Shola reminds leaders that those who are following you are always watching you, and why that is so important to pay attention to.
Entrepreneurship is not a personality trait, nor is it something you are necessarily born with. So, for leaders who want to pull out the best in their teams, especially in the midst of change, it’s a great reminder to realize that entrepreneurship can be learned by anyone—because to be an entrepreneur is to be human. Award-winning entrepreneur, Sahar Hashemi is a big believer in this idea. With a mission to connect the heart as well as the head in big business, she distils the unnecessarily complex subject of innovation and entrepreneurial behavior down into simple, actionable, and human terms.
To be an entrepreneur is to be human.
With a wealth of insight to share we’re excited to welcome Sahar Hashemi to The Global Leadership Summit stage in August 2022! Get Tickets >>
Described as “a change agent” and “a powerful catalyst to drive entrepreneurship within big corporations,” offers a simple, powerful toolkit to unlock start-up culture at big companies. A former lawyer, she started two ground-breaking businesses: the United Kingdom’s first coffee bar chain, Coffee Republic, which she grew to 110 stores and a £50 million market cap, and Skinny Candy, a market segment-defining brand of sugar-free sweets. Her first book, Anyone Can Do It, became a bestseller by demystifying the idea that entrepreneurship is an innate trait. Her latest, Start Up Forever, stems from her experience working with large corporations over the last decade and addresses one of the most pressing questions now facing large organizations: how to be more entrepreneurial. She has also been named by Her Majesty the Queen (UK) as a “Pioneer to the life of the nation” as well as an OBE for services to the UK economy and to charity.
Check out this reel of Sahar’s speaking highlights!
Get your tickets to join us at GLS22, and until then, get a taste for Sahar’s insight and enjoy this article on what it really means to be an entrepreneur, and why she believes everyone can develop entrepreneurial skills.
The other day I was looking up for synonyms for the word “entrepreneur” on Dictionary.com when my eye caught the “antonyms” section directly below. There was the word “employee” — meaning the polar opposite of an entrepreneur is an employee!
I couldn’t believe it. That plays right into the biggest myth of them all—that entrepreneurs are a “different” kind of human, almost with different chromosomes.
Being an entrepreneur is not a personality trait. It is not or something you are born with or not. I was definitely not born an entrepreneur. A mini Richard Branson growing up, I was not. I was not the least bit imaginative or creative, with no leadership flair. Having started my working life as an employee, I became an entrepreneur in the process of following through with a business idea I had. It’s just that in starting a business, I was “forced” to behave in a certain way—to behave how all other entrepreneurs behave. Which is why, for those that know me, I titled the book I wrote about my own entrepreneurial journey Anyone Can Do It. Meaning exactly that: anyone can do it.
My belief is that the actual process of starting a new business sparks the innate entrepreneurial qualities every human being has. The whole process is so completely out of your comfort zone—so difficult—that you end up digging deep inside yourself to access skills you didn’t even know you had and make a big behavior shift, because that’s all you have. Necessity really does become the mother of invention.
My belief is that the actual process of starting a new business sparks the innate entrepreneurial qualities every human being has.
An employee working in an established company has almost the opposite experience. The only way you are “forced” to behave is to keep it all very safe. The business already has customers, resources, and systems. It has a comfort zone. All you have to do is keep the status quo ticking along and not rock the boat, there being no need to reinvent anything or challenge yourself too much. No need for behavior or mindset shifts. You can afford to just coast along. As a result, you don’t need to dig deep to access all your skills and abilities. They remain untapped.
The relentless pace of disruption we live in, is changing this equation dramatically. The corporate environment is losing its comfort zone. Ticking along is no longer an option. Even customers are no longer a given. A big market share today doesn’t mean the same market share tomorrow. An established company has to fight for customers and resources every single day just like a startup has to. The boat is rocking uncontrollably. You can’t just coast along.
The corporate environment is losing its comfort zone.
What this means is that now it’s not that different working in a startup or in an established company. Everyone operates in the same uncertainty and pace as a startup environment, regardless of size or longevity. So, what we will be seeing is employees having to make massive mindset and behavior shifts out of sheer force of necessity. Just like I had to when I started my business. Just like every entrepreneur has had to. They will need to dig deep and tap into their entrepreneurial traits that might have been previously dormant. They will have to think creatively and find solutions almost out of thin air. This will happen naturally, just like it did for me, turning from an employee mindset into an entrepreneur’s mindset. I had no idea I had these qualities until I was “forced” to use them.
You don’t need a degree or training course for them. You don’t need to study empathy, curiosity, resourcefulness, or resilience. You are born with them. It’s just that maybe, until now, you didn’t need to use them at work. You just kept them for your personal life. Now you will have to use them at work. It will take practice to feel confident enough to use what you might have considered “personal” qualities at work. But it will be worth it. And it’s a no brainer if you’re into self-improvement.
If you’re human, you’re an entrepreneur. Activating your inner entrepreneur is the easiest yet most transformative skill ready for you to tap into, right now.
Is leadership about taking people somewhere, or is it about shaping people in powerful ways? In a recent talk, author, fashion designer, and pastor Erwin Raphael McManus shared the tremendous capacities of human beings—our inherent genius and the ability to create futures. While many of us end up believing a lesser story and forget about our creative power, Erwin shows how leaders can help people recover their faith in their God-given creative capacity and suggests a couple critical, practical tools to unlock your genius.
LEADERSHIP IS MUCH MORE THAN A DOMAIN OF KNOWLEDGE. The point is not to become an expert in “leadership.” The point is to become an expert in humanity and what makes us different from other species.
TO BE HUMAN IS TO MATERIALIZE THE INVISIBLE. Human beings create without even being aware that we are creating. Our capacity to “translate dreams” is what sets us apart from all other species.
HUMANS CREATE FUTURES. “The future” doesn’t happen to us, it happens from us. We can choose to act and to create. We are not simply a part of creation—we are created to create as both works of art and artists at work.
LEADERS HELP OTHERS LEARN TO BE HUMAN. At its core leadership is about helping people remember how to be human—to be creative and to have agency. It’s not about where leaders are taking people; it’ show they are shaping them. It’s not about where we are going but who we are becoming.
THE REAL POWER OF LEADERSHIP IS IN UNLOCKING THE POTENTIAL OF INDIVIDUALS. Given the inherent creative, imaginative power of human beings, the true task of leadership is to help men and women unlock their true potential.
EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION IS A CRITICAL PIECE OF THE PROCESS OF LEADERSHIP. You cannot change the world if you cannot translate your ideas and visions into language.
LEADERSHIP MEANS GIVING PEOPLE A BETTER STORY TO LIVE IN. We are the sum of the stories we tell ourselves. Whoever tells the best story shapes the culture and creates the future.
REALIZE THE IMPACT OF YOUR WORDS. Our words give us the power to create new stories and new possibilities—of hope and of love—for the people we influence.
The Art of Communication by Erwin McManus
The Global Leadership Summit—the premier leadership event of the year—brings you a two-day catalytic experience of rich learning, new ideas, fresh perspective, and inspiring stories from leading experts spanning a wide range of fields and backgrounds.
This year’s featured faculty includes amazing leaders like Andy Stanley, Vanessa Van Edwards, Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., Lynsi Snyder, Deb Liu, Jon Acuff, and more. View Faculty >>
Gather your team, family, and friends and join us on August 4-5, 2022, at a local partnering host site venue near you or online!
Get your tickets today for up to $50 off the regular price of $229 to attend a premier host site venue or online (or $40 off the regular priced ticket of $289 to be part of our Studio Audience in South Barrington, IL). Get Tickets >>
Attracting an audience that represents various industries, including marketplace, non-profit, healthcare, education, government, ministry and recently, corrections, The Global Leadership Summit (GLS) has become a unique platform, bringing people together to empower better leadership within the organizations and corrections facilities they represent.
“It made me feel like I was loved again.”
The growth we’ve seen in corrections facilities is a more recent development that started in 2014 when the Global Leadership Network (GLN) built a partnership with Prison Fellowship. As kindred spirits in the belief that everyone has influence, a partnership was formed to bring the GLS to incarcerated men and women as well as corrections staff in the U.S. and by 2015, the GLS was hosted in 11 corrections facilities. In 2021, the GLN brought the GLS into 100+ facilities in the U.S.
As we lean into the expertise and support from corrections staff, wardens, chaplains, churches, and organizations involved in prison ministry as well as several passionate volunteers and donors, we hope to expand the reach of the GLS Prison Program into the future!
I know, it’s a strange thing to talk about. And yet, silence is exactly that. It’s what remains unspoken, unsaid, undiscussed—often until it is too late. At worst, silence is what perpetuates mistakes, enables abuse, and all that we wouldn’t wish on others—or ourselves. It’s the missing piece.
Staying silent also means our ideas, perspectives, creativity, and expertise are missing from the world.
I’ve been working with leaders for more than a decade to build skills in negotiation, having difficult conversations, and giving feedback. Despite solid theory and practice from my colleagues at the Harvard Negotiation Project, there have been mixed results. Some people still don’t negotiate. Some people still avoid the difficult conversations. Some managers still don’t give the feedback regardless of how much they know they should. Why is that? Silence.
When it’s to our benefit to be compliant, to not “rock the boat”, to avoid backlash or someone else’s reactions, we’ve learned silence from the times we were literally told to “shut up” and from the times that their disapproving looks told us we crossed a line. And yet, staying silent also means our ideas, perspectives, creativity, and expertise are missing from the world. Silence gets in the way of collaboration, innovation, developing talent, and building healthy relationships.
We each know what is appropriate to talk about—and not talk about—on our teams, in our communities, and in our families. And by continuing to be silent, we reinforce that those are, in fact, the norms. So, let’s ask ourselves—what messages are we sending to others about whose opinions matter, how things work around here, and which risks are worth taking? And are those, in fact, the messages we intend and aspire to send?
Silence gets in the way of collaboration, innovation, developing talent, and building healthy relationships.
So many leaders say they want to build a “speak up culture” where people speak freely and where together, we can get to the best ideas and outcomes. Others say “I’m always here for you. You can come to me with anything.” How we show up when someone takes the risk to speak up, to disagree, or to seek help, matters. Why would we go through the motions of sharing our thoughts if we knew that they wouldn’t be received, and in fact, might make things worse?
Many of us are caught in what social psychologist Adam Galinsky calls the “low power double bind” because we’re outside the range of acceptable behavior. But who gets to decide what is an acceptable range of behavior? Who decides what we’re going to talk and not talk about here—on this team, and in this family? We do. As leaders, we set the tone about what is acceptable or not acceptable, what issues we’re going to grapple with and which we’re going to steer clear of, and what parts of our lives we’re allowed to bring into the room and which we’re going to ignore.
If you want to encourage healthy debate, do you start encouraging people to say, “I see it differently…” and appreciate them when they do so?
To reap the benefits that collaboration, innovation, and fully unleashed talent promise us, we each have to ask and answer:
Attracting an audience that represents various industries, including marketplace, non-profit, healthcare, education, government, ministry and recently, corrections, The Global Leadership Summit (GLS) has become a unique platform, bringing people together to empower better leadership within the organizations and corrections facilities they represent.
For two days I remember feeling like something other than a resident at a correctional institution.
Thanks to the Global Leadership Network’s generous donors, in 2022, the GLS will be broadcast into 200+ prisons across the U.S. to serve men and women behind bars. One of those leaders is Bo, who has been attending at Algoa Correctional Center in Jefferson City, MO, since 2019. In a recent letter to our team, he shared the impact the GLS has made in his life as well as on the culture of his facility.
“I have had an amazing and life-altering experience through this opportunity, and I wanted to share it with you,” Bo shared. “My story begins when I was invited to attend the GLS in August 2019. It was a very positive experience. For two days I remember feeling like something other than a resident at a correctional institution.”
As a result of Bo’s experience, a seed was planted to start a Global Leadership Development program at his facility to bring people together to learn about leadership and apply it to their lives. “After hearing Chris Voss speak at GLS19, I was aware that applying tactical empathy could benefit me in my interactions with other residents and staff members,” said Bo. “This concept worked and planted the seed for Global Leadership Development (GLD).”
Bo’s seed grew at his second GLS in 2021 after hearing Shola Richards talk about civility. “I realized I could ‘be the buffalo’ and apply these concepts in the prison to the benefit of all,” Bo explained. “My idea for the GLD resurfaced and others were also excited to expand the scope of the GLS experience. I read both of Richards’ books along with others. Reading books from many of the GLS presenters helped me understand who, why, and how I was, and gave me a shove to get uncomfortable and heal through connections and relationships with others.”
By the fall of 2021, a group of men gathered for a follow-up meeting to discuss what they had learned. Bo brought up the idea of a regular GLD gathering with the chaplain, and he suggested Bo send a proposal to administration. “I not only wrote a proposal, but also created directives, a syllabus, and a sustainability framework,” said Bo. “I spent a lot of time thinking about the GLD program, but with no experience, I was anxious and nervous. I knew that applying the process and practice of leadership to my desire to heal through connection and relationships would require me to get out of my comfort zone.”
We have a lofty goal of changing the culture of our institution and also establishing a path to give back to our communities by re-entering as smarter, better leaders.
In December 2021, the proposal was approved! In January 2022, they would have their first group meeting. To prepare, Bo watched over 30 GLS talks from the DVDs provided to the prison and started to create outlines for discussion. “Like anything new, the start was rocky,” Bo shared. “I felt very insecure, and I was doubting my idea. But through prayer and meditation, I knew the solution was to move through my pain, uncertainty, and chaos. I felt like this was a process, not merely a product.
“I continued by having several discussions with a participant that I knew could be a big help. He told me what he liked most about our group was that it was something that helped to ‘build us up in a place where everything tears us down.’ He offered to take the lead for the talk by Jo Saxton on the topic of ‘self-actualization.’ Our warden even joined our discussion and told our chaplain that he was impressed, and that it was like being back in a college philosophy class. It was all icing on the proverbial cake and a turning point in the program.”
Bo and the participants continued this model and explored how to apply the concepts they were learning in prison, discussing how it could benefit the life now in prison, as well as when they are released one day. “We also discussed how the lack of applying and practicing these topics caused us to come to prison,” said Bo. “We discussed how we can practice these topics now and we recognize that these ideas are a process that require us to try and put forth effort despite the difficulties of where we currently live. We discussed the importance of being willing to fail and to try again. In the words of John Maxwell, we are learning to ‘test, fail, learn, improve, and RE-ENTER.’”
By applying a process and practice of leadership, they have experienced many successes. “Recently, I was in the visiting room with my mother when I was approached by a gentleman I didn’t know,” Bo shared. “He was a little emotional and thanked me. He stated that he was impressed by his son’s growth since being a part of the GLD.”
I can honestly say that this experience has changed my life.
Moving forward, Bo and others are determining how the group will grow, including curriculum development and a process for how to involve community business leaders as well as state legislature. “We have a lofty goal of changing the culture of our institution and also establishing a path to give back to our communities by re-entering as smarter, better leaders,” said Bo. “In turn, this will help reduce recidivism and make our communities stronger and safer. We know that these are lofty goals, but we are also happy to say that we are well on our way.”
If you have ever donated a gift above and beyond the ticket prices to attend one of the Global Leadership Network’s events, you too are part of Bo’s story of transformation in prison. Thank you! To quote Bo, “I can honestly say that this experience has changed my life and created a calling and a direction for me to follow for my life moving forward.”
Learn how you can get involved or bring The Global Leadership Summit to your local prison at GlobalLeadership.org/Prison
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