TRUST is the genesis of economic prosperity.

A lively debate today with Oakland McCulloch, Douglas Lines and Geoff Hudson-Searle, discussing the role of leadership in creating trust.

Douglas Lines: Douglas is a senior business leader, executive committee member with substantial global commercial experience, operating principally in financial services.

Geoffrey M.J Hudson-Searle: Geoff is a serial business advisor, CSuite Executive and Non-Executive Director to Private and Publicly listed growth-phase tech companies. An author of 5 books including the best seller Purposeful Discussions and rated by Agilience as a Top 250 Harvard Business School authority covering; ‘Strategic Management’ and ‘Management Consulting’

Oakland McCulloch: Oak is aRetired Lieutenant Colonel Oakland McCulloch is the author of the 2021 release, Your Leadership Legacy: Becoming the Leader You Were Meant to Be. Based on 40+ years of leadership in the U.S. Army and subsequent civilian positions, Oak highlights principles that will benefit today’s leaders and inspire the leaders of tomorrow. Oak is also well-known speaker who gives presentations on a variety of topics including leadership, success, military history, college preparation and others.

Trust directly influences the actions and outcomes of business every day. By embedding trust in a company’s business, leaders generate value for their stakeholders and society more broadly now and in the future. Trust between employer and employee and among employees enhances human capital investment. Trust influences the behaviours of both employers and employees. Deloitte research suggests that employees who highly trust their employer are about half as likely to seek new job opportunities as those who don’t. At the same time, workers are more likely to invest in their own skill building if they trust that their employer will reward them for their efforts. This is especially true regarding non-transferable or firm-specific skills, which suggests that trust can raise the level of institutional knowledge that can lead to more productive work.

Geoff and Douglas: https://ib-em.com/

Oakland: https://www.ltcoakmcculloch.com

Scott: https://theinnovatecrowd.com

Blog site, books, news and resources: https://freedomafterthesharks.com/

Transcript

Scott: [00:00:00 ]

Hello, and welcome to the latest edition of how might we, and I've got a first, I have three guests with me this time. So it'll be interesting how this pans out the title for this podcast is how might we go back to the future with leadership? So with me today is Oakland McCulloch, Jeff Hudson, cell, and Douglas lines.

So gentlemen, in no particular order who would like to go first and introduce themselves to the lovely listeners?

Oakland: Well, I'm a retired Lieutenant Colonel McCall on. Yeah, over here in America. So across the pond there, as you guys would say did 23 years in the army retired, a Lieutenant Colonel had got about 40 years of leadership experience one way or another.

And recently wrote a book your leadership legacy becoming the leader you were meant to be. And and I'm out on the speaking and speaking tours doing some [00:01:00 ] speaking, but but excited to be here with, with all three of you and looking forward to talking about.

Scott: Okay. Lovely. Thank you very much.

And I will go international then. So Douglas, you want to go next is our next,

Douglas: thank you. Scott says you can hear my accent clearly, south African living in the UK educated in the us. And actually I have a German driver's license. I think that confuses most, really great to be here with you guys today, a conversation and a topic that I'm enormously passionate about.

Equally like Oak. I have in excess of 20 years experience leading businesses and teams have learned to the good, the bad and the ugly along the way. But I really believe that with great leadership there's great opportunities for, for the world that we live in and certainly going forward. And it's that positivity that each and every one of us can bring in our lives not only in professional, you know, corporate life, but equally in our personal lives in our community.

So really looking forward to the conversation, Scott.

Scott: Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. And Geoff,

Geoff: .Thank you, Scott. It's a pleasure to be here. And I [00:02:00 ] also a great pleasure to be here with both Douglas and Oak I'm really looking forward to this conversation. My name is Geoff Hudson Searle.

I'm a 30 year executive serial business advisor for growth phase companies. C-suite executive private and publicly listed companies both CEO, CMO and CCO. I've been at NXD for the last 13 years, mainly on around regulation technology and internet security. And I'm an author and thought leader of my sixth book, which will be out 2022, which is called the trust paradigm.

And. As I said before I do have a little bit of an explainer, everything that's, I will be discussing today with, with both Oak and Douglas, I must make clear that these are my personal preferences and they are not of the preferences of any of the companies that I represent.

Scott: Okay.

Thank you very much. See, I only represent my one company, so I never have to put that disclaimer in, this is me. [00:03:00 ] It's just the way it is. It makes life so much more simple, so much more simple. Okay guys. So we, we had a chat before we came on, live on air I'm one of the, we were talking about the time it was and we said, we go back to the future back to back to the future for leadership.

So, oh, go to you. Why do you think, well, what was it about that title that you liked and sort of what it was suggesting?

Oakland: Yeah. So I think that we have gotten away from producing leaders who. Understand what their job is, and it's not about them. I think we've got to get back to producing servant leaders who, who understand that it's about the organization.

It's about the people who work for that organization. And if they put the focus on that, then the organization will, will do well and they'll get their benefits in the end anyway. But if, if you're becoming leaders and I think at least here in America, we are producing leaders at all levels. In all professions, politicians, businessmen, military, we're [00:04:00 ] producing leaders who have forgotten why they are leaders.

And it's not about their title. It's not about the power that they get. It's not about the money they make. If that's why you're picking to be a leader, then go do something else because you're going to be a horrible leader. As we see in the world right now, if you want to be a good leader, you gotta, we gotta get back to if we want things to get better in this.

We got to get back to producing leaders who understand that it's not about them. It's about the organization and the people.

Scott: Okay. Lovely. Thank you. Listen, would you like to come in on that, but yeah, I think

Douglas: first of all, I, you know, I'm a firm believer that we live in a, an environment of contextual change that's happening at a rate that we cannot even begin to imagine.

And so this matter of contextual leadership is really profound for me. And I think coupled with that is I do not believe that the past is necessarily the proxy of the future of leadership. I think there's aspects where we want to take the best from the past. But be enormously curious about the future and, and I challenge leaders in every society and [00:05:00 ] every level of our organization to really continue their journey of personal reimagination, because I don't think leadership is static anymore.

And, and coupled with an enormous amount of curiosity about the world that we live in. And so, yeah, enormously passionate in terms of, of, of going from that past world and the great learnings that are exploded, use those, don't lose them, but bring new ones that compliment and enhance this ever-changing context we operating.

Scott: So don't, don't throw the bath board out with the baby type thing. So let's learn from the past and that's okay. But when we learnt leaders in the past, it was principles, but application was going to change because the world is changing at a pace. We never, I love the curiosity aspect, but I do think that we under under milk or under rag, really the value of curiosity.

In what we do, because I think curiosity is the path to finding new ways of working, working out. What's working, what's not working doing this, [00:06:00 ] but I think curiosity with care. Absolutely. Yeah. So it's not about challenging, Jeff, would you like to come in on anything

Geoff: that was mentioned? Yeah, look, I, I can't disagree.

You know with my colleagues whatsoever. I think we do need to get back into back to the future and more importantly, the time machine on a few issues. I'd like to, I'd like to talk about some of those issues. You know, we talked about principles, we've talked about, you know, accountability.

I mean, if we go back in history, you know leadership was more passionate 20