaker 2 26:39
So each participant in the university then identifies their own personal

Speaker 4 26:44
purpose, yes, and we hope that they will identify them also on the bigger purpose of Deloitte. And of course, that is very broadly formulated. It’s to make an impact that matters. But you have to color that on an effective way. It is

Speaker 2 27:01
certainly well, and my books, that’s the first chapter of exercises, is, what’s my personal purpose? Yes, what are my values? And then I ask us here as a reflection questions, how does that cause me to behave? But then how do I fit within the organization exactly, and do the systems and processes that are in place enforce or or mitigate who I think I am and what I stand for. So how do I align with the organization? And if I’m not aligned as I’ve just entered, I should maybe not be here exactly.

Speaker 4 27:31
That’s that’s exactly how we look at it. If you, if you don’t want to align or can’t align, then better find another job, because then you don’t fit into the organization,

Speaker 2 27:42
and you’ll be less satisfied, less engaged, exactly,

Speaker 4 27:45
and that will also have an effect on other people that work for us. So what we are now doing is trying to put all the work that we’ve done in the workshops, in designing trainings and in that trainings, and that could be small snippets of trainings, that could be formal training. That could be classroom training. It could be digital learning. It could be everything we are designing now, modules that we can stick to technical programs, but also to industry programs, to to business advisory programs, so that ultimately you can see, if you work for us, you will be developed also as a leader at all levels,

Speaker 2 28:24
people come in, presumably with extremely high technical skills. Yes, most of them, and often people who have invested their time building technical skills, have invested all of their time doing that and haven’t invested an equal amount of time becoming a better leader. And if the organization doesn’t tell them they should, they often don’t,

Speaker 4 28:46
exactly, and then ultimately you will have a very in productive organization.

Speaker 2 28:51
I coach some of them well, and because the organizations are starting to recognize that brilliant physicians as an example and researchers, they are curing cancer, but now they’re leading organizations that cure cancer. There’s an additional set of skills that needs to be added,

Speaker 4 29:07
because we are not a firm with professional managers. Everybody who works for us and is in leadership positions is basically a practitioner at a different stage in his career, and now it was more a coincidence that you had a person who could lead, and then even a lot of times not very effective. So that’s why we are now emphasizing that leadership on all levels is very important, and we start training people around it. And then, as I said before, we will not use one framework, one theory. We will use what is applicable to us.

Speaker 2 29:44
And what is applicable, I assume, is a broad range, depending

Speaker 4 29:48
it’s yes. And also what we want is not something that is fixed. So we are not going to fix it and stabilize it, but it has to be agile so that new. Insights. I had this conference again. I was in some workshops, and I got some very good insights, especially on virtual leadership, which was a great lecture that we had around it, which is for us, of key importance, because all our teams, almost all our teams, work virtually.

Speaker 2 30:19
Actually, I want to find out who that is offline, because that’s something I want to share with listeners. My sister works for Microsoft and is leading virtual teams, and she, she said, Yeah, share more. Share the latest, latest research with me.

Speaker 4 30:35
It’s, it’s, in fact, if you listen to the lecture, it’s very simple, or it seems very simple. You have to find out what cultural background people have, what what their personal situation is. You have to imply, implement, how to resolve conflicts, all those kind of very simple things you need to put in place. But the first and most important thing is getting to know each other, and if you don’t spend time there, it will be an ineffective or a less effective

Speaker 2 31:08
team, which has been a theme throughout the entire conference. For me, I’ve heard consistently, in times of complexity, personal relationships need to be built and maintained, even if we never see one another face to face again, if I have a call with you, I’ll know who you are, and we will have shared some experience of getting to know one another

Speaker 4 31:31
where we are now currently looking at and we would like to see also some scientific proof of that, is that we think, but it’s an assumption that it makes sense if you have A team working virtually to at least get them together one time, face to face without interference of computers and telephones. And we think that teams will be more effective if they have been together again.

Speaker 2 31:57
Those are the comments I’ve heard this week through the interview series, but I don’t know that I could point to any specific research.

Speaker 4 32:03
No, I didn’t find it yet, but I hope to find it and and then then work with it. But because, as I said, it’s for us, it’s crucial all our teams were global in future. You know,

Speaker 2 32:15
one of the things I want to just comment on, because my whole work is built around innovating how we lead. So not just I went to a leadership class in, you know, year 2000 and now I’m set, but that, as the world changes, how I lead must change.

Speaker 4 32:32
For instance, a leader now has to Twitter, otherwise he can’t be a leader anymore. Is that true? At least? No, absolutely not. I’m referring to Mr.

Speaker 2 32:40
Trump, and we’re not going to go there. No, no, no, let’s not go there. But leaders need to communicate it in a way that exactly that is effective. Yeah, let’s keep let’s stop it at that. But the definition of leading has changed even in the last couple probably since I saw you last. The conference seems different this year, in part, maybe because of your organizing, but in part because the world context has changed. With populism, with new presidents and prime ministers, with with Brexit, a lot of changes.

Speaker 4 33:18
It’s very interesting to look at. I completely agree with you. The world changed every time and again, and that has his effect on leadership, but this is also on political leadership. What happens in the in the companies and perhaps also in the public sector, is that the possibility of all the data, of all the means that we have at our disposal are changing the way how you lead very dramatically. In the lecture about the future leadership, they asked us, How many teams do you think work virtually, and how do you think it was 10 years ago? And that was astonishing, because 10 years ago it was only 22% and now it’s 85% so imagine what an effect that has on the way you lead.

Speaker 2 34:04
Well, think about when you and I joined the workforce. We wrote things on paper, printers, paper. We there was an inbox that was a physical thing, right? There was a mail system that we that we got actual client correspondence through. Yeah, this

Speaker 4 34:21
was, was just the postman brought the correspondence. Then we did when I started working. There were no computers. I had a del x.

Speaker 2 34:32
I started shortly after that, but at that point I we were using mainframes. My I entered data into a mainframe, and the next morning, I would go get reports that were printed on a, you know, big sheets, and if there was a mistake, you’d run it overnight again. So the response time was days for an analysis, not three seconds. And so

Unknown Speaker 34:54
happy days.

Speaker 2 34:58
Well, I carried a heavy audit back. Tag back then. And so because of the speed of information, the way we lead globally has to

Speaker 4 35:07
change Absolutely. And you see that now already changing, because when email happens, and it’s the same, by the way, with WhatsApp and all those kind of things, SMS, you can name it, Twitter, what we see is that we are now coming out of an era where there was always an instantly reply. If you don’t answer an email immediately, you’re almost a criminal. And you see now that that starts to change. There are companies now who close down their email systems in the weekends, because we also found out that you need to have some reflection time. And that is also one of the things that was very important in this whole conference this year. You need time to reflect, to be quiet, to listen and to reflect on what you are

Speaker 2 35:53
doing, the synthesis integration, not just thinking about the stuff, but thinking about who am I? Exactly context of this

Speaker 4 36:01
stuff, exactly that means also that you shouldn’t be always disturbed by your devices. So I don’t know how you do it, but I sometimes, for in the weekends, I try to put it off. I don’t use it.

Speaker 2 36:12
I have one day a week that I don’t use it, okay. But I also I have a reflection practice. I walk a lot. Oddly, I walk at night, so even the visual of nature isn’t as distracting, but if I sit down, I fall asleep. So I

Speaker 4 36:30
have to keep hoping. Well, one of the themes that I also attended in one of the workshops was about meditation. They said, Yes, well, there’s proof for everything. But they said, Well, if you start the day or do meditation at least for 1015, 20 minutes a day, it will make you more effective.

Speaker 2 36:49
And that’s theologically, yes, our DNA changes, our frontal lobe builds that the neural network expands. There’s a lot of research that says our thinking gets better, exactly.

Speaker 4 37:01
And so that is for me, that was a new insight, that it has been proven from the physiological side. And I did it already for a long time. Every morning when I wake up, I first spent 1520 minutes really reflecting on what I will do that day. What were the problems of the day before, and how do they look after a night’s sleep? Because that’s basically different. They look different so and now I heard that it’s actually proven that it’s effective, and I think we also are going to take that up into our leadership trainings, that we are going to start learning people how to do it.

Speaker 2 37:39
I teach my MBA students to do it, and it’s interesting the questions they have, because some will say it’s against my religion. So contextualizing it that it’s not a religious practice. Exactly. It’s weight lifting for the brain. It doesn’t do any good to go to the gym and have a fabulous body and a flabby brain. So there are ways to contextualize it, I think,

Speaker 4 38:02
and that’s not only for the mind, but also for the body. Of course, we are taking much more care of our bodies, which makes us also more effective. And I attended also a few workshops around that theme. So for me, it was a great thing. And a lot of workshops, a lot of topics in the conference I can use for my leadership journey within Deloitte University. So for me, it has been very beneficial as a person, but also as an organization.

Speaker 2 38:32
So as we wrap up, hopefully some people from Deloitte University will be listening to you, and also the many people from ILA and beyond who weren’t maybe able to listen to the attend the conference, but would like to hear a closing message from you as the conference organizer.

Speaker 4 38:52
Well, I would almost say, Join Deloitte and be part of our leadership journey. But that’s another. Become a client of Deloitte, I think, Oh, well, of course, we like that also. Now my message would be, have your eyes and ears wide open to all the changes in community, what’s happening in our society, but also to all the research that has been done and try to apply what’s applicable for you in your day to day life, and hopefully then you will become a better leader.

Speaker 2 39:27
Thank you. Thank you so much, Hubert, for your leadership in creating an amazing conference and your leadership in Deloitte, because I know what an important firm you guys are, and it is only with good leadership in this time that you’ll continue to add the value that’s possible.

Unknown Speaker 39:47
Thank you very much. You’re welcome.