It's about how you think, not what you do! Feat. Special Guest Dr. Ted Sun #Podcast #UnscriptedLeadership

Welcome to the Unscripted Authentic Leadership Podcast. A podcast We're seeking to lead change while also seeking to understand. We're also here to provide a platform for leaders to come together to unite, empower and develop other leaders in the areas of business, family, faith and community. I'm your host Lafayette Lane, joined by my co-host, John Lebrun, and this week we are joined by a special guest Dr. Ted Sun. Those of you that are watching listen to this go ahead and put those clap emojis in the comments those hands together. Clap it up for Doctor Ted Sun and he is here to have an incredible conversation today around the topic behaviorism just a little bit about Doctor Ted Sun, He is abundant and passion, integrity and innovation. That's how many across the world have described Doctor Sun. After working with him over the past two decades, even before the pandemic hit the world, Doctor Son saw the lack of systemic thought and problem prevention skills and many leaders across the world. Says no business schools were developing these key skills. He built a University focused on complex intelligence and skills development. None like none other in the world leveraging his two doctor degrees, one in psychology and another in business management along with an elite group of professionals, consultants, authors and or thought leaders. He launched Transcontinental University in the US to extend the work of his accredited Graduate Business School in Europe. As the President and Chief Innovations officer at Transcontinental University in Dublin, OH. He lost the first executive MBA. An inclusive leadership in the world that addresses the current challenges and diversity, equity and inclusion using his systemic perspective and organizations. Doctor Sun revealed the numerous challenges and behaviors approaches and today we have Doctor Son. With us. I'm gonna let Doctor Son tell us a little bit more about himself where he's from and just what his University does and a little bit more detail as we launch into this conversation. Doctor son. Sure, thank you very much. It's hard to be here and to all the viewers out there. It's an honor, but be talking with you on this very important topic, so a little bit about me. You know, I was an immigrant, came to the US at the age of 10 and I've kind of worked from the slums of Brooklyn, NY All the way to where I live now in Columbus, OH. Never even thought that the job of a University president was a reality at all until the last ten years or so, so, but, you know, grew up with a mechanical engineer. That's why I got my first degree and then pursued half a mechanical engineering degree and then decided to jump off and do an MBA instead. So I saw the need in the business field. 'cause I'm my passion. Was you know solving engineering problems with one thing and it's always logical. But I saw the bigger challenges with people. People was always mysterious to me so I went and got an MBA. Once I had finished MBA, I realized it's not anywhere close to being enough. So I got my first Doctor in management and then once I learned that I'm like, oh, that's not enough. I got into the psychology field so you know, bridge and all these gaps. You know having a multi disciplinary approach to understanding how? Businesses function how human beings go to a job. An workout at a job for, you know, with all of the majority of their waking hours. I'm kind of realized that there is a lot of things in education that is often missing. So you know one of the one of the fascinating topics that I learned in my first Doctor. It was a course on management traps and its specific book that the audience can easily go get is manufacturing employee. And it taught me about how universities were created in the purpose of University and overall the school systems as a whole in the early Industrial Revolution where they needed to manufacture employees that can be controlled within the industrial machine. So people to push the buttons on the assembly line. That's the purpose of the education system. Right, and as I kind of studied further and further in my second doctor, I understood the psychology psychological aspect of how human, how the human brain learn and how we come to grow as human beings. And I've really got about much better understanding how University systems work as I worked in many numerous different universities across the world like University of Liverpool. To you know, top University in China, Africa. Also, you know Southeast Asia. As well as the US of course, and you know, it's it led to me that the business, schools and how they're approaching education you know. Although the topics have gotten better over time with new technologies and new concepts, but how they are being taught is drastically limiting as much time and money. People spend things needed programs when you ask most graduate degrees or even business degree graduates. Hey, how much do you remember? Right, so you guys for example were from your degrees. How much do you really remember from your degrees? It's pretty limited. Most of its post degree now most degrees or memorize and regurgitate for a test. Yeah, yeah exactly, and that entire system of regurgitation is a form of teaching you how to be controlled by someone else, 'cause how good you are is determined by the professors by the test itself. Wow. Yeah, I had. I had read something similar in a different book and it said that could be wrong, but it was. Our education system was based off oppression system which was basically not how to think but how to do what you're told was essentially what how they outlined it two different things. So it's interesting, yeah. Yeah, I mean conformity pretty much is the same concept, right? You? Your job is to say yes, Sir, to the boss, whatever the boss is, the minute you enter the school system, even at the elementary level, the teacher determines how good you are as a student. And we play so much focus on, you know, listen to your teacher. Study this. Study this study this and the testing systems that exist in the elementary systems always up is crazy. How much they determine your worth based on an external perspective as opposed to understanding our own worth and our own value in our family life in our friendships in the community, in the church, and whatever activities we belong to. But we're still focused so much on what the school tells you. That's how good you are, right? Everybody tells you to get good grades past essay T. AC T and then University. Even the same thing. It's all about that hierarchical conformity system that's out there. Which kind of brings back down to that whole behaviors, principles. You know, as we're talking to the viewers about behaviorism and you know, let me give you a very basic understanding of behaviorism. Behaviorism basically says the human being is a simple stimulus response system. So if I poke you, you're going to get a response out of you, right? So the behavior is a. The poking is a stimulus. And the outcome is a response and it makes human beings very simple. If I give you a gun, you're going to shoot it. OK, so there's not much in cognitive understanding of people, and there's so much going on in the current world right now, especially with the systemic racism. Black lives, Black Lives Matter, and so forth. Everybody looks at the whole entire population. And how do we get them under control? Many companies approach this as let me check the box of training. I'll give you a course you take this course and you know, regurgitate some concepts that you theoretically understood it. Even though your memory of this is going to be really short, check the box done. All of my employees are trained and certified in diversity and equity inclusion. Right now nobody. It's the biggest joke nobody's looking at. Hey, how are you each individual at the individual level perceiving another person? Right, right? How do we see them? How do we think through stuff before the decision that behavior is even happened, right? So if I you know in our diversity program we teach people say OK, if I put in a professional athlete in front of you, what should emotional connotation? How do you see that person if I put a beggar in front of you, right? Or if I put a generator in front of you, what is that an emotional connotation? How do you classify them? 'cause that's part of the functions of the brain. Our brain will categorize and reduce the amount of data we get. So that we can understand what's going on and then process faster to be more efficient. But it's not efficient at all. We make all kinds of unconscious bias on a regular basis, but there's no awareness and looking at what is the perception and the thought process behave before behaviors happen. So as all these wonderful courses talk about, do this if you get in situation, do that if you get to get this situation, it's Doo Doo Doo. Nobody says, how should you think about this? How should you perceive it? 'cause in the most waste they won't even perceive that reality? Yeah, you talked about you laid the foundation of what behaviorism is. And you talked about the diversity. How? What can we do or what can companies do or what can we do as leaders to improve other than, as you said, just checking a box and now everyones training diversity? What are some next steps that we can put into practice that can say hey we can actually change the culture and actually bring a cultural diversity through these behaviors and techniques? What are some of those things that we can do to put into practice to change that? So now your question unfortunately. Beautiful question, but the question is what we can do. Yeah, so much of what we can do is what we can design in the system, in education or in systems of education. Systems of thinking to change how people think and see each other. Thank you, so let's start off with core values. OK, this is research I've been doing since 2006. I published my first paper and with the UN conference in looking at core values, if we look at diversity, right? The worst thing to do is to say diversity is a color erase a demographic group. I group you into this category. Therefore everybody takes on the same characteristics, right? If you're African American you must be black. Lives Matter, so you must be an athlete or you must be this. Whatever the category is in the and the characteristics go with category. Throw that out. OK, the biggest lesson here for humanity is the actions of a few does not equate to the entire group. That's good, however we look at that right. Whether it's the police, whether it's a government, whatever the actions of a few individuals does not equate to what the group represents, right? So we go down to looking at core values. What are your top? Five values. Write them down right in our work with organizations. We go to the value level. OK so we say hey, what are your top five values at the executive level at the middle management level at the lower levels and get people to be more conscious of their core values through the values we get them to create a much stronger relationship. Between people because of values not because of we're so different and and put salt silos in each place, right? So while we wait, let's take the two of you for example. What are your top five values? Loyalty, integrity. Respect. Oh spirituality. I don't know what my fifth one would be. Yeah, those are basically my core values. That's pretty good, yeah? I would add accountability for me to that along with several of the ones he mentioned. That's a big one of mine. Accountability, character integrity. I like loyalty word but. I don't know how many I just named, but I've never written out five exactly. You know what I mean? Yeah, me. Either yeah. Right, I think I'm going to. Do that with this. Yeah well, so let me take this to the next step. Once you write this in the piece of paper right, then you go to your best friends. Then you go to your coworkers and people that you will go to church with and you have other activities with. Ask them what they think your top five values are. They will be able to reflect to based on your behaviors, how they see you. So let's take you know. But you both talked about integrity, right? Integrity, accountability, similar, right. If you have integrity as number one. Does your best friend, your coworkers, see that in you on a regular basis if they don't? Then you get a good, better understanding that you may not behaving according to these values as much as you think you are. That's great. So you get a better understanding that you know another example here. Respect how would you define respect? Respect for me is. Basically showing someone the level. Of. How they treat you. Treat others the way you want to be treated in a simple definition for me. Not based off of exterior things, but what a person shows you. That's a level of respect that you get from me. At least viewed to respect this two different things. Some some people say I will like. Be respectful to somebody like elders and something and stuff like that. You know, tell my kids, be respectful of adults. And then there's people I have respect for based on how they've lived or how they've you know. Like I had. Maybe I hold them in a high. Maybe I put him on a pedestal or something based on, well, I really respect this person based on their life actions. I guess you can say. But I mean, maybe I could be wrong there, though I'm instantly had to say. Yeah, see you both have a different view of respect, right? Yeah, I'll take that basic rule that you talked about earlier that Golden rule respect says do unto others as they would as you would like to be on to you, right? Yeah, correct. How many people is exactly like you? In very few. Hit miss yeah. Not really, right? 'cause you're unique. Every well at the basis of diversity. Every human being is unique with their own set of core values. Sure, is there all set of offerings to the world. Whatever the skill set, maybe right now. Making that assumption in your primary definition, you're assuming there like you. OK, So what if now people talk about the platinum rule? Do unto others as they would like to be done unto them. So your focus is thinking about the other side, the other person. What do they need at the situation? How do they want to be heard? How do they want to be touched, right? Figuratively, literally, right? What is the other side need? But that's not enough, right? That's just the behavior side. Internally. As a leader, you need to figure out what do I need as a human being. So at some point I don't lose myself. You also need to balance. What does John need? What is so in Sonia? What is the entire team may need? You have to balance everybody's needs and showing respect is a balance between your individual needs and the needs of others on your team. So there's a whole systemic thought process that comes into play. It's not as simple as whatever I want, therefore they want. Right, that's the basic assumption. That's the behaviors principles at play you take on those rules that everybody is passed down in generations generations like I did a little bit of research on where the the Golden rule respect came from, and it simply pickle times way back in the beginning, right? It made sense back then, because human beings we didn't move. We were on horses right at most we go through a few cities like Europe, never even though America existed at that time, right? But it wasn't very isolated environment, so it's OK to think that because. Everybody, it was homogeneous in most characteristics 'cause you know everybody didn't move. Now we have globalization, everybody's moved. I mean there's so many different cultures mixed in every single one of our genetics at the starting point, right? Not to even count the whole family dynamics and everything else? Or how we go through life in different socioeconomic classes and so forth. So the whole concept of that Golden rule. But most people took it as a behaviorist approach. Let me just do what I've been told. The thought process hasn't changed. So if we start shifting people in thinking and believing in a different set of rules, it becomes much more interesting. To say the least, right now it's my job as a leader to not assume everybody's like me. But let me go. Figure out what Jane needs. John needs, you know, whatever whoever it is and my team let me go. Figure out what they need and how to create that balance. That is what leaders should do when it comes to diversity. That's not just the starting point, right? Understand your core values. How you define it in each. Each one of those value. There are certain basic assumptions, and we challenge those assumptions which challenge how you think about respect. Wow. So do you find that this then helps people you know? One thing I've been trying to you know my kids see things as far as we don't really watch news and stuff, but they ask questions based on what they hear and stuff like that. And I was trying to explain to them is instead of worrying about everybody's differences and make a bad thing like just 'cause this person likes this and you don't appreciate the differences. Because often when someone else when someone? Has a difference from as a difference from you it should be. It can often be appreciated in like wow. You see this this way I see this this way. Let's talk about it. Or, you know you grew up this way. That's cool. Let's you know, I'm really interested into understanding that. So with your approach, would you? Would you assume? What does that do? You find then that if it sounds to me like you're saying leaders need to start looking at OK, what does Lafayette need right from me too? To as a leader too. Let's say we're working together to help him better thrive in his role or whatever. Does that do you find then that that changes that thought process to? Now we're more appreciating what the individual needs and the difference is that they bring versus before. It's you know in in corporate America, when someone. Does things differently thinks differently? It's kind of out of the norm or the OR the group. It's usually kind of frowned upon if I've been there in the. You know corporate America. We are a little different than maybe the group was, yeah. Yeah, let's kind of break that down into two separate areas. When you talk about children, what are my huge passions? Is bringing up children in the right way? Yeah, one of the one of the common things that people do, and they tend to do this allowed in the management field, so they cut automatically adapted children is explain things to them. Depending on the age range of their children you're working with, especially when you get into the, you know the teenagers or even above 10 first, for example, right, they already have ideas in your head. If you keep on explaining, you're adding on behaviors principles to them, you're telling them what to do. A different approach to that with children, and this works with adults to ask them to go find out. Ask him about their thoughts. The key here is to develop how to open their brains to think differently. To see. OK Lafayette steak in this example here are doing this right now, right? What do you think is going on in his mind? What drives them to behave this way? What in his family history may have led him to this right? Get people to see beyond the actions instead of you explaining to him so they may go and say, OK. I have a little project from Mom and Dad. My job is to go figure out exactly what's in Lafayette's mind. How do I do that right? And this sparked that creativity to empower them to think for themselves. So instead of saying, you need to look at this person this way or you need to think of this person in this way the way you thought was wrong. It's why don't you go and find out more about that person yourself. And then we're saying that human nature will be that they will develop that respect for that same individuals that were trying to. Exactly, it's the thought process you want to develop, yet, not the idea itself. The idea will always come and go, but it's a thought process will stay right in the best situation your children. You know people that look up to you that you talked about respect for others, right people? You look up to you will easily say what would my dad do in this situation. The next time he faces something? Right over my dad asked me to do all my mom asked me to do. That's the program you want to put in their children so they start thinking in a proper, healthy way that opens their eyes to reality. That be so good too, because when you look at, let's say for example somebody does grow up in a family that. Maybe it has lacks leadership in developing their children as they get older you see that reflect then as a teacher there always tell your sort of nicely telling them what your dad said is wrong. But now you're combatting what mom and Dad told him

15 twenty years, and they've never been able to go and create their own thoughts on their own. And now you're empowering them to find out for themselves, which goes back to the core of why we actually started our show in Lafayette, and I would have difference of opinions we actually just. Talked over lunches and stuff and realized you are differences. Opinions are actually have a come from just experiences, which is fine, but we actually wanted the same or very similar results. We just saw them from different perspectives and that's why we actually started talking. The show is to get those perspectives for the same reason, but anyways, that's so good. Yeah, so the second part on the corporate side, right? Yeah, talk about different ideas and innovation and so forth. You know in the corporations the systemic racism is in is breaded in such a way that we all make assumptions. So let's take the race out right? People are marketing versus people in engineering. Imagine an engineer going to a marketing guy. Hey, I got a great idea for something. Guess what? The first thought that comes out of a marketing guys head. What's the bias there? What's the unconscious bias? Who is it for? Who is a cater to? You're saying the marketing guy is going? The engineer says I got a great idea in the West of marketing. Guys. First thought, Yep. For who? Not, not quite, so I was just talking to a marketing executive Friday on this topic, right. Unconscious bias automatically comes out. You know what my idea is? How do you shut you up? Yeah, we'll never know, OK? So, but when you look at the different functionalities within corporations, different corporations have biases thord certain sectors. So what they do right? If you look at it, finance. Those guys are making decisions based on numbers they don't care about people. Right unconscious bias. Actually used to work and we hated the sales Department. Yeah, you hated the sales in like him. You're in sales, don't like you? The sales guy that makes me do it. Yeah, harder you can make crazy promises to the customers and to clients who get. Yeah I can't do right that. We don't have capabilities that happens all the time. What do you think of HR? Everybody has their ideas about HR and how they do training right? So even in companies, different functions have different levels. When you look at the Union system right, many companies do have unions manufacturing the hierarchy of the longevity. How long you've been around? That's a huge unconscious bias, right? In high tech fields, it's you know what type of degrees you have. You know you get value. Degree from Harvard. Would you supposed to be this big thing out here, when in reality he's just another person? Right now, who gets what degree in software? So there's so much unconscious bias in different places, and one of the things that we've just kind of created as a new product for universities is what we call fearless innovation. We take every single demographic out of the equation. OK, imagine working in an innovation system where we train the people in such a way and we have put it the technology piece to this as well. There's no names. There's no schools, there's no color. There's no race. Everything is completely gone. Right, you can be. You know, some companies it's the Company of animals. Everybody gets alias. And you share ideas and then based on the collection of the initial ideas, you have innovation meetings. We trained that management. How to do innovation meeting. So we capture the ideas and value the different thoughts, unique thoughts and there's no company functions in these borders, right? We designed the system in such a way that nobody's trapped in marketing. Write whatever idea you have. It goes through the knowledge structure so that the best ideas win. Not the color of your skin, not your education. Not where you come from. None of that matters. It's the best ideas win in this innovation system. Right, so a lot of those corporate concepts you know it's hard to get out of just because we're so ingrained in it, right? You talk about sales, everybody thinks you know a greasy car salesman, right? You talk about whatever Emma Engineering and like when I was in high T way in the back. Oh no days. It was hilarious because we would always have the user error, right? It's not a technical error that all these people are reporting. It's a user error, you know, we blame it on the users 'cause whatever the customers are, the users weren't doing it right. Right, but then the tech guys have no idea what the user actually go through in their regular day lives. And sometimes we see that on Microsoft Office or whatever new software that comes out. You know the technical pieces there, but it doesn't fit how you want to use it. Right, we see this all the time and all kinds of different things. So everybody has some type of unconscious bias. It's there, it's part of our human brain how we operate and the reason why it's there is because typically the human brain gets about 11 million bits of bytes of data coming at us every single second. Imagine 11 million coming at us right? And we only process a 2000. OK, so the amount of data reduction that has to happen from all this stuff that's coming out here to very very small amount. So we have to make general assumptions right because everything has to fit into a nice container so that we can process it consciously. And some things we don't process. Back take that out from an innovation perspective. If you're talking about creating new ideas completely, eliminate the whole concept of it came from this person. Who cares? It doesn't really matter. There's a scientific process in place that moves the idea for the value of ideas moving forward. So from that, is that why you started the transcontinental University? To take away, you said the biases. Or can you tell us a little bit more about that? The University and of itself, yeah. Sure, so the way I've designed the University, there's so many different systemic changes, so let's start with the basic curriculum right in any University the way they designed the curriculum as a marketing Department will design the marketing course. The Finance Department would differ. Designer finance course. Everybody is so isolated. Buckets right in the real world, everything is connected in a business sense. Right, they wait the way they teach it. Everything is segregated, so the way we've kind of gone about doing it, hey, let's take these meaningful topics. Put him together. OK, so we've taken technology and finance into a single course so that how technology and finance integrate with each other and support each other makes sense, so the whole sequence of all the courses their students are learning systems thinking how do these different parts that don't usually don't fit fitting here. Right, that's like step one and you know it was kind of fascinating during the accreditation process, when University want to get started, we always there's always accreditation processes, right? So the state goes through its first level of accreditation piece when we had a site visit, one of the site visit professors from another University basic set. You have an MBA. Why don't you have an accounting class? Accounting class so we said well based on this matrix here, accounting is embedded into a chart into marketing into every single one of these functions. 'cause accounting is being used in all these different functions. If I teach accounting by itself, I may know how to read us accounting spreadsheet, but do I know how it integrates into that real function? Not really right. It's very limited. So the way we've designed the curriculum is very, very much integrated. Putting systems thinking throughout entire critical. So that's one part of this one. Part of the system, and we can kind probably go on for hours about the whole. You know the system of the education side. Another very basic principle. Most universities use tenured professors right? The minute you get tenure, guess what happens? You're invincible, you're invincible, right? So there, what's the incentive to? Perform to tigro to make sure that you're doing your job to make the biggest best impact on the students. You know, some my favorite professors were the adjunct professors when I was in college. They just were they were excited to be there, yeah? Yeah, exactly, and as human beings you know if we're given a cushy job, sooner or later, the brain basically goes to mush to some extent, right? Why work so hard? Nothing is going to change. I'm going to get my 6 figure salary no matter what. Why should I work so hard start to coast a little bit. You may start the coast, but then you get a few individuals that's really passionate. That actually, really, really care. They want to make an impact. They want to see the impact, right? So in our system, there's no tenured professors. I've created a performance management system where you know most companies. Performance Management is a one year kind of a cycle. In our system, it's a actual feedback before the course is over, right? Instead of all you get is bonus in the positive side and the only thing that matters is 2% or 4% or 10% right, whatever the bonus structure is in the positive side. Well guess what? In my system they can go the negative side. If you really don't do your job, your base will get decreased. So there's a lot of different metrics and systems to put in in the system so that it works intelligently that guides people to become the best. It is not a system where, hey, something's wrong. Let me go fix it. We don't wait for the fixing part to happen. We designed the system to create the best. That is good. That is good. That's really good. Yeah, so the brain. Is hurting from this conversation. Going, thank you. The very basics of this the student is at the end, right? They're coming to learn. OK, so in our system you can't come to our school without being full time employed at a manager level higher in our graduate program. If you come without being employed, can you apply anything? Limited with less yeah. Right, so no matter how great we are in teaching, if they can apply it, your brain will forget. Yeah, that's how the human brain functions. OK, you can do all the testing and whatever happens if you can apply it, you'll forget it. So with full time working students guess what we get to do. They get to create their the center of the actual true education. So they get to bring their problems from their workplace income. So if they're learning marketing class, they're learning leadership class, for example. They could do an assessment of their own leadership within the company and whatever level they choose to write, and then we take the theories we help him develop an intervention to go make it better, and then they go apply it so it's not some theoretical case study about Amazon or Walmart this now this theoretical stuff. And in the real world nobody hands you piece of paper. A problem on the piece of paper right here is a case study, so here's the problem. Everything is on a piece of paper that doesn't happen in the real world, so we're giving them real world skills of let me go figure out what the problem is. We help you figure out how to identify the right problem. Prevent it from blowing up in your face like this pandemic, right? So they're solving the problem before it blows up. Wow, in the class being mentored and guided by faculty who are already consultants who are helping companies across the world to do this already right? So at the end of the day, within almost every single class you will help solve a number of problems in your company. That's how location. Wow, does this allow them to adjust to then? Well, fixing 'cause you do a case. In this case study or something they say. Well, here's the solution. Case closed. You know all done, got it, but when you do that in real life you have a solution and it may be good, but there's almost always something else that happens, you know cause and there's a whole. Cause and effect fact there we go so you do something and something else is going to happen. You need to figure that out. I didn't think about it so you helping them do it in real life is it? Is it prolonged then so they can now say hey, this just came up now we. Gotta figure out this situation. Yeah yeah and this is amazing. This is what systems thinking really gets into right. If imagine a system is always a cycle, yeah, so there's like a cycle of life. Somebody dies. And then the Rebirth software and the system stinking model. There's always a measurement in multiple places within the. Implementation of that solution, right? The measurement is often the missing part in most business strategy and so forth. I've seen all kinds of different strategies and strategic plans that have no measures in it. How do you know if it works? They have no idea, right? So in the systems, thinking well, when we do the implementation is we say OK if you take this action. Here's what should happen. What's the measure for it? How do I know that this action created this result and the various influences to it? An in real life? The cause and effect is too simplistic. OK, that's another behaviors principle. It's one cause. One effect. I poke you, you jump right to simple, OK? In human systems where there's multiple people working together, you have to look at. One implementation, whatever systems does it influence and how different systems impose on each other. So when we do an implementation of any kind of solution, it's never once one action. It's never one thing, one behavior in one Department, it's OK. Now if I want to do this, let's say fix the leadership, right? Since we're talking about leadership here, if we want to fix leadership, how do we do that? It's not about taking them to a training or some course alone. It's about creating the environment so we get a good understanding of values and the starting point. And then we put in a system that holds them accountable to those values. And then we put in a system where we kind of help them learn and guide them through frequent feedback loops, right? And the performance management system should be able to tell the leader, hey, you're going the right way, you're going the wrong way. On a regular basis, not once a year. Once a year, they've already developed all kinds of good habits and bad habits, and the bad ones will kill him, right? So the performance management system is another one that will often improve as part of the system to continue to guide them. And going in the right direction. What are some of the challenges that you see within leadership or other context of whatever the context is of leadership with the inclusive leadership that you offer? What are some of the challenges that you see specifically? I think the biggest challenge is that the money leaders don't understand system thinking. OK. At the basis of it, most people talk about systemic racism, inclusive leadership, and so forth. And then I asked him what systemic process did you put in place? What inclusive process did you put in place to make the changes so people feel included? The sad part is, nobody's really experienced inclusive leadership. He right where do you get the examples from? 'cause everywhere you go, somebody at the top is making decisions. For the rest of the people underneath them. Right, there's not very many places that they've designed a knowledge structure to go alongside of the hierarchical structure. OK so helping leaders get a good understanding with systems are and then we help them design the system that's needed to create inclusion, right? So if you're talking about specific inclusion, for example meeting agendas. Right? Who creates meeting agendas in companies? Usually the manager, whoever leader meeting. Supervisor, you know those were charging? People in position of authority. Not inclusive. OK, we put a very simple inclusive process in there so that when they agenda gets created, guess what every single person has had input into the system. Now when people go to meetings. Hey, my idea, my concern is on my online meeting agenda. My voice is heard. I have a sense of belonging. So is this kind of a win you need to bring an idea to the table. Kind of system? Is that how that would work? Yep, Yep, that's that's part of it, yes, but identifying problems before it happens. Like a lot of times, the supervisor, the managers don't know that these things are happening at the lower levels, right? 'cause they're not interfacing it on a regular basis, right? So the frontline people are interfacing with the customer with the technology or with whatever they do on a regular basis. They can see the problem is happening. Right, so when you created agenda, Now the management leaders will automatically create the direction the meeting would go right? They want to set the direction, but details of that agenda gets built by the people that's doing the work. OK, so it's kind of like if you're running a call center like hey, we're going to talk about how we are handling our customer service with such and such product. I want to know how that's. Operating with you and you basically get down in the weeds and have everybody talk about their challenges within the software. The customers things are seeing is that kind of what you're saying. Yes, to some extent, but there's a very dangerous line that you don't want to cross. Yeah, well, let's take the call center example. The call center example maybe. Hey, we want to reduce our number of calls. Down decreased right so that you don't have overload in the product's doing this job. How do we do that? That's open ended question. That's open interaction that you can give when you give that direction to the lower levels, it's not identified the challenge, but find 2 solutions for every challenge you see. You have to focus people on the positive, creative part and then also show that you believe in them. That makes sense. Yeah, no, they're bringing solutions, not just problems to a meeting exactly. Exotic sense. Wow, so everything. That you've said. I mean, it's been such a wealth of knowledge and information that you have given, but if I was to simplify, everything starts in the mind before we do it. It's you have to think it yes, right? And when I think about that, I I'm a preacher, doctor side, and so there's a scripture that says, as a man, think about heart. So is he? That word heart in the original texts in the Hebrew is mind. So as a man thinks in his mind, so as he is so. What you've been saying this entire time, that if we can. Because when I posed the question earlier, I posed it as what can we do? And you said, how can we think that's just mind-blowing to me? So if we can change the way we think, we can change the way how we act. Yeah, and I would say that's step one, but go another deeper level. OK, let's go. Right, how can we think before we think? How do we perceive reality in a healthy way? OK, how how do we do that? I'm here for you. So, so this is. This will take at least six months of conscious development. OK, we will constantly put different containers in front of you. Right, so I can put the word in front of you, say Africa. Right will come to your mind right away. I think about my people. Well, you say after immediately OK goodbye my people my culture. Right now, but so here's the fun part here. Which part of Africa? Which nation? Which tribe? In which nation? OK, so you took me a level deeper, I don't. Know so. So here's the perception, right. The perception of Africa. Too many Americans. It's like its own little country, right, right? Yeah, but have you been to Africa? I have no. Look at the different African countries and look at different tribes in Africa. They've been fighting each other for value differences for long time. Yeah, every country has its unique principles, have its own unique way of what it means to be in Ghana to be in Nigeria, to be in. Kenya, right? And within each one of those countries, the tribes in those countries have unique differences. OK. OK, so like take for example Ghana. Ghana is a country that you know we there's a lot of guardians in Columbus, OH. OK, yes so yeah so. But when you ask them if they are from northern part is gonna like Ashanti, right? The shanty guardians are usually a little bit taller. Their cultural values a little bit different versus the ones from the southern part of Ghana like in Accra, which is the capital. And even the foods they eat is different. OK, so how they think how they behave? There's conflicts between northern and southern tribes in Ghana. Right, so getting good understanding of the tribal level is where you need to go. Not assumption of all of Africa. And the same thing container happens in Europe, right? When we think of what does it mean to be European? Well guess what those guys fought for centuries and centuries and centuries, right versus the Romans versus the breads. And, you know, Estonia and just now I mean they fought constantly, right? What do you think of Asia? Asians, right? We have this whole challenge right now in the in the US about the whole Asian hate issues, right? But they take that container Asia and then say the Asians? Well, you know how different they are, right that drastic or even put the container of Americans, right? What's on American? Oh my goodness. We're not that simple, but the Europeans make that assumptions on a regular basis. If you're American, you're self centered, egotistical you think on the world, and you behave in certain ways. Alot of people treat Americans that way until you get to go there and show them that you are you and your different, and you're another human being. OK, so how we perceive reality is the first step. Perception is that data that we see. And then the thought process come after that, and then the behaviors. Let's go. That's really good. Is there anything else that you wanted to to provide our audience on? The topic of behaviors or anything that has to do around that, or something that you wanted to talk about doctors? I just enjoy talking to you, man. Thank you, yeah you know the thing, that kind of gets me a little bit upset is I see so many companies out there taking peoples good money and giving certificates left and right and at the end of the day people have walls of certificates that they don't really know what the concept is really about. So for everybody out there that's looking to upscale, you know it's a huge concept. Right now everybody is doing some type of upskilling or reskilling or whatever you want to call it. Be careful about the courses you're taking out there, right? There's a lot of courses out there that give you a lot of information. The information is maybe good information, but you may not learn it based on their methodology. Take learning into your own responsibility as an individual. Don't expect company or some other external source to do it. 'cause most of them. Don't know. It's not profitable, right? Sure, I can give you all kinds of stuff I can replicate it. I can give you 10. I can create one single course and sell million copies. Make it kind of money with it. I'm not really changing people. But the consumer has to say, OK, you're not here to help me learn. I'm responsible for that. I'm not going to simply do what this behavior is. You're saying I should do as a good leader as emotional, intelligent leader or as this is that it's not about behaviors. I need to take a step back and say OK if I want to learn this I need to figure out how do I see reality differently. How do I think through this? And then how should I behave? And then once you figured out how you behave part based on your core values and your environment, the people around you. Then you put into a learning system where you can say OK. Every week I will apply some. This knew action that helps me think differently and then put a system to measure the outcome of that action. That's when you really, truly learn. But it has to be individual responsibility. Sure, that's when you become an extremely powerful learner, Anna leader. Wow. John, did you have any other questions for Doctor Son? No doctor son. You do. Also as we I think we're kind of wrapping up a little bit. Your University also does consulting with companies to help them help guide on putting in these practices an ways of helping. Employees learn how to think and so forth. As we've been talking about. Is that true? Yes, did you want to talk any on that? As we wrap up? Sure, like so to me, like the consulting world is often somewhat of a challenge because consultants have some great ideas and they give it to a company executive, right? It's in a binder, yeah, great ideas. And then the company exactly looks at what I do with this notification. How do I oftentimes? It's on the behavior side, so when we look at consulting, it's consulting education should be very much tide together, right? If I have a great idea, I can give it to you from an intellectual property perspective. I still need to go and develop the people underneath that so that they can apply it and create a system where this gets better and better and better every iteration. If you had to bring a consultant back multiple years, then there's an ethical challenge there. Right, I always have fun with, you know people that are coaches or executives or consultants. You know how, how many years have you had those clients? The minute they go over two years for having a client, then there's A to me. There's an ethical challenge to my to my understanding. Of what we should do for companies, we should empower them to give him a system so that it can perpetually grow and be perpetually better and better and better overtime not. Hey, I always need you let me call the consultant to fix this problem. Let me call the consultant fix that problem. The constant perpetual need to call somebody no codependence in my world. So the consulting education is really very much tide together. Even in the education side of things and the academic programs we help people solve their problems while they're going through an MBA or PhD on the consulting side, we add a lot more by saying here's another system. Here's a fearless innovation system that eliminates unconscious bias that ensures guarantees inclusion in every aspect of creating new ideas. That's intellectual property. So we do that on the consulting side, as well as provide educational support. To make sure people can run those systems. I love that fearless innovation idea. You know how anybody companies listening you know how much innovation your company could have over 12 month period? If this was really part of the culture in the company where everybody comes up with solutions to problems and they're all brought to the table because people have such great ideas. But most people are afraid to speak up. And I think part of that is because we were raised in school where if you said something wrong or made a mistake on something. You got a big red mark, right? I was telling my kids like quit being so afraid to fail. It's OK, I don't care. You're going to fail if you're not failing. You're not learning like failing is part of growing. The problem is the school teaches us that failing means you know you've been bad and you have to do it again, which, but why is doing something again a bad thing necessarily, right? I mean perpetually having to do over and over major, not learning the proper things, but there's nothing wrong with having a set back that's called business. It's called life anyways. Right, yeah? And the beauty of this once we implement this, it's not a 12 month journey. Yeah, it's a three to six month journey. You know I have clients that's done this and within the first two months they take their zero number of ideas like one of the metrics have his ideas per employee. OK, before we engage with them, they had zero, can never measure it. They had no idea. And then they were complaining about not being having no innovative solutions or no innovation in their company, right? We engage with them by the 2nd month. We were at 1.25 ideas per employee. OK, so depending on the implementation piece three to six months we can get them there. It's not a whole year when you think systemically and holistically to change many environmental variables. You can make it happen. That is incredible and this is been an incredible incredible conversation. Those of you that will watch and listen to this episode. We want you to not just watch and listen to a doctor. Ted has said on this episode, but we want you to follow him on his various social media pages there on his LinkedIn page. Doctor two tedson Ann on Facebook. Doctor Tedson are those are two main places that they can follow you on doctors tent. Yeah, also at the University website. Why published many articles and? You know different resources for deers. Absolutely, absolutely. And as always we want you to follow unscripted on our various social media platforms. There are Facebook page. You can watch this episode and you can see clips from this episode there on unscripted authentic leadership also on our Instagram page. At unscripted leadership you can also find us on LinkedIn. Unscripted authentic leadership on our YouTube channel. Subscribe their unscripted authentic leadership, those who've been name out watch this episode but you will listen to this. You can do that. By going to our various streaming platforms we are all podcast platforms from Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio Stitcher and so much more. Wherever you can find podcasts, you can stream that on any platform. You can also connect with us on our website. Unscripted-leadership.com and our read of The month this week is if experience is such a good teacher. Why do I keep repeating the course? J Ellsworth kalas? That is our reader, the month this has been another. Incredible episode here on the unscripted Authentic leadership podcast. Again, we say thank you to our special guest Doctor Ted Sun for all the fire, the knowledge that he dropped in the wisdom that we can go back and take with us to be better leaders and we are we with. We are thankful for that. As always we're here to build bridges and not walls, bridges connect, walls divide until next time we pray you be the leader that God has called you to be.