Please note : This transcript is automatically generated and provided for your convenience.

[00:00:00]

Sean Stewart: the essential leadership skill, being able to interpret.


Context matters, it's not enough just to look at someone's life and say, well, I'm gonna have their attitude, and just more or less do what they did,


Your team doesn't have to be harmonious to work well.

Rob D. Willis: welcome to Superpowered with me, Rob d Willis. Each week I talk to people who've mastered their skills in the most demanding situations, and they share what actually work. So you don't have to learn everything the hard way for anyone who's new here.

wonderful to meet you. It'd be great if we saw you in future episodes too, so please make sure to subscribe. We have amazing guests every week, and today's conversation is gonna be extremely close to my heart because we're gonna dive into the power of history and how to lead better. As many of you know, I actually started my career as a tour guide in Berlin, and a quote I always used to use was at least attributed to Mark Twain.

[00:01:00] He used to say, history doesn't repeat itself, but often it rhymes. Now I was talking about the warnings of history, but we can equally look to history for inspiration on how to live and how to lead. Sean Stewart has joined me to explore this further. Sean, welcome to the show.

Sean Stewart: Nice to meet you everybody. Thanks for having me on the show.

Rob D. Willis: For listeners meeting you for the first time, could you tell us a bit about who you are and how you help people? As the historian in the boardroom?

Sean Stewart: sure.

Rob D. Willis: Yeah.

Sean Stewart: I'm a professional historian. I did my postgraduate work in, several different fields actually. Archeology and history being the main ones. And what I do is I help people by giving them both stories and artifacts, objects, in other words that they can sort of frame their leadership through.

So you see a lot of people go to these training sessions and they have a lot of abstract theory and the top five, this and the top three secrets of that, and a lot of jargon is thrown at them and it doesn't really resonate with people. Over a long ti period of time, you know, they go through the training session and then basically it's forgotten [00:02:00] after a week and no one's any the wiser. So what I did is I looked at history and said, well, you know, the past is gone. It doesn't exist anymore. It's finished. So how can we actually use this? The easiest way to do this is not to teach everybody history and have everyone become a PhD holder in history. It's to just provide one or two key points sort of encapsulated in historic or archeological objects that I bring in from which they can understand how. The past can help them, right?

So in other words, encapsulating leadership lessons or followership, lessons for that matter in the object. And then have the object on your desk to remind you of these things at the crucial moments when you need them. So when you feel lost, when you're uncertain, when you're angry or upset or something stressed and you don't know what to do, you see the object on your desk, you are reminded of a very simple investment it contains and it helps you it helps guide you. It's like a silent coach, I sometimes call them. [00:03:00] Mm-hmm. Sure.

Rob D. Willis: start with?

Sean Stewart: Well, before I go into it, let me say a few, a few more words about the background theory, just so people understand exactly how, how they can best use this thing. We make people tend to make mistakes when they use the historical approach.

They have this sort of jy ka in the boardroom, or I'm gonna be Napoleon, or Michael Jordan, or whoever your person is, right? And so then they read about the lives of these people and they say, okay, I'm gonna copy what he did, or she did, or whoever it's right. The problem is, is that copying what somebody else did doesn't work. Oh, very occasionally it does, right? Like a stopped clock is right twice a day. But usually what happens is you are simply in a different historical period. You're in a different situation. Context matters, right? it's not enough just to look at someone's life and say, well, I'm gonna have their attitude, and just more or less do what they did, right? So the objects don't tell you what to do. That's the crucial point. The objects are not instructing you. They're not telling [00:04:00] you do this, don't do that. What they offer is a kind of baseline. Right. So they basically give you, so if you're excavating in archeological sites, right? You have a big field picture in your mind. Say, okay, we're gonna start to make an image of this field. So what do you do? How do you do that accurately, right? what you do is, it's very simple. You just put two stakes in the ground and put a piece of string between them, and that's your baseline. So everything you do then is measured, or everything you find or excavate is measured against that baseline, right?

Three feet up, one foot to the left. And that's where it's, so the objects act as that sort of baseline, right? So you understand what the object is telling you. And then. Your decision for what you are going to do in your situation will either be very similar to that or it will deviate by a certain amount. And the reason why this matters is because it gives people a fixed point to hold onto, right? It, it's a sense of security. There's a sense of having a framework through which you can understand your decision making process. It doesn't have that sort of random just wandering around the field. Nature about it, right? So the artifacts are departure points. They're way points. They help you navigate the, the field [00:05:00] a little bit better. the way it works

Rob D. Willis: Way

Sean Stewart: you could just take, you could take

actually any object. I use archeology objects because that's. original field, you can do two things. You have a technique that it comes from textural criticism, but it's called exegesis.

So exegesis means taking what the object represented originally, what the original artist represented, or the original author wanted you to understand and simply take that lesson out of it. Right, and then use that directly. But Sometimes you.

have obs abstract objects or things that we don't know what the original artist was intending.

Maybe it's just something practical, like a glass cup saying, well, what's the lesson in this? Right? So in that case, you do the opposite process, a GSIs. So you're reading into the object. In other words, you are infusing or embedding the object with a lesson that's relevant to you. way, the lesson now the the object now has some kind of significance, right? And what it does then is act as a kind of memory aid. When you are in stressful situations, right? So I have to remember to do this and not do this, and that object is there to remind me, right? So [00:06:00] that's sort of the, the background in, in a couple of sentences, but going to objects. Now, one of the objects that I have is a picture of a castle on my desk. And medieval castles are, are wonderful things because in the leadership context they have two opposite and contrasting stories, right? let me ask you this, not to put you on the spots, but why do you think. castles are so interesting to people, you know, why do people spend money to go and visit them on a, on a weekend out?

What, what grips person, so to speak this castle architecture.

Rob D. Willis: I mean, firstly, they're cool.

Sean Stewart: Exactly.

Rob D. Willis: Secondly, I think they possess a huge romantic charm because so many of the stories that were raised on are infused with castles and so on. From the minute you're born, you're being told about princesses and castles and that sort of thing.

Sean Stewart: Yep.

Rob D. Willis: I'm sure that's not all of it, though.

I'm sure there is also a curiosity.

Sean Stewart: Mm-hmm.

Rob D. Willis: Into how people lived. Maybe [00:07:00] also a kind of, I don't wanna say disgust, but also kind of, it feels so different and so primitive in a way somehow that one would live in the kinds of conditions that one sees that you are almost drawn to it. It's more curiosity, I would say.

Sean Stewart: Yeah.

I think you're onto something there because the underlying thread behind your answer is that it's something that's fundamentally different from our world. It's removed

Rob D. Willis: yeah.

Sean Stewart: world and it's, it could represent a fallen world or a lost world, or how do they live in these conditions different from us, and that difference gives us perspective.

So that's a pretty good starting point for me. I used to work at some castles in, in England and in Wales, back in. About 20 years ago, I was an exhibition designer at one of the castles on the Welsh border, and I had a chance to observe people interacting with the Castle Ruins. And I understood something from watching people. And that is that I think the, the underlying reason why castles are so interesting to people is because they encapsulate in one building or one structure, you know, a cohesive structure. Things that in the modern world are absolutely diverse. Things that [00:08:00] occupy absolutely different buildings in different parts of the cities that look different. The castle unifies everything, right? So what was a castle? It was a residence. So it was a house place where people lived. a military structure for both offensive and defensive purposes. And now we have military bases that are completely different from, you know, where you live as a person. It was a corporate office.

It was where the Lord ran his. State from It was expensive. So it was like a corporate building today, you know, these skyscrapers that show off and demonstrate power. It was a prison for, for, for when it needed to be. It was a hospital, it was a church. And so we have these disparate functions united into one structure.

And I think that's the underlying reason why it fascinates people. It's like, how did they do that? And it works. It's a kind of a harmonious whole. the leadership lesson I bring out from that is your team doesn't have to be harmonious to work well. Right. You see, sometimes leaders say, well, you know, people don't agree with my vision.

Or This person has a different working style. This person's an early person. This person's a late night person. I can't work with this team. I need to change it. I need to [00:09:00] quit. I need to, you know, they, they sort of get into this position where because the team is so disparate, they feel like they can't go on.

And I say, well, look, look at the medieval castle. What could be more disparate from having big stained glass windows in a military fortification? mean, they're

Rob D. Willis: Mm-hmm.

Sean Stewart: and yet it works, right? So your job is to leader as a leader when you're facing that crisis, to look at that picture of the castle and say, right, if they can do it. So can I. It's just a

Rob D. Willis: Suggest question

Sean Stewart: the disparate fits together to make the whole work. Then the next question, the final question becomes just how do you do that specifically with your team? Right. So rather than give up, that's what the picture of the castle does. It reminds you that yes, you can solve this.

It's absolutely possible to take people who are utterly contrasting in their characteristics, in their work styles and make it work, right?

Rob D. Willis: That's, that's really, really fascinating. Have you got a example from history about. A leader who is able to unify those disparate forces.

Sean Stewart: So I can give you another object rather than a

Rob D. Willis: Okay.

Sean Stewart: So back in the east of Old Roman [00:10:00] Empire came across a mosaic which I sort of made a copy of. It's called, it's called the Achilles Mosaic. And it refers, it's, it shows Achilles. If you picture this Greek warrior, he's dressed as a woman with a wig. And he has a shield in one hand and a spear in the other. And he is looking in this very sort of action filled scene. He's looking over his shoulder. There a series of women running by him and he's looking the other way. comes from a story, I won't go into too much detail about the story, but basically Odysseus was out recruiting people to fight in the Trojan War. He wanted to recruit Achilles, who was the most famous warrior of his day. And Achilles' mother had told him, don't go because if you go, you're gonna die. And so he was. Persuaded to dress up as one of the serving girls in the palace, right? And OIS

Rob D. Willis: Okay.

Sean Stewart: by this disguise and said, well, where's Achilles?

Nobody knows. And so he says, okay, I'll go home. But of course OIS smelled a, a trick. So what he did is he went outside and he sounded the alarm. Pirates are coming to attack, Achilles at that moment, forgot his disguise and immediately reached for his shield and spear, [00:11:00] right? So in other words, what I use this object for is to show people that your job as a leader is to find out what their Achilles moment is.

What is their true nature? fulfills them, right? Very often when people run a team, they don't inquire too deeply about the personalities that they're leading. So who is lead? Who are you leading? What fulfills them? Right. And if you can plug into what fulfills them, you will be on a winner, right?

Because they will want to do the work, they will want to be successful. You don't have to have a technique to persuade them. You know, very often you see motivational speakers and say, oh, we're gonna get a motivational speaker, motivational speakers, like a prod. It's like a cattle prod, right? So you zap them and they move forward a few steps.

So you keep zapping them every six months, right? But you're not leading then you're just hurting. So if you wanna lead, then you have to have that. Just find that thing that makes their head snap around, what makes your head turn right? And then your final step in that process is then to, to take all of these things, find out what these things are, and then write what I call a North Star statement. And a North Star statement should be stunningly simple, and it's the thing that gets you [00:12:00] out of bed in the morning. Collectively and individually, right? Now, how to do this? I can give you an example from my sailing career.

I knew a guy, he's a very famous sailor and he spent basically all of his life at sea. And what he does is he takes people out on one week, two week, three week trips. So he's got a constant evolving. Set of people that he has to work with every week. Right. And he has to put them in watches, right? 'cause the ship is there.

The boat is sailing for 24 hours a day. So the question is, these people have to all work together. So how does he find out what fulfills them? Very simple. He just gets them at six o'clock in the evening. He sits down with a drink and he just chatted them and he gives them sometimes interesting questions.

You know, like if you could be either blind or deaf, you had to be one or the other, which one would you be? And people say, oh, that's interesting. Well, like you. And it goes off in a 20 minute conversation. And what he's doing through this, it feels like just a chat in the pub. what he's doing is he's just looking for these markers.

Like what are these personality types? Right? What what basically fulfills these people and he puts them in the correct teams and he's been remarkably successful. [00:13:00] So what you can do in the office, you know, depending on how big your team is, is just chat to them. Like human beings, right? But do it attentively, right?

Figure out what it is that makes them feel. Great. About, so it's not an interrogation, it's just, you know, tell me, you know, when was the last time you actually had a laugh? Oh, I'll tell you the last time I had a laugh. It was this, you know, and you get to know them, and then because you've fulfilled them, you've, you've found out what fulfills them.

They will now motivate themselves to work together to avoid that casting phenomenon. Right? Because now you're providing the North Star, that's, that's, that's sort of leading them onwards, right? Rather than prodding them forwards.

Rob D. Willis: Yeah, the process and the outcome is so close to how I'm thinking about storytelling

so for me, the story is a journey , the narrative is the why. That's what you'd call the North star. the vision is the destination, the storylines of the different routes that we might want to take, and the anecdotes of those impactful moments. Which can support us on that journey. And I feel [00:14:00] like being able to have that North star, which is authentic to everyone involved, that's gonna be the key, isn't it?

Have you got any other examples, any other artifacts that you'd like to, to share? I reckon we can do one more. Yeah.

Sean Stewart: We can do one

we can, I'd also say

Rob D. Willis: I.

Sean Stewart: you know, when, when people look at this stuff sometimes it seems, you know, and I don't say overwhelming, but it's like, oh, I've gotta do a lot of stuff. I have to talk. How do I do it? Here's the thing I say as a species, as a minimum, at a minimum, we've been around for a hundred thousand years. Usually, most scientists say closer to 200,000, right? But let's say a hundred thousand for the ease of numbers. recorded history goes back, what? Four, five, 5,000 years. So let's optimistically say 5,000. It's really closer to like three and a half, but let's say five. that

Rob D. Willis: What that

Sean Stewart: minimally, 95% of human history has been unrecorded and lost, right? But look at what we as a species, have survived in that time. You know, the ice age is coming and going. Migration out of Africa, the discovery of farming, building cities, conflicts, meeting Neanderthals, you know, [00:15:00] our, our close human.

Think about that. We don't have any human cousins today. There's just us, right?

But back 40,000 years ago, they were meeting another type of human, right? So how did they interact with each other and interbreed and fight and exterminate? You know, I mean, we've got massive untold stories here, and yet. Those leaders for 95% of human history didn't have any record to go on. They just used these simple techniques to survive. if you get confused, just think most of humanity has done a very good job of surviving by using fundamental, simple principles. You can do it. It's a hardwired into your mind, right? Just give yourself permission to do it right. A little self-belief and permission to do it, and then you will do the same that they did. Right. don't have to make a big 500 page book, an instruction manual on how to lead. And here's 15 types of, you know, models that explain. I mean, it's all very nice academically and for theoretical discussions, but when you're on the firing line, just remember you have an instinct for it. At some level, right? So that's one thing. The other thing in terms of the object I also use [00:16:00] very often a trench whistle in the first World War.

Rob D. Willis: Okay.

Sean Stewart: whistle is a very interesting thing because it was a sign of your status as an officer. So you were a leader if you had it. But when you blew that whistle, you and the people you were leading were going over the top at the same time. So I remind people that being a leader doesn't mean sitting in the corner office and, you know, firing people that you don't approve of and you going off early to catch the game while you make your team work late. And you know, this kind of thing. It means leading from the front and being ready to take, take a bullet with the rest of your team. And what I found throughout my study of history is that the leaders who do that. Are significantly more successful than the leaders who lead by threatening. a DR era baton that I contrast with this and say, look, here's, you know, keeping people in line through threatening to beat them. And here's the whistle, which is keeping people moving towards the goal because you are participating in it, right? And the British Empire was successful in the First World War and the DDR R has [00:17:00] fallen, So there you have it. Simple.

Rob D. Willis: So this leads on to my, my next question, which is you've got. background. You studied musicology, you worked as director of interpretation.

Sean Stewart: Yes.

Rob D. Willis: And I'm wondering what are then the key principles of museum design that have maybe influenced what you're doing today, how you're thinking about artifacts and how you're helping people.

Sean Stewart: So the, the easy answer to that is that today's museum is all about story. So in the Victorian age, you just took your objects and you chucked everything on a shelf, stuck a label on it, and that was it. It was up to the visitor to, you know, put meaning into it. So today you're telling a story. That's the key thing, but I will sell

Rob D. Willis: I.

Sean Stewart: though.

I think more interesting is that as a museum designer or a historian, you are an expert in interpretation and I would put to you that leaders must also be experts in interpretation. And fact, I would say that's the essential leadership skill, being able to interpret. So interpret [00:18:00] means being presented with a massive data and you pick out the points that are crucial to that story, which points are just noise. And then forge a link that has meaning. For what you're going to do now, you have to be good at that. So if you want to use ology as a leadership training tool, I would say just train to be a curator in the simplest way possible, which is an exercise like this. Go outside your office or your home today and just the first three objects that your eye catches.

So a tree a, a, a tire from a car and a a dog leash. Just things that, three things have popped into my head. Now imagine that those three objects have somehow survived 500 years into the future, right? And you as a museum curator, those are the three objects you've got from the 2020s to tell the story of the 2020s. you didn't pick them they picked you, so to speak, that just that three objects you happen to have in your collection. Now, make a story. Make a story about the [00:19:00] 2020s using these three objects, right? So the tree could tell a story about environmentalism and protection. Right. say, well, we've got one tree and two manmade objects, and so we can see the dominance of manmade objects crushing nature.

That's the story that could be told. Right? So again, notice that's not necessarily the inherent story to those objects, but you're putting that meaning into those three objects and telling people that, yes. Conservation and the feeling that we are on the back foot and the 2020s, these three objects reflect that.

Right?

Rob D. Willis: Yeah.

Sean Stewart: leash, people had pets. what does a pet mean? What does it mean to have a pet? You know, in the year 2,500, it might be something different, right? So you've got a whole world you can go into with that dog leash, right? The car. So, okay. It depends on what transportation people are using in the future, but the whole world of the car and the political movements behind the vehicle, you know, cities built around car use, cities built around car use, which also helps contribute to the crashing of the environment. So you see, I'm just making assumptions riffing off the top of my head with this. So you, you're making meaning from objects. Right, [00:20:00] exercise. If you do that every day for a couple of weeks, maybe three, four weeks, a month, let's say, if you do that every day, the first three objects, you make a story, you are training your mind to find connections, and you're

training your mind to think quickly and figure out what really matters with what I have in front of me. So then when you take care of business problems, you do the same thing. Okay? What is the essential thing here? And you, you, you, you, you're thinking in that process already. You, you have the habit of thinking that way.

Rob D. Willis: I think we do that automatically.

George Saunders made the point that a story is just a limited set of elements that react against one another, and we are hardwired to find story in everything. There was the experiment by hydro dissimilar in 1944. I dunno if you've seen it, there's some random shapes

that move around a screen and they ask people what they're looking at, and everyone comes up with a story about it.

what I love about your technique is that that people are making it conscious and they [00:21:00] realize that they are actually making a story.

Sean Stewart: Right?

Rob D. Willis: Because one of the ways, one of the reasons I think we get so. Stuck in particular opinions and perspectives is we forget that we made a story about it.

Sean Stewart: Right.

Rob D. Willis: if we're doing it consciously, then we can begin to challenge that story as well and see where are the weaknesses?

I get new data or new elements come in, and how does that move things rather than sticking to my guns and only thinking one particular way. Really interesting. Any other principles that you take? I, I love this idea of telling a story with objects, but anything else?

Sean Stewart: So you want to keep the text a little bit light and have the engagement high. So when you are leading your team, for example, in the business world, you know, people tend to, maybe not 10, but some, some leaders tend to be text heavy.

You know, there's a list of rules and regulations, and here's this inspirational quote and here's that. It's a lot of text, right? How can you involve them? That's the question right now. So when people are doing things experiential learning, right, is the, is the catch [00:22:00] phrase in modern ology. So how do you get people to learn things or to understand things or to frame things?

Reframing is very powerful to reframe things through activities, right? So not just, you know, catch and all follow you type, you know, trust building things from the 1990s, but like exactly. Ways it is gonna be different for each team because they composed of different, you know, team. Every team is composed of different people. But the idea here is to get them involved in the process of thinking through the problems, you know? And sometimes that just involves taking them out of the situation entirely. One of the things that. People go to museums for is to look at civilizations that are far distant from their own right and they can gain, and that's the type, the power behind the technique that I have, I believe anyway, is that because these objects are so alien and they represent cultures that are so foreign to us, at first glance, they take us out of our comfortable world and they help us see basic principles from a far, and then now we can go back into our familiar world. With a clear grasp of what those principles are, right? So device games and activities around that idea. You know sailing, for [00:23:00] example, is a wonderful device that if you can take your team on a team building exercise for five days at sea on a yacht what you'll find is that they will work very much more harmoniously than before. Because in many cases their lives depend upon it. You know, if a breeze blows up and it starts to get a bit rough and stormy, and they're far from land, they gotta work together to, to save themselves. So how does that work? How do they behave? Right? Like Fanta C is the ultimate teacher, right?

Rob D. Willis: Mm-hmm.

Sean Stewart: it's so different from working in an office on an IT project that those lessons now will be, will last a long time. Exactly. Because it's different, shockingly different. So that's what a museum does. That's what something like experiential learning through sailing does. That's what I try and do with my objects. As a leader in the business, try and do that with your team as well, because remember, ultimately your, your point is try and recreate that Achilles moment that we spoke about before.

Rob D. Willis: Try to look and see, ah, there's the moment. I got you. That's the, that's, that's who you are. I've seen what motivates you, what fulfills you, you know? And I've seen this happen many times in my state. You know, just people at you come from disparate backgrounds and they have [00:24:00] a moment where it's like, aha, I found what fulfills you. Right? And then you keep drawing on that. Throughout the rest of the voyage and it's, it's really powerful.

I would love to. Just change tack slightly to use a sailing pun. And hear a little bit about the work that you are doing and what that looks like. So how are you creating that sort of experience when you are going into a company

Sean Stewart: Mm-hmm.

Rob D. Willis: you're creating this sort of experience, the story, applying these principles?

What does an average session really look like?

Sean Stewart: So they take mostly the form of workshops. Sometimes it's a presentation. You go and speak for 20 minutes about one object or something. But mostly it's what we're doing here. So explain a little, but there's a little bit more. You know, drawn out over the course of four hours rather than, you know, what we have today. You take an object, explain the theoretical background explain the lessons that it has, and then they have an opportunity to in infuse the object with lessons that are useful for them. And then finally they have an ob. And [00:25:00] what I would suggest to you subsequently today is find your own object that has meaning, right?

And how

it related to this exercise or problem that, because usually they bring you in to, to help them with a certain problem. You know, cohesion, resiliency, turnover, whatever the problem is. So you find an object that matches that problem. Tell the story, have them think their way through a, a couple of solu you know, kind of tests. Problems and then apply it to themselves, to their own company. So for example, last year I have a replica Greek Shield, right? An ancient Greek hop light shield in Asus. What I had them do was to show how team Harmony works by having them march in an ancient Greek phx, right? And this is in many ways the opposite of the ing.

So what you're getting is a very horizontally organized team strengthened through this use of these shields. 'cause what happens in a. Greek phalanx hot light phalanx is, the shield is designed in such a way that it covers only half of your body, half of your body is left exposed, right? And you have, because you're holding it like this.

And so the, the left [00:26:00] half of your shield is hanging out in space and the right half of your body is unprotected. It's covering only your left and center. So what that means is that the person on your right, his, the left part of his shield is covering your right side, and the left side of your shield is covering your colleague to your left. words, everybody is covering each other. So again, you're not afraid to ask for help, the idea here is that when you, you have your own shield, so you're doing your own work, you're doing your own project. You're also accepting help from your colleague and offering help to your other colleague. Those are the three pillars of a smoothly working team, right? You can't overemphasize one at the expense of the other. Now, when you give them those shields and you have them march in formation and they can experience that overlapping, ah, now it starts to gel. Right. So now they understand, okay, I viscerally I know what it's like to help somebody and to ask for help and to do my own job at the same time. Now how can we do that to solve our current problem? So they could break into their little groups and work on it and then present it [00:27:00] to the end. And then vitally you have a follow up a few months later to say, okay, how's it getting on? You need any tweaks any more examples, you know? inevitably you'll follow that peop you'll see that people are improving. And it's working 'cause it's just so simple and so different. And it addresses the, the fundamental things. That's basically it.

Rob D. Willis: And you've got a book coming up, redefining the leadership code, stories and objects that shape greatness. I usually actually ask guests on the show if they were to write a book, what would they call it? But you've already got one, so I'm wondering When's that coming? Can you tell us more about it?

What's gonna be in it?

Sean Stewart: Yes. I, I, I might change the title. My name will be the

same, so you'll know

Rob D. Willis: okay.

Sean Stewart: but I haven't firmly decided the title is the hardest part of writing any. Because you have to take, you know, 250 pages and summarize it in three words, right?

Rob D. Willis: Mm-hmm.

Sean Stewart: so I may tinker with the title, but it's coming out this spring.

It basically

Rob D. Willis: Basically

Sean Stewart: In greater detail what we've talked about today. So some of the same stories that we talked about today are in the book a lot more like that.

Rob D. Willis: out

Sean Stewart: the controlling metaphor I [00:28:00] use, there is an ancient Greek statue of a horse from the sixth century seventh century bc and it happens to have, because of the way the artist has made this little object, a votive offering, it happens to have within it the capacity to carry about half a dozen leadership lessons. So what I suggest at the end of the book is go out and buy a copy of this. Model horse. Right. And stick it on your desk and you'll have it. Yeah. For example, a random example, the, the tail on that horse is, is unnaturally long. It's an abstract piece of work. Actually. The tail goes down to the ground and it touches the ground.

So it's got five points of contact with the ground, the horse. So what I did with the tail was to say, you know, the horse has to be, we talked about the head of the horse, the leadership and all of this. And now the tail is the ability of the horse to keep grounded. keep itself anchored to the ground. What that means is ask yourself as a leader, when was the last time you went out among the team? And ask them how they're actually doing, rather than relying on the reports of your intermediaries. So, have you gone, you know, if you run restaurants, have you gone and served the food for a [00:29:00] day?

Rob D. Willis: Mm-hmm.

Sean Stewart: it's like?

You know, so how well grounded are you? And the, the, the leader who is grounded in the realities of his team going to be more successful. Right. Which brings us, funnily enough, squirreling back to the trench whistle. The leader who's in there with the trenches with his men is gonna be more successful.

Yeah. It, it, it all interconnects. I mean, there's a, there's a handful of principles that you'd have to know and that's it. And they come, you know, throughout, they appear throughout history really. I.

Rob D. Willis: Let's move on to the listener challenge, and in this part of the pod, we give listeners a ritual or an exercise that they can try over the next week to get a bit of your superpower.

Sean, what have we got for us?

Sean Stewart: So what I would recommend is take a look at something that's been troubling you in the recent past in your leadership or in your life, whatever it happens to be. spend some time thinking about what that was, and then find an object that resonates with you that into which you can embody the, the lesson that you learned from the problem you just had. and this will be trial and error, so you're not gonna, you're [00:30:00] probably not gonna get it right the first week. It, it's a question of developing your skills, like going to the gym, right? You can't beat Schwarzenegger after the first session, but keep doing this week after week. And what you'll find is that you will keep coming back to the same themes over and over. The first

week, the.

first couple of weeks, you're gonna have these objects, and then you're gonna find one object that really encapsulates everything you need. And you're gonna have, it's gonna be an aha moment. You're gonna have the light bulb go on. So for me, it was that horse that we spoke about before.

It's like, oh, this object really encapsulates everything, and I just stick it on my desk and there it is. Right? So find an object and, and it to something that happened in your life recently in a lesson you learned, and then you're off slash. If you don't have that happening in your life, if you, everything is going well, then practice your skills at interpreting quickly.

So just the first three objects you see when you walk out the door today, make a museum exhibition out of them that's telling a story about life in 2025, right? For future generations. And again, the point is not to make that exhibition. The point is to train your [00:31:00] mind in thinking about things and interpreting quickly and accurately. that's the skill that you wanna develop. And that's it. It's really that simple.

Rob D. Willis: Awesome exercises. Where can people go to find out more about you?

Sean Stewart: They can go to my LinkedIn or to the website, which I think you have

Rob D. Willis: Yeah, I'll link to that all in the show notes.

Sean Stewart: Yeah. And I'm available to talk to anybody who wants to talk about this

Rob D. Willis: Well, I think I could speak for all the listeners by saying that this was an interesting, challenging, moving story filled conversation. I've had so much fun. Sean, thank you for coming on the show.

Sean Stewart: you for having me.

Rob D. Willis: Good stuff.

Sean Stewart: All the best. [00:32:00]