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Every month, Grant Greeff shares his professional learnings, experiences, and ideas about business, leadership & culture through a South African lens.
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Bonus: Zuby on Leadership: Building Authentic Relationships & Providing Value
In this engaging conversation, Zuby discusses crucial aspects of effective leadership, emphasising the need for competence, empathy, honesty, and authenticity.
He also delves into his personal growth journey, particularly the importance of building meaningful professional relationships. Zuby shares his strategy of 'giving first', which involves being of service and providing value to others, suggesting that this approach opens doors and builds a flourishing network.
Encouraging viewers to be proactive, gracious, and generous, Zuby emphasises the power of appreciation and giving back to those who have helped or inspired them.
00:00 Introduction to Leadership
00:18 The Importance of Leadership
01:12 Building Relationships and Networking
02:39 The Power of Giving and Being of Service
04:23 The Art of Reciprocity
04:42 The Value of Helping Others
05:24 The Power of Acknowledgement
05:48 Conclusion: The Importance of Giving More Than You Ask
I'm with Zuby, who's going to be speaking specifically in the leadership pillar. And Zuby, from your side, maybe just tell us a bit more around like What you have identified just overall when it comes to leadership and the practicalities of how we introduce it into both teams as well as organizations. Wow. Well, I think the leadership is firstly, it's something that's massively important and something that has always been there and always going to be there. And when it comes to leadership, I think you need competence. You need human empathy and understanding. You need honesty and authenticity. And I also think that human beings are wired to follow, follow leaders. If you think of any, any sector that exists, we're, we're individualistic animals and beings, but we're also hierarchical in a way, right? And people are always looking up for leadership. So I think it's incredibly important to have non corrupt and well incentivized leadership. We see what happens in human history when, uh, that doesn't exist or when you have, um, strong leadership that is malicious or bad, or when you simply have leadership that's incompetent. So those are some of the factors I think matter a lot when it comes to leadership. And if you think about your journey thus far, how have you found the opportunity to build relationships with people that have been there before, or they, you know, they possibly are at a, at another chapter in their story, in their professional lives, like how have you actually found that? Have found or created the opportunity for you to actually connect with them and then start learning from them and not necessarily isolating yourself or Closing off doors before they even you know are present. Yeah, I think putting yourself out there I think the world has never been smaller. We've never been more interconnected as we are now I'm probably two to three degrees of separation from Almost anybody in the world, which is which is insane. Um, So I think it's a matter of being useful. I'm a big fan of being of value, living your life in service to not yourself, but to other people. It's also how you achieve success ultimately, right? By providing people with things that they want or things that they need and being genuine in the process. And if you are, if you put yourself out there and you will just live your life in service to other people and you're just helpful, And you're polite and you treat people with kindness, then we are human beings are reciprocal. If you're finding that there's no opportunities or people are closing doors in your face or people are being rude to you or so on, it's often the case that that's the energy that you are putting out there. People just tend to reciprocate and reflect back whatever it is you're doing. So in terms of reaching people who are successful or who are famous or who are in whatever area it may be, I think the best thing to do is to, is is to give first. To give first. Don't be that person who's always just asking people for stuff. Asking, asking, asking. But just be gracious. Show gratitude. Um, if someone's helped you or inspired you, tell them. Let them know. Um, and be willing to say yes and be, and also understand that other people like saying yes. I think sometimes people self reject more than they get rejected, right? They close off opportunities and doors. And shut down bridges before they've even had an opportunity to explore those at most at the worst, you know, someone can say no, you reach out to somebody, um, more often, though, maybe they'll say not now or come back later or build a little bit more. And. Then maybe we can connect or we can work together or whatever it is. Um, I started everything I do with zero, right? People might follow me now on social media. Oh, you've got so many followers or you're connected to this person or that person. I'm like, dude, I started zero followers like you. I remember getting my first hundred, first thousand, first ten thousand, first hundred thousand, right? Like you, you build every, you build everything over time. So I think sometimes people have unrealistic expectations and they want things to, I think it's natural to want things to happen quickly, want them to happen now. You just have to dedicate yourself and like I said, be of, be of service to others and you will find over time that your network grows and your connections grow and people start to reach out to you and offer you things because you've just given so much. Brilliant. And I think for me, the big lesson I take from that is. Have direction of where you want to go. Don't approach it with a condition, approach it unconditionally and then people naturally then don't experience you always having a quid pro quo to that interaction and knowing now that there's a, there's a plan of where you want to go to, but you're, you definitely want to give before you take. Yeah. Focus on helping people. If you focus on helping people. And being a value to people and just assist. You will so many doors open. Um, and I think so many people are, are just inwardly focused. They're, they're thinking like, Oh, how do I, how do I make more money? How do I get to this position? How do I do that? What can that person give me? How do I connect to that person? And instead, if you flip that the other way around and you just think, okay, how can I, how can I help more people given what I know, my experiences and my personality and my skillset, how can I be, how can I offer more value to other people? I want to connect with that person who I admire. Maybe I can do something for them. Maybe even, it could just be, it could just be a kind word. Right? It could just be a kind word. Just acknowledging them and thanking them for what they, Someone, some author wrote a book you love? Cool, tell them, let them know. Someone made a song that you like? Cool, let them know. Someone's inspired you, helped you with whatever? Let them know. No person gets tired. Of hearing that, right? Um, and so go from there. And then, like I said, just see, see how you can be useful before you can give more than you ask for. Give more than you ask for. Just be giving, giving, giving. And then even when you do ask for something, people are much more likely to say yes, because they've already received so much from you. Excellent. Thank you so much. And I'm really excited for your session and good luck with it. Appreciate it.