045: Collaborating Beyond the Org Chart with Emmanuel Gobillot

Pete Mockaitis
Emmanuel, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome at your Job Podcast.

Emmanuel Gobillot
Pete, it’s a pleasure. Thank you so much for having.

Pete Mockaitis
I understand it’s cold and rainy and dark in London.

Emmanuel Gobillot
It is. It’s a special day today because I don’t if the news travels as far as Chicago but today, it’s a big referendum in the UK. Today is the day the UK decides whether it wants to stay part of the community or not.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, yeah. That’s today.

Emmanuel Gobillot
I’m a Frenchman. I’ve been living here for about 30 years now so I don’t get to vote but I get to watch and see what happens and we’ll see. It’s got a strange day.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, its funny. When this air is 1 to 4 weeks later, folks will say, “Wait, that was a awhile ago. That’s old news.”

Emmanuel Gobillot
Yes. You see, I could be gone by then. I could be back in France I don’t know.

Pete Mockaitis
I hope that you do stay where you want to stay. Well, you have so much stuff to share across numerous books I’ve been pulling bits and pieces that I want to chat with you about but it seems like one bit of an overarching theme if there is one is. Often, you look at things and organizations and you say, “there’s got to be a better way.” Tell us a little bit about that and what are the kinds of situations or real life scenarios and circumstances that kind of sparked this thinking for you?

Emmanuel Gobillot
You know, I think we all have them. I think you don’t have to be in an organization to have them. I think as customer you have them. You have those moments when you’re interacting with business and you think, really? Really? Is that what we’re going to do? Is that really the best way? You just don’t know. You think it’s really it’s always been fascinating to me about equating our normal life as individual with some of the business practices. Early on in my career, I used to be in banking a long time ago. I remember the whole performance management thing and I remember thinking you know I have children and I would never dream of sitting down at the beginning of the year with my kids and say, look, it’s a new year so we’re going to set some objectives for the year. Then won’t talk to you for 6 months. In 6 months time, we’ll sit down again and review and see progress. Then at the end of the year, if it’s all gone well, you’d get Christmas.

We just don’t do that. We interact, we talk. We discuss. We correct as we go. All the rest of my career, I’ve been thinking there has to be a better way to kind of reconnect our humanity to the way we do business. What’s always been really interesting for me is how do we get the efficiency and the effectiveness of the four more organizations that we’ve built but yet injected with the energy of the networks that we have, the networks of relationships that we have as people. There must be a better way has always been driving me somewhat and that’s why business is so much fun because you think, well actually, what else can we do? What else can we explore and how can we make things work? Yeah. That’s been my mantra ever since I started on this road really.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. I want to hear a little bit about that sort of liveliness associated with the real live connection. You talk about how the real organization is made up of the networks of relationships people have within and outside the formal organization. There’s even another a fellow Bain alum who’s created some software that kind of maps the communication pathways that show what the “real org chart” looks like and hopefully we’ll snag him as a guest of the podcast later. Can you share with us a little bit about that notion? Why is that what’s real as opposed to what’s kind of formal and on the org chart?

Emmanuel Gobillot
Well, I think the reason I chose word real to describe it is because it is really how organizations work. Anybody, who has ever been successful at achieving anything in an organization knows that you do it through a combination of knowing who has a certain set of skills. You follow the organization chart in that way but mainly the way you work is through an informal network of people you know. You know you could follow the chart to achieve something but client wants you to meet a deadline quickly over customer want something which is slightly unusual and slightly out of the ordinary so you call somebody you know you want  and then you say, “Hey, look. I got that problem and what do you think?” They come back and they say, well I don’t know but Jim over there or Janet over there, they’ll be able to help you.”

I think for me, it’s trying to understand how can we use that energy and align it to the objective of the formal organization. I’ve never said formal organizations don’t matter. I mean I think it’s pretty critical when you want something reliable, when you want something to happen, when you want something to go out to market. You do need some processes and some structure. At the same time, you have to realize that actually that structure needs energy in order to fulfill over and beyond what it is designed to do. The reality of it for me is because we know that’s how organization really function is through those organizations, through those relationships within the organization.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I’m sold. Let’s talk about bringing that energy there. I particularly like to focus the remarks on a person who maybe they’re in their very first management role with a couple direct reports or even an individual contributor on a team. We want to bring forth some more energy, so things are actually happening and flowing. What are some particular perspectives or practices that we should adopt?

Emmanuel Gobillot
Well, there’s two for me. The first one is one of definition. I’m very clear that leadership is about impact on influence not about role. It’s really interesting how in an organization, it’s one of the few instances in life when actually followers don’t choose their leaders. We have a false sense of security when we made the leader. Actually, in organization, it is leaders who choose leaders formally. You thought that’s it, now you’re a leader. Don’t be conned by that. You’ll never be a leader until people follow you. If you turn around and there’s nobody behind you, you’re not leading anybody. You have to be careful that leadership is not about the role but it’s about your ability to impact and influence the world around you so that people decide to follow. The good is even if you haven’t got a leadership role you have a leadership position. You can impact the world around you and you can have that set of skills and you can have people follow you. That’s caveat or point to remember number one.

The way for me, the one thing that trumps everything else when it comes to actually creating energy and the ability and creating followers and the ability to forget things done is to remember one question which you should ask yourself after every interaction, after every meeting, after every conversation. That question is simple. It says, “have I made that person feel stronger and more capable?” Not happy, that’s a different thing. Just have I made that person feel stronger and more capable. I came to this country, so I came to the UK back in 1985 and I came to study originally. It was an advert in TV at the time, the British government was  trying to recruit teachers. The advert was beautiful. It said, “Nobody ever forgets a great teacher.” If you think about it, we all have one. We all have a great teacher.

We all have a great boss. We all have a great mentor. We have that one person in our past distant or near where we thought, you know that person did something for me. They made me feel stronger and more capable. They weren’t necessarily the ones telling me all the time how great I was. They are pushing me a bit. They gave me that job. I didn’t think I could do. They’re promoting me in what I thought was too early or whatever it was. That one person who kind of made us realize something about ourselves. They made us feel stronger and more capable. If you can do that with somebody, actually what you’ve done is you’ve created a whole set of emotions that build a whole lot of trust and resonance. You’ve created somebody who will be following you for as long as you’re around.

I think that’s a really powerful aggression to ask yourself. That just gets the energy of people aligned. If you have that fundamental trust that people think that person is going to make me feel stronger and more capable then it’s a question of giving it purpose. Then you have to decide who are we, where are we going, why are we going there, what do I stand for, what am I about, and people will lend that energy to that effort but it starts with that one question for me.

Pete Mockaitis
That sound powerful and I imagine that’s probably a key ingredient of what we’d call charisma in general and you’ve done some good writing on ingredients of charisma and developing that further. I imagine if people continually walk away feeling strengthened from your exchanges and interactions, they’d say, “What a charismatic guy or gal.” What are some other components to bear in mind beyond that one question?

Emmanuel Gobillot
The key to the whole charisma thing was I was doing some work trying to understand all these thing about what makes a great leader and what is it that leaders do. I thought actually if you think about it, the thing that we need to understand is what do followers want? What is it that people are looking for when they follow someone? Every time we did a piece of research, every time we did interview, people like this thing about charisma there we said, “Well you know, the person is charismatic.” Then if you look at the people who are being described, they look all completely different, somewhere quiet, somewhere allowed. You think, okay, they all have that one thing in common but it doesn’t look the same. There’s not one skill we can point to and say, well, they make great presentation or whatever it was. Charisma took a different form.

What I realized is that Charisma is actually just a short hand that people use for they made me feel something, that made me feel like I wanted to follow them. Then we try to do some stuff around. Well actually what is that something? What is it that we look for in followers? There’s three key to this. One is I think in the US, the presidential election time, people always say, I’ll have a beer with that person. They make us feel like they can relate to us. There’s something about their values that I can equate to, I can understand, I can relate to and they can relate to me. I think that the start of charisma which incidentally is the first two letters of charisma is compassion and hope.

People get me. They understand me. They show compassion towards me but they also give me hope. They give me a sense that they can do something for me and that’s the first things we look for in leaders. Then the next thing we look for is the thing … Actually, is that all a show or can they do something about it? Have they got the ability to do something to take us to that vision or whatever it is they’re describing they want to do for us. Then we look for some other ingredients about can they actually describe that vision in a way that is compelling? Is it simple not simplistic, but is it simple? Do they have a track record of achieving things or are they just a great talker? It has to start with the values okay the leader. Can I in some way share with you the values I hold true and do they resonate with you? Are they build on the same fundamental ground as the one you operate on?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. That’s great. We get the relatable components and it’s like I feel something that guy, that gal. There is a sense of connection and above and beyond that, there’s some substance. There’s some reality to it like that’s going to go somewhere. That will do it. If you got those ingredients then you’re perceived you’re charismatic.

Emmanuel Gobillot
Well, I think it’s a start on the road. I think there is a thing that … You mentioned people in their first leadership role or first management role or people starting on their career. I think the biggest thing which is you look totally emotionally intelligence. If you want, call it social intelligence. It depends which definitions you look at but there is a key characteristic which is the ability to challenge without alienating. You see it with people who are calling you to an organization especially when they come from another organization. They tend to say things like, well, we didn’t do that. We didn’t do it like this in my last organization and it was a lot better or whatever.

You know that the intent is right in so far as they’re trying to challenge you to make things better to make improvement but our first reaction is to say, well, I tell you, what if it was so great then just go back. It’s kind of that ability to be able to challenge in a way which is accepted and which actually I think really helps people and it comes back to this compassion thing. Do you understand the person’s position and do you walk from that position onwards or do you start with your position that are trying to pull them to you? I think it’s easier if you start from that position. If you understand and you think about how am I going to impact that person and it comes back to the ability to influence and rhetoric and using emotions as well as facts and arguments. You have to have that ability to relate to the environment around you in order to be able to challenge it and change it.

If you just walk in and say this is what we’re going to do and this is how we’re going to do. However compelling that is it’s also incredibly challenging and threatening to people. I think starting from the other person’s point of view is much more likely to give you charisma on the basis that they are the ones that are going to give you charisma. The Greek word charisma comes from the Greek for a gift from the gods and it wasn’t a gift from the gods. It’s a gift from your followers. They are the ones that are going to give it to you. You need to understand them first if you got any chance of going anywhere.

Pete Mockaitis
This is fun. This is fun. Well, this is kind of like a buffet of goodness. I want to shift gears yet again. I want to hear a little bit about your latest book here, Disciplined Collaboration: Four Steps to Collaborative Success. It is out in the UK but not yet out in the US as of this airing but it should be rather shortly. It’s kind of like inside scoop for American listeners. Tell us, what are those four steps to collaborative success?

Emmanuel Gobillot
Okay. I’ll make it three, just to simplify things and then we can go into the four. I started to think about the work and when I heard so much about collaboration that I was starting to become tired of it and I was starting to think this whole thing is now becoming a bit of a fad and everybody is asking people to collaborate. Then I was starting to hear things in organization that worried me like I’m supposed to collaborate so we have a lot of meetings now and we don’t get much done but it’s okay because apparently we’re collaborating so it’s fine.

You get a sense that something is becoming a bit too fashionable. Then I was also going … I mean I do a lot of speaking and conference platform and I kept on hearing the same quote which people were starting to use all the time all over the place actually. I know pretty much every continent I had the chance to visit, it was all coming back with that old African proverb. The African proverb goes something like this. If you want to go fast, go alone but if you want to go far go together. People used to use them and say isn’t that marvelous? All I could think about was what happens if you want to go far and fast? How do you get there? Do you get there alone, together or half way through, do you swap people? What’s that whole thing about?

Actually, it’s a bit the same as the conversation we had about the real run four more organization. My sons was always, actually I want the efficiency and the benefits of competition at the same as wanting the richness of collaboration. How can I get both? Then we started to think about, well, how do we make this happen? The first thing that I realized is actually most of us do not think about when we need collaboration. In a lot of instances, when you talk to leaders in organization that says I want more collaboration, actually they don’t. What they want is they want people to consult with each other or they want people to exchange information or they want people to coordinate their action but none of these things are collaboration. Collaboration is one type of exchange but actually on the continuum of influence from competition to collaboration. You’ve got a whole heap of other steps in between.

Step number one to effective collaboration is actually thinking do I need it or not. I have to say and I do say in the [Budha 00:17:44], Actually we probably need collaboration a lot less than we think. We need other forms of influence and other forms of interaction but probably less of collaboration. There is only one … The real instances where collaboration is critical is when we’ve got something completely undefined for which we have no accountability. When we’re trying to solve a problem which nobody is really accountable for but we all know it’s a problem and none of us know how to solve it, then that’s an instance of collaboration. Actually, those instances are few and far between.

Now, my biggest issue was if we don’t do that homework of thinking do I need collaboration, would end up missing the instances where we really need it. That was the first step. The second step is to think, well okay, if we identify when we need them, what are the things that we need to bear in mind around collaboration? What are the things that we need to have in place in order to make it effective. I came back to the four fears of collaboration which is what in the book we’ve called the four steps. The four fears of collaboration are fear of loss of value. Take a consultant or a trainer or a coach, if I tell you everything I know does that make me less valuable? That’s a question.

Pete Mockaitis
Don’t book Emmanuel, he gave all the goods on the podcast.

Emmanuel Gobillot
No, but that’s the … About 8 years ago, I was invited to do a speech at Google. I was preparing myself. I was packing my bag ready to fly across. My son who was 7 or 8 at the time, my son looked at me and said, “Papa, where are you going?” I said, “Well, I’m going to Google.” He said, “Well, why are you going to Google?” I said, “Well, I’m going to Google to give a speech.” He looked really puzzled and he said, “Well, that’s really weird because surely if they want to know what you’ve got to say, they can just Google it up.” They don’t really need to fly you all the way. In any case, it’s all out there anyway so they could watch another one.

It’s at that stage that you think, but actually what is my value? My value is not what I know. My value is not what I say. My value comes, my history, my history, my story, my ability to engage with you, our ability to create something together. Actually, when you start at work, we don’t spend many times sitting down with people and saying let’s define your value. We don’t actually tell people what we think their value is or why we appreciate them or we appreciate their work. What is it that they have to offer?

As a result, we’re actually slowing down our maturity. Maturity for me is being comfortable in your own skin. Actually, for a long time many people in organization just worry about what is my value. Collaboration needs you to be mature to the part where you don’t have to worry about your value because if you worry about your value, you’re never going to interact in the proper way. Step number one is do you understand your value beyond what it is you know. Actually, we’re going to need you to share what you know. Will there be anything left once you’ve shared what you know. That’s step number one. Step number two is about the two fears, well step two and three if you want. The two fears which are most common in most organization to do with collaboration. Fear of loss of quality, fear of loss of momentum. We know them because we’re told if you want something done well, properly and fast, do it yourself.

Again, part of what I do in the book is to walk through how do we get rid of those fears? To get rid of fear of quality is about having the ability to build a purpose that resonates with people, and not just to tell them what to do because you don’t know what you want done as the point of collaboration. Actually to have a purpose which is articulated in a way that people can build it with you. I’ll give you an example, Hollywood. Hollywood is brilliant at putting posters together for a film. You look at the poster. You see the title. You see the tag line and you know what the film is about. You can pretty much decide is that a movie I want to go and see? Is that my kind of film? Then you play that movie in your head and then you make a decision and say, yeah, you know that sounds pretty cool. I’m going to go and see it. That for me is purpose.

Can we articulate something for people which says that’s the kind of film we want to play? In a way that is clearly enough for them to decide whether they want to be involved on or they know what it is that they’re supposed to do. They know if they’re in a comedy or a drama or an action movie and they kind of know sort of what the plot is likely to look like but they’re still excited on when they’re going to see the film. Actually, collaboration is about that. It’s about are we going to create this film together? Are we going to put it together? Do I know what it’s going to be about? Do we have a shared understanding. If we have a shared understanding, then we have much less risk of quality going wrong.

I think that quality comes back to meaning and momentum again is about how do we put … A lot of people talk about gamification but how do we put some staff in place and processes in place that are going to be fun, that are going to make us want to increase the pays, that are going to make us want to increase the pays, that are going to let us know when we are going off track. There’s a whole lot of tools again in the book about that. Then the last step, the last fear that I talk about in the book is fear of loss of control which the most senior you have in an organization, the more important it becomes to you. Fear of loss of value becomes less important. Fear of loss of control takes over which is if a bit likely in the old pirate ships, if I stop drumming, are they going to stop rowing? Can I trust that people are going to carry on even though I’m not always there telling them exactly what to do.

That’s a tough one. That’s a tough one for most leaders to get over and to try to articulate. The way I talk about doing that in the book is to be really open and to create a language around those fears which is language of predisposition and to say to people, look, these are my concerns. This is what I normally do. This is where I know it’s going to go wrong for me. This is where I’m going to become anxious. What are we going to do together to make sure that we get over that? If you have the discipline to go through that stuff which is why the book is called Disciplined Collaboration, if you’ve got a pathway to the process of collaboration then fear of loss of control is much less likely to go ahead. I have to apologize to you. I live next to a church, so the bells have just started. I don’t know if you can hear that.

Pete Mockaitis
I can’t… the bell’s welcome. It’s ambiance. It’s like that you’re the revelations that you are sharing with us from…

Emmanuel Gobillot
Well, there you go. Yes, so the whole thing comes back to actually, can we understand when we need collaboration? Do we understand what’s going to be in getting in the way of being effective? Do we have a set of processes and norms that are going to give us the discipline to go through it rather than just put people in a room and say you need to collaborate? The issue is if you don’t go through those discipline, all you’re doing when people get together is you’re reinforcing their fears anyway. Actually, they’re thinking, well this is a waste of my time. I don’t quite know what’s going to happen here, quality is poor. I’m not too sure why I’m here. I don’t understand my value and nobody seems to be in charge so it’s go to be messy. Unless you make collaboration much more of a discipline, I think chances are you’re going to end up in some weird places which might just be weird and not wonderful.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Well, it seems like that’s … I asked a dense question and you provided some great stuff worthy of unpacking a little bit. Maybe could you share an example or a case study of an intervention along these lines that helped turn things around? They were kind of caught up in the fears but we got to the bottom of what was troubling them and they were able to get unstuck and move forward.

Emmanuel Gobillot
It’s interesting because I’d love to say they’re some kind of weird deep magic which happens when I go into a workshop with the team and there’s something marvelous happens and then some big revelation and then I’m the hero of the story and everything goes well. Actually, it’s very small. I tell you what it is, the thing which happens most of the time and I’ve just finished work with two senior teams, two executive teams. One in the UK and one outside the UK or on the continent. The two things that happened are exactly the same. The biggest revelation for most teams is, wow, we don’t need collaboration the way we think we need collaboration. Actually, the stuff that we really calling for is much more coordination between people and much more consultation between people and much more flow of information but it’s not as big as saying we have a collaboration problem

Just giving them the ability to … Just giving them a set of definition to say, look, on the one hand, you’ve got a competition. On the other hand, you’ve got a collaboration. Let’s think about everything else in between. Which one is it you want and when do you want it? Just to do that work is actually three quarters of the wind because it does two things. First of all, it removes a bit of anxiety that actually we need stuff which is weird and wonderful and a lot of it can be solved with very simple processes.

Most of which are already in existence in organization. It’s just a question of we focusing them. The second thing which happens is that then identify the big ticket items, that just think about, wow, so again there’s three things here which are genuine collaboration. Two of which we hadn’t even thought about because we were so busy thinking we needed more collaboration everywhere and even everything that we actually were risking missing those couple of things. We’d want  in particular the work that we’ve just finished. It was about a market opening which they hadn’t even thought about but it suddenly occurred to them that if collaboration is about things that are undefined for which no one really has an accountability or the accountability is shared. There was a couple of things around the market which they needed to do which they hadn’t even thought about until that moment.

The big thing for me is the simplest thing which is one of definition which is to say, actually, let’s sit down and think what it is that we want and where is it that we want it in this entire collaboration thing. I mean you will know that three onward but it’s the same as culture. It’s the same as empowerment. They’re all big terms that we use all the time but we don’t really spend that much time actually defining them. Once we do, we just think, oh actually, that’s not as complicated as I thought it was. It’s not as big and mysterious as I thought it was. I think collaboration is one of those where it’s kind of … There’s a whole mystic around it now about this is a [killer 00:29:00] thing and it’s going to change the world. Actually, it’s just simple steps and simple processes.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s fun. That’s fun. Thank you. Well, I’d be curious to hear. Is there anything else you want to make sure that you get a chance to put out there before we shift gears into hearing about some of your favorite things?

Emmanuel Gobillot
No. I mean I just … What is really fascinating for me about your work and your podcast or your audiences is I have a real fear and I see that a lot. There’s something strange about a career because actually, for the first part of a career, you feel that you have to fit in to the point that you start having no opinions anymore. Then you get promoted to a point where the only value you have is in your opinions but you kind of have forgotten how to have any because you’ve kept them to yourself so much that you haven’t shared them. The thing which is really interesting about your audience because they’re successful people and they’re people that who are trying to change the world around them and have an impact is please don’t stop. Don’t stop having an opinion and don’t stop being opinionated.

Now, we can learn to share those opinions in maybe a more appropriate way or a way that resonates with people. Please don’t stop having opinions because they will come really handy at some point. Actually, they’re the things that add value is that ability to show new ways and to get people excited and interested. That’s my plea is please carry on doing your podcast and please carry on getting your listeners engaged in the way you do because the more I listen to the episodes that I’ve listened to, the more excited I get by the potential of doing things differently. That’s all.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. That’s a really fun trajectory or chronology. I haven’t thought of it that way before with the opinions but it does resonate. I’m going to be chewing on that a bit. Now, let’s hear a bit about some of your favorite things. Could you start us off by telling us what’s a favorite quote of yours, something that inspires you?

Emmanuel Gobillot
I heard that quote years ago and it was, show me a man with his two feet firmly on the ground and I’ll show you someone who can’t put their pants on in the morning. That always interested me because it made me laugh but it also made a point about sometimes we have to dream a bit and sometimes we have to challenges and sometimes we have to be able to [disrupt 00:31:47] the stage score and say, actually I don’t believe in this or I don’t see how that can work. It’s only through those dreams and disruptions that we can get into some new places.

I’ve always kept that quote at the back of my head and say, you know, never take yourself too seriously and certainly don’t think I’m so grounded because if you’re too grounded, you can’t even put your own pants on. That’s my quote.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. How about a favorite study or a piece of research?

Emmanuel Gobillot
I mean that one is tough. That one is tough because there’s a lot but there’s a little piece of research that I mentioned at the end of every intervention I have, every speech, every conversation. That piece of research, I always come back to. It was a piece of research done in the US in about 2003. People over the age of 65 were asked if you could have your time again, what would you do differently? What is interesting in that study is that the same answers come back over and over again and there’s three in particular which where over 75% of the people interviewed gave and those three answers were: I would take time to stop and ask the big questions, I would be more courageous in love and in work and I would try to live my life with purpose, make a difference. These were the three most common things that people regret.

My call to action to myself and to others is always why wait, why wait. We have, I don’t know, 15,000, 14,000, 500 days left each and everyone of us that’s not that many days to make a difference. Taking time to stop and taking time to ask the big questions, being courageous and living with purpose is something that I hold dear. That’s my little piece of research that I always come back to.

Pete Mockaitis
Powerful. Thank you. How about a favorite book?

Emmanuel Gobillot
Favorite books. Now you see, I don’t … I mean I’m sitting in my study literally surrounded by books. There are many but I’m French so I have to say The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Again, that’s a book that every French person has read at some stage in their life and Saint-Exupéry was one of the first pilots and used to fly and has this wonderful book about crashing and meeting the little prince. If you haven’t read it then I would encourage you to do so. It’s got a certain magic about it. Yeah, I would come back to that as one of my classics.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. How about a favorite tool or whether that’s a piece of hardware or software or gadget or something that has made you more effective?

Emmanuel Gobillot
You know, I am so not interesting, but anything which has got an Apple on it seems to have done a whole lot for me. I was brought up as a Mac guy. I went to university in the UK when Mac was the only thing you can get in the university in the UK. From then on, I’ve been an Apple person all of my life. I have to say, there is one piece of magic, true magic which happened and made a big difference in my life was the first time I plugged in a MacBook and I launched Keynote and then suddenly on the screen was my slide and then on my little screen was my next slide and the timer and all of that happened on its own purely by magic. I thought here, I found a company that understands what I want a computer to do without me even thinking about it. My trustee MacBook has been with me pretty much all over the world and I have to say I have never regretted using it ever. Yeah, that’s my favorite tool.

Pete Mockaitis
Me too. How about a favorite quote?

Emmanuel Gobillot
Do you know that quote? Sorry. Do you know the quote by … There’s a wonderful quote about [tour 00:35:55] which was Einstein was doing an interview and then one of the journalist said to him, “Look, is it possible to see your lab? We’d like to see where the magic happens and where you work.” He just took his pen out and said that’s it, now you’ve seen it. Sometimes, a pen is also quite handy.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. A favorite personal practice of yours, a habit that’s been helpful?

Emmanuel Gobillot
I wake up and I read the news. I try to read a paper for all around the world. I try to catch something from the east, from the west and from the middle depending on where you’re looking at the map. I try to have a round view and then I will always switch off in the evening at some stage and speak to my children. I do that religiously. I’ve never missed a call with the kids and they’re now away but I will do that everyday until the point where they don’t pick up anymore because he’s becoming really annoying, but they haven’t done that so far. That’s my favorite practice.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite sort of nugget or piece that when you share it, it gets folks really resonating in terms of they’re nodding their heads, they’re taking notes, they’re retweeting, they’re highlighting in the Kindle version of your book?

Emmanuel Gobillot
It’s that question that I gave at the beginning which is this idea around have I made them feel stronger or more capable, but the whole idea I think that really resonates with people is if you unpack that question a bit and start talking about power and how do you have impact and influence other people, and how that evolves and change throughout your life and it starts from as a child having no impact on influence being purely dependent on other people for your own survival. In adolescence you realize you have power and you are your own person which is why you completely give up on other people and decide to be independent. Then you then go to the next stage which is kind of a form of assertive power which we have as an adult.

The thing that resonates with people is the difference between what I call personalized power which is I can be bigger than you by making you feel smaller or socialize power which is I can make myself feel smaller and I can make myself feel bigger by making you feel even bigger. This idea that actually we can resonate in the world by making other people stronger rather than just necessarily by making them weaker. I think when people will start to understand that and understand that practice, it’s something that actually most of my books tend to come to which is this idea of socialized power of around how can I make the world a better place and how can I do that as an individual.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a best way to find you in terms of folks want to learn more about your work? Would you point them to your website or Twitter or where would you have them go?

Emmanuel Gobillot
EGOBILLOT is My Twitter handle. I’m on Facebook as well. I’ve got a … Just contact me there or via my website, my email and even my phone number I think is on my website. I am always delighted to speak to anybody. I always make a promise which is I will never try to sell you anything. I have no time to deliver it anyway. Please get in touch if there’s any questions, anything at all. Sometimes I get people saying, “Hey, you said this thing and I’ve been trying it out and it didn’t work out the way I planned. Can I rehearse it with you or whatever?” Just always contact me. As I said, Twitter is probably the first place or email because I travel a lot, but I always endeavor to reply to you as quickly as I can.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. How about a favorite challenge or parting call to action for those seeking to be more awesome at their jobs?

Emmanuel Gobillot
Don’t wait. Don’t wait. I know we all have ideas. We all have thoughts and we all have regrets of not having done something quicker or not having spoken quicker. In many conversations, you say, “I wish I had said that and I wish had done that.” Sometimes is because you didn’t think about it but there’s nothing wrong with going back and saying it. If you thought about it but didn’t dare say it then just dare say it and deal with the consequences but don’t hold back because I think it’s a safe podcast to say it on. I think the people will listen to your work, other people who want to better themselves. I think most people who want to better themselves are pretty good already. Don’t hold back and make the difference that you seek to make.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Well, Emmanuel, this has been so much fun. I wish you tons of luck and really appreciate you take some time to share your wisdom with us here.

Emmanuel Gobillot
Well, I know. I appreciate you asking me to do, Pete. That’s really, really kind of you.