 Some of you know me already, I've been giving quite a bit of talks in the past about how to run an agency, how to grow an agency, how to become successful and I can honestly say that yes, my agency wants you, we've been very successful, we've been growing rapidly, we won many awards and as a leader I knew I had to grow throughout the different growth stages of the agency and then 2017 happened, 2017 was not what I should say was my best year, it was a year everything went wrong, so I stand in front of you now with a lot of lessons learned of what I've learned throughout that year and I hope to share this knowledge with you so you can, you know, don't make the same mistake I make at the time, but what happened was, well starting off early in 2017 a couple of clients, three to be exactly three major clients put their projects on hold for several reasons, all at the same time, so that created a bit of a stir within the organization, like okay how to deal with the fact that three major clients are putting a project temporarily on hold and then a lot more things happened, we faced some problems, internal problems, colleagues who went on skiing holidays and you know got into an accident that kind of stuff, major problems, 17 to be exact, I was standing in the showers somewhere, well nearing the summer, I was standing in the shower in the morning and I felt like it was Mike Tyson who's been doing a workout on me, you know, viciously, and standing there I was like okay so how many problems do I face, you know, I started counting, I was 17 and then I started thinking like hey you know, yes okay you've got to teach and help colleagues, you know, solving those problems but there's something in me that probably needs to change as well and this is what today is about, I've learned a lot so I'm going to share that with you today, all right well my name is Michel Van Velde, as introduced I'm a co-founder of One Shoe, I'm a marketing strategist and a creative concepter and I'm also a board member, this presentation is on behalf of One Shoe, not as a board member, I have to state this because this is my personal lessons learned. Philosophy of the company, curiosity creates, we like to be very curious and I'm really happy that I've been very curious and that I've looked at myself, you know, what could I have been doing differently, you know, and what should I have done differently at the time and I expect this from my colleagues as well, you know, this is where change comes from and you can create beautiful stuff when you're curious. Yes and we won a lot of beautiful awards, so we're going to talk about leadership today and you probably all have an idea what leadership is and I'm going to walk you through some photos and I'm going to challenge you to look at these photos and think leader or not and it gives you a couple of seconds per photo. So, sorry, here we go, leadership, this is what it looks like and that's what it feels like, the pictures will come in a second, this is most of my colleagues, they're thinking like, yeah leadership, you know, you're in the top, you know, you're leading the stuff, this is what leadership feels like because leaders, you know, they walk into the void, you know, every single day trying to find new territory. So, leadership versus management, when you look at management, that's going through routine processes every single day. Leadership, that's like walking into the void, trying to find new territory, new strategic decisions, that's the difference between management and leadership and leadership, that's oxygen. A company needs leadership, not only from the management team, but also from its employees and that's why most of the companies, the bigger companies are now investing in leadership and 90% of the CEOs are already planning to increase investment in leadership, why? Because it drives the company forward. So, start doing your homework and dive into the role of leadership, what it entails and what is needed. Okay, so leadership or not, as I said before, let's have a look at some pictures, leader or not, had to pull him in. Remember this guy? Yeah, so think about it, you know, when you think about leadership, what it is, leadership is not only running a company, leadership is taking charge, leading people into the void, crossing boundaries. So, what is leadership for you? And the question is, are you a leader or are you a manager? Big difference. We can debate on all these pictures, whether they are leaders, yes or no. It's been an interesting discussion we can have. All right, so here I am, 2017, Mike Tyson did his work out on me, you know, standing in the shower and I thought, okay, I got a change. There's something that needs to be changed, I'm the leader, so I started to do some self-analysis. I started to think, okay, what am I doing, doing good, what am I doing wrong? So, and then I learned that self-analysis is not the best way to do it. Why? Well, when you do self-analysis, you need to accurately reflect on both your strength and your weaknesses. There's a big chance you will overplay your strength and you will downsize on your weaknesses, based on human nature, what you do. So, I needed to know what the exact lessons were that I needed to learn. And I came far, you know, with self-analysis, yeah, but not at the core. So, I started reading books. There's a book which is called Radically Candid. And when you start reading the book, it's really interesting. It tells a story about a leader of a company, a digital company, and she has a colleague who's not performing really well, you know, but he's such a nice guy, you know, and, you know, he's having some problems at home and stuff. And, you know, so she starts pampering him, you know, she starts helping him by doing his job. Fair enough, you know, the guy is a difficult time, you know, so let's help him, you know, the guy's not performing over and over again. So, after about a year, end of his contract, she says, sorry, I'm not going to lengthen the contract, I'm going to fire you. And he says, why not? Well, you know, you're not performing really well. And then he made one statement. He says, but you never told me. You are not radically candid about my end of performance. So, this made me think, okay, how do I do it myself, you know, am I radically candid? Well, not in the early days of one show, because when we started the agency, we were small, you know, we didn't have a lot of money, you know, so, and I sometimes requested my colleagues to work some overtime so we can finish the project and make some more profit and they could invest again and that kind of stuff. So, when they were in dire need, you know, they'd been, you know, giving me some help and I started helping them. And that was in the early days. So, then we started growing and when colleagues were not performing, he says, okay, I'll do it for you. You know, this is okay. So, maybe this is the mistake I'm making. And the question was, okay, how do I address a person by telling him that he's in the performing? So, when in 2017, when all those problems arise, I started to take control because I wanted to steer the company in the right direction. You know, I wanted to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Still remember a colleague saying that could be a train. He says, well, thank you very much. Yeah. So, I started steering my colleagues in the right direction. Big mistake. And then you think like, hey, but you know, you should be radically candid. Yeah, I was radically candid. And I was taking over at the same time. I was doing it myself. So I was making multiple mistakes. And then I found out, okay, you know, I don't have the key to the solution. So, then I remembered this picture. This is Tiger Woods. At the time, he was the number one golf player winning every single tournament. Nobody could beat the guy until he started sleeping with all the women and stuff. And then double, but that's another story. At the time, I still remember that picture. I said, okay, this is the number one in the world and there's a coach behind him. And then I thought, okay, behind every, you know, winner, there's a coach. Okay, I don't have a coach. You know, and I had never needed one. But this was the time, Mike Tyson, you know, still beating on me like, okay, maybe I need a coach. So I started looking for a coach. And he was a guy I found. Amazing guy. He was a psychologist. And a business coach in one. So he knew how to transform businesses. But he's also a, I'd say, professor in psychology. And that became the journey of my life. This is, this is where true leadership started from me, because I started to learn what leadership do. You know, and this is what I want to share with you guys. Okay, so he told me about transactional analysis. I'm said, well, so well, yeah, transactional analysis TA said, what is it? He said, well, that's a modern form of psychology. Okay. So yeah, this is really interesting. And what I've learned is that leadership is also about deep diving into the role of psychology, human psychology, because we work with people. And we have to motivate people. All right, I knew I was stuck the company, you know, there was a lot of negative emotions within the company. And I learned that we were stuck in what my coach told me was the drama triangle. The drama triangle is easy to get into. And this little triangle I'm going to show you in a minute has changed my life. When you face a lot of problems, those problems evoke emotions in you is what they do. And then these emotions, they evoke a certain behavior. For me, it was starting persecuting the people, hey, you're not doing your job right. And I was helping people, you know, taking over from their job, you're taking your job over and doing it myself. Big mistake. So the thing is, you know, when you are annoyed, you know, when a colleague is not performing really well or anything, these are negative emotions. So you want to get rid of these emotions. So you can do a couple of things, you can start helping, you can start persecuting him. But the problem is, you don't have to do that. You don't have to persecuting him, you don't have to help him. It's a really simple solution. I can share that with you in a second. So because when you start doing that, you'll be entering the drama triangle. And then here it is. Okay, so a colleague is not performing as he should be. So the first thing you do, you start controlling him, performing superior behavior, you start naming him, or you become critical. So you're persecuting the guy. In about 80% of the time, the other person will play the victim role. Poor me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm late all the time. Bridge was open. You know, there's a lot of excuse making, excuse making will happen. And you'll see this happen in many dialogues, not only at work, but also at home in your private life with friends and everyone. This is what's happening. So they are playing the victim role. You know, I'm stuck. I'm powerless. Most of the times what happens is that you'll become the rescuer. You start rescuing the people. Oh, poor you. You know, I know you've got problems at home. Let me help you. So you're the pain reliever and you keep the victim dependent on you. Big mistake. So you're taking over, messing up your own agenda. So you're working late. So in the it's already there. So you're working late. His fault. And suddenly you're the purest persecutor again. And then you come home, your wife get pissed off at you because you're a home late. And you say, Yeah, it's his fault. And here we are. And suddenly you've become the victim yourself. So when you start persecuting, big chance you end up being the victim yourself. So how do you do that? How do you solve that? It's a mystery to me. I'll give it to you. So let me have a look. Yeah. So if you're in the drama triangle, people are either, you know, they have to move. They're stuck. They're stuck, you know, being a victim. And you're persecuting. So how do you move out of that situation? And the first thing you have to realize is that you're both in the game. You know, you both work for the same company, you're the leader, he's an employee, and you want good things to happen. That's really important. And you can wait until the other person comes to understand, but you can also act differently yourself. How do you do it? Well, and this is really difficult. Whenever a thing goes to sorry, part of my language goes to shit, you know, you're most likely to start helping, you know, or persecuting. What do you do? You got to put people in their strength again, over and over again. So what you have to do is you have to take what I call, and psychology calls it like that, the adult position. So person is making a mistake. Mistakes happen. We were human beings. So you walk up to the guy says, Hey, I see if you've made a mistake, which is a fact. There's no persecuting in it. What do you need to do yourself to make sure that doesn't happen again? What can you improve yourself to make your world better? What can you do yourself to be here in time? So you put him into power, he can come up with solutions. And you have an adult conversation about the problem. There's no persecuting in it. There's no victim role there. It's just a simple question to put people in power. And by empowering people, suddenly, that it ignites a lot of energy. If you start persecuting them, we're just downsizing. So you don't want to do. So take the adult position. So this is a little box I've, you know, learned as well from my coach. When you enter a conversation with a colleague who's making mistakes, you have to approach him from a standpoint. I'm okay. You're okay. That can be difficult if the person is making mistakes over and over again, you know, and it will give you a lot of negative energy and negative emotions. But you have to fight that. You have to put that aside, those emotions says, I'm okay. You're okay. Let's have an adult conversation about it. Then there is, I'm okay. You're not okay. You know, I'm okay. You're an idiot, you know, you're making mistakes and everything. A lot of persecuting in that one already. Or the other way around, I'm not okay. You're okay. It's the other way around. Or I'm not okay. You're okay. So when you look at this, the red ones, you'll end up in the drama triangle. This, I'm plus plus. You're okay. But I'm plus plus. I'm a little bit more okay than you are. That's drama triangle as well. Yeah, because I'm superior. You know, that's that's a plus minus situation in a different form. And when you start thinking about this, you know, this is really you can study this little box for I think four years time, and you won't grasp the power of this. Because we are finding our internal emotions, our beliefs that some people are not okay. But if you start approaching them in your conversation about hey, I'm okay, you're not okay, you end up in a drama triangle. There's a lot of negative energy in there. And that energy will drain you. And as a leader, it will drain your energy. And you were not able to lean to lead your company. At all. I was drained. And so I started listening to this. You know, I walked into a colleague says, Okay, see this is happening. What can you do? Like, Well, I can do this and could do this and this. Excellent. Do it yourself. Fix it. Awesome. And then the organization started moving again. So when you approach this, I'm okay, you're an idiot, that's drama triangle. But in fact, it's this, I'm an idiot, you're okay. Because if you do that, you're the idiot who makes a mistake. So in fact, I was, I was an idiot, because I didn't know. That's why I'm sharing this knowledge with you. So you can leak your team in a better way and in a more effective way. And I see, you know, this happening in the community as well, the plus minus, you know, we're cool, you're not cool. You know, we're better at this, you're not good at this, you know, it's a lot of plus minus within community as well. And if we can, you know, absorb this as a community, as developers as well. And we're both okay. You know, because we're all working on the same project, we're all working, you know, to propel Drupal into the future. And we both have different perspective, we can have an adult conversation about that growth. So then now we're going to deep dive into transactional analysis. It was Eric Byrne, a psychologist who I think was in the 50s or something. And he had conversations with his patients. And he was talking about Freud. And I don't know who who you know read some stuff about Freud. But Freud, you know, was the founder of the old psychology talking about the ego status, the it and everything. And most of his clients were looking at him like, I have no idea what you're talking about. So he found it difficult to explain Freud's theory to his patients. So and within those conversations, he started noticing that people were moving into different ego states. And those ego states are the child the adult and the parent. And he started doing research about this. And so he learned that those ego states, the parent, the child and the baby adult in between, are already formed in the early stages of life. Basically, from one till five years old, you know, you start adopting a lot of information from your parents, and the people around you. And you store all these scripts, as they call them, you can store them. You will store them in the parent role. And the interesting bit is, you know, when, you know, the going gets tough, you fall back on the basic scripts that you've learned in the early days from one till five, and onwards. So let me walk you through these positions. And I hope it inspires you to read the book. I'm okay, you're okay. Because as a leader, I'm aware that you should know this stuff. So you can talk to your colleagues, and you can identify in which state they are in. Okay, let me walk you through those states. Okay, so we have the parent position. The parent position basically reflects the absorption over years of influence of your actual parents, and authority figures, such as teachers and bosses, and so on. So in short, behaviors and thoughts and feelings copied from your parents or parental figures. And if you start digging deep now, you'll probably find out there's yeah, this is what my dad does. Same thing, my mother, you know, or I'm copying stuff from my late boss or anything. That's all stored in the parent position. The adult position is challenging that every single day. You know, when my mom told me, please do not wear white socks, because they look ridiculous, you know, like, okay, you're not gonna wear white socks. You know, but you know, I'm an adult now, like, why not? I can wear white socks, you know, but it feels like awkward because my mother told me not to wear white socks. This is a ridiculous example. But just to give you that sense of feelings, like, okay, do I wear white socks? Yes or no. So the adult is challenging that. And basically, when you're in touch with your adult position, you are fully in control. When they go and get stuff, you might fall back on the parent position. Again, all the scripts, because those scripts make you survive. You know, as your parents told you. So that's a child position. This is really interesting. Child state consists of part of yourself. I wish hard back to our childhood. It's child like, but not childish. It's just a lot of intuition and creative and spontaneous drive. Basically, the creators amongst us are the vision creators. You know, they spend a lot of time in the child position state because this is there's no boundaries within the child state. If you start reading the book, you'll start learning there's different kinds of child states. There's the free roaming child, which I portrayed here. But there's also the rebellious child. When I tell my son, go clean your room, you know, okay, that he goes up and he's not really cleaning his room. You know, that's the rebellious child. You know, when said, Hey, let's make a drawing. He goes to the, you know, the normal child position, and he's really creative and start, you know, drawing really cool stuff. In my agency, when I tell a colleague, I want you to do this, which is rather bossy and demanding. In many ways, a colleague will end up in your rebellious child position. Okay, I'll do it. But not, you know, he's not performing, you know, at his best. So and sometimes, you know, I can identify, you know, because I read the book and stuff, and I've been teaching myself, you know, all this knowledge, I can identify in which position people are. When I want to have an adult conversation with somebody who is in his child position, that's going to be conflict is not going to work out at all. So I have to move them out of the child position into an adult position, and we can have an adult conversation. And then the energy starts flowing. I know this is kind of difficult, but read the book. It will guide you a lot. So by identifying whether you're stuck or stuck in a drama triangle, you can deviate from your position and continue with an adult dialogue. I can tell you so I was learning myself and I learned I was in the parent position more often than the one that got tough in 2017. I was more in the parent position than in the adult position. This is what I learned. So I had to move myself out of the parent position, the steering parent position, do this, do this and do this, moving myself into the other position. Hey, what can you do yourself to make your life better, the work better, etc. So I had to move position. This is what I learned. And it propelled the company into success again. In 2018, I had a record breaking year in terms of turnover and we won 15 awards. The energy within the company goes through the roof right now. Why? Because I told all my colleagues that we gave them extensive training in transaction analysis. So when we give 360 degree feedback, we do it from an adult position and not from a position like, Hey, man, you're doing your stuff. No, right. So colleagues amongst each other as well really works out brilliantly. Okay, some key ideas about leadership. Great leaders identify other people's traits. And transactional analysis can help you with that. And you act upon them. Move them out of a child position into an adult position, have an conversation. Good leaders solve problems. Great leaders ask questions. To make sure the right problem is solved. I learned I had to ask a lot of questions. It's really interesting. Sometimes, you know, sitting in my office and three colleagues come in, we have a problem, you know, and I start asking questions to either one of them, you know, and they have a different kind of idea about that problem. And by asking questions, they subtly realize, Hey, the problem is a little bit different than I thought myself, you know, and just purely asking questions, I'm not going to solve it for them. Makes my life a hell of a lot easier. I can tell you that, you know, save me a lot of time or well, wife's happy. I'm home early, you know, and this is really an interesting parable of the blind man and the elephant. It originated in ancient India. I don't know if you've heard this story. It's, it's a story of a group of blind man who never come across an elephant before, and who learn and conceptualize what the elephant is like by touching it. You know, one blind man is standing by the tail, you know, he says, Yeah, it's a rope. You know, and the other one stand by its leg and he says, Yeah, it's a tree, you know, and the other one said by its stomach, it's a wall, you know, and the interesting bit is that the moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to project their partial experiences as being the whole truth. And they ignore other people's partial experiences. So one should consider that one could be partial and maybe having partial information. So that's why when problems arise, the first thing I'm going to do as a leader is start asking questions. Many, many questions. And then suddenly the true problem, you know, arises. And then we can solve the problem. They can do it themselves. I'm not going to do it for them. You're serious. It's great, great stuff. All right, great leaders set the standards act accordingly. You know, if you come in late as a leader, what do you think your colleagues will do? You know, you're messy, that kind of stuff, you know, so you have to set the standards yourself in your behavior, but also in your communication. Really important to do so. People will view your actions. And the interesting bit is they will draw their own conclusions. And they're all different. Why? Because we're people. So, and it was said earlier in the first presentation. Repeat yourself over and over again. I do this within a community as well. Drupal needs marketing. And I'm saying this over and over again, until it starts resonating to you. And they think, hey, the message has come across. Yes, excellent. And then you can move forward to the next bit. So they will draw their own conclusions. So start talking to them, you know, and see what their conclusions are. And then repeat yourself over and over again. And until they understand the message. All right. And that's my talk about leadership. I don't know my time. Oh, three minutes. So you've got three minutes worth of questions, you know. I'm radically candid. So you can ask me anything. This is your time as well. A round of applause. I've been pronouncing your name incorrectly. So it's Michelle. Okay, I worked in London for a while. I had to make a lot of telephone calls at a time. So hi, it's Michelle. Who? Michelle? Isn't that girl's name? Yeah, outside Holland, Belgium and France. It's a girl's name. Ah, okay. So what's your last name? Well, you spell there. So it's okay. Sorry. Hi, it's Michael Fields. Thank you, Michael Fields. Just made it easy for me. Any questions for Michelle? I have one. Go for it. So what happens when you approach someone in another position? Yeah, they've made a mistake. And then you have to approach them again in a couple of weeks. Yeah. From an other position. And then again, another couple of weeks later, and then again, again, again. I mean, where does that then? That's, that's, of course, as a leader, you said you should make boundaries for yourself. You know, if people are making mistakes over and over again, you can have an adult conversation about his skills. You know, are his skills in line with what you expect from him? Yes or no? Where can he learn? And that's an adult conversation. And if there's a mismatch, you part ways. So there that you have to have that adult conversation. If you start persecuting him, that's not gonna happen. That's not gonna work. Yeah. Okay, but you can set boundaries. It's really important. Does my question bother you? It did. Yeah. The at the time, you know, when you're facing like 17 problems at the same time, and they're not like, little problems, you know, colleagues who went on holidays, and had skiing accidents and all that kind of stuff happening at the same time. You're standing there also on Saturday in the shower, you're like, not swearing here. You're like, bloody hell, how am I going to solve this? You know, so it goes over and over again. But I knew I had to do research. And when I knew that I was, you know, getting at the end of my research, like, hey, this is not solving the problem, you know, reading books and stuff. So, okay, I need a coach. And I still remember having my first session with my coach, and he put the three papers on the floor, the parents, the adults and the child position, you know, and he says, okay, let's do a little role play. So I did a real role play. And he says, okay, so your reaction, what is it? Is it an adult position? I'm in the parent position again, steering parents, you have to do this. Okay, let's move into the other position I stood there and says, I don't know how. I have no idea. And then he gave me this little sentence. And he says, what can you do yourself to improve your work? That's it. That's an adult response. So it was difficult. I had to transform myself reading a lot about transactional analysis, the way you communicate, tone of voice, all that kind of stuff mimics. So yeah, it truly transformed me. But also in my personal life, you know, when when I watch television now, you know, late night shows, they always put a persecutor and the victim in front of each other. Great television. It does. It is it is great television, you know, because fire will happen. It will ignite. They will not put two adults in front of each other. Never. So yeah, boring. It is boring. We've, sorry, we're going to move into our next. Yeah, no, Michelle is here all day. And yeah, tomorrow as well. Yeah, tomorrow. And as well. So maybe let's talk. Yeah, it was like yoga positions of learning, the adult line. Another, another big round of applause.