Thomas Green here with Ethical Marketing Service. On the episode today, we have Julian Chapman. Julian, welcome. Thank you, Thomas. Thanks for having me on. It is my pleasure. Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a bit about yourself and what you do? Sure, no, I appreciate that. Well, so we at Forrest & Company, I’m the president of Forrest & Company here in Toronto Canada and what we like to say is that we help create great places to work to achieve the strategy of the organization, and so we do that through training, coaching and consulting around organizational design and how do you actually get the best out of your leaders in order to create that great place for people to work at and that at the same time achieves the strategy and it’s that tension between a great place to work, which takes care of the people and then delivering the strategy on the other hand, which is the task side and so we try to carefully balance that. And I’m the author of the book and the managerial leadership journey, so that’s just a recent recent addition to the Forrest stable and so that’s what I’ve been focusing my energy on of late at any rate, so.
Thank you for the introduction. I did want to focus a little bit about the book and also sort of your writing journey. So would you like to tell the listeners a little bit about your book and what you wanted to convey? No, thank you. This is a great opportunity to sort of speak to what I was hoping to convey in the book and that is that I suppose first and foremost is, it’s referred to as the managerial leadership journey. So it’s about this connection between management and leadership. All too often in the sort of thinking that is out there, the books that are out there, they talk about how great leadership is and how you don’t want to be a manager and all this sort of stuff.
And what I’m trying to do is trying to create that understanding that you actually have to be able to do both. And so managerial leadership is the connection of people and task. Mean to be truly effective, you need to be able to deliver the tasks whilst having a positive impact on people. So you have to be managing that tension between task and people. So that’s what I was intending to do with the book was sort of raised the stature of this notion of managerial leadership, but part of it is, is that there’s a lot of the books also focus solely on how do you lead your team, how do you manage your team, and what I’ve noticed is there’s a real gap in the discourse around managerial leadership, around how do you manage managers or lead leaders? And so the book is designed for those that are in a role where they are actually managing managers or leading leaders and how to do that.
And in particular this is important because it’s actually where you do create great places to work, it’s through good management and it’s not about the managers themselves being great, that’s important, but they also have to be led well, and so the sort of the last, the last piece of this and why it’s called the managerial leadership journey is that it’s not a one and done thing all too often what happens is is that we start our careers as finance experts or operations experts or you name it and that sort of becomes our foundation, but as we move up we have to be able to manage the tension between task and people. And so in fact our work is actually around managing the tension between task and people and that we can’t just rely on our technical expertise and the journey part of this is is that it’s a lifelong journey based on my experience both as a leader in the Canadian military, which is part of my background but also in working with all sorts of different clients.
This is became clear to me that this is a journey, it’s not a one and done thing and it’s not about doing managerial leadership on the side of your desk, so to speak, where you know, I’m going to focus on my technical expertise, I really have to take that and really work at that throughout my career. So it’s not just about taking a course and you know, check, you know, we’ve checked the box and away we go kind of thing is that we actually have to work at it and who better to help us work at it than our own managers. That’s so that my boss is actually helping me on the journey, so that’s what I was trying to convey with the book um and within the, within it, not only some of the conceptual constructs, but then a number of tools that, from a leadership standpoint that we need to be able to do, and from a management standpoint we need to be able to do. So that’s that’s that’s the essence of the book. Um and it’s um it’s been, it’s been an interesting journey learning about how books are made, it’s kind of like, you know, how the sausage is made, You don’t necessarily really want to know how it’s made, but, but you learn along the way kind of thing.
Thank you for that. There’s a couple of things I wanted to follow up on and that is you touched upon the, should we say, the topic of people who categorize those two things, but don’t necessarily see how they tie together or don’t speak about that. And I have been, I don’t know whether you’d say guilty of, should we say saying that I’m one thing or not and not another, I’ve said before, I’m not a good manager, I’m not a manager, but I perhaps might be a leader. Would you say that that’s maybe self imposed limitations or do you think that people are suited to those different roles? Well, it’s it’s interesting you say that Thomas because certainly, you know, I’ll go back to my military background for moments and the German army used to have a brilliant system where they developed young officers and they were either streamed to be leaders. They were extreme to be staff officers. So in other words they really focused on their task orientation or their people orientation.
And I think we do get ourselves into what do I prefer to do. But part of the issue when we’re in roles where we are to be managerial leaders we have to recognize that I may have a tremendous strength of being a great leader but I’m also gonna do some of that managerial stuff. The the the tasks, the task aspects of the work, so planning the work, making the decisions, organizing things, structuring the work. Because and particularly as you go further up in your career you have less and less chance of actually leading people and more and more you have to set the conditions. So it’s it can be a bit self imposed. But it’s also that I need I need the help to actually move myself along and recognize my strengths and limitations. So it’s a bit of you know I suppose I’ve spoken out of both sides of my mouth on that, on that response in the sense that you have to recognize your strengths and limitations but you really have to try and build that that that muscle up to to do either one or the other.
And I often see it actually the opposite direction tosses you see it all the time in organizations I got into I. T. For example you know using R. T. Professionals because I really don’t want to have to deal a lot with people. I’m much more interested in technology and things like that. So they struggled to do the leadership side. So we have to put the emphasis on developing their leadership skills by the same token I’m a great sales guy and I love pressing the flash. I need to focus on my management skills. It’s not just about my inter relationship and having great conversations with people. I got to be structured in how I do that in order to be truly successful. Stop simplistic summary that I take from that is is kind of a bit of both. Right? Exactly. That would have been a lot faster. Yeah I wouldn’t have been a very good podcast guest with that particular answer though would I? But you also mentioned in your answer about the fact that the higher up you go the more likely you are to be managing the managers.
And I just thought in my head that’s so true. And is you more likely get that insight from experience than you do from theory. So is that something that you learned that you wanted to take over? Yeah. So it’s um the further up you go well the closer you get to that that radiant sun that we call strategy. Right so you’re you’re trying to get to that point of strategy which is what do we want to be as an organization and so you need to then be able to articulate the strategy and that’s the work that we actually do is help our clients to articulate their strategy, but then you need to be able to structure it and so in structuring that you that is very much a management function. And far too often we see in our clientele that they’ve been rather slipshod and how they’ve structured things. Um The old adage that we use is that the the structure comes from the strategy, not the strategy from the structure, but all too often we have Josue fill Deborah what are we going to have them do versus.
This is where we’re taking the business, this is the direction that we’re going. Now, let’s see which of those four is best suited for this particular role and which of these four is best suited for that particular role and that’s that’s a critic that is a critical management function and it gets left off the list, the to do list of many senior executives, many CEOs that we’ve seen and that that they really have to be able to do that work because that will create a great place to work where there’s clarity and I know what I know what kind of sandbox I have, I, you know, I’m in this sandbox, I’m able to maneuver around, I got all my choice in the sandbox and if I need to get other things from my sandbox, I can go, I know who to go to to get that rather than either being, you know, immense and unable to maneuver in the sandbox. In other words, I’ve been given a role that’s too small for me, or I’ve been left in the middle of the Sahara where I’m not sure where to go and what to do and so that that part of management is so critical at the, at the upper echelons inside the organization is really structuring the work and then letting people just get on with it, you know, tell them what you need them to do, what’s the end state and lead them to use their creativity and to grow and to develop and to work through it on their own.
Is there anything that you that you learned from writing the book that you didn’t know beforehand? That’s a great question. Well there’s certainly a lot about writing books, but but aside from that, I think on reflection, you know, we in Canada have a have a similar, a similar tradition to sort of downplay our relationship with the military. And so it actually forced me to talk about the things that I never talked about, which is my military career. Um and and how that how that in fact had colored my view on the importance of managerial leadership. Um the importance of the relationship between the the actually more than a relationship that the sacrosanct covenant as I refer to it between the leader and the lead um that it really, really painted that now. You know, no organization is perfect and perfectionism is one of the things I learned as a dangerous path.
Yeah. And that so, so I think it was a journey. It was a journey of reflection. And I suppose, ironically, I’ve tried to create the book in such a way to get leaders to reflect. So at the end of each chapter, there’s a series of questions to get them to pause and think about what’s been talked about. And so in my doing that, I was also reflected. So it was it was a huge learning for me as well about all those, all those preconceived notions that that were lurking in the back of my mind, some of these constructs. So if you were to say maybe a couple of principles that you’ve learned um on leadership or management from the military, what would you share? Well, I talk about it as being the enlightened leader. So, so talk about the leadership side then I’ll talk about the management side, but but particularly from the military, I learned what I refer to as the enlightened leader and enlightened leadership is about three things.
It’s about being authentic. You have to be true to yourself. You absolutely have to be true to yourself. And, you know, it’s, you know, you talk about talk about ethical marketing, you talk about ethics and integrity is absolutely critical and really having an understanding of who am I. And and I’ve seen that certainly learned that through the military because you know, I tried to I tried to be everything to everyone and that was very inauthentic, so understanding what my strengths and limitations are. But I also see that that in our in my coaching practice and uh and working with with leaders that they’re often believing that they should be someone that they’re not, that they should demonstrate this. Um it’s one of the dangers of all of these leadership walks back there. They say you need to be this, you need to be done. I suppose I’m adding to that, that sort of deluge, but but it’s it’s about you need to understand who you are and what is your purpose and why are you here and those sort of things.
So that’s the nature of authentic leadership. The 2nd 1 is one that’s very common in parliament right now, which is servant leadership. Servant leadership is all about the care and concern for the people that are doing the work for you. And I see that there is there is a lack of servant leadership for sure. And it’s one of the things you learned very early in the military and you know, the the the Adage is very true. It’s it’s embedded in junior officers that they eat after the troop seat because they’re the ones that are going to fight fight on your behalf. So you need to keep them prepared. Good to go primes ready, you know, well cared for and that’s the essence of servant leadership. So so authentic leadership, servant leadership. And then the third one is transformational leadership and this one uh this one i I suppose i it came through a lot more reflection because it’s not necessarily how the military sees things.
Um but that came through reflection that that you have to realize that the people that are coming to you to work for you and work with, you are not fully formed. There isn’t the Mag the the unicorn is as it’s referred to out there, that you’re just going to be able to bring in, they have all the skills, all the knowledge, they’re gonna be perfect into the rule, you’re just not there, that’s not to denigrate them, it’s that they’re your role as the leader is to develop them and to transform them. And and so in transformational leadership is the is rooted the foundation of continuous improvement. Continuous improvement is the attitude of transformation and it’s the attitude that every enlightened leader has to have in their in their viewpoint because they have to be focusing on continuously improving the capability of their team, the the work that is being done.
They need to be looking for opportunities for continuous improvement, all of these sort of things and they need to engage their people in that, in that dialogue around continuous improvement because those at the coalface are going to see the opportunities long before the leader does. So there has to be that open and honest dialogue to make that work. So that’s the essence of enlightened leadership, authentic servant and transformation. Ask about the last one because I from a personal perspective, I think continuous improvement, great principle. And I also think it’s good from a well being perspective stumbling block that from a thought process perspective is that sometimes when in business education people will say about sort of systems and processes in order to let your business function in the smoothest way, for example, it might be just my thinking on it.
But what do you think about the potential conflict between asking someone to do something a certain way in order for it to be streamlined if you like versus always looking to improve. Have you got any thoughts around that topic? Well, I I think I think the most important thing is to engage your people. So so what do you think about doing it this way is just as important. Um One of the things that that I talked about in the book and that we talked about with all of our clients is the accountability of every employee to give their manager their best advice and best advice is the is the root. It’s the germ. It’s the longest term is probably a bad term, It’s the seed of continuous improvement because I’m working on this and I see this opportunity for that, it can be done better, can be done faster, smarter or whatever the case may be. Now there’s there is the tension I suppose between um between designated process improvement, right, and and where we’re bringing in a new process and and of course employees are going to go and that’s uncomfortable because I’m used to the way we always did it, that’s a natural human reaction.
So part of it is, and I talked a little bit about this in the book is that you can’t just rely on your authority to make that happen. You have to be able to sell it To your employees. Now, you’re not gonna be able to sell 100% of the time, you know, particularly if you’re having to change things in such a way that you’re going to have to downsize or or you know, any of those sort of difficult situations, but you need to be able to sell it from the standpoint of how it how it helps the individual to meet their needs and wants. Now, the question is is that it may be the strategies need and want and not necessarily the individuals need and want, but this is where that tension between creating a great place to work and delivering on a strategy becomes once again, it’s something that has to be, has to be dealt with, so So you have to be able to sell it as best you can, but sometimes you’re not gonna be able to get it to 100%.
It really is about I guess managing the tension between those two things uh and and and and everything is about managing tension. You know, tension seeks resolution and so managing and keeping those two constructs there, but if you if you are going to ram it down their throats with everything engagement, employees, then you’re gonna have a disengaged group of employees. And so you have to realize that I have to be able to manage this tension between the task of the people. It’s still the same, it’s effectively the same tension um just in a different, just in a different form, I’m not sure did that, did that capture that thomas or was that? Yeah, I’m just going to say thank you for the clarification and I interrupted your about to go on to the management principles from, from the book. Well, the, so the management principles are, are fairly straightforward and that is um it’s I have to be able to um to to do what we do refer to as the A.
B C D. S. I have to be able to align my team. So I have to set context, I have to plan the work and I have to and I have to establish how the team is gonna work. I have to be able to build the team, so find the right people for the team and when there are those situations where I think I found the right person, they’ve been working at it, but they just haven’t quite got it. I have to be prepared that I need to remove them from that role and find them a better rule or ultimately, you know, remove them from the organization, I need to be able to connect with them, so I need to be able to monitor coach and assess their effectiveness and the work that they do. And most importantly, and and and at the core to the engaged manager is this notion of accountability and accountability is driven through delegation. So I established what I’m going to give you as an end state, I need you to deliver how you go about getting to that is up to you, but I have to establish for you what is the end state because that piece of work is actually coming from the strategy or it should be at any rate.
So it integrates as a whole. So that’s that’s the essence of the engaged manager. And and the point around the engaged manager is is that I have to I have to be focused on accountability. I have to define what is the work and what is the expectation of the work, I can’t as we refer to it is leave it to your sense of responsibility, your personal feeling of obligation. I mean it’s great to have a sense of responsibility but we’re not all the same. We are all diverse and so as the leader and as the manager, I have to define one of the expectations because otherwise we’ll do things very differently and we’ll we’ll have very differing attitudes as to how we’re engaged and how we’re not engaged. So this accountability framework is critical and I would argue that the challenges that we see in our society today are the direct results of the lack of accountability. People are not being held to account. A very interesting point to end with. And I all I was going to say was how so well because people are not being held to account.
The application of accountability is not occurring and and and you know, in when you see it in small microcosms inside organizations where people out of their sense of responsibility and it’s and it’s a good sense of responsibility are are just going off and doing whatever they feel they need to do. And that goes all the way up to, you know, whether it’s government or whatever the case may be, they are not being held to account. They’re not being held to account at the ballot box. So it’s so it’s a it’s a small construct, very big construct, best way I define it is that the difference between accountability and responsibility is have you ever seen A group of 11 year olds playing football? Or as in North America and which we call soccer, but you know what, what do you see, you see a bunch of them are clustered around the ball, you see some are picking flowers, you see some whose parents have taught them that they have to get out there and score at all costs and they’re not going to pass the ball back to anybody else, they’re just gonna run with that long ago.
That’s what happens when we live in our society, just based on responsibility, where the individualist king or queen. Whereas accountability, you have a professional football team where everybody knows their position and they pass the ball back and forth and when we score, we score as a team, not as an individual. So it’s a simple analogy, but it’s and I apologize the sports analogy, but but I think it gets the difference, we’re very good at defining responsibility and accountability outside of work in those two ways, but when it gets into work we just kind of mush them all together. So it’s it’s about really driving home that accountability and that’s what they engaged manager does. Have you given any thought as to why this particular topic over any of the other sort of topics that you could have written about? Well this is kind of a starting point, I suppose is the is the best way to describe it.
I’ve spent a lot of my time working on how we think in the workplace. So so but the the foundational pieces how are we set up to actually manage and lead in the workplace and then then we can talk about it. So I guess I’m giving probably the next book which is about thinking although I do talk about thinking in this book but but it’s it’s it’s about how do you set up the conditions where people can be their best and then being their best is where they the true diversity of us comes out is actually in our thinking mean ultimate diversity is about diversity of thought. It is the it is the essence of diversity. So you have to set up the conditions where that diversity can flourish. And so that’s that’s I think why I wrote the book. Um Plus it was probably easier to write that because it’s something that I’ve been doing for a long time. And so it’s sort of it sort of flowed.
It was a natural flow from from the work that I’ve done and also my own experiences and any any feedback that you’re should we say particularly proud or of or is significant to you. Um Well it’s the books it’s early days yet. Um I suppose the fact that it’s sold out on its first day in Canada and the U. K. Um is either indicative of it was very popular or they didn’t have that many copies even though they were pre ordered. So um but yeah it’s really the essence of it is is a book to to be the foundation from which one can can launch our own journey. So it doesn’t you know it’s just to give a a foundational piece and then and then you go and you build on that and and you create your own journey along the way. But the essence is to just sort of keep at it not to not to let it go and just say okay well I read that book.
I’m done. Well congratulations on on that. Because I think if you if you’ve sold out let’s say the amount that you ordered or sold out a significant amount it means that you’ve done. Should we say you’ve achieved more than most authors. I would say you did mention that it’s kind of an ongoing um don’t forget the words that you use kind of an ongoing process. Not like a checking the box type thing. I think it is and an admirable thing to highlight because I think a lot of internet activity around these topics is kind of like we have to know is this you know there’s just this principle that you need to know and nothing else. Have you got any thoughts that arise from that? Well it’s it’s interesting you say that thomas because one of the things that that was important to me is is to create a universal approach rather than so many of the books tend to go into a particular area or a particular experience of the individual?
And I’ve tried to create a universal approach rather than going down one particular path. And I think social media has, has focused us on that one particular path with however many characters you can get into social media message or whatever the case may be, but it’s really narrowed our focus and um we’re not as expansive in our thinking as as we used to be. Um and that, and then of course, the simple fact that if I like that thing, then it immediately acts as a magnet and everything else I see now, it is all about that, and it just keeps reinforcing, reinforcing that particular, that particular perspective? There will be some that read through the book and go, that’s not my perspective, that’s not that’s not how I see the world. Um and uh and that’s understandable. I mean, that’s, you know, that’s that’s that’s part of it, it’s in the, in the work that we do, sometimes we say we’re actually not teaching you something new, we’re helping you to unlearn what you learned before and that our experiences have have created a perspective.
So, so it’s about, it’s about how do I broaden my thinking out, uh and look at things much more holistically than than my my narrow focus, I suppose would be the way to describe that, And do you have anything to share on for those who feel like they’ve got a book in them, the promotional side of it, because for me, it’s almost 5050 in the sense that yes, you do have to create it, but if you create it and you can’t promote it, it doesn’t get in front of anyone. Well, i it’s very much so. I think in fact, arguably the packaging of the book is almost bigger than the book itself, because because otherwise, you know, people, people will come and go, there’ll be people that enjoy it, there’ll be people that don’t enjoy it. So you need to be able to reach a broad perspective. And and we’ve got a good team here that’s uh that went out and and and found the right people uh to to help launch the book.
Um and it was it was a little bit of an investment, but but they did pristinely did a magnificent job in in in launching launching her book. Um and uh and and so it was worth it from that standpoint. And it became clear to me that was part of the, you know, part of learning about the book is it’s not necessarily about how good the book is, it’s about how well does it get launched, which is kind of frightening. I have to, are you proud of what you created? I am? I am, it’s um I will say to any budding authors be aware, because there is that there is that moment of, oh my gosh, I should have said this or I should have added that, can I redo it. Whereas I just had to say, okay, that’s it, you know, cut it, it’s gone because it could have gone on and on and on because I would have found something else and there’s there’s some things that I would do differently, save it for the second edition or third edition or fourth edition if you forgot something.
So well, it leads us nicely onto your writing process. So, have you got anything to share there? Well, I set myself um crazy, crazy set of goals for writing this. So I wrote a chapter a week and I actually managed to stick to that. Although I think I managed. There was one where uh I didn’t send it out until the Wednesday, but I meant more or less, I stuck to it and it was a matter of sticking to it. Um and finding the right time to write that works for your, for your own thinking. Rhythm is is something that I learned along the way as well. I always thought I was bright and fresher in the morning. But actually I found I was writing until two and three in the morning. Um because I would find that writing at the end of the day actually worked better for me than than writing in the morning. There’s too many things looking at, you know, stare at the window, it’s much better to do it in darkness, you don’t get distracted and and those sort of things and and get yourself a coach.
I had tremendous coach, Suzanna de boer, who who kinda helped me along the way and um and sort of said, hey that doesn’t make sense, which comes up quite often every now and again in those early drafts and and this makes sense. She actually convinced me to write an additional chapter that I hadn’t planned on. Um that where I where I talk about the difference between strategic, operational and tactical, because we talk about strategic and tactical all the time, but we forget operational level and understanding how do you take the strategy and operationalize it and then provide the direction from the operational into the tactical to get it done so and that’s part of my military background, but uh that sort of found its way into the, into the book surprisingly because as I said, it wasn’t where I planned or something that I planned on initially, but the germination was there. So having the coach helps too, have you got a favorite part of the book at all?
Uh favorite part? Oh, that’s a great, that’s a great question. Um I think where I talk about the tools for for leaders and the tools for managers. So the last two chapters are a set of management tools in the set of leadership tools and um and that’s where I got into some of the topics that are important to me personally. Um, like so in the leader, you know, one of the examples in the leadership side is leader self care. In my spare time, I’m a vice chair of a post traumatic stress disorder charity here in Canada. Um, and, and so I’ve become become cognizant of the, the impact of, of stress on individuals and stress on leaders in particular. And so we need to be, we need to be healthy in mind and healthy body, uh, in order to be truly effective leaders. So, leader self care is an important one.
And, and I don’t think, I think we’re talking more about it, but, but it is, it is absolutely critical and it’s something that I learned in military because if you’re not, if you’re not on your game, there can be disastrous results. Um, just as you know, when you’re physically healthy, you can withstand the shocks of stress on the management side. The whole notion of communications, I am surprised how communications has fallen apart in organizations. Um, and it’s, you know, whether it’s, you know, I I argue that part of it is the mistake of, of getting rid of the memo because it took your time to take the memo and then it had to be sent over. Whereas now I can text you, I can email you and, and I don’t have to worry about what I’m doing. I just sort of floating things at you. And uh, and so, you know, that’s just a simple case of it, but, but it’s really becoming problematic.
I know, you know, I I I’m often wondering, oh, why isn’t my client getting back to me? But I realized that they’re dealing with upwards of 405 100 emails a day and just triaging that it is impossible for them. So we have to get better at how we communicate. We have to create the rhythm where we communicate. So how does that actually work? And and when do we have meetings? And when do we not have meetings? Especially now that people are working from home, Covid has taught us Magnificence of this type of technology, but it only goes so far and you know, you have to jump from one meeting to the next meeting to the next meeting. There’s no time to breathe in all of that. And that has a direct impact on our effectiveness as as managers because we’re just jumping from meeting to meeting to meeting. I saw and I was playing this to what my ceo clients the other day and just watching when his team came together how they were all focused in the room because they were on the room, but when they’re online, they’re doing others, so they’re not focused.
So this, this technology has been great. I don’t know what we would have done had Covid been 10 years earlier because we wouldn’t have had this technology and businesses would have had to figure out bring back passenger pigeons or whatever to be able to communicate. But but it’s now it’s just where we’re inundated with communication and we need to get an interesting concept because it is about the ability to communicate with each other has, I mean there’s so many different ways you can do it, but it almost has meant that the quality of that communication has gone down. It’s a really interesting, really interesting to think about what you wish people take away from it. Is there anything that that comes to mind for you there? Well, I I think, I mean there there are lessons while whilst I wrote the book focused on managers of managers and leaders of leaders, um others there there are lots of there are lots of pieces, bits and pieces um that’s not suggest that their shattered fragments or anything.
But there there are lots of things there for just, you know, a newly minted manager or someone who’s someone who’s going into a management role um or a leadership role for the first time. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of pieces there and I would really hope that people take away that this is that this is a profession managerial leadership. So we have we have a profession of uh you know in mathematics and you know, we have a profession in um in human resources and all of these other professions, we don’t have a profession of the most common thing in all organizations and that is managerial leadership. We don’t see it as a profession. We see our technique back to when I started beginning with, we see our technical expertise as our profession. You don’t see that the care and feeding or the care and concern of the people that work for us is actually the most important, not only from the standpoint of the business, but for society in general, in fact, we just leave it to them.
It’s their sense of responsibility, right? It’s back over to them. So, so really taking this job seriously, managerial leadership would go so far in our society today and that we really need to, we really need to get good at it and recognize that it’s a journey, it’s not a one and done. It’s it’s a journey I open the book by referring to, as I have done with many of my clients. I refer them to the odyssey by homer. It is, it is that it is that quintessential human journey and that you learn along the way and being able to reflect and think about that and understand that and what have I learned? What did I learn today? I mean, just in this, in this podcast alone thomas you get all sorts of already for me to reflect on and think about because these are some great questions. Well, I’ve certainly taken away that perhaps the memo should be reintroduced because it went away and I didn’t even realize it.
So, but thank you for getting all your ideas down into, into a format which is beneficial to other people. Do you have any goals for the book at all? Um Well, I just, I hope it I hope it spurs on people to a dialogue around in their organizations, around managerial leadership and how good are we on it and how important is it for us? There was there was a burst of energy into leadership with, with Covid and with the pandemic. Um and but I don’t think it’s, I don’t think it’s gonna last long. I think we’ll get back to our old ways. And so it’s it’s about it’s about really having the conversations in our organization. Are we doing these things? We really, really focused there and getting those managers of managers and leaders of leaders to really start thinking about how well am I leading my people? How well am I leading these leaders to be great leaders for the organization? Or am I just getting through the day?
And I asked you about beforehand, there is a question I asked near the end of every episode, what does success mean to you? Well, success means to me well, as success means to me fulfillment. And so because I think often we talk, we talk about success is a as a, you know, as a, as a thing, it’s about winning something or getting somewhere. Um but success has to be about fulfillment and for me it’s very important, fulfillment is absolutely critical. Um and so that success, that fulfillment for me would be to would to be to raise a generation of people that really do care about other people and and lead in the best way possible to manage those organizations to create these great places to work and also deliver the strategy and that’s what our world needs right now.
So that’s a lofty. Yeah, that’s a lofty sense of fulfillment. I’m not sure whether I’m going to get there, but but that’s the intent. The typical question I asked after that is based on that criteria. Would you say that you’re a successful individual? Yeah. Well, um I know um I would say that I’m feeling more and more fulfilled as time goes on and with every interaction I have with our clients, I feel more and more fulfilled every day. Um You know, there are good days and their bad days, obviously we all have them, but on the, you know, if it’s a ledger, it’s more on the, on the, on the plus the negative side, so it’s but it too has a journey. So, so I’m going well, congratulations again, is there anything that I should have asked you about today. No, they, there were some some brilliant questions there that so thank you, I think we certainly had a good, a good exploration and then I could just wave the book up at this point, a good exploration in the book, so that was, it was tremendous.
Alright, good. Well thank you for the answers for people who do want to buy the book or to connect with you where do they go? Amazon is carrying it, amazon.com, amazon.ca, amazon.uk and it’s available there. It’s I think there comes a tipping point where it sells really well online and then you get into bookstores and I think how this, how the system works. I’m learning as I said, so certainly available through that. And then we have a website for the book which is managerialleadershipjourney.com as well as Forrest and Co, which is our business forrestandco.com, so forrestandcompany.com is our own business, so I’m available there and feel free and people to reach out and and engage in the dialogue of your journey, be magnificent.
Thank you for creating the book and for your contribution. Julian, thank you very much. Well thank you very much Thomas for having me on the show.