324. Brave Together: Leading Through Curiosity and Co-Creation with Chris Deaver

If your leadership strategy still depends on being the smartest person in the room, AI is about to make that a painful game to play. We sit down with Chris Deaver, culture shaper, leadership coach, former HR leader with experience at Apple, Disney, and Pixar, and co-founder of Brave Core, to talk about what actually scales now: bravery, co-creation, and the skill of leading with questions. 

We unpack why fear is normal in a fast-changing world and how the “loss equation” fuels resistance to new technology, layoffs, and disruption. Chris shares how great leaders flip that script by focusing on purpose, stacking uniquely human strengths, and treating AI as augmented intelligence that clears the busywork so teams can do deeper creative work. We also get practical on what brave space really means: emotion is contagious, connection creates courage, and shared flow is possible even in everyday meetings when ego gets parked at the door. 

Along the way, we use memorable metaphors like the Avengers and the orchestra conductor to rethink what leadership looks like when your job is to bring out heroes around you. If you want a clear next step, start here: be the last one to speak, ask one better question, and invite the quietest voice in the room into the conversation. Subscribe, share this with a leader who needs it, and leave a review so more people can learn to lead with curiosity, courage, and care.

🌐 Connect with Chris:
• Website: https://bravecore.co
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-deaver/

📚 You can purchase Chris' book on Amazon:
• Brave Together: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1265386676/

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:03

What if leadership is not about having all the answers? What if your job is not to be the hero in the room, but to bring out the heroes around you? And what if the future of leadership belongs not to the person with the loudest voice, but to the leader who creates the space where everyone can contribute. In today's episode of The Leadership Project, I sit down with Chris Deaver. Chris is a Culture Shaper, Leadership Coach, former HR Leader with experience at organizations like Apple, Disney, and Pixar, and he's the co-founder of Brave Corps and co-author of a great book called "Brave Together". And this conversation goes right to the heart of what leadership is becoming. This is a conversation about bravery, creativity, connection, courage, and the future of leadership. Let's dive in. Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by Chris Deaver. Chris is a Culture Shaper, a Leadership Coach, and a HR Leader with experience with amazing organizations like Apple, Disney, and Pixar. He's also the co-founder of an organization called Brave Corps and the co-author of a book called

Chris Deaver: 1:18

Lead by design, spark creativity, and shape the future with the power of co-creation." And this is what we're going to be talking about today co-creation and creativity, and how we spark it in our organizations. We're going to be talking about some of the challenges that it takes to transform from being someone that might have been a prolific individual contributor to being that person that cultivates creativity and co-creation in others, this is going to be a challenging one for some of you. So, please come on the journey with us. Without any further ado, I'm dying to get into this, Chris. I'd love to for you to say hello to the audience, give a little flavor of that very rich background of you, but mostly I want to know what inspires you to do this work that you do today with Brave Corps, and what inspired to write this book called "Brave Together." Thanks, Mick. It's great to be here with you and with everybody, and I'm excited for this conversation to dive in and share some more. And I think starting with that question, kind of the origin story of why, why do I do, what I do, and I think ultimately it's an expression in my life of wanting to be brave. And I think at the core it's an act of bravery to be ourselves, you know, to be true to who we are at the core, and that's really the main message of our work, and the book is how do we express that more fully, and the best expression of that is together with others. I've explored and found that, you know, in my life. So, looking forward to diving in, and it's great to be here with you and with everybody.

Mick Spiers: 3:11

So, let's get straight into that term straight away. What does it mean to be brave to you, Chris Deaver?

Chris Deaver: 3:18

Yeah, I think there's, we all experience fear in our lives, conscious, subconscious, like especially in today's world, right. It's more whitewater rapids than it is a safe canoe trip down the river. AI technology, layoffs, all these things that are happening, and it's not slowing down, right. In fact, if anything, it's picking up faster, you know. While we're talking right now, there's probably thousands, if not millions, of new technologies being created with AI and organizations that are looking to transform, and so it's a really disruptive time. And I think it's easy to feel and kind of sit in the fear and feel paralyzed or frustrated, and I think being brave is about stepping forward, even when you're in the kind of that, that darkness it feels like, but there's at least a clear step ahead, and you take that step forward. And you know that's it's an act of faith, it's really about being brave, and I think you know more than anything in our time we need leaders. People are really in deep need of leaders who are going to be brave, and we can be those people.

Mick Spiers: 4:34

Yeah, there's two key things I'm picking up there, Chris. The world is changing at an incredible pace, so the thing is, is it's changing now faster than it ever has been before. The scary thing, Chris, is it's changing slower than it ever will again. It seems like it's, it's on a feels like a runaway train at times that no one can predict anymore what the world is going to look like six months from now, let alone six years from now. So that is scary, which is going to lead me to my next point, which is the word fear, that there is no such thing as fearless, is what I'm hearing from you, that fear is is always going to be there, but what I'm hearing from you is courage and bravery is to step forward despite the fear.

Chris Deaver: 5:25

Yeah, absolutely. And you're right, and you know, we see this in the greatest athletes, some of the greatest business people, you know, they never admit to eliminating fear. It's kind of an ever-present wrestle to put a constant choice to overcome the fear, and I think we can position ourselves through preparation to power over and to overcome fear in really meaningful ways, and I think one of the best ways to do that is to build the muscle memory of how we work together as a team, and you know, this has been true throughout history, you know. Steve Jobs said it, you know, "Great things have never been done by a single person. It's always been a team, and even the greatest leaders in history." Right Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr, they always created a great team around them. And I think that is so true about our lives, it's true about leadership, it's true about business, and certainly more so now than ever before, right? Where to your point, the pace, I think the sheer pace feels so jarring and just like a whiplash every day, and I don't know that our minds and our physiology, our mental state, the default setting we have physiologically, has been is fully prepared for what we're experiencing right now. But the good news is that leaning in, and again, you know, I think anybody that claimed to be a futurist before is really now, at best, a presentist plus one week.

Mick Spiers: 7:00

Oh, love it. I love it, Chris.

Chris Deaver: 7:03

And I would add myself to that list, and so I'd say, you know, but the more I can exercise a brave step, and I think the beauty there is that it's really about stacking, if you can stack brave steps and brave moments, you're going to start compounding a better future for yourself and others.

Mick Spiers: 7:23

Okay, all right. So, three really key things I want to summarize there, and then I'm going to go and come to another question. We'll come back to these ones, but the three things that I heard there were Preparedness, and I'm curious to unpack that in a moment, the muscle memory, and I'm going to put in the stacking of habits that you just said, there. I'm going to put that together with muscle memory to go well. If we lean into it, we can get better at it. And then the Togetherness that you know, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together, the, you know, the famous African proverb. But you're right, anything that is great happened in history was co-created by a team that had complementary skills that managed to put their egos aside and work together. We might come back to that as well. This thing about the changing world, though, I want to unpack something else. Psychology tells us, and we experience this every day, that our fear of loss outweighs by a factor of five to 10 times our appreciation of gain, so when we're in this world, and let's, let's pick AI. I know everyone's talking about it, but when we look at AI coming into our workplace, our brain is kicking in, our amygdala, and is going loss, loss, loss. The fear of loss is screaming in our head far louder than the appreciation of, oh, wow, what could I do with this? Oh, this could make my job better. The appreciation of gains not there. So, how does someone work with that? That we're biologically designed to keep our brain keeps ourselves safe, so it's designed to fear loss. It's it doesn't care that much about the appreciation again. How do we flip that script, Chris?

Chris Deaver: 9:10

Yeah, that's a great question. We talk about this in the book, in "Brave Together." In fact, we call it the loss equation, and the simple test of this is if you, if somebody gave you $100 or $100, 100 you know, in anything, any currency that you have, you would think about it for a minute, you would appreciate it, but you forget about it soon. If you looked at your bank account and you lost $100 or you know that feeling of loss would stick with you for far longer, and to your point, maybe five to 10 times longer than the gain, which doesn't, that doesn't seem very rational when we think about it, because they should, shouldn't they be about equal. But no, just it's the way it works, and that's an interesting point that you brought up too, is that I think you know it's absolutely true that you know. The man versus machine reality is become so ever present, and I think it's a real fear, because those layoffs that are happening, they are real, and are they always tethered to, you know, AI's capabilities or not? You know, it's hard to know, but I think certainly technology is, is doing more, and you know, a lot of leaders are leaning into that for good, you know, or worse, but I think for us personally, I think the key there is we really need to be able to flip that loss equation and look at the upside, because it is within our power, and we ask ourselves, why are we on earth, like what is your purpose here, and if it is to express your talents in the best way you know, regardless of whatever your personal code is, your religion, your perspective, we all have an innate call. It a calling or something we love that we're here to do, and I believe that no matter how much the bots express or show up, you know, we've seen iterations of this, right? Like Naval Ravikant has said the bots are already here, they've been here for a very long time, doing a lot of different things, now they're doing a lot more, and you know, companies are taking advantage of that, but if you look back, you know, back to the even like the Bobby Fischer days at chess, you know, challenging the bot, you know, to in these they got pretty good, right? You know, Deep Blue, and then Watson, that Beat Ken Jennings at Jeopardy, and so, but I think it, you know, if our interpretation of that is, well, I'm out of the game, that's over. I think that's probably the wrong answer. I think the better answer is, well, you know, it's partly true, because, hey, look, they're probably better at trafficking and knowledge and combing through information and data sets far faster and far better than we are, but are they good at intuition? What are the things that that they're not going to be good at, no matter how good they get? Well, they're probably not good at intuition, creativity, full creative expression, and also in a collective sense that binds across teams. Now, you know, those things could shift a little bit, but largely over time, you know, these have always been true. The best teams create the best products. I saw it at Apple, you know, AirPods, iPhone, pick a product, it's really smart people beginning in a room and egos off the table, building blocks on the table, just creating amazing things. This is still true of stories and movies, and it's true of any, any industry in any domain, but you know, creating whatever products or services, and in our careers I think, so the better question is, is what can I do, what can we do that it can't do. And some of that, which, like I tell my kids, is converging your stack of talents and stacking those things where they're they cross over, and so you become a true original that express, because AI is, yeah, it's gonna get it's very good, a functional task. We just saw some updates about finance industry getting a bit carved out with AI, and you know what's next, accounting, I don't know, but, but is it, can it do those, you know, the triple threat things, right, those things that cross over that blend creativity and team? I don't think so.

Mick Spiers: 13:19

Yeah, it's interesting, Chris. So, yeah, certainly I like what you're saying about intuition. I'm going to add into their emotional intelligence and the ability to deal with other human beings. It's certainly not there, and that's, that's going to lean to your togetherness and your co-creation that you're talking about on the creativity. That's an interesting one. Here's a theory, I'll just throw this out, so AI engines that are based on large language models, yes, they can process that, that data set faster than any of us could have ever imagined that they could, and none of us could possibly do it, but then they're working in a container of what is already known, whereas innovation and invention is to start working on things that aren't already known. They start from a core of truth, but then they start the human being, then starts going, well, well, if that's true, could this be true, and then could this be true, and then could this be true? It can't do that if it's starting with a container of knowledge that would mean that the world knowledge that we now know in the world is complete, and we know that not to be true. So human beings still have that creative spark to be able to create, to bring something into existence that doesn't exist, that isn't in any large language model already. How does that sit with you?

Chris Deaver: 14:41

Absolutely true. You know, it's the nature, too, to feel like it's all been done, like Walt Disney. He would, he would go to the train station as a kid, and he'd see the train go off to Los Angeles, is when he led to Missouri, and he'd say to himself, "It's all been done, all those dreams that he had." Out of creating a studio, creating a theme park, everybody had already done it, right, but it wasn't real, right, and what he proved manifesting in the world that those things that he imagined were possible, and I think, what's the, what's the biggest temptation in our lives, or biggest distraction, let's say it is discouragement, right, to feel like you know what you've been called to do on this earth and what you're here to accomplish, that it's already been done and it hasn't. And I think what you're getting at too is, you know, this skill set, and by the way, I'm not by, I think I don't think it's a, it's as useful for us to stay in a competitive mindset with technology. I think it's, and as you've said, because what is it good at? It's good at aggregating existing data sets, and there's a lot of data sets, right, over the, let's say, the millennia, even, you know, but all this data that's been gathered, and you know, into the what we know as the internet, you know, history, and it's good at feeding that quickly, and then the question is also, then, well, in our creative intuition, how do we co-create with AI as well as a tool, and I think you know, I have a daughter who's very, very much a purist artist, and I appreciate that about her, you know. But she'll say, like, "Oh, AI, it's just terrible, and there's a lot of slop out there, there sure is, but I also see people that are taking a kind of hybrid approach to the strengths of AI, and then the strengths of humanity, and blending those together, and I think that's where a lot of the, well, how we can help power the future." Because ultimately, I think it is a super abundant future. There's a lot of possibility that's being created, and the other good news is a lot of the tactical things that we don't necessarily enjoy as human beings. AI is really good at, so we don't have to do those anymore, you know.

Mick Spiers: 17:00

I hate doing pivot tables and spreadsheets, Chris. I just, I just despise them. If it can do it for me, game on. And then I can spend my creative brain doing the things that I can do. Well, the stacking of my uniqueness to come back to the term that you said before, stop fighting against it, start working with it, let it do the things that you, you don't like the other thing that was bouncing in my head when you said this. And you know we're going to talk a lot about co-creation today, and co-creation of a team of human beings, but what if I don't know six of the team members are human beings, and, and six of them are agentic AI agents, I think that's okay, and what I heard from you is the word possibility came out of your mouth, I think three or four times in the last few minutes. So, instead of fighting against AI go, well, what could this make possible? And to start thinking AI is augmented intelligence, not artificial intelligence, but augmented intelligence. How can this augment my uniqueness, my team's uniqueness? If we add the six of us plus three agentic AI bots, are we now more powerful than we were before or less powerful?

Chris Deaver: 18:15

Yeah, I think theoretically and practically you can be, but you know, it's interesting, because human nature, I think leaders, and C-levels, in particular, we're seeing this out in the open, in public, they're making very drastic, extreme decisions about, "Hey, AI is going to do it all, right?" Like we saw this with Amazon, they let a lot of engineers go, and they, they built out these AI systems to track all these things, and there was a breakdown that happened, right, but I would ask the question, which you just posed, which is, well, what if they had thought about this differently, rather than say, "Hey, look what we can replace, you know, all these people with these this tech, what if it was what the nuance and the intention of what aspects of this are going to be done well with AI. What aspects are going to be done well with this team of people together, and how are we going to synthesize that very intentionally, so we don't have any breakdowns?" We can iterate and test things, and I think those kinds of questions, and it is in like an art, we would call it, it's kind of the negative space, right? There's this, you create this what-if scenario because we don't have the answers to those questions, but that's the exciting part, which is, wow, if we rethink what the future could be, and it's much more collaborative, much more co-creative, and that may be rethinking economics, right, how we think about competition in the marketplace, if it's much more collaborative and co-creative. And I think the distinction between those is as you move up the chain, you go really connection, which is at the heart, and I think we need more of that in the workplace and in our lives, deep empathy, we need shared wisdom, which is. Asking more questions than sharing answers, and by the way, leaders that are stuck in just sharing answers or expertise, AI is really good at that. So that tells us, like, "Hey, you're not, you know, might look at that, because the future value of that is not very high." The future value is in asking different questions, and there are so many unknowns we have to shape together, and connection leads to collaboration, which is better partnership and exchange of ideas, and listening, and shared wisdom, which can lead us to co-creation, which is we start to build on principles, and we start to create a new world around us that is much more brave, and I would liken that too. If we ask, well, what does that look like? Well, on a very simple, whatever sports you're into, it's soccer, be it basketball, football, whatever it is, or American football, any sport, when you watch a team in motion, and there's a difference between when they're just kind of kicking the ball to each other or making some plays with versus when they are in rhythm, like a V-shaped bird, you know, flock of birds in unison, and it's not only powerful, but you know, we know with the birds they actually create an aerodynamic space where it alleviates the birds behind them as they move as one. And I think there's power in that in teams, and that's the kind of thing that I think we barely started to tap into in the business world, and so maybe like the brain, where it's like maybe we're just 10% usage, the amount of potential energy we can unleash in terms of human creativity, you know, the blend, the synthesizing of humanities with technology, is it's untapped. I think there's so much potential for that.

Mick Spiers: 21:50

There's definitely something exhilarating and magic when a team comes together, and you can see it, you can, you can see it, and if you're in the team, you can feel it. By the way that, that exhilaration of when you're in that rhythm where you are co-creating, there's no doubt about that, for sure. I think that's a nice segue to head towards one of the topics we wanted to talk about today. Chris, I'm going to say something that I always thought was a limiting belief, anyway, but I'm going to say it, which was I'm going to say the leadership models of the past were one where the superpower of the leader was being the smartest person in the room, right, and one of the things you and I were planning to discuss today, that the sooner we let go of that, the sooner we lean into a different model of co-creation and creating an environment where others can do their very best work, that the better off we're going to be. The bit that I'm now going to add as I transition into the topic we want to discuss is not only are we not the smartest person in the room anymore, but AI, from a knowledge point of view. I'm not talking about other types of intelligence, but from a knowledge point of view, AI is going to be smarter than all of us, that no one can process the amount of knowledge that it can. So, give up on being the smartest person in the room anyway. And now the new superpower, instead of knowledge, the new superpower is going to be curiosity and asking the right question at the right time in the right way. How does that sit with you, Chris?

Chris Deaver: 23:23

It's perfectly, I think it's so true, and in some, for some leaders, it's taken them by surprise, but it shouldn't, right? Because I think if you look at what, what were the requirements, like the need that leaders were called to in other decades, other centuries, and largely you may have existential crises, you may have entire industry shifting, you may have a need to innovate that hasn't been before, and I think that could be tru. Said about most generations of time, but I often think about there's a book, great book called "The Fourth Turning", or "The Fourth Turning is here." And it's about, you know, we're in a state of crisis phase. There's four kind of secular, or there's a, there's a secular within each secular, about 80 to 100 years, there are four seasons, basically. And the last one is, it's a crisis, and we're in this kind of crisis state, you know, lot of disruption, there's a lot of commotion in the world, you know, doesn't help that there's like wars, you know, talk of wars, and so we kind of feel disrupted, and but to your question, I think then what are the requirements of a leader, and this a leader, in any sense, right, could be the moral foundation you have, you show up in a team and you're just contributing, you're a coach, you know. If you're actual little C-level leader or leader of a team, what are the requirements of a leader today? Well, I don't know, you know. And granted, I think having a heroic approach matters, and the hero's journey matters. In fact, in our book, "Brave Together" we talk about the hero's sacrifice mainly because that part of the journey is. I'd say it's not because it's least talked about, it's probably the least desirable is the part that's the hard, you know, what we have to give to the world, but it's also the most meaningful, and it also happens to sit in a time, usually where it's a messy middle, right. Where things are, there's a lot of unknowns, and a lot of shifting underneath us, and all the more reason for leaders to be authentic, to lean in, and I'll give an example, we are good friends with Ed Catmull, he started Pixar, and we had the chance to sit down with him, and just pick his brain, and you know, this is like Yoda, right? So I thought, I'm gonna, we're gonna click the wisdom button, he's gonna dispense pure knowledge into our fertile padawan minds, and we're gonna become Jedi, just like that. But it didn't actually happen that way, you know. This was a 30 minute meeting that turned into three hours, and in the process, he just asked really powerful questions and listened, and I was amazed at the depth of his questions and just space that he created, and so at one point I stopped him and I said, "Ed, what's your leadership philosophy?" And you know, he's the guy who, he's a PhD, he's really smart, he's created all these technologies that are still used in the film industry, right? Render Man, it's, you know, all the great movies had been, have used this technology, and of course, what he did at Pixar, but he said, you know, my leadership philosophy, so I, I lead with a question, and he was doing that, and it stood out to me, it stood out to my co-author, Ian, because that this is the future, right? A leader who can lead with a question instead of an answer. And his journey was when he started Pixar, he said it was really difficult, because he's, you know, again, a smart guy, PhD, has a lot of answers, so people come in for questions, he would just give him the answers here and there all the time, and he said he was exhausted, he wasn't empowering anybody, and his wife said, "You got to take a break." And she told him about this meditation retreat, and it was basically you go and you just listen and ask questions for seven days, and the first few days he said it drove him crazy. He couldn't, he was ready to quit, but it changed his life, and it changed him as a leader, and that became for us in our study for the book "Brave Together" that principle we call it Meta Principle. That was the first one, lead with the question, because it's so powerful, and it's strangely counterintuitive, or it's uncommon sense, because we have assumed for so long a leader should have the answers. Well, I don't believe that's true. I think a leader should be able to inspire and help build the best answers with their team, and that's what the future looks like. I think that's where the shared future is yeah.

Mick Spiers: 28:05

Yeah, really good, Chris. I want to bounce off that a little bit and throw some ideas at you in terms of what I'm hearing. First of all, the hero leader. The hero leader does still exist now that I listened to you, and that's not where I started at the start of this conversation, by the way, but bear with me for a second. So, the hero leader of previous was the one that was the smartest in the room. I'll keep on using that term. The hero leader tomorrow is the one that overcomes some of these things that we're talking about. They, they overcome fear and they take action despite fear, and they role model that behavior, so courage, bravery. Second one was the humility that you spoke about. Instead of being the smartest in the room, the hero leader now is the one that sticks up their head and says, actually, I don't know, and you're my hero now, because you admitted that you didn't know, right? So that the humility, and now the curiosity, and the curiosity with the questions. I'll tell you, what was jumping into my head as I was listening to you comes to the heart of non-directive coaching. Here, so the principles of non-directive coaching is that people know more than that they think they know, and somehow they got stuck. So they've got this idea in their head, and they think they know what to do, but they get stuck. They get stuck in fear, they get stuck in doubt, they get stuck. However, it's going to show up, they get stuck, and they don't take action. And in the previous model, they would have gone to the leader, and the leader would have just given them an answer. But now, what the leader has done is created a bottleneck and dependency, and that person has to come to the leader every time that they get stuck. Whereas the leader that asks the right question at the right way in the right time is actually going to draw out the knowledge that was actually in their head, help them become unstuck, and be a multiplier. So this lead with a question, I think it's at the heart of non-directive coaching that people. Intuitively, to use that intuition, where do we most people intuitively know what they need to do, and somehow they get stuck, they get stuck in inaction through fear of getting it wrong, fear of looking silly, whatever the case may be, and the great leader helps them find their bravery to take action despite their fear, how does that sound?

Chris Deaver: 30:22

Yeah, you're so right. And I think there's also a risk with people if they lean too heavy into AI for the answers to the questions that they should have answers to, or we're talking creativity and intuition and inspiration. Then they'll also fall short, because they'll be, they'll create a dependency on something that's not very good at that, right. And you know it's interesting, going back to the hero model. I think it is still true about a hero, but this, his ear, like you said, it's a different version of a hero, where rather than them projecting that they're the hero and everybody else is kind of the fan base or the spectators to this, they are inviting people into the hero to be heroes in a team, this is more of the Avengers, and they're working together to save the world, and that's what it's all about. I think you know, and it's funny because sometimes fiction will proceed, you know, fact in this case in life that we see that in some movies and stories, but I think it resonates, especially because we know, right. And you know it when you see like bands, you know, these team bands that stay together for years or decades, right, the Beatles, you know, the YouTube Coldplay, and they transcend time, and they're able to reinvent themselves and have these cycles of rebirth, and how they do, you know, the genre that they show up in, and they always play better together, right? Like the Beatles, when they split up, it was never the same. Now they were talented, but it wasn't the same as when they were together, and you know, you two is on the verge of splitting up, but they stayed together, and you know, being brave is one thing. You know, working harder, working smarter, that's good. Yeah, that's a good foundation. It's better than being afraid, but it's not as good as being brave together with others, because this will unlock power that's beyond you, and it's in the strengths of others, and when you start to do that, you unlock a future that, frankly, it goes way beyond solos. It goes beyond, you know, your solo efforts, and you're working creatively together, and that's, that's really, you know, the shared future, and not, not self-made, it's shared, and you know, it takes a little bit of everything to do it.

Mick Spiers: 32:42

Really, really interesting. I'm going to throw a metaphor at you that's going to build on what you're talking about with great music bands. I'm going to double down on a little bit, Chris. I'm going to think about an orchestra, and I'm going to think about if you listen to a violin solo soloist, you're at some kind of event, and there's a nice single violin player playing violin. It sounds nice. It does. It does. It sounds nice. And then when, when that violinist gets together with a viola player and a cello player and maybe a double bass player, now you've got a squint, a string quartet. Hang on a second, that's different. Something new just come into existence now. Put that together with a full orchestra, and maybe even a tenor out the front singing as well. They're now going to co-create something that none of them individually could have done, none of them. Now something new coming to innovation and invention. Now something new comes into existence that couldn't possibly have happened if they all just mastered their craft and did their own thing. And the conductor of that orchestra, at this point, he's not playing those instruments, he's asking the questions, he's drawing, he's drawing it out of those different from the strings from the percussion. I'm, I'm not great at this music stuff, so bear with me if I get some of these wrong, but the conductor is bringing those collective strengths of the Avengers together to create something that couldn't possibly have existed if they didn't come together.

Chris Deaver: 34:24

Yeah, what you start to do is, you, you start to increase, amplify the amount of variety within the construct of unity, right? The greatest art we look at the Renaissance, you know. These like amazing works of our, and as you said, in an orchestra, it's a great example, because it's so many different moving parts, but it creates a more infinite expression, and that reaches into our souls, and I think there is truth too, as well, to that's all you know, and there are this, I think. There's a lot of experimentation being done with AI, and again, it's interesting, but if it's just AI and just outsourcing our creativity to AI, it becomes slop very fast, and we could feel it in our souls, we can see the difference, you know, we may not be able to distinguish it consciously, but subconsciously, and so I think there's a, there's something about that synthesis that you're describing that a leader could bring, and using the tools, but you, but partnering with people to create something beautiful, and that will always be true, that will always be true.

Mick Spiers: 35:35

So, my ask to the audience listening to this right now, you, you might do this in your head, if you like. Go into your next team meeting and imagine you're the conductor of an orchestra. You're not the leader that's going to give everyone the answers. You're the conductor of the orchestra, and just look around, and you can picture it in your head. If you are, imagine that they're all talented musicians that have their own unique strengths, and imagine that your job is to draw out those strengths in a complementary way, where one plus one equals three, and this is when you'll be leaning into this all right now, but I want to, there's still another challenge here, Chris, that I want to unpack. You use the words before brave together, and I've, you know, you also using words like brave space, creating a brave space. The next challenge that we're going to have, we spoke about fear before, and we're talking a lot about our own fears, fear of loss, and all this kind of stuff, and having the courage and the bravery to take action despite those fears. Well, now guess what? If you've got seven people in the room, you've now got seven people with their own fears. How do you create a brave space where those seven people can also take action despite their own fears?

Chris Deaver: 36:53

Well, it's a great question. There's studies about the contagious nature of emotion, right, and we can see this in social contagions, pandemics that catch on, and suddenly you know there's an entire community or state or country that feels fear about something. Now, the flip side is true too, which is a positive emotion that can catch hold, and it's, it also if it's rooted in principle that there's, it's true, there's power in that, and I think that's the opportunity, right, for a leader, for a team, is to tap into, and granted, everybody may have different fears, but at the heart of it, we're all human beings, and you know they're probably that could be related to financial fears, health, right, loss of a loved one, you know, whatever those things are, but to bring this and make it practical, too. I'll tell you, we did an exercise with the group. You know, this was just post-pandemic COVID, and we were getting together a lot on Zoom still, and this was an eight hour Zoom offsite. You can imagine eight hours on Zoom is crazy, and you know why would we ever do that? Well, the team really wanted to get together, and these are, you know, senior directors, different leaders, and, you know, they wanted to connect, and so, but we really looked at it like, look, we have this technology we weren't really using was much before, you know, Zoom, and, but ultimately, it is about connection and about working together more and co-creating the future, and so we did a connection exercise, which was, what's your story, right? And we literally had them chart out with a miro board, just post-it notes on their line of their life things that were significant events or core memories, and they shared with each other, you know, little breakout groups. "Oh, your dad passed away of cancer." "Oh, mine did too." You know, they had these kinds of conversations that were really deep, and this led to the next exercise, which was a retrospective in the past. And then we did a future perspective, which was, how do you want to build the future? That was the whole eight hours was those three exercises, and by the end of it, after those eight hours, people said you can imagine they'd be exhausted, like anybody on Zoom for eight hours, for longer than three hours straight, but they said they were excited, they're like, "Wow, can we stay on, can we, can we do more of these activities, like carry it on in our team meetings?" And I think what had happened was we and they had tapped into the kinds of things we're talking about. The orchestra was playing beautiful music, right? And, like great music, does it just cut straight to your soul, and you know there's a state of flow. There's been studies about this, a lot of research and books written about flow, but the thing that gets less attention is shared flow, which again is a team experience, right? And you're feeling that kind of vibe of, wow, we're doing the best work of our lives, we stepped outside of time, we're in the zone, and how often do you feel that in a meeting, but. Why not, and I will say my experience with companies like Apple, Pixar, you know, they do this, you're in meetings, and you know they'll take time to check in and feel get personal for a minute. And then they'll take time to just build their best in their best way, and there's not an interest in trying to position ego at all, it's an interest, it's a full interest in, wow, wouldn't it be amazing if we do something that could really make an impact on people's lives, if we could change the world in some small way, enrich people's lives. And you know what, wouldn't you want to do that, and you get in there and you're just like you know, and this can happen in any domain, any industry, whatever services or product industry, any, you know, anybody's in, and in life, right, in our families, in our personal lives, with our friends, and we know the difference, we know the difference, and you know. Just the simple test of this is used to ask yourself the last time, like when was the last conversation I really enjoyed, but not just on a level of, like, it was a good laugh, you know, which is great, but I felt like there was depth, it wasn't just on the surface, right, there was real, real depth to it, and again, I think you said it earlier, AI is good at some things. But usually it's good at surface and knowledge, knowledge work that's been largely commoditized. It's not good at depth, you know, but we are.

Mick Spiers: 41:29

Really good, Chris. There's three words screaming in my head, I've got to tell you, as I'm listening to you, and they're all start with C, Contagion, Connection, and Courage. So the Contagion part, like, so the mirror neurons, so we do, we self-regulate off each other. So, here's a key role for the leader of today and tomorrow, is you've got a role model that spirit that you want in the room, and it's contagious, and it's up to you, whether that's a spirit full of fear or spirit full of creativity. So, if you come in with the right spirit, others will pick up on it, and it is contagious. The next one was the Connection. This was really interesting for me. The more we get to know each other, which AI is nowhere near being off to do this kind of stuff, the more we get to know each other with that connection, Chris. Then we are going to have the Courage to speak up and share our ideas without fear of judgment, because we're in a safe space. We're in a safe space where we're not going to get judged for bringing up a stupid idea or looking foolish, or whatever it is that's holding people back from speaking their mind. If the connections there, they're going to find the courage to speak their mind and speak their whole mind. Too many times people go into meetings and there's too many things left unsaid, Chris. So Contagion, Connection, Courage, and now we're going to have the right conversations. We're going to have that group space.

Chris Deaver: 43:06

Yeah. I think, I think, and then there's also this unique differentiator that also will always be true, and it relates to these very things is experience, right? We as human beings experience life, and AI doesn't experience like AI could never say, "Oh, I had father die too", you know, like they couldn't say that, right? It couldn't say, "I did a marathon, here's how it felt, right." We can, we have shared experiences, and I'll tell you, I think it seems to me, you know, we look around at the construct of business, the construct of organization, the science of business. They go back to Peter Drucker, the Father of Management, and the design of all these, you know, kind of, or Frederick Taylor, right? You know how supply chain works, the mechanics of this. There's so much related to mechanics and to the sciences and less focus there has not been as much focus on the organics or the creative. The ecosystem of humanity that helps to shape those things, and this is the uncomfortable part that we're facing right now, because AI is coming in and doing all of that science stuff better, it's doing all of that science of management, all of the mechanics better than us, and so it scares us, because that's how organizations, and that's how business was designed, right? We like it or not, it was, but I think, and what we've seen, and the beauty is of the kind of what if is that the companies that have been best at creating the best innovation, arguably the Apples, the Nvidias, you know, pick it doesn't have to be a tech company, but companies that are just doing amazing things, Patagonia, right, pick a company, they have been doing this kind of innovation work as creative teams. Teams leaning into humanity, and they don't, they don't ignore the sciences, they don't ignore that those aspects of mechanics, but they synthesize them, and they fuel them with a sense of perpetual motion that comes from people, right? It's an unlock.

Mick Spiers: 45:15

Yeah, really good, Chris. Yeah, I love this. All right, all right, so we're getting into this groove, we're getting into this collective flow state that is going to unlock. I love the word unlock, but it's going to unlock the individual create creativity of everyone in the room, because they're finding the courage to speak their mind. But it's going to unlock the collective creative, creativity in the room when people start deeply listening to each other and actually going, oh, well, if this is true, that means that this could be true, and then this could be true, and, and before you know it, you're you're hurtling down the road the momentum that you're that you're talking about here, Chris. All right, I want to come back to something that we parked a little while ago, you spoke about Preparedness, Muscle Memory, and Stacking Habits, and Togetherness. How do we get better at this? Like, you, what does this preparedness look like before the leader goes into the meeting to try to create the environment that you and I are regaling here? How do they prepare for that?

Chris Deaver: 46:16

Yeah, this is a good question, because this could feel overwhelming, right? Some leaders may say it's just not me, right? I have to opt out of this. It's too much of demand on my identity, right? I've become this other thing, right. And you know there may be truth to that, but like we talked about with the bands, there is possibility for rebirth or change, and that could be very incremental. It could be small, but for a leader, you know, in our book, "Brave Together" we talk about the mirror test, which is essentially a metaphor, but you could literally be looking in the mirror and ask yourself. And a leader should ask themselves this question, and not, and the point is, is it's not looking at other directions for best practices, and by the way, AI is great at going to the average or going to the mean, going to best practices, going to what's been done before, as you said earlier, but that's not the question of a leader today. And so looking around at competition or what the market's doing can only get us so far, and again, the best leaders throughout history have had the intuition, right, with the Walt Disneys, the Steve Jobs, is Elon Musk, like him or not, but as far as inventing and creating stuff to see something right, to see a vision of the future. But then also having the bravery to say, what do I need to do differently, right, or look at Steve, when he was in the wilderness, right? He got fired from his own company, right, and it's the hardest thing in the world. You know, Ed Cat will talk to us about this, and you know a lot of people talk about the rough version, you know, we call the rough Steve, which was before he got fired. He was kind of abrasive at times, he was innovative, but it was abrasive, you know, it wasn't, it was rubbing people the wrong way, and so he goes into the wilderness after he's fired, and it's he knows a choice point, right? We see leaders that have a moment like that, where they're in the wilderness, they're in the deep valley, and they can give up, they could leave, try something else, they could live on a beach if they've had success like he had, but he wanted to do some more things, and he allowed himself to change in some fundamental ways, which is going from a rough version to a changed version of himself, and you know it may not be as noticeable in the public movies, etc. That were created about him, because I think they focused on those earlier years, but what happened is, when he founded, co-founded Pixar with Ed, and he came back to Apple, he was a more compassionate person, he had more empathy, and by the way, he got married and settled down, had some kids, so he calmed down, but, like, he, he learned some things, and I think if a leader can be open to what do I need to do differently? That's a key starting point, because the things will emerge, so it's not as much about what the thing is as asking that anchoring question regularly. What do I need to do differently?

Mick Spiers: 49:14

Yeah, I really like it, Chris. So, the preparedness for me sounds like it's starting with self, so I'm going to do your mirror test. I'm going to look myself in the mirror. I'm going to ask myself the question, what do I need to do differently? That's an I question, not of the team. What do I need to do differently to get a different result? And the answer is maybe I'm not going to answer it for everyone, because you need to do this exercise yourself, but it might be that I do need to make these shifts, I need to shift from being a leader who has all the answer to being the leader who asks the right questions, to being the leader that parks my ego at the door, to be the leader that role models humility and says actually "I don't know, does anyone else know, that might be the shift that you need to make, so it sounds like." The preparedness starts with self, and the question that is coming into my head, then, would be, if I'm going into my next team meeting, and I've realized that maybe I was the old Steve Jobs, I was a bit more like that one. How do I need to sharpen in the next meeting to be more like the new Steve Jobs, who gets the creativity out of others, not just be the the innovative one in the room, but to get the so I need to ask the question "How do I need to show up in my next meeting differently to the way I have been doing it?"

Chris Deaver: 50:34

Yeah, I think it's a great question, because it requires a wrestle not with others but your future self with your past self, and that could be the hardest wrestle, right, because what you're saying in that choice, if it's a bold choice, if it's a brave and courageous choice, what you're saying is I refuse. I refuse to be that person anymore, and you know there's like a Superman, but I think it's Superman 3. I love the other movies. I don't think this one was as great as the others, but there's a moment in there where he's fighting his darker version of himself, right? And it's a wrestle, right? The old Superman I'm talking about, and this idea of this clash and trying to overcome habits that are very ingrained. I think those are the hardest ones. Where it feels like, can I even do this right? I'm on the edge of what I feel like is possible, but if it were true about other things, right? If you objectively were to zoom out, like for example, Steve, let's just keep with his example. I heard leaders who worked with him on the antenna, the launch of iPhone, the first iteration of iPhone, and he'd say, you know, you just have to create this, and they're like, it's impossible, we don't know how. And he's like, well, you, "Here's how you do the impossible, you just figure out what the obstacles are, you delete them, and then it's possible, and I think if we took that mindset and apply it to our lives, and as a leader, it's like, well, it feels impossible, and you might have a lot of reasons, right?" It might be like, well, "My dad was, he'd get angry, and I just kind of inherited that, or, you know, I'm, you know, I've got some Irish in me" or whatever you have, right, that I feel like I get fired up, and it's like, well, but is it serving the future, and is it, is that the best thing for you, right, and for the people around you, and I think if we ask her, if we're honest, and we do that mirror test properly, we're going to lean in to our best future, and you know, this is the good news, is it's just it's really a process of shaving off what's not right, so like the great sculptors, Michelangelo included. It wasn't that they came in and just hit once with the chisel, and it was a beautiful sculpture. No, they chipped away everything that was not. And I think if us as a leader, we could chip away everything that's not a great or amazing inspiring leader of the future, then we're going to start to become that future leader that we want to be, people need.

Mick Spiers: 53:06

I think, there's two layers to everything you're saying there, Chris. One is the work on ourselves, chip away the interference and the stuff that doesn't need to be there, getting stuck in our own heads. We're doing that work on ourselves, but then we're going to have to help our teams do that as well. So, when you spoke about jobs, explaining to people how to, how to invent the iPhone, is your, you remove the obstacles, that's what leadership is as well. Timothy Galway has this famous equation, Chris, it's performance is equal to potential minus interference, and that means that we can work on people's potential, that's their knowledge, their skills, their experience, or we can help them get rid of the limiting beliefs that are in their head that they can't do it, and if you get rid of those limiting beliefs, that that's got a bigger multiplier than then building up their their potential.

Chris Deaver: 54:00

Yeah, I think the best test of this is if you just rewind the tape in your life and you're being really clear-eyed, but in a good, in a positive way about your potential, like you're saying, and you go back 10 years, you rewind the tape 10 years, right, and say you're in your 50s, 60s, or 40s, and you go back 10 years, and you look at yourself and you think, wow, there's a lot that I didn't know, right. And there was, and there's like these rough behaviors, but like maybe they weren't so bad, but there's things that could be, and then you go back another 10 years, or you go back another 20 years, and you're a teenager, right, and there. I mean, I have conversations with my, my teenage sons, and there are times where I'll see myself in them, and I'll think, "Holy cow, I had no clue, but like, look at all this progress you've already made."

Mick Spiers: 54:45

Look, how high you've come.

Chris Deaver: 54:46

Right? Because, like, if we had stopped at the at the answer at the time of, "Oh, I can't, you know, I just, who I am", we never stopped there, right? So then the question becomes, What are all the possibilities of things you can change? Change, because look at all these things you've changed, and by the way, if you go back another 10 years, maybe you're 15, you're barely walking, right? Like, so we've gone, we've advanced and grown in so many ways, and you know, there's the, you know, fixed mindset, there's a growth mindset, and I think even beyond that is a fluid mindset, where, like Bruce Lee would say, "Be like water, right, where if we are leaning into the future, we're able to flow and change and be different." Yeah.

Mick Spiers: 55:29

Really good, Chris. We've been going for almost an hour, and I say this without any exaggeration. I feel like I could speak to you for at least eight hours, and I would still have the energy to keep going. This has been an amazing conversation, but we do need to draw it to a close. I'm going to summarize a few things, Chris, and then ask you to have the final say in this summary. So, if leaders are listening to this, this is the future. This is the future of leadership. These shifts that you need to make from the hero leader of the past to the new hero leader of the future, where you're moving from, you don't have to have all the answers, you don't, you're not expected to have all the answers. But a great leader is able to ask the right questions, the right question at the right time, in the right way, and it's your job to bring out the best in all of your team to create the environment where everyone can bring their true self that they can overcome their fears. It does start with yourself. Think about some of the things that Chris is talking about. It starts with this mirror test and looking into the mirror and asking yourself, what do you need to do differently to get a different result, how do you have to overcome your own fears, so that you can have the courage to take action despite those fears? For you to be the brave leader, let's remove here a leader and say brave leader, for you to be the brave leader, and the brave leader is someone that takes action despite fear and role models that behavior in front of everyone else, and then you're going to get this contagion effect that Chris was talking about. Those mirror neurons are going to kick in. If you're brave, others will get the license to be brave, and your job is also to create this connection, the connection amongst people, so that people leave their ego at the door, and they just trust each other, they know, like, and trust each other, and then they can feel safe to bring their best ideas to the table in a brave space, free from judgment, where you're just co-creating together, and this metaphor that you're the conductor of the orchestra, and you've got a bunch of superstars in the room that have got different superpowers, could be the Avengers. We can use that metaphor too. You've got a bunch of superheroes in the room that have all got different strengths that you can then create a co-creation space where those strengths are complementary, and we start building something that couldn't have existed without the individuals, individually contributing into the room to something that's greater than themselves. This is what the future looks like, but it means parking your ego at the door, and it means making a big shift, making a shift from the leader has all the answers to the leader, asks better questions, and if I, if you take anything away from today to the baby step. The baby step that I want you to all think about is go into your next meeting with that mindset that you are the conductor of the orchestra and they are the superstars, not you. They are the superstars, and you're going to draw out of them, and how you're going to do it, you're going to lead with a question, don't lead with an answer, lead with a question. Anything you want to add to the summary before we go to our rapid round, Chris?

Chris Deaver: 58:49

I love that, Mick. I really, I think you summarized it really well, and you know, I would say if someone is questioning, well, this feels heavy, right? It feels really hard to do what you're asking, and you know the good news is we're not asking. I think really it's your future self that's asking, and you know one of the things that has stood out to me for many years, and I, you know, there are examples that are archetypes and analogies, and I love those, because they help paint a quick picture that resonate, it tends to resonate, and there was a movie, Days of Future Past, it's about X-Men, and Dr. X is kind of, he's this kind of leader we're describing, right, he asked a lot of questions. The Socratic Method, he cares a lot about his team, and there's a moment in that movie where he's living in a dystopian future. Everything is literally burning down, right? The enemies at the gate, they're tearing down this building they're in, everything's on fire, right? They're all going to die. And so this future version of Dr. X is able to connect with his past version of himself, and in a very inverted way. His past version of himself is in a world that by all accounts is seemingly fine, but he is a total wreck. His path is on a self-destructed, he's on a self-destructive path where he is just completely, you know, devastated with life, and he feels like it's the end, and the message in that moment, and by the way. I think we could all feel this way at times, especially in a world that feels so disruptive, where we're asking ourselves, what is my contribution, and if AI can do all this stuff, what's the point, right? Or, you know, all these layoffs, and you know, what does it all mean? Or this is really hard to be a different kind of leader, that you know, I got to do all these different things. Well, you know, I think there's something to learn from what Dr. X says to his past self, and he says we need you to hope again. And if there were a message from your future self, I think it would be that, because if you hope again, you know, and I think in the, in the context of our lives, the story arc of our lives, we go back to when we were children, and that we had a fresh view, and you could find pictures of yourself, and just you were ready to take on the world, right? Anything was possible, and if you hope again, and you're able to lean into what would be a rebirth of yourself as a leader, as a husband, as a parent or as a wife, as you know, elite team member, whatever, whatever you do, that's a good starting point, because what you're saying to yourself and your the wiring and the programming you're giving to yourself, the gift is this is possible, and again, it may seem impossible, but those experiences in your life that have been the greatest, there's probably a reason, and there's probably a lot of things that relate to the kind of patterns that we've been talking about. You probably were being very intuitive, you're leaning into your best version of yourself, you're being creative, you're working with the team, and you felt like you're in this kind of zone, and that this orchestra, there was beautiful music in the background, or in the foreground of your life, that was being created by what you're doing, and we can all do this.

Mick Spiers: 1:02:09

It's very powerful and very inspiring. Chris just beautifully said. Thank you so much. All right, now I'm going to take us to our rapid round. These are the same four questions we ask all of our guests. So, first of all, what's the one thing that you know now, Chris Deaver, that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Chris Deaver: 1:02:29

Well, going back to this conversation with my past self, if I could say that thing, it would be a lot of what we've been talking about, which is not to look. I was very cheap and oriented, I mean, I wanted to just take on the world, and I talked about this in the book "Brave Together." You know, I got my Eagle Scout at 12. I did a lot of things, I, you know, just achievement oriented all the way, but I think what I would say to myself is, look, the greatest version of achievement in this life will happen in the context of a team, it'll be shared, and to the extent that you build a shared success story, that's a great life.

Mick Spiers: 1:03:06

Love it. All right, brilliant. What's your favorite book?

Chris Deaver: 1:03:10

Well, I have a series set of books that are probably tied for my favorite that I regularly read. Funny enough, so I, it's hard for me to pinpoint one, but I'd say it's probably a tie between "The Seven Habits" by Stephen Covey, he was a mentor and friend, "Creativity Inc" by Ed Catmull, the Pixar founder, "Ender's Game." I kind of love that book by Arson Scott Card, of course, "Brave Together" which is available on Amazon, and I love that book, and I would just add one more. "Book of Mormon" a spiritual book. I think there's power in ancient wisdom, and you know, Bible, or whatever religious background, or you know, universal experience you have. I think finding a spiritual foundation helps as far as ancient wisdom, and again, that could be, you know, whatever it is for you, right? Some people, it's stoicism, but I think having a good moral compass or principles to guide your life is also powerful.

Mick Spiers: 1:04:09

Yeah, really good. Chris, what's your favorite quote?

Chris Deaver: 1:04:13

Oh, wow, that's it. That's a hard question, but I probably go with Stephen Covey's "The best way to predict your future is to create it."

Mick Spiers: 1:04:24

Yeah, nice one. Yeah, really good. All right, now a final question is, how do people find you? There's going to be people listening to this that need to make these shifts, they need to be more brave themselves, but they need to create this environment of being brave together and creating these brave spaces and shifting to co-creation. How do people find you and learn more about your work, so that they can lean further into this?

Chris Deaver: 1:04:48

Yeah, no, I mean, speaking of connecting, I love to connect with people, so happy to connect and have an intro or a conversation. I'm on LinkedIn, and we have a website. It's www.bravecore.co and that you know has information about, you know, the what we do, talks about the book, and you know some of the great experiences we've had with that, which you know it's been a dream. We were featured with the next big idea club with Malcolm Gladwell, it's you know been Forbes Fast Company, but the most, the most powerful thing has been just seeing the effect in people's lives and what these principles can do as we live them out, you know, in our lives or as a leader, and I'm excited for what you and what all of us can accomplish as we're not just brave, but as we're brave together with others.

Mick Spiers: 1:05:44

Yeah, really well said. Thank you, Chris. And I do encourage everyone to reach out to Chris. There's a significant depth in this work, but it's also about how you can create a brighter future for you and your teams and your family. I'm going to say you can apply this not just in the workplace, so thank you so much, Chris. Thank you for the gift of your time, your wisdom, but I'm going to use a different word now, and say the inspiration you've inspired me to look at things through a different lens, and I know that you're going to inspire everyone listening into action to lean into this. Thank you so much.

Chris Deaver: 1:06:21

Thank you, Mick. It's been great. Really appreciate being here.

Mick Spiers: 1:06:25

Another great and powerful conversation there with Chris Deaver. So, let me ask you, are you trying to be the hero? Are you trying to have all the answers, or are you creating the space where others can bring their best ideas to the table? One of the biggest takeaways from this conversation with Chris was this. The future of leadership is not heroic, it is co-creative, and that requires bravery, the bravery to be yourself, the bravery to admit you do not know the answers, the bravery to ask better questions, the bravery to park your ego at the door, and the bravery to create a space where others feel safe enough to contribute, challenge, experiment, and build together. So, here's your call to action, in your next meeting, do one thing differently, be the last one to speak, ask one better question, invite the quietest voice in the room into the conversation, or say, "Actually, team, I don't have the answer yet. What are you seeing?" Because when the leader changes the room, the room changes, and then you're going to create an environment where other people will find their voice and find their creativity. In the next episode, we bring together the lessons from Alejandro Ramirez, Wainwright Yu, and Chris Deaver, our great guests from this month. We'll explore how communication, cognitive diversity, and co-creation all point to one powerful truth. Leadership is not about controlling people, it's about creating the conditions where people can do their very best work, so until then be brave, co-create, and as always lead better. You've been listening to The Leadership Project. If today sparked an insight, don't keep it to yourself, share it with one other person who would benefit from listening to the show. A huge thank you to Gerald Calibo for his tireless work editing every episode, and to my amazing wife Sei, who does all the heavy lifting in the background to make this show possible. None of this happens without them. Around here, we believe leadership is a practice, not a position, that people should feel seen, heard, valued, and that they matter. That the best leaders trade ego for empathy, certainty for curiosity, and control for trust. If that resonates with you, please subscribe on YouTube and on your favorite podcast app. And if you want more, follow me on LinkedIn, and explore our archives for conversations that move you from knowing to doing. Until next time, lead with curiosity, courage, and care.