- [INTRO] Welcome to SkyeTeam's People First with Morag Barrett.

- So my friend and colleague Dr. Terry Jackson is a dynamic Executive Advisor, Thought Leader, TEDx Speaker, and Organizational Consultant. He's a member of the prestigious Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches group, which is how I've come to know him, and was recently chosen by Thinkers50 as one of the top 50 leaders in executive coaching. Terry has also been named by Thinkers360 as one of the top 20 global leaders in the future of work, and by CIO Review Magazine who have named him and his consulting company JCG Consulting Group as one of the top 10 most promising leadership development solution providers in 2019. So, Terry, welcome to People First.

- Well, thank you so very much Morag. It's a pleasure to be here with you, I'm honored.

- I am so excited for our conversation and to get into the nitty-gritty of the value you bring to your clients and organizations. But as with all my episodes, I want to start with your origin story. When you were a small boy back in elementary school and the teacher saying, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" What did you think you would be doing? What did you picture at that time?

- That's an excellent question because early on when I realized even though I was a lover of sports and I played sports all through high school and college, as a lover of sports, I always realized as a young boy that it wasn't really about being a professional sports athlete for me. It was really about owning a business, owning a sports type of business.

- Okay.

- And with that, I remember a local newspaper did a story on me in the ninth grade, it was great actually. Asking me what I wanted to do. I said what I was going to do in college and my goal at the time was to open a sporting goods store. But business has always been a part of my mindset, my process. Even though for my family, there were no real entrepreneurs in the family. But for whatever reason, I loved sports and I just saw next step as owning a sporting goods store that would allow me to provide equipment and services for sporting teams.

- Well, that's interesting. If there was a pivot point where you went from selling sporting gear then to selling your expertise and skills. You are now the product, Mr. Jackson. What was the pivot point then that brought you from selling things to selling tools, concepts, your ideas?

- I remember in an interview process while I was in college, someone asked me the question, what is the most difficult thing to sell? And I sat there and I pondered, and I pondered, and I pondered. And I couldn't answer. At the end of the interview process, the gentleman said, the most difficult thing to sell is you. I began to think about at that particular time. I began to realize that everything that we do in life is a sale. Whether I meet you for the first time and I'm selling myself or you you're selling yourself to me, the great thing about sales is, you're trying to get into the head of the person or the other people or the consumer that you're trying to convince to purchase or use your good or your services. So, there's a lot of psychology, what is that compelling message that's going to pull on the heartstrings of those people or that individual that is going to enable you to actually convince them that your product or service or you are the right person for the job.

- It's interesting you say that because I certainly know when I first started my own business and SkyeTeam we've been in business 13 years now, not withstanding that I came from the banking industry where I did have to sell credit cards, et cetera. My biggest mind block when I started was getting out of my own head and the, "Oh I don't like sales and I don't want to be seen "as a sleazy sales person and trying to disconnect the two." And for me, the mind game I played with myself is it's not sales, it's a conversation. Use me or don't use me there are plenty of coaches and leadership consultants in the world, either way I've made a new connection and that's how I did it. It was just I'm here for the conversation. And I took from myself the sales aspect out of it. So, how did you make that adjustment then to pitching yourself to become such a successful and as I said, sought out executive coach and organizational consultant?

- That's interesting because as I kind of looked around in corporate America when I was in undergraduate course I had my undergrad degree in business, I looked around at all of the business gurus at the time who were considered to be the expert in their field. And I listened to their narratives, their stories and looked at their approach and their process, as to how they got their message out and understood that it was about a system. And so, as I began to move away from- Or, as I began to put my message out there, for me it was always about building a business not necessarily building my personal brand even though I know it is the word of the day. It is the phrase, build your personal brand. Now I kind of see how they relapse the personal brand along with business. Now, when I thought about businesses I thought about companies like IBM at the time. Nobody calling on the CEO of IBM to do business for IBM they were going to IBM to do business 'cause they needed computers at the time, right? So it wasn't about the individual it was more about the brand, the brand of the company, the business. And so, that's how I always solve things until I began to realize that it was more of the personal brand, I wanted to name my company something outside of my name because I wanted to build a business. So, you can call on the business not necessarily having to Terry Jackson to have a business. As we begin to shift from business to the personal brand in order to build a business, I began to realize that I had created a narrative around, being able to have a conversation around solutions for executives and for businesses. And so, that's what I began to do. And so, I pivoted because in my last corporate position, I actually ran a vision big marketing firm and running that, I was also a student meaning that I was learning as we worked with other Fortune 500 companies and helping them developing their marketing campaigns, hit me that I must develop not only my personal brand but the business brand, be able to articulate that in such a conversation who would be willing to go more in depth with me around what their challenges are that they're facing.

- So, I love that your work encompasses the full spectrum from individuals through to organizations. And I know you have a very powerful TEDx talk where you talk about the difference between change versus transformation.

- Yes.

- So let's just start there, how do you differentiate between the two? Are they not synonymous?

- No, they're not synonymous. Change is passed based, transformation begins right now. And transformation is a journey, it doesn't have an end. Change can begin and end. I like to use the analogy of the butterfly, right? The caterpillar to the butterfly. The caterpillar comes in the world as a caterpillar, and then it begins to go through metamorphosis and that metamorphosis is a transformation into becoming a butterfly. See the butterfly is not a caterpillar, it's a whole different being. And transformation is about becoming a different being. It's really about challenging all of the old assumptions, by understanding who you want to be, not necessarily based on who you were.

- Okay, it's interesting that you use that metaphor because the other thing that many of us aren't aware of to your point, the caterpillar and the butterfly are two different insects, animals concept. And the caterpillar actually goes through a very messy middle where it kind of decomposes and then becomes the butterfly. And I think that's what I like about your differentiation is that change if you read the textbooks on change, it would imply that there's a nice linear step-by-step process you start, there's a middle and there's an end. Whereas transformation is... Especially with the caterpillar analogy, it embraces the messy middle. The yucky bit where it's sticky and not quite sure it's going to move through. And again, the research shows Terry that change efforts, transformation efforts are not as successful as we would like. What do you attribute that to?

- That's interesting because I'm working on a transformational project right now with a client. And one of the things that I've shared with them and from one of our colleagues actually about transformation, the disruption mindset, right? Is this, I shared with them success stories of companies who actually went through transformation very successfully. And we both noticed that it sticks around 70% of all transformation initiatives or change initiatives fail. I studied the 30% that succeed. I need to know 30% succeeded, so easy to do because if 70% fail, I need to understand the foundation was for those that succeeded and study those companies which increases the probability of the success of a transformational agent. Note the difference is and we kind of touched on this earlier. Oftentimes clients think that doing transformation, you're supposed to do the work for them. You're going to transform them. When in fact the transformation is incumbent on them. They are to work to transform. Because it begins in the mind that I'm capable of doing such. Now I start to take action opposite or different from what I'm accustomed to doing. And I become accustomed to being uncomfortable, I become comfortable being uncomfortable. Because as you mentioned, the caterpillar going through the cocoon the messy middle, right? It's chaos, right? There's fear, right? There's ambiguity, there's uncertainty. So, you have to be able to embrace that and continue to move through the fear. You have to be courageous if you're not courageous during transformation, the likelihood of it succeeding is slim.

- So I love that, great consultant. But even as a great consultant to your point you can't affect that change unless the organization and the people who are part of it choose to step up. So you're saying transformational thinking is what leads to the transformational doing?

- Absolutely.

- So, what are the steps to getting to people to think differently?

- I use some very simple exercises. I remember asking my client, did you change your route to work today? Or did you use the same route? Did you pick up a different book today to read? Did you wake up at a different time to take your shower? Did you take your route to the bank? I mean, did you make that route differently? Did you address your spouse differently this morning? Because we know as human beings, we're creatures of habit. And so what we need also are small wins which gives us the momentum to continue along the path that's uncomfortable for us. More wins make the uncomfortable a little bit more comfortable. And so as we begin to take those habits, and begin to change them about how they go to work, what time they wake up, all the small wins and truly that's not transformation, it's change and that's incremental. We know that transformation it's actually exposive. Is something that happens or it happens quickly, right? You have to get the small wins in first. So change is a part of transformation. Transformation is not necessarily a part of change, right?

- So, it sounds though if you're getting down this new path and to your point moving us out of our comfort zone, there's an element of fear that goes with it because how do I know if this is the right path?

- Well, you don't know that is the right path.

- Okay.

- You have determined who you want to become either as an individual or an organization. And in determining that, you begin to make steps toward that for instance. I remember reading a study on T-Mobile. T-Mobile decided back in I guess it was 2011 to go through a transformation and in doing so, the CEO said we have to be successful. Well, the first thing he did, if you take a look at him, his name is John Legere. If you take a look at pictures of him, you see him in his corporate two eye very clean cut, in order to make the transformation, he himself became the role model for transformation. So he went from the clean cut CEO to the hippie looking CEO. Wearing warm ups, letting his hair grow long, letting his facial hair grow. Because he decided to become the carrier meaning they were the company that actually eliminated contract's cell phone service. He became a role model by changing his total look appearance. It was easy for his... And I'm not saying every CEO has to do that, but it was easy for his company to begin to follow him. I can tell you that between 2011 and 2018 T-Mobile as a result of their transformation more than doubled their revenue. They went from roughly 20 billion a year in revenue to more than 40 billion a year revenue in a seven year period of time. So, the transformation for them stuck because he lived it right. Something that you have to live on a day-to-day basis. It's not something you just give lip service to.

- Yeah, often I find leaders get stuck in the quagmire of what's not working, and they have a logical goal of, "Let's increase revenue, let's launch a new product." Whatever it might be. But that in itself causes a disconnect that reinforces the stuckness. What I like about the story you just shared about T-Mobile is that there was the physical role model. There was signs and symbols that this was different, and not just yet another talking head of, "If we out weight it we'll go back to the old ways." That something new was a foot. So, how does a leader listening to this start to think about closing that gap between their vision of what needs to happen and selling it in a way that engages not just the minds but the hearts and minds of the people impacted so that we can ultimately tap into the hands to make it happen. How do you get that passion and excitement other than growing out facial hair which is going to be a challenge for me?

- I'm a little different about passion because passion is an emotion that's fleeting. One day you can be very passionate and the next day you can... Because it's emotional, you can be very low. For me, it's about the why, it's about purpose, right? It's the purpose that connect the people. It's the bigger picture, right? Then once you find what that why is that picture, that purpose, then you begin to add the passion in once you discover purpose. So the purpose keeps you going when you're up or you're down because you understand what your purpose is. So you don't have to necessarily rely on whose emotion is taking you on that emotional roller coaster you understand why, the existence of this. And so, with any organization or individual that's going through transformation, the first thing I say to them is we have to clearly understand and be able to articulate why, the purpose for the transformation. Once you get the purpose for the transformation, you can talk to the people about the impact it's going to have one day. The opportunities to use your curiosity and your imagination to be able to create the narrative in such a way that pulls at the heartstrings, right? It pulls it to heart. The purpose is about heart.

- I love that.

- Yes, purpose is about heart and mind.

- It's interesting. And of course 2020 has been the ultimate emotional roller coaster ride. So, to your point, the passion and then the despair or whatever words one wants to use about the polarity that we've all experienced. I know I've experienced sometimes all on the same day has been interesting. But if that why and that purpose can be the guiding light through all of it, it reduces hopefully the volatility of either end of that spectrum.

- Yes, one question we always have to remember during all of that volatility is we must always remember why we probably are here. That's the question. Why are we here? That's the key to the purpose. I mean people center around the purpose and kind of not eliminating but minimizing emotion 'cause it's going to be the purpose that's going to drive long term because transformation as I said earlier, it's a journey. It's a long term, it's not short term. And actually it doesn't have an end, continual, perpetual. So, once you start that journey, you're always on it. I just heard a story last week about when Stanford University Hospital decided to go through the transformation, well, they're 20 years into their transformational effort and they're continuing to excel. They're challenging all assumptions every day in order to perform better for their clientele.

- So, I'm curious about if personally then, what's your own transformational journey? How has your leadership philosophy evolved over time?

- That's an excellent question. You asked me a little bit I think or you mentioned my book maybe earlier and I'll tell you that at that point when I began writing which was roughly around 2004, that was the beginning of me for transformation. I was in a business at one time and I looked in the mirror one morning and I said, "I don't like what I see, I don't like who I see." I began the process of transformation. I began to reach out for a lot of resources to read, I began to speak a lot of people who I actually considered mentors to have conversations with, knowing that I wanted to get into a space of consulting and coaching, I began to do my research on this particular space and not knowing where I was going to end up or not even knowing the type of coach I was going to become, so my evolution started as a business coach at small businesses locally, and I actually took a break and went back into corporate America as I started that. And I said to myself if I can utilize these skills that I've learned from coaching inside a corporate setting to help develop people, then I can use it anywhere. So, I took a hiatus, went back, ran a division of a firm for five years, tested what I learned, never missed the number with an operations or sales team, and I decided it's that time. so, my transformation began by saying, "Okay, there has to be a different type of theory. "There has to be a different way of thinking." Mind you, that even though the transformation was taking place, I still wanted to be in the arena of business of commerce, leading and developing people. So, I created for myself a seven word kind of mission statement. And that is helping others improve their quality of life. For me, it's all encompassing. It's all encompassing because whether you're an employee of mine, whether you are a friend that I'm just meeting you, my conversation I hope to give you a nugget that's going to improve the quality of your life. Whether that's an idea or something you can take action on. It's really about improving the quality of life of others. And so, that's why seven words which I've been told seven words is significant for completion. And so I did it in seven words.

- Wow, and that's a theme I've heard from everybody who has known you longer than I. Your approachability, your generosity, your deep thought, with that outward focus on others. And as you mentioned your book, it's Transformational Thinking, the First Step Towards Individual and Organizational Greatness. And so, if I'm picking up that book, what am I going to be taking away from it that's going to help me or my organization move forward?

- The first thing is, one is a call to arms. It's a call to arms for individuals to look at themselves and for the organizations to look at themselves collectively and figure out, how can we be different. That call-to-arms challenges you, challenge all assumptions. I think you've probably heard this in one every day, right? Every day you walk in, it should be fresh. You should be looking for a new solution to a problem or creating something that solves a future problem. And so, with that, you are able to challenge those assumptions on a day-to-day basis, what we have to be able to do and I've created this model around the 11 P's of transformation.

- Okay.

- First P is perception. We got to challenge how we see the world, how we see ourselves, how we see others. Second is potential. What is our true potential? What is the potential of others? What is the potential of the organization? So, we have to challenge those assumptions around potential. We have to challenge our assumptions around our principles. There's no secret count, right? We going to challenge every aspect of our life. We're going to overturn every rock of our life. We have to challenge our passion, our assumptions around passion. As I mentioned to you earlier, passion is a little bit differently than others. That's the few but, I need to have the purpose. So, we need to also challenge all the assumptions around politics, not necessarily Republican and Democrat, but the politics of the organization and how we align ourselves and how we show up every day as an organization to the consumer. we challenge all of our assumptions around our people. What they can, what they can't do. Do they need to be able to excel as people within this system that we know as an organization? And we have to challenge the assumptions around what our purpose is. Are we in the right business? Who do we really give back to? Our consumer or to our society? We have to challenge assumptions around our plan, our plans as an organization for not only growth but our plans around how we serve the community, right? We have to challenge all assumptions around our processes all the time, right? How can we become better? How can we take something that already exists, create something that's never existed before? How do we see it differently? Challenge assumptions around perseverance. And right now COVID-19 has all of us challenging our assumptions around where we persevere. And lastly, we have to challenge our assumptions around pliability, how flexible are we? How vigil are we? How adaptable are we? Because I think we can get more out of ourselves, if we challenge all of these what I call the 11 P's of transformation.

- I love that, 11 P's. And I was thinking about you touched on it there with COVID, I think it's the ultimate cocktail shaker that's taken all of those P's and given them a good shake. When you think about the experience, 'cause it has been an overnight transformation where we've gone from one reality perception to an adapted one. We've certainly challenged processes and people and how we organize and how we relate or don't relate. If you just look at the headlines, et cetera what do you hope that we as a human race... Let's make it as broad as possible here. What do you hope that we actually take away from this experience?

- That's an excellent question. And you used a word that I've been using in this whole COVID-19 environment, and that is human. We are all human. We've seen a great deal of events happen during COVID, people getting sick, social unrest, to corporations shutting their doors and it impacted. And I think we have to understand and realize that we're all the same, we're no different. We have the same wants and needs as everyone else. I don't care if I'm in the United States of America, if I'm in Denmark and if I'm in Africa. Am human so, all of the labels that have been created around the humanization of people, all of the activities around the creation of people, when we really get down to it COVID is really exposed, the fact that we are all vulnerable, and we are all human, we all need each other in order to survive. That's what I want people to take away from COVID-19. Whether you're an organization, a group because I don't care what technology is, you're still just a human being and the human mind can create what technology looks like for the future, right? So you still have to have human being. Human being is the most important part of the commerce equation because it's through the imagination and the curiosity of the human being that we create products and services for everyone else to benefit from.

- Terry, those are powerful words. Thank you so much for sharing. As we come towards the end of our time together, what final thoughts do you have for people who are listening, who are likely in the midst of their own change and or transformation?

- I really love that because I'm going to actually go back to a passage in the book around transformation, and this passage goes something like... It goes something like this, "Is it time we all begin to assume the responsibility "for improving our own lives and the world in which we live? "Is it time to recognize our difference as a source "of increased perception, rather than barriers? "Is it time we all get off our individual and collective "and begin contributing and constructing "rather than denouncing and destroying? "Is time to come together in a spirit of true communication, "cooperation, and coordination? "Is it time to build up our strengths "and develop our weaknesses? "Is it time we recognize and celebrate the human spirit "and tap into this incredible source of unlimited potential "redirecting our energy, time, and efforts towards "more constructive and meaningful purpose? "Isn't it time for a little transformational thinking?"

- I'm going to go and vote, heck yes. Thank you, Terry. I truly appreciate. In the short time you just giving me a glance, giving the listeners a glance to the depth of your experience and impact. To the extent we peaked others curiosity, how can they get a hold of you, find more about the book, and the consulting work that you and your team do?

- Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much for this. Book can be found at Amazon, Amazon.com It is, Transformational Thinking, First Step Toward Individual and Organizational Greatness. You can find me on LinkedIn as I like to play on social media from time to time, you will find me on LinkedIn, Terry Jackson, PhD, you can find me on Facebook, you can find me on Twitter, and you can find me on YouTube with a couple of pieces that I've done. Email address Terry@jcgconsultinggroup.com. Thank you very much Morag for this opportunity.

- Oh my pleasure and I'll make sure all of that information is in the show notes and of course you can add this video to your movie credits on YouTube once it goes live. So, thank you again, Terry.

- Thank you so much.

- [Narrator] Thank you so much for joining Morag today. If you enjoyed the show, please like and subscribe so you don't miss a thing. If you learned something worth sharing, share it. Cultivate your relationships today when you don't need anything before you need something. Be sure to follow SkyeTeam and Morag on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And if you have any ideas about topics we should tackle, interviews we should do, or if you yourself would like to be on the show, drop us a line at info@skyeteam.com that's S-K-Y-E team.com. Thanks again for joining us today and remember, businesses is personal and relationships matter. We are your allies.