“Why is anyone richer for even 30 seconds spent with me?” This simple and thought-provoking question will help you define the value you add to other people’s lives and comes from my podcast guest and leadership expert, Steve Hall, who is often described as a deep thinker and inspirational storyteller.

Steve believes in the extraordinary potential of human energy: how it is shaped by our paradigms and perceptions. and how it is the key to high performance at all levels. It is this work which gives him his reason for being. He is committed to helping people shift their perceptions and paradigms about the world and each other by using another set of lenses.

Steve has a passion for immersive leadership work which started with the education and training company, I Will Not Complain, in China and The Covey Leadership Centre in the US. He was part of bringing the Covey franchise to Africa. He has run hundreds of workshops worldwide helping individuals, teams and organisations to become more effective in their lives and in their dynamics towards one another. He has been a partner in Lead with Humanity for the last 10 years and has designed and delivered more than 50 leadership weeks across the African continent.

The conversation covers:

  • How our conditional thinking limits us
  • Thinking paradigms and how they influence our behaviour
  • How our thinking polarities are neither right nor wrong – they co-exist like breathing in and out but they are the root cause of our responses and behaviour
  • The six blue pictures of an expansive and friendly world filled with possibility and opportunity and a disconnected world.The six red pictures of a small, finite, unfriendly
  • How to take responsibility for your own human energy battery
  • The importance of leading yourself and others
“I don’t remember who said it, but I’m sure it’s been said by many people that the shortest distance between two people is a story. The minute I get to know your story and you get to know my story, we reduce complexities. We reduce the picture that some of us are better than others. We learn about the challenges that other people have been through and continue to go through. And the minute I’ve got that and I’ve got that curiosity, surely then we become closer together. Surely it means that we can in fact work more cooperatively together and celebrate the fact that each of us comes from a very different place.”

Steve Hall, Leadership Facilitator

“You know, we’ve got to breathe in and we’ve got to breathe out. We never go away on a workshop to say, ‘Well, today, guys, we’re going to just breathe in. Today we’re going to learn how to breathe in.’ We’ve got to breathe out as well. We’ve got to manage our polarity, manage the balance between inhalation and exhalation, and that simply supports this thing called life.”

Steve Hall, Leadership Facilitator

“If I’m not aware of who I am, then how am I expected really to lead others through influence if I don’t know what triggers me, if I don’t know which lenses I’m looking through?”

Steve Hall, Leadership Facilitator

“If I’ve constantly got to play power over people using manipulation and coercion, it’s an expensive process. It really is draining on our batteries.”

Steve Hall, Leadership Facilitator

“I think it is our responsibility to act in the moment, to act for what’s good, to see life through that other set of lenses and say, I wonder if my action now might have recurring or repercussion events down the line.”

Steve Hall, Leadership Facilitator

“When we look at a car battery in human terms, we can have degrees and diplomas and we can have extraordinary products to sell, and 30 years of business experience and networks but, if I wake up in the morning and my battery’s flat, then my car doesn’t go, it stays in the garage. And so we can put in a beautiful new steering column and Bose sound systems and heated leather seats, but all of them are useless until we’ve got a charge in the battery.”

Steve Hall, Leadership Facilitator

“If I rely on somebody else to keep charging my battery, then maybe you’re really not going to progress that far. I’m going to be on the side of the road waiting for somebody to come with jumper cables. Why are we waiting for somebody else? Can we not work on this as a collective as to how to recharge our batteries together?”

Steve Hall, Leadership Facilitator

Steve Hall’s book, Another Set of Lenses, is well worth a read if you want to shift your own paradigms and perceptions through his stories and personal experiences.

Listen to another episode in my podcast series Embrace Your Story and Find Your Voice