The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 42 - These 3 Things Will Make You Successful In Life: Jamil Qureshi

Episode Date: January 27, 2022

Jamil Quresh is a high performance expert and psychologist. he's worked with some of the biggest businesses, sports teams and individuals to help them reach the highest level of performance. In my mind Jamil's episode was probably one of the most valuable I've recorded. I struggle to think of a better encapsulation we’ve received of self progression and how to always have an attitude in life open to learning. This is the episode to listen to if you want to learn how to better take responsibility in your own life, but more importantly what that means for your wider attitude. Especially having an open mind and being willing to experiment and try new things. I learn from all of my guests, but I think what Jamil taught me is how to learn better. This is definitely an episode for you if you feel like you’ve recently been stuck or like life isn’t throwing up the opportunities you want. Because it isn’t just the opportunities you receive, but the ones you look for, and how ready you are for them when they arrive. Episode 61 - https://g2ul0.app.link/w3n4SIUN6mb Jamil: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamil-qureshi-494661a/ Twitter: @Jamil_Qureshi Website: www.jamilqureshi.com Watch the episodes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/StevenBartlettYT?sub_confirmation=1

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the united states and i'd be recording a lot more over in the states they put a massive billboard in time square um for the show so thank you so much amazon music um thank you to our team and thank you to all of you that listen to this show let's continue i wanted to know really from you, what role responsibility plays in people's outcomes? Okay, that's a big one. You promised me some easy questions today. Responsibility is huge. It's just massive.

It's one of the predeterminants of successful outcomes, is our ability to take ownership and accountability. So circumstance and situation push and pull us in different directions on a daily basis. successful outcomes is our ability to take ownership and accountability so circumstance and situation push and pull us in different directions on a daily basis the world is complex it's uncertain it's unpredictable all of those things the people who perform best have huge levels of response ability an ability to respond to those circumstances and situation no matter what they are to drive the best outcomes or opportunities so i always said it is a circle of concern water cooler conversations the stuff that's going on you know around us circumstance situation incidents and accidents then there's a circle of influence

and the circle of influence is where we make choice that's what it's about so responsibility is all about choice for me i absolutely absolutely guarantee you now that circumstance and situation is not a predictor of success. Because we know of people who were born into privilege. They're great role models, had good access to opportunity, to wealth. They had good guidance and good support. And they ended up dying heroin addicts in prison. We know some people born with a physical disadvantage, they had a lack of good role models, they had a lack of guidance, lack of support, lack of opportunity. They grew up to be some of the most successful people

who have ever walked this earth. So it proves beyond doubt that attitude is more important than intelligence or facts. And I genuinely believe that to be true in all areas of high performance, that attitude is more important than intelligence or facts. always say give me i will over iq any one of my teams i'd rather have i will over iq because high technical expertise i'm talking about the western world at the moment high technical expertise is no longer as valuable as it used to be and the reason why high technical expertise is no longer as valuable as it used to be it's because we can google things that's why so knowing a lot isn't where your success is going to come from yeah it's not what

you know which is important it's how you think about what you know and how you bring it to life with your character and personality to determine the best outcomes or opportunities so you know i genuinely believe that the only way in which businesses or people will become successful and truly perform to their optimum is taking full accountability and ownership. We need to almost move away from circumstance and situation, which is a distraction. So the more that we realize that our success is dependent upon us and not on the the better and because the world is so unpredictable i need to simply learn to dance on a shifting carpet not see the rug being pulled from under our feet you know life is a game of continual adjustment and it doesn't matter what happens it's how we react and respond to it to determine those best opportunities or outcomes and i think that you know it's funny

because initially i'm working a lot of businesses and on culture, on team, people strategies. And the focus on responsibility has never been higher, mainly because we've been asked to stay apart. People are having to determine their own work schedules. People have to determine their own working week. They're going to have to take responsibility for driving the best outcomes whilst they're not surrounded by a team or working directly with a leader. So there's been a greater call for responsibility. I wonder whether, in answer to your question, and I don't know the answer to this, I wonder whether we'll see a better shift or greater shift towards more responsibility in the Western world. Because I agree with you. I think that many of us will see ourselves

as a victim of circumstance and situation and not necessarily see the beauty in the chaos because of it. You talk there about the internet as well and the power of the internet and how that's been a bit of a leveller, which is a really wonderful thing, I think. How important is it, do you think, when you think about the successful people you've

worked with to be a sort of self-driven learner beyond school um do you see in the specifically in the sort of upper echelons of like business the ones that the people that are most successful are proactive sort of self-driven yeah i think i think it's true i think that um i've said our only sustainable competitive advantage is to learn faster and better than your competitors so you know and you think about that for a business you think about that for a leader you know you think about as a sportsman it's probably true isn't it you know our only sort of sustainable competitive advantage is just learn faster and better than anyone else two power line line yeah yeah and i think that you know and i think that i think that how can we learn faster and better yeah if we're

not proactive lifelong learners and so you know and i think that you know learning isn't necessarily about being taught um we don't necessarily need teachers um it's a strive for greater curiosity you know i think curiosity is worth more than creativity at the moment but it's a strive for greater curiosity you know i think curiosity is worth more than creativity at the moment but it's a strive for greater curiosity it's a matter of being matter of being open-minded it's a matter of being agile in our thinking so we can deploy resource to opportunity as it becomes visible it's about it's about self-discovery so it's about a variety of things which are based not necessarily upon traditional learning, but more in a way in which we can open our mind up to experimentation and feedback, you know, and understanding ourselves differently. And I think the best leaders, you know, have this ability to reimagine, repurpose, reinvent.

I don't think they're beholden to a particular or wedded to a particular mindset but that's for a lot of people that's terrifying the thought of experimentation and being agile and reinvention i've seen that in my own business i've seen over the years i was um i was known as being the guy that would walk in i think a lot of business leaders are walking in the morning and be like we're going in a different direction everyone come in this room we're going to launch this part of our business and we're going to take a we're going to experiment and i i would often say to our team that experimentation is like at the heart of all of our strategy it's like why especially as a social media company where our platforms social

media changes every day there's new updates pushed by facebook and instagram every day so our company slogan was keeping keeping brands at the forefront of what's possible which meant that we had to be agile but i'd often see people in my organization that were really against change fearful of it they would take you know they would resist it yeah you know uh and i i um i wonder how you if it's i always wondered why it was i think some of them had levels of imposter syndrome so they were you know they were just uh just trying to get a hang of the role they were in and not do more they you know they were already you know conscious but i wonder what your thoughts were on that i

think i think people don't like change because they don't know what it results in i think that's one of the things but so let's take um let's take uh moving your desk yeah someone sat at a desk for 10 years in a particular office, and he said, you know what, you need to move down the corridor. We're going to make a move. People weren't like that in the slightest. If you said to them that, you know, you need to move down the corridor, we really appreciate the move. We're going to give you a million pounds at the end of the year because of it.

They'd be trotting off with their potted plant in hand. I guarantee it. So I think that because people don't necessarily know what it results in why should we invest in doing something different which is uncomfortable because it goes against our mental tramlines our habitual thinking so now you're asking me to compromise my patterns and i don't know what for i don't know what's going to result in it could could be good, it could be bad. So therefore, I'm not sure I want to go to the trouble of investing in this change

when I haven't determined the result of it. As human beings, we like patterns. That's good, and it's bad. It works in our favor sometimes, sometimes it doesn't. So we like patterns, and so we like consistency. And we compartmentalize and i'm going to viewpoint on the world and in fact if you look at um the office is a good example the office is a great example of keeping people in patterns you've got your phone on your desk here your

computer there coming at a certain time working a certain way take your lunch at a certain time so we're conditioned to work in a way which is reflective of the consistency which takes out variance in business so you think that management has been around for about 100 years and the reason why management's been around for about 100 years is to reduce variance at a time because then you can get then you can scale so business has got bigger a lot bigger 100 years ago at a time because of the ability to keep people habitual so um so because we become conditioned to do this and everything around us keeps us in in in a pattern that we quite like being in as soon as you start to move outside of that there's a level of discomfort so i guess

leaders can allow people to make change and embrace change um i guess there's a few points one it's always best if it's co-authored and co-created right and so let's involve people in what that change looks like um it's always best if um we look at our organizations or teams as a community instead of as a team or an organization at the moment communities are outperforming bureaucracies and hierarchies when it comes to maximizing human talent. So let's try and form a community. Let's co-author and co-create.

And then let's have a look at peer recognition, peer coaching, peer challenge. It doesn't need to be a top-down thing done to people. It can be something which can happen from the inside out. You know, it's meaningful when something is endorsed by others that, you know, you feel an affinity with.