(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Growth Hacking Culture Podcast. I'm your host, Ivan Palomino. This podcast is about thought provoking ideas to scale up and growth hack performing and human centric work cultures. My guests are experts on mindset, skills and science behind work cultures. I hope you enjoy this episode. - Emprey confidence is not just something that is nice to have. It seems that it's critical for organizational success. And yet countless employees grapple with self doubt, imposter syndrome and a fear of failure, hindering their potential and impeding their team performance. This lack of confidence can manifest in various ways from hesitant decision making to miss opportunities for innovation. This interview today with Alan Lazaro's is about the complexities of building a culture of confidence within organizations. We are going to be discussing about root causes of self doubt, the generational nuances impacting confidence level and the tangible consequences for business, the money behind that. But most importantly, we will discover actionable strategies that leaders can implement to foster a workplace where every employee feels empowered, capable and confident in their contributions. Let me tell you a little bit more about Alan Lazaro's. He is an engineer, the type of people that I really like, by the way, an engineer who turned into one of the most recognized self-help wizards. He's also the CEO of a company called Next11 University. Alan, I'm so glad to have you today. And I wanted to ask you, so, how can you move from this structure, perfectly modalized world of engineering into the area of understanding human beings and helping them do better? How did you do that transition? So, in typical computer engineering mind fashion, so it's very important that I get the computer engineer thing out because I think very structurally. So I'll break it down. So I have this thing called the pyramid of the universe. And essentially what it is, is the things that I study that I think help me piece the puzzle of life together. And it starts from the bottom. The cool thing about a pyramid is the foundation has to go wider in order for it to go taller. So here we go. The very bottom is mathematics, okay? Mathematics, I believe, is the study of the universe. Then the next is physics, which is the study of the physical universe. Then the next is chemistry, which is the study of matter. Then the next is biology, which is the study of living organisms. Then there's physiology, which is the study of the human body. Then there's neuroscience, which is the study of the human brain. Then there's psychology, which is the study of the human condition, the human mind. To me, those are the modalities of science that you need to understand in order to go from corporate, like I did to the self-help space. Because truth be told, in corporate I was very professionally developed. It was, you know, bachelors of science in computer engineering, masters in business, resume, cover letter, LinkedIn, I had hard skills, a lot of hard skills. But it was the personal development side that needed work. And when I was 26, I got in a car accident that really got me to question my life. And that's when I found self-improvement and personal development and personal growth and mental health and the inner work. And that's when I really started to become this, what I now call a 21st century ambidextrous leader, because I think most of us are on one side of that pendulum or the other. Very few people have both the professional development in tandem with the personal development. Because if you want, if what you wanted was what you needed, you'd already have it. So what I've found is the people who love what I call STEM-Biff science, technology, engineering, mathematics, business and finance, usually they're lacking the inner work. And the people who have the inner work and they're these holistic, wonderful, heart-driven, empathetic, emotionally intelligent people, but they don't know the economy at all. And it's been very hard for me to see some of my colleagues from the past are very successful in the economy, but they're still very immature inside. And then there's really mature, well-developed human beings that just don't succeed in the economy. It's in the 21st century with technology. And so to me, and then there's some people who do both. And I want to recommend to everyone, myself included, that we do both. Because I didn't get a therapist until my 30s, and that was a huge mistake. - I totally feel you, especially the area where, as engineers, we tend to have this critical thinking and try to understand why am I in the current situation today. And sometimes we don't have the right answers, but this is typical from someone who is constantly questioning themselves in terms of, "Where am I going?" And it comes very often in engineers, just the question. But as you said, sometimes we don't have all the tools in order to know how to get out or to find alternatives to the life that we can potentially have. And that happens to many of us. And I really like the way you structure science, which is maybe it's something that is missing a lot in the area of self-help, is to the understanding of science and how you can relate it to self-development. Enough of these gurus that talk about something that is in the sky, there is rationality, there is psychology to explain a lot of the things that happen, it's not about chakras anymore, it is about something that can be understood by the influence of the external world to our brain. And that's why sometimes we feel shitty, so that's why sometimes we cannot overcome certain limitations that we put it for ourself. I love it Alan. - The number one thing that bothers me is the inaccurate thinking. The core value that I have three core values, one is legacy, one is candor and one is rationality. You mentioned rationality. Rationality is a deep belief in thinking as accurately as possible, knowing that you're always somewhat inaccurate. In other words, all of us are really guessing at our own level of intelligence, guessing at other people's. How accurate can you be is my question. That's the question that I think of a GPS, my Tesla, for example, we have a supervisor mode where it kind of drives itself and it's really cool, it's really cool, but imagine if the Tesla didn't have, so it has nine cameras, so it has three in the front, one in each driver's side door, and then one in each backseat door, and then one in the back, and then one in the actual car. If one of the cameras is occluded, they call it occluded, like the camera occluded, it shuts down the supervisor. And the reason why is because you can't let the self-driving car drive when it has a blind spot. - Yeah. - If the trucks come in this way, the Tesla needs to be able to change lanes, which works really well when the camera's there, but it won't let you do it when the camera's not. I think that's the problem in life with most people, particularly in the self-help space, they don't understand how inaccurate they are. When it comes to the science of it, the first principles of it. I don't care what your opinion is, gravity is 9.8 meters per second squared, and there is no opinion about it. That's the truth. That's the accurate, measurable truth. And I think that when you get into the guru space, you realize very quickly that a lot of it is hocus pocus and not real, and some of it is real and has a lot of merit and can be very helpful. And so that's the heart. How do you sift through the non-intelligent, irrational nonsense and keep the good gold that really is there like self-belief and self-worth and how to build it and all these things? Yeah, I mean, on one side, you have science and rationality and structure and mathematics and accurate thinking. And then on the other side, you have this sort of artistic, how do I feel about it type of thing? And how do you merge those two, I think, is really where life and success lives? I want to relate to something that you have mentioned, that people with high emotional intelligence sometimes seems to perform better, be more successful at work than people like me, for instance, I was an introvert or sometimes I'm still an introvert, but I learned how to guide it. I'm an introvert who learned how to hide it. I studied for two intellectuals. I'm overthinking stuff. I'm an engineer like you, so that's probably one of the root causes. So there is a mix, almost of lack of confidence, because I still remember my early days in my career, always thinking about what others are, what is the image that I'm projecting to others. Am I going to say the right thing? So this lack of confidence in the workplace. And also, if you think about your career and incorporate, what would you say is that main reason why people are more confident than others, and is the organization itself doing something about it today? - So this is something that I've found really challenging, because some of the most confident people externally are actually the most internally arrogant. And so the unfortunately, and this is what I've found to be true in the economy, the person who is externally confident is portraying high levels of certainty, usually has the most influence, but they're also usually the least intelligent. So not always, sometimes they're the most intelligent, but not very rarely, very rarely. So for example, I think engineers statistically have very low self-worth, and the reason why is because they really struggle socially. And I had to learn from a very young age that the way that I think, there's four modalities of thinking. The first one is the rarest, I think statistically speaking, which is math and numbers. So I think in math and numbers, everything is numbers to me. That's very rare, it's not normal. And when your girlfriend says, "Hey, do I look fat?" And you say, "Yes, at level six, you're in trouble." But that's what our brain actually says. And so you can't say that. So you have to lock that up, right? And again, and by the way, same, right? I'm not, so zero to 10, how fat do I look? Zero to 10, it's a six based on what my brain has calculated. It's not that there's a logic to it that isn't emotional. I'm not trying to be unkind. And so you laugh because you know your brain says the same thing. And it says the same thing about you too, by the way. But that doesn't fly socially. People are deeply insecure. And when they don't want the truth, they don't want it. They want you to say, "No, you don't look fat. "No, no, no, no, you look great." Even though the truth is you don't, and that's okay. And now you can do something about it if you own that. And so I think engineers learn from a very young age that they're not socially safe. And I did for sure. So I locked it up, I hid it. It's called an exile if you study internal family systems. I just hid my genius and just pretended I was an idiot because that kept me safe. And I've stopped doing that, but I'm now what I refer to as a social coward. So I'm very, very confident when I'm alone behind the scenes, especially when it comes to achievements. But I'm only recently in my 30s, learning how to be confident in who I am. So there's two types of confidence. There's confidence in achievements, which is I can run the mile, I can build the thing, I can study the thing, I can take the test, I can get into the school, whatever. That I always had at level 10. And that's why I came off so arrogant to people is because I had so much certainty in my ability to reverse engineer a finish line and actually achieve it. What I didn't have a lot of confidence in hindsight is who I am, who I really am, because I hid who I really was. And the reason I hid who I really was and I've come to understand this is that it makes other people feel more insecure. So when someone asks you a question and you give them a hard answer that you believe is accurate, but it makes them feel more insecure, so they kind of lash out. So you learn how to kind of dim your truth in a way. And a playful example is, hey, how do I look? And you say, honestly, that's probably not the outfit for you. That is what our brain says, but you're not allowed to say that. Okay, so that's the first modality of thinking. The first modality of thinking is numbers and mathematics and objective truth and rationality and structure and logic and that's very, very rare, very rare. I would say probably 3% at most. All right, but of course, I think that because I think in numbers, right? So everything statistics, I see a bell curve every time, like, am I in shape? Well, statistically no, but you're in better shape, right? See, okay, so you're laughing. Statistically speaking, no, you're not. Like, but you're better than you were yesterday, so good job, right? And so that's, again, very uncomfortable for me to be this honest. All right, number two. Number two is images and pictures. And that's pretty rare too, but it's fairly, it's way more common than the math one. So images, imagination and pictures. So if you picture your car, okay, that's one modality of thinking. The most common, by far, is words and concepts. So when I say dog, you have an emotion about a dog. Whether that's rational or not is based on your past. I mean, dog is dog. And if you had a dog growing up that bit you, you might think, ooh, danger. If you have a dog that was super loving, you might think and feel love. Those feelings drive most people. Most human beings are emotional creatures, and all of us technically are all four of these modalities, but which one's your main one? Most people, that's their main one. They just think in words and concepts, they construct emotions. That's why they get so easily offended when you tell them any real truth. All right, the last one is very rare, energy. Some people think in energy. That one was my rarest. I didn't think in energy at all until I met my girlfriend, and she started to help me understand vibration, vibe, energy. When I first got on this session, most men, not all men, but a lot of men, they do this with me. Like the ego bonking, you didn't do any of that. Which tells me, number one, you have higher self-belief than I think you think, because you're not insecure about your intelligence. Usually, when I get on a microphone with someone who is insecure about their intelligence, they get very insecure and they start ego bonking. And/or they go docile, so I have to kind of lift them up. You're not insecure about your intelligence. You were excited for this interview, so that's great. So you aren't insecure around me, which tells me you believe in yourself a lot. You probably think in logic and rationality, so you're not afraid of this conversation. And you're probably an awkward engineer like me. That's all great, that's all great. And you aren't trying to portray this strong masculine front of I must be dominant, because deeply inside, you're actually an insecure little boy, right? And you're not, and this is awesome. But most men, like the manly men with the huge, lift-kitted trucks and all that kind of stuff, a lot of that is really just overcompensation for their own insecurities, because they don't believe in themselves and they certainly don't believe in their intelligence level. And they don't know how to achieve their goals and dreams without the social dominance hierarchy that's necessary for them to seem more valuable than they really are. And go ahead. So you have mentioned a couple of modalities of on the way we think. And you have mentioned that there is the majority of people is about world's concept and that generate emotions. Now, my question is, in order to fulfill, complete, and have full confidence, should we have a certain proportion of each? Or should we just say, this is what I got? And I trust the person that I am with that type of thinking. And that's it. The tie all of us back to your original question of how do you help people be more confident in the workplace? The first step is to understand what your modalities are, the syntax. Yeah. And to answer your question, it's both. This is the weird part about life. This is why life is so hard. It's all dualities. In other words, on one hand, you need to figure out what modality is yours, own it, and learn how to be confident in it. But you can't ignore words and concepts and energy and then just expect everything to work out. Engineers do well in the economy, but they don't do well in relationships. And this is why. Right? This is why. So you have to be you and then round out the edges. Versus contort yourself, pretend not to be you, and then try to be something you're not. That's what I used to do. And I learned over time that that's deeply unfulfilling. Yeah. It's almost like we, sometimes also we, we don't guess correctly the person that we are. And it's almost like we need to have a couple of iterations like we have a hypothesis. I am that like this. But now I need to find a way to validate my hypothesis. And do an iteration. Let's call it a scrum or whatever you want to call it. But because it is very difficult to find out, you mentioned your example. So at the beginning, you thought, that's the way it's either expected, or this is the way I do behave today. But little by little, you were finding your real you. But I don't think that we can, in one shot, like let's have a coaching session and I'm going to discover it. No, no, no, it's forever. It's iterative. I am narrow. But of course you can be helped by coaching and all the stuff. But yeah. But you need to try it. You need real action. So who you are when you're by yourself is who you, is the closest to who you really are, most likely. So the people that I mentioned earlier that are really insecure and they kind of overly dominate and they ego bonk, is what I call it ego bonking. Those people behind the scenes are actually a lot less confident. When they're alone, they stop portraying that confidence. Like I think that some of us are turtles and some of us are puffer fish. So the puffer fish is trying to pretend it's stronger than it really is. And the turtle is hiding and actually pretending that it's less than it really is, because it's scared that the puffer fish is going to whamow it. So and this goes into the modalities of people who believe in themselves a lot. Usually dim that down around other people. And people who pretend, who don't believe in themselves much, pretend that they do, to try to establish dominance. And so the thing that I think is most important is to identify who you are when you're alone. That's the closest to who you really are. And I have this blog that I just wrote and it's how to become more of your true self is the name of it. And it's a simple diagram with three layers. There's three circles. I call it the circles of the ego. The farthest, so picture a target with three layers. The farthest outer layer is who you want others to believe you are. The next inner layer, the next layer after that, is who you want to believe you are. And then the inner layer is who you really are. I'm going to give you an example that happened to me recently. And I always say the gap between circle one and circle three is the size of your ego. AKA how inaccurate you are about who you are, right? So I'll give you an example of how inaccurate I was. This was probably four months ago. I go to the track and I'm an athlete in my identity. So I'm thinking to my girlfriend, I'm saying, I'm going to run a time to mile. I'm going to see if I can do a time to mile because we had a 5k coming up. And I've been working out and I feel good. I'm like, I'm going to do a time to mile. I'm going to go for six, six minute mile. I figured and in my engineering brand, I always do best case, worst case, most probable case. So I'm like, OK, best case, six minutes. I got this worst case, seven minutes, most probable, somewhere in between, right? I'll end up at six and a half or something. I end up, I poured my heart onto this track and I was going and I was dying seven minutes in 10 seconds. The truth is, I was really inaccurate in my own self perception. That's really detrimental to progress because if you think your cardiovascular health is better than it actually is, you're not going to go work on it. That's why you need action to your point, to benchmark your perception up against reality. That's what we all need to do. And that's why the most humble people in the world that are inwardly humble, not externally humble, inwardly humble, are constantly taking action and failing all the time. Because the more you fail, the more you eat humble pie. I always say this, if you have level 10 self belief, you better have level 10 humility in the opposite direction. Because I never considered myself a very humble person until my girlfriend said, she said, Alan, you're the most humble man I've ever met. And I said, I really genuinely appreciate that. Like, thank you. You're very sweet, but I've never identified as humble. And she said, Alan, that's exactly what a humble person would say. And I was like, oh, am I humble? I've been called arrogant my entire life. I figured it out. I believe in myself more than I'm humble. So it seems arrogant. I might be really humble, but if I have level 10 self belief and only nine humility, it's going to look at like level one arrogance. So I've realized as I've matured that I need to work on humility, I don't need to work on self belief. I already have that. So I have to work on humility constantly. Most people need to work on self belief because if they were believing in themselves more, they wouldn't look humble. I've seen people that I coach go from humble to arrogant as hell because I helped them do the thing and now they feel like a million bucks about themselves. And they lost their humility once they started to believe in themselves. And so if you have really high self belief, most engineers do, but they have low self worth socially, most engineers have high self belief because they're reverse engineer. What is self belief? It's certainty. Self belief is certainty in your own ability to create a certain outcome. Engineers have that. You know what we don't have is social confidence. We don't feel like we can talk to girls or guys. We feel like we're different. We never feel like we fit in. We say things. People get offended. We don't get it. It's this whole thing. So it's taken me 35 years to figure out. I'm so different. I'm so different than other people. And I used to be so scared of that because I didn't fit in. And it seemed like everyone didn't like me. And I just learned how to socially learn how to have courage and just be more vulnerable and honest and just say, hey, I don't struggle with self doubt very much. I think that's probably obvious to everybody. But I do struggle to be socially accepted. And I don't feel like I belong. And I'm scared not to belong. And then that vulnerability really helps people ironically, paradoxically really like me more, which is important in order to have influence as a leader. Because as a leader, if you want to help people, you really do need them to resonate with you. And they're not going to resonate with you if you're statistically abnormal. That is true. Alan, while you were talking, I was thinking that it's so difficult. There are two things that are very difficult to clearly define. One of them is happiness. And the other one is about the definition of confidence. In fact, if you ask several people, they will only tell you certain traits or characteristics of your happiness or confidence. And I'm talking about happiness because yesterday I had all people like me. They have talks with the younger people in my team. They are fresh from university. And we're talking about happiness. And it was super difficult to help them find their own definition because it cannot be so complex. The different elements that I didn't want to come up with a definition that is meaningless. I wanted them to discover it. Now, what could be for you the right definition of confidence? So I think one of the problems with happiness and confidence is that it's actually a byproduct of something deeper. So it's like laughter. I can't force you to authentically laugh. I have to say something where laughter is a byproduct. Yeah. I think happiness is the same way where it's meaningful progress towards meaningful goals for a meaningful purpose. And then happiness and fulfillment will be a byproduct. And then when it comes to confidence, I think there's two types of confidence. Like I mentioned earlier, I think there's confidence in your abilities to achieve something. There's achievement confidence, which I had a lot of. But then there's confidence in who you are. I didn't have that. That's new for me. I'm learning how to build that. I have 10 out of 10. Like start a podcast. Okay. Like that's not an issue. I don't have an issue with that. Even when I got the 710 mile, I ate the humble pie, realized I wasn't as good as I thought, then I started training more. It didn't shake my confidence in my ability to achieve an outcome. I still know eventually I can get to a 6 minute mile. There was no shaking of my confidence in that. But socially, I was constantly shaking in my confidence in who I am. Like people lash out. They make fun of you. They call you arrogant. They shake your confidence in who you are. I don't feel arrogant. I don't feel like a bad person. Why am I allowing this person to shake my confidence? Because I would try to find the 1% of the feedback that's actually true so that I could improve it. Which by the way, made more people more insecure and made them lash out even more. I didn't understand. So now I realize, finally, that I'm confident externally. Most people aren't. So they think I'm arrogant. And I'm not confident enough in who I am. So I kind of get bullied. And so that started to shift a little bit because when you're confident in who you are, which most people are like, well, you know, I mean, I am the man. And so that we give off this self-worth of really high self-worth, even though we haven't really earned it. You ever meet those people who think they're amazing, but they don't study much. They're not that intelligent. They're not in shape. They're not, not, not, not, not. And then you have people that are unbelievable, wonderful human beings who just are so competent and capable and intelligent, but yet they don't have like this bravado of I'm the man. Those people are not that confident in who they are. Usually because those other people are insecure around them and then lash out at them to establish dominance because deep down they're actually very insecure. So now I've started to understand self-belief and self-worth. Self-belief is confidence externally, your ability to achieve something externally. Self-worth is confidence in who you are, who you are as a person, who you are as your character. And if you can have unshakeable, authentic self-worth that is built on actual merit, with self-belief to achieve, you're a very, you can do a lot of good in the world. And you'll be fulfilled. You'll be fulfilled. Yes. Tell me, if we compare, for instance, generations. So let's talk about Gen Z, millennials, just at the start of their career. What's your feeling? Is if we compare generations at the beginning of their career, do you have the feeling that they are more confident, less confident? Is there any attribute that is different between these generations? So I went on a, I have a podcast coming up about Gen Z, and my company, I have 21 individuals. It was 22 yesterday. We actually had to let someone go yesterday, which was, it went really well all things considered, but I still can't stand it to me. That's like the worst part of the job. But anyway, so we have Gen Xers, we've got, and my roster too, of my business clients, my youngest is 16, my oldest is 63. So I've got all the generations. This has been fascinating. To coach these individuals, you have to so coach them very uniquely. What I would say is a fair assessment from this stage, all different countries, all different backgrounds, all different generations, all different industries, all different ethnicities, men and women. I would say my feeling is that the older generations tend to believe that the younger generations are entitled and lazy. And I would say there's some truth to that. I would, because real confidence can only be built through doing really hard things. And I think that the conveniences that we all enjoy, and I say we as in Millennials and Gen Z, are really getting to our head. Like back in my parents' generation, there was no famous tick talkers who shake their butt for money. Like that wasn't real. And now it really has messed the expectations up in terms of what actually is, and we coach podcasters all over the world, right? So we produce 40 shows, including three of my own. And when you coach these podcasters, the younger ones, I think they have a very broken time perspective. I think they think that they'll be successful in like a couple months. When in reality, I mean, you're basically going to lose for the next decade, and then you might make a name for yourself if you stick with it. And so the grit is lower from my perspective. The attitude, I would say, is a little bit more entitled. But I also want to say, too, there's definitely more of a purpose-driven focus, rather than the paradigm of the older generations. I can tell is more family, and it tends to be more religious. I think that a lot of that is antiquated and unintelligent at this stage. But I do think that the 21st century Gen Z mindset, if they really do want to succeed, at what I would say is, you need to have the grit of your elders with the intelligence of a 21st century computer engineer. And if you can combine those, and then the other piece, too, that the younger generations are really good at actually, is empathy, vulnerability, and emotional intelligence. I think it's become much more common, and there's a lot less of the whole stoic, strong man. Never let them see you cry crap. I've cried in front of my team several times. And I think there's an emotionally driven component, an emotional intelligence component to leadership now that is very, not only, it's very necessary, and there's a lot less top-down patriarchal. I'm going to tell you what to do, because I'm the leader. Nowadays, the younger generations are like, no, that's not going to work. You have to lead by example, and then develop other leaders who can lead themselves. And I think that a lot of the older generations are in some trouble, if they can't learn how to adapt to the younger, much larger generations. You know, the crazy thing is that, yes, what you say, it is true, especially about Gen Z, the perception that we have, that they might be a little bit more entitled and lazy. But I was wondering, if these interests that they have about purpose at work, curiosity, and even this mentality of saying, okay, I don't have to devote hours and hours on this, but I'm going to growth hack it. I'm going to find a way to do it quicker, or ask someone or what so. So ever, I find it fascinating, because they get the job done. And with a new perspective, I understand you. And I have caught myself thinking the same, Alan, but there is something that tells me, "Ivan, you are being biased. You are having a little bit of a formatting, because I'm older." And yeah, that made me rethink a little bit the perspective that I have about Gen Z. There's another component, if you don't mind me sharing, that I think is really, really, really important, that the conversation is starting to be had. Women in the workplace are unbelievable, and they've been under appreciated. Most of my team is women. They've been under appreciated societally for, I mean, in my country, women couldn't even vote until the early 1900s, or something like that. So it's what I would say, without getting political here, it's very cool to start seeing empowered women and what they're capable of when they're not hidden and suppressed. And to me, I think that's the most important conversation to have about leadership, which is how do you power these incredible women to be creative and feel free to be creative? Because that usually comes from a leader who's emotionally intelligent, because if as a leader, if your people are afraid of you, and I've dealt with this a little bit, they won't tell you the truth. And if they don't tell you the truth, now you have inaccurate data, and the Tesla's going to crash to go back to the original metaphor. So you have to create a safe psychological for these people to open up. And one more thing that I'll say about Gen Z as well is, Gen Z, I think, and I heard this from a Gen Z recently, because I'm always asking them questions. And it's so weird, because now I'm old, it's like I'm 35, I'm not that old, but I feel so old sometimes. It's getting weird, because it's like, "Oh, you remember that movie?" And they're like, "No, I wasn't born yet." "Oh my gosh, what has happened?" And I'm only 35, so that's going to be weird. But so I talked to a Gen Z last week, and he said, "I feel like a lot of us are frustrated because you guys screwed up the world." Climate change and all that kind of stuff. And the truth of the matter is, there's some truth to that, there's some truth to that. And they feel like they now have the burden to kind of fix a lot of our poor decisions. And most of our poor decisions were just based on ignorance. I mean, what, 150 years ago, we thought the world was flat. There's still some people who think it is. I mean, come on. I just, we need science. Science is important. You know, I'm not going to go down this rabbit hole, but if you're not accurate in your thinking, you can't make good decisions. There's no such thing as having good decision-making without accurate data. And most people are just, unfortunately, the very most confident, seemingly confident among us are often the least intelligent internally. Indeed. By the way, you made me think about, now that you mentioned the story about women. So eight years ago, there was a research done by Harvard Business Review, comparing the leadership traits of women and men. And in average, women are outpacing out of the three different leadership in '21 or '22. Let's say that is true. But what is blocking them is confidence. And that's the thing that the person-- I think it's actually courage. Yeah. I think it's courage, not confidence. I think what looks like confidence is actually courage. If it's authentic. Because these people that seem so confident, and this is what helped me a lot. Everyone out there picture-- The best archetype for this is Gaston and Beauty and the Beast. Gaston and Beauty and the Beast. Have you seen Beauty and the Beast? Yes. Okay. Gaston is the toxic masculine, overly confident, but actually deeply insecure person, right? Okay. Picture everyone, everyone knows a version of that in their own life. So everyone right now, please imagine your Gaston in your life. Who's the Gaston? All right, I've got one. All right. Is that person actually confident? Or are they just dominating their way through life by trying to create status that isn't real? This person's probably broke, but they drive a Lamborghini or a really nice car. They probably are scared deep down. And so they have to dominate every conversation, right? Because they don't want to lose status. The truth is they're cowards. They're too cowardly to be honest and vulnerable. They're too cowardly to admit that they aren't confident. So unfortunately, when I hear women are struggling with confidence, I think they're actually struggling with courage because they're afraid to be lashed out at by the stereotypical Gastons of the world. And this is what really helped me because I have one person in particular that I think of as the archetype of Gaston. And I said this to myself once. I said, why, how does he act so confident? Why is he so certainty? He's like, you would think he was the most confident person in the entire world. Drinks like a fish, smokes like a chimney. He's overweight, right? And I figured it out. Why would someone with level 10 confidence only have level two goals? If you're level 10 confident, wouldn't you have big goals and dreams? Oh, it's not real. And then you've got these incredible women that have real confidence behind the scenes. I've met them, some of them on my team, but they would never stand up to that Gaston because they don't have the courage to stand up to the tyrant, so to speak. And so I think it's a courage problem more than a confidence problem. Yeah, we also have to consider that the women have a narrower, how they say, plasticity. No, not plasticity. Narrower gap of judgment. So if they do something that is less expected from them, they're judged by us men more partially than if it was another man. If you do something funny now, I'm going to laugh. Voice club, but if it was a woman, maybe it will be interpreted in another way. And that has been mapped by ages, generations. And it still is now. Certain discussions, even in social media, LinkedIn about men and women equality, that are like, what the hell? Where are we? It's wild. It's wild. Yeah, yeah, it's wild. I think a lot of that's changing, which is good, not the underlying biology of it, but I do think, fortunately, there's a lot less suppression. It's good. It's happening. It's changing. It's really good what's happening with women entering the workforce and being appreciated. And I mean, I think it's going to change the world. I think it's going to change the world. I thought that we would have guy listeners. 90% of my listeners are women. Kevin and I, yeah. We didn't know. I mean, we were a couple of bodybuilder bros back seven years ago. We thought it was going to be men. It's women who struggle with courage, clarity, and confidence, who want more fulfillment out of their career and their intimate relationship. And they really, it's been awesome. I've learned so much. I've learned so much. And I also learned where I was emotionally immature and I've learned where I'm ignorant. I think, statistically speaking, men tend to be more arrogant, not always, but statistically speaking. And we tend to be more emotionally immature. And we also tend to be less holistic and more narrow focused. And I think that that creates a lot of blind spots. And those blind spots have created a lot of the challenges that we face today. And I think that empowering, amazing women and men waking up to holistic self-improvement is the solution. But of course, I'm biased because that's my whole world. I've oriented my entire existence around that. Right. So if you had to provide a one-to-one advice to this leader who wants to develop the confidence of his team, what could be some of tips or real actions that this person, this leader can implement like tomorrow, just to level out this confidence of his team? The number one is what you wouldn't expect, which is you have to actually believe in yourself. You believe in yourself. You have to believe in your ability to achieve yes, but also in who you are. You have to have the courage to be humble, courageous, and vulnerable. That's what I call the triad of transformation. Humility, courage, and vulnerability. The humility to admit that you don't know, and be a student, not always, but be a student. Then the courage to say I screwed up or I kind of sucked there, that's my bad. And then the vulnerability to sit in the discomfort of emotions, particularly the emotions of guilt or shame or being imperfect, being imperfect. And then if you can do that, if you could be humble, courageous, and vulnerable, and not just say it, but actually live it and lead by example, I think that the safe space is created where confidence can flourish. It's almost like in a garden, you have to create a safe space for the garden to flourish. That's really what needs to be done by a leader, but it has to be from a place of leading by example. Like if I didn't have a therapist, then I'm not leading by example, right? So it has to be, you can't say, hey, you should do this. That is so irritating to me. When that people who don't lead by example, well, like for example, I'm just going to call it out. Why aren't you in shape? Why aren't more leaders in shape? If they have it all together and they have it all figured out, and they're so confident, why aren't you taking care of your health? And until you're taking care of your health, and until you have the humility to own that you're not, and the courage to own that you're not, and the vulnerability to sit in the fact that you've let it go, maybe you're not leading by example for your team to take care of their health. And so to me, leadership is leading by example, is 90% of it. And then I would say the other 10% is effective communication, humility, courage, and vulnerability. And insistently believing in other people, which you can't authentically do unless you actually believe in yourself. And so you have to cultivate all that inside you first. And then it's like a champagne tower. And the top bottle that is champagne towering down, for lack of better phrasing is you. But you have to refill your own bottle so that it goes to the top champagne, and then it pours into the chief officers, and then that pours into the directors, and then that pours into the team, and that pours into the freelancers, and then that pours into the community. And to me, that's what we've tried to do at NLU. It's been unbelievably difficult, honestly. Because one of the things, when you believe in so many other people, is then there becomes a humility issue. And so that's another layer that we could talk for days on. But a lot of times I've done the believing in self, and the believing in others really well. What I have not done well is, unfortunately, I've created delusion. Because when you believe in someone, a ton, and they finally get that validation they've never had, sometimes that goes to their head. And how do you then not be villainized when you have to say, "Hey, maybe that's not real?" And that's been really hard. So that's a whole other conversation, though. Yeah. Alan, I really think that it's quite powerful the message that you have sent in this specific part about living by the example. And because you also mentioned that, I mean, if you have a psychotherapist who is giving you advice, what the hell? He doesn't have something that we call the skin in the game. He's not putting himself into action. So a leader should be the reflection of the people that he's leaving. So he has to portray this example. All what you have mentioned is this humility, the fact that he's doing certain things, he's doing the work for himself. It doesn't matter if he's failing or not, because change is difficult. But if you are open about it, that I'm continuously in better mode, then that's super good. You made me think about a book that I have. I'm rereading for the second time. It's called Skin in the Game, by the way, by Nicholas Talen, Skin in the Game. He's the guy who wrote like a fool by randomness of something like that. It's like kind of a... You are going to know it. He's a mathematician. He was good in finance. I'm sold. Nicholas Talen, Skin in the Game. So it is beautiful. So it is about how much you are going to be getting involved in terms of the ethics of... If you want to plus meet an example, and that inequalities in the world come from the fact that people are taking decisions without any penalty, without anything happening to them. Think about the bank system and when everything crushed. Or think about leaders who don't get really involved in the life of other people. So I think that this story about leading by the example is one of the most powerful things that a leader can do in order to develop the confidence on the team. You cannot do it otherwise. It is not crap or otherwise. 100%. To me, what is leadership if not leading by example? There's a book called High Road Leadership that John Maxwell wrote. And quite frankly, I used to be too much of a coward to say this. I actually don't think the book is very good. I just don't. But the concept is unbelievable. High road leadership. We all know what the high road is. We all know the high road is to take ownership for your mistakes. The high road is to have courage. The high road is virtue. That's what it is. High road is putting in the work to become better, even though you temporarily look worse. Yeah. This is it. This is it. Alan, tell me. So we are almost ending this episode that ended up being fascinating. And that was wrong that we fixed like we are going to discuss on. This conversation could go for hours. So this conversation about the confidence gap at work. And it has been really interesting for me. It has been also a good learning experience, Alan. I really appreciate the way you think. I also, how can people reach you out if they have questions? More questions, not only about confidence, because your job is not only about the confidence. Confidence is maybe one of the pillars that you can help people to work on, but you have many others. How can people reach you out, Alan? Okay. So we have a podcast called Next Level University, spelled just like it sounds. 1% improvement in your pocket every day from when you are on the planet completely free. We do a podcast episode every single day. We have 1,750 plus of those. The average is a half hour too. They're not just little snippets. These are pretty in-depth episodes. And then we have a website called Next Level Universe.com, spelled just like it sounds. Next Level Universe.com. The website is different than the podcast. Next Level University is the podcast. Next Level Universe is the website spelled just like they sound. And then you can email me, A-L-A-N, at Next Level Universe.com. Spelt just like it sounds, just please provide context because like all of us, I get a lot of spam mail. And I really do appreciate this. The idea underneath this is try to figure out who you really are. Try to uncover that first. Once you realize that and get it as close as possible, then set your goals from that place. And then when you hit your goals, which you will, because they're actually real based on who you really are and what you really want, then you'll build self-belief. And when you build self-belief and keep the promises to yourself, you'll value yourself and then you can build from there. And I think that a lot of us, ironically, paradoxically, are trying to look good rather than actually get better. And if you're trying to get better, even though it doesn't make you look very good, long term, I promise to you is that you will be more fulfilled and more successful. But the key word is eventually, eventually. It's the longer, harder road, but you'll be more fulfilled and more successful eventually. Alan, thank you very much for making the time for this podcast, the Girl Hacking Culture podcast. It was lovely to have you today. Have an excellent evening. Ivan, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Like I mentioned to you in the recall, Emilio and I are very excited to visit Switzerland at some point. So who knows, maybe we'll cross paths. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it and keep doing what you're doing.
