On this
episode of the active CEO Podcast, Craig Johns speaks with Jason Treu about
building trust for transformation, vulnerability and leadership, and why all
leaders should provide psychological safety in their organisation, team or community.
We also discuss
Unstoppable Workplaces, Cards Against Mundanity, why the Dallas Cowboys and Mavericks are the
heart and soul of the city, and leading high performing teams.
Jason Treu – Building Trust For Transformation
Jason is a best-selling
author of Social Wealth, TEDx Wilmington Speaker, and Executive Coach who has
worked with transformational leaders such as Steve Jobs, Mark Cuban and Reed
Hastings. He is host of the Executive Breakthroughs Podcast, Keynote Speaker on
Unstoppable Workplaces, Dallas Cowboys and Mavericks fan, and supporter of
charities such as the American Cancer Society.
His education includes a BA
History from Indiana University Bloomington, a Law degree and Masters in
Communications from Syracuse University, and has a completed a leadership
program at the Harvard Business School. Jason has held roles in Communications
and Investor Relations at RightNow, Hewlett Packard, American Heart Foundation,
Blockbuster and ReachLegal. As an entrepreneur he co-founded Visual Arts
Reimagined and company culture expert at Unstoppable workplaces.
Jason talks about:
Why the Dallas Cowboys and Mavericks are the heart
and soul of the city.
Self awareness is paramount for you to prevent
sabotaging your success.
The catalyst that led to focusing on company culture
and leadership growth.
We all have fears and fears control us.
Why so many talented and productive teams struggle.
Building trust for transformation.
How successful leaders build psychological safety.
How people can identify their blindspots and use
them to their advantage.
Your brain is wired for survival, it is wired to
keep us safe.
Leadership skills that set the worlds most
influential leaders apart from good leaders.
You have to be humble, because you cant be right all
the time.
The three secrets to speeding up the relationship
building process.
As you scale its always a challenge as you have to
let go of parts of the business.
The most important ingredients in being a high
performing leader.
How do you bring people together and make them feel
connected and belonging
Active
CEO Performance Tip
Leadership Overwhelm – As a leader, have you ever felt
completely overcome in mind or emotion, where you feel a stress or combination
of stressors are too big for you to manage? This is the feeling of overwhelm.
Everyone experiences some level of overwhelm and the important thing to
remember, is that it is all manageable. Rather than fighting your feelings of
overwhelm you can accept that anxiety is like riding a wave and it will be
easier; learn to turn overwhelming thoughts into helpful thoughts; shift your
thoughts from having to complete everything right now to focusing on one thing
at a time; identify what you need to be present with right now; take a deep
breath to relax the body; and most importantly engage in an action that you
enjoy before rushing into solve the trigger of overwhelm. Start taking control
of your overwhelm today.
Tweets
“To build psychological safety, admit your own
failings and vulnerabilities and things that you are not good at. Thank people,
stay open to try and do other things, doing risks and things differently, have
the tough conversations and get to the core of the issue.” Jason Treu talks
about the importance of psychological safety for building trust, on the active
CEO Podcast.
“Before you can start to move things forward, you
must have high level of trust.” Building trust with Jason Treu, on the active
CEO Podcast.
Fuel Your Body For Leadership Performance Read Article How Exercise Enhances A Leaders Performance Read Article Four Basic Fundamentals Of Being A High Performing Leader Read Article How To Be A High Performing Leader In 2020 Read Article active CEO Lessons In 2019 Read Article Four Ways To Overcome CEO Loneliness In 2020 Read Article
Recent active CEO Podcast Episodes
#90 – Jason Treu (Unstoppable Workplaces) Building Trust For Transformation Link #89 – How Many CEO Performance Habits Link #88 – Kate Maree O’Brien (SHE Conference) Tenacious Spirit Of An Entrepreneur Link #87 – Have You Got CEO Presence Link #86 – Chris Tabish (Comediology) Leadership Effectiveness With Comediology Link #85 – Raise Your Energy Bar With CEO Periodization Link #84 – Catherine Molloy (Auspac Business Advantage) The Conscious Leader Link #83 – 3 P’s Of The Leadership Performance Formula Link #82 – Revital Golan (Anemone Ventures) Entrepreneur State Of Mind Link #81 – How A Leader Can Recover With Purpose Link #80 – Jonathan Rake Launchpad To Go Beyond Borders Link
Do you fuel your body as though it is a Formula 1 car or a diesel truck? If you were an athlete, would the food you eat help or hinder your performance? If you were to deliver the most important speech of your life would you be energizing or lethargic? What we put in is what we get out; when it comes to the food we eat and fluids we ingest. Eating a healthy diet full of non-processed food such as fresh grains, seafood, legumes, fruits and vegetables, with a small amount of red meat and dairy products, allows you to sustain your energy levels, enhance your mood, improve your memory, sleep easier and prevent unwanted health problems.
How will you Fuel Your Body For Leadership Performance?
Become the boss of your body. It
is made up of more than 100 trillion living cells, approximately 206 bones in
the adult body and 78 organ systems of which 5 are considered vital for
survival. Every CEO has a good strategy and usually the best strategies are the
simple ones. For a CEO to perform at their best, they simply need to move and
eat real, simple food. Take up the CEO Challenge to change your lifestyle by
adopting a new mentality. Own the food and drink choices you make. Lifestyle
change and weight loss is like a waterfall. Start with your mind, and only then
can the change flow down the rest of your body.
In the last article we introduced
Exercise Your Future, the first of the four basic fundamentals of being a high
performing leader. Breaking The CEO Code shows you that the synergy of all four
basic fundamentals – exercise, nutrition, mind and recovery – is the key to
being a high performing leader, and not just doing one or two successfully on
their own.
This article takes a look into
how fueling your body with the right food has a positive impact on how you
perform as a leader. There is a lot of noise in the marketplace, when it comes
to what we should or shouldn’t eat. When it comes down eating for energy,
health, vitality and leadership performance, there are a couple of key
fundamentals that will set you in the right direction.
Having extra energy when you fuel your body with the right food, will improve productivity and raise the opportunity to increase revenue every day. Being able to calculate the billions of dollars of lost revenue each year due to the effects on business because of low energy CEO’s and employees may be challenging. However, take a moment to consider what happens to productivity and performance when a CEO or employee is too tired to start the day off with a bang, runs out of energy by 3pm or suffers the inevitable energy drain after a heavy lunch time meal or sugar crash after a sugar and salt loaded snack. For many people the thought of creating something new, delivering an important sale or completing a project before they clock off work, becomes both a mental and physical impossibility. If you aren’t replenishing the car with the right fuel it will struggle or seize up. If you don’t put enough full in, it will eventually hit empty and so will your body if you don’t consume the right type and amount of food.
Your body is the next frontier of
leadership performance and so it must speak your language. Dieting is a problem
of knowledge and efficiency rather than a problem of vanity. We are now
optimizing our performance and energy instead of watching our figure as people
are more focused on longevity and cognitive performance rather than on dieting.
When it comes to food, it is important to note that a diet is temporary, so it
must be about making a lifestyle change.
If you really want to become healthier and more focused you have to be in it for the long game. Eat for the brain and the body will follow. Remember the brain is literally what controls all our bodily functions. Many people focus on the body first, which can have a negative effect on the brain. If you focus on the number of calories you eat, because you want to lose weight then you take the risk of eradicating important nutrients that your body and mind requires to function effectively. Eating food that allows brain to perform, focus without stopping every couple of minutes and feel supercharged is the new frontier of nutrition for leadership performance. Let’s turn your attention to focusing on eating for your brain, a healthier gut, and fully functioning cells.
What food and fluids should we ingest to unlock our body’s true potential?
Our society is being burdened by
a growth in the number of people with cognitive, emotion and mood dysfunctions,
which most often occur due to metabolic disorders, such as obesity, and/or poor
nutrition habits. The human diet, especially in the Western world, has become
cluttered with highly processed food, and foods lacking in important
polyphenols, antioxidants and Omega 3’s that are required for health brain and
body functions. What we eat and the number of calories we ingest, each day,
have large and lasting effects on our cognitive function and our emotions.
Consumption of a high-saturated fat diet has a negative effect on the hippocamapus region of the brain causing memory deficits and cognitive dysfunction. This leads to reduced focused attention and retrieval speed of information. Low levels of Omega-3’s in our diet may contribute to depression and memory loss, whereas high levels of Omega-3 in our diet can reverse the effects of a diet high in saturated fats. We do need a moderate amount of un-saturated and saturated fats in our diet, as long as it is not paired with high levels of simple sugars, as the brain is made up of 60% fat and 25% cholesterol. Cholesterol comes from fat and is required to produce our hormones such as testosterone, estrogen and cortisol, as well as acting as insulators by creating healthy myelin sheaths around brain cells. Healthy cholesterol in your diet is important and the best sources of fat including un-saturated and Omega-3’s are avocado, nuts, salmon, almond milk, olive oil, full fat yoghurt and organic red meat.
The lowering of oxidative stress and inflammation as a result of consuming fruits and vegetables high in polyphenols micronutrients can prevent and even reverse age-related cognitive deficits. Free radicals, unstable oxygen molecules in our body, are thought to damage DNA, decrease organ function and speed up the ageing process. Free radicals create havoc in the brain, lead to less energy and poor mental focus. Antioxidants neutralize free radicals in the body, and neutralize nerve growth factor leading to faster learning and memory. They also fight inflammation in the bloodstream and brain. Great sources of Polyphenols, which provide exceedingly powerful antioxidants in our body, include blueberries, grapes, red cabbage, organic coffee, cloves and dark chocolate with at least 85% cocoa. They are fat soluble so require some fat to assist with absorption.
More than one third of adults are
obese or overweight and it is totally preventable. Obesity costs Billions of
dollars each year and is killing us. In 2016 the World Health Organization
(WHO) noted that the worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since
1975. There are more than 1.9 billion adults, 18 years and older, considered overweight,
with over 650 million obese.
It’s time to make the healthy steps to take control of your body.
Physical inactivity has increased
in the workplace due to automation, manual labour shifting to predominately
inactive tasks, the arrival of desktop computers, and Work Health and Safety
guidelines reducing manual labour activities. With less physical activity there
is a greater need for exercise and nutritional incentives to be introduced into
the workplace.
The workplace is a perfect environment to begin a positive trend towards employees making positive changes in the physical activity, health and nutrition. Employees spend a significant amount of time in the workplace. As a CEO you have the powerful opportunity to utilize peer groups and employee incentives to encourage healthy behavioral habits, when it comes to the food that people eat. Improving the eating habits of your employees can lead to decreased absenteeism, presenteeism and sick leave. As a result productivity and performance is likely to be increased.
You can provide a positive
influence over attitudinal changes to diet and activity. Favorable physical and
social environments as well as supportive organizational culture to encourage
positive behavior change through providing knowledge, providing healthier food
options in the staff café, substituting lollies and cakes for fruit, nuts and
vegetables options during meetings, and increasing healthy options in vending
mentions, at a reduced price. Encourage your employees to bring a water bottle to
work and having filtered water stations, which are easily accessible.
Is there a food-mood connection?
Studies have shown mixed results when looking at the correlation between an
unhealthy diet and the effects on emotional wellbeing, depression and other
mental health issues. Foods that include nutrients such as vitamin D,
magnesium, Omega-3, B vitamins, folic acid and tryptophan are associated with
supporting your emotional wellbeing. These can all be found in foods that are
part of a health diet.
The World Health Organization
recommends the following for a healthy diet:
Caloric intake should balance
with energy expenditure;
Sustainably produced, consumed
and where possible cooked at home;
Wide variety from different food
groups, with an emphasis on plant-based;
Eat un-refined carbohydrates rich
in fibre, minerals and vitamins such as fruit, vegetables and whole grains;
Include a minimum of 2-3 portions
of fruit and 2-3 portions of vegetables per day;
Consume moderate amounts of high
quality lean protein that has amino acids which are easily digested, such as
fish, seafood, turkey, pork and chicken;
Incorporate moderate levels of
dairy products and milk;
Have starches such as banana,
potatoes, sweet potato, carrots, brown rice and taro;
Add legumes and nuts including
dried beans, nuts, peas and lentils;
Restrict the amount of red meat,
processed meats, simple sugars, sodium, saturated fat and fruit juices;
Reduce the amount of food that
comes from a bag, box, bottle, jar or can.
Avoid processed foods with trans
fats (crackers, cookies, pies, pizza, fast food, and dough products)
Live healthier, happier, stronger, smarter and longer. Improvements in diet are associated with lengthening of lifespan and decreases in the risk of most chronic diseases. It is important to think of your life in regards to healthspan, the number of healthy years of life, rather than lifespan, the number of years you are alive.
“It’s much better to live long and die fast rather than life fast and die long.” CRAIG JOHNS
People are often looking for the quick fix, when it comes to food. Many people jump on the bandwagon of the thousands of fad-style, celebrity endorsed and marketing designed diets, which have no research into the long-term effects on the body, mind and soul. Science compared every diet and the winner is real food. The only diet that has been implemented and remains over a long period of time is that established 10,000’s of years ago. It is a predominantly plant-based diet with no processed foods and only included the occasional meat when they were quick enough to catch it. Those living by the sea would catch fish and seafood. Why would you incorporate the middle-person in the diet, so to speak, when you can go straight to the source an eat it. What do I mean by this? Land animals generally eat plant-based diets including fruit, vegetables and grains, which are the stable of all nutritious diets. So why do we need to eat red meat, when it is just the by-product of the plant based foods we need anyway?
If you are looking at weight loss
or maintenance then it is important to include foods that are high on the
satiety scale in every meal. What does that mean? Satiety provides a feeling of
fullness, reducing the likelihood of over-eating. Foods high in satiety are
high in protein, fiber, volume (water and air) and low in energy density. They
consist of foods such as potatoes, eggs, oatmeal, fish, Greek yoghurt,
vegetables, legumes, apples, oranges, quinoa, nuts, and watermelon.
There is a lot of over the
counter dietary supplements out there in the market place. It’s a $30 Billion a
year business in the USA alone. Are they helping your nutrition intake and
health or just a waste of money? A majority of supplements have no health
benefits and aren’t regulated. They are never a substitute for a balanced and
healthy diet, and can often be a distraction from healthy lifestyle choices,
which provide much greater benefits. They can play a role for some high
risk-groups such as adults with osteoporosis (Vitamin D & Calcium), Crohn’s
disease, Celiac disease, people with vitamin D efficiency, or people who don’t
have easy access to plant-based foods produced in nutrient rich soil. You are
far better to save the money you would spend on supplements and use it to buy
higher quality fruits, vegetables and other foods high in quality nutrients.
CEO’s and employees who are well
hydrated are smarter, can think faster concentrate longer and stay alert. Drinking
fluids are the most underrated components of keeping your body and mind healthy,
especially when you take into consideration that the body is made up of 60%
water. They are crucial for maintaining the function of every system in our
body including your brain, heart and muscles. Fluids carry important nutrients
to cells, support a healthy gut and prevent the dreaded constipation. Dehydration
affects your mood, reduces cognitive function, decreases your memory
capability, increases pain sensitivity and impairs motor skills. Many people
make the mistake of being reactive when it comes to hydration, waiting until
they feel thirsty.
Drinking a minimum of 1-1.5L over a period of a day is advisable if you are relatively sedentary in a mild climate. The warmer the climate and the greater the exercise you do, the more fluid you require. A great way to test whether you are drinking enough water and suitable fluids such as juices, is to check the colour of you’re your urine. Pale or clear urine means fully hydrated. A dark yellow colour indicates that you are dehydrated. An easy way to boost your hydration levels is to ingest foods such as watermelon, salads and other fruits that are high in water content.
Boost mental acuity, skin quality, toxicity in the body, boost immune function and regulate body temperature by developing a daily hydration strategy. An inadequate intake of fluids can impair performance, leading to tiredness and headaches. Your main hydration strategy should incorporate water, milk, fresh fruit juices, caffeine free teas, coconut water and sports drinks, only if you are doing moderate-high intensity exercise or struggling to hydrate in hot and humid environments. Limit the intake of, alcohol, soda drinks, coffee, flavored milk, smoothies and energy drinks as they can have adverse effects on hydration and health.
Fuel your body with the energy to perform. It all comes down to common sense and keeping it simple. If you feel you need to make a big change in your eating habits or your are unsure how to make the right changes, then it is advised that you seek help from a certified dietitian or nutritionist. A variety of fresh, plant-based and lean food and hydration options will help you maintain a healthy body and mind to perform at your optimum every day. Remember, good things take time, so it is important to make a small change each week so it isn’t too much of a shock to the body and over-time eating healthy for performance will become a normal part of your day.
So how do you recharge the batteries, refuel the tank, switch off and find time for yourself, so that when you are “on” as a CEO or Leader, you are fully present?
Over the next two articles we will talk about freeing your mind and recover with purpose, and why it is important to maintain a synergistic approach with exercising daily and fueling your body with the right food, if you want to be a high performing leader. They make up the four basic fundamentals of the FOUNDATION phase of Breaking The CEO CODE, the future of leadership performance.
In the meantime, please take the time to read the Breaking The CEO Code whitepaper. Click the download button:
World Health Organization – Obesity & Overweight Link World Health Organization – Healthy Diet Link
Recommended Reading:
How Exercise Enhances a Leaders Performance Read Article Four Basic Fundamentals Of Being A High Performing Leader Read Article How To Be A High Performing Leader In 2020 Read Article active CEO Lessons In 2019 Read Article Four Ways To Overcome CEO Loneliness In 2020 Read Article
Why should a CEO dedicate time in their busy schedule to incorporate exercise into their daily routine? A CEO with low energy poses a big problem for a company, as they create a stress environment each day. Creativeness, decision-making and attention suffer as a consequence. Family relationships and social life will be impaired, as they will take longer to complete tasks and will have less energy, than a fit CEO, to use use after work has finished for the day. For CEO’s and leaders to maintain high levels of integrity, think strategically about the future, have clarity when making decisions, be energetic and have the confidence to lead a high performing team, they need to be healthy. This means they need to be attentive to regular exercise, fueling their body with the right food, freeing their mind and recovering with purpose.
“Take care of your body. It’s the one place you have to live” JIM ROHN
In the last two articles we introduced Breaking The CEO Code, the future of leadership performance, and the four basic fundamentals of being a high performing leader. Over the next four weeks we will talk about how the synergy of all four basic fundamentals – exercise, nutrition, mind and recovery – is crucial to being a high performing leader, and not just one or two in isolation. This article takes a deeper look into how exercise, enhances a leaders performance and some valuable tips to make it work for you.
So, how does exercise have a positive effect on the amount of stress we have as a leader?
A common term in literature is the “runners high”, which is the result of exercise stimulating the release of important chemicals, associated with happiness, called dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins. These four chemicals decrease our stress levels, help relieve pain, improve our sleep quality, enhance memory and learning, boost cognitive ability and increase our positive mood state.
“Business comes in all shapes and sizes, much like the CEO’s who run them” UNKNOWN
How often do you hear of CEO’s and leaders who have major health problems or look unhealthy? What message does this send to their employees? There are a number of health benefits as a result of regular exercise. Exercise is known to improve blood pressure, blood sugar levels, heart rate, and heart function, while decreasing the risk of heart disease. It also has a significant effect on decreasing body fat, increasing lean muscle tissue, lowering cholesterol, increasing metabolism and reducing the risk of cancer.
The fitter you are the better the sex life, life improves as a whole and there is evidence that it slows the ageing process. A positive by-product of exercising regularly is that people tend to improve their eating habits, sleep more, and cut out unhealthy habits such as smoking and drinking alcohol as they want to improve their exercise experience.
Completing regular exercise provides a sense of accomplishment, satisfaction, liveliness and pleasure, which all have an impact on your self-esteem. As a CEO or leader, the greater your self esteem the higher your confidence in your ability to make decisions, being realistic in your expectations, assertive in expressing your needs and opinions, able to form secure and honest relationships, and have greater resilience in times of stress and setbacks.
“In order to make great decisions, a person needs to think clearly” CRAIG JOHNS
Being a CEO or leader requires you to think quickly, make smart decisions, and understand a wide range of information and topics. Our brain’s are a vital organ of our body and the health of the brain has a major impact on how we perform as a leader. Aerobic exercise not only provides an escape from your day, but also boosts the size of the Hippocampus region of your brain, which is the center for memory and learning. Moving your body, through exercise, improves mental clarity, upgrades your ability to be present and decreases cognitive decline. There are also benefits of increasing your concentration levels, alertness and cognitive function. It’s time to start exercising your brain.
Motion is known to evoke emotion, so it is no surprise that many people note their best ideas come while out exercising. Regular exercise is known to improve people’s ability to solve problems, come up with new ideas, better analyze incoming perspectives and enter a flow state. Our decision-making ability improves due to increased blow flow and oxygen levels to the cells. CEO’s and leaders find that aerobic exercise can feel like a form of “active meditation”, as it provides a time to think alone, get to know yourself and inspire deep solutions.
“The human body predictably follows the input and actions of the brain that is controlling it.” GREG JUSTICE
Exercise supports the development of confidence, discipline, focus, energy and resilience. Being active provides an opportunity to shift your mindset and enables you to power down from the stresses at work, while also creating a disconnect and technology break. Other leadership benefits from regular exercise include enhancing work productivity and quality, and increasing the strength and stamina to complete every day activities. Your mental health can be improved as exercise assists in removing the feelings of pressure, stress, unhappiness, confusion and anger. Exercise may just be the best investment you can make in yourself!
“CEOs have the power to get done anything they seriously want to do. The problem is they don’t even believe they need to.” UNKNOWN
To change the work first mindset and the prevalence of sitting at a desk, exercise in the workplace can be increased through encouraging commuting by walking, cycling or running to work; stopping at a bus stop or parking a car a few blocks away and walking the remaining distance; utilizing lunch breaks for exercise; encouraging the use of the stairs; initiating walking meetings; installing standing desks; creating regular group exercise activities; and utilizing gamification techniques such as providing employees with a FITBIT and doing 10,000 step challenges.
“There is a human energy crisis and what we don’t realize is that there are movement opportunities everywhere” CRAIG JOHNS
Positive habits generally take 6-12 weeks of regular repetition before they become part of our normal routine. Setting SMART goals that are specific, measureable, achievable, realistic and time dependent increase the likelihood of being consistent enough to achieve success. Goals provide a destination and consistency creates long-term habits.
A great way to increase the enjoyment, motivation and accountability of exercising regularly is by getting out with a training partner, family member, pets, friends, colleagues, a group of like minded people or hiring a trainer. Exercising with others helps build relationships and achieve goals.
Music can provide the motivation and stimulation to both relax and unwind while exercising or to focus on training harder, faster and longer. If you find it difficult to fit in exercise, then schedule it in your diary or place the workout in a calendar.
“Do you want to live long and die fast or live short and die long?” CRAIG JOHNS
To stay focused and improve the chances of sustaining a regular exercise routine, you may find it valuable to set adventure or endurance type challenges. Adventure type challenges may include completing a long hike like the Abel Tasman walk in New Zealand, or climbing Mount Kinabalu in Malaysia, doing a Spartan race or going on a 7 day surfing trip to Tahiti. Triathlon has become the new golf for CEO’s and leaders and is among a range of endurance type challenges you could set such as completing a 5km run, cycling around Samoa, sea-kayaking around Hawaii, tackling an Ironman or even an open water swim.
There are a range of difference exercise options you can choose from including running, hiking on trails, sweating it out in the gym, participating in a Parkrun event, joining a team sport, playing activities in the back yard with your children, going for a surf, taking Latin dancing lessons, having a game of tennis or doing yoga.
“There comes a certain point in life when you have to stop blaming other people for how you feel or the misfortunes in your life. You can’t go through life obsessing about what might have been.” HUGH JACKMAN
Setting aside just 30-40 minutes of time for exercise, 5 to 6 days each week, will help you complete the minimum weekly requirements as provided by the American College of Sports Medicine.
Variety is the spice of life. Mixing up your type, location, intensity, frequency, training partners and duration of your exercise helps you to stay focused longer, decrease boredom and will more likely to repeat exercise on a regular basis.
So how do you recharge the batteries, refuel the tank, switch off and find time for yourself, so that when you are “on” as a CEO or Leader, you are fully present?
Over the next three weeks we will talk about fueling your body with the right food, free your mind and recover with purpose. Along with exercise daily they make up the four basic fundamentals of the FOUNDATION phase of Breaking The CEO CODE, the future of leadership performance.
In the meantime, please take the time to read the Breaking The CEO Code whitepaper. Click the download button:
Four Basic Fundamentals Of Being A High Performing Leader Read Article How To Be A High Performing Leader In 2020 Read Article active CEO Lessons In 2019 Read Article Four Ways To Overcome CEO Loneliness In 2020 Read Article
Craig Johns – CEO NRG2Perform, active CEO Podcast Host
On this episode of the active CEO Podcast we talk aboutthe four basic fundamentals of being a high performing leader, on the second episode of Breaking The CEO Code. It is a short podcast episode where host Craig Johns decodes a new aspect of being a high performing leader each week.
Craig talks about the four basic fundamentals of being a high performing leader:
Exercise daily
Fuel the body with the right food
Free your mind
Recover with purpose
These four components are the fundamental, non-negotiable, building blocks to determine how high your performance ceiling is. Talent will only set your minimum height, whereas the four basic fundamentals will determine how high you can raise your ability to perform at your absolute potential.
Check out the newly Breaking The CEO Code whitepaper. It provides an overview of Breaking The CEO Code and showcases the 6 key phases. We also go a little deeper into the 2nd phase PERFORMANCE, where we discuss the 3 P’s of Leadership Performance.
#72 – Azran Osman Rani (Naluri) – Power Of The Human Mind Link #71 – How To Be A High Performing Leader In 2020 Link #70 – Miles Stewart (Triathlon Australia) A Lifetime Chasing Results Link #69 – Deepthi Bopaiah (GoSports Foundation) – India’s Next Olympic Gold Link #68 – Abraham Kamarck (True Made Foods) – Leadership Lessons From The Sky Link #67 – Liz Volpe (Ambisie) – Dare to Dream Link #66 – Bill Coletti (Kith) – Reputational Resilience & Transformation Link #65 – Todd Greenberg (NRL) More Than A Game Link #64 – Gabrielle Dow (Green Bay Packers) Green Bay Packers Experience Link #63 – Charles Fairlie Unsung Business Heroes Link #62 – Amanda Jacobs (Blairgowrie Yacht Squadron) She Leads With Empathy Link
On this episode of the active CEO
Podcast, Craig Johns speaks with Abraham Kamarck about leadership lessons from
the sky, being a Naval Aviator, transitioning from the Navy and how a dislike
to ketchup led to creating True Made Foods. We also dive into air speed is life
and altitude is life insurance, learning to say no, understanding the cultural
environment you work in, and placing family at the core of the story.
Abraham Kamarck – Leadership Lessons From The
Sky
Abraham Kamarck is a design
thinking professional who makes cool products, starts movements and changes
behaviour. He is a former Seahawk Helicopter pilot on counter-narcotics
missions, business mentor and judge of the MIT Enterprise Forum of the Pan Arab
Region. With a zest for launching multiple businesses in challenging
environments, Abraham has lived and been an entrepreneur in more than ten
countries including Bulgaria, Ghana, Jordan, Egypt and currently the USA.
Abraham has studied a BA
East Asian Studies from Vanderbilt University and an MBA in Business
Administration and General Management at the London Business School. His career
commenced as a US Navy Naval Aviator and Division Chief for the US European
Command, before moving out of Defence Forces to become an independent
consultant, CEO of Viomel Limited, Director of Innovation Coexist Foundation,
Principal of Maendeleo Ventures LLC and is currently the CEO and Founder of
True Master Foods.
Abraham talks about:
Growing up in Washington DC and Brooklyn, with diverse cultures, people and food.
“Moderation in all things including moderation”
Being a fox and not a hedgehog.
Remain calm, composed and focused during very complex and high-pressure situations.
How to process a lot of information very quickly and get to the most important things first.
Aviate, navigate, communicate.
Prioritising information as a senior executive or an entrepreneur
You have got to realise what is going to kill you, and focus on it first.
The importance of having a “tool program”.
Not being prepared for transitioning out of the Navy.
The core for doing well in business as a start up is saying no!
Starting True Made Foods at 38 years old with four kids.
Being an entrepreneur and working with the culture in Qatar.
No one is really disrupting ketchup yet.
Will it pass the five year old test?
Why Amazon and e-commerce are valuable for start-ups.
The pro’s and con’s of having co-founders.
How to figure out that work life balance and get it right?
Active
CEO Performance Tip
CEO Flow – It’s the psychological state
that we need to get ourselves into where we have an out of body experience,
because everything happens so effortlessly. If you’ve planned, prepared and you
put yourself in a state where you feel like you are living what you are about
to say, then you are more likely to get into that flow state. When you are in
flow, everyone engages and connects with you.
Tweets
“The more people working for equity and not salary
the better your company is going to do.” The importance of
co-founders, with Abraham Kamarck, on the
active CEO Podcast.
“A lot of my aviation training works well as an entrepreneur. In both
cases you are basically trying not to die the whole time. You basically use the
same strategies. How to process a lot of information very quickly and get to the
most important things first? When you are falling out of the sky you don’t have
time to spend time figuring out what is happening with the aircraft. You have
to identify the problems immediately and fix or save yourself. ” Focusing on
what will kill you first, with Abraham Kamarck, on the active CEO Podcast.