Meeting your Ego to Unlock Co-Creation & Collaboration with Eitan Sharir - PART TWO
Welcome to the We are Human Leaders podcast. Today, join us for the second half of Alexis’ conversation with Eitan Sharir on understanding our ego to create true co-creation in our workplaces. In this episode Alexis finds out more about how we begin to imbue Co-Creation into our organisational culture’s through becoming a truly aligned and ego-less Leader.
Eitan Sharir is President of Organizational Culture and Performance at Dynamic Achievement. For more than 20 years, Eitan has worked with many leading organizations including: Starbucks, IKEA, Avis, ISM/IBM, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Mercedes Benz, and lululemon. To enable organizations to achieve the real, and sustainable business results they are looking for, Eitan applies The Co-Creation Activator Process which is an advanced approach unique to Dynamic Achievement. In addition to his consulting work, Eitan shares his knowledge and insights as a keynote speaker for association conferences and organizational retreats on how to Develop a Culture of Excellence in the areas of Culture, Leadership, Service Excellence and Teams. Eitan is the author of Activate Your Power – How to Unlock Your Full Potential and Direct Your Own Success.
Eitan holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree with a double major in business economics and economics, and a post-graduate commerce degree in general management and international marketing. He has also reached the Masters level in Neuro-Linguistic programming and is a certified Business Coach with the Behavioral Coach Institute.
For full access to Eitan Sharir's work and ebooks, visit his website here.
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For accessible access, view the podcast with closed captions below and access the full conversation transcript.
Episode Transcript:
Spk0 Sally. Spk1 Alexis. Spk2 Eitan.
[00:00:00] spk_0: Welcome to the We Are Human leaders podcast, I'm Sally Clarke, Co-Director at Human Leaders and today we're sharing the second half of Alexis's conversation with Eitan Sharir on understanding our ego to create co creation in our workplaces. In this episode, Alexis finds out more about how we begin to imbue co creation into our organizational culture through becoming a truly aligned and ego list leader. If you haven't listened to part one yet, I really encourage you to go back and give it a listen so that you get the most out of this often uncomfortable confrontation with ego and ego driven behaviors and be sure to listen right through to the end of some nuggets of gold. Thanks for joining. Welcome.
[00:00:54] spk_1: You know, I want to dive back into the co creation activator for a minute now and I know the third stage of this model looks at what you call the vertical mindset and I just wanted to hear a little bit more about how this vertical mindset works and what its impact is and I'm just curious to know you know what role leaders can play in cultivating this mindset throughout the organization and their team as well.
[00:01:19] spk_2: Certainly so two questions I'll answer both because the two questions in one, number one vertical mindset very simply is heightened awareness where my purpose in life is in moving forward in creating, coming from being number one and then doing creating moving forward. It's about giving, it's about being authentic, it's about simplicity, not complexity, it's about lightness of being, so the more vertical we are because there are different levels. Okay, the the more we are aware the more conscious we are. Okay, so if you think about like a buddha nature, okay or christ's nature or whatever one wants to call it, that is that is the ultimate of awareness, right? Is an awareness enlightenment. Okay, again we don't wanna go too much into this, but it's it's a full awareness. So vertical mindset is the ability for us, the rest of the team to see, to be able to be aware enough to see the ego to see the obstacles and to be able to embrace them and move forward and not allow them to to become the obstacles in our life, How leaders can cultivate that is step number one by being role models or being of what being vertical actually is, especially when things are challenging. You know when you're on honeymoon it's wonderful, it's wonderful. It's easy to be at your best behavior but when things are tough and challenging, this is where our limbic system gets challenged as we know our amygdala gets triggered. This is where the ego takes over and this is where people behave very badly. This is where we are very not were not very nice to be with. This is where even the one that you love becomes your enemy temporarily. I think we all know the space, right? So so it's really the leader's job and role to show up as a vertical human being and then as a vertical leader to go and show how to show up when things are not more challenging. And then to help the team members go through a vertical mindset, whether it's a program or thinking or initiative for them to start to see as well.
[00:03:31] spk_1: So coming back to the ego, it sounds like the first point of call to actually cultivate this vertical mindset is again, creating that awareness and being able to witness that ego and where it's kind of keeping us maybe blocked in this idea of moving forward, moving vertical creation, authenticity.
[00:03:48] spk_2: And if I can just add one small thing, because I want to make sure that it's not missed. The biggest antidote to the ego is you coming up with the most vertical purpose for your life possible. When were your your purpose? Your life purpose is about being freedom, joy, love, peace, fulfillment, and about creating and co creating with others something better, creating a better world just you know, for simplicity of language that when you are doing everything every day to live your purpose and it's a vertical purpose, the ego has no room to living here. So that is the most important thing as far as I'm concerned coming up with what your purpose is in life, something that is beyond ego and then doing everything dedicating your life to living your purpose every day.
[00:04:37] spk_1: That's powerful. And it sounds to me though that almost by being those things in the moment every day, the future kind of takes care of itself were not necessarily pre planning every moment of that future by being the freedom, the ego list, the joy being, that human being in the moment, we're almost pulled forward into a future where that resembles that purpose, right?
[00:05:02] spk_2: Absolutely. Well said I'm doing everything every day to live my purpose. I have goals, I have dreams, I have aspirations because our mind prefrontal cortex needs to know what to focus on in order to create. So we need that we're not forgetting about it, but we are not attached to it. And what happens is every moment as life shows up, we embrace what shows up, I'm not making up life. Life is as it shows up, we embrace it and do the best that we can with whatever resources we have available to us in every single moment to live our purpose and and that's it, that's it, Sorry, it's so simple, but that's it, that's life.
[00:05:43] spk_1: We do, we do oversimplify things and now I want to bring this back to an organizational culture context for leaders. So when we're trying to imbue this mindset of co creation into an organizational culture, what are perhaps some of the skills or the processes that we need to be using on an ongoing basis to sustain this sort of thing and really embed this vertical mindset into the culture of how we work.
[00:06:12] spk_2: I can just talk from my experience, what I've done with different clients. The first step is for the leaders to go through the co creation leader, okay, it's like a program, it's like a whole 12 month program with different segments to it, there's the in class or virtual depending on where they are because now we can do everything virtually. There's also a learning management system for the 12 months so they get together and then as soon as they started after they started, especially during the mindset because the first thing that they do in the first two sections modules is mindset as soon as that's done and then we start to move to culture and leading vertical leadership and all that, that's when you start to bring the rest of their teams for the momentum through the mindset, the vertical mindset installer, okay, which is a stage three, we start to bring them through and what you start to see now is the momentum of everyone speaking a common language. The most important thing that I've seen for culture, development and culture transformation is we create a common language that is synonymous with vertical, there is synonymous with authenticity that is synonymous with everyone, clear on what their life purpose is and then having unifying purpose that brings all of us together as a team and as an organization for a greater course when that happens, the rest of the things are techniques and tools and skills and competencies for me, those are easy, it's having that right collective mindset that that helps the organization shift and accelerate everything. I find that skills are the easiest for us as human beings, especially for a little bit educated, skills are the easiest things for us to learn mindset is the most challenging things to shift. And that's why I always focus on that first and I start with individual purpose. I'm not interested in the company as much as I'm interested in the human being when the human being finds out who they are and how they want to live and then they bring that with them to work within the work context of what unifies us in terms of our products, our customers, our communities, it changes everything. But now the energy and the motivation and the inspiration comes from the human being, not from some manager having to say be motivated, be engaged, be happy, that's nonsense, it doesn't work.
[00:08:29] spk_1: So I'm hearing to kind of core things come out of this, I'm loving this because the first one really aligns with what we talked about at human leadership as well and that is that we have to start with ourselves. One of the core, one of the core pieces of our framework at human leaders is you have to self lead first before you can lead others. Does it sound like that's exactly the way you're trying to imbue this as well, you've got to be the change before you can lead the
[00:08:56] spk_2: Absolutely. So in the, in the two day mindset program that I run day number one is know yourself day number two is lead yourself and it's exactly half.
[00:09:08] spk_1: I love this. And the second thing that I'm hearing is, and something that I think we struggle with as leaders in organizations is that and I've been there so I hear this and I understand what this is like. We think that setting purpose and vision is all about getting conformity to our idea of what purpose and vision should look like. But what I'm hearing from you is that individuals need to tune into what's important to them, their purpose and their vision, right? And then we need to create the space for that to become part of our bigger vision. Is that what I'm hearing?
[00:09:42] spk_2: Yes and yes and number one, number one, number one help every single individual find out you don't tell them they find out there's a process, you know, it's basically an invitation and a process to help them find out for themselves at a very, very deep level emotional level and an intellectual level, emotional first and intellectual second, what what they will jump out of bed for seven days a week. Okay, very simply, that's it. You help them with that. Then what you do is you give them the tools and resources to be able to do that and then when they come to work, you support them to live their purpose every single day. Okay, everyone clear so far, and then you create something that glues how I come to work, to live my purpose with what I'm coming to help co create from a business perspective for the community products as services, whatever it is. But first and foremost, create a whole structure that supports each and every single team member to live their purpose every single day when they come to work Number one, then what is the team purpose? What is the company's purpose? What is the company's vision? What are the plans? What's the strategy? But first and foremost, people come to work to live their purpose. It's not for the company, it's for their purpose.
[00:11:12] spk_1: It does, it completely does. It's so powerful because we're not pushing people anymore. We're pulling them, we're becoming a magnet for them to actually reveal themselves and have the space and the opportunity to do what they feel called to do. We're giving them that space,
[00:11:29] spk_2: correct. And so if you ask one of those team members, so why do you come to work for company abc and not X, Y, Z or X, Y. Z. How come the response that you'll get from them is because when I worked at abc, they helped me live my purpose every single day and that's why I work here and not there. It's not about the pay, it's not about all the other things that are important, but the main reason is because this is where they support me to live my purpose every single day more than any other place that I've ever been to and that imagine the alignment, the engagement and the glue that that creates of why I want to come to abc to co create with you, my team members more than any other place.
[00:12:17] spk_1: I you know, even just the language evokes a more visceral feeling in me than thinking of going to my job. You know, when you talk about aligning with purpose and showing up with purpose and intention every day, we feel that, you know in our bones more than we think, oh gosh, I've got to go to work again today and you know with that, I'd love to know it because I know you've worked with a lot of companies around the world using the Co creation Activator model. I'd love to hear if you have any real world examples of what this looks like in action and you know, maybe what some of the outcomes were for those particular organizations or how they overcame challenges by switching from a very finite mindset if you will to more of this co creation model.
[00:12:58] spk_2: Absolutely. So I want to mention companies, but I'll tell you a team that I was working with a company that I was working with in my mind as I go through this. So the first thing that I did was to find out, okay, so how you organized here, okay, what is the structure and how you organize to work together? And I immediately started to see flaws and I'm talking about any of those companies that you mentioned, okay, as great as they are, they may be the number one in the industry. It's all relative to other companies in the industry. When I look at organizations, I look at their potential, I don't look at how well they've done. I look at the potential that they've got. And I can tell you all the companies that I've ever worked with are far away from their potential, no matter how great we think that they actually are when you start to go beyond the surface. So the first thing that I noticed is that in terms of alignment of the leaders around while we are actually coming here, what we're actually here to achieve the purpose and the vision, lots of different interpretations. And then as you go down down the line, it gets more and more distorted, You know, So by the time that you go to whatever the lowest levels and you ask them, so why are you here? What it is just a job? You know, I come here from whatever 84 or 85 or whatever it is to do my job, get paid every two weeks and that's it. I mean where's the energy here? Where's the life here, There isn't you see that's why it's so easy to leave this company and go to another company because they're paying me, you know, 10% more whatever it is because there's no difference. So the first part that I work with and worked with with this organization is on what I call the Co creation mission. Two parts to it. No one, make sure that all the leaders are 100% aligned on what I call the master plan. There's a master plan and the leaders created and co created. There's a master plan on what we are here to achieve, how we're going to do it as a leadership team. And then we start with what I call tier excellence plans And then we go and cascade that master playing to every single member of the organization, even if there are 20,000 or 100,000 people in the organization to that extent where every single member of the team has a piece of that master plan and they can see how that's related. Okay, so that's number one second stage is what I call the co creation leader, which I briefly mentioned earlier on. It's how it's the mindset for the leaders, it's the culture, the ideal culture, current culture, the gap and then how do we lead co creation? The so that's what I then did with them. Once we had the co creation mission, we then went all the leaders, we talked about hundreds of leaders went through the co creation leader. Okay then we brought in the rest of the team and that is for the vertical mindset installer. So the rest of the team went through a two day program, the vertical mindset program and that is all about cultivating the right mindset. Then the re everyone goes through the stage four and that is another two days of the co creation culture activator basically that is learning, this is skills now because they've got the vertical mindset more. So it's and now it's about how do we practice co creation, these are practice and that's a practical thing. How do we come together? What are the rules of engagement for the meeting? What's the structure for the meeting? How do we know that we are co creating? How do we know that we are not okay. And then stage five, which is a super mind accelerator, is when a team or has got a specific project or even a whole company and they need to turbo boost co creation because of time constraints because of the innovation they really want to think big, that's when we go through stage five, so this is what I've gone through with different clients of mine and the results have been amazing because that in itself has shifted and transformed their culture, It created a different language, people are coming together in different ways. I even teach them how to how to do a special type of meditation just before the co creation meetings. They start every meeting this way. Um it's it's it's it's very inspiring for me to see what organizations have been doing with it and what I've done with it and the success of their cheating. So for me that's the greatest reward is when my clients are successful. So that's
[00:17:19] spk_1: and you know what was interesting for me listening to speak about that and the mistakes that I've made in leadership and the mistakes that I see other companies making around these sorts of issues as well when they're trying to overcome. You know, a lot of them call things like this, you know, we want to create a high performing team, we want to create a team that's very innovative and and these sorts of things. But what I so often see is organizations identifying a problem and then focusing on the skill set that needs to be up leveled to fix that problem and it sounds like they're missing steps 12 and three, right, is that kind of what you see happening?
[00:17:57] spk_2: I think most organizations focus on becoming in most cultures that I've seen are problem solving oriented cultures. Instead of vision creating oriented cultures. It's a very huge distinction when you are a problem oriented, a problem solving oriented culture. Okay, the context for you coming to work is to solve problems. Now solving problems has got nothing to do with creating a vision, moving things forward. It's about solving problems and understand we need to solve problems but problem solving needs to be in relation to we are all coming to work to co create the vision things. Get in the way which we call problems or obstacles. We're gonna send a task team to go and deal with those. But the rest of us are going to focus on co creating the vision and there's a very different culture here, a very different focus of energy between those two.
[00:18:55] spk_0: Yeah. And you know what's interesting, even when we look at the term problem to me, that signifies something that's already happened in the past. If we know about the problem, we already know that this is a thing. So it's more like retrospectively fixing rather than looking to the future, right?
[00:19:12] spk_2: And spending most of your energy on problem solving. Now, what do you think happens to a culture like that when there's no problems, they start creating them because they see the value in solving problems. So no problems. Let's create some okay, Alexa, I don't like you here today, I don't like this today. I don't like the way that you treated me yesterday and okay, now we've got problems, let's deal with that. Let's bring extra consultants to deal with our problems and issues and dysfunctions. What a waste of life.
[00:19:40] spk_1: Right? And to me it kind of sounds like a dog chasing its tail in a way, we're only ever going in that circle of chasing the issue that's already there. Or as you said, may or may not be there and we're creating that problem because we're not being future focused. And again, there's obviously that underlying ego there, right of, you know what's in this for me.
[00:20:03] spk_2: Everything is so slow And so frustrating and imagine that most people spend at least 60% of their waking hours at work. What a waste of life. So I don't subscribe to that clearly. Okay, not when I'm not when I'm putting my head up
[00:20:21] spk_1: for, you know, I've been there and I've worked in organizations like that. I've also will raise my hand here and say that I've been a leader that has been trained and more comfortable with, I think putting fires out and fixing problems than looking to the future because there's a few things about the future that are scary and that is uncertainty, uncomfortable. Itty. And frankly, the ego, again, it comes back to this idea that, well if I don't know what might happen, then how do I release the need to control what I don't yet know we might be capable of. So it's so uncomfortable at a human level
[00:20:58] spk_2: and that's the ego needs to control everything needs to be certain about everything. Welcome to life. Tell me one thing that you can control nothing,
[00:21:06] spk_2: I can control my emotions really. Come here, let me press a few buttons. We'll see if you can control your emotions, I can control my body really, you're controlling your body going downhill, forget about it. You know, you may be slowing it down, you're not controlling it. So this whole delusion of I'm in control of my life is garbage. So instead of trying to control anything, how about just being here, doing the best that you can with whatever resources are available to you, doing everything to live your purpose. And of course there's gonna be some setbacks and you know, and you know, disappointments, Welcome to life, that's it, enjoy the ride as much as you can.
[00:21:41] spk_1: Yeah, well what a tough mandate I'm hearing you and I'm also thinking to myself, yeah, that is difficult. Um but I just want to recap here here for us and so what I'm hearing is firstly this really does start with the self leadership component, this really as leaders. If we want to talk big words like co creation, which you know, breeds things like innovation and change, we really have to dial it back down, peel back the onion and say what do I need to do to become the person that actually can lead in that way. And then what I'm hearing from that, it's not until we do that work that we can start to imbue that in our team and look at that vertical mindset as a team and then we focus on the skills, so this is really overhauling the process that so many of us are used to diagnose the problem, Look at the skills required up skill fixed problem. We're looking at who do I need to become? How do I then in view that into my team then? How do we up skill to move forward in a way to essentially address a future that we don't have all the answers for you.
[00:22:45] spk_2: So let me, if I can share, I think maybe helpful. The definition of leadership that I use and every word that I use is very carefully chosen. Leadership. These the capacity to influence and inspire others to co create excellence consistently. So the capacity of the leader to be able to deal with stuff, the more vertical we are, the more we can deal with stuff setbacks, challenges issues, that's the capacity to influence and inspire. Is the leadership skills, how to influence people to move from A to B to inspire them is for them to connect with their own purpose, their own what's most important to them to co create excellence consistently not the flavor of the month but consistently. And for me that is the definition that I use in all the leadership programs that are around.
[00:23:38] spk_1: I almost need to just let that land for a minute and digest it before I can make comment on it. So, oh well there's so many things that I think we can keep on packing there. But the capacity again, it comes back to this idea that we have to be this person. We actually have to embody this person before. We have the capacity to inspire and influence others to be the same. And coming to the last part of that definition, you've used to co create consistently. So co creation is not a goal, it's not a one off. We don't co create to finish a project. Co creation occurs consistently and this is what keeps the evolution of business alive.
[00:24:22] spk_2: So if you're getting inspired, I'm getting inspired now as well. So let's go for the co creation. The actual co creation is a collective, collective being. So the co creation is not an outcome. It's just a way of collectively being together and excellence is really the outcome. See it's the byproduct and that's all it is really. So so imagine that we have created a culture that we are coming together to co create and all we are doing everyday is co creating. That's it. That's that's our mode of being together. We co create. What are we co creating? A better future? Where where do we created? Co created from? What is the present moment? What happens to the past then? Well, we learn from it. We go to the past from time to time to learn from all our experiences, things that have worked. Things that haven't worked, learn from other people. We've got the benefit of the internet of documentaries. We can learn so much from everyone but we are no longer attached to the past. It's not real anymore. It's just memory. A co creation can only happen in the present moment. And when we are co creating now it informs the next moment you see which from this moment we call the future. But when we step into it, it's another moment. It's another moment and that's well we learn to be in that cycle okay of of being creating, being, creating. Being what I mean about being is being one with one with myself and then creating, going out there engaged inspired focus driven with others. And and that that it's like it's like a dance. It's it's magnificent and it's not one or the other. It's both it's being and creating and being and creating all coming from free will nothing forced. No,
[00:26:13] spk_1: I almost get shivers thinking about this because as a leader for me this feels so almost nurturing because I know that I'm not trying to push or do this on my own when I can release the ego and the need to be in front of and be part of something else. It feels like it also diminishes the expectation on me to be the noah the do uh the person with the answers, the person with the plan which we get so stuck in that as a leader to being part of this mobilized as you kind of explain it this mobilized movement towards the future and it gives me shivers because I know what it's like to be a leader and to feel alone, to feel isolated, to feel like there's me and there's the team and you know we try and create teamwork and all of these beautiful words but this gives us the space to energetically fall in line with everyone else and move as a collective, which I think is just you feel the power from that statement.
[00:27:12] spk_2: The co creation vertical leader invites the team to come on the journey with him and they figure it out together. No one knows more than another. By the way, I may know more than you may have more experience. But that doesn't come into the co creation. You see, I just bring it in but it's not as a okay because we are unified. That's a super mind. You see that's the beauty of the super mind. Everyone brings everything. But there's no yu mi hierarchy title doesn't doesn't feature that's why that real co creation vertical either it's like come let's go in this right together, let's go and play together, let's go and co create together and figure it out because we're gonna screw things up as we're going on. We're gonna screw a lot of things up and we're gonna learn from it and welcome to life and that's it. It's by invitation only
[00:28:05] spk_1: So so powerful. Now I want to wrap this up for us a 10 and before I leave our audience here, I just want to know what's the one thing, what's the if this, if all of these concepts are so new to you in leadership or perhaps you're looking at becoming a leader in the future, What's just the one negative advice? The one place where we can start to start embodying this leader that's capable of co creation and excellence and all of these incredible things you talk about.
[00:28:36] spk_2: So there's so many things, but I'll tell you the one thing, if I could advise anyone, start the quest for self realization and self realization is not self development. Self realization is get connected to who you really are and that will then help lead the way and open the pathway for you, then accessing the right resources and the right skills and the right tools how to connect with people. But when you can get closer and closer to the core essence of who you are as a human being beyond form beyond body beyond feelings beyond thoughts, I mean we have all these things but without the identification that liberates you to start seeing life with more clarity to connecting with more clarity, to be inspired. Um that that is my biggest advice, the rest of the stuff is easy stuff, eating books, sitting workshops, you don't need me for that. I don't think I can add any value to that beyond many other far greater minds than me that have come up with, you know how to and all that. So that would be my, my my strongest suggestion.
[00:29:53] spk_1: Well I after this session will need to take a minute to pause and let this land and think about it a little more because we do so naturally think that to develop oneself again, it might be an interchangeable thing that we quite often confused with self realization and it's not this isn't about more training, this isn't about more knowledge, this is about the journey inward to understand who you are at the core of your being and bringing that forth, isn't it?
[00:30:20] spk_2: Wonderful. Absolutely. As saying that I once read many years ago that really stuck with me, if you don't go within you go without and basically that's my suggestion. Okay go inside, okay, just stop believing that everything is on the outside, you have to fix it and go inside and things will get clearer and that will make life much easier to lead others with confidence will come from you, from the from who you are not from some new management techniques that you learned in some workshop that everyone can see
[00:30:53] spk_1: incredible, incredible A tan thank you so much for joining us at human leaders today to impart your incredible knowledge, your experiences um giving us this new way of looking at ourselves as leaders, the role we play as leaders and how we can start to create organizations that truly you are able to cultivate big words like co creation. So thank you so much for joining us here today. We really, really appreciate this session
[00:31:24] spk_2: opportunity.
[00:31:28] spk_1: We hope you enjoyed this live session as much as we did. Big conversations around what it means to be a human and a leader. It's what we're all about. Our human leaders. Community hosts, live leadership circles and conversations every month with an expert joining us for a learning session just like this one to help us grow and evolve our leadership, join us at www dot We are human leaders dot com and be a part of the conversation. See you next time.