Dare to Author: Shaping Your Life and Leadership Journey
Lior Arussy emphasizes the importance of authoring your own life story rather than becoming a victim of circumstances in this insightful podcast episode. He shares valuable lessons from his experiences as an entrepreneur and consultant, highlighting how a shift in perspective can lead to exceptional results in leadership and organizational change. The conversation explores the critical role of storytelling in leadership, illustrating how personal narratives can inspire and motivate teams. Arusi also discusses the common challenges leaders face, such as the fear of change and the importance of fostering emotional connections with their employees. By reflecting on past experiences and embracing vulnerability, leaders can create a culture that encourages growth and resilience.
Dare to Author is a compelling exploration of leadership, innovation, and personal growth, featuring Lior Arussy, a seasoned author and consultant who has worked with many high-profile brands. The conversation delves into the philosophy of viewing change not as a victim, but as a hero in one’s own story. Arusi shares invaluable insights from his extensive experience, emphasizing the importance of understanding customer perspectives over being enamored with one’s products. This shift in mindset is crucial for entrepreneurs and leaders who often become overly focused on their offerings, losing sight of how they serve their customers. The episode not only highlights Arussy's journey and the mentors who influenced him but also discusses actionable strategies for leaders seeking to inspire and connect with their teams. Stories, according to Arusi, are powerful tools that can transform the workplace, enabling leaders to communicate their values and vision effectively while fostering an environment of trust and respect.
Central to the discussion is the concept of “authoring” one’s life story, which Arussy argues is a necessary skill in navigating today’s complex business landscapes. He asserts that individuals must take ownership of their narratives to not only survive but thrive in their careers and personal lives. The episode features engaging anecdotes that illustrate how storytelling can impact leadership and organizational culture. Arussy’s experiences demonstrate that leaders who are willing to share their vulnerabilities and authentic stories can create deeper connections with their employees, ultimately leading to enhanced performance and morale. The insights presented challenge traditional leadership paradigms, advocating for a more human-centric approach where empathy and emotional intelligence play significant roles.
Listeners are encouraged to reflect on their own narratives and consider how they can take proactive steps toward transformation. Arussy discusses practical steps for leaders, including recognizing and internalizing positive feedback—something he coins as the “gratitude denial syndrome.” He emphasizes the necessity of understanding one’s unique contributions and using past experiences to build resilience against future challenges. The conversation culminates in a powerful message: authoring your own story is not a one-time event but a continuous journey that requires daily choices and reflections. Arussy’s legacy, as he envisions, will be one of inspiring others to stretch beyond their perceived limitations, a reminder that every individual has the power to shape their destiny and influence those around them.
Takeaways:
- To be an effective leader, focus on leading with stories that inspire and connect.
- Understanding your customers' perspectives can dramatically shift your business strategies and outcomes.
- Choosing to author your own life story is a powerful step towards personal empowerment.
- Mentorship is crucial; having someone to guide you can illuminate your path forward.
- Embrace change as an opportunity rather than a threat to foster growth and innovation.
- Recognize that your past experiences can provide strength and resilience for future challenges.
Transcript
My guest today, author of Dare to Author, has written several seven previous books including Next Is Now, Excellence, Everyday Innovating it, Customer Experience Strategies, Exceptionalize it and Passionate and Profitable.
Host:He is an investor, strategic accelerator, speaker and award winning consultant.
Host:The founder of Stravidia Group, he has helped brands such as Mercedes Benz, Delta Airlines, Walmart, FedEx, Johnson and Johnson Honeywell and MasterCard to author the Next chapter in their success.
Host: ussi, who was named in the in: Host:He lives in New Jersey with his wife and children.
Host:We welcome him to the podcast.
Host:Well, my friend, welcome to the podcast.
Host:How are you doing today?
Lior Arusi:Doing well.
Lior Arusi:How are you?
Host:I am great.
Host:I'm so glad to talk to you about this important topic.
Host:I love, love your audience, I mean your topic here and name of your book.
Host:So we should have a lot of fun talking about this.
Host:I'm looking forward to it.
Lior Arusi:Thank you very much.
Lior Arusi:Let's dive in.
Host:So I love to ask my guests this question to kind of get a chance to think about the best piece of advice you've ever received.
Lior Arusi:The best piece of advice I ever received was stop thinking about your product and start thinking like your customer.
Lior Arusi:The moment you start thinking like your customer, it changes everything.
Host:Oh, I love that.
Host:And it makes so much, so much sense because if you're thinking about your product and not how the customer, how that product benefits the customer, you lose sight of how to even talk to the customer about the product.
Lior Arusi:It's actually going deeper than that because as entrepreneurs, as young business people, we're in love with our product.
Host:Oh yeah.
Lior Arusi:Solution for everything in the world.
Lior Arusi:And many of the customers are actually kind of afraid of that.
Lior Arusi:They don't want to change or they, they draw a completely different benefit from it than you thought it was.
Lior Arusi:So thinking and putting yourself in the shoes of the customers is requiring you to be humble about what are the real benefits and really understanding what are they struggling with?
Host:Right, Exactly.
Host:I'm curious, a person like yourself who's had a lot of influence in a lot of different companies, were there people along your journey who came alongside you as you were developing, growing and maturing as a leader to help kind of be a guide for you or a mentor?
Lior Arusi:So I cannot say that a specific person was my mentor at any given time.
Lior Arusi:And I think this is something I regret.
Lior Arusi:I have to tell you, in retrospect, I should have had a mentor.
Lior Arusi:I'm serving that today with some people and I can see the big difference.
Lior Arusi:But there were definitely people that illuminated, you know, at the moment of time and gave me kind of a wake up call.
Lior Arusi:I'm going to give you one example that my, you know, so I was, I was in startups and I love startups.
Lior Arusi:And you know, you, you're, you're, you're the king of everything.
Lior Arusi:You're the chief executive of everything.
Lior Arusi:And one day I got a call from HP and I went to an interview and the place was like, you know, it was like huge company cubicles.
Lior Arusi:And, and I came back and I told one of the board members in my startup.
Lior Arusi:I'm like, I don't think I can do that.
Lior Arusi:It's just too big.
Lior Arusi:Said to me, look, Leo, you need to go and see how the big guys are operating.
Lior Arusi:It's going to change your mind, it's going to change the way you think about problems and the way you present your companies to the world.
Lior Arusi:And you know what?
Lior Arusi:He was right.
Lior Arusi:He was right.
Lior Arusi:I was afraid.
Lior Arusi:So that's an example of somebody that would say it was an insightful moment that kind of changed my perspective.
Lior Arusi:And then after I left HP and I started my own company, Strativity, I remember like the first few days I freaked out, like, oh my gosh, I'm corporate salary and what's going to happen now?
Lior Arusi:And a friend of mine pulled me aside and said, liora, have you been successful until now?
Lior Arusi:I says, by and large, yes.
Lior Arusi:I mean, I made my mistakes, but I've been successful.
Lior Arusi:He said, so what do you, why do you think you're going to start being a failure right now?
Lior Arusi:That was another one.
Lior Arusi:I was like, oh, I guess you're right.
Lior Arusi:So I would say I was blessed with people at certain points who either believed in me in a way that I didn't believe in myself or have given me a perspective that I did not see, and then it guided my career in a certain way.
Host:As you think about how you are mentoring people today, what are some key things that you've discovered that are important if you want to mentor someone?
Host:Because we all may think we're going to be a blessing to somebody, but if we don't have certain principles in our mind about what it means to be a mentor, we can do it the wrong way.
Host:So what are some key things that you're trying to do as you try to help someone else so one of.
Lior Arusi:The first ones that I have a discussion with people who wants to go into their own business.
Lior Arusi:And I said, look, you can make money in corporate, you can make money in entrepreneurship.
Lior Arusi:Entrepreneurship is not a financial decision.
Lior Arusi:It's a lifestyle decision.
Lior Arusi:So first and foremost, understand what are you really looking for?
Lior Arusi:Are you just running away from something you don't like, or are you pursuing something that you want?
Lior Arusi:And the question is, how big do you want that company to be?
Lior Arusi:Do you want to be the chief of everything?
Lior Arusi:Do you want other people to work for you?
Lior Arusi:These are important questions that you need to think about in advance.
Lior Arusi:Because if you structure a company where you are the chief delivery person, it will never grow.
Lior Arusi:But if you are going to bring other people, you need to let go.
Lior Arusi:And that's not.
Lior Arusi:That's not an easy.
Lior Arusi:People don't think about it.
Lior Arusi:Okay, so.
Lior Arusi:So that's the first thing I have a conversation with them around, what are you really trying to achieve?
Lior Arusi:And do you understand this is a lifestyle decision as opposed to anything else?
Lior Arusi:Now, as companies grow, I have usually an interesting conversation with CEOs, and I said, look, guys, I built a business.
Lior Arusi:I was the CEO of my business.
Lior Arusi:And I have to tell you, I never knew if I'm funny or not because I never know people laughing because I'm funny or because I'm the CEO.
Lior Arusi:And.
Lior Arusi:And I said, and whenever I send it to my employees, they'll say, no, no, no, you are funny.
Lior Arusi:I said, you see, that's exactly why I don't believe you.
Lior Arusi:And my point to them is it's lonely at the top.
Lior Arusi:And get yourself some people that can put a mirror in front of you and tell you the truth.
Lior Arusi:And second, there are things that you know when you're at the top, there are things that your employees are never going to tell you.
Lior Arusi:You're holding a certain position that carries authority, that carries responsibility that people are counting on.
Lior Arusi:And you need to be humble, but also understand how powerful that position is and how influential that position is.
Lior Arusi:And I think a lot of people, when you started and you were on your own, all of a sudden your business had 30, 40, 50 people.
Lior Arusi:You think you're still that entrepreneur with nobody there, but no man.
Lior Arusi:You have 40 payrolls on your back.
Lior Arusi:You have 40 families living off what you're doing.
Lior Arusi:And guess what?
Lior Arusi:It's a huge responsibility.
Host:Right?
Host:I've talked to other entrepreneurs and CEOs before, and the question I always ask them, because I saw this in a study somewhere, that as you become at that level of CEO, you lose the ability to have emotional intelligence and connection with your people.
Host:How do you, as a CEO, make sure that you maintain some level of.
Host:Of connectivity with your people so that you can better lead them?
Lior Arusi:So that is actually a very, very interesting question because I've done workshop with CEOs and executives around this topic.
Lior Arusi:And I asked them, what's the difference between a manager and a leader?
Lior Arusi:Okay.
Lior Arusi:And ultimately we reach a very simple conclusion.
Lior Arusi:A manager draws upon their formal power.
Lior Arusi:I'm the boss.
Lior Arusi:And a leader is drawing upon their informal power.
Lior Arusi:Now the question is, how do you create informal power?
Lior Arusi:Many of them think that their job is to be the friends of their employees.
Lior Arusi:Your employees will never be your friend because you're carrying the responsibility for their salaries, for their job, and everything else.
Lior Arusi:The question is, how do you command respect?
Lior Arusi:There's a difference between their friend being their friend and being respected.
Lior Arusi:So my employees always knew that I will, and this is what I was known for.
Lior Arusi:I will stretch them beyond their comfort zone.
Lior Arusi:I never wanted them to perform within their comfort zone.
Lior Arusi:I always look for, like, what's the next aspiration?
Lior Arusi:How can I put you in a different position?
Lior Arusi:I want you to perform outside of your comfort zone because A, you're going to strive to do better, B, you're going to be careful not to fail, and C, you know that I'm there to be your safety net if something will happen.
Lior Arusi:This is the way I manage my people.
Lior Arusi:And I said, you know, the joke was in the company, you know, when you join my company, you join a Ferrari doing 90 miles an hour, and we're going fast.
Lior Arusi:So if you don't enjoy the fast.
Lior Arusi:And by the way, then the employees adopted this joke to say, yeah, blindfold too.
Lior Arusi:So I was.
Lior Arusi:My way of commanding the respect for my people is by stretching them with opportunities and tasks and challenges that they've never done before.
Lior Arusi:So they can look back every year and says, I've grown this year, I've achieved this year.
Lior Arusi:But they knew that I'll be their safety net.
Lior Arusi:If something will happen, I'll be there to catch them.
Lior Arusi:So that was my way of doing that.
Lior Arusi:And I believe that people who are operating within their comfort zone are tending to not excel in their performance.
Lior Arusi:Performance.
Lior Arusi:And people who are outside of their comfort zone are striving to grow.
Lior Arusi:These are two different running people.
Host:Yeah, no, I love that.
Host:And something you said was interesting to me as you talked about describing how your employees kind of had the we're going at 100 miles an hour.
Host:In a Ferrari.
Host:But you also talked about, you know, how do you.
Host:You saved a safety net for them so if they, they wouldn't fail.
Host:How do you, how do you get people to trust you to know that it's okay to go 100 miles an hour?
Host:But what if I do fail?
Host:What?
Host:What?
Host:You know, because a lot of times people don't take the chance because they're afraid to fail.
Lior Arusi:I'm going to give you an example.
Lior Arusi:The end.
Lior Arusi:The short answer to it is Stories, which is connected to my next book, Dare to Author.
Lior Arusi:So I'm going to share with you a story.
Lior Arusi:One of my consultants went on the road.
Lior Arusi:She was in Austin, Texas.
Lior Arusi:She was working with a medical organization and she was late for a meeting that she didn't even know she had with one of the executives.
Lior Arusi:That executive decided to burst into screaming and yelling in front of other people about how she's wasting his time.
Lior Arusi:She didn't show up on time and what kind of a person is she?
Lior Arusi:And so on and so forth.
Lior Arusi:She called me all shook up and I said to her first, are you okay?
Lior Arusi:She said, yes.
Lior Arusi:Are you, Are you ready to continue or do you need to come back?
Lior Arusi:She said, no, I think I can continue.
Lior Arusi:And then we'll do the discussion after I finish.
Lior Arusi:Three days later, she returned.
Lior Arusi:We sat down in the office, we went through everything, and then I called the CEO and I said, sir, based on what I've understood, your person have crossed the line and I'm expecting an apology.
Lior Arusi:And he said, well, I don't know about that.
Lior Arusi:Let me see what I can do.
Lior Arusi:Da da da da da.
Lior Arusi:He called me back the next day.
Lior Arusi:He said, I've researched the issue and talked to people who've seen the scene and I've concluded this is a quote, that he scolded her just the right amount of scolding and therefore we do not believe that there is a need for an apology.
Host:Wow.
Lior Arusi:So listen to this.
Lior Arusi:I said to him without hesitation, I said, here's what's going to happen next, sir.
Lior Arusi:I'm going to write you a check for the down payment that you paid for this project.
Lior Arusi:I'm going to FedEx it to you for delivery tomorrow at 10am upon your receipt of that envelope, I do not want to hear from you ever, ever again.
Lior Arusi:And the guy said to me, are you sure?
Lior Arusi:Isn't that not too extreme?
Lior Arusi:I said, no.
Lior Arusi:If you are leading an organization and can actually utter to me that screaming and embarrassing people.
Lior Arusi:There is such a thing as the right amount of scolding of embarrassing people, then we don't have a basic foundation, shared foundation of values.
Lior Arusi:Now, that story, that story was traveling for years in the company.
Host:Wow.
Lior Arusi:That story.
Lior Arusi:I'll give you one more story.
Lior Arusi:One more story.
Lior Arusi:We were doing a major project for Delta Airlines.
Lior Arusi:One of my guys was on stage training flight attendants and gate agents and so on, so forth.
Lior Arusi:During the break, he receives the message that his father passed away.
Lior Arusi:Now, arranging that training was not a simple thing.
Lior Arusi:The schedules of flight attendants and so on.
Lior Arusi:So it's not easy.
Lior Arusi:And he calls me and he said, leor, I don't know what to do.
Lior Arusi:And I said to him, first, tell me about your father.
Lior Arusi:What is the one lesson you learned from him?
Lior Arusi:And we spend 30 minutes talking about his father.
Lior Arusi:And then I asked him a very simple thing.
Lior Arusi:If you go on stage right now, what would your father feel?
Lior Arusi:And can you find a way to weave at least one of the special qualities of your father on stage so at least you'll turn this not into a mandatory thing that you have to do, but maybe part of the commemoration?
Lior Arusi:Because I said to him, I said, steve, I never met your father, but I know you.
Lior Arusi:And as his son, I know that he was a great person because he brought us you.
Lior Arusi:And he was in tears and he went and finished this and flying colors.
Lior Arusi:And again, that was another example, a story that ultimately kind of was shared across the organization.
Lior Arusi:Organization.
Lior Arusi:So leadership is about creating stories that demonstrate that at the moment of truth, you live by your values.
Lior Arusi:I don't believe in putting values on the wall.
Lior Arusi:That's, that's bs, right?
Lior Arusi:Until, until you don't test them in real life.
Lior Arusi:They're just statement of intentions.
Host:Yes.
Host:Just from those two stories, I could probably tell you your employees really do think you're funny because you seem so approachable.
Host:You know, I think sometimes when you're not approachable, people laugh out of a sense of obligation versus the fact that you truly are funny.
Lior Arusi:You're right.
Lior Arusi:But I have to tell you, I have to tell you that anyone who would approach my wife and say, can you talk to Lior about getting a job in his company?
Lior Arusi:And she would say, I would work there.
Lior Arusi:He's a very demanding guy.
Lior Arusi:I wouldn't work there.
Lior Arusi:I wouldn't recommend you to work for him.
Lior Arusi:He's very demanding.
Lior Arusi:And I didn't demand because I wanted to, you know, be a tyrant.
Lior Arusi:I was demanding because I, I, I believe that they would grow better that way by get giving them opportunities that no one else will give them, which is the ultimate trust you can give your people.
Lior Arusi:But the notion of leading through stories, it's actually leading with proof points for what you're going what.
Lior Arusi:What you.
Lior Arusi:What you're really all about.
Lior Arusi:And you know, I have to tell you, I wrote there to author in order to empower a lot of leaders to feel comfortable with that.
Lior Arusi:And their thinking about storytelling is you need to strip everything.
Lior Arusi:You need to be vulnerable.
Lior Arusi:I said, no, no, no.
Lior Arusi:There's no purpose being vulnerable for the sake of being vulnerable.
Lior Arusi:You're sharing the things that are relevant in order to activate people.
Lior Arusi:Don't share stories for the sake of stories.
Lior Arusi:I don't care what you did in high school or in the problem.
Lior Arusi:If it's not relevant, this is not what it's about.
Lior Arusi:But use your stories in a deliberate way to demonstrate the performance you're looking for, the kind of values that you're looking for people to live by.
Lior Arusi:That's what stories see.
Lior Arusi:We don't live in the world of facts and data.
Lior Arusi:Data doesn't change people.
Lior Arusi:Stories change people.
Lior Arusi:People will follow stories, they will not follow data.
Lior Arusi:And I'll give you, here's a funny one for you.
Lior Arusi:How do I know that?
Lior Arusi:Because January 1st is coming.
Lior Arusi:On January 1st, millions of Americans are going to go on the scale.
Lior Arusi:They're going to see the number, they're going to hate the number, and yet they won't do anything about it.
Lior Arusi:Because we don't live in facts, we live in stories.
Host:Right.
Host:If you tell me a story about how it could look next January 1st, it might be more interesting.
Host:So what inspired you to write Dead Author?
Host:Because it seems different from your previous books.
Lior Arusi:This book is very different.
Lior Arusi:And it comes with its own story, which I actually start the book with.
Lior Arusi:So I've been working with a US insurance company for several years and I was preparing a board meeting presentation about innovation.
Lior Arusi:And 30 days before the presentation, I went on a call with the CEO and a couple of VPs.
Lior Arusi:We already have all the content ready.
Lior Arusi:And the CEO, who knows me, we are good friends.
Lior Arusi:And he went on the call and he said, lior, we're not going to talk about innovation.
Lior Arusi:Going to talk about your next book.
Lior Arusi:And I said to him, ben, there is no next book.
Lior Arusi:I'm not working on the book.
Lior Arusi:And he's like, no, no, there is.
Lior Arusi:You just don't know that yet.
Lior Arusi:So you're going to come and talk about the book.
Lior Arusi:I'm like, ben, I mean, we're 30 days away from the presentation.
Lior Arusi:Everything is ready, all the slides.
Lior Arusi:There is no next book.
Lior Arusi:And he's like, yeah, there is Leo.
Lior Arusi:You just don't know that.
Lior Arusi:But there is.
Lior Arusi:I'm like, ben, I'm going to bring Winnie the Pooh and I'm going to read for 90 minutes.
Lior Arusi:And he's like, if you want to read Winnie the put to me, I'm sure I'm gonna learn something new.
Lior Arusi:And lo and behold, young up.
Lior Arusi:I look at the other CEOs in that Zoom session.
Lior Arusi:I'm like, what the heck just happened here?
Lior Arusi:And like, we don't know.
Lior Arusi:He didn't tell us anything.
Lior Arusi:So within 30 days, I, I, I started basically the who is the author of your life story?
Lior Arusi:And, and the main argument is because.
Lior Arusi:Because my business is transformation and change.
Lior Arusi:One of the things that I realized that we are by default as human beings treating change as a victim.
Lior Arusi:We are feeling victimized.
Lior Arusi:We are fighting like victims.
Lior Arusi:We are never ever considering the possibility that change and transformation actually can be exciting.
Lior Arusi:And what was the difference?
Lior Arusi:When you are a victim, you feel that things are being done to you.
Lior Arusi:When you are a hero, you are the one leading.
Lior Arusi:So my challenge to people is if you do not author your own life story, it's going to be authored to you and I'm not sure that you're going to like it.
Lior Arusi:So it's time to author it in the way that we'll be proud.
Lior Arusi:That was one reason.
Lior Arusi:But the second reason.
Lior Arusi:Many people talk about authoring your life story in a form of, of coming to closure with pain.
Lior Arusi:I'm saying that's not the purpose.
Lior Arusi:For me, authoring a life story is to convert past experiences into future strength and resilience.
Lior Arusi:I honestly believe that God puts us in situations and challenges that we have inside the power to solve.
Lior Arusi:And we do not know that power because we have never authored past experiences to discover the superpower and the toolkit that we do have within us to deal with those challenges.
Host:I love that what you're describing is a revolutionary look at leadership and innovation.
Host:So how do you see authoring your story challenging our conventional way of leading?
Lior Arusi:I think that we are shifting in so many levels from what used to be the invincible leader that knows it all and into the leader that says, let's discover it together.
Lior Arusi:Because one of the things that I'm trying.
Lior Arusi:Here's what happens.
Lior Arusi:A lot of the leaders, if you see CEOs in corporate America, you'll see many of them coming from finance or operations.
Lior Arusi:So they are left brain people.
Lior Arusi:They're not creative people.
Lior Arusi:They're not people people.
Lior Arusi:Okay?
Lior Arusi:They're seeing the world through spreadsheets and pie charts and graphs and all this type of things.
Lior Arusi:Second of all, many of them are mirroring their first manager from 30 years ago who told them, if you want to do it right, do it yourself, or something else like that.
Lior Arusi:Well, that leader may have been relevant in 95.
Lior Arusi: s not going to be relevant in: Lior Arusi:We don't use Windows 95 anymore.
Lior Arusi:Why are we using the operating system of leadership from 30 years ago?
Lior Arusi:That is the issue that our employees are not looking for the invincible leader.
Lior Arusi:Because in their mind, if you're so invincible and you know everything, then what do I.
Lior Arusi:What do I need to do?
Lior Arusi:Just do it yourself.
Host:Right?
Lior Arusi:We're not inviting them into creation.
Lior Arusi:We're not inviting them into.
Lior Arusi:Into the journey.
Lior Arusi:We're just telling them to follow with their eyes closed.
Lior Arusi:And nobody wants to follow such a leader.
Lior Arusi:If you know all the answers, then I'm going to go find somewhere else to put my talent, because my talent is valuable too.
Lior Arusi:But you're not giving me a space to express myself with my talent.
Host: gap between that leader from: Host:You have to be vulnerable.
Host:You have to be willing to cry with your employees.
Host:So you kind of, in that middle space of no, you can be a good leader by telling stories that connect with that tell the story of the company where you've been in the past.
Host:So it's like in between those two extremes of leadership.
Lior Arusi:I think that as leaders on one side, we need to demonstrate the confidence in our direction without necessarily prescribing every step of the way.
Lior Arusi:People do want to follow someone who knows where he's going.
Lior Arusi:I mean, they're not going to follow you if you don't know where you're going.
Lior Arusi:But at the same time, if you're going to prescribe every step of the way, you're going to lose me.
Lior Arusi:I'm gonna be.
Lior Arusi:I'm gonna become a victim of your.
Lior Arusi:Of your method.
Lior Arusi:I'm gonna become a passive follower.
Lior Arusi:Don't expect me to bring my caring, my thinking out of the box, my creativity, my sense of ownership.
Lior Arusi:I'm not gonna bring it to a situation where my leader already knows all the answers.
Host:Right?
Host:Exactly.
Lior Arusi:One side, a clarity and conviction of where you're heading, but with the flexibility to find different ways to get there.
Host:I love that.
Host:I also want to ask you, as we talk about this book, a Little bit more.
Host:Walk us through some of the I do love research myself because I just got done doing a ton of it.
Host:What was the research behind your book?
Lior Arusi:The book actually includes wide variety of research that I bring to the table.
Lior Arusi:But one of the central pieces is a benchmark study that we have done with Harvard Business Review several years ago.
Lior Arusi:We benchmark 422 companies and we asked them a very simple question.
Lior Arusi:How successful are you with your change program?
Lior Arusi:And 9%, 9 out of 100% said we have been successful.
Lior Arusi:Which is a very bad number.
Lior Arusi:If you substitute the word.
Lior Arusi:If you substitute the word change with the word future or strategy, you understand that they have no future.
Lior Arusi:They're not future ready, right?
Lior Arusi:Okay.
Lior Arusi:So what are the reasons?
Lior Arusi:What are the reasons for this level of failure in a sense?
Lior Arusi:And is it budget?
Lior Arusi:Is it technology, Is it governance?
Lior Arusi:The human factor was the number one.
Lior Arusi:Then we started to dive deeper and deeper and the notion was always that people are fighting the future because they are afraid of the unknown.
Lior Arusi:We found that it's actually something totally different.
Lior Arusi:When people hear the word change, they equate it with a negative judgment on their past behavior.
Lior Arusi:If you want me to change from my Excel to use Oracle, then guess what that means that 20 years I did something wrong.
Lior Arusi:That's too much for me to process.
Lior Arusi:What we recognize is that people are stuck in old chapters and they don't know how to convert those chapters into future readiness.
Lior Arusi:So the story is stuck in a different place.
Lior Arusi:That was the combination of the benchmark study with HBR and the over 400 transformations we have done.
Lior Arusi:And we looked at employees responses through focus groups, qualitative interviews, and so on and so forth.
Lior Arusi:We realized the issue is that they are stuck in an old story and they don't know how to conclude that chapter and convert it to the next chapter.
Host:It's funny you talk about that.
Host:I just did my research on changing in the church setting and why our church is stuck and also don't want to change too.
Host:I had Kotter as the underlining model of would that work in a non public sector and private sector?
Host:So it's kind of fascinating you talk about the reasons why people don't want to change.
Host:I'm curious as you did this research, did you also test for and I did this in mine.
Host:Is there a particular leadership style that's more easily adaptable to change versus another?
Lior Arusi:So I'm going to make generalization here, but really ultimately I saw two buckets of leaders.
Lior Arusi:The leaders that came from operation and Finance were very KPI oriented, very objective oriented.
Lior Arusi:People became almost secondary to numbers.
Lior Arusi:There were.
Lior Arusi:They were running the business through process and process was their way of controlling the situation.
Lior Arusi:Then you got the more, you know, creative.
Lior Arusi:Call them, you know, marketing, sales, they were far more people oriented.
Lior Arusi:They would put people first before processes and those were a little bit more, more.
Lior Arusi:A little bit more adaptable to change.
Lior Arusi:However, however.
Lior Arusi:And let's take another industry in order to learn from.
Lior Arusi:Well, in the book I cite a study from the Mayo Clinic in which only 12% who ask for second opinion on a diagnosis actually received the same diagnosis that they have originally received.
Lior Arusi:Only 12%.
Lior Arusi:12%.
Lior Arusi:This is ultimately bringing the confirmation bias.
Lior Arusi:Even your physician is listening to you and is confirming it with other diagnosis that he or she have done in the past as opposed to listening to you and understanding your feelings and your symptoms and everything else.
Lior Arusi:So the more that I experience, the less they are open to change because what they're doing is they're not learning from their success how to be open to the future.
Lior Arusi:They're learning from their success to further reinforce old convictions.
Lior Arusi:So although there was a little bit more openness around the creative side and the people oriented side, when they've been in the business for too long, they become as rigid and as resistant as others.
Host:Did you discover that people who were people oriented, when the people resisted the change, were they more likely to stop because they were concerned about how people took to change versus those who weren't as people oriented?
Lior Arusi:You like research.
Lior Arusi:Let me give you one more.
Lior Arusi:I first came across it in a TED talk.
Lior Arusi:Professor Gilbert from Harvard conducted a very interesting study around are 18 years old people more open to change than 50 years old people?
Lior Arusi:That was the premise of the study.
Lior Arusi:And his conclusion was no, they're not.
Lior Arusi:Both are equally resistant.
Lior Arusi:He described that as end of history illusion.
Lior Arusi:We somehow at any given time in our life think that all the major changes could have happened in our lives, have already happened, and from now on it's going to be smooth sailing.
Lior Arusi:He described it as ultimately an inherent human response.
Lior Arusi:An inherent human response in which we treat change as a threat.
Lior Arusi:And as a result it doesn't matter from which angle we are coming.
Lior Arusi:It is being perceived as a threat.
Lior Arusi:And that's the essence of dare to author my book, that we are by default responding to change as victims.
Lior Arusi:And the moment you're a victim, there's no way you're going to move forward.
Host:I love that we like actionable items.
Host:So what are some actionable steps you hope People take away from your book and can apply that to their organization.
Lior Arusi:So I remember an example.
Lior Arusi:I was at the Aria Hotel in Las Vegas behind the scenes, getting ready to go on stage, stage.
Lior Arusi:And the CEO, who was both German and a banker, said to me, lior, remind me after the conference, I want to sign up for coaching how to do public speaking.
Lior Arusi:I said, I'm not doing coaching for public speaking.
Lior Arusi:But what's your issue?
Lior Arusi:He said, no, no, you engage with the audience so well, and I don't know how to do that.
Lior Arusi:I don't have this connection.
Lior Arusi:And.
Lior Arusi:And I said, oh, you want, you want me to help you with that?
Lior Arusi:He said, yeah.
Lior Arusi:I said, let's do it right now.
Lior Arusi:I said to him, why do you love this company?
Lior Arusi:And he started to tell me that it was a fascinating story.
Lior Arusi:And I said to him, you know what?
Lior Arusi:Put aside your slides.
Lior Arusi:I want you to go out there in front of your employees and I want you to tell them why you love this company.
Lior Arusi:He said, why would they care?
Lior Arusi:I said, just trust me, you want to be coached.
Lior Arusi:Here it is right now, free of charge.
Lior Arusi:He goes there, you could hear a pin drop.
Lior Arusi:And he came back almost in tears.
Lior Arusi:And he said, why did it work?
Lior Arusi:I said, because you spoke from your heart, because you were willing to share with them a human story and not just facts.
Lior Arusi:Because people don't live in facts.
Lior Arusi:People don't follow facts.
Lior Arusi:People follow people and you just spoke to them in the language that they understand.
Lior Arusi:So in the book, I want couple of things for people to take from it.
Lior Arusi:First of all, you want to lead and you want exceptional results.
Lior Arusi:Stories is the way to go there.
Lior Arusi:And you need to learn how to author your stories in order to get to the exceptional performance and in order to get to your team following second thing, understand?
Lior Arusi:And if you don't do that, you will become victim to prejudice and biases that are going to actually make your life miserable.
Lior Arusi:And imposter syndrome is one example that I have a whole chapter on.
Lior Arusi:I suffered from that also in the past.
Lior Arusi:And you know, even when I achieve things, I always was full of anxiety that I will be discovered as a fraud, that it destroyed even my achievements until I learned how to overcome that, which I discuss in the book how to do that.
Lior Arusi:But here's one that I want everyone can start thinking about tomorrow.
Lior Arusi:I actually had to coin this in order to have people understand that.
Lior Arusi:So I don't know if it happened to you.
Lior Arusi:When you get feedback, okay, when you get feedback and people give you positive feedback, you're probably going to get very anxious and you're going to tell people, okay, okay, what's the bottom line?
Lior Arusi:What's wrong?
Lior Arusi:Right?
Lior Arusi:We all do that.
Lior Arusi:We all do that.
Lior Arusi:I coined this as the gratitude denial syndrome.
Lior Arusi:And I'm arguing in the book that this behavior is exactly what's robbing us from the future strength that we need to face the future challenges.
Lior Arusi:Because those positive comments, how dare you not believing people when they give you positive comments, how dare you not believing that you have it within you instead of actually internalizing it.
Lior Arusi:Not in a cocky way, not in an arrogant way, but in a way that helps you refuel.
Lior Arusi:So next time you need to catch up, next time you need to build yourself up because we all have bad days.
Lior Arusi:This is the refuel, this is the energy.
Lior Arusi:So you want to start by authoring a life story.
Lior Arusi:Pay attention to those compliments, pay attention to those positive feedback and ask yourself, what is the good that I bring to the world?
Lior Arusi:What is the unique perspective that I impact people that I can use for the future?
Lior Arusi:Because again, if we don't author it, it will be authored for us and we just gonna become the victims in our own story.
Host:I love that.
Host:So I love to ask my guests this question.
Host:What do you want your legacy story to be?
Lior Arusi:What I want my legacy story to be?
Host:Yeah.
Lior Arusi:You know, for years when people told me that I inspired them, I did not take it in the right way because I equated that to some kind of fake showmanship of, you know, out of body experience that will not last.
Lior Arusi:And I learned to accept over time that I live with people stories that stays with them for years.
Lior Arusi:Okay.
Lior Arusi:People quote me 10 years after they saw me.
Lior Arusi:People remind me stories that they heard on stage when I that I shared or example and so on and so forth.
Lior Arusi:So I want to be, I want my legacy to be.
Lior Arusi:He's the one who inspired me to stretch beyond what I thought I could.
Lior Arusi:That's really what I want my legacy to be.
Host:That's really wonderful.
Host:I love that.
Host:As we wrap up this amazing conversation, what key takeaways do you want the audience to take from our conversation?
Lior Arusi:I want them to know that to become the hero of your story and not the victim is a personal choice.
Lior Arusi:Things can happen to you, but the way you're going to offer that story is up to you.
Lior Arusi:You can make the choice to live life as a victor and not as a victim in your own story.
Lior Arusi:That's the first thing.
Lior Arusi:Second, it's not a one time choice.
Lior Arusi:It's everyday choice.
Lior Arusi:And third, whatever challenges you have in your life, understand that deep down, somewhere in your past, there is a chapter, unfinished chapter, that you did not author, that contains the answers to how you're going to how you're going to solve the new one.
Lior Arusi:So whenever you feel that you're lost, whenever you feel that you don't know what to do, I want you to go back to the last time that you felt that way, the last time that you were overwhelmed and survived it, and ask yourself, how did I actually thrive it?
Lior Arusi:I didn't just survive it.
Lior Arusi:What was the thriving factor?
Lior Arusi:And then learn that and bring it straight into the new challenge.
Host:That's awesome.
Host:Where can listeners find your book?
Host:Dare to author and connect with you?
Lior Arusi:So people, connect with me on leorarusi.com just as my name L I O R A R U s s y.com There's a wealth of articles and videos and all free of charge.
Lior Arusi:Please, by all means use it.
Lior Arusi:Inspire yourself.
Lior Arusi:The book is available on Amazon and other book bookstores.
Lior Arusi:So inspire.
Lior Arusi:Inspire yourself and give it to someone you love.
Host:Well, thank you so much, Leora.
Host:This was a great conversation.
Host:I really enjoyed hearing your stories and how you pour into your people and encourage them to be the author of their story.
Host:Because that is so powerful.
Host:Because your story is unique.
Host:Your story is powerful and your story can inspire others.
Host:So thank you for sharing yours with us today.
Lior Arusi:Well, thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to share it.
