159 - How to unlock human potential in the age of AI - with Andrew Bryant

Speaker A: And I think the metaphor of trying on new clothes, you might not like them, they might not feel comfortable, they might jar with their identity, but you might go, you know what, I feel really good in this. That's really what curiosity is. It's trying on a different set of clothes.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Smash youh Own Ceiling podcast, helping you to up level your thinking, elevate your success and create the life you really want. I'm your host, Barbara Nixon. And your next level leadership journey starts here. Hey, it's Barbara. How you doing? Now today I'm really excited to be sharing a brilliant conversation that I had with Andrew Bryant. Andrew is the founder of Self Leadership International and the global authority on self leadership in the AI era. For 25 plus years, he's coached the C suites of Microsoft, Singapore Airlines, Airbus and Credit Suisse. He's spoken in 40 plus countries and authored five books. His most recent one was published this year, which if you're listening in real time is 2026. And it's called Potential How Leaders Unlock Human Potential in the Age of AI. He helps leaders move from doubt to decisive action, from reactivity to authentic influence, and from burnout to sustained performance. Now we have such a good conversation. It was such a so great to get under the skin of self leadership. As you know, self leadership is something that is very, very close to my heart and it was great just to unpick some of the topics that Andrew and I both find incredibly fascinating, namely how to show up and be our best self. We talk about daily practices and Andrew shares his and um, what he does every single day. We talk about the power of intentions and how, how that actually helps us to be. Not only focus on what it is that we want, but also to attract what we want as well. We talk about fear being the biggest thing that stops most of us in our tracks, as well as fear of success and how that often shows up. And we talk about the importance of actually making a decision and thinking about who do we need to be in order to get what we want in order to be the person who attracts that decision, who makes that decision happen. And then we move on to talk about Andrew's latest book, Potentialize, and all about AI and leadership in the age of AI. And yeah, it's, it's a really interesting and great conversation full of brilliant golden nuggets. So let's dive in and um, please do feel free to share it if you know somebody who would benefit from this, this episode. And um, if you've not already done so, hit the subscribe button, because there's always amazing episodes coming up in the future and I don't want you to miss any of it. All right, let's dive in. Hi, Andrew. Welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

Speaker A: I'm doing very well, thank you, Barbara. Thanks for having me.

Speaker B: I'm really excited about today because your thing is something self leadership, and that is very close to my heart. So I'm really excited to just uncover what self leadership is, dive deep into that and, and, and let's see. See where it goes. But you do have a. You celebrated a big birthday recently, I believe,

Speaker A: coming up. I'm currently version 6.4 of myself, and next month I will Upgrade to version 6.5. So, uh, not aging. Evolving.

Speaker B: Evolving. Right. I'm curious then, because I'm coming up to chapter five next month as well. So when. Which date are you?

Speaker A: August 15th.

Speaker B: I'm

Speaker A: a Leo.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm a Leo as well. I'm 21st. You're a little bit ahead of me. A little bit. But, uh, true two lines on the call.

Speaker A: We Leos are too skeptical to believe in star signs.

Speaker B: I don't know. I think, I think there's a lot of truth around Leos, though. I think there's a lot of truth around Leo's. So tell me about. You mentioned just now, which I really loved about just upgrading to 6.5. Tell me about what that feels like and what that means to you.

Speaker A: Certainly. So you mentioned my area of expertise and research over the last 25 plus years is around self leadership. And self leadership is a practice. It is the practice of intentionally influencing your thinking, feeling, and actions towards your objectives. So, in short, you're becoming the best version of yourself because you're intentional and because it is a practice. It's something you do daily. And it is about what is the best version of myself. Um, and realizing that we can break free of the programming of the time and place of our birth and our upbringing, that we can take agency and choose to some extent the life that we live, but we can certainly choose our attitude. So what does it mean to be upgrading? It means that I, with living a sense of agency, I am where I am because of the choices I've made. I mean, I'm coming to you from Portugal. I'm living the dream. It's a beautiful sunny day outside. You know, I just had a swim in the pool. You know, I write books, I travel around the world doing keynote speeches. I really have nothing to complain about, do I? Which is hard being British. Because, you know, we have a PhD in complaining, of course. So what does upgrading mean? It means I'm going to be a better version of myself. Version 6.5, um, as 6.4 has a lot less hair than version 3.4, but hopefully some more wisdom and some more compassion and definitely some more insight and experience.

Speaker B: I love all of that. The thing that's, that's popping up for me is the word intentional. So do you have or at some point? Because obviously if every time you upgrade, as in age, every year, you're. You're living your. Your life's work. Yeah. In terms of being the best version of yourself, do you have a practice where you sit down and think, right, what do I want this to look?

Speaker A: Absolutely. I, um, mean, I have a daily practice. Um, and in both my self leadership book in 2012 and my latest book, Potentialize, which came out this year, there are the practices, and they're very similar to the stoic practices of waking up in the morning and setting your intention for the day. Who do I want to be today? Now, in context, for instance, somebody might have a presentation today. They might be talking to their boss, or they might be talking to stakeholders. And most people focus on the content. Right. You know, what do I have to say instead of focusing on who do I need to be to be the best negotiator or to be the best collaborator or to be the most influential? Who do I need to be to do those things? We tend to focus on the doing rather than the being. So, yeah, every morning I get. I wake up and, I mean, it's almost unconscious these days. I've been doing it so many years. Who do I need to be? And I look at my diary or look at the counter and say, okay, what have I got today? Okay, I need to be on this podcast. So do I need to be for you today? Um, and at the end of the day, I'll take a few moments just to reflect on the day and go, wins and losses. Well, I handled myself really well there. As I look back on that situation, I got triggered. So I was the sort of person that got triggered by X. In future, I would. I want to be the person that's not triggered by that X. Um, because we're all triggered. Right. So absolutely. And on a yearly basis on an upgrade, I absolutely do set my goals for the year. And some things. You asked me what I was excited about, uh, before we pressed record, and I took a moment and I was like, what am I excited about? I'm excited about so many things. But two of the things that were on my intentionalities for 2026 was to be invited on a board for a startup. And I mean, and that's happened in terms of the negotiation for that is happening as we speak. And also I wanted to license my self leadership methodology and somebody approached me to do that as well. Neither of which I went out for. But by setting the intentionality, those things turned up on my radar.

Speaker B: Mhm. Yeah, exactly. I also, um, do a process of goal setting every year where I just sit. I do it twice a year. Once on my birthday, so it's coming up, and once at New Year's. And you're right. Once you set those intentions, and I like that word intentions a lot, once you set that those intentions, you tend to attract the things that you want. Yeah. And

Speaker A: uh,

Speaker B: it just works.

Speaker A: It does just work. I have friends who are into synchronicity and quantum entanglement and it could be some, all of those things. Um, it could just be, you know, the reticular activating system of your brain just noticing those things. Uh, you may have just had a conversation that you forgot that the ripple through and somebody heard it. I don't know. And smarter people than me would have to explain how it works. But as you said, it does work. And knowing that you'd be daft not to set the intentions.

Speaker B: Exactly. That is knowing that you would be daft not to set the intentions. So why don't we. Because I know certainly in my world people just get busy, right? We get busy with the day to day, we get busy leading a business, we get busy with the uh, to do list as long as our arm and all sorts of responsibilities. So what other than busyness, what do you reckon, what, what do you reckon really stops us from actually sitting down and setting those intentions?

Speaker A: Fear. Usually the thing that stops most people is fear. Because if I become that person, you know, if I become the person that's going to get that promotion, if I'm going to become the person that walks through the velvet rope into the C suite now, I'm going to have all those more responsibilities and accountabilities and bigger problems and bigger challenges and I'm kind of in this little comfort zone that I am now, right? So it is fear. What if this comes to pass, right? So, so people set ridiculous things that would never happen. Um, because what if I, you know, the moment I step into that, I'm going to have to grow and it's fear of what that growth is going to be like. So, yes, I think it's more likely that than the laziness because, you know, busyness often is a mask. Busyness often is a defense mechanism against growth because you're not doing the things that are moving you forward. You're doing the things that are giving you a dopamine, uh, hit in the moment and avoiding the things that really matter.

Speaker B: Yeah. And keeping you still. Right. All busyness is, it's the equivalent of treading water rather than, you know, doing a good old front crawl and getting some speed behind you. But you're right, it is. I would agree with you there in terms of fear, because that once you've declared it, once you've set that intention, once you've actually admitted that this is what you want and you've achieved it, all of a sudden you're right, there is a level of responsibility. I've got to live up to that now. And this is where fear of failure comes in. And, um, fear of success, you know, I've actually got to do the thing now. And who am I to do it? I'm just some, um, kid from wherever. Uh, you know, I don't have the qualifications, I don't have the experience.

Speaker A: Well, you're touching on, you're touching on a frame of reference there, which is identity. So, and this is why intentionally is about who am I going to become? Because, you know, the mere version 6.4 turning, you know, just transitioning to 6.5 as we, as this comes out is, you know, my identity. The narratives that I have around that have to evolve. So who am I that, you know, being on a board or, you know, licensing my programs or traveling across 40 countries that I do, you know, who am I that, you know, that is worthy to do that? That's the work that we need to do. Um, and that's, you know, that's what keeps coaches busy, and that's mentors busy and uh, and people that are taking ownership of their own self development or their own, uh, professional development, you need to upgrade your identity. You know, we get delivered this identity out of pure accident. You didn't choose the time and place in your birth. You didn't choose your parents. It was chosen for you. Uh, up until the football team that you follow is pretty much, you know, an accident at birth. It's only when you become intentional that you say, well, I'm going to adopt this frame and not this. Now, I just recently posted on, um, LinkedIn because, um, I'm married to a Brazilian now. When you marry a Brazilian, there's A few things. Firstly, as a man, you know, you're alive because death is so close. But secondly, you're, you know, you're, you're, you're marrying into an entire culture. So for my wife, football isn't, isn't a hobby, it's inherited. Now I wore a yellow shirt and we had, we had a Brazil party, um, at the weekend. Unfortunately, Brazil was knocked out at this particular point. And of course our household was, was, was heartbr. But it was interesting for me, you know, that same weekend of when, you know, England went through. This is all going to be dated by the time you, this goes out. But I talked about how I had intentionally adopted, you know, eating Brazilian feijoado, you know, with faroffa, which is the national dish, you know, and how, you know, I adopted my barbecue style to be Brazilian and how I'd learned to speak Portuguese with my mother in law. These are intentional acts. I'm, uh, not just playing out the, the blueprint from my parents, right? So, you know, anybody listening to this because World cup is currently on you, you support a team because it's what your father supported or it's where you were born. But of course, you know, the World cup right now. And again, as I said, I'm making this very topical. You know, you have, you have a player that got, ah, that is playing for America because his birthright citizenship, but is actually Nigerian and his mother lives in England. You have, uh, you have a Norwegian who grew up in England and could have played for England. These soccer players are choosing their nationality by circumstance or intentionality because it's leveraging their career. So what else could we upgrade if we so wish to?

Speaker B: M. Yeah, exactly. And what's coming through my mind as I'm listening to you is that it all starts by just deciding what it is he wants. And I think that's the hardest question of them all. So in order to set this intention, we have to decide first what is and admit to ourselves, what is it that we want? Where are we going? What does that look like? And then who do we need to be in order to step into it?

Speaker A: I have a strategy for that or a piece of advice. And that is curiosity, right? Because if you're not curiosity, who could I become? What is possible? Um, then you're never going to ask the question and you're never going to come up with any answers. So it is a curiosity, you know, looking around at, you know, who are the people I admire, who are, you know, what are the behaviors that I value in Others. And could I have that? Um, I'm very fortunate. I mean, I left the UK at 24 to go to Australia. You know, I lived there for 18 years and I transitioned into living in Asia before I moved back to continental Europe and living in Portugal. And travel broadens the mind, obviously, it challenges the frames of mind we have. You know, I mean, interestingly, at 4 o' clock, I still tend to reach for a cup of tea. Um, but I drink coffee in the morning. Right. So, you know, simple, simple cultural things. But travel broadens the mind. I think curiosity is the key. If you, you know, if you haven't moved more than 10 miles from the place that you were born and, you know, you're still hanging out with the same mates from school, it's challenging to do that because to be curious about who you might become is going to mean you're going to leave some of those people behind. And that's really hard for a lot of people. Um, these are my friends. And so, you know, there's a concept in Asia, you know, the crab crawling out of the bucket. And, you know, as one crab crawls out the bucket, the other grabs bring it up. So, you know, there's lots of wisdom around. You know, you are the sum total of the five people that you hang out with and the last ten books you read. And, you know, so this is the, you know, curiosity, what is possible and challenging that and role m modeling. Because as you, as you look at other people, you go, well, if they did it, it's possible. You know, this is the concept of modeling. You know, what did that person think? Do that? Allow them to be in that position? Um, so that's my suggestion.

Speaker B: No, and I agree. Curiosity just takes you. It allows you to explore without any risk. You know, you can. It's just having a look around and being curious at what could you do. And nowadays it's so easy to do that because you've got podcasts, you've got access to people and YouTube and videos and social media, we can just follow people. So even the, the sum total of the 10 people that you hang around with, that's extended to the people that you spend time with on social media as well. So you, it doesn't. You don't have to feel completely trapped by the people just in your inner circle from school.

Speaker A: A story that just popped into my mind back when I was living in Sydney. Um, there's a show on tv. Well, it's been on TV for a few years now, which is Queer Eye for a Straight Guy. And the basic premise of the story, of course, is that straight guys have bad fashion sense and gay guys have good fashion sense. Not always true, but it certainly, um. And I had a firsthand experience of that because I had two gay friends that took me shopping in Sydney. And I said, you know, try this on. You look fabulous in this. And it was a wonderful afternoon. And there was things I tried on and they just stretched my mind. I mean, here I am wearing a boring black shirt, you know, for you today. So clearly I have defaulted to the neutral. But I tried on a number of things and the experience was confronting and exciting and I did stretch my comfort zone. And, uh, this is something that I do want to say is don't get out of your comfort zone. Expand your comfort zone. Getting out of your comfort zone is disruptive and it's psychologically damaging and physiologically dangerous. But if you constantly expand trying on new things, and I think the metaphor of trying on new clothes, you might not like them, they might not feel comfortable, they might jar with their identity, but you might go, you know what? You know, I feel really good in this. And that's really what curiosity is. It's trying on a different set of clothes. Like Anthony Bourdain going off on his travel show and saying, try this new food, right? Move beyond, you know, chicken tikka masala and fish and chips and try something different.

Speaker B: Exactly. That you might not like it, but at least you've tried it and it might just expose you to something else that you might like. So, yeah, uh, you're absolutely right. It is just about trying things on. And I completely agree. In terms of stretching your comfort zone, I'm not a fan of stepping out of it. You're right, it's not great for you. But just expanding it and giving yourself permission to expand it is no bad thing, especially if you can integrate it into your day to day.

Speaker A: Well, you pick up on a very important point because permission is a frame. It's a frame of mind that holds us. Do I have permission? So permission, the opposite of permission, is taboo, Right. So a lot of our upbring taboos us from doing certain things, right? I mean, we were talking about clothes. I grew up. Blue and green should never be seen. Right. And so it was a taboo of mixing those together, but they actually do work in certain. I mean, I'm no fashionista, right? So don't get advice from me, but, you know, giving myself permission to try something. Right. And suddenly when you do this, all sorts of other frames of mind pop. Up, you know, oh, don't climb too high. You might fall. I mean, based on the topic of this podcast, right? Oh, who do you think you are that you think you should be the BO or you should be an entrepreneur or you should be this, right? But you. Where does the permission come from? At some point in your life, you have to make a decision to live the life for yourself and the other area. I mean, I remember very distinctly having left England at 24, moving to Australia, calling my parents regularly back in the uk and always everything I did in Australia, I had this internal dialogue, this will make my father proud or whatever. And so I'm playing my life to my father long past these days. But, you know, I was playing it out and then phoning up and telling him and getting that validation. And then I remember the day I realized I don't need to tell him this, that, you know, I need to do this for myself. And years later, you know, as I sat by his bedside in a hospice for a week as he transitioned, and he said, I'm proud of you, son. And that. I mean, it's a beautiful moment. A lot of people never get that from their parents. And it was lovely, but I already knew that, right. Uh, I didn't need his validation. I had finally grown up and was validating myself and giving myself permission. And I'm very happy that I got that closing. But I coach a lot of people who have lived their life for a parent that's passed, and they're constantly looking for validation, and they're never going to get from that parent because they passed, but they have to give it for themselves.

Speaker B: Yes, it is a moment. I had a similar moment, actually, where I realized that I didn't need to get somebody else's validation. And in order for me to live the life I wanted, one that I was truly happy with, it had to come from myself. And I see this, and I'm sure you do, Andrew, is. I see this with a lot of leaders as well, in terms of who are they looking for validation from other people, when in actual fact, it has to come from within now that you get to a certain point where it just has to.

Speaker A: It does. And I mean, working as a sort of CEO confidant, as it were, rather than a coach. Because, you know, there comes a point where they don't want to be coached. They just. They need somebody as a sounding board, um, because it is a rarefied atmosphere at the top. Right. And, you know, because anybody that you ask for opinion is in some way sucking up and you know, has, has something to gain. So getting on an objective feedback without needing the validation, it's a good space. So I'm not saying giving yourself permission means that you don't, you don't have accountability and you don't have people around to check you for some unseen narcissism that is creeping to the surface. Self leadership is not selfish. It is not arrogant. Arrogant is thinking that you're better than somebody else. It is the state of mind that I recommend is a state of confident humility. We need confidence in ourself and our ability. And the humility is being grounded. Humility from the Latin humilitas, and being grounded in a realization that you have a perspective which is valid, but everybody has an equally valid perspective. And that's what true humility is about. It's not going, oh, we are humble, but we're better than everybody else. We are more humble than everybody else. Which is very much a religious frame, isn't it? Look how humble we are. Um, which is in itself a form of arrogance. But confident humility is. I know what I'm good at, but I also know there's a whole bunch of stuff that I don't know and I need to get around smart people who can help me get where I need to be.

Speaker B: Yes, agreed. Especially now that the world is changing so much. Leaning towards your latest book, which came out this March, potentially. Yeah,

Speaker A: first of March.

Speaker B: First

Speaker A: of March.

Speaker B: I'm just reading the. Hold it up again, Andrew, just for a second. Centralize how leaders unlock human potential in the age of AI. We'll put all the links in the show notes, um, for you to go and grab that. But yeah, the world's changing and I know this isn't an AI book, so tell me what kind of book it is because you do mention AI.

Speaker A: Sure. So this is, this is my fifth book and um, Wiley, the publisher came to me which was, which was nicely validating. And not that I was, because I wasn't looking for the validation, but it was nicely validating that they said to me, you know, what are you working on? And I said, well, you know, I've done all this work on self leadership and I know self leadership moves the dial. You know, I know that it has a return on investment that, you know, self, self led people, you know that they're greater employee engagement, better business outcomes, I know all that. But the world is expanding and the element of leadership that I'd always been a big fan of articulating is that leadership is contextual. So you know, on LinkedIn, you'll always see lead. You know, leaders do this, managers do this. I find it a tad frustrating because it says in what context, right? Leadership always depends on who the followers are, what their competency, skill set and motivation is, and what is the environment in which it's happening. And since I wanted to relook at the human potential movement, which I grew up in, right, you know, you've got Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs, and then you, you know, you've got the birth of the human potential movement. And out of that, you know, you get Oprah and Tony Robbins, et cetera. And I wanted to look at this in the context of AI because self leadership brings us to a point to become the best version of ourselves. But human potential is about unlocking what is possible for us. It's back to that curiosity. So as I wrote this book, I interviewed lots of people from business, from organizations I consulted to Olympic athletes, to par. Olympic athletes, and looking at how people had uncovered their potential because it's always inside, right? And as I did the interviews, a pattern emerged. And I began to look at this pattern as I played back all the interviews and run and I ran the transcripts of these interviews through AI and it helped me do the pattern recognition. And out of that I got a framework which is the Ignite framework, which is in the box. And that Ignite framework is a framework for human transformation or organization transition or expansion, but particularly in this context because a lot of people are trying to adopt AI as part of their business and failing. And there's some case studies in the book about organizations that have gone in boots first as it were, replaced all the humans with AI and then had to hire the humans back because it didn't work. Right. And the reality is that you have to have the humans and the AI. And the World Economic Forum has recently published a paper that makes that point. And so this book is how do we develop ourselves alongside the AI? Because AI is rapidly accelerating in its evolution, which challenges us to evolve at a similar pace, if not a, uh, more accelerated pace.

Speaker B: You know, you just said something that, uh, I just want to kind of highlight and underline that it highlights us to develop also. It's not, uh, AI isn't a replacement. And I think there's so much fear around that at the moment. It's just. It enables us to accelerate our development too.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's not a replacement, but it can be a displacement,

Speaker B: right?

Speaker A: A lot of people are going to be displaced because there's no point Having a human do things that are easily automated by AI robotics. So we are going to be displaced, but we're not going to be replaced. Right. As long as we add the human elements of. We've already talked about curiosity. We need to talk about critical thinking. Right? Because, you know, AI can sort things into category, but it doesn't necessarily judge them very well. Right. It takes, you know, AI can create art, but it takes us as humans to say, is it beautiful or is it not? Right. You know, and to appreciate it. Right. Because AI can't appreciate its own art. Right. So art, uh, for art's sake, in this case. So we will be displaced. And a lot of the jobs that we previously did, it's pointless doing them, um, and hanging on to them. So people are going, but this is my skill set. And if AI and robotics take this, I'm out of a job. Yeah, we have bad news, right? And it's already happening at a rate of speed. I mean, even in the area of, you know, the leadership development workshops and masterclasses that I do, you know, the, the, uh, the learning and development people are telling me, uh, you know, this year we're not running any workshops. We' told all our employees, um, to use AI to teach them AI. Right, well, okay, we'll go to that in a minute. But what we need is curiosity. We need that creative thinking. We need developer discernment.

Speaker B: Yes,

Speaker A: right. How do we evaluate things? How do we judge things as good or bad? And this is the element of philosophy that is such a human skill. And organizations around the world have been hiring philosophers, which is, to me, um, funny, because I predicted this. I'm sure I'm not the only one that predicted it. But back in the 90s, when I took my MBA, I was doing the IT course, and our professor of technology asked us, what is the profession of the future? And this was around, I don't know, 1995, 1996. And we were like, well, it's it. It's tech. And she said, no, it's librarian. And we're all like, like, what? And we're like. And she said, yeah, because the future is about curating information, and curating information is the job of a librarian. And we're like, okay. Bit of a spin on librarian, but yeah, okay, we get it. And now the job of the M present and future is philosopher. A job that's been kind of out of vogue for quite some time. But we need developing ethics. And leaders in particular can't just say, well, we deployed AI. We don't know how the algorithm works. They are still going to be challenged around what were the ethics that went into that algorithm. And you have to be able to articulate your philosophical, your value proposition around why you're doing things. So curiosity, critical thinking, discernment, and ethics.

Speaker B: Brilliant. I want to delve into your five movements, actually. Is that all right, Andrew?

Speaker A: Sure. It's inspire, guide, nurture, integrate, transform and evaluate.

Speaker B: Okay, right, brilliant. So inspire, ignite, nurture, integrate, transform and evaluate. Um, and evaluate. So do you see these as a hierarchy? A step by step is this. No. So how do you visualize it?

Speaker A: Absolutely. Absolutely not. I mean, you could take it, you could take it through a linear process, but nothing much in life is linear. Anything. I mean, everything is loops and reinforcing loops and even Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which everybody wants to go up to. Self actualization actually is a cycle, it's not actually a linear process process. So the whole process ignites. The beginning is the inspire is the story. And so the framework has both an inner work and an outer, uh, impact aspect, which is all of my self leadership work is you have to do the inner work before the outer work happens. So the inspire is, you know, what's your story? What's your narrative? As a leader, you need to inspire others. Now of course, that concept was in many ways made popular by Simon Sinek with his three circles of why. Uh, that's been around for a lot longer than Simon, but thanks Simon, for making that popular. So the inspire piece is the skill around narrative. The guide is leading people through questions. So the guide for yourself is what questions you're asking yourself. We already covered that. Right. What is possible for me?

Speaker B: Uh-huh.

Speaker A: The guiding other people is asking them what's possible for you. Not here's your job for the next 12 months. But how do you want to grow as a human being in the next 12 months and as an employee within this organization and then guiding them to what is possible with that through questions. The N is for nurture. And we know that human beings meet nurture. Psychological safety has become a household term. Now in the book I talk about the Goldilocks zone. We all know Goldilocks from the three Bears story. And in astronomy, a planet is in the Goldilocks zone. If it's not too close and not too far from the sun to support life. Well, we need to create a Goldilocks zone for ourselves. Are we being stretched enough, but nurtured enough? Are we stretching ourselves but also employing self care as we set up a cultural environment in our teams and organizations. Are we stretching our people at the same time m supporting their growth? There's a balance. The I for integrate is integrating AI plus humanity. And you know what Klarna did back in 2024 was replaced all the humans with AI and then had to hire them back. Ikea, another Scandinavian company, has actually put the bots in, put the AI in, but given not did not replaced, but displaced people, given them different roles, as did, um, Patagonia, which is another case study from inside the book. Um, so the integrate is any skill that you have, you have to bring it on board. And most, most training, you know, obviously is, is expensive because if people don't apply the learning, um, the T is for transform. And it's interesting that change never happens without adversity. And transform is, is growth through adversity. And every motivational speaker will tell you about the time that, you know, they were up a mountain and they faced hardship or they lost a limb or you know, there's always a moment where in the mythologist Joseph Campbell, where you, you know, you've gone on your hero's journey down into the darkest moment that you discover what you're made of. You discover your gift gift, and you bring that gift to the world. So organizations and individuals that go through their transformation find the gift in the change and the ease for evaluate which should be going along all the process, which is the feedback loop. How is this doing? Is it moving me towards my objectives? Is it in alignment with my values, integrity and identity? And so the evaluate piece is there. And so within the book there are a number of case studies and we look at the ignite framework all the way through. So it becomes second nature. Not something that you have to, you know, hang on, let me check this, the, the checkbox. It becomes something that, you know, looking at anything that you're doing, all the elements are there.

Speaker B: So, uh, so if somebody was listening and they wanted to kick start this in their business, what would be the best starting point? Would you invite people to start right at the inspire stage?

Speaker A: The inspire stage is, you know, there's nothing's going to change unless you, you have a vision for that. There is a better version, right? Unless it's just reactivity. Right? You know, it's change because you're disrupted and it's a survival mechanism and it's a reactive thing. And in reactive change, we're not planning, we're not being strategic. But if an individual and organization is saying, look, I want to become a better version of myself. Or we want to grow the organization to be a better version of ourselves. That's the place to start is what is the story? What is the narrative? What is possible? Um, and then going through the steps. And in the book, you know, there's a, there's an evaluation for each of the steps. There's a whole bunch of questions to say, you know, where are you? And therefore what you need to do. So I've mapped it all out and you know, um, you know, we can put the book back on the screen, right? You know. Yeah, it goes away. It comes back. It goes away.

Speaker B: Fantastic.

Speaker A: So

Speaker B: you've mapped it all

Speaker A: out. Yeah, keyboard shortcuts. So, yes, it's mapped out. And it's mapped out through case study. Right. Remember, I didn't have a framework and then go looking for the validation. The framework, you know, um, the framework revealed itself in the research for the book. It was always there. Um, and other people might have a different model that they've used for organizational change and they'll go, oh, well, we'll use a different letter for this. And I'm like, I'm going to go, I don't care if you use a different letter for it. It's probably the same thing, right? Because these are the natural things that we have address if any, any evolution is going to happen. So I'm not hung up on. We have to use my letters, Right?

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. No, but that's all the best frameworks do reveal themselves in, in the research. You're absolutely right, Andrew. How can people get hold of you? I could talk to you all day because this is a subject so close to my heart and it's just nice to have a, um, a kindred spirit to yap to, to chat to. But, um, I'd be. People find you.

Speaker A: I own selfleadership.com and every link to books and coaching and workshops and my thoughts on AI all are, uh, linked off that homepage. So that's a good place to start if you're a LinkedIn person. You can find me on LinkedIn. I usually, uh, accept LinkedIn requests, um, because I know that I can always unlink somebody if they sell me in the first five minutes before finding out who I am. Personal bugbear there. Um, so, yes, selfleadership.com is the easiest place to find me in. Um, I'm self leadership on Instagram and Andrew Bryant speaker on TikTok.

Speaker B: All the places. We'll put all the links in the show notes. But Andrew, it's been an absolute pleasure thank you so much for hanging out with me today. Um, and as I said, all the links to Andrew's book and, um, places to get hold of him are all in the show notes. But Andrew, I'll speak to you soon. Thank you. You.

Speaker A: All the best. Thanks, Papa.

Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the Smash your own Ceiling podcast. If you're ready for more, go to barbaranixon.co UK. See you soon.