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Dive Into Whole Brain Thinking
In this episode of “The World’s Stickiest Learning,” hosts Darren A. Smith and George Araham engage in a deep dive into Whole Brain Thinking with expert psychologist Johan Olwagen.
The discussion revolves around the HBDI (Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument) model, exploring its applications and insights. With Johan’s extensive experience since the late ’90s and the hosts’ own encounters with the model, the conversation delves into the value and impact of Whole Brain Thinking.
Get a comprehensive understanding of HBDI and its relevance in leadership development and personal growth with this podcast!
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You Can Read the Full Kantar Market Share Transcript Below:
Darren A. Smith:
Welcome to the world. Stickiest learning. I am absolutely pleased that this title will be a deep dive into whole brain thinking with our psychologist, Johan. Johan, how are you?
Johan Olwagen:
I’m very well and thank you for the opportunity guys.
Darren A. Smith:
And we’re here with George as well. Hi, George. You good?
George Araham:
Hello. Hi, good and you?
Darren A. Smith:
All right, so we’ll ask these guys to introduce themselves in a moment. What we’re looking to do here for the next 30 to 40 minutes is a real deep dive into HBDI whole brain thinking to understand this thinking preference tool. And we’ve got our expert here. And George and I are going to grill Johan to within an inch of his life about HBDI because he’s been using it for about 500 years.
Johan Olwagen:
Excellent. Looking forward to the challenge.
Darren A. Smith:
All right. Well, let’s start with George. George, would you just tell us 30 seconds about you? So our listeners know who you are before we get stuck in.
George Araham:
Sure. So I’m actually NSO blog writer and I’ve been collaborating with Darren on HBDI. Which is a fascinating assessment tool. I also have my masters in marketing, but that’s boring stuff so I don’t really like to talk much about it. I did write an international best selling book on relationships, so yeah, that would be me in a in a nutshell.
Johan Olwagen:
Trans.
Darren A. Smith:
Well done. Well done. Thank you, George. Very welcome. Johan, would you just give us 30 seconds about you? And also I’m going to ask you that tough question, but in the nicest possible way, why should we listen to you when you talk about HBDI, please?
Johan Olwagen:
Well, first let me introduce myself. I’m a clinical psychologist in South Africa. I have been working in the field of leadership development since 1995, went through a number of iterations in my career. Why should you listen to me? Passion, excitement and impact? I really am passionate about getting people to change and working with people so that they can thrive and grow in whatever they intend in life and purpose in life.
Darren A. Smith:
Fabulous. Fabulous. Thank you. Thank you.
George Araham:
Hmm.
Darren A. Smith:
And how many years have you been, Johan working with HBDI whole brain thinking.
Johan Olwagen:
Well, in the late 90s, we had discovered it. A colleague of myself and we wanted to get a hold of the HBDI and it was provided to somebody else to run the business in Africa. And so I haunted this person down in 2001, made-up with her. She was the CEO of Herman International Africa and just said, I need to talk to you. We need to get together. We need to. Utilise this tool because I found absolute value in it so since 2001. In a couple of decades now.
Darren A. Smith:
And I didn’t know that before we started this, but I had my first profile done when I worked for Sainsbury’s, a supermarket here in 2001.
Johan Olwagen:
There we go. Fantastic.
Johan Olwagen:
Again.
George Araham:
Interesting, that’s a similarity.
Johan Olwagen:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Darren A. Smith:
So we’ve got about 50 years between this of Herman thinking. Wow, wow, wow, wow. OK, OK. Brilliant. Brilliant. So we’ve got some credibility. We’ve been using it for a while. And in this room, I think we’ve got a red, a yellow. And I think we’ve got some blue as well. So we might be missing green. But as we’ve said in our preparation, George wore a green shirt. So we’ve nailed the green. Lovely.
George Araham:
Yeah.
Darren A. Smith:
All right, we’re going to come over to George for our first question and then we’ll take turns, I think, and we’ll build on those. So, George, what’s our first question for Johan, please?
George Araham:
So I’m going to start hard. I always like to jump deep into the subject, so I’m going to start by asking like today in it’s very trending that companies are very much masking in land of like they tend to be very rigid in their approach and a lot of employees prefer the freedom of choice which they are not being given. I’m not going to go deep into it but like this like this is. A bit of context around the question, so my question to you, Johan, is how would you as an employee for example?
George Araham:
That has a blue, a yellow, a green, or a red personality type. How would you cope with this problem? Yeah.
Johan Olwagen:
All right, so I want to say this first upfront because, as you’ve mentioned the word personality part, I think it’s definitely more thinking preferences. So for me, the starting point is always this: how you think is how you act is who you are, because our thinking, if we look at the behaviour that people display, behind that is a lot of thinking, and you’re so right. I mean, we all grew up with particular thinking patterns and ways of doing things. Organisations need to understand that we’re in a new world of work. It’s a VUCA world, volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, and so the old ways of being and the old ways of thinking.
George Araham:
Yeah.
Johan Olwagen:
What got you there is not going to take you here. And I think that’s a critical understanding in that changing world; we’ve literally got to learn to shift our thinking gears, if I can use that analogy because if we don’t shift the thinking gears, the elements of the model that you don’t apply will bite you in the end. In other words, if we really look at whole brain thinking. It really implies for me that we need to climb out of our comfort zone. We can’t expect other people to change.
Johan Olwagen:
Or to accommodate us, we need to do that accommodation. And so what you will find in the new world of work, especially with the new generations, very flexible, very open, very willing to discover and explore. And unless you shift that gear to also accommodate them, you’re going to run into difficulties. And we see this. How do we see it? We see it in organizations that want to force people back into the workplace.
Johan Olwagen:
That are not open to work from anywhere, and they’re running into difficulties and we can talk about what the kind of leaders are that do that. But I would say that shift your gears. It’s a new world. It’s a different world and you know Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, said in 2018 already.
Johan Olwagen:
That the world has never changed as fast as it is changing now. Think about that. The world has never changed as fast as it’s changing now. It will never be this slow again. So unless you accommodate that, unless we are agile, we run into difficulties, so I’m not sure if that’s answered the question directly, but that’s a start.
Darren A. Smith:
All right. Well, I’ve got a subsequent question off the back of that. So if I’m one of those colors, I might assume that the Greens might struggle with this more because they’re more rigid in their thinking than the yellows. I’m happy to be wrong. I’m just sort of mulling this over. What do you think?
George Araham:
Yeah.
Johan Olwagen:
So, so. So let’s talk about what those colors are. You know, if you think of in the whole brain model, yellow is about holism synthesis, integration, it’s about innovation, forward thinking and and I think if one can use the F word for yellow, it’s about future. So how do we how do we accommodate this future?
Johan Olwagen:
Blue very much about goal-directed focus is the F word there. How do we solve this problem? How do we deal with the issues? How do we capture the chase, whereas for green, green wants a format? Once structure it wants clarity, it wants certainty. If you think about it, green very often. Struggles with change. It’s not that they can’t change.
George Araham:
Yeah.
Johan Olwagen:
But the change must; they need to be able to see how that change is going to add value and what the process is going to follow. So now post COVID. The world has changed. Suddenly, people are working from different places. New demands are coming in and blue says, excuse me. What part of did you not understand? You get back to the office. This is how we’ve done it. Green says hello. This is a workplace. Can you just come in here? There’s due process and policies that we need to follow. Yellow says, whatever. What policies? What are you talking about? Alright. And then obviously the Red Quadrant people-oriented collaboration.
Johan Olwagen:
It’s about teamwork now. Can you imagine? They run into people who tell them this is how it will be. Yeah. An office space or a factory space? There’s no problem. They do it immediately. But if it doesn’t make sense. So what do you want? Do you want me to spend time and hours? Or do you want the output? And does it matter where you get the output? Or is it where you want me to be? The green quadrants if for them they can see. How it unfolds sequentially and how ultimately it would add value. They will buy in, but don’t you come and just change things for the sake of changing.
Johan Olwagen:
Yeah, let’s go. Where do you want me to work? I’ll work. I can be anyway, but but certainly I think all of those quadrants are open to change that or yellows. Can I see where this is going? How’s it going to add value for blue? Does it make sense for green? Yeah. Show me exactly how we going to get there. And for red. Can we talk about this? And if leaders don’t do that shift, that’s when they get stuck.
George Araham:
Beautiful head.
Darren A. Smith:
Throughout the whole of the answer, I’m just smiling and thinking yellow’s it was a case of do you want me to work on this planet or that one? I don’t mind as long as you just pick a planet, you know.
Johan Olwagen:
Exactly, yeah.
Darren A. Smith:
Sorry, I’m robbing George from an excellent answer and a great question. George, you want to come back? Have you got a subsequent question on that? It’s a great answer.
George Araham:
Actually, it’s. Yeah. It’s a great answer. And I was actually going to flip the question the other side. So if you’re as in, like, now, we’re talking more as an employee. Now, what if you are an employer, how would you, like, deal with it from the four different quadrants? So we’re flipping the rules.
Johan Olwagen:
OK. So we’re talking employer now.
George Araham:
Yeah, owner, founder.
Johan Olwagen:
If, if I’m any. Yeah, I’m the owner, the founder of the business on the CEO, the CEO or whatever the case might be. The one thing that you need to understand if you play in those roles. Create a shared desired outcome with your people. In other words, what are we saying? Let people envision.
Johan Olwagen:
What it is that we’re trying to achieve here? Help people understand why the shared desired outcome our shared purpose is so critical for us. There was a wonderful article in the Harvard Business Review that spoke to purpose and organisations that spell out the purpose get far better by in because people want to believe in something bigger than themselves.
George Araham:
Yeah.
Johan Olwagen:
In other words, if you as a leader can tell people why we do what we do, that’s a critical thing.
George Araham:
Simon Sinek.
Johan Olwagen:
This and absolutely back to Simon Sime. But Simon did a wonderful job in bringing that about, but from a whole brain perspective, we’ve got to bring in all four of those questions. So so we’ve got the why do we all understand why we need to do this? This is a factory. This is what we do. We need to be responsive, et cetera. Hey, but it’s an office job. Doesn’t matter where I do it. So if we understand the shade purpose, that’s critical. The second question is the what? So what is it that we want to achieve?
Johan Olwagen:
What are our critical SuccessFactors in our workplace? If your customer facing natural critical success factor well, then you’re not going to get people to do things online of necessity. But if if we’re a factory, what is our critical success factor? So be a hand on to get that production line to run that we’ve got to make it work. So if people understand the what and they understand what is critical for the success of the business. Remember people don’t do things out of malice.
Johan Olwagen:
They do things because they want to understand it, so if you bring me. Into the fold, you bring me into the picture. You ask me for my opinion and my input, and we have opportunity to debate that. Yes, I understand it takes longer. Yes, I understand. It gets irritating. Cause can we just get on with it? No, no, no. Bring me in if it makes sense to me. If I feel. And that’s the F word in red. If it feels right. Intuitively I’m I would go there. Why wouldn’t I go there? Because I want to add value to the team.
Johan Olwagen:
In the Green Quadrant, and this is the tricky one. Now ’cause. You know if if your green quadrant is strong, you like process you like structure, you have quantums, but at least if you spelled out where we going, what we need to do and who’s involved in this process, then we can come to the heart and then we can work a shared plan and we can work out where it’s possible, where it’s not possible and then we can start playing with flexibility.
Johan Olwagen:
What is the right way? Are we all going to be here five days a week or seven days a week? Or are they time to we can come in and go out depending on the situation. And then I think is important for leaders to understand. It is situation independent. But if you tell people you’ll do it because I said so. Well, this is not 1847.
Darren A. Smith:
Yeah.
Johan Olwagen:
People are not going to fall for that anymore. And if you tell people. Why do we do this? Cause the youngsters are going to ask why? Because this is how it’s work. Well, that model isn’t going to fly either, because they’re going to bring you 10 models that they’ll challenge you with.
George Araham:
That’s for sure.
Darren A. Smith:
So true. So true. Yeah. I’m brilliant, George. Any subsequent questions? If not, I’ve got a another big question. Yeah.
George Araham:
Go ahead, go ahead.
Johan Olwagen:
Yeah.
Darren A. Smith:
OK, so as a yellow, I’m fascinated by the bigger picture of things. And I’m a lover. I’ve a soft spot for HBDI. I’ve also been exploring Myers, Briggs or disc or any of the other models that are around now in my opinion HBDI is the best probably because I’ve grown up with it and I love it. But you know Han, what do you think of whole brain thinking versus all the others? How do they compare? Why should we use this one?
Johan Olwagen:
Well, as a psychologist involved in leadership development in routine coaching team excellence. There are many tools and the tools that you need to use should be purpose driven. So what’s the purpose of using it? I’m going to answer it in this way. A fool with a tombstone? A fool. In other words, if you’re not sure on why you’re using this tool, you’re using it because.
George Araham:
Everybody says so.
Johan Olwagen:
15 million other people have used it and they said so and there’s there’s a wonderful book that’s coming out now. By a colleague and friend of mine in the UK where he writes about the cult of personality that was the first book and the second book is coming out because everybody’s looking at personality as if that’s the only answer. So I have a model that I use here in South Africa. I draw. I always tell people, draw a triangle, look at the 3GS, there are five. But if you look at the look at the 3GS, the first one is your ability to grasp.
Johan Olwagen:
In other words, the tools that you would use there would be cognitive assessment or ability tests. You’re not going to determine a person’s cognitive capability and ability to deal with complexity.
George Araham:
Yeah.
Johan Olwagen:
By using a personality profile.
Darren A. Smith:
Yep.
Johan Olwagen:
Irrelevant. On the other hand, you don’t want to use a cognitive or an IQ test or an ability test to say to people. Oh well, because your IQ is 131. Therefore you would be good at working with people. Now you need something else for that. And that’s where other tools come, but certainly emotional intelligence, which has been identified now as one of the the competencies or set of sets of competencies that we need in the future work of work, different tools there.
Johan Olwagen:
So so let me rephrase it. Two is still a two in the hand of a food, but if you’re very clear on that you understand that there’s competency. Or set of competencies that you want to assess, but how those competencies play out behaviorally, emotionally, cognitive. That’s where the HBDI can come in very, very handy because I might have all the capabilities. So let me give you an example to illustrate. I assess many people and we assess them at the five levels of complexity in the workplace, ranging from operational to tactical to strategic.
Johan Olwagen:
What do I see? I see them cognitively. They’re exceptionally good at solving problems at a wonderful. We appoint the person. So why is it going wrong ’cause when we do the HVDI we see that this person is strong blue-green and under pressure goes even more green. In other words, they become nitpicking, pedantic perfectionists. They want to follow due process, so I might have the capability. But how I use the capability is using my preference. And you know the consciousness of any organisation.
Johan Olwagen:
Can only grow to the level of the consciousness of the leaders. And no, using Mysbricks, well respected using ability test. There’s so many of these literally 100, no people will use what they use depending on what they want to get out of the tool, and they can certainly can come to the same kind of. So my approach is always use the ability tests.
Johan Olwagen:
Understand if you’ve done your job profile, you want to do a person job match cognitively, emotionally. Behaviorally at what level? At what behaviours do we require people to operate? But I always do the HBDI as well because here’s the interesting thing such as the minds Briggs and many of the other teams, you also have to find fit between the leader and the person that you’ve just brought in.
Darren A. Smith:
Yep.
Johan Olwagen:
So yeah, I told you now this this person’s got cognitive capability. Oh, yeah. So therefore he’s going to be yellow. Nope. I just told you, he’s strong. Green. But what is it that you need? Just imagine. Just imagine. Project management. And just imagine a project manager needs to be able to flip between those quadrants. But boy oh boy, you can have the smart. You can be the smartest tool in the shed, but if you don’t have execution, your projects are going to be late. And what do we know? We know that 70% plus of projects are never delivered on time and all of costs.
Johan Olwagen:
But if you use something like the HBDI and you help people understand how to shifting gears in the different phases of the project. Then you can add Sandy to it, so capability. Competence. Certainly your career tactics are going to be other issues that are very, very important as well. But certainly your character will play a role. So use the tools, but the HBDI always view as a meta tool, so two that can accommodate the inputs from the different tools that you’ve been using.
Johan Olwagen:
And you can then add value to whatever others assessments.
George Araham:
Beautiful.
Johan Olwagen:
Yeah.
Darren A. Smith:
Thank you. I’ve got a subsequent question that I wanted to ask your opinion on using HBDI as a tool for recruitment. Now we’ve got a bunch of clients who do and and our thoughts are it’s a tool in the decision making process. It’s not the only tool, but I’m interested in what your thoughts are on that HBDI fair recruitment.
Johan Olwagen:
You you know the to to use that old, terrible phrase, the different ways to skin a cat.
Darren A. Smith:
Yeah. OK.
Johan Olwagen:
And and I think what we need to be careful of is equating preference to competence. And I think a lot of organisations make that mistake, in other words, what I’m saying is you can come from different areas. I’m a psychologist who are my favourite and I do apologise to my clients who will be watching this podcast. Who are my favourites, engineers and accountants?
Johan Olwagen:
I can talk their language. In other words, I can shift out of my red, yellow thinking preference into their blue-green preference and I can help them make sense of things. But I might be very strong blue and if I tell you, don’t tell me about your dog, that is that. Can you just go home and sort it out? I might not sound emotionally intelligent, but I’m actually displaying what you require. You need time now. Maybe I don’t want to hear your whole story. I think that the difficulty is, is that different people can come from different angles from these different problems and get the same result.
Johan Olwagen:
Please let us not make the mistake to think that yellow is iffy. Buy in the sky. Please can we not make the mistake of saying if you’ve got a strong Red Quadrant? That must imply that you fully feel touchy touch. Well, it all same flies there. But what I do do is I might approach problems more intuitively, more holistic, more collaboratively. And so my my short answer is don’t use it for recruitment as the only tool.
Darren A. Smith:
Yes. Yeah, cool. That makes sense.
Johan Olwagen:
The long answer is, the long answer is preference leads to motivation, motivation leads to investigation. Investigation leads to competence. But not don’t use it as a recruiting tool in isolation. We.
Darren A. Smith:
Fabulous. Fabulous. That makes sense. A few moments ago. Sorry, I was just checking. We were still recording. We are. I thought I’d forgotten to press record again, but we are George. I’m going to hand back to you for your next question because I think we’re grilling Johan very well. He’s standing up to the task fabulously. So what’s our third big question?
George Araham:
Actually I wanted to ask you if you could give us. Examples without naming no names, but like the best, the best cases you’ve had with a red a blue, a yellow and a green.
Johan Olwagen:
OK. Yeah.
George Araham:
Whether as a psychologist or when you’re doing trainings or without no names, nothing, just like the experience of it, that you from your side and their sides.
Johan Olwagen:
OK, I I’ve got to make something very clear. You know that 5% of of all the people who have been analysed, 5% of people have a single dominant meaning that they’ll be either blue or red or green or whatever the case. 3% have all four quadrants as a preference. 50 something and 30 something out of double and a triple dollars. That’s very critical to understand. But let let me give you an example of someone that I know very well.
Johan Olwagen:
That rate quadrant is almost off the chart. If it’s not off the chart. This person’s ability to relate. With with anybody, and I mean literally anybody. And I’ve seen this person, I’ve seen her operate in so many different contexts. We climb in an aeroplane and we fly to Europe and people are around her and want to talk to her. The verses and and the hostesses and so on. You would do some training and people would say wow. Now the one thing that she’s got is intuition. When that gut feel kicks in, you can almost put money on that. Then whatever she tells you, it’s going to work or it’s not going to come off.
George Araham:
Did she win the lottery?
Johan Olwagen:
See that that. Well, I need to talk to her about this, but she has won the lottery in terms of where she lives on the coast. In one of the most beautiful places in South Africa. Having said that. That that intuition is just incredible.
George Araham:
How you made them feel?
Johan Olwagen:
And and that relationship ability has taken a in so into so many directions that people whenever they meet her, even years later, they will remember her. They will remember the impact. Remember that little statement that says people don’t remember what you said or what you did. But they do remember how you made them feel. Maya Angelou. Well, I can tell you this person absolutely inspired. I I know of of so many blue quadrant preferences.
Johan Olwagen:
Where their ability to cut to the chase is just phenomenal. You know, you and me, we might be talking and we’re going on for hours, irritating these people. Absolutely. But when those blue cordons come in and they say to you, you know what, guys, I hear what you’re saying, just focus on the following three. Here’s an example. In in a retail organisation.
Johan Olwagen:
Where someone has taken a company that was 70 million in the red and within 18 months changes it into a 310 million profit organisation. And of course, all Brian played a role. I’m not taking the credibility credit credit credit for that, but I asked him. How did you do this? I I don’t understand. And he says to you, you know what people need to focus on three or four things. Don’t make it more. Don’t make it too complex. You know, all these balanced scorecard areas where 325 focus areas. Nobody can focus on them but focus on.
Johan Olwagen:
Are we going to innovate? Are we going to be productive? Focus on how we’re going to execute and deliver and focus on the customer. And those are the four things that he said. And they’re address turned it around in the 18 months. Just incredible. But you also you you’ve seen these green quadrants? Man policy process, procedure. Let me give you an example because green quadrants are very detailed and and I’m I’m just reminded of a financial manager that I work. Where? Strong green, but also have that red intuition. Something is not right here. And she suspected some fraud.
Darren A. Smith:
Oh, OK.
Johan Olwagen:
Investigates investigates. Doesn’t make sense. The numbers are right. Obviously she’s got a strong blue potted being. An accountant runs it past her seniors runs it past the number of people. But that mean quadrant is like a bulldog. Doesn’t let go. And then eventually discovers that the fraud is in fact taking place, so that meticulous, systematic revisiting of it. Over and over and over again, not giving up, going back, taking the steps again. Brilliant example in the end, sound and save the company, 10s of 1,000,000.
Johan Olwagen:
Yellow quadrants. Man, these are crazy people, you know I love it. Because the yellows think so out-of-the-box, one of one of my clients, we had a session where we try to say we used couple of words and we said so what’s the D word in yellow? So usually for dreamer etc. And this guy came up, he said they’re just delusional and they are not delusional that. Think of any product, any service in the world. But let let’s take iPhone as an example. Very simple example.
Johan Olwagen:
Boy oh boy, who saw that stuff up? You had to have a bit of a yellow cordon cause remember what even some of their compatriots said to Steve Jobs at the time. Sarah, please. Who’s going to need for this kind of thing. And it was Steve Ballmer who said that. And we know where we are today. If we think of Google. Can you? Can you guess who said that these guys just want to attend conferences and have fun.
Johan Olwagen:
A very famous person in that industry and we look at really the value I think of of what I see is that those yellow quadrants can anticipate. They can see things before it might happen. And they they have an uncanny ability to say, you know, if we what about don’t you think we should? The problem is in the and let me use an example in a production environment where where the CEO is off the charts yellow and he’s just generating ideas.
Johan Olwagen:
And of course, in the blue-green quadrants you want to take it, take the ball, run with it, pump it and and go go to the people and say he wants us to do this. But remember, he’s still conceptualising, he’s still thinking it through. Next week they come back and says guys, I’ve thought about some of they say, what do you want us to change it now again? But but in that forward-looking in that integrative thinking in that creative thinking, their ability to come up with ideas.
Johan Olwagen:
Industries have been shown that they were actually often six months a year, even three years ahead of everybody else, and had people just listen to them. Yeah, yeah, sounds fluffy. But let’s unpack that. And let’s utilise that. So I think those are a couple of the examples that I can think of. See leaders who are strong blue leaders who are strong green. All red or yellow or combination of those, but they each bring value given what they see. Really feel passionate about and they add value.
George Araham:
Beautiful.
Johan Olwagen:
Yeah. Exactly.
Darren A. Smith:
And Steve Jobs could, because I was thinking about his story when he went back to Apple after being kicked out of Apple and they had a million ideas and projects going on. And Steve said, we need to just do a few. And I think he said the iPad, the Mac and the blah, and it just went and they went through the roof. And that’s a lovely example of Steve Jobs doing what he did best.
Johan Olwagen:
Yeah, absolutely. And I and I think we see it with the CEO of Microsoft now, again, I mean you remember Microsoft was in trouble at some point and he’s really just brought it back. We see it in the Pharmaceutical industry, we see it in their healthcare industry, we see it in education. You know I mean.
Johan Olwagen:
Yeah, I just remember my children had a maths teacher. She was. Completely yellow blue. Out of the natural fold and and one of my colleagues did studies on this, but she was not a typical nasty.
Darren A. Smith:
Yeah.
George Araham:
Yeah.
Johan Olwagen:
But the children loved her because she created pictures for them. She created stories for them. They made sense of them, you know, as opposed to my maths teacher, who just beat the living daylights out of me. Because I didn’t know why X + Y would make zed.
Johan Olwagen:
And when I looked out the window to try and form a picture, I got lambasted.
Darren A. Smith:
Yeah.
Johan Olwagen:
I think what we need to do is, as I said earlier, even teachers shift your gears.
George Araham:
Especially teachers.
Johan Olwagen:
Leaders shift your gears and especially teachers. Are you sitting with a diverse group of cognitive preferences there? Shift your gears, make it work for everybody. I will get so much more out of.
Darren A. Smith:
Lovely. George, did you have a subsequent follow up question from that?
George Araham:
Not really, but I did have like something I wanted to add based on what John was saying. It reminded me of a story that one of my mentors, the late Bob Proctor, used to say he was setting the story of a business owner who actually passed away and his wife was about to inherit the company. And so basically the whole board of directors and stuff were expecting her to actually sell the company because the company wasn’t making so much money at the time.
Darren A. Smith:
George Araham:
But she said actually, no. I’m not going to do that. She and every now and then what she did, she asked three questions. Now I don’t remember the third question, but I remember two of them. She was like, what works, what doesn’t? And and focus on that. So she we used to say to the whole like CEOs and stuff. Focus on what’s working. Drop what’s not working and that’s it. And after a couple of months or so, she was able to raise the.
Johan Olwagen:
You. Yeah.
George Araham:
The the capital of the company to like I think from around 0 or something to $10 million, it was a record thing and then they went much more and 70 million and stuff like this. So the power of the blue.
Johan Olwagen:
Yeah, don’t it it it it goes to show we we have different strengths. And we have different angles that we come from and we we can add that, but we should also know that we have blind spots.
George Araham:
Yeah.
Johan Olwagen:
And often exactly relating to your story, the bold might have had a blind spot, and this lady just opened that blind spot for them and asked those questions. But but we all have those blind spots. I don’t care how smart you are, how experienced you are. We all have them, but should we? Should we focus just on strengths or just on the negative? And and I think, Darren, you’ll understand if you want to get stickiness in learning, you can’t just focus on the negative.
Johan Olwagen:
I wouldn’t say, but you’re also going to run into difficulties because if we think that we can only focus on our strengths as a workplace requires us to make shifts.
Darren A. Smith:
Yep.
George Araham:
Yeah.
Johan Olwagen:
Into those different quadrants and I can’t just wait. I don’t do green and therefore I’m going to wait for somebody to do that green on my behalf. Yes. Certainly surround yourself with a whole range team. Here’s an interesting thing. The research that Herman did showed that diversity are 66% more effective than homogeneous team. Why? Very simple, because we’re bringing all kinds of angles, all kinds of thinking. And if we can meld that together.
Johan Olwagen:
And for me, it’s always a question of how do we leverage. Of the value that each person brings. Because if we can leverage of that and complement that, we’re going to get far, far better results. Than blocking people. You know, we we do a creative problem solving. Moduling in some of our leadership programmes and I I do a particular technique that I utilise. You show people and and guys, I’m not teasing you. Now we do it sun wise and we do it. Specifically, business relief. Where we get in a group of 20. In 5 minutes. Please note in 5 minutes the most that we have ever got was 574 ideas, but they average around 200 plus ideas.
Johan Olwagen:
Because you’re opening it up for people not to be smacked down and not to be called names. You know, we can call everybody now. Yeah. You Blues are just you just you just cold in clinical greens. You just control things. Reds. You just people pleases and yellows you just delusional. You know we can call everybody there. That’s not what it’s about. How do we leverage of all of those and I promise you in in the cases we do where we do those creative problems solving exercises.
Johan Olwagen:
People can can come up with some of the most amazing ideas that they never had time to think of. They were blocked, so leverage of that and your example of this lady focused. Yeah, these three questions. Can we answer those please? And you can bring people back on track. You’re right. Oh, yeah.
Darren A. Smith:
Fabulous. Fabulous. I I’m just conscious of time. I think we could do this for another hour. We we may have to do. We may have to do a Part 2 which would be brilliant. George, any final questions you’d like to ask your hands. We can squeeze his brain from the last drop of what we might want to share. Short question.
George Araham:
I was going to go for a story, but I’m I’m I’m fine for now. Maybe for the Part 2. I’ll like that, yeah.
Johan Olwagen:
Yeah.
Darren A. Smith:
You sure? You sure you. OK alright. Well, you might have to go for Part 2. Johan. I’m just going to ask you to to finish off if you would. In a in a summary of let’s say we’ve got a team and they’re just embraced. HBDI whole brain thinking they’ve got their profiles. I understand. I mean there’s some a triquadrant, blah blah blah. I’ve got that. How do they leverage it to be a much better team? What are they doing?
Johan Olwagen:
They do four things. Four things and four things only, and I’ve mentioned some of them. We we call it the reverse 8 model. Alright, so you start with creating that shared desired output. Let’s all be clear on what it is that we’re trying to achieve and why we’re trying to achieve that. You help the team understand what are those critical few things. That we need to leverage off that will make the difference. So you move from yellow to blue.
Johan Olwagen:
Now that we understand what is critical, we go to read and we engage with one another and we support one another. We leverage off one another and as I said previously, how do we how do we really help one another to achieve this in our own brain? And then lastly, let’s move to green because we still have to execute.
Johan Olwagen:
I call it the four QS. If you’re interested. It’s called tap into the creative or conceptual quotient of people. Tap into the knowledge quotient of the team blue. Tap into the RQ. The relationship quotient, you better have a higher relationship quotient. So that you can deal with all these diverse people that you deal with, but you also need to have. Execution approaches.
Darren A. Smith:
Yeah.
Johan Olwagen:
Because you leave any one of those queues out, it will bite you at the end of the day.
Darren A. Smith:
Well, well, well, I I’ve been working with Herman for 20 years and I feel as though I knew nothing before. I just heard that. So wow. Johan. Awesome. George, what are you thinking?
George Araham:
I’m flabbergasted.
Darren A. Smith:
I can see George and he’s doing what I’m doing. We didn’t know any of that. We’ve done about five of these HBDI podcasts. So. Wow, wow, wow, wow. And a big thank you for sharing your thinking. You clearly understand this stuff on a level that is just phenomenal. Thank you.
George Araham:
Thank you, Johan.
Johan Olwagen:
OK. And and thanks again for the opportunity. The people out there. Use your whole brain. You don’t have a left brain or a right brain. Use your whole brain and use it with passion and purpose, and you’ll get much further. Thank you for your time, James.
Darren A. Smith:
That’s cool. I’ve been Darren Smith, but more importantly, George, Johan, thank you for being my guest on World stickiest learning. I think we’re going to the Part 2. I’ll catch up with you guys. We’ll publish this, see what the listeners think, see what questions they’ve got and come back again. Thank you.
Johan Olwagen:
Thank you. Thanks.
George Araham:
Wonderful. Thank you.
