Moment 42 - These 3 Things Will Make You Successful In Life: Jamil Qureshi

Jamil Quresh is a high performance expert and psychologist. he's worked with some of the biggest businesses, sports teams and individuals to help them reach the highest level of performance. In my mind Jamil's episode was probably one of the most valuable I've recorded. I struggle to think of a better encapsulation we’ve received of self progression and how to always have an attitude in life open to learning. This is the episode to listen to if you want to learn how to better take responsibility in your own life, but more importantly what that means for your wider attitude. Especially having an open mind and being willing to experiment and try new things. I learn from all of my guests, but I think what Jamil taught me is how to learn better. This is definitely an episode for you if you feel like you’ve recently been stuck or like life isn’t throwing up the opportunities you want. Because it isn’t just the opportunities you receive, but the ones you look for, and how ready you are for them when they arrive. Episode 61 - https://g2ul0.app.link/w3n4SIUN6mb Jamil: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamil-qureshi-494661a/ Twitter: @Jamil_Qureshi Website: www.jamilqureshi.com Watch the episodes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/StevenBartlettYT?sub_confirmation=1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Steven Bartlett?

  Wanted to know really from you like what role responsibility plays in people's outcomes?

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Okay, that's a big one.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  You promised me some easy questions today. So responsibility is huge, it's just massive. It's one of the predeterminants of successful outcomes is our ability to take ownership and accountability. So circumstance and situation push and pull us in different directions on a daily basis. The world is complex, it's uncertain, it's unpredictable, all of those things. The people who perform best have huge levels of response ability, an ability to respond to those circumstances and situation, no matter what they are, to drive the best outcomes or opportunities. So I always said it's a circle of concern, water cooler conversations,

• 0:50Speaker 01

  the stuff that's going on around us, circumstance, situation, incidents and accidents. Then there's a circle of influence and the circle of influence is where we make choice. That's what it's about. So responsibility is all about choice for me. I absolutely guarantee you now that circumstance and situation is not a predictor of success. Because we know of people who were born into privilege, they're great role models, had good access to opportunity, to wealth, they had good guidance and good support, and they ended up dying heroin addicts in prison. We know some people born with a physical disadvantage, now the lack of good role models, now the lack of guidance, lack of support, lack of opportunity, they grew up to be some of the most successful people who have ever walked this earth.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  So it proves beyond doubt that attitude is more important than intelligence or facts. And I genuinely believe that to be true in all areas of high performance, that attitude is more important than intelligence or facts. I always say give me I will over IQ. Any one of my teams, I'd rather have I will over IQ. Because high technical expertise, I'm talking about the Western world at the moment, high technical expertise is no longer as valuable as it used to be. And the reason why high technical expertise is no longer as valuable as it used to be is because we can Google things, that's why. So knowing a lot isn't where your success is going to come from.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Not what you know, which is important, is how you think about what you know. And how you bring it to life with your character and personality to determine the best outcomes or opportunities. So, you know, I genuinely believe that the only way in which businesses or people will become successful and truly perform to their optimum is taking full accountability and ownership. We need to almost move away from circumstance and situation, which is a distraction. So, um, the more that we realise that our success is dependent upon us and not on situation, the better. And because the world is so unpredictable, we need to simply learn to dance on a shifting carpet, not see the rug being pulled from under our feet. You know, life is a game of continual adjustment and it doesn't matter what happens.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  It's how we react and respond to it to determine those best opportunities or outcomes. And I think that, you know, it's funny because initially I'm working with a lot of businesses and on culture, on team, people strategies. And the focus on responsibility has never been higher, mainly because we've been asked to stay apart. People are having to determine their own work schedules. People have to determine their own working week. And they're going to have to take responsibility for driving the best outcomes whilst they're not surrounded by a team or working with directly with a leader. So there's been a greater call for responsibility. I wonder whether, in answer to your question, and I don't know the answer to this.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  I wonder whether we'll see a better shift or greater shift towards more responsibility in the Western world. Because I agree with you. I think that many of us will see ourselves as a victim of circumstance and situation and not necessarily see the beauty in the chaos because of it.

• 3:53Steven Bartlett?

  You talked there about the internet as well and the power of the internet and how that's been a bit of a leveler, which is, which is a really wonderful thing, I think. Well, how important is it, do you, do you think, when you think about the successful people you've worked with, to be a sort of self-driven learner beyond school? Do you see in the, specifically in the sort of upper echelons of like business, the ones that, the people that are most successful are proactive, sort of self-driven?

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, I think, I think it's true. I think that, I've said, our only sustainable competitive advantage is to learn faster and better than your competitors. So, you know, and you think about that for a business, you think about that for a leader, you know, you think about as a sportsman, it's probably true, isn't it? You know, our only sort of sustainable competitive advantage is to learn faster and better than anyone else.

• 4:42Steven Bartlett?

  It's like the two-part line, line analogy.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And I think that, you know, and I think that, I think that, how can we learn faster and better, yeah, if we're not proactive lifelong learners? And so, you know, and I think that, you know, learning isn't necessarily about being taught. We don't necessarily need teachers. It's a strive for greater curiosity. You know, I think curiosity is worth more than creativity at the moment, but it's a strive for greater curiosity. It's a matter of being, matter of being open-minded. It's a matter of being agile in our thinking so we can deploy resource to opportunity as it becomes visible. It's about, it's about self-discovery. So it's about a variety of things which are based, not necessarily upon

• 5:24Speaker 01

  traditional learning, but more in the way in which we can open our mind up to experimentation and feedback, you know, and understanding ourselves differently. And I think the best leaders, you know, have this ability to, you know, reimagine, repurpose, reinvent. I don't think they're beholden to a particular, or wedded to a particular mindset.

• 5:46Steven Bartlett?

  But that's, for a lot of people, that's terrifying, the thought of experimentation and being agile and reinvention. I've seen that in my own business. I've seen, over the years, I was, I was known as being the guy that would walk in, I think a lot of business leaders are, walk in in the morning and be like, we're going in a different direction. Everyone come in this room, we're going to launch this part of our business and we're going to take it, we're going to experiment. And I, I would often say to our team that experimentation is like at the heart of all of our strategy. It's like why, especially as a social media company where our platforms, social media changes every day. There's new updates pushed by Facebook and Instagram every day. So our company slogan was keeping, keeping brands at the forefront of what's possible, which meant that we had to be agile.

• 6:26Steven Bartlett?

  But I'd often see people in my organization that were really against change, fearful of it. They would take, you know, they would resist it.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:36Steven Bartlett?

  You know, and I, I, I wonder how you, if it's, I always wondered why it was. Some of them had levels of imposter syndrome. So they were, you know, they were just, just trying to get a hang of the role they were in and not do more. They, you know, they were already, you know, conscious, but I wonder what your thoughts were on that.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  I think, I think people don't like change because they don't know what it results in. I think that's one of the things. But so let's take, um, let's take, uh, moving your desk. Someone sat at a desk for 10 years in a particular office and he said, you know what, you need to, you need to move down the corridor. I'm going to make a move. People weren't like that in the slightest. If you said to them that, you know, you need to move down the corridor, you know, we really appreciate the move. We're going to give you a million pounds at the end of the year because of it. They'd be trotting off with their potted plant in hand. I guarantee it. So I think that because people don't necessarily know what it results in. Why should we invest in doing something different, which is uncomfortable because it goes against our mental tram lines, our habitual thinking.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  So now you're asking me to compromise my patterns and I don't know what for. And I know what's going to result in. It could be good, it could be bad. So therefore I'm not sure I want to go to the trouble of investing in this change when I haven't determined, you know, the result of it. As human beings, we like patterns. That's good and it's bad. And it works in our favor sometimes, sometimes it doesn't. So we like patterns and so we like consistency and we compartmentalize and I'm going to viewpoint on the world. And in fact, if you look at, um, you know, the office is a good example. The office is a great example of keeping people in patterns. You've got your phone on your desk here, you've got your computer there. Come in at a certain time, work in a certain way, take your lunch at a certain time. So we're conditioned to work.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Work in a way which is reflective of the consistency which takes out variance in business.

• 8:27Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  So you think that management has been around for about a hundred years. And the reason why management's been around for about a hundred years is to reduce variance. Because then you can get, then you can scale. So businesses got bigger, a lot bigger a hundred years ago. Because of the ability to keep people habitual. So, um, so because we've become conditioned to do this and everything around us keeps us in, in, in a pattern that we quite like being in, as soon as you start to move outside of that, there's a level of discomfort. So I guess leaders can allow people to make change and embrace change. I guess there's a few points. One, it's always best if it's co-authored and co-created.

• 9:07Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  And so let's involve people in what that change looks like. It's always best if, um, uh, we look at, um, our organizations or teams as a community instead of as a team or an organization. At the moment, communities are outperforming bureaucracies and hierarchies when it comes to maximizing human talent. So let's try and form a community and, um, let's co-author and co-create. And then, um, let's have a look at, um, peer recognition, peer coaching, peer challenge. It doesn't need to be a top-down thing done to people. It can be something which can happen from the inside out. You know, it's, it's meaningful when, when something is endorsed by others that, that, you know, you are, that you feel an affinity with.