Dr Michael Hewitt Gleeson Revolutionising An Industry Part 2

Hi, it's Luke Darcy.

Thank you again for joining me on the Empowering Leaders podcast.

I hope you're enjoying it as much as I am recording these conversations.

The upcoming guest, Michael Hewitt Gleeson.

What a legend.

I learned an incredible amount from this conversation,

so much so that we lost track of time and have decided to release this in two parts.

Both are ready to go now.

It was a fascinating insight from a man who has collected wisdom right across his life.

I hope you enjoy it.

On with the conversation.

G'day, it's Luke Darcy.

The idea of self-improvement and leadership both on and off the field

has been a lifelong passion of mine.

With one of my oldest friends, we created a leader collective

and have had the privilege of working with thousands of leaders

in education, sport, industry and the arts

that have helped shift to what we see as the 21st century style of leadership

where everyone has a voice.

In this podcast, we hear stories from these iconic leaders.

I love every time I change topic.

You've got another book, Wombat,

selling another one of your brilliant books,

Word of Mouth, Buy and Tell,

and your sales philosophy sort of pivots into that concept.

Can you explain that?

So, yeah, Wombat, Word of Mouth, Buy and Tell,

and it's also Australian, not American, sorry.

But the idea is the goal in most businesses is to close the sale,

is to get a deal or to get a customer.

So, yeah.

A very, very big in science is replication.

You know, I won't go into it all, but it's a very big thing.

The whole genetic structure of everything is based on replication

and what happens when genes replicate

and what happens when they replicate accurately

and what they have when they replicate with a little flaw

and that plays all out into evolution and everything else.

So, replication is...

And there's only two replicators that we know of at present in science,

genes and memes.

Memes are like idea viruses.

Yeah.

So...

Darwin's theory would...

Yeah, and applies to them as well.

That's evolution.

The little defaults change evolution.

Yeah, mistakes are the important thing.

Yeah.

Is what enables us to survive in a changing environment.

Now, if the environment was stable, then you wouldn't want that.

You'd want everything to replicate accurately.

Yeah.

But in a changing environment, which it always is,

it's actually the mutations or the mistakes that enables accidentally

to a certain copy.

Yeah.

And the other ones die off, you know.

So, the same with memes.

So, use the word meme and I've got, you know, 13, 15, 18, 12-year-olds.

So, meme is something that occurs, you know, on social media.

Those memes are an example of a meme, but that's not what memes are.

Memes have been going on for thousands of years.

Memes are little packages of information that are very good

at getting themselves copied from brain to brain.

And historically, how has that happened?

You're like...

Yeah.

You know, Beethoven's Fifth.

It could be, you know, Mind Your Manners.

It could be Drive on a Certain Side of the...

They're just things that become highly replicable.

Whereas other things, like Save Money, could be a good idea,

but don't want to hear about that.

You know, so they're not always necessarily good or bad.

They're just very good at getting copied.

Anyway, sorry, that's a bit detour, but that's the science behind one.

Yeah.

So, word of mouth, buy and tell.

I buy something.

I become a satisfied customer.

And I tell you at a dinner party or something, you know,

you complain about your, you know, your insurance costs.

Oh, you should talk to my guy.

He doesn't do that, you know, and blah, blah, blah.

And then we'll give me his number and so on.

So, we've all done it.

Go and see this movie.

We've all, we're all wombats.

So, but in wombat selling, the goal is not the deal, but it's a wombat.

Because every time you get a wombat, a satisfied customer who replicates

another satisfied customer, and it turns out that if a satisfied customer

comes to you because they're replicated by a wombat, they're very likely to do

the same thing if you map it out.

That's how you really multiply your business by 10, other than just some

motivational slogan, you know.

And we can, again, track it all down.

But I ask a customer, how many wombats do you have on your database, you know,

and on your spreadsheet?

Oh, what's a wombat, you know?

In other words, it's not even on the spreadsheet of projections.

To be able to measure.

It's just deals, sales, and dollars.

So, having some data saying, this is our customer base.

We should know who fall into the wombat category, who are genuinely satisfied

and are a good likelihood to tell other people that we're, yeah.

And that's because we're obviously still servicing them very well, and what can

we do to multiply that by 10?

So, that's where the lateral thinking of just different strategies, different

ways of looking at the world, and therefore, different behaviours.

You've had extraordinary people in your life.

I'm going to get to a handful of questions in a moment that I've been asking all

the inspirational leaders, but you mentioned George Gallup.

I didn't realise he was the academic that oversaw your PhD, but became a great

mentor in life.

Tell us George Gallup story.

He was 84 when I met him.

He had the Gallup Pollock Princeton, which he'd formed.

He originally was a professor of psychology, I think, in Midwest,

Northwestern University near Chicago or something.

But his idea.

His idea was he would look at newspapers and he would measure, you know, the ads

in newspapers, and then he found a way of measuring readership, and then he would

start calling people and say, did you see the ad on page six, upper left hand?

And then he would do that research and then sell it to advertising agencies,

the early days, in the 1920s.

And then Ericsson, I think it was, McCann Ericsson, jumped on this, that this is

really clever, and then that led to the kinds of things that they do in marketing.

Research, not all of it's great, but a lot of it's good, where you actually measure the

customer's point of view rather than just what you want to say and, you know, what

sort of headline you'll have and copywriting, all of which are important, but a big

emphasis on what the customer is thinking and saying, not just, so Henry Ford, you

can have any color you want as long as it's black.

Well, he was the opposite of that.

What do the customers want, you know, and then, and then coming backwards from that.

And so, you know, people wouldn't even run.

For politics today, unless they did polling and tried to find out, it's not always done

well, but I mean, it's done.

He changed the system.

I believe it was his mother-in-law that was running for a, for a seat in local government

or a Senate seat.

Ah, yeah.

I think, I think you're right.

Yeah.

And that they had surveying systems that were millions of people, but he worked out he could.

The statistical sample.

Yeah.

That if you measure 1200 people, you get the same result, plus or minus a small deviation

if you measure everyone.

Yeah.

Well, you can't measure.

You can't measure everyone, but you can measure a sample.

So this is, you're right, sample polling.

And he had brilliant accuracy at the start.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can always get it right, but we said.

And he got the, the Gallup poll predicted the result of every presidential election

since, you know, from then to then kind of thing.

But again, nothing is perfect.

And was he influential on, on your thinking as a, as a thinking instructor?

Yeah, well, he was the one who said the importance of measuring the CVS.

Yeah.

You know, so Edward was on about, you know, looking for BVSs, you know, in, in my, in my

terminology, you know, thinking outside the box, looking for, for BVSs in better ways.

Yeah.

Well, George was, but make sure you understand what the CVS, you know, make sure you, you

know, problem well stated is a problem half solved kind of thing.

And a lot of time we, we're confused about our CVS, you know, so he helped me to pay

a lot more attention to the CVS and the value of it.

And we do have a CVS and it is valuable because we've spent a lot of time on getting it and

investing in it.

So, so, and then, then of course the other part of the switch CVS to BVS is, well, then

what can we find that's 10 times better, but you better watch what you're multiplying by

10, you know, because that could lead you off somewhere where you don't really want

to go.

So understanding this and his measurement of trying to understand, he measured more

human thinking than any other individual on the planet.

And that transformed your thinking.

You've got to know where you are to get to where you want to get to.

If you don't know where you are.

But using measurement from a scientific point, not just sort of a vague feeling that

I think I know what I'm doing or, or my vague feeling that this is what the customer is

wanting.

So, you know, let me ask them 10 questions to find out exactly, you know.

And for a business, that's an important skill too, to understand.

And even in relationships with kids and with partners, you know, it can help if we understand

where they're thinking, where they, yeah, that's right.

That's again, careful what you multiply by 10.

The classic one I always say is that the parent, well meaning, of course, and most,

most of the things we do are well meaning.

The kid spends two hours on writing an essay or something and comes to mom or dad and there's

a spelling mistake on line three.

Well, there is a spelling mistake on line three.

That's true.

That's correct.

But something to me, or the famous story is that the cart, can I think we got time to

quickly?

Absolutely.

So the cut.

Yeah.

It's.

playground and he goes up to this little girl he's got his eye on

and he says, if you can guess what I've got in my hand, I'll take you to the

dance tonight. And she says, oh, it must be hippopotamus. He said, that's

close enough, I'll pick you up at 7 o'clock. So there's logic's

one way of thinking, but there are other types of thinking to get a result that you want

that they don't necessarily deal with right and wrong, you know. That's the best lateral

thinking I think I've ever heard. If only I'd known that, my youth might have

been a happier time. Andy, who introduced us, loves that one. He loves that one,

absolutely. The great Andrew Sutherland, who's been kind enough to

tee up this meeting today and I'm very appreciative.

Part of what we've been doing in the leadership space, Michael, is identifying what we think

great leadership looks like in the current context and we see an

evolution in leadership and some traits and dimensions of great

leaders that are coming through regularly and your story is one of the great

leadership stories that

we've ever heard and so please expand on these dimensions

or as little as much as you'd like, but we see all leaders have an understanding

of self-leadership. When I ask you about that term,

does it resonate with you? Oh, very much so. I mean,

the way I hear it, you know,

my way of saying is thinking is the skill or ability

to lead yourself. So that's where it starts,

doesn't it?

Self-leadership. So from a scientific point of view to do with

brains and biology and so on, it comes down to behaviours.

So, you know, why do I behave

in certain ways? And behaviours that are often triggered by emotions, fear being the big one.

So, how do I,

to what extent have I been taught?

Maybe formally, the way I'm saying it, or just by good parents and grandparents

or

good little village or whatever that you learn somehow instinctively

that the importance of not just always reacting to a

stimuli on the first response, although there are occasions

where, you know, rustling the grass in the old days, don't say, I wonder what that is?

You know, you've got to be out of there, otherwise you're lunch, you know,

to a tiger, but still, life is

not full of those kind of moments. So how do we use our thinking

to, and the big word is,

praise. So this is what I was going to do, and if our

prefrontal contact is well and being trained, it says, but wait a minute.

Is that, you know, what's the customer

actually thinking here? Or what's your partner thinking?

Or why did he or she say that?

Oh, okay, and then you can have a second think. It's like, you know, a second opinion with doctors.

A second think, and the second thing very often is more

useful.

it's metacognition you're actually thinking about your thinking and therefore the behavior that

comes could be a quite different behavior and that's where self-leadership comes in

we think and there are other definitions of leadership but that to the extent that one can

help others do that whether they're your family your children or your colleagues or your platoon

if you can help them also to be better thinkers to lead themselves better that's also fits into

my view of leadership yeah it's a brilliant answer and as i'm listening to your talk

in some ways it feels like what you started in that thinking is is sort of the founding part

of the modern mindfulness movement in lots of ways it's really being mindful is actually

really taking in your current you know view of the situation as you call it cvs yes being able

to process that pause and react in the way that you feel like you want to um and are you a believer

in

you

the stuff like meditation and oh yes very much so i mean nothing could be more deliberate and

mindful than breathe than than your breathing and improving on your breathing i had pneumonia

twice when i was a kid and uh you know quite young and i was even apart from giving shot penicillin

shots in the bum uh which i remember but i can remember that when i was eight you know i can

remember the doctor giving me breathing said all all the rubbish settles down in the bottom of your

lungs and we only breathe shallow most of the time and i was like oh my god i'm not going to

breathe at all i'm not going to breathe at all i'm not going to breathe at all i'm not going to breathe at all

you know like this so and that's fine but uh to make sure that's a number of times a day you know

the one method i was taught was three deep breaths where you push your stomach out so you feel your

stomach first and then your chest and hold it for four seconds and then let it out do three of those

you know as many times a day as you can think of now i've had that for well should i admit 70 70

75 years so so very much so and then of course uh

the buddhist and other um cultures uh that believe in that and understand

meditation and are also mindful we call it metacognition thinking about thinking and it's

just a synonym yeah their one is mindfulness which as you say is right now um so so yes uh

the alternative to mindfulness is unmindfulness the term alternative to metacognition is not the

word mindfulness it's actually the other one is sleep so sleep is usually it's always the intention

of that person and that's what you feel it's almost like i'm just thinking about sleep

have that you're sort of thinking about it you're thinking it's basically reacting so you know and

what do you react to a stimulus so basically you know you're a slave to to uh social media

whoever you're sitting with or anything road rage in the car they do something and if i'm gonna do

yeah no you you i you do actually do that but that's when your prefrontal cords come in and say

You know, sometimes if you can actually get it on the first thing, but usually on the

second thing, whereas without it, you don't do a second thing.

You're into the behavior, the behavior takes off.

Or I'm going to eat a little bit better today because, you know what, I'd love to have had

the burger, but I know I'm going to feel a bit better afterwards if I have something

that's maybe a bit more nutritious.

It's always an alcohol-free day, you know, which, you know, someone talked about years

ago, just a day, you know, we all like to have a drink and that in our society.

We just say, well, today, you know, I'm not giving up drinking, but I'm having an alcohol-free

day.

And then you can have two if you want, you know.

So that's a nice little one.

That was useful for me.

And my mate's just that, you see, today is a day where I just won't have a drink.

The laid gratification.

Yeah.

For the great.

And that can almost become a skill, you know, a little pattern.

And then you say, I'll do an AFD today.

But what about lunch?

Oh, well, maybe I'll do the AFD tomorrow.

But anyway.

Software update's not perfect all the time, Michael.

It glitches occasionally.

But we see leaders are really conscious of how they positively impact others in their

environment.

I mean, that feels like that's been a huge part of your life.

How can I positively impact, train trainers, improve thinking, improve people's lives?

I mean, were you conscious about that?

Yeah.

Well, because that army experience taught me that.

I also had a classical education at a Catholic boarding school at Rupert's Wood in Sunbury.

And that was, you know, the true for Italian, there were all Italian priests that are

coming out.

So we got the full, you know, Italian church classical education, you know, Latin and learning

vocab.

And you had to learn 10 words of Latin vocab every day in the order that they were on the

list.

Apart from anything else, you had to do so.

A lot of academic discipline stuff, old fashioned in a way.

And in updating the education, some of the things we did throw out some of the good things,

the baby with the bathwater.

Because practice repetition.

Practition, rehearsal, are what the military use, for example.

And when you're, you know, flying in a two-seater plane and the pilot says,

Tango, Whiskey, Juliet, eject, eject, eject.

If you say, are you sure?

It's too late.

So certain things, and we don't live life like that.

But in the military, they have to deal with situations.

Ambush left.

Who, me?

You know, it's all over, you know.

So there are things that have, in the military, a very severe bottom line.

So in the thousands of years of military science, they've evolved pedagogies that are very,

very useful.

And, you know, many of my old mates, when we get together and talk about that, we say,

well, you know, Marcus Blackmore was in my class.

Well, he took his dad's little, I used to tease him, his voodoo laboratory and built

it into, you know, one of the great brands.

Biggest vitamin business, Blackmore's Vitamins.

Yeah, it's an incredible story.

Kenneth and Tim Fisher also went to the same education.

So, so, um, I think that the other thing we haven't missed.

I think that the other thing we haven't missed is, you know, the role model, the imitation.

So you can learn from techniques that you're taught by a coach and through practice and

so on, but the brain through the mean thing can also, and we've all got our heroes and

our, which may be, they may be, uh, you know, fake, I mean, if nonfiction or fiction, but

they're still, for whatever reason, our heroes, uh, and in the sporting field, you know, we

all had our, we had our little footy cards when we were young.

And, you know.

And we all wanted to be footy, you know, if you're short and fat like me, uh, then the

opposite of you.

So you, you don't, I was always the last one.

I was the youngest in the class and the smallest.

And so the big boys like you, uh, would pick their teams and they, you know, one would

pick one and one would pick the other.

And then it would come to me and say, they'd fight over who's getting me.

So we had him last time, you know.

I don't think any of those guys went on to find, found the school of thinking, but there

were DeBoto, uh.

Uh, Michael said, we've all got our.

We've all got our strengths.

And, uh, you know, someone, uh, on this podcast said to me, you get some cards, you just have

to play those cards well.

Exactly.

And you've played your cards as well as you could possibly imagine.

We, we see great leaders conscious about how they go about creating and sharing their vision.

The school of thinking is a huge vision.

I mean, how did you systematically go about sharing that vision?

Sort of random.

Randomly.

So you have to remember, it was also the days of Studio 54.

I was new in New York and I was, uh, so it was, uh, you know, it was learning about life

and enjoying myself and, and, and learning on every level that I could.

But, um.

Did you have big ambition for it?

Did you?

Yeah, yeah.

And I had a kind of, well, the fact is, so, uh, I said, we've got to do something.

We've got to have something.

I can't just be wandering around trying to sell.

I was originally trying to sell Edward, the city corp on that.

And then when I'll get it.

It's a.

They'd say, well, well, where is he then?

Well, he's at Cambridge.

Well, Americans want it now.

They don't want some guy.

So I, that wasn't the model.

So I said, Edward.

So I presented him an idea for a school at JFK once on a visit.

The 70th of November, 1979.

And I said, what we need is a school.

So I got a point.

You never forget that day.

No, no, no.

I was there and he said, yes.

On the spot.

Yeah.

That was when I did the idea of the train, the train.

Yeah.

I'll do what I know.

Yeah.

Now.

We'll go into business together.

Going together.

This is a school.

If you want to do it, we'll do it together.

As a business.

Yeah.

I suggested 50-50.

He suggested 60-40.

Fair enough, you know.

So that was okay.

No, but it was good and I knew I could do that.

I put the first ad in the New York Times.

I thought teachers would be, you know, logically.

So I put an ad in the New York Times Education Supplement,

part-time thinking instructors.

And when the ad came out, it was part-time thinking instructors.

And then a little copy that.

No.

No one knew about De Bono or anything.

And then I'd put the wrong phone number in.

I, you know, it was a little bit too much Studio 54.

Anyway, this poor lady in Harlem kept getting all these calls about wanting,

people wanting to be part-time thinking.

She gave them a piece of her mind.

So, false start.

So, so De Bono wasn't a household name at that stage.

No, no one had heard of him.

Yeah.

And, uh, he, he, he was, no, there wasn't, he was getting well known here

because he'd done regular trips to Australia, was starting to.

What brought, what brought him to Australia?

He studied at RMI.

I tell you, didn't he, here in Australia?

No, no, he, you know, he, he, he was given an honorary PhD from RMI.

Yeah.

But he did his, he's from Malta.

So he got his, he was very young doctor of meds.

Not all his family are doctors.

Uh, very young.

His father was a famous Malta doctor.

Um, and then won a road, road scholarship to Oxford and did psychology at Oxford.

And then when I met him, he was the professor of investigative meds at Cambridge.

Since then, he's been given various honorary doctorates around the world, including RMI.

But, um, so, so, but what I said was, let's do a book together because then I've got something I can sell, you know, a book.

And then I obviously put courses together.

So we did the learn to think course book and instructor's manual, which we co, uh, authored in, in, uh, 19 sort of 82.

And that had the lessons in there and how to teach them, you know, so I had the lessons and if you're an instructor, you just.

I bought the book and you could teach from the book.

And that was the multiplier.

Then, then, um, uh, he always said, oh, I'd love to get something in the reader's digest because that is the biggest magazine in the world.

So I was like a little, you know, robot bunny, you know, the bunny rabbit just pressed the button.

I said, okay.

So I went up and I did manage to get a, an interview, uh, about the book in the reader's digest.

And it turned out to be the cover story in all international editions.

And which had massive coverage, didn't it?

Read his digest.

That would be like being on Oprah.

Yeah.

You know, it was before the internet on it, 68 million readers.

So, and we had seven lessons in there, you know, so.

And that, and that put the school of thinking on the map.

That, that puts, well, then what, from that comes like hundreds of these.

Yeah.

Radio interviews all around America.

Cause it's all, everyone copies what's in the reader's digest, the New York times, all cascading across that America we described before.

Yeah.

So I was doing talk show, like, you know, suddenly from nothing or, you know, a dribble of things we were trying to create.

Yeah.

And then we hit.

Yeah.

And then your vision changes.

I mean, you're sharing it then.

But in the course book, I said, let's train 300,000 thinking instructors in America, which is a number I just made up.

Yeah.

I mean, that's the long answer to your question.

So Edward said, well, where'd you get that number from?

I said, well, you know, why not?

You know.

Six million instructors later.

Now there's 6 million in the world.

We haven't trained them all, but it's cascaded down to 6 million.

So it's a, it's a brilliant story.

It was a vision.

Yeah.

But how to do it, it was a little less.

It's brilliant to hear the back story of it.

I like, we, we see curiosity as a common trait for, for this, uh, modern leaders.

And, and I suspect, uh, that's going to be a huge part of, of you.

And then through curiosity, leaders really thinking about how they change and learn and, and develop.

It was, was curiosity a big part of your.

Yeah.

I'm always got into trouble for being curious, even in the military, you know, but, um, but, but, uh, that's okay.

Cause sometimes it's perhaps inappropriate, but other times.

Yeah.

But it turned out to bone to explain why it's actually very, very important in the brain.

Humor is the other big thing.

Um, if, if, if computers ever start laughing, that's going to be a very sinister day indeed.

Cause it's one quality of the human brain that indicates that random patterns are connecting.

If it's temporary, then it's just a joke.

But if it's permanent, it's an insight.

Yeah.

And I, I can't do that.

Yeah.

Uh, not, not, we can program, we can program it.

We have to do it and it even can take off in self-programming that may, that's kind of changing.

And by 2030, there probably will be two distinct types of thinking, silicon and carbon.

So it is, as we all know, rapidly changing.

Does that alarm you?

Well, it does both, you know, it alarms me and, uh, you know, piques my curiosity, but, uh, but I won't be here.

So that's an awful thing to say, but, uh, because, uh, but it is.

I mean, it's, it's something we have to, the opportunity is unbelievable.

In artificial intelligence, but the threat's also there.

But we have to really be on the ball and know what we're doing because the potential consequences are there as well.

I think there's a quote from Elon Musk that's coming to me that, uh, he's clearly an interesting thinker, Elon Musk, however you view his, his view of the world, but he's.

He's a visionary.

He, at one point said, if we don't have a way back into artificial intelligence, a human way back in.

Yes.

Yeah.

Humans are a chance to end up like a domesticated cat, effectively.

Well, we are going to evolve into the future together.

How, how that unfolds could be anything from us being domesticated to something far more favorable, you know, uh, uh, some sort of cooperative thing that worked well as it, in a sense, has to a large extent so far.

But, uh, uh, the biggest thing that worries me on the planet right now is social media.

I mean, if you're, you didn't ask me, so I'm just poking.

Which is great, because it's, uh, it's, it's the addictive nature of it.

I mean, it's up there with heroin and, uh, you know, you get, and we don't understand it.

Unfortunately, it's happening faster than our ability to understand it.

So you do get people who pick up their kids from school because they're worried about stranger danger.

And then the kids will be sitting back and say, here's your mobile phone.

And, uh, and, uh, and we're becoming more and more aware and even challenging.

We're challenging tech companies now to do something about it, but we can already see.

As, as a parent, Michael, it's the number one.

Yeah.

Is it?

Yeah.

By far and away, because it's the genie's out of the bottle.

That's where all the communication channels exist.

There's part of it that is, that is genius, that I admire.

Their ability to.

It's, it's so useful.

I mean, you can't just throw it away.

I'll try and explain it.

As a kid, I used to, growing up in, in South Australia, and you'd try and meet someone

in the, in the city, in the mall, and two out of three times, you'd miss each other

because you might've been standing on the side.

But you'd go home because.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, it's so.

So there's just so many, for all, it's a total mixture of pluses and minuses.

The minus side, can I share this with you?

Because I find this, and I have told this story before, but, you know, through lockdown

in Melbourne, we lived in the most lockdown city in the world.

And there was an extraordinary amount of teenage girls by the end of it presenting with eating

disorders.

And the link back to not being able to connect, not being able to connect, sitting at home

and looking.

And looking at these unrealistic images of what body image looks like.

There was, you know, I'll get the number wrong and I shouldn't have it, but something

like 700 a week teenage girls in the city of Melbourne being diagnosed.

The, the, the social media.

Yeah.

The complexity for young people is, it's alarming.

The problem is with any, it's, it's an addiction.

And the problem with it, it's two problems with addiction, but the problem with anything

like, you know, a Kit Kat or a cigarette, there's nothing wrong with a cigarette.

Or a Kit Kat.

But if you have 10 Kit Kats a day, that is a very, very serious problem.

If you have 10 cigarettes a day, so it's the dosage.

People say, oh, you know, it's, it's, it's, and the dosage, the problem with the dosage

is some things can be, are addictive.

So, an easy, a basic definition of addiction is, I can't say no.

It doesn't matter what it is, whether it's sex or sugar or, you know, coffee or drugs

or whatever.

It doesn't matter what it is, whether it's sex or religion or any of the things to do

with, again, we're getting back into the, into the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex.

But, um, uh, the basic thing is if you, if you cannot say no, then it's really addiction.

And this is something.

Unbelievable.

Right on up there with heroin in terms of the ability to say no.

It's interesting you make that comparison.

And you understand that much more than me because you've got kids.

And you know the problem.

I've just got my partner.

Yeah.

But I, I find the problem.

I've got to be totally transparent.

I'm yelling at the kids to get off social media as I'm on my phone.

Yeah, I know, of course, exactly.

And it has, and I, you, you can lose, and I'm very, very late to the market in social media.

In fact, people who know me know that I have no understanding at all, but, but, but I find

myself reading news articles and half an hour's gone and you go, what happened just then?

Cause it's, it's, it's intelligent behavior to use this, but you know, there's many ways of using, I, I, you know, when I'm had a couple of years.

I've you know, I'm on a roll here with four glasses of red wine and I'm on a roll.

I, I say, uh, partly emotional might say it's like kloaca, maxima, the great sewer of Hen, you know, it's like a sewer in the sewer.

There are diamonds.

Unbelievably precious diamond, but you got to wade through a lot of What a shit to get there.

Well, you said it.

So, so that's, you know, it's a very serious problem.

I think we're now understanding that it is.

And we're starting to the government's and very similar.

people. But I don't envy, you know, parents because

I mean, you know, I'm having enough trouble

using leadership on myself with this. It's much more difficult with kids

who don't yet have a prefrontal cortex. Yeah. So there's no

possible way they can really understand what we're trying to tell them,

you know, and all their mates have got it. I mean,

I would call it a wicked problem, which is a problem which in a sense

doesn't yet have a solution. Yeah. No, it's a very

important point that you make. A couple more dimensions that we've been talking about,

communicating with clarity and your books are, and I'm going to come back to

the fourth brain. It feels like you've captured really

a version of where thinking is going in 2022 that we talk about.

It's a good segue from social media and kids really having a shorter, and adults too.

So your communication's brilliant

and clearly your writing and the way that you've been able to expand

the school of things. How did you go about that communication?

That book there. All of it, yeah, just in all of you.

Well, that's a really good question. I don't really, I don't think I've been asked

that before, but it's one I really

like to be asked because it's one of my things that I think I'm good at.

So it's about communication and there are levels of communication

aren't there? So for example,

I was raised a Catholic, okay, and had

great education, the fall, everything, and the liturgy as it

was then in those days with fabulous vestments and

I was the kid on the smoke thing, you know, and I got the job of doing a smoke ring

once when I thought the priests weren't watching. But you know, all of that

and the wonderful history and

culture of the church and so on. Well, it's good because not everyone

had a great experience. No, no, no.

I had some experiences that weren't great. Yeah, yeah.

But overall, this will be another soapbox I could get in, but overall,

well, you can pay, well, you can focus on

well, you know, the child abuse thing in the church. There's no doubt about that

that is terrible. Horrific. But already now they're far more advanced

than probably any other country in the world in dealing with it.

That's not focused on and looked at, and so there are other issues. But that's

not the point I want to make.

Then as I grew up and then I became a scientist and so on, I became agnostic. I couldn't really

believe what I taught anymore. But I was trying to hold on with, you know, one foot in the

thing. And then it came to a point where, well, I mean, I'm sorry. I mean, what I've

now learned in science, I have no choice to be an atheist. I can't believe in the version

that I was taught. And then I went further and I find myself becoming an agnostic. And

now I'm sort of, you know, vacillating between I believe. But the thing is, I'm an agnostic.

I'm an atheist as far as what I was taught when I was young. But the man with the long

beard and all that. Yeah. Santa Claus. I mean, that was nice for a prefrontal cortex, pre-pre.

Yeah. You know, but I could never go and believe

that anymore. Extraordinary, but a bit the same when you're

forced to go into the church environment. It's a mixed bag.

And you look back and you go, that, you know, that doesn't add up. But there's part of me

that is in this universal energy understanding of the way that the world organizes itself

and that there is a greater force. Yeah.

If you're curious, there are other ways to explain that.

So I had a wonderful meeting once. I was a fan of the Dalai Lamas because I'd read some

of those Lobsang Rama books when I was young. And then I had a chance in New York on his

very first trip to America to meet him. A friend of mine was a friend of his. And I

really wanted to have a meeting with the Dalai. So I arranged through CBS for a friend for

them to do a documentary on him. And in exchange, I had a long meeting with him.

What was that like?

What was that like? They tell me incredible presence being around.

I couldn't speak when he, I mean, as you can tell, I'm not someone who has trouble speaking.

But when he came into the room and he just, the presence came in and he was in the other

room giving an audience to the governor of New York. And then he came in, there was a

chair, his sort of throne type of chair was there. And then mine was here. And then I

had a tape recorder set up and I had a photographer with me. And he came in and I was like, I'm

going to do this. And he came in, big smile, took my hand and then went over, looked at

the chair and then moved mine away. Physically himself, got another one like his and put

it next to it. And being cynical, I looked at the, you know, the, all the Tibetans in

the room and the ambassadors and that thought, oh, this must be his little stunt that he

does. And you could see by the look on their face that it was a completely spontaneous

thing for whatever reason, you know, that he just did. And they were like, this is not

his routine that he does.

Yeah.

It was tremendous. You know, the things we talked about, I asked him to design a new

religion.

That would have been interesting. Yeah. That's probably a separate.

He said no at first, but then.

I'm fascinated by that. When you're in the presence of someone with great presence, that

energy, you know, is such a unique thing. And it's, you know, I'm sure that would have

been the experience. We're talking final, so many great stories to keep going, but collaboration,

we see leaders are really passionate now about how they collaborate. Your life is,

has been full of great collaborations from Edward de Bono to, to, to George Gallop. I

mean, you've extraordinary life of collaboration is, is, is that how you've.

Yeah. And continues. I mean, the, the project that I told you, well, that, that had Andrew

Sutherland who met us. I mean, that's the, you know, it's a collaborative thing we're

doing.

Yeah.

You know, I couldn't do it without them and the way that they're applying it. I think

you really, you know, you can really say you're in the leadership zone when you're collaborating.

Yeah.

In an active way with someone with, you know, I don't know, did you know the, one of my

favorite models over these is the transactional analysis model that was developed by, there

was a book around in my day called I'm okay, you're okay. It was a big bestseller, but

there were the, there's the three circles, parent, adult, child, and you put two of them

together, parent, adult, child. So you can do the metrics of the relationships. So parent,

parent is good. Child.

Oh, no. Yeah. Yeah. Adult, adult is good. Child, child is good. But parent, child has

problems. Nothing to do with the fact that parents and children don't have, but just

as a psychological.

Exchange.

Exchange, you know, there's a power thing, you know, do this because I'm saying so, that

sort of thing. So that there are other ways to communicate other than, you know, when

I want your opinion, I'll give it to you. You know, that's a joke, you know, but, but

obviously adult, adult's good. And when we're having a bit of fun, child, child, child, child,

you know.

Yeah.

Um, so, so just different ways to communicate. And I think if you're in that collaborative

zone, rather than someone just telling you what to do, you're in the leadership zone

no matter what the ranks are.

Yeah.

That's fascinating. You know, I love talking parenting, um, you know, given my house is,

is full of it. But that is interesting why, because it's the great sort of conundrum is

that the parent adult, parent, uh, child relation naturally has got that hierarchy.

Yeah.

It comes with challenges.

Yeah.

One of the things that's been great advice.

is you're having the outside mentors for your kids

who naturally they want to gravitate to

because there is that barrier.

And when you can accept that as a parent,

there's so much genius in burnout.

Just sit back and hopefully have other people surround you.

Well, in the old days we had a village.

They used to say the village raises the child.

We don't know.

And it's not that the kids shouldn't be exposed to parents.

I mean, they've got to grow up and survive in a world of humans.

Yeah.

And there are occasions when they'll be authoritative

or even authoritarian.

In some parts of the world.

And so, you know, if they've had a bit of that in the family,

that doesn't hurt them.

But you wouldn't want only that or too much of it, you know.

Yeah.

So kids should be exposed to a range of things that they can adapt to

and be skilled at.

Otherwise, their survival is inhibited, you know.

But we all know what an authoritarian household is like,

you know, whether we've had it or whether we've seen it somewhere.

So, and that's, you know, we can do better than that, you know.

Yeah, not a lot of joy.

But there are moments, of course, when rank is important.

We occasionally need it.

Occasionally.

It still happens in my house from time to time.

I put my hand up, pull rank occasionally.

Two final questions.

And I've loved catching up with you and learnt an enormous amount from it.

We've been asking this of all the great leaders we've been around.

Who has been the greatest leader in your life?

Well.

Yeah.

It's like when someone says what's your favorite song or movie, you know, you've got several

that could, I mean, easily my dad.

I mean, that's, that's easy, you know, in a sense.

Can you tell me about him quickly before?

Yeah.

He, uh, he, uh, you know, he, he went to St.

Kevin's and went on scholarship there as a St.

Kilda boy, you know, grew up in St.

Kilda, put his age up and went to the war for six, six years in the Middle East, New

Guinea, came back redhead or sandy coloured hair.

and told me, you know, and then I was born right after then

and when I was, one of my earliest memories,

one of his famous sayings, son, if things aren't working out,

go to the beach.

Like that was, that pretty much sums up.

He was well-read, one of the most well-read people I've ever met,

highly intelligent, wicked sense of humour.

I often say we weren't so much raised up as we were teased up, you know,

cheated at Monopoly, did everything, you know.

But we were always laughing, you know, his sense of humour was always,

you know, there were different moments when he had to be dead,

but, and empowering, you know.

He was not an ambitious man himself.

He had a great life, he was fine, but he never brought work home.

You know, we went to the beach every weekend and, you know,

but he, anything I ever wanted to do, I was a bit different, you know,

I had things I wanted to do and I needed to buy things

that he thought were silly.

Like motivational tapes from America when I was starting out.

Some of them were no good.

So he was right, but I didn't know that and I needed them

and he paid for them, you know.

Yeah.

You know, like if, well, you know, oh, you're going to play this bullshit,

you know, but you need them here and, you know, they were not cheap,

you know, it was like 500 bucks, it was a lot of money then.

Yeah.

And so that was dad, you know, whatever you're doing, he backed you

and right up and older, I would always go and discuss everything with him,

you know, and.

It's a gift, Michael, isn't it?

The people that answer that they're a parent.

I was lucky.

They go there straight away and they feel that I feel exactly the same way.

Oh, that's good.

And lost my father in recent times as well,

but had a very similar relationship to that, you know.

Can I ask you a return question because I really admire the work

that you've been doing and that you are now doing.

I mean, you're current and you're doing this.

What's one of your favourite things to say?

Like, I mean, vaguely in answer to the question,

if you could teach a 10-year-old one thing about leadership.

But you don't have to answer that question.

But one of your, if you could just get one message across something

you've really learned as being.

Well, it's a great comment.

It's a lot easier asking the questions, Michael, than answering them.

But I think the idea that being able to self-reflect, being self-aware,

you don't have to get things right all the time.

But I think there is a common trait of people who I think live a lot more

full lives, that they are reflective and want to get better.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hm.

Yeah.

And so that's the sort of community I'm passionate about creating,

really.

Yeah.

connecting with is that idea of your life experience so different

from mine, but there's a hundred things in preparation

for this that I'm reflecting on and what we want to create in the

leadership space and the people I want to connect with, that constant idea to learn would be what

I would hope to pass on. And learning a lot from people, I can see that

in you. It's that constant curiosity and learning.

And you're doing it. I mean, of course, having the media

is a terrific thing. I mean, the media is great, especially if you've got

something interesting to say, whereas not always is that the case. So what

you're doing, I mean. And I've worked in mainstream media where you don't get that, which is why

you're not all the time. You're sort of soundbite media. You're not really able

to, which is the beauty of where I think media is going, which is this format to sit down

with someone. Hopefully we're capturing unbelievable life stories

like yours and there's going to be life lessons out of it. The world of collaboration

is sort of part of what we're passionate about in the business I'm working

with my great friend, Matt Waterwitz in Alita. And we see

great collaboration and yours is so obvious. But if you look back now

and if you collaborate with anyone else, has there been anyone else in the world you could collaborate

with right now on any passion of your life? Is there a name that springs to mind?

Well, that's great. That's like getting a blank check.

There is

someone.

Whether I can remember or not.

Well, it's not, there's someone else but I can't

remember. But for example, I'll say Prince Charles. Now

a couple of reasons. Prince Charles obviously is

in his own version, but one of these. You know, they used to joke that he talked

to the flowers and all that. But actually when you look into what he does

he's very, he's curious, he's interested in different points of view. He's got an open mind.

And having been

Prince of Wales so long, he can have an opinion, which you won't be able to have

so easily when he becomes king. You'll see he'll change completely.

They're frightened that as a king he'll be, you know, he'll have his finger

in every pie. He won't. He knows the job. So as his father pointed

out, being Prince of Wales for so long, he's been able to, you know, build special

towns and have the Prince Charles trust and do all the various

things he does. So I've seen a lot of the work he does

and you just see, you know,

relate to a lot of it, not all of it, but a lot of it. But of course he's going to be the next

King of England. So somehow, you know, you are able to say

co-author a book or something. Apart from that, that would be a very interesting

thing to do. There's always the practical outcome. I mean,

that would draw a lot of attention to thinking

if one could do a book on, you know, lateral thinking with

Prince HRH, you know. HRH lateral thinking. I mean, he gets a bad run.

Yeah. Doesn't he? Really? He does.

No. Well, he gets a run in a way like the church does

that is less than what it really is, you know. So your understanding

is he's a good thinker. Well, you can focus on the quirky things,

but if that's all you focus on, then it's a bad run.

There's a lot of value there.

Well, in a Darwinian sense,

the Vatican, for example, I wanted to do a Netflix series on the Vatican.

And I've kind of written it up, you know. But

it's a human organization. It's the only one that's actually survived for

2,000 years. Now, whether Google will survive for 2,000 years

or Musk, what's his

company? Tesla. Tesla, yeah. Or Amazon. It's another matter.

It's no easy thing to do. And then the crown, of course. Well, number two

is the crown. 1,000 years. So it's like Coke and Pepsi.

Yeah.

If you're a scientist and a Darwinian thinker, you realize the enormous

value that must be there for that to happen. And so

if one starts to dig into that value, there's a lot there, regardless of

what, you know. Quirky things happen. The coverage is,

you know, and you're going to find terrible mistakes.

And you're going to find what there is to find, which is the highs

and lows. But you just don't, in any species,

get to survive in a Darwinian sense for thousands

of years unless there's enormous survival value there. And what is

that? And that's what I'm curious about. Well, that's a fascinating answer, isn't it?

Because, you know, your mind doesn't think of it in that way, that the Vatican is the oldest

living organization followed by the royal family.

And so they must do more than, you know, ride around on horses and, you know.

So, and of course, I mean, you know,

I'm not religious at the present.

Okay, so this is not me trying to promote religion, but

the Vatican has 230,000 schools.

Who's got that? Who's got 230,000 schools?

Imagine the teachers, the parents, the students. It has 5,000

hospitals. Who's got 5,000 hospitals? America?

Russia? It's got 10,000 old age times.

So just forget all of the dogma and all of that

and, you know, the fancy hats and so on.

Who's actually doing that? Not to mention the gratuitous

libraries and art and music and artifacts

that have been spread around the world by missionaries, today you'd call them

influencers, for 2,000 years. So when

you actually look at the value. And the land holdings outside

of all that. You go to Rome and, you know, there's a church on every corner,

one of which, if that was in Australia, it'd be the most amazing thing.

Let alone their own country with their own, you know, set of rules.

And the Vatican Observatory and science. I mean, the science

of the, I'm just starting a new school, which I haven't launched yet, called

the School of Catholic Science Thinking. And I'm looking at like a Venn diagram

if you looked at Catholic thinking, just 20 centuries.

Science thinking, which is four centuries. The bit that overlaps.

Now whether it's science that was created, usually the

priests and that, but science that was created because they were Catholics

or in spite of being Catholics.

Or, you know, just the bit. And then you get these George

Lemaitre's and Mendel, you know, and you get Galileo

and you get a whole lot of others. And if you just look at that. In the cross over?

Yeah, just in the part of Catholic science thinking. Which is not thinking about

Catholic science, because there's no such thing. Science is science. But

to the extent that Catholic education has created valuable

science. You know, it's up there with the schools and the

hospitals and so on. So

I just encourage people to go a little bit more than just, you know, throwing stones,

because there's a lot of value there.

It's a brilliant way to understand the school of thinking. It's a brilliant way to understand

the curiosity of your mind. It's a brilliant way to think outside the square. And an incredible

note to finish on. I could sit here all afternoon, Michael, and

I'll get off my soapbox now.

You've got story after story. It's a remarkable life. The schoolofthinking.org, really go

and check it out. There's so many great tools available for free. Most of them, you can

download the books for free.

The one I've got in my hand now, The Fourth Brain, alongside all of Michael's other

incredible books. But that is a nine-minute bit of genius that you can pass on, which

I plan to do. Really, it's been a great pleasure to meet you. Thank you for your time.

Thanks, Luke. This has been a lot of fun. Great questions, too. I usually don't get

really good questions.

Well, I appreciate that.

It's been lovely having the time, too, instead of like three or four, five minutes to really

learn from each other. It's really, really loved it.

I'm driving everyone mad in my house with X10 thinking, and I'll continue.

Continue to do so. Go to schoolofthinking.org, Michael Hewitt Gleeson on the Empowering Leaders

podcast. Thanks again.

Empowering Leaders was presented by me, Luke Darcy, produced by Matt Dwyer, with audio

production by Darcy Thompson. To start your leadership journey, I encourage you to go

to elitacollective.com, take our Empowering Leaders Indicator Tool, and understand the

impact you have on your environment. Join us at Elita to learn, lead, and collaborate.

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