Learning ecosystems for executives during the COVID-19 pandemic

Learning ecosystems for executives during the COVID-19 pandemic

The need for a collaborative virtual learning environment

I'm with David Nour, an expert on applications of strategic relationships and profitable growth. He’s the author of over ten books and contributor to all kinds of great publications. David, welcome to the show.

Andy, it's good to be with you.

It’s good to have you on. We were introduced by the global CEO of a company. That's always a great introduction. When you get that, you know you've got to talk to this person. We've never talked before, and when we started chatting, I knew right away it's one of those times where we could probably talk for an hour. It’s cool to have you on here.

I appreciate the CEO who introduced us and I look forward to a rich conversation with you.

Let's start with a little bit of an introduction. I'd love to introduce you to my audience and get to know you a little bit. Tell me about who you are what you do.

I'm originally from Iran. I came to the US in 1981 with a suitcase and $100, I didn't know anybody, and didn't speak a word of English. I came here to finish high school. I got my Eagle Scout here. I grew up in Atlanta. I feel like I worked for the Chamber of Commerce some days. I have moved away six times, and I keep coming back. It's a great place to raise a family. I’m 95 years old, but I look great for my age because there have been three phases of my career. The first phase was technology which is IBM, Silicon Graphics, Business Objects, sales and marketing. After graduate school, I went to Emory Goizueta Business School for grad school. After that, I became a president of a company and went up to New York to raise a round of funding.

After that, I spent a number of years at a private equity firm where we bought and sold 110 different companies. Consulting, president of a company, private equity, then some years ago I went out on my own. I run a boutique innovation consultancy to fuel new revenue and new growth opportunities for my global clients. I bring this unique lens of strategic relationships to accelerate getting things done. I've been blessed. Over a couple of hundred global brands have been clients over the years. As you were kind enough to mention, ten books. Back in the good old days of February 2020 when we used to get out and speak, I typically speak 50, 60 times a year. I'm an adjunct faculty at Emory University in Atlanta and Vanderbilt University in Nashville in both the executive and education programs.

[bctt tweet="Convey your credibility with the questions you ask, not the solutions you provide." via="no"]

That is a lot of stuff. You must be 95 years old because you've done a lot of things.

Rolling rocks gather no moss. You’ve got to keep moving.

The Learning Ecosystem From Writing A Book

That's how I like to operate as well. I'm very curious about the ten books since I'm writing my first book. Doing it while running a business and many other things, I assume you did the same thing. How did you get into that? How did the first book happen?

You and your readers will be delighted to know that I'm not writing Harry Potter. We're never going to get wealthy writing books. For the first few years of my business, I pushed off the idea but at some point, you've read, talked, researched, consulted and coached enough about an idea that you feel like you have something to say. I had enough people ask me, “Is there a book on this topic?” I was talking about business relationships, how to become more intentional, strategic and quantifiable in the relationships you choose to invest in. Enough people wanted to know more that I kept getting asked, “Is there a book?” I wrote a 60-page booklet, 6x9 and printed it at a local printer. I would just hand those out almost like a booklet that has some good ideas in there, but I felt like it needed to be more substantive. My first book came out in 2008, Wiley published it and is called Relationship Economics.

The other thing I try to do is keep my ideas evergreen, so I've already updated to a paperback and write the third edition of that book. As you write each book, other ideas come to you. This is a tip that might be useful for you. I learned as much about my own books after they come out. Because people read them. They bring their ideas, perspectives, research and references of, “Have you read this? Have you thought about this?” It makes me think of that. You feel like, “I wish I knew this stuff when I was writing the book.” You already have material for the next edition, if not, the next book. That's what led to the subsequent ones. I'm writing book number eleven. That one is called Curve Benders.

You're obviously a student of life and someone who's always learning and talking to people much like I am as well or trying to be. You go out there and you said you learn more about the book after you publish it. Does that almost get frustrating because you can't necessarily change it?

Not necessarily frustrating, it becomes a great opportunity to double down on what you mentioned, which is I'm absolutely a lifelong learner. You also have to know your why if you're publishing a book. My why is to disseminate my ideas and instill conversations with executives that I work with. I'm not writing for everybody. It’s not like you're trying to date. There have been a few presidents since I’ve dated. You can't date everybody. My target is P&L executives who are stuck and trying to solve real problems and their teams.

Relationship Economics: Transform Your Most Valuable Business Contacts Into Personal and Professional Success

The more I speak with them, I've had 64 conversations in 3 or 4 weeks with executives globally, the more I learn about their challenges and opportunities, what they're thinking, hearing, and seeing. Sooner or later, you start to call them with some questions. Those questions, the ones that gnaw at you, or me anyway, I get curious about, and I start reading, writing articles, blogs, and podcasts. It takes me about four years to think about an idea enough. I've got six grad students that do Social Science research for me, and you come up with substantive enough information that you feel like you want to share that, yet you can't you know it all.

My dad drove into me, “If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room.” After you publish the book, when people read it and they bring their perspective, lens and their experiences, what I love is they challenge a lot of your assumptions. They challenge a lot of your thinking. It does one of two things, either it reinforces what you're doing, which is, “I was right on that topic or that issue,” or, if you're an astute learner and a lifelong learner, you're like, “That person or that update has changed my mind.” After that, you learn to maneuver or shift your thinking, and that's where the subsequent editions or the next book comes in. It's an exciting learning ecosystem to research, write, edit, share and get feedback from the market on new ideas.

It's an ever-evolving process. You are evolving your thinking on things. You don't feel like if you published a book, you can still change your thinking on it and it's okay that book is still out there starting the discussion.

A mentor drove into me years ago that when you're 80% ready, move. The last 20% doesn't matter. You'll never get a perfect book and write everything you want to write. You'll never be done if you wait for it to be perfect. There's a reason that you'll do subsequent additions. I do subsequent additions to incorporate all the stuff I've learned since the original edition came out.

I am not one who ever waits for things to be perfect, as most people who work with me can attest, so I don't worry about that with my book. I'm reviewing it now and I'm adding to it and I'm not worried about it being perfect. I'm worried about it having too much. I may have to cull it in the editing process. We'll see because it feels like it's getting a little long.

It's a great experience. I do the same thing. I write a ton, then you slim back. You appreciate the movie editors who take the scene and then they spend time, effort, money, resources on that scene even if it doesn't contribute to the story. It doesn't enhance that character or whatever the case may be. In our world, does it reinforce that idea? The other challenge, I don't know if you face the same or not, it's getting beyond motherhood and apple pie. Nobody's going to say, “We want crappy solutions. I want to be in an awful place to work and we don't want to communicate.” How do you get beyond the obvious for those a-ha, and those nuggets? I've always believed I'm in the idea business and my superpowers make people think. If you believe that, you better double down on, “How do I get people to think and lead their teams, organizations and themselves differently in this personal professional growth journey?”

Conducting A Collaborative Webinar

You mentioned being a lifelong learner and I feel the same way. I always trying to learn as much as I can through reading, going through classes, webinars, whatever it may be. I asked you what you want to talk about and you said, “I've talked to 64 senior executives in two weeks and attended 128 webinars,” which is incredible to me. Tell me more about that and why were you doing that?

[bctt tweet="The best thing you can do for your kids is to teach them how to become self-sufficient rather than doing something for them." via="no"]

With this pandemic, we all went beyond. It’s more than a flu. You start to see, unfortunately, a lot of clients shut down unnecessary travel and they start to think as government orders and shelter at home orders came. We saw the numbers climb. First Asia, then Europe, then of course the US. I made a list of my most valuable relationships, clients, prospects, collaborators and people that I value their opinion and perspectives. I started to reach out. I'm still not done but I'm going through the list of, “What are you seeing? What are you hearing? What are you thinking? What are you doing? What crossroads do you find yourself at? What are you struggling most with?”

The speed of this pandemic initially created both a supply shock and then a demand shock. Beyond the shock, what I get excited about is, more and more my executive relationships are thinking about COVID-19, not as a beginning, middle, and an end. They see it as what I call a new norm. How do we live with this thing? How do we get back to productivity? How do we get back to work and beyond lives? Now start to shift our thinking to livelihoods and not let this thing globally wreck our livelihoods.

In that process, to build on that idea of a lifelong learner, I'm a voracious reader, I read 3 or 4 books at a time, and I subscribed to twenty some odd newsletters. The funny thing is I've been doing webinars for probably a long time. It was cool about years ago and then it became passé and suddenly, they're all back on the spike again. I literally embarked on a journey to sign up for as many as relevant ones. I'm not doing the cooking, they're all business webinars. I signed up for 128 in a two-week period, and nobody that I know of can attend all of them. You register for those and the ones you miss, they send you the replay. Screening yet another TV show on your favorite streaming service doesn't do anything for me.

Even on weekends, I'm watching some of these and in all candor, 95% of them have been a waste of time. You either have an amateur host, a guest that is all about grandstanding, pitching their next book, or whatever the case is. They completely forget that what you do on a stage or what you do on a panel does not translate well to this medium. I'm reminded when television first came out, they use to broadcast radio shows, and it's because that's what they knew.

A lot of these webinars are too long, they go sideways or they're completely misaligned with what they promised. Along with the promotional stuff and they completely forget the takeaways for the consumer of that information, not you, as the producer of it. They missed the mark in a great way. A lot of the technology is still kludgy. It's still one too many and you feel like you're being talked at, not nearly as collaborative as it could be. It's a great learning opportunity for me and I'm learning a lot.

What was the best webinar you attended? What was something that was done really well?

Wall Street Journal and Strategic Insight has done a couple that I've attended. What I look for is a host, where it's not about them. You're there to moderate a conversation. Two, intelligent, you can train intelligence. Intelligent engaging guests. Three, value-packed. There's enormous value in brevity. Nobody wants to sit down listen to you pontificate for the next three days. “For the love of sweet baby Jesus, can we get to the point? Get to the core essence. Get on with it.” You lose me at, “Hello.” I took a comedy a six-week comedy class and this was a great point, “If the punch line is not worth the setup, you've missed the point.” If the insight from the story you're sharing isn't an a-ha moment, you've missed the point. There's value in brevity and value-packed. One-to-one meetings is one thing. One to a few is when you can have a dialogue. One to many, I got on one and there were 700 people on it. Everybody's Zoom rectangles are small.

Learning Ecosystems: Learning has to come from within. We can't just duct tape people to chairs, hold them hostage, and shove learning and development in their faces.

It wasn’t a webinar. It’s an open call with 700 people.

They didn't mute everybody upfront, so it's just like amateur hour. It makes you cringe. Learning the tool, great host, great discussion and immerse the attendees in the content invite them in, and then share great insights. Those are the ones that are useful. Also, go shorter. You can go longer, but make it more immersive. We're doing one of our own that's 90 minutes, but it's not about slides. It's about a digital whiteboard where you jump in and you collaborate with others. You got to bring three of you because we're going to talk about trust, rapport, and co-creation.

We've been doing some with my company and our sponsor. Advantage Performance Group has been hosting a weekly webinar series. We've been keeping them under 30 minutes, with a 15-minute Q&A afterward, no selling. They've been engaging using polls, chat and things like that, to keep people engaged because we know how valuable people's time are. When they come on there to meander around, we jump right into it. We take about 25 to 30 minutes to explain all the concepts, give them value and then open it up to Q&A. A lot of people stay for the Q&A and then send the recording out.

Something I learned from Boy Scouts, “Early is on time, on time is late.” Start and finish on time. There's a role of a professional moderator where you're moderating the conversation. I don't like to end on questions. You want to end on a high note or some key nuggets. I sprinkle questions throughout, which means a couple of things. For the presenter, less content, less about you and more about nuggets that your audience can take away from. Number two, you've got to be able to defend your position, not just regurgitate it. If you can defend your position, people can ask you and challenge you along the way and you can respond to them versus giving some pre-scripted answer later.

Most of my audience is in corporate talent development. They're working in large companies. You're talking to a lot of big company executives, attending a lot of webinars, learning about everything going out there and the economy. Let's give people some value. What are you learning? What insights can you share that you've been hearing a lot about in terms of, we'll call it the future of work, as in what's coming, and how companies are reacting? Obviously, no one can predict the future.

Let me answer the question this way. I've got kids, you've got kids, we learned as young parents early on that the best thing you can do for your kids is teach them how to become self-sufficient versus do it for them. I've long believed, talent development has been the babysitting business. You've got to push people to drive their own personal and professional growth. This is a premise for my next book as well, which is to create a roadmap between your journey from now to next. As an individual professional, hopefully knowledge worker, where are you today and where's your next?

Whatever the next role, job or thing you want, learning has to come from within. I don't believe we can duct tape people to chairs, hold them hostage, and shove learning and development in their faces. Talent development, it's got to be self-initiated. I do a lot of executive education and training. A lot of training that's out there is boring. Get out. Get people out of that classroom environment and immerse them in experiences. I'm having a lot of walking meetings. I live in Atlanta, beautiful weather, beautiful days. Let's get out and walk. Why can’t we do walking, learning and development? The idea of learn and learn, then at some point figure out to apply it, is outdated. How do we create those learn, get challenged, apply it, come back and learn something else? The idea that they can only learn from a subject matter expert? They can learn as much from each other as possible. COVID-19 is a phenomenal impetus to rethink, reimagine, if not, reinvent talent development.

[bctt tweet="Push people to really drive their own personal and professional growth." via="no"]

Virtual Learning And Innovative Culture

I am a big fan, proponent and peddler of experiential learning. My main business is in connecting clients with learning solutions, and they're all experiential learning. Even the classroom stuff. People moving around, getting up, learning from each other as much as, if not more than learning from the facilitator. It’s been interesting pivoting that during COVID-19 and making everything virtual. I like to think we've done a good job of doing that. I know a lot of organizations are pivoting and converting a lot of their programs to virtual. You talk about the experience and the walking meetings of learning, that sort of thing. What, if anything, have you seen work well for virtual learning since we cannot bring people together?

I've got teenagers, so what a great opportunity to put them to work. I hired one of my teenagers over a weekend and we researched 75 different virtual or digital collaboration platforms. A lot of these platforms give you 30-day trials and give you a chance to test them. I've been on this journey to learn as much as I can and test a minimum of a couple of these a week. There's still a long way to go, but the digital whiteboard space is coming a long way. I believe in immersive, so I took a group of executives to the Consumer Electronics Show. I've done that for several years. I took a group of executives to South by Southwest, and immersed them in that experience. We had a briefing in advance. I curated a track for them and then we had a debrief afterwards.

Even when I do things online and when I do things with whiteboards, absolutely getting keep your finger on the pulse of what they’re thinking and create that appreciative inquiry. The other thing that we try to do in a lot of talent development space is we try to provide answers or we try to explain. I would submit one of the things that COVID-19 has done is to force us to create a space for better inquiry. We need to get better at asking better questions, more powerful questions, and insightful questions. I've always believed, “Convey your credibility with the questions you ask, not necessarily the solutions you provide.” If you've asked enough questions, and you nurture a culture of experimentation, a culture of, “That's interesting. I don't know.” “Even as the leader, I don't know what the answer is.” “Let's go figure it out. Let's go test that.” I'm going to take you back to your high school chemistry classes. “Let's go do an experiment and let's go find those catalysts that accelerated that infusion.”

Creating a culture where we're asking more questions and testing more ideas will often lead to not just more discoveries, but more impactful, and more personal ownership of those discoveries. Also, if you build an environment where people are okay with killing 999 flowers, so they can grow that one oak tree. You're teaching them a portfolio approach to innovation, iteration and to think about things differently versus there's only one way to do anything.

You're talking about creating a culture of innovation, which is something I'm excited and passionate about. I was coincidentally reading, being a regular reader as well, a book called The Bezos Letters. Steve Anderson and his wife, Karen, read through all his 21 letters to shareholders and took out these fourteen principles. The one I was reading about was how they've created the innovative culture because everyone is compelled and encouraged to take calculated risks, take bets, they're celebrated, and share their learning. It's okay to make mistakes as long as you're willing to learn from it and share with everybody else involved, which is what has allowed Amazon to be so innovative, and successful. The company's worth $1.2 trillion. Many other companies have failed because they say they want to be innovative but nobody feels comfortable trying new things because they're worried they're going to get fired if they make a mistake.

It goes back to metrics and compensation. How are we measured? How are we compensated? How often have you seen people ask for A and then measure and compensate B? “We want to be an innovative place.” “We built a perfect execution box and if you mess with it, you’re fired.” It’s difficult for mature companies in mature industries, who've built a perfect execution box to think outside of that comfort zone. That's why I don't believe innovation centers or innovation hubs work. You've got a 30-year veteran of the same way you've always done it in charge of running the place. A nice guy, but he wouldn't know what innovation was if it was water and he fell out of a boat.

How are you expecting to do anything different? I've seen intelligent global brands waste millions of dollars on this innovation center or innovation initiative because it's the cool, sexy, jazzy thing to do. You just want to shake some sense into them. I have a lot of friends who are in these roles. I call Chief Compliance, Chief Legal, Chief Risk Officers, oncologists. Their job is anything that's new, dig it out because it doesn't fit in our perfect execution box.

Learning Ecosystems: One of the things the COVID-19 has done is force us to create a space for better inquiry.

Most of the work that we do, I insist on, it has to be, I need a SEAL team six, not a battalion. Three to five people that’s away from the current governance and way from the current structure. Thank God, most of us have all gone to virtual because we can get a lot done under the radar to just experiment. Bezos says the same thing. If you're willing to be bad at something and fail at a whole bunch of them, and we go into it knowing, many of them are never going to go. That’s why I say a portfolio approach. You have quality gates, where you invest in them, and only if they pass those gates will you continue to invest in them. If you go into it knowing that failing is part of that learning, you're setting yourself up for a much better chance to actually succeed.

Relationship Economics And Curve Benders

You've got to have those failures. If you don't, then you're not taking enough risk, and then you're not going to have the big bets and big successes. You are recognized as the leading expert on applications of strategic relationships in profitable growth. I want to know, what does that mean and why is it important?

It's nature and nurture. I was born in the Middle East, grew up and I wrote in Relationship Economics that I didn't get it then, but I certainly get it now. I was 5 or 6 years old, that dad was walking me through the bazaars of Iran on our Friday morning errands. Beyond what mom needed in the house or the project he was working on, that also had a relationship list. He made sure we visited with individuals that were critical to what he was trying to get done, whether it was a plumber or access to an influential politician. There is a big reason why the rest of the world builds relationships first from which they do business. As Americans, as Westerners, we're so focused on the business part that if and only if the business part works, and then we'll ask, “How are you doing and what's going on with you? How's your family?” Those kinds of things.

I've always believed that when we're faced with a challenge or an opportunity, we often think, “What should we do and how should we do it?” We seldom ask, “What relationships do we need? What relationships do we have? How do we connect the dots with value add?” That process we call relationship economics. It's a discipline and a systematic process to be more intentional, quantifiable, and more strategic in the relationships you choose to invest in. On any given day, that's a choice. If you apply that discipline to initiatives, ideas, innovative approaches, and business models, we've proven that it accelerates your ability to get traction.

This is appropriate because with this pandemic, executives’ typical mindset is, “Let's cut back.” I like prudent conservation of those limited resources as much as the next guy, but I don't know of a company that can cut its way to growth. I’ve never seen it. It does not happen. You can preserve some of those resources, but you better also be making some bets and some investments in other areas. Every executive I've spoken with says this pandemic is here to stay. Instead of thinking of it as beginning, middle, and end, how do we start to deal with it as part of our ongoing new norm?

As such, if your business, even with a vaccine, I genuinely believe we're going to have some angst in going back to businesses that are predicated on physical proximity. I thought bowling alleys were Petri dishes before all this. I'm not going to go back there. Most people hated the middle seat on airplanes, so why would we go back to any of that stuff? If you have to deliver your value in physical interaction, you've got to be thinking very differently about your value proposition and how do we deliver that very differently? Those are examples of bets and we've proven relationships can accelerate your ability to identify, test, monetize and scale them.

I've always been big on relationships. They've driven almost every successful move I've made in my career. I'm big on building those relationships with clients. It is interesting how, in the United States, at least, where we are, I think a lot of people are big on relationships, but there's certainly a lot of business that gets done without it. Whereas I've learned in traveling around the world, there are many parts of the world, like you mentioned, the Middle East, much of Asia, where you're not doing business with anybody unless you have a strong relationship with them. You know them, trust them and know about their family, that sort of thing.

[bctt tweet="It's okay to make mistakes as long as you're willing to learn from it and share it with everybody else." via="no"]

The other thing you mentioned about when this is going away and going back to work. Things are changing so fast all the time but I hosted a virtual roundtable for a bunch of clients, talent development professionals on Zoom. It wasn't 700, we only had about eleven, so we were able to have a conversation. We talked about the return to work plans. Everybody's in a different place. Someone brought up that they're reimagining the office for when they get back. Others said, “We need to think about that too.”

They sent me an article from Fast Company that showed what Cushman and Wakefield the real estate firm has been doing and designing this, everybody needs to be six feet apart office of the future. I posted that on LinkedIn because it's fascinating. Maybe some parts of society will get back to “normal.” People are going back to restaurants now, at least where you and I live in Florida and Georgia, but it's not going to be the same. Companies, businesses and leaders need to pivot, adapt, adjust and be ready for what's coming.

I'm going to go one step further. I spoke with a CEO who's got 2,000 people come into their building every day before all this. He said, “I'm looking outside my window, and there are about ten cars in our parking deck.” He said, “We’ve got to find a way to make it safe, for people to feel safe to come back.” We brought some of the systems and designs to our work together. Not only are we are truly redesigning the traffic flow to their building, but they've also eliminated their lobby. They're replacing it with an airlock system and UV lights. You get sanitized as you come in. They're deploying wearable technology. Samsung was one of my clients and they have an app that actually will alert you if you're within six feet of somebody else.

They're deploying iRobot Roombas that are constantly cleaning hallways and restrooms. Nobody also wants to touch doorknobs and handles, so they're replacing a lot of hands-free motion technology. They're spreading everybody's desk at least six feet apart with Plexiglas between them. The same thing with dining. They're spreading the dining apart. He said, “I realized that there’s a good chance only about 1,000 are going to come back or need to come back.” One of the things that this pandemic has done is challenge a lot of our assumptions about this idea of, unless you physically have to be there, we've proven that we can get things done remotely. He said, “A lot of these people may not need to come back.” For those that do, we’re absolutely going to create a different work environment for them so they feel safe coming back again.

It’s interesting to see where all this goes. The last thing I want to ask you about is you're working on a new book and you launched a podcast around that. Tell me about the new book. What's the idea and the plan behind that?

Future Of Work

The new book is called Curve Benders. It's my Star Wars trilogy. Relationship Economics was the first one, Co-Create was the application of those relationships and innovation. Full disclosure, as of 2020, I'm 52. Realistically, I'll work another twenty years proactively. I've been curious about what will the future of work look like in the years to come? One of the things this Coronavirus, which is an example of a black swan event. We know they're going to happen, we may not know when they're going to happen, but we knew what a pandemic was and we couldn't anticipate the impact that it had globally. In this ideal work-life balance, what we've seen this Coronavirus do is create a work-life blending.

I've expanded this future of work into the future of the way we'll work, live, play and give. In those four areas, we've identified fifteen forces that will dramatically impact those four, and a black swan event is one of them. To remain relevant, you're going to have to continue to learn and grow. For most people, that's a linear curve. Taking you and your readers back to Algebra 101, a linear curve’s slope is, rise over run is just one. It looks like a 45-degree angle straight up.

Learning Ecosystems: Asking more questions and testing more ideas will often lead to not just more discoveries but also more impactful and more personal ownership of those discoveries.

I believe and our research is pointing to certain relationships that come into our lives, that take that linear curve and create a nonlinear trajectory. In that process, they dramatically change both our direction and ultimate destination. What I'm finding examples and interviews and we've got 4,000 data points, I'm up to a couple of hundred executive interviews. Beyond what we accomplish, they have a profound impact on who we become. They are more than just great bosses, coaches, or mentors. They see the best version of ourselves. They push us to challenge ourselves beyond even our wildest imagination. They help us and develop a real vested interest in our success. They nudge us to go in a different direction. I call those relationships to curve benders because they have, not an incremental, not a linear, but a nonlinear profound impact in our lives. One quick question that's come up in the more I research this is people want to know, “Who are they? Where are they? How do I find them?” A better question is, “How do you become one? How do you change the lives of others such that, they're not delighted that you came into their lives, but they're forever grateful, and they'll remember you for the rest of their lives?”

I've had a few of those in my life, and I try to be for others. I love that ending advice, too. We always ask, “How do I find a mentor? How do I find that person that's going to change things for me?” It's like the Zig Ziglar quote, “If you help enough people get what they want, you'll be able to get what you want as well.” If you focus on helping people, being that person, connector, curve bender or the person who's going out of their way to help others accelerate their careers, lives or whatever it may be, that's going to happen for you as well.

You're exactly right in that. Beyond our education, professional pedigree and experiences, I'm doubling down on these relationships. They're not transactional. It's not a network. These are far and few in between people that changed our lens and our perspective. We're finding some interesting nuggets. Early on, we actually fight them, “Andy can't be that smart. Susan can't be right about that.” After that, we have one of those moments like, “Are you kidding me? I’ve got to go back and reconnect with that person or reengage him, or that was a rich conversation and I want to explore that further.”

Tasha Eurich is a good friend and part of the Marshall Goldsmith, MG 100 community. She's big into self-awareness. These people who have been able to dramatically benefit from curve benders in their lives, first and foremost became very much self-aware of, “There are some things I do well, but I don't know what I don't know. That awareness that there are opportunities for me to learn and grow is the first step.” There's a certain vulnerability that comes with that. We grew up in an age where leaders knew it all and they were powerful. Knights in shining armor and on these pedestals. They were brilliant, and what I'm learning more and more is there's this vulnerability. They didn't know at all. Hal Gregersen at MIT Executive Leadership Center is a friend. I love his push on powerful questions. They ask great questions which led to great conversations. Those conversations lead to mutual value. That's what I'm mapping out. This personal and professional growth roadmap for you to become the best version of yourself.

I’m a big fan of that and I cannot wait. Of course, you've got a podcast, Curve Benders. You're working on a book of the same name. I'll be checking it out. I'm hoping to bend some curves with the book that I'm writing because I wrote in my book as well about the importance of self-awareness in leadership and taking ownership of your career and figuring out where you want to go. I think it's critical, and that vulnerability is an important part of modern leadership. It's totally power. I'm glad you brought those things up and I'm glad that you agreed to come on and share all these insights. For anybody reading, who wants to find out more about you and follow your stuff, where's the best place for them to go?

Our website is probably the best one, NourGroup.com. It’s a blog where we launched a forum where you get to discuss a bunch of these ideas. Most of us write a book, then we'll come out and talk about it. I decided to talk about Curve Benders since 2019. The podcast and those interviews have just enriched my experience and my learning in the process. Go to our website for a ton of free resources. There are assessments and things you can download. I would encourage your readers to also check out our forum and come ask questions, start conversations and discussions, and be a part of the journey.

I started doing that as well by the way working on my book, Own Your Career Own Your Life. I started doing some interviews for that, even though the book won't be published some time, and it's adding a lot of great insights that I can still add to the book. Also, I'm learning and connecting with some great people. Building relationships, which you're a big fan of. David, thank you so much. This has been awesome. I appreciate you coming on the show.

It’s my pleasure. It was great to be on the show. I enjoyed our conversation and look forward to staying in touch.

Take care.

You too.

• David Nour
• Relationship Economics
• Advantage Performance Group
• Consumer Electronics Show
• South by Southwest
• The Bezos Letters
• Fast Company – Cushman and Wakefield article
• Co-Create
• Tasha Eurich
• Hal Gregersen
• Curve Benders – Podcast
• NourGroup.com
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/posts/andystorch_live-with-david-nour-author-of-multiple-activity-6665704206093033472-dmBK