This is the second of two podcasts with Pepper de Callier – who is a Prague-based leadership coach and author.
In the continuation of our wide-ranging conversation we discuss whether leadership differs in small countries and large ones, the rise of populism in the US (Trump) and around the world – and why. We discuss change and ways to accommodate its speed, self enhancement bias, and the way women lead.
Takeaway quote: “Life is not lived as a generalization. Life is lived by one person at a time. I want (a leader) to see that person.”
This is Pepper’s official bio from his Prague Leadership Institute website:
Pepper de Callier is a bestselling author of three books on leadership and personal development (The Common Sense Wisdom Trilogy), newspaper columnist, senior-executive coach, and Founder and Executive Director of Prague Leadership Institute. He was voted Top Corporate Leadership Coach in Europe—2015 by London-based AI Media. Pepper has devoted his career to understanding, counseling, and coaching leaders globally. Formerly a partner at two of the most respected executive search and consulting firms in the world, Spencer Stuart and Heidrick & Struggles, Pepper has advised executives in Asia, North America, and Europe
Pepper is also deeply involved in the development of future leaders. He is a Founder and Member of the Supervisory Board of Aspen Institute Prague. And has mentored many young women and other rising executives.
For both of these first two podcasts I converted the audio file to a video file and uploaded it to YouTube. Future podcasts will likely be delivered differently. My podcasts are a work in progress.
I was going to write about the Apple controversy. And how CEO Tim Cook’s refusal to roll over and let the FBI tell him to create a backdoor to Apple’s vaunted iPhone encryption is a classic clash between two great rights – privacy and national security. I was going to add in antivirus software founder John McAfee’s post volunteering his band of hackers to break just the one iPhone in question –used by one of the San Bernardino killers. I was going to say that like many people, I don’t really know who is right. Which right has to give way for the greater good. And which right IS the greater good in this case. And finally I was going to add how I certainly don’t want any person or entity or agency or government to have the key to what’s in my own iPhone.
But tonight – listening to the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton make her victory speech in the Nevada caucuses – I decide to leave the Apple controversy for another, longer day. Because Clinton, mentioning how important small businesses and entrepreneurs were to the overall need to create good jobs, made me think about something central to this Presidential election. How do we create enough GOOD jobs for all the angry people left behind by the technological revolution? And all the young people who’ll need good jobs in the future?
You can’t turn everyone into an IT code writer. Or doctor. Or lawyer. Or basketball player. Or musician. Not everyone can graduate from high school with advanced placement credits. Or sail through college with a huge loan right into that great new high tech world. It isn’t just lack of the right education at the primary and secondary level. It’s interests. It’s native abilities. It’s caring about something enough to make it and you a success.
Almost everyone has something they really care about. Something they’d spend long hours learning about and doing. And I think many of those interests and abilities can be turned into small businesses. Which may be where to find the good jobs we need.
In the small suburban towns where I live, Main Streets are alive again with all kinds of little stores and businesses. Many women with kids find they can develop home-based businesses around something they always did for pleasure. Like making gloriously good cupcakes.
Maybe the entrepreneur part comes in when you look around and identify a need you can fill with your business and knowledge. Maybe we can foster this way of looking at the world and your place in it if we start early enough in school. And maybe we can use the internet to reach the older worker who’s stuck in a town where the industry has gone away. Even without broadband at home, everyone who can drive to a connected library (and most are) can have the benefit of an online career counselor. And basic courses. And whatever else might work.
Small businesses are the job engines of our world. Ask any economist. Maybe instead of making all these empty, grandiose promises, our political candidates this year might look around at the people who come to their rallies –and develop some targeted business programs aimed at them. Because if a small, one person business is successful, it will hire someone else. And someone else.
Oh. You didn’t ask what I think about the current political scene? Well that’s certainly never stopped me.
In the wake of the latest GOP presidential candidate debate on CNN – the one on foreign policy and homeland security – I’m thinking of going into deep hiding. The rest of the 2016 presidential race – only just getting started really with the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire primary coming up in February – should be a doozy.
And it’s not just the Republicans. I’m not exactly thrilled by anyone who’s running on either side. I’d like to see a third party. Drawing from the country’s majority moderates. And supporting less “required” dogma for the parties’ base.
The problem as I see it is the whole primary system. It encourages what we’re seeing in the GOP – a lot of outrageous, “I’m in charge” comments with no real actionable policies behind them. Senator Rand Paul – the Libertarian – sometimes seemed the only reasonable voice in the tough-guy babel. Mildly pointing out that one candidate after another would violate the Constitution. Or take us into World War 3.
On the Democratic side – there’s Senator Bernie Sanders. With his well-meaning but costly and unrealistic ideas which have never worked. It’s unfortunate but the relatively unskilled jobs paying middle class wages – beloved by the unions – are not coming back. Nor are the big corporations going to stop combining and getting bigger. What can happen is better, more targeted education for today’s young people. And more targeted retraining for workers left behind in the rush to the internet of things.
That leaves Hillary Clinton. Who seems at this point an overwhelming force headed toward the Democratic presidential nomination. Right now – paired against any of the likely GOP candidates – Clinton is the only candidate on either side who has the real world experience to (perhaps) deal with the highly complicated mess the world seems to be in now. She’s been in the White House, she’s been a Senator, she’s been Secretary of State. Of the Republicans, only Senator Marco Rubio seems to have any understanding of the world outside the US. He sits on the Foreign Relations Committee. And at least from what I’ve heard in debates and interviews he seems to be highly intelligent. Once he gets past the primaries controlled by the evangelicals and tea party types – he might come up with some reasonable ideas.
No Republican is going to stray far from the party line on macro issues like guns, abortion, education, immigration (total reform of which may be beyond any politician) etc. But I’m much more concerned with geo-politics and the migration crisis. How to deal with China’s rising prominence. How to handle Russia – who’s seeming “Leader for Life” Vladimir Putin is perhaps the most dangerous man on the planet right now. And of course how to destroy ISIS. Before it completely destroys the Middle East.
Unfortunately ISIS or its successor (and until the core problems of the Middle East are solved there will be a successor) will keep radicalizing some Muslim citizens of countries like France, Belgium, Britain and the US as long as we – the dominant society – make those other citizens feel like outsiders. And having a presidential candidate talking about registering all US members of the Muslim faith and closing the gates to all other Muslims doesn’t help.
Internal (homeland) security is not why I will ultimately vote for a candidate. We’ve been living with this same threat since 9/11. Actually well before but intelligence agencies were (and maybe still are) incapable of connecting the dots. It always takes something bad to wake us up.
I’m really afraid some of these issues are just unsolvable. By anyone in the West. How you get the Saudis and Iranians to agree to actually do something constructive about the Middle East?
No, you didn’t ask what I think. But I’m as angry as everyone else. And as afraid as everyone else. And I’m mostly afraid we’re about to have a Presidential election season which can only make everything worse.
I was going to write about the Apple controversy. And how 