About

Being courageous is leaning into the things that make us afraid, and seeing if you can unlock creativity in that moment. To share one of your ideas, is an act of courage. In this episode we learn how to harness courage, to understand our insurmountable sphere of influence for impact, and from that place how to build an ecosystem and supports our audiacious vision.

In this episode we share what it means to be courageous as a leader, team and organization. People have been known to think that creativity happens when everything is right, but the moments when an outcome or transformation happens is usually when we are in a place of great difficulty. To share one of your ideas, is an act of courage

Being courageous is leaning into the things that make us afraid, and seeing if you can unlock creativity in that moment.

As a leader, we have a sphere of influence that has ripple infinity potential. Knowing how powerful we each are, we get to decide what responsibility that presents and what we are going about it.

Companies want to get to the future faster while staying ahead of their competition. However the pieces that need to be present, the pathway to breakthroughs might not seem so obvious.

We need to show up at different altitudes in life to move things forward. When we are stuck, we have altitude sickness so a change in perspective gives us the ability to go higher.

If you really want to solve a challenge , make your challenge harder, increase the altitude, go up in vision and purpose, rise up into an altitude that you haven’t been before.

The five levels of altitude enquiry relate to Core, Enablers, Growth, Bridges & EcoSytem.

Get guided access to the altitude questions, as well as a downloadable template, from Kyle at:

https://www.becourageousinnovation.com/hihellosura password: hihellosura.

You can get in touch with Kyle Hermans at: www.becourageousinnovation.com, as well as on linkedin and instagram.

About Kyle Hermans Kyle is the Founder, CEO of Be Courageous, the global growth platform helping leaders and organizations master their future today through courageous breakthroughs in culture, strategy and Innovation. Kyle’s group facilitate Start Up's, Scale Up's and Fortune brands to create, grow and sustain purpose driven cultures and businesses, unlock rapid growth and mindfully impact the future.

Transcript

*This Transcript is Autogenerated

Welcome and join me today on the high hello, Sura, podcast where I decode and deconstruct the stories, secrets and skills of the creators of our time. If you are looking to challenge the status quo and get new perspectives, join me as I share with you practical advice that you can use to impact your life and help those around you today.

Oh, Hey there. And welcome to the high hellos show. I'm your host Sura Al-Naimi. Today we are joined by a very special guest Kyle Hermans. He is the CEO and founder of be courageous. He is faculty at singularity university, as well as a member of the Forbes business council. We are going to be covering today. What it actually means to be courageous in business in your personal life.

Holistic. In addition, we are going to look at how much influence do we really have in life? What is our sphere of influence? And with that knowledge, what do we do with it? And finally knowing that, disclaimer, we do have a huge sphere of influence. How do we set vision for the future and then put in place all the core ingredients so that we can achieve this seemingly impossible.

So without further ado, I'm very excited to welcome Kyle to the show. Kyle welcome. Thank you so much, sir. It is great to be on your show. Uh, I'm thrilled that we could carve out the time to be with one another today. And as I was, you know, I've known you since 2009, and I'm looking through your background, even though I know it.

And I'm like, oh my gosh, I, we could do a whole show just the lot so I thought I would pause, but just briefly before we get into. You know, I mentioned a few things, but would you share with our listeners just a, a pithy little bit about you, so people get to know you very quickly. Yeah. Thank you so much. I, when I get asked the question about the background and people look at the bio, um, The way I always describe it, you know, for those that are listening is I, I don't think that I've ever followed a conventional business path or a conventional career path.

It's more like I've spent my life trying to solve some sort of. Existential question. like, what is creativity? And then finding myself, studying design and marketing and, and then ending up founding and running a, uh, design studio. And then, and then what comes before a brief and then stumbling into innovation and helping build, uh, and, and flip an innovation business.

Um, and, and then, you know, why does most innovation not successfully get implemented in companies and then realizing it's around human nature and then finding myself inside of. Uh, you know, positions leading employee experience, um, you know, with large fortune 500 companies. And then, and then again, finding that, you know, when you're in a role inside of a company, um, it is incredibly, incredibly hard and deep work to move a system.

Uh, sometimes it feels like you're you're on your own and then realiz. Do I add more value sitting in a seat inside of a large organizational container, or do I actually serve better by sitting in a seat outside and being an advisor in, and, and these types of questions have led me to some incredible opportunities in life and positions and working with some very celebrated companies and brands.

And, and then finally this. These existential questions, you know, were, were like, why is it that I just can't move as much work for it as I would like to, you know, win sitting in other containers and realizing that you have to kind of just take a risk and do it yourself. And, uh, and this is where the concept of be courageous was born and, um, And now we get to do it our way and we get to help and support, um, organizations and their leaders both big and small all around the world, doing some really great transformative and breakthrough work around culture, strategy, innovation technology, and, and here we are.

So, um, you know, every step of the career has been amazing. And, um, I'm sure we could do a show on it because there's some really good learnings in just following. Following your purpose and your passion and, and, and asking yourself bigger questions. In life and then letting those, the exploration of those finding those answers actually lead you, you know, into, into the unknown.

And, and, and it's amazing what shows up along that way. So, and here we are on the high hellos sh show. Yes. And here we are. Absolutely. And it's interesting that you bring that back cause it's, it's connecting me to, you had mentioned that the individuals that you work with, they want to get to their future faster while staying ahead of the competition and they want to stay relevant.

Mm-hmm increase market share all of these pretty meaty things. Mm-hmm and what really excites me about the conversations that we've had. Is that the path there might not seem so obvious to some of these leaders. So before we get into that, just, just quickly taking a step back into be courageous, like, how did this name come to be?

And you've mentioned this word breakthrough. And so I really wanna unpack that for our listeners, just so that they can get a sentiment of what this movement looks like. Sure. Uh, it's a, it's a great question. Uh, it's one that I actually think about very often. I, I reflect on the moment, uh, very often. Um, I, I can still clearly remember the day I had the, the honor and privilege of working with, um, an incredible organization and helping build that organization called Synectics world.

Uh, Which has been, I think it's celebrating its 60th year this year. If I'm not mistaken either this year or next year, which is they one of the foundational, um, Bodies of knowledge that helped to systematize the process of creativity, um, and, and getting to new discoveries, um, by looking at, you know, the dynamics of, of, of human beings coming together to solve, to solve problems.

Um, and I got to work, um, with that group and with some extraordinary people in that world. And, um, we were actually. In a, um, senior leadership strategy meeting are in one of our internal annual meetings out in Boston on an incredibly cold day. I think we were snowed in and, um, we were hunkering down thinking, reflecting on the year, thinking about the next year of, of what we wanted to do.

And, and the one beautiful thing about, about that particular work. What I learned from that work was this idea that reviewing. What you've done in life is so critically important. We, we are so overwhelmed and things are so busy. And so exponentially fast that we, we tend to just layer things on top of each other, but we very rarely pause.

People are pausing to meditate and ref, you know, to, to think about what's next, but very rarely do we pause to reflect on what just happened, what worked and what didn't work. And so we were in a moment. Um, thinking about those things. And there was a, there was a quote from one of the founders of, of Synectics world.

His name was George Prince. He said that another word for creativity is courage. And I I've, I've got to do keynote speeches and run. You know, hundreds, maybe a thousand sessions at this point, uh, facilitating sessions using this quote, saying another word for creativity's courage. And it was really, but we, the focus was on creativity.

The focus was on locking people's ideas and bringing things that are trapped in your mind to the forefront and getting that into the world. But there was something I realized just in the dynamics of our own internal team meeting was that we were in a, we were in a, it was, it was quite a heated.

Conversation about where the future was going. And, and I realized in that moment, seeing this quote, this quote popped up to me and I was like, actually, we think that creativity happens best when all the conditions are right. You know, everyone's happy and we've got great climate. And the, you know, there's all these playful gadgets in the room and the sun is shining and everything's really great.

And, and actually what I, what I got to realize was suddenly in this kind of gestalt moment was, was reflecting that pretty much every single session where we got to some form of a, an, an outcome, a breakthrough or transformation, which is language I love to use now. Um, it came when we were in an incredibly.

Difficult place the client was in a difficult place. They were, they had a lot of pressure on them. Um, they were internal conflicts. They were siloing, there was a whole bunch of problems. And I realized, wait a second, like to express your ideas, to really share your thoughts and perspectives in those moments is one of the biggest acts of courage.

And that I was just having this complete bubble moment. , you know, sitting with the team and everyone's like, wow. You know, arguing about the future, very productive meeting. Because, you know, things really got to move, but I, I just, I had this, I had this awakening for me and, and I think, I, I think I turned to one of my colleagues and shared it and they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a great quote. And the conversation carried on and I was like, no, there's something here. There's something here. I was like being courageous, being courageous is actually, is actually about. Going into and leaning into the things that make us afraid. It's actually creating conditions that are not ideal, are not optimal and leaning into those and seeing whether you can start to wrestle with and uncover and unlock creativity in that moment.

That was an awakening for me. And I realize I've, I've got my calling and, and, and of course, you know, as things happen, like this business has been in business for a long. And there were ways that they were doing business. And I, I had this thing bubbling inside of me and, and eventually it, it got to a tipping point where I, I needed to, you know, follow that dream, follow that passion and, and really dig into that piece.

And so the name be courageous, just didn't leave. My mind from that day, I started thinking about it and obsessing about it. And I think in 2013, uh, registered it as a, as a company and started to pilot and practice and play with it offline, uh, taken on special initiatives and projects. And then 2017. Um, it actually started to build, you know, when they say, turn your side hustle into your full-time gig, um, it kind of, it kind of happened that way, which was there were things happening and, and I was getting more energy and passion and excitement.

Not saying that anything else I was working in, wasn't amazing. But I just, there was, I just this thing, I think when a dream hits you, like it did for me, it just, I, I could, it couldn't, it didn't let me go. And so I had to follow it and, and, and here we are. So that's how the name came up. Um, It came up in a, you know, in a, in a moment of conflict, it came up, it came up with this quote with this moment of conflict, with, you know, amazing transformative creativity that came out of it.

And I was like, this is it. And I just, and, and a message kind of came through to me, which was, I want every single person in the world to be able to tap into the courage that's within them to help them be self reliant and successful and achieve the transformations, the breakthroughs, the accomplishments take the actions that they need to take.

And, and. Be held back by the unknown and fear. And, and so here we are, I, I just, you know, BCO agents is not just a part of my DNA. I think . Yes, it is. It, it really is. It really, really is. And what's interesting about it is that it, it is a muscle that you, you, you consistently cultivate, you know, it's not that, you know, being courageous suddenly is like, oh, that was so easy because by pu prerequisite part of the formula is that it's in a moment of conflict or it's when something is really challenging.

And that's when. Are intuiting into it or leaning into it or making a decision to be courageous. Yeah, I think, I think my, I think my take on it because now I've been obsessing for several years over it and, and really trying to get into the science of it. And of course, right now, just in the last year or two.

Courage has become a very big thing. You know, Brene brown, amazing, amazing bodies of work and, and other authors and businesses are focusing on the concept of courage. So I really feel like courage is having its moment, which is amazing. My, I, I think that we all have it inside of us. It's like, it's the same way.

We all have creativity inside of us. We all have the, we all have power. That we might even be too afraid to realize that we have inside of us, ES one of those attributes. I think it sits within us. We have an, I believe that we have an unlimited reservoir. I believe it comes from a place. I don't even understand where it comes from, but it does.

Uh, you, you look at. You look at people in, in the most harshest situations, in the most extreme conditions. And now of course, there's this push for people to push, push their lives, you know, pushing extreme sports, pushing the boundaries of what's possible, you know, pushing for breakthroughs, trying new things, really, you know, on this quest to be superhuman on this quest to go beyond this planet.

And, and so this system, just all these things, we, we are pushing and, and at some point. You know, these were things we feared and, and, and somebody, somewhere along the line tapped into something bigger than themselves. And I think that that inside of that, I'm not saying that courage is the only thing there, but I do believe that that courage is a word until a better word or a different word shows up.

I think courage represents. Courage represents. I don't think it's like, I'm gonna wake up and be courageous today. It's like, this is the funny thing. That's almost like a dichotomy with our own business, which is we represent being courageous. But what it, what that really means is. Think of the thing that, that is that you're resisting.

Think of the thing that you are holding back from doing, think of the thing that is making you afraid. Think of the thing that you actually right now, even though your mind is saying nothing is impossible. That feels impossible. Lean into that thing. Cuz on the other side of it, you suddenly inherit courage.

And when you inherit that courage, it kind of levels you up. It actually gives you like you, you suddenly you expand you, you. You increase your capacity to take things on you, you increase your awareness, you increase your intuition, you increase your experience, you increase whether you failed or fell or, or you succeeded.

It doesn't matter. You, you get this, you did it, you tried and you get this thing. And, and so that, that is, that is really, really at, at the heart of this. I, I think that, you know, just, just pushing this, this concept of courage is so fascinating to me because when you allow yourself. To go after the things that you're most afraid of or that, you know, the things that just seem unobtainable.

Um, it's incredible. The resources that show up. And, and I think one of the things that supports all those resources is this concept of courage. So what I love about this amongst just loving it, period. Is that what way? Are going to really dive deep into today is something that you take leaders all around the world.

You take them through this journey, right? Mm-hmm and it. On the face of it, it, it can begin with, this is, you know, how we're setting vision for our organization. But what you do is that you turn it on its head and all of a sudden you're shining a light on that individual leader and the role that they need to take in terms of their growth.

And then how that expands out into the world in terms of impact. And you began this journey journally, you began this journey, uh, with yourself. Yes, as you were looking to stretch and have impact on the world. So can we, can we start with you? And then I love the story that you talk, um, and you share with individuals about, you know, what is their sphere of influence and then how you guide them through, um, this, this, this beautiful journey of discovery.

Absolutely. So usually, uh, our group sessions maybe. Let's say anything from 50 plus up to a couple hundred people. If we are doing, you know, executive groups going through some of these exercises and altitude work and, and early on in the, in the, in the session and, and think of this, uh, for, for the listeners, think of this as.

A way that we help to start to create like priming the mind. It's, it's what we call expanding. The thinking, you know, a mindset is so critical when we are making decisions or getting together to make decisions. So we have this exercise around, around expanding mindset. So I ask the audience, I'll say how many people are in this meeting right now?

And so the audience will look around and people will shout out numbers, 50, 60, you know, 75, uh, you know, and some people will, you know, Uh, you know, make, make funny jokes about those things, but generally they, they are trying to, they're trying to depict the exact number if they don't know the exact number, um, of who's sitting in that room and then I'll ask anybody else, I'll say, are there any other answers?

Does anybody have a different answer? And every now and again, like we've noticed one person might say one, you know, which is, which is great because they'll, they'll say to themselves, like, you know, like there's just me, I create my own reality. You know, like those folk that are really in it's like it starts with me kind of a mindset, which is great because that's actually, that's actually a, a piece of this, but what, what I say here is all right.

Okay. So we've established that how many people are, are, are in this meeting right now say, let's say it's 50. And I said, then I'll ask. How many, you know, who of you are leaders in the room? You know, most of the room raise their hands. How many employees do your companies have? And that's, you know, then their members will shout out.

Some will be, you know, if it's, uh, SMEs size businesses or startups, it could be 50, 60, 10, 15, you know, uh, a couple hundred, couple thousand. And then for those that in fortune brands might jump up to like, I've got 150,000, I've got 250,000 and I'll say, great, All right. So collectively we do kind of a quick math in the moment and we realize, wow, we, in the hundreds of thousands of people, you know, from this 50, we are now how many CU, you know, collective employees have you got, uh, a couple hundred thousand and then I ask them, how many customers do you collectively have?

And that's when they start getting into millions. Um, and then a fourth question is how many customers do your customers. And then, you know, usually you see hands go up and people kind of lean back in the chairs and these big size, and we'll be talking billions. We, you know, some people, if they, if they're representing some really big companies that we have, the, the, the fortunate, um, you know, ability to work with, they they're talking almost like everybody on the planet, like you realize.

And so within three clicks of separat, Within three to four clicks of separation. We are, we have access to so many people. So what I say to them, when we, when we actually like, sort of get, we get aware of those numbers, I'll say that the decisions that we make here together as a leadership group, the decisions we are, are going to make about the future together, the ideas that we come up with in this room, if we start to expand our mindset and just ripple out a little bit and think about our impact beyond just ourselves or even just beyond the containers of our, of our companies.

You realize that collectively we can have a massive. Just in two or three decisions about what we put out into the world, how we think about the impact we're making, what we decide to do, what actions we decide to take. And that, that is a very powerful exercise, cuz it primes, it really primes the audience.

We start to have a very different conversation. After that exercise. So I, I would try it, try it, try it with some of your audiences, try it. Even in your small meetings, like, you know, how many people are we really talking about here? Like, if we think about the decisions we make here, where are these decisions going?

It, it gets you, it gets you being a little more conscientious. It gets you being, um, it brings you into a space of mindfulness. It brings you into a space of awareness. But it also actually expands your mindset to start thinking bigger than just proximity or, or, you know, or local impact. It actually starts expanding your impact.

So it's, it's very. Great. So now that the leaders understand that they actually have such a spectrum of influence a sphere of influence, how now do they go about setting vision and getting aligned in making sure that they have all the key components to realize that vision? I know that you have a very specific way of interrogating that and bringing that to life for leaders.

Could you, could you share that with us? We've got one particular thing that, that really in 2019 kind of blew up for us. Um, again, it's a, it's a synthesis process. We call it altitudes. Um, and altitudes is, is really around that, that in our experience of, I think we've, I think we've done more than. In my 20 something career, I think we were working out.

It's like a few thousand sessions now, like two and a half over two and a half thousand, like facilitating sessions groups, whether they're small groups, individuals, large groups, large organizations, small organizations where they're where the general premise of these, these sessions are. They have a challenge or they have an opportu.

They have to bring a group of people together and they have to figure out how to get alignment and then get shared outcomes that they can all go and execute on that then does right by their bigger ecosystem, whether it's their organization, whether it's their community. Um, and so what are the, what are the pieces that, that have to be presence?

What were the pieces that were present? What, what are what's the pathway to get them there and what. What are some of the, the different aspects that, that have to show up in order for them to be able to get the breakthrough, not just get the breakthrough, but actually sustain its activation, meaning like they'll actually go and take action on it.

It's not just a great creative exercise. Hey, we had a great brainstorm, but I'm not gonna do anything with the outcomes. Like they actually go and do the hard work, like the really hard work of the grind of, of making the changes of shifting habits of shifting the system. And so what we've looked at is like, what are.

What are the different things that have to be present. And so, um, I landed on that. There's sort of five, there's five key. Don't call them stages cuz you can kind of bounce around them, but there's five key components and, and we call this, I call this altitudes because we have to show up at different altitudes in life, on a daily basis in order to.

Move things forward. And we also have the ability, like, what we found is that when you are stuck or you're struggling or you're in fear mode, or you're in resistance mode, or you're trapped, you it's, it's what we call altitude sickness. You you've been stuck at a certain type of a level. And that level was absolutely the right level to get you where you needed to go, you know, from, from where you were to where you are, it was absolutely the right level of frequency and vibration to get you there.

But we don't go after things just to stay the same. We go after things to grow and, and the five, the five key steps to build out your own, you know, altitude of leadership canvas is you start on the base level. Looking at your core. So if you think about going to gym, if you wanna lift heavier weights, you wanna work your core, your core gets you strong.

If you wanna run faster, swim better, you know, do anything it's core. It's doing the abdominal work, the stuff that most people don't like to do, um, strengthening your core on the baseline is what do I need to be present? At my core on both my good days. Like when I know I can, I can really push, but also on my bad days when things are not going well, like what do I revert to when things aren't going well, am I, am I, am I applying the best habits and practices?

And when things are going very well, am I applying the best habits and practices to, so we wanna look at that baseline. We wanna look at that base core layer first, what has to be present in order to provide enough stability for me with no matter what comes at me in the future. For me to be able to rely on my core, my core that's the first step.

The second one is then. Okay. If I recognize those things, then those could be values. Those could be habits. Those could be emotions you wanna experience. Those could be rituals, you know, at the core, those could be things that you're saying, you know, if this situation shows up, I, I need to practice gratitude or patience.

Um, I, I, you know, if I, if I'm, if I'm asked tough questions, um, I, I should be better learned. I should be reading more like whatever these habits or these core things are super important to look at yourself and say, what do I have at my core? You know, what, what is at my, if you. How do you go about doing that?

Kyle? Obviously it's a very thorough process, but how would our listener go about interrogating or, or revealing that within themselves? Are there a couple other questions that they might ask themselves? Absolutely. The one of the first ones, one of the first ones that I started to lead with at first, but I realized that wasn't even enough was imagine yourself on your most difficult day when you, when you're really having a very, very difficult day, things are not going well.

Um, you know, it could be stuff at home. It could be stuff in business. It could like just, you know, whatever your mojo is. It's not on . Um, how do you handle that? How do you handle that? How do you show up for yourself? How do you show up to other people? um, you know, what are your eating habits? what are your sleeping patterns?

How do you communicate? You know, what are those things that you do in, in those tough moments? Are they healthy, sustainable, friendly, kind. Um, nurturing or are they, are they aggressive, tough, uh, short, sharp, um, you know, do you go introverted and siloed and, and, you know, bark at everyone around you? Do you, do you lean on others for help?

Like, what is that your, what is at your core and then look at your really great days as well. And like when you're having amazing days, what is at your core, what is happening at your core? What is just running on automatic there? What is. What are you relying on? You know, uh, is, is it your trust of other people?

Is it, are you surrounded by the right people? Are you, do you have healthy habits in your day? You know, what are those things? And when you assess that spectrum, you start to, you start to realize, um, You know, what has to be present for me to go after big growth often? What I, what I will prerequisite with this is that is that most of the time when we go into this businesses are coming to us or leaders are coming to us with KPIs.

They're coming to us with objectives. They're coming to us with a mission. They're coming to us with a vision, some, some very few, but some even are playing on a purpose level. Like this is my purpose. This is what we are striving for. This is what we're trying to get. Some of them have. Where they've made these extra ordinary, like they've, they've just, they've just put these targets out there.

We gonna double our profitability. We go, we gonna, you know, take over a market share. We're gonna increase. We're gonna 10 X. We're gonna like, they, they, you know, they call it out. They call it out. They really put, they put, they lay down the gaunt and say like, this is it. We putting a big milestone in front of us.

The very first thing that we tend to do when you have these big things that you're trying to shoot for is we are in growth mode. We in growth mindset, what we, we, we hope we in growth mindset, meaning like this is a big metric. So we are thinking very big. What we fundamentally forget to do is say, do I even have the right foundation currently to even be able to go after that?

Like, because, because I'm thinking about it in more of a aspirational way in that, in that moment, right? I'm like, oh, this is great. And I feel it. I feel the passion for hitting that number and that marker. But then the reality is that the days are hard. What if you miss your mark? What if the customers don't show up?

What if the weather, the, you know, misses up? What if there's some political situation? What happens to you business? What happens to you? What if you are, what if you, I don't know. Does something happens personally or even professionally. Like that the conditions aren't perfect just to have this linear way of getting there.

It it's, it's a, it's very tough. What is at your core that you can rely on to remind yourself of what you're going for? How can you have, and stack those 1% daily improvements or those habits that you know, that if I, if I do these things consistently, I can achieve this outcome. Very, very, very few of us, very few.

And we we've been with in rooms of tens of thousands of leaders over these years. Very few. Even think about this, they're just on automatic pilot. So getting back to your core is so fundamentally important and those kinds of questions are, are the ways to kind of dig into that. Um, that second step up from there is like, if you've, if you've identified those again, the very first thing we do as humans is we want big, we wanna go for growth.

We want to achieve shoot for these huge things. What, what we, what we haven't done is practiced. And so the second step for us is what we call enable. Look for enablers, short term enablers, quick wins. Where, where can you go out and like try a few things out where you're applying some of your, your core strength, you know, attributes where you can achieve short term, quick, fast wins.

It's like, and, and so what you do is you're learning on the fly. Like, you know, in innovation, we, we call these sprint. What are short sprints that you can play with what are short, um, you know, nothing that takes months and months and months. And that, that is just, you know, trying to solve world peace, but it's, it's like, what can I get done today?

That would demonstrate to me how I am applying. Some of these core attributes, because, because when you can win in short term, if you can win the day, if you can just win each day, if you can win an hour, if you can win half a day, if you can win a day and you can do that consistently, you're going to win in the long term.

You're going to win going after your big goal, because you're building a habit of winning. You're building a habit of, of enabling yourself. To have the right core strengths and foundations to go for whatever you wanna go for, but you've gotta practice. You've gotta practice. You've gotta do the hard work.

You gotta go and lift the reps. You've gotta go in and do the a hundred thousand abdominals right before you get the six pack. Right. You've gotta do that. Doesn't just show up after one day, you know? Um, so those two are fundamentally important when those two are, are in play with each other, then the, the natural next step is.

What are our, what are our zoom out? Look, 3, 4, 10. You know, we, we like to go for 10 years, but zoom out reg really zoom out beyond a year or two go far out. What's the big thing I'm going for? What would push me? What would be something that would put me in an uncomfortable position, like, you know, that quote, you know, dream so big, it makes other people uncomfortable, but it should also make yourself uncomfortable.

It's like this excites me, but it also requires me to have to do some tough work. Those growth goals are like, you know, what's gonna grow me. What's gonna, what's gonna help me evolve further. Those three are, are really around. The self to some degree growth is when you're going for something big, you realize it starts to incorporate more of an ecosystem.

It starts to bring other people in, cuz you'll realize if you go for a big goal, you realize you cannot do it alone. You cannot do it alone. There's a lot of things we cannot do alone. And when we are doing it alone, I think that we are playing too small. Personally, so that fourth step. So again, go ahead.

You had the, you have this really great example that you've shared with me and it's around health. Like, so the, and you, you track that through, from core to enabler to growth. And could you, could you share that with our listeners just to bring that to life? Yeah, absolutely. So, so we, I mean, I've, I'm trying this, I've been trying this.

Few different areas of life, you know, relationship health, uh, you know, business growth, financial, even spiritual, actually. Um, uh, you know, uh, community giving back, um, it, it, it, this works across the board, but for the health aspect, uh, what I found was I set a goal. Like when I went back, I set a goal to, to, I I've always been fascinated by endurance sport, but then I was too lazy to do it.

and so I was like, okay, I've gotta, I've gotta hit this thing. I've I've gotta do this thing. I think about it. I obsess about it. So it must be a thing I've gotta try. So, um, My wife actually, uh, said, you know, talk, talk me at one point into triathlon. And, um, I was like, sure, I'll try, you know, one of these, you know, shorter things and I'll get the experience.

And she came back from a, she came back and she said, I've signed you up to a half Ironman. Um, and I, I didn't even own a bicycle at the time. So it was like signed me up to Huff Ironman. And, and this was, this was where a lot of this was born out of too, because I was like, wow, I've got, and I, and the race was in six.

So I had to figure out how to get better at swimming. I had to figure out running. I had to figure out cycling. I'd done all of this when I was younger, but, but not now. Um, and on top of it, it was, it was a fundraising system too. So, so I needed to, to really show up and, and raise a bunch of money for an incredibly important, um, you know, charity, which was all around finding cures for.

And, um, but I had to go back to the core and go like, all right. So when I went for a run, I realized that my unhealthy habits of eating, whatever I wanted to and not sleeping correctly and all these kinds of things didn't help because when I got up to run the next morning, it was terrible. It was a terrible experience.

Swimming was even worse and riding a bike was, was tough. But when you get back to the foundation, it was like, okay, I gotta, I gotta look at my diet. What am I. Like, like, how am I structuring my days to, to fit in the right amount of time? How am I surrounding myself with the right influences in people to, to get my mind.

Right. Um, and, and how am I researching? How am I making time for rest? How am I making time? Because we still have to run businesses and you know, we've got kids and running a household. How do I, how do I find that time? And I had to fundamentally change everything at my core. I had to change everything at my core.

And I had to work on a bunch of new things. I had to unlearn some old habits and really learn on some new things. Then my enablement piece was. Okay. I have to hit 70 point something miles I have to run, you know, I've gotta, I've gotta swim 1.2 miles. I've gotta ride 56 and then go and run the half a marathon all to all together.

So I have to break that down. The enablement was well, can I run five kilometers? You know, can I just run three miles then? So, so the enablement was doing short term things. Could I. I've gotta work for these for three weeks on this particular stroke, you know, of swimming stroke. I've gotta just, all these different things are, are at the core change.

My diet change. My change. My habits was the enablement. The growth piece was. Was going for this. And then I, I, what I started to do was like in triathlon for you to achieve the distances, you have to go further than that distance. You have to train longer so that you're not just surviving that distance.

You're actually, you can actually either compete in it or thrive in it or come out the other side, not injured. So you have to go further. You have to go further than the, than the distance. And that for me is like a growth goal. And of course, after completing that one, I got obsessed. And then I started doing full iron and all these other extreme things.

But that, but that, that piece up to, up to the growth aspirations towards completing was a way to get there. Now that the tier above that, which is what that fourth, the fourth level is what we call bridges. The only way that I got to, to, to really successfully complete that. That, um, goal of that endurance distance was, was not, was not by doing it alone.

I, I learned from other people, I had coaches, other people that I was, you know, riding with or training with, uh, were, you know, I seemed to progress in certain areas. They progressed in certain areas. Um, We shared information. And what I've realized in this altitude system is that one thing that we are, we need to change in society pretty heavily is, is how we, we help each other come up together and that we share information most of our blockages, and most of the reasons why we are stagnant and stuck and not moving forward at pace and speed is because everyone is so afraid of their information.

And, and of course, rightly so. There's some that is very important and critical, but then there's also some which, which I think we. Making a very big deal about knowledge. Um, you know, that our differentiator is just something that we know and our advantage is knowing it over somebody else. Everybody loses in the long term when we live that way is, is, is, has been my experience.

Companies, lose organizations, lose leadership teams lose. So that first step is bridges. What, what knowledge have I gained in those first three? As I was applying my core, as I was enabling myself as going for growth, I've learned. I've gained knowledge. I've mastered things. I've overcome stuff. What if I shared that with someone else, men and, and I started to build that level of trust with people in my community.

They will share things with me. We start to move much quicker. When we, when we are able to help each other out on that level and that fifth level up the fifth level above that bridges is what I call the ecosystem. Is that when you, when you started, when you start operating on sharing that information on, on, on a bridging level, we, we are bridging knowledge.

We're building bridges. We're not burning them. We're building them. Is you suddenly start to realize, oh, I'm, I'm starting to think on an, on an ecosystems community level. I'm starting to think in expanding circles. I'm starting to think in greater ripple effects because, because now I'm, I'm working on myself.

I. You know, for those first few, I'm starting to find people around me to go after bigger growth goals. I'm also expanding my community because we are sharing knowledge and we are helping each other, and we are gaining faster learnings. And we, we are overcoming bigger things, which means we can take on bigger things.

And that, that nets out at actually creating a very powerful ecosystem for ourselves. And so that that's, that's this model when we think on those difference. And if you think about it, if you think about it, if, you know, as you've been listening. Um, you can, you can feel the, the, the, the tight detail on a core, like, what's the thing I'm doing in the morning, but when you think of it, an ecosystem level, you can, you, it feels big.

It feels huge and expansive and, and very airy. And this is altitudes. You're going up higher. You know, you can flow between these different levels to be able to gain the right perspective to, to get you the, the breakthroughs and to move you to the future you wanna live into. So these leaders, us as leaders, cuz we're all leaders.

In a fashion. Is there any particular point at which they would start this journey? Because for example, in your story around the iron man, you, you had an interest in endurance, you started with this goal and then you almost reverse engineered into core and enablement. So is there a right place to start?

So, as I mentioned, where, where most businesses are, are trying to solve for the future, from the present, when we flip it and, and solve for the present from the future. You'll, you'll notice that that what that requires you to do is future is step into your future. This is why visioning is so important, but again, people, people do a lot of visioning and purpose.

While standing in the present, looking at the future, they're standing in the conditions they earn in, in the behaviors and the habits and the rituals and the mindsets and the emotional state that they're in today dreaming about another future. But, but almost through the lens of the present. And, and that can where that's often where things can, can get stuck is because we're not, we are not truly embodying that future state.

So when we step out and we state shift into the. And we really imagine that to be real, we really start to play with it. And so that's creating the conditions to let that creativity thrive, to let those con those unfolded conversations, you know, be spoken to, to really imagine what that could be like, play with those things as much as our body and our mind and our operational self is saying, that's not true.

It's not possible. It's not feasible. You got there's no time, money, resources. There's no budget. You can't do that, blah, blah, as much as those internal voices, we wanna keep moving further away from that and just live into, well, what literally lived into that possibility. And then you stand in that possibility looking back and saying now, how did I get here now?

How did I get here now? The way I got there was by doing this at my core, I need to, to be here. I have to strengthen these parts of myself to achieve this, to get here. I have to practice things that start moving me towards this destination. That's the enablement. To, to really get to this place I have to doing big.

I have to go for growth. I've gotta push myself. I've gotta step outta my comfort zone and go for bigger things to get here. I can't do this alone. I, I, I have to find partners, friends and build bridges, share knowledge, learn knowledge, gain knowledge. To get here. This takes a village, it takes an ecosystem.

And so, so you start, we start to work with those leaders through those, those parallels. When we really, when we really help them embody that future first, and then we can work our way backward to the present. Kyle we've been guided through these questions. And so what is a way that individuals can start to dig into them and internalize it for themselves?

Like I hear. That we have something very special for our listen. Yes. Um, we wanna see everybody win and, and to anybody listening to this podcast, or if anyone is sharing this podcast to, to friends, family, and colleagues, um, what we are doing exclusively for you is if you go to the web link B courageous innovation.com/hi hellos, you will get, um, a download of the worksheet.

You will also get me, um, a video of myself, uh, facilitating you through the, the altitudes worksheet. Um, and I will also be providing an example of how I took myself through it and, and what my, just for myself as a leader, what I, what I took myself through it. So it just gives you. Some proximity of what answers could be like or some prompts.

And I'd be very, very excited to, to hear if you guys use it. Um, you know, we are always open for feedback. We're always open for comments. We, we love hearing stories of you wrestling with this and, and what you came up with. And. So, if you remember, and, and you feel inclined, please drop us a line. We, we, we are always looking to make these things better and learn as we go.

And the only way we learn is by, is by getting that feedback. So please enjoy. And again, sir, thank you so very, very much for, for having me on your show and, um, and I wish all the listeners the very, very best, well, thank you, Kyle really appreciate you taking the time to be on the show. Really value, being able to spend this time with you.

Now listeners once again, if you want to get the worksheet to the altitudes questions, which are fantastic to help you set vision for your team organization, and for yourself personally, you can visit be courageous innovation.com/high. Hello, sir. And it's password protected with hi. Hello, sir. And if you wanna get in touch with Kyle.

You can look him up as Kyle Hermans on LinkedIn or any other social media for that matter. I will include all of these in the show notes. Thank you for listening to the high hello, sir. Show. And if you enjoy this episode, please go ahead and wait it until next time. This is your host Sura Al-Naimi.