Domenic Saffioti:

One of my project managers years ago said to me, "The more I know, the more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know." And at a point in time in your life, you have a certain awareness and knowledge of who you are and what you are. But then as you start exploring more, you start to find those gaps that you weren't aware were evident in the past.

Tim Spiker:

If you're willing to open your eyes, you just might end up seeing exactly what you need to. I'm your host, Tim Spiker and this is the Be Worth* Following Podcast, a production of the People Forward Network. On this show, we talk with exceptional leaders, thinkers and researchers about what actually drives effective leadership across the globe and over time. Today, we have part three of our summer series called Who* Not What: From Research to Application. In our initial episode, we learned how the Who* Not What principle was discovered and what it says; that 77% of our effectiveness as leaders comes from who we are not what we do. In our second episode in the series, we heard from an HR executive who oversaw the application of the Who Not What research to executive leadership development in a publicly traded global organization. So in the series, we began with the research and then took a look at its application from an organizational perspective. That leaves us with one very important angle to investigate. That being the perspective of a leader who applied Who* Not What research to his very own leadership development.

Tim Spiker:

In this final episode in the series, that's exactly what we're going to do. We're going to get up close and personal with a leader who dove into leveraging the Who* Not What principle in his own leadership development. And that person is Domenic Saffioti. Dom has held a variety of leadership positions in engineering and asset management in the building materials, manufacturing industry. As you'll hear, he wasn't satisfied with a passing understanding of Who* Not What. He wanted to understand its intricacies and real life applications. It was his engagement that ultimately made all the difference for him. Through his diligence and commitment, Dom made strides in who he is as a person and that made him a markedly more effective leader both at work and at home. So let's join Domenic Saffioti as he takes us along on his very own Who* Not What journey.

Domenic Saffioti:

I've got an open mind to these kind of things and it was a little bit of, "Okay, yeah, I'll buy into it, but I want to understand more. Why is that? What is it out of that 77%? What specifically in the who bit is so important?" Because in the past I've done some courses in personal development around emotional intelligence and understanding some of that. You get a bit of a taste of the importance of who, but to get a result that says that more than three quarters of the effectiveness of a leader is related to who, it was, "Well, that's quite a significant number and there's got to be a little bit more than just emotional intelligence to all of this, so let's find out a bit more."

Tim Spiker:

So there's an openness and then we begin to dig in. And initially we dig into the concept of being others-focused. If you can go back in time a little bit to think about the things that we engaged there, the things that you worked on there around being attentive and curious, empathic, humble, [inaudible 00:03:20]. Talk about your first impressions of the idea of working to be a more others-focused leader.

Domenic Saffioti:

I think one of the really important parts from all this for me was around the authenticity of the others-focus bit. Is that being attentive, being curious, it's the genuineness in those particular things was the most important part of it. Because you can ask a question just for the sake of asking questions, but when you're genuinely interested in that other person, when it comes from within, that's when you get the greatest interaction with someone and the greatest engagement for that matter and relationships and all of that kind of stuff built from there. So I think the authenticity in all of those things you mentioned about curiosity, about focus, attentiveness, and so forth. There's a lot of authenticity that has to come with that for it to be real and for it to be received in the way that it should be.

Tim Spiker:

When we think about some of the outcomes of being others-focused, the two that kind of leap to the top of the list are better relationships and better information. And there is actually a relationship between those two things, because initially, when I'm more others-focused, I'm more trusted and people share more, but over time they continue that cycle. So the healthier the relationship, the more that free flow of information and ultimately that helps enable us as more effective leaders. But let's jump over to the other side of it for a second. As we engaged and explored the idea of being others-focused, eventually we moved over and talked about the idea of being inwardly sound. And in that, we talked about being secure and settled. We talked about being self-aware, purposeful, principled, and also holistically healthy. So share with us a little bit about your experience with beginning to engage at a really personal level around the idea about what would it take for Dom to be an even more inwardly sound leader?

Domenic Saffioti:

Look, I must be completely honest here as when I started the whole program with your self team, I wouldn't have said that I was an inwardly sound person. At the time, to the extent that I am now, certainly, but understanding all of those components of being inwardly sound, actually analyzing those, the secure and settled and everything that goes beneath that. You start to dig into the who you are a little bit more and understand that. And when you do, you have that self awareness to be able to appreciate it, understand how it affects others, and it allows you to be emotionally stable at a time when things are going on.

Domenic Saffioti:

So I think about going through what I'm going through now with both work and personal life and it's nothing bad, it's just a lot of it, thinking about how would I have dealt with that prior to the sort of five years that we spent together. And it would've been a very different outcome. It would've been an emotional wreck and a lot more stress and yes it's stressful, but being able to deal with that being inwardly sound. You mentioned one thing many years ago. I'm okay, come what may, I'm okay. And that there, when things are going really tough, you sort of bring yourself back to that sounding board, that grounding that says it's okay. It's not about not caring about things, but it's about putting perspective on it. And it's about bringing it back to the things that matter.

Tim Spiker:

So walk us through that connection a little bit because you and I have had a chance to work together over a number of years, but some of the folks listening haven't had that experience, obviously. And so you and I very easily say, "Being inwardly sound makes you a more effective leader." But if you were sharing with somebody who's listening to say, "Well, wait a second, what's the relationship between being an effective leader and being in a really sound? Having done the work that you have done, how would you explain that to somebody?