Learning from the Best: 12 Habits that Separate the Unicorns among Leaders from the Rest

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability, explicit or implied shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's Working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want Working on Purpose. Now here's your host, Doctor Relise Cortes. Welcome back to the Working and Purpose Program. Thanks you turning in this week. Great to have you. This show has been on air since February of twenty fifteen. It is a pride and joy of mine.

1:12 I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. If we have not met before and you don't know me, I'm a management consultant, organization, logo therapist, speaker and author. My team and I at Gusto Now help companies to enliven and fortify their operations by articulating their purpose and building inspirational leaders and cultures activated by meaning and purpose to turn those companies from a flatline EKG to a vibrant destination workplace. There people are intrinsically motivated to perform with their best, grown too their full potential, and are committed to stay and dynamically deliver on the company's mission. You can learn more about us and know we can work together at Eliscortes dot com and gustodeshnow dot com. Now getting into today's program with us, we have William van der Bluman, who has been leading the vender Bluman Search Group for fifteen years, where they are regularly contained to identify the best talent for teams, manage succession planning, and told on all issues regarding teams. This year, vander Bouman will complete their three thousandth executive search.

2:06 Prior to his search career, William served as a senior pastor at one of the largest Presbyterian churches in the United States. He is the author of Be the Unicorn, Twelve data driven habits that separate the best leaders from the rest. She'll be talking about today on the program He Knows It Today from Houston, Bill William, Welcome to Working on Purpose. Thanks Elise, appreciate you having me, absolutely, and let's just celebrate this gorgeous thing you brought into the world. Look at this. Oh, it's just every time, William. Every time I get a new book, and it's every week I read a book. It's always amazing to me. You know what. I know what it takes to bring a book into the world. And I will tell you this, my friend, this is harder to bring you into the world than a child. I've done both. Okay, so I'm quoting you forever now. Absolutely. I mean I tell people say, why do you write the book? And so well, it's not because I wanted to. It's not I mean, it's not fun. You won't make money unless your last name is Rowling, you know. So you know, we have seven children.

3:09 So I have been and I tell people this all the time, So now I can actually quote you. I've been in the labor and delivery suite many, many, many times. I have not given birth to a child. I do not know what it's like to give birth to a child. I'm not saying anything or minimizing giving birth to a child, but man, getting a book out of you feels like what it looks like my wife has gone through. Oh, that's a great way to say it. Well, I'm not to say a great way to say I'm gonnaquote you on that. Okay, Well, I have to tell you it's a miracle to bring a child in the world. I'll just say that. So I have to tell you. You won't know this from because you wouldn't know this about my background. But one of the things I really appreciate about what you've done in your book is where you drew your your analysis from. Because I started my career in human capital twenty five years ago in recruiting. So I want to start by saying that you do have a very unique vantage point on which to be able to understand these and discern these twelve habits. So I just want to celebrate that first thank you, thank you. Sometimes the expert is not the smartest person, it's just the one with the most repetitions. Yeah, yeah, no, I but you have a really really interesting, you know, bird's eye view on this, especially because of the kinds of people you recruit for organizations that you search for. So again, as you say you're not staffing all positions, you've been asked to get the next superstar. So that's just huge. So anyway, really, I mean, I'm envious that you have such a great data set, so we won't have time to get into

4:43 all twelve of the habits. And besides all that, ladies and gentlemen want we want you to get the book anyway, So we're going to talk about a few of them that I think are really pretty interesting and really add to what this shows curated content really really has already provided in the nine years you had on air. So I want to start with the notion that you tal talk in your book, and I love the way that you've laid it out. It's so crisp and well organized. But you talk about the habits and then you talk about why hired managers favor them, and then you talk about how we can cultivate them in ourselves, which I just think is wonderful. So the first habit that I want to talk about is this idea of the fast and so that's not really something we hear a lot about, you know, being fast, as it's distinguishing habits. So bring that to life for us a little bit if you will, Wow, Well, is it okay if I give a little backstory please? Yeah. So this started as a selfish research project. I wanted to figure out how to spot top talent quickly.

5:38 Like so during the pandemic we had a shutdown, right and some everybody had a little time on their hands, and we realized we've now done thirty thousand top top top interviews. Not we've done more than that in interviews, but the last best of the best, we've done thirty thousand of those. And so we asked a question, like, of the best of those, do these people have anything in common? And that was the question that sort of led to a selfish study figuring if I can spot these people quicker, I'll be a better search consultant, clients will be happier, Everything goes faster and better. A surprise happened on the way we studied what these people had in common, and it was an absolutely consistent and an absolute surprise. I would be IQ of one sixty they all have that. No, I thought, well, maybe they all got to go to great schools and have a pedigree and a network and you know Ivy League that sort of thing. Nope, that wasn't it either. It wasn't even as mundane as they all had fabulous hair, which I'm jealous of, or that they were the quarterback or they head cheerleader or whatever the thing. It wouldn't any of those sort of outward appearance or inborn things. It wasn't even traits that they had. What they had in common were habits, things that they do, particularly as it relates to how humans treat other humans. And these habits that came out are

7:15 absolutely coachable. Yeah I didn't know that. Yes, absolutely, it's training. It's a development plan. And when I realized, oh my gosh, we're not just able to spot a unicorn, now I'm able to teach you how to become one. Well then it was like, I think we got to write a book. And the first so each you know, there's an intro chapter and then maybe another one. But then you get to twelve chapters on these twelve habits, right, the very first one is the fast, And I get asked about this a lot. I'm not entirely sure why they ended up being the first one. I do know that it's the easiest one to tweak in your life to make you stand out in craft. So what do you mean, William, I'm not fast? At least I'm not fast either. I'm Dutch. We're not built for speed. We're built for wind resistance. So like, it's done great. So it's not speed, it's responsiveness. And I probably could have said responsiveness, but that wouldn't have led to fun questions like this one. So fast does not mean I ran a four three forty of the combine. Fast does not mean, you know, I can juggle and all the fast just means I get back to people.

8:33 And it turns out these unicorns, the best of the best we've ever interviewed, are almost compulsively driven to get back to people. And then when you look a layer beneath that and say, well what about everybody else, we're all pretty horrible at it. Yes, agreed, I mean just included. Yes, Oh, I fail all the time. At it. But but like we went past our candidates, we went to well, we surveyed all thirty thousand of our unicorns. We also surveyed two hundred and fifty thousand people that are just you know, random sample sized sort of thing. And what was so interesting is people graded themselves of the two hundred fifty thousand, the non unicorns, the rest of us, the normal people. We interviewed the or surveyed the two hund fifty thousand, and in a very long survey, asked them, would you grade yourself above average, below average average at these following things? Are you above average or not at getting back to people?

9:35 And the overwhelming answer was oh yes, okay, great. The average response time for people to take the survey we sent them, yeah, so it was about six days. We called the people at survey monkey that we had hired out to help us run this thing, So what's the average response time? They're like, most of your good responses are going to come in in the first three to four days. So what does that tell you? People that were grading themselves above average are below average? So we're not good at getting back to people we talked to. At least this I'm going to date myself here. But do you remember e harmony? Oh yeah, yep, it's kind of the og. It's before we were ever swiping right or left.

10:16 You know, it's the beginning. And we said, so, when your software sends one of your subscribers a hey, we may have found a potential match, how's the response time, it's terrible. And think about that for a minute. A site like e harmony fabulous outlook for people that are trying to find someone to spend their life with. Right, And theoretically everyone in that database is motivated to try and find someone that they can spend their life with. And then when you get a prospect, you wait forever to write back. Right. We saw marketing and I can bore you with all kinds of studies, but the reality is the unicorns are all most scary, how driven they are to get back to people quickly, and the rest of us are not. And if it's it, it is the first chapter, and it is the easiest tweak is the easiest one. If you will start getting back to people, you will rise to the top, whether it's in dating or parenting or business or what have you. So yeah, and we can talk in great detail about that or not, depending on what helps you and the listeners today, Well, thank you. I what I would love to do is get through like a good like three or four of these, So let's not go super in detail. But what I do want to do, because what I love about hosting the show is I like it to be one part educational, one part inspirational, so to be able to walk away put in the stuff to work. So one of the other tips that you put in your book on learning how to Cultivate the Fast was to make incentives

11:50 for faster responses, So encourage your people to respond more quickly and so that you know, you see lots of times that there's a service level agreement of respond within twenty four hours or whatever it is. Maybe it's something else, but I like that idea too. And then setting you also say to say quick, achievable, achievable deadlines. And then you also just cracked me if you said no one needs a month to make their benefits elections. Now they do not. So just little things like that, I think that just really gives some guardrails we be able to figure out how do I become more fast? Well, and I'm still learning it. I remember I was a lifetime ago. I was a pastor long long, long time ago. I was a very very young senior pastor of a church were I was called in to help them with a relocation they were doing. And we were looking for a new place to meet on Sundays until our building was built, okay. And I'm with one of the board members and we're riding around and driving down the road by the new property. So you know that YMCA just down the road that they don't use that on Sundays. Like really, he said, yeah, I actually know the board chair. I'm like cool. And so we get back to my office and he's dropping me off from lunch, comes in and here's the number for the chair okay. And then we sit and talk for a little bit and he looks at me and says, why haven't you called him yet? And I said, Todd, I'm sitting here with you.

13:09 And he said, William, I want to have a place to meet on Sunday. Listen, let me tell you something. The first chance you get to respond to people is almost always the best chance you're going to get. You know, I will drilled into me. I love that, and I will tell you as a result of written in your book, I am also, which has been I guess I finished it a few days ago. I'm doing that thanks to you. You're teaching me already, so I'm I'm coachable, William uncoachable. All right, Well, let's talk about this next one here before we have to grab our first break, and the next one that I want to talk about, which we do talk about in the show quite a bit, and that's authenticity. But I like the way that you distinguished some of the benefits of authenticity. So first, if you could talk about how this is such a unicorn habit. Why, yeah, well, I think you know. I work with a lot of people who spend time in front of a microphone, whether it's the CEO that does meetings, or a college president that's fundraising, or a pastor or whatever it is, and it's amazing to me how rare it is to find someone who's the same on stage as they are backstage. And that doesn't mean authenticity does not mean always telling all of the story and painful detail that's awkward and makes people go, oh my gosh, you need to share all that. That's not all.

14:33 Yes, authentic is are you the same in the daylight as you are in the dark, and the unicorns are the ones who do this. Most of us do not. This one scares me a little bit at least because there is no privacy anymore. I understand, Yeah, I mean, how many times have you been talking about a car with your phone in your pocket and then your social media feed has the car ad coming up? Like right, So all the time. There is no hiding anymore. And when we do a search for for for a candidate, we can do a social media history scrub to see how they're doing. I remember a dear friend of mine whose son was graduating from college, and she's like, he's getting ready to enter the job market. So I kind of watched him on Facebook. Was years ago, and he's a senior at college, great guy that he had a big college experience, and his post profile picture on his Facebook was him in a toga with the caesar wreath, the whole you know, fraternity everything.

15:37 The day after he graduated, he changed his picture to him walking somewhere like in Haiti with an orphan holding his hand. We'll switch so, and you know, I get why he did it, but but I think cultivating an authenticity that runs a little deeper is is going to help you stand out? Yeah, and I also liked that, you know, you also talked about it that when we're authentic, we it really helps build confidence and trust and and this is such a very important phrase today's psychological safety. Absolutely absolutely, And I I can I give you a life hack that's not in the book on authenticity? Can I keep it to myself? Okay, go for it.

16:26 So, so, if you were sat with someone in a conversation and at the end of the conversation, you're sitting there saying they made me feel like I was the only person in the room. Yeah. Yeah. Most of the time that's happened, it's either my wife when you know, particularly when you're first in a relationship and you're all, you know, puppy, you know. But but surprisingly the other times it's happened are with the most successful people I've ever met, and it's because they're unicorns and there's something they're doing in there listening to me that breeds authenticity trusty, and I've tried for it, and there are a lot of different ways, but here's one life hack that can help everyone here today. Okay, look people in the eye when you talk to them. Oh, William, that's easy. But why am I tuning into this radio show? That's silly. No, no, no, no, no. People don't do it, particularly gen Z and millennials. You know my kids who call FaceTime us all the time from college.

17:26 They FaceTime and I don't know why they FaceTime because I'm looking at their nose, they're looking up, they're doing something else. It's not It's not normal for people to look people in the eye, and even when they do, people are rarely looking someone else in the eye. What do I mean one of our eyes is the one we see with the other one gives you peripheral vision. See really only looking out of one of your eyes. I have noticed this in myself, but I didn't know that that was actually true. Thank you for saying that right there. And here's the life hack. Ninety percent of all humans are right eye dominant, So that means you have a nine to ten chance of getting it right when you're talking to the next person you're talking to, look dead in their right eye and they will walk away. Saying, he made me feel special, she made me feel like I was in I trust her, I believe him. He's authentic. So a little white hack that we learned on the way that's not in the book, So freeby for everybody, bonus for coming into the show. Okay, on that note, let's let them think about that while we grab our first break. I am your host, Doctor Releas cortesk. We run the Earth with William vender Bluman, who has been leading the vender Blumin Search Group for fifteen years, where they are regularly routined to identify the best talent for teams, manage succession planning, and consult on all issues regarding teams. We've been talking about a couple of the data driven habits from who Spook. After the

18:56 break, we're going to hit a couple more. Stay what this will be right back. Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at Elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to a lease A l Se at Elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on purpose. Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to working on purpose. I'm your host, doctor Early's Cortes, as I too, am dedicated to helping to create a world where people realize their potential at work and are led by inspirational leaders that help them find and contribute their greatness, and we do business that better is the world.

20:18 I also keep writing books so I know the birthing experience. My last one came out in March of twenty twenty three, and it's called The Great Revitalization How activating meaning and purpose can radically enliven your business. I wrote it for leaders to help them understand the lay of today's land, of what it takes to be able to attract and keep the best talent who want meeting and purpose, and then I provide twenty two best practices to help them develop that in their culture. If you are just joining us, my guest is William Vander Bluman. He is the author of Be the Unicorn, Twelve data driven habits that separate the best leaders from the rest, which we want to continue on here. Okay, So, as I said, we can't give all of them to you, ladies and gentlemen, but I want to give you a few that have really stood out and that I thought were really crunchy for me. So the next one I definitely want to hit, William is the one on agility. And you really got me with that opening agile fact you put in your book. I also love that you do that, that you have those facts for all of your habits as well. So do you want to share the agile factor do you want me to? Well, you can share the fact and I'll share a personal learning. How's that? Okay?

21:18 So you know, as somebody who continues, you know this aging process goes on the agile factor you have in your book. That really struck me, As you say. A physical therapist friend told me the other day about a continuing education class she'd taken over the weekend. It was on geriatric physical therapy, and she shared a sobering fact. Once a person is no longer able to get up off the floor on their own. Their life expectancy is less than five years. Practice agility, my friends. Yeah, yeah, And a couple of these habits we're better at when you're younger than as we get older. This is one of them. I noticed this personally years ago, our seventh kid, who she probbe ten years ago. She was just a toddler. And I'm a very slow jogger. Yeah, I think I remember the story from your book Go ahead. Yeah. And I got to the place where I was starting to get injured. So I started trying to do stretching and I'm pretty stiff, so you know, the stretching was harder than the running. And I'm at home, I've done my five mile run.

22:30 I'm stretching. I'm sweating like crazy, just you know, trying to touch my toes. My daughter walks in, looks at me, sits down on the floor, ties herself into a human pretzel as only a little kid can because they just babies bounce, they do. And then she stands up and looks at me and laughs and leaves the room. Not a word said. Message, Well, the youngest can get away with that, But it dawned on me, Hey, William, every day you're alive, you get less flexible. Humans are never more flexible than the minute they come out of the womb. And that's that's agility and learning that It's like when you can teach a kid to languages at once until they're like five or six years old, and it does not confuse them one bit. But when we get older and an iPad comes out and you say, but I like a legal pad, you know, the flexibility is not what it used to be. So this is one that will get worse as you get older. But nobody's working on it. And if you will just put a little bit of work in, your agility will go up. And I promise you your value in whatever arena you're living your life, whether that's as a parent or a student, or an employer or an employee, it will go up. Think back, at least you're such an expert on workplace and and per I bet the people you

24:02 talked to during the pandemic when they talked about who they're keeping and who they have to let go of, the people they kept were the ones that showed a lot of agility because we all had other duties as necessary. And let's figure out zoom and let's figure it. That was just a new gold standard for people. It's only going to continue the advent of AI, which is already here and is not going away, right, is going to demand that people learn new ways of creating value and those who work on that agility, which is hard. I can touch my toes now, but it took a long time. It's hard, but it will separate you from the field and is worth giving a shot. I really appreciate that, and I think that is so, so so true, even talk about things like, you know, don't add waste to projects, you know, don't waste time during meetings, don't have news at all if you can possibly do it. But there's this idea cost thinking about how can you get better at things and add more value that I really thought was critical and definitely wanted to be able to showcase for our listeners and our viewers. Just it's as simple as take up a new habit, yeah, a new hobby, learn to play the piano.

25:12 I'm trying to learn tennis right now. My wife plays. Sooner or later, all these children will be grown. We need something to do together, so take on and try something new. Well, And that's another one of the things I liked about what you had in your book is you offer a section on agility test and you say that when you're interviewing a candidate and you want to find out how agile they are, you tend to ask a few questions. And one of them is what new hobby have you developed? Which I think is fantastic. The other one that I really thought was pretty interesting as asking them what part of history do you like studying the most? That really really was compelling to me. And you said why in the book do you want to say? Why here? Why do you have I can tell you why right now without trying to remember the quote in the book. You know, my sense is people who are drawn to seasons like the Renaissance I would love to live in, or the dawn of the internet, or the printing press. People who are like man that must have been fun to be in an era where we just discovered a whole new part of the planet over here. You know, those who lean toward that kind of thing are the kind of people who naturally are working on their agility. And I mean I remember doing a chief communications officer search during the pandemic Big Client, and they were worried about having communications that were omni channel, like how do we do print media? And TikTok right like, so this person had to be able

26:45 to think in a like polylingual sort of way. And when I was interviewing, and it's very fast moving, fast growing client, so you know, agility is a key. When I was interviewing one of the candidates, I said, so, what you got any new hobbies. That's kind of interesting and she said, yeah, i'm learning French. Well, this is southern California and I live in Texas. French is not a super helpful language in southern California. It's not in It is in Napa Valley, I guess, but not in Texas and where this woman was. I said, oh, that's interesting. Why French? You know you think Spanish should be more helpful.

27:25 She said, well, my daughter is a senior in high school and I promised her a trip to France for her graduation. That's not going to happen. We're not going anywhere. We're certainly not going to Europe anytime soon. It'll be a year or two before travel comes up. So we thought, okay, why not make this fun. Why don't we both together learn French? So that when we go to France, we can actually try speaking in French and have a full immersion experience. And I thought that you just passed the interview. That's the agility that this particular client needs with this particular job. Mm hmm. I love that. I think that's so great, so smart. It makes sense to me, and that actually, as somebody who does love to speak different languages, the richness of your experience is radically multiplied when you actually can converse in that country's language. It's amazing the difference.

28:18 So okay, so all right, so maybe that maybe that kind of leads us somewhat over to the next one that I wanted to talk about. Again, we're not talking about all of them ladies and gentlemen, because you get you've got to read the book. It's awesome. But the next one that I want to talk about is the anticipator. Yeah, yeah, who can think ahead, who's thinking two or three shots ahead? You know, not to get all religious, but as only you probably could. Well, it's just interesting to me. I grew up, you know, I had this previous life as a pastor and still attend church and that sort of thing. But you know, early on in my career. I thought Jesus was so nice to refer to people as sheep. They're fluffy, you count them to go to sleep. They you know what a sweet thing, until you I actually got a round a sheep. They're dirty, they're nasty. They end up in trouble primarily because they don't look up. They're always looking for the next tuft of grass. Their head is buried in what they think is right in front of them. They end up walking off a cliff and the shepherd has to go pull him out of a ditch. And they they're their own author of bad things in their life because they don't look ahead. Now, oh wait, I can't see the future. You don't have to see the future. You just have to think two or three steps ahead. It's as simple as the old Covey seven habits of highly effective people. Number one begin with the end in mind. You know, when Tiger Woods tease off on a golf hole, he is thinking about where the pin is on the green, even if it's going to take him three shots to get to the green, because he's going to place the first shot so that the second shot

29:49 in the third shot makes sense. And most people don't do that if you find someone who thinks ahead, who can just sort of anticipate what you need before you ever articulate it, it makes all the difference in the world. The best example I know is a woman who worked alongside me as my assistant for years and years. I guess I love this story in the book by the way I love it, I tell the story, yeah, please do. So I had a fabulous assistant and she had three kids in about three years, and then all of a sudden, it was like, well, I probably need to raise these children. And so she left, and we had a brand new employee who was a friend of one of the people we'd hire that we love, and oh, I don't know what she can do.

30:37 She can help out the office, but she really likes our cause and what we're doing and the purpose at our work. Can we give her a try shirt? So my assistant leaves and this young woman's there, and I'm like, I need to do a search, because at the time I was doing a whole lot of searches. I was probably on ten or twelve playing flights a week. I was trying to run staff while I was running three reports and do it. So it was a pretty big job, and I said, can you man this desk while I'm doing the search for the church or sure. So this is back in the days before the iPad. If you can remember that far back, or if you were alive that far back, I guess I should say. And in those days, I don't know. Do you remember the little stick you used to get to plug into your computer to get a three G signal and you could get your email and like AT and T would sell and it was almost like a mobile phone attachment to your Yes, yes, exactly long time ago. So I am maniacal about getting back to people, and it has been a big reason why we've had some good fortune in our business. I'm getting on a plane. I'm sitting in the seat I picked very particularly so that the flight attendant can't see me very easily, so I can keep my computer open just a little bit longer, get a few more things done before I have to close it because there's no Wi Fi or anything on a plane. A lead comes through. It comes straight to my inbox and it's in Spanish, and I'm like, how cool is this? We're now international? So I messaged Bethany and said,

32:13 can you take care of this? And when I land, we'll talk. Get up in the air and it's not Spanish. I realize it's not and then I don't know it well, but I knew enough to know this is Portuguese. And if you know Portuguese at all, the best probability is this is Brazil, and they're a little bit crabby when you mix up Spanish and Portuguese. So I land. At the minute I land and can turn on my phone, I call please, oh wait is and she says to me, William, you know what that wasn't Spanish. I'm like, oh, you knew that. I mean, I knew you knew some Spanish. She said yeah. I said, well, how'd you figure that out? This is before iPads, think back to technology, right, not too far from dial up modems, And she said, well, I found this thing on a website that translates languages, which was a new idea. So I ran it through a translator. I figured out it's Portuguese. Like cool, she said, Now I hope I'm not in trouble. Okay, why do you hope you're not in trouble? Well, I just went ahead and dealt with it. Okay, what'd you do? She said? Well after I read the translation, he was getting ready to speak to a bunch of pastors about succession. And I know that you've written on that. I know we have a book on that. And so I went through our blog and I searched, and I know I've only been here a week, but I found a white paper you wrote years ago on succession that seemed to be the kind of thing that he was looking for. So I ran it through the translator,

33:43 got it into Portuguese. I went ahead and branded it. I saved it as a PDF. I didn't want to be able to mess with it when it's your words, you know, just make it an unalterable document. And I went ahead and send it to him. I hope that's okay. That's okay, rock Star. So so here's here's something new. I'm no longer looking for an executive assistant. Will you please join me? And it wasn't she's a smart lady, But it wasn't her smarts, and it wasn't her responsiveness. All those things were there, but it was her ability to think a shot or two ahead of what was in front of her right and say, how do I get something done that will make things easier for him when he lands. Yeah, and oh my gosh, hall of fame. I love that. And here's the funny thing, William, I lived in Spain, so I still speak Spanish. I'm here to Coasta Rican. That's so.

34:43 I got that in court test Alo Espanol. I lived in Rio Diijenar for two years, so I speak I speak Portuguese. Huge difference between those two languages when you are writing them, especially, So anyway, let's let our listeners and viewers sort of think about how they might be able to become more of an anticipator while we take our last break. Here your host, Doctor release Cortes. We are on the air with William van der Bluman, who has been leading the vander Blumen Search group for fifteen years, where they are regularly routained to identify the best talent for teams, manage succession planning, and consult on all issues regarding teams. We've been talking about a couple more of his habits. After the breaker, we're going to hit one more and then I want to hear a story from him about someone who is radically transformed by learning these habits. Stay with us. Will be right back, Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies visioneer for a greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at Elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise,

36:16 send an email to a lease a li Se at eliscortes dot com. Now back to working on purpose. Thanks as stating with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elease Cortes. As I mentioned in the last break on the book that I just brought out here, which is the great revitalization, what I did for you is I created a three page assessment put it on my website for you that will allow you to discernment, to determine the extent to which your culture is suited for today's meeting in purpose crowd. So You can find it at gustodeshnow dot com if you are now just joining us. My guest is William van der Bluman is the author of Be the Unicorn, Twelve data driven habits that separate the best leaders from the rest. So the next one I want to talk about here, which again we do talk about on this program quite a bit, this is the self aware? Please can we find more the self aware? Yeah?

37:15 Yeah, I need to be more self aware. I mean, you know what's so interesting about the research and the reality of self awareness? Alease, We asked the unicorns to force rank, like what are you best out of these twelve what are you worst? The self assessment of our unicorns showed that the unicorns believe that the weakest of their twelve habits is self awareness. Okay, you turn around. Survey two hundred fifty thousand people that are normal people, and ninety three percent of them said I'm above average at self awareness. So you know, like I don't have an applied math degree or anything, but ninety three percent of a group is not above average. Sorry, right, right, So, so on the one hand, it's a huge blind spot for most of us. On the other hand, the unicorns who are actually pretty good at it realize how much better they need to get at it. Yeah, and it's it's just it's like when I was young and was it seminary at Princeton and you have to go through all this assessment to see whether you can be a minister in the Prestrian church. Some of it's, you know, visit with psychologists, career counselor is this sort of thing.

38:34 And I don't even remember which appointment I was at, but I had to take all these Myers Briggs Berkman, you know, all the all the batteries of tests, right, And the person came back and said, well, based on what you have done in these inventories, we think that you've got a lot of strengths here and here and here, and they went through, I mean a lot of strengths. They're very flattering and then they said, it does seem that you might have a hard time accepting criticism. And before I even thought, I just looked at the person and said, I do not. And I'm afraid that's where we all live to some extent.

39:22 And it's good to know that in the last three four years particularly, we're making the need for mental health more and more of a stated thing, right, yes, and not just mental health for people that are severely ill, but like, have you worked through your stuff as we all have it? Right? And again not to go all religious, but I think most listeners probably know the old saying, you know, why didn't you get the log out of your own eye before you worry about the splinter in your friends? And that was easy walking. And I used to think that meant like judge not lest you be judged, or you know know, hey, you know everybody's got a bad don't pick on people, or a lot of what I didn't realize might have been behind that teaching is until you work through your own stuff, you're not going to be much help to others. So true and one is just hard work, it is, and you know, really increasingly too to that in William, I have come that, you know, we all the sooner that we can work through all of our past pains and torments and and really step on the path towards healing, the more effective and connected we can be. And all of us have to do that, we all, none of us are immune. We have to do it. And that's why some of the things who say in the book around the self awareness habit that are so interesting compelling to me is you talk about why our managers love this one is because the less anyone has to tell you, the smooth things run right. So you have to come. You have to if you have to come to somebody saying, look, you're overpowering people in meetings, you're

40:53 an anybody to talk. They already know that, or they're not doing it, just the better. And so there were so many pearls in this one that I just thought, you know, one could harvest if we really put this stuff to work. Well, I know I need to work on it. And the more I get in touch with my need for self awareness, the more I realize, oh my gosh, I got a long way to go. But that's probably a whole other podcast. Yeah, yeah, well I'm with you on that. And there's a couple of other things that I just want to call it that I think are a really quote one in particular, I love this one sentence zinger in your book, while you miss ay self awareness is a pact we make with ourselves to be better for others. Mm hmm. That's so powerful, so powerful, and you know, my experience at least has been. If you spend your career trying to help others, you'll never run out of business, right, yeah, yeah, you always be in demand. Well, speaking of that, the last one that I want to just briefly hit before I want to get that story from you is and this is this is a really interesting this is interesting one for it being one of the twelve habits. The likable Yeah, be likable, yeah, factic being likable. Yeah, with you know, three thousand completed searches under our belt. We were sitting around not too long ago with the consultants have been with me the longest, and I was like, hey, guys, you know, it's one of those after dinner kind of sit around, chew the fat sort of thing. When it gets down to two finalists in

42:25 a really big search, what do you think the big difference between the person who gets the job and the person who doesn't is And there are three guys there, and all of them said some manifestation of this sentence. Oh, the one who plays well with others. Yeah, it's you know, And as we head into a much more automated, efficient future with our new friend AI, the people who are likable will last. I have a friend who wrote an article for The New York Times some years back. It still gets googled and red and is probably twelve years old. And the title of the arc you don't even need to read the article. Can you share the title?

43:10 What do you do with the brilliant jerk? I've met them over and over and over again. They hit all their sales numbers, and they walk all over people. You know. Now there are a few, like the airline pilot flying my plane. I really don't care if they're jerk. Just get us landed safely, right right. But for the but that may get automated, you know, for the most part, the value that will last in the coming labor market is humans being good to other humans, which computers cannot do. So, you know, to me, the likable is one that is almost like a secret sauce. If you can get that down, you can get away with a whole lot. You know what's so amazing about that, William? Many many ways, That's what I do is I teach adults to be nicer, to be better to each other. It's really a lot of the work that I'm doing. It's crazy to me. Well, and then it's no wonder your success every one of these habits is how people treat one another. Yeah, which really is the ballgame between you know, the you ever meet somebody within five minutes, you're like, this one's special, this one's different. Yeah. They're probably practicing the majority of these habits all at once and you don't even realize it. Yeah. One of the simple things you say in terms of cultivating this one is stop talking and listening more. I mean, that's so basic. How often I know I've been

44:43 I've been out and had conversations. If somebody's just add nauseum, just spewing, your eyes are literally glazing over and they're still going right. I think we've all been there, and time has never moved slower except be in high school physics class. I mean then when you're across the table from that, I know, I know exactly. So, Okay, we're getting close to being running out of time, So I want to make sure we're and give you the chance here. I would love for you to conjure in that data bank memory of yours somewhere a story about someone that you've known or work with who has cultivated one or more of these habits and realized some kind of major transformation in the process or having done so. Yeah, I would say maybe the first thing that comes to mind, okay, would be my wife learning a new level of agility. We got were blended family. She had two kids and they were little when we got married, and all of a sudden, she's a mom of middle schoolers and a high schooler. Wow. And watching her force herself into learning new ways of stretching and growing and that's really I mean it. Frankly, it made the how work. And you know, she'd get mad if I were giving her credit for these things. But I watched that firsthand, and it was a committed effort at learning agility and it changed things. And in a year, maybe I come back on the

46:15 show and give you five case studies of people who've gone through this or taken we built. I don't know if you know this a software assessment tool where you can see how you measure up against the unicorns against everybody else, and give you a little bit of a development plan. So then in a year we'll have all sorts of stories of people who are like I worked on this, I got better, and now I'm irreplaceable at work. I love that. William, Yes, well and here's the thing. When I connect with my guests, what happens is now we're connected and you really can't get away from me. So you're kind of stuck with me. And when I am in Houston, you know I'm going to come knocking on your door. So just just know it's our version giving you the warning. Okay, So here we are. You know this, this program has listened to by people around the world, William who are really interested in being part of, or help them to create organizations that allow them to be their best, grown or their best They're led by inspiration leaders that lead them to their greatness. They are part of an organization that does something to better the world. What would you like to leave them with? You know you're on the right track. The last of the twelve habits, and we put it last for a reason because I think it's the most important. Is the people that really separate themselves from the field are the ones who are driven by a purpose. Yep. And I think you look at successful people, they're all driven by a north star.

47:35 Some of their north stars are not what I would call north I'm going to make as much money as I can, and they're driven by it. And they succeed, and they make a big pile of money. I think the most successful people fix their eyes on a north star and run toward that, and it separates them from the field. And I think the higher and more noble your north star is, the more you'll get noticed, the more irreplaceable you'll be, and the more fulfillment you'll feel wherever that works in your faith or philosophy or that sort of thing. So I would just say to those listening today, you're already on the right track. You're already doing things that most people aren't. Just keep down that path. Go read the book and tell me what I can learn. I'd love to learn from you.

48:17 You are a delight, William. I'm so happy to have cross paths with you, to have read your book cover to cover and gotten so much from it. Thank you for gracing us on working on purpose. Thanks so much, Elise, joy to be with you, wonderful to have you listeners, viewers. If you all learn more about this amazing man, William vander Bluman, the work in his team, do at vander Bluman Search Group or his book Be the Unicorn. Start by visiting there's a couple sites you can go to. You can go to Vanderbluman dot com. Let me spell that for you. No, no, no, no, no no. Here's the best thing. Uh, it's so messed up you can misspell it one hundred ways in Google and you will get there. Never mind listeners of viewers. You're on your own, Babia, what, however, you want. One that you can go to is the unicornbook dot com. That's pretty amazing.

49:00 You did that all right. Last week if you missed the live show, you can catch it on the recorded podcast. We were on the air with Zach mccurio for a second time, this time talking about the business of mattering in the workplace. He helped us understand the components of how we register that we matter and the consequences of how it's lack of being registered in culture and people's behavior. Very very compelling, very very fascinating. Next week will be on the Area with David Penglaze from Australia talking about his fascinating new book Living in the Light of Day, How to avoid the success trap, strive to strive, to be sorry I missed, lust of it, Strive to be your best and live a more meaningful, flourishing and prosperous life. I've started this book and it's compelling to see what he's put forth here as a possibility for all of us to live in this light and literally better the world because of it. It's fascinating. So see you there, and remember that work is one of the best adventures and means of realizing our potential and making the impact we crave. So let's work on Purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes, each week on W four CY. Together we'll create a world where business operates conscientiously, Leadership inspires and passion performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there, Let's work on Purpose.