Lead Compassion: Gunnar George on Creating a World of Hope and Joy

Pity Party Over

How can we make our common road lead to a world of hope and joy? Our guest today is Gunnar George, author of the book Aha... Wow! Yes, and leadership development expert.

Gunnar George believes that the most effective leaders are those who are compassionate, inspirational, and have a vision that promotes hope, joy, and sustainability. He challenges the notion of transactional communication in business and personal interactions, advocating instead for authentic and emotionally engaging exchanges.

By developing others and maintaining a vision that encompasses societal and global impacts, compassionate leaders can play a significant role in creating a better world.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to become an authentic and emotionally engaging leader.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn.

#LeadershipDevelopment #EmotionalIntelligence #TransformationalLeadership #GlobalImpact #Sustainability #CompassionateLeadership #BusinessTransformation #AuthorInterview #NewBookRelease #PodcastEpisode

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TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: The first question that I have for you, being someone who wrote a book, is how is the whole experience of writing a book? How your idea for “Aha... Wow! Yes.” came by?

Gunnar George: Oh, the whole experience. It's a long experience, actually. It started many years ago. I thought I wanted to write a book. And I also worked in a company that had a different way of leading. We were consultants working with strategy and big transformations.

And we had a different way of leading change that most of the traditional consulting companies had in those days. So we said to ourselves that we need to write this down sometime. And I had that in the back of my mind for many years. And then I've worked a lot with leadership development programs lately.

And one of the things that I realized is that the more you share, the more you get and sharing is sort of the sharing of knowledge and experiences and views and so on. It's really what that is the core of leadership development.

I met so many fantastic people and been part of extraordinary things in meetings with companies and transformations in big companies and so on. So I thought I need to share myself what I've experienced and what I've noticed and observed. But I didn't want to share it sort of to give advice, more to sort of to share my observations and my reflections on that.

But it is a fantastic experience to see it grow and to see it take form. And then also, another thing is that the people you have around you and the people you meet, as soon as you start to talk about it a little bit, people want to contribute.

And I have a friend who likes Paulo Coelho and he often quotes him and says that you have to be careful what you dream of because universe will conspire to make it happen. And that is sort of joked a little bit about it sometimes. But when you write a book, you see that almost like this is true because people come from suddenly from nowhere and say, I can help you or I can do that.

So it's an amazing experience in that way.

Stephen Matini:When you thought about writing a book, what was your initial biggest wish for the book?

Gunnar George: I wrote it in English, in a simple kind of easy to read English. So I wanted to reach out to as many as possible in the world, not only to English native speaking countries. That was one of the thoughts I had.

And then one of my wishes also that people start to think more about, “Aha... Wow! Yes,” which is the title of the book. That is sort of if we need more emotions in business, we need more emotions in society and positive emotions. And often when we structure things or do strategy work or communication work, whatever, we use why, what how as a structure that is sort of, you check that you have covered, why, what, how?

And my thing thought with it, my wish with this was that “Aha... Wow! Yes,” would be the new why, what, how. So that is also a wish that I had. So I have in the book, I had sort of this “Aha... Wow! Yes,”, circular that I spoke about many times in the book.

Stephen Matini: One thing that struck me when you and I met, you were talking about the importance of contributing to create a world of hope and joy, which, you know, these days, it seems to be so important to do, considering all that is happening, all the negativity. How do you keep that hope and joy within yourself?

Gunnar George: I try to find it in the people I meet. I see sort of the positive things and heard an interview with the previous foreign minister of Sweden the other day. And he said that he had hope for, he saw hope in the world because we haven't done the transformation with women. Women has sort of, that is still a big transformation for the world.

And he saw a lot of hope in that sort of, because it is a man's world. And this transformation is to make it a balanced world with both men and women is, he saw a lot of hope in that. And I agree totally with that. And I see that type of messages and people who think like that, that just brings me hope.

And also the young generation. Every time I talk to them, I get amazed a little bit because I think back when we were young, were we that clever and that did we see so much? Did we see the world with that clear? Do we have this engagement or not when we were young?

Stephen Matini: And to keep that youthful approach to things, I believe is really important. You know, like I believe for you, one of the key points is learning. And learning for me is one of the components that probably keep me positive, but keep me wanting to keep going. Absolutely. You said a few times the word transformation, which seems to be such an important word to you. What does transformation mean to you?

Gunnar George: For me, transformation. A lot of people talk about change and transformation and it's sort of, and everybody have their different definitions about it. I see transformation as a bigger type of change than just improvements.

So transformation for me is a radical change. And you often start from the future and look back. What type of future do we want? And then you look back and say, what do we need to make happen in order for this division to happen, so say. And transformation is also more, it covers both the mindset and the system and the culture of a company or a society. So it's a very thorough change. That is the way I see it.

And I think you mentioned learning and learning, I see, is the big way to get there, learning and seeing different perspectives. And I have in my book, I have one of the longest chapters about learning, actually, how to learn faster, faster than the speed of change.

Stephen Matini: A lot of people say around learning, oh, I don't have time. I'm busy. I don't have time. I don't have time. So how can you keep what they say? A growth mindset, you know, a learning mindset, despite the fact that so many of us are super busy. How do you carve that time in your opinion?

Gunnar George: Yeah, that's the biggest challenge, I guess. I think we need to add the inspiration part to the learning. We need to talk much more about inspiration. And if we are inspired and curious, we will learn much more. And we will create the time. You can see yourself. You have a lot of mails and messages coming all over.

And then suddenly one of them, you can spend quite a long time on that. And then you can also say, why do you do that? And I think it has to do with you get inspired or you get, this is something that attracts you. And suddenly you create time. You don't have time, but maybe you spend half an hour or something, you didn't think that you were going to spend half an hour. And there was something that triggered that. And then to learn for half an hour just because it's really interesting.

We have a limited amount of time during the day. So I think also we need to set aside learning as part of our work. So we have you answer a lot of emails. That does a chunk in your daily work. But you also need to put in maybe one hour or two hours a day just for learning. I mean, if you take a writer, for example, many writers, they read a lot.

And so they have before lunch, they read or after lunch they write or vice versa. And that is about learning and getting new inspiration, new perspectives on things. In business, we have forgotten to take this time to learn. So we need to book it in our agendas, I think. I have a lot of examples and stuff in the book that how to speed it up.

Stephen Matini: You said what we find inspirational, and I have to say during the day, a few things are inspirational, but a lot of stuff is boring. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Emails are God ... such a boring thing. You know, emails, I started writing less and less email. And I'm definitely using more and more of chats because they're faster. But the emails, God is still. I mean, emails have been around for what, 25 years? And still, people complain, oh, I get put in CC and so much stuff. Hundreds and hundreds of emails a day. And you think, yeah, but I mean, what does it do anyway? You know For sure, it's not inspirational.

Gunnar George: But you can ask yourself, what is that really gets your attention? What type of headlines is it? What type of pictures is it that you sort of stop for a moment and give it a chance?

Stephen Matini: I have to say that a lot of stuff that I see in business, I find it very transactional. You're trying to get something out of me. And I think that all of us can spot that in a second. And what I'm thriving and what I try to seek is something that feels more simple, simpler and more authentic. Because when everything becomes transactional, then the energy doesn't flow, you know?

Gunnar George: So that is also why I have this “Aha ... Wow! Yes.” When you see a title or something, you see a picture and they say, aha, I didn't realize that. Or you say, wow, that was new or something.

Or yes, I would like to try that. Then those type of emotional expressions are also, you see it everywhere, this aha, wow, yes. These are the things that we're focusing on.

Stephen Matini: So it is an emotional book. It's supposed to evoke emotions.

Gunnar George: Yes, I put in a lot of stories in it and a lot of quotes and stuff like that. Because many books on leadership and change and transformation, they are written in a very transactional way, in a sort of square mechanistic engineering type of books. I don't believe that you can explain leadership to leaders. You cannot, but many do.

Many think that if you explain a model or something, then people will say, okay, and then they will sort of get it. But I think you need to go the whole circle. Aah, that is the learning and wow is the inspiration. And yes, it's sort of the action. So you have to go do all the whole circle in either way.

Stephen Matini: In your book, there are three, I guess, ingredients that are so talked about these days. One is the notion of sustainability, which means a lot of different things for people. Another one is technology, new technology, and how technology is speeding things up. And the other one is this whole global political discourse, that is becoming apparently dark and dark and darker. And so these three components seem to be as part of this transformation. So from your perspective, what would you say that is a healthy, positive approach to the three of them?

Gunnar George: The way I see it is that the more you learn about it, the more you understand. So you sort of feel that you are not maybe on top of it, but you feel that you are following what's happening.

So that is one way. And the next thing is that I think you need some sort of vision as inspiration. If you don't have a positive future vision, then you will just do a lot of problem solving and you will run around and feeling stressed and so on. But if you have a vision, then that will sort of color the things that you do.

I heard one person once talked about visions as memories of the future. And the reasoning was that memories that forms the way we sort of select information and the way we think our memories. If you have a vision, then you have sort of that is part, then that is your memories. You start to see new things just because you have this vision. If you have a vision to go to the moon or to Mars, for example, nowadays, suddenly you start to see all things that can help that. If you have a vision about the sustainable future, then you pick up all the things that are positive and that can add to that vision.

You also see the barriers, of course. But yeah, I think you need to see these positive things to be able to cope with all the stress in a society today. Because I think it's sustainability, new technology and geopolitics. These are the three major forces. It's like a perfect storm now with three storms just enforcing each other. And they are connected, of course.

Stephen Matini: How do you build a vision when you don't have a vision?

Gunnar George: It is to paint a picture of what kind of future you want to see. If it is in business, for example, if you take that, then most companies, they are not used to painting visions that are sort of something else than their own company. Because in today's world, it's so much focused on the shareholder value, for example, and there's a lot of companies looking at their valuation because they want to become unicorns and so many visions is about we are going to be the leader in the world or the leader in our industry.

But the real vision is they go, they leave their own company and look at the customer or the society. What is the future customer experience? What is the future society we want to live in? Who are the future leaders? That type of vision is something more than yourself.

Most companies start with the wrong question. They start with, what do we want to be in five years from now? And then they start talking about their own company and market shares or whatever, profitability. Instead of talking, what kind of customer experience do we want to see? What type of society do we want to see in the future? So I think when you have bigger visions like that, then you need to go outside of yourself, connected to the purpose of the company or the organization.

If you look at yourself as an individual, if you can do the same there, you can come up with a wonderful vision, which is not only about yourself, it is about your network or the whole world, if you want to have a really, really big vision. And in the book, I try to connect the three levels. It's the individual level, the organizational level, and the world, the global level. And most books are about one of these levels.

But I try to connect them all because now if you take sustainability, for example, you actually can do a lot as a responsible person as an individual, but it also can make even more as a company. And it's all connected to what's happening in the world. So all this, you have to cover all three today in many of the big challenges we have. It's not enough just to look at the individual or to look at the team or the organization. You have to go all the way. It is a time for big visions, I think, that we live in right now.

Stephen Matini: You know, as you're talking, I'm thinking about vision and whether or not I've had the vision in my life, but everything you are saying, that sort of vision that goes beyond myself, I think it's something that I have developed only in recent years. And a lot of that, I think it has to be with age, and the understanding that I will not be here forever. So the question to you is, do you think would you have written this book earlier?

Gunnar George: Maybe not, because I think you have a point there. There are many young people with strong visions, but it's also when you get older, you have a broader perspective and you have more experience. Since part of the book is a big reason for the book is sharing experiences and observations is I needed to collect a lot, of course, before you can do it. But I think it's an interesting question you have. But there are young people with a very fantastic visions, of course, that I think is amazing when you see them.

Stephen Matini: In your life, were there any experiences, any people that somehow, you know, looking in hindsight, were responsible for the way you think today?

Gunnar George: Well, there are many, actually, maybe a thousand. But actually, in my book, I wrote down, I did an exercise. I was doing a presentation at the conference. And after the presentation, two persons from China came up to me and they thanked me a lot for, and they said that they had learned a lot. And I didn't realize it. I said, I said, yes, thank you, thank you. But then they said, we learned a lot. And then I said, one more time, we learned a lot. I thought about what was so, why did they say that?

But then I realized that that is one of the best things you can say to someone, especially in Asia. So then I thought about it. Who has I learned a lot from? Who could I say that to? So when I wrote the book in the beginning of the book, the introduction, I wrote down the people I learned a lot from. And then I was thinking, when I've done that, I put them in the right order. And then I realized that that was a very interesting thing to do.

But I also developed it into an exercise because if you do that, then you can start to think, who did I put on a list and who did I not put on a list? And why did I not put them there? Because the list cannot be too long. And then you can ask yourself, who could I have put there that I didn't put there? And why did I not take that opportunity to learn from that person more? I've developed maybe 10 questions.

I think it was that was that you can connect to this list that really says a lot about how you think and how you can start to learn faster and learn more. If I should pick one or two persons from that list, I learned a lot from this guy that I told you about earlier. He was an Irish guy, was an expert on cross-cultural communication. Sean Gaffney was his name.

And I learned a lot from him. And that thing I said, I love people. That summarizes a lot of his view on things. I learned a lot from Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian explorer that I had the opportunity to talk to. And his view of life, I take him as an example a couple of times in the book, also things that he said and one thing that he shared was that he had traveled around the world as an explorer, looking at digging out this ancient pyramids, whatever.

And then when we talked to a group of people, he told us that I have learned what is a good society or not. There's an easy measure of that, he said, and everybody was curious. And then he said, you can just count the number of smiles on the streets. That is my, from all the travels are done all over the world. If you count the smiles you see on the street, that is the best indication for how good a society is. And I thought that was a really strong message in that.

But I learned a lot more from him also. And then I learned a lot from my wife that I'm very thankful for having met. And there are many others also that I work together with. And you learn every day when you work with the curious people. And if you work in situations that are really stretched, so really challenging situations. So I learned a lot. I can go on forever, talk about people.

Stephen Matini: And sometimes you learn from people that they teach you stuff unintentionally. It may not necessarily be someone that you know super well. It could be someone that you met very briefly, but somehow the person says something that you really need at the moment.

Gunnar George: Yeah, exactly. Small things. I learned a lot from one of my sons. When he was about five years old, he was, every time the doorbell rang, he was just running as crazy to get first to the door because he wanted to stand there and shake hands and see who it was on the other side of the door.

And it was so curious. His eyes were just glowing when it was a new person coming, ringing on the door. When I saw that, I thought, what a fantastic curiosity. That is something I need to develop even more also myself. So you learn all the time from all kinds of sources, of course.

Stephen Matini: You know, you've been working in leadership development for such a long time. If you had a leader in front of you, and if you had to share with such a leader a very important point that you think should know, what would you say that is? What I seem to say the most now is people always look at you and they seek a consistency. So you may ask people whatever you want, but they don't see that behavior in you, they're not going to follow you. So be mindful that people always look at you. They always seek for consistency.

Gunnar George: For me, if I say something to you, it's to take initiatives and develop your people. It's not about yourself. It's about your people. If you as a leader can develop really good leaders, that is the ultimate sign of good leadership. And I think one of the key questions in the book that I've written is about sort of what type of leaders? How do we get leaders who care for the whole world? I think that is one of the core questions we need to ask ourselves now. How do we get leaders who care for the whole world?

If you as a leader can develop that, that would be fantastic. And there are many more things to say, of course, in that. But I try to think a lot in the book about what, you know, this famous quote from Einstein. So if I had one hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I would just spend 55 minutes on finding the right question. Then I had five minutes to find the answer. So I was thinking about that quote.

I said, "What is the right question in a book about leadership?" So I thought a lot about it. And then what I came up with is that the question is, how do you develop, how do we ensure leaders that we have leaders that care for the whole world? That is the key question for me when we go forward now. That is part also of a vision, of course, if we can have that. Because what we see now is the opposite in many cases.

Stephen Matini: Is this also the reason why you name your consultancy Compassion?

Gunnar George: Yeah, it is. Because I think that is one of the keys to the future. It was actually my wife who suggested the name for the company. She has done a lot of yoga, and that is a key element in yoga. And when the yogis talk about the future, they talk a lot about the compassion.

And also compassion as a word is sort of passion, it's passion for communication, which I work with. And it's also compass is part of compassion. And I work a lot with strategy visions and values. So that is sort of the compass. So it's a lot of things that come together in that name, compassion.

Stephen Matini: So it's more passion and a vision, basically.

Gunnar George: Yeah. There are so many different definitions on compassion. I did one myself in the book. I will just look it up and see if I say the right thing. So the way I usually define is to listen with your heart and do good.

Stephen Matini: We talked about different things, a lot of different things. For those who are going to listen to this episode, is there anything in particular that you would like for them to pay attention to?

Gunnar George: What we talked about with the compassion, I think, is the key. That is the last chapter in my book is called compassion as the cornerstone. And so we talked about compassion. And I think that is the key for the future. And if we can determine how we interact, how we communicate, and how we lead. It comes down a lot to that single word, actually.

So I think if they find out more about compassion and they try to behave more compassionate and see the effect that it has on your surrounding and the boomerang effect that you get back. Like when you inspire people, you get so much inspiration back yourself.

Stephen Matini: From your perspective, compassion starts with the relationship with me. Does it start with people?

Gunnar George: What it starts with, I think it starts with yourself that you want to see the positive, that you're curious, want to see the positive, like what I said, to listen with your heart and your good. And so you listen a lot. And then in all your meetings, you're trying to find these positive things and create this positive feeling in the relationship. I think that is the core of that.

Stephen Matini: This listen with the heart and do good. I’m going to write it down. Thank you so much for sharing this moment with me. I learned a lot of important things. Thank you.

Gunnar George: Thank you. This has been fantastic to talk to you. You are very good at talking to people, you know.

Stephen Matini: You too, you too.