1224: Leaders ADAPT: Break Self-Limiting Beliefs in Leadership and Master Self-Awareness with CEO and Co-Founder Andreas Pettersson

Robert Plank 0:04 Music. We're here back on the podcast. Andreas Peterson is here from leaders adapt.com and Andreas is an accomplished executive leader. He has over 16 years of international experience in the technology sector, but he has transitioned from the corporate world to coaching, or also coaching and mentoring leaders, as the founder and CEO of leaders adapt where he helps fearless leaders and entrepreneurs navigate the journey from seven to eight figures while staying true to themselves. We all need help with the sort of thing, right, with the the ever evolving identity crisis and becoming a better person, getting to your inner self while also making money, helping others, growing a company, having happiness, fulfillment, success. It's a tall order, but Andreas is here to help you. So Andreas, we introduced you with your bio a little a little bit hype people up, but what did I leave out? What is your current focus and passion? What should we know about you just right off the bat?

Andreas Pettersson 1:05 So first of all, I want to hire you to be my person that introduced me for everything. Think about having you walking into a meeting, and you hyped me up that way. So I like that. I'll be your MC Yes, I think you captured most of it. Sometimes also introduced myself as the software engineer that became went over to the dark side and focused more on business leadership and strategy. But I don't want to pigeon hole myself too much as an engineer. So thank you so much for having me, Robert.

Robert Plank 1:36 You're very welcome. And you know what you just mentioned there? Of kind of like getting to that next leadership level. I came across this idea when I was like, 1819, like, I don't know about you, but you get into computers software, you have a lot of fun being the script kitty, being the code monkey, making the software. And that's good if you're a young buck. But then they say, you know, once, once you're in a corporate job, or you build a business, eventually you have to grow up. Have to rise above it. You have to architect, abstract, do the leadership stuff. And so did that kind of similar journey happen for you? Or did you think about that like just the the evolution from you start off as a grunt doing the work, but then eventually you have to delegate others to do the work.

Andreas Pettersson 2:22 Very good way of putting it. So I would say that. So first of all, both a bachelor and a master degree in software engineering, I worked for maybe three to six months before someone said, You need to lead a team of other people doing this. And the main reason was that while I took my software degrees, I worked as a waiter. And what is a waiter really good at managing crisis and really understand what the customers want and giving them a good customer experience. So after working for just a few months, and we were having some issues with a specific, large customer. I don't want to say their names. It's many years ago, but still a very large customer, and we were in a meeting with them, and the customer kept complaining about things we were doing, and I was just brought in as a because it just happened to be in the area of the code where I had been working. I managed to handle that customer interaction so well that the person that I was reporting to basically pulled me out directly after it's like, okay, you can't sit here and code anymore. I need to put you into product management. So that's how my journey started. And then I had a career where I grew it very fast. I went from the bottom to the top of the pyramid fairly fast. The main there were three reasons. I didn't give an F about politics and everyone else we're doing politics, I always focused on, how do we add value to the customers? And third is radical candor. I always said what I was thinking. And a lot of other people, they were constantly never they weren't speaking the truth, or they were only telling things that was better for them, instead of just the brutal, honestly, honest truth,

Robert Plank 4:04 I love it. Well, you've given us a lot to think about here as especially with the like the leadership and the emotional intelligence of it all. And basically, it seems like, in your story, you're you're so good that they can't ignore you. And it's like, it's interesting to think about, because it's like, well, you want to, like, be a good person, do the right thing, come up with solutions. And then it seems like there's almost like three tiers, right? There's like the bottom tier, where you're, like, unaware of all the socialness happening around you, right? And you just say, I'm always losing in any kind of an argument, fight, interaction, people are running circles around me. And then there's the middle tier, or maybe, like, you're playing their game, you're just as nasty as them. And then there's like, what you figured out, which is, like, how to how to run circles around them. And so, like, were there any missteps along the way? Because it's like, I feel like, you know, none of us are perfect, right? But especially the past like, two years or so. But. This has been on my mind on a daily basis when people talk about, like, leadership and stuff like that. I always would hear all these keywords, and they seem meaningless to me. But then after a while, somehow it clicked just this idea of like, hey, if some, like you said, if some customer is, like, having an attitude, like, don't meet them there, just like, figure out a solution, or figure out how to handle them. And maybe once you get more mature than yours, you've come up with, you've seen enough of the use cases to then say, Hey, I've seen this is problem number four. I'll apply strategy number seven. So how do you like, I guess, in a way like win the game, and the way that everybody wins, without playing their game, without resorting to their tactics. I mean, it seems like a tall order.

Andreas Pettersson 5:42 My number one advice to everyone out there who really don't like politics, calm your emotion. Be direct, be open. And then, always, as soon as you get the emotional trigger, someone is attacking you and you feel like I want to punch back. You always think, what if the opposite is true? And try to put yourself in their shoes. Why are they choosing to react the way they do? If you stop thinking about who you are and why you're reacting the way you are, and you focus on them, first, you usually find a solution forward, then you get known for the person who always keep your calm, who always speaks the truth, who is always direct, and guess what? Executive C levels, that's the number one thing. Because, like you said, on a director level, it's all about learning to lead other or basically, I'll reproxit the steps, but basically director level, you're learning to lead a team. Vice president level, you're learning to lead other leaders, but you have to sometimes play the political game sea level. You don't have to play the political game anymore. It is what it is, radical candor, directness, but you have to start getting in control of your own emotional state at a C level, because a sea level that loses their shit in front of people will never be respected.

Robert Plank 7:04 And when you see that happening in any kind of situation, right? You see like someone who runs a company who's immature, or like you mentioned, like politics in a general sense, but like an actual, like government politician, when someone in power doesn't have a handle on their emotions, you think like, I don't know, should they really be given that responsibility, right? If you can't handle your emotions, fine, but don't be in charge of others where you can do some kind of damage. And so it's reassuring when it's like, okay, this person knows what they're doing, but they're also in control of themselves. It's like when you can't even manage yourself, how can you be managed to what can be managed to deal with other people. And so this idea that you mentioned here, like, people pay lip service to empathy, but that technique you mentioned, I only heard it put that way, like, very recently. Like, if you're doing a negotiation and you're like, hey, I want this and I want this in response, we'll reverse it and say, like, what if they asked you that of you and you were to respond? And then, and it starts to hurt your brain, because then you say, like, Okay, what if the opposite issue? And, like, if you flip it, I guess it makes you see those different perspectives. And in this, like, in this evolution of kind of being a calmer person who has empathy, I've always been impressed, and I've tried to role model people who can really let things go right? Like you're dealing with someone else, and they like, they freak out, or they're they say something you don't like, and sometimes things can kind of stick, or they're hard to let go. And have you struggled with that? Or do you have any techniques on the sorting of it right? Because sometimes there's things that are said that are just not helpful, irrelevant, but then you don't want to like, let everything go, because maybe if they said something good that will help solve their problem, like I want to latch onto that. So do these thoughts come in your mind as far as sorting the helpful and the unhelpful? Yeah,

Andreas Pettersson 8:49 so I'll answer first, I would just want to make a comment on the other thing you said, and then I'll answer your question. I think it's extremely important whenever you sit in a situation and you feel your emotions starting to be triggered. Think of it like this. Everything is actually a negotiation. Every interaction in a company is more or less a negotiation on responsibility and authority and who ends up doing the work versus who gets to say to who does the work. So your brain naturally react that way. And I just want to say one more thing there, that is your brain. Your ultimate role of your brain is survival, right? So all the nerve impulses will first go through your body, into your mind and will cross the part of your brain that is related to an emotional response, because it's fight or flight. By thinking, what if the opposite is true? You kind of bypass that part of the brain to the frontal cortex, and now you have to think logically and put yourself in someone else's shoes. And just by saying those words as a mantra, you actually calm yourself down what you were saying. What was the question? Again? The second question was, uh. Oh, what I do to let go of grudges or let's go of bad situations. So first of all, one of the things I always teach people when I'm working with them is listen for the positive. You need to rewire your brain to listen for the positives and the confirmations. Every time someone gives you feedback, I ask them to write it down on a post it note, and then every single morning, they read all the positive things that were said about them, and in the end of the day, they reflect on how that played a part of their day. That is a great way to get the brain to start noticing the positive things instead of the negatives. Now, in the negatives, I believe everything is relative, so I play a game if someone really hurt my feelings. It actually happened earlier this week. Someone actually hurt my feelings and at the same time, and we can go into a very sad topic here, but a friend of mine died recently, and but I've experienced death prior in my life as well. What I'm trying to say is I always put it relative to that so sometimes, and it sounds stupid. I if something bad happens, what is it relative to what I'm actually have gone through previously in my life, and I almost tried to quantify it and put a number on it, and by just doing that exercise for two seconds, my brain usually goes, You're being ridiculous. Why are you choosing to feel the way you are for this situation relative to what actually is happening in your life right now or happened in the past, and as soon as you again, you convert it into an emotional part to the logical part. Now you're in control of the emotion. You're not in control of it, unless you try to make it a logical thinking.

Robert Plank 11:35 I think you're on some kind of life changing philosophy. I feel like you need to create a TED talk about some of this. So I love what you said here, and especially after this podcast, I need to go out to the store and buy some of those bright colored post it notes. I love how they're bright color, just to override, yeah. Oh, and you have multiple colors. I mean, now you're speaking my language, things like,

Andreas Pettersson 11:55 I capture my positives, obviously, on the green ones, oh, on the green ones. And I have add one for different businesses and different things I do. And I you should I look like internal sunshine of a Spotless Mind here craziness. But I have post its everywhere but the power of capturing the positive things Robert and then tell it, reading them out loud every single morning you stop hearing the negatives. The negatives just fade away. The other thing I would obviously say to every leader out there, sleep on it. Never do things in anger. As soon as you have an emotion, think, Why am I feeling the way I do? I'm also big on I love stoicism as a philosophy. There is a great book written called how to think like a Roman emperor that one really helps mindset for a lot of executives, because, again, everything is relative, and everything is how you train your brain. But yeah, go get post its. Post its can be used for anything. They can also be used for covering meetings you don't want to see on your calendar. You just stick them on

Robert Plank 12:59 the screen. Yeah, and that's a choice that your logical mind makes. So you think about there's always this, the war happening in your mind, right? There's the logic and the emotion. And if you're a caveman living in 6000 BC, emotions are most of your life. Emotions drive everything, because you should be afraid of the tiger. But if you're the Roman Empire emperor, and you have to, like, run this tier of management, and that tier of management requires a lot of abstract thinking. And if you apply too much emotion to, like, a complex problem, then bad things will happen. And so it seems like we need to override the emotion and let the logic kind of take the driver's seat. Emotions can be useful, but so many times, like it's running outdated software, and they backfire on us. And so I love just kind of the the attempts at organizing the messy, and I think that might transition us into another cool subject. You said that you're a dad of an autistic son. We're both in the autistic son club. I have a four year old. He's non speaking, but it's, I'm always, like, thinking, like, Okay, what is he like? What does he respond to? And then what do we really need to, like, work on a lot, like the speech therapy. And so I'm really curious, like, what is your situation like? What do you have to say about your autistic child and what you learn from him? So

Andreas Pettersson 14:17 I'm gonna use the bridge here on the emotional regulation. And by the way, if I it's you can blow up and be mad if you want to end of the day, I reflect on all my emotions. I went through food today, but you have to be able to show up as an executive for meeting after meeting after meeting, always coming in with a fresh mind, positive attitude. To my autistic son, he has been the best leadership mentor, coach I could ever wish for. He was diagnosed when he was three. He is today 10. He has gone from the most restrictive not speaking or he was saying a few words, but it's like really hard to communicate a lot of anger problems too. Today he. In a general education with a one on one aid, he's keeping up logically. And what I have to say to any parents you, including Robert, there's hope, like just keep working on it. And think whenever you're having bad days and you are struggling, just think one day they might not be there, they might not live with you, and you get to experience all these things, and then always look for like, what? What can I learn from this situation when my son was self injuring a little bit when he was younger? What can I learn from this? And how can we be go from reactive to proactive, for example? So what I have learned in any situation now is, instead of letting things escalate, like, look for the small signs and then de escalate as quickly as possible, I do it in the workforce. I do it with friends. I do it in any situation, or if I don't want to de escalate it, what are the consequences if I choose to accelerate a certain behavior? Because a big thing on with, for example, ABA for autistic children, therapy is that you have to trigger them in order for them, to teach them the coping mechanisms to find an other outcome in their pattern.

Robert Plank 16:12 That is huge. That is powerful. I love this branching paths idea and just the gratitude rearing its head again, right? These ideas of what do I get to do, and how can I learn from this? And then built into that is what's good about this, and how can I appreciate the finite time in the situation or with this person? Because once it's gone, it's gone, and I'll miss in the future. I'll miss the present. I'll miss what the good old days used to be like. And so, man, some profound ideas here. You told us about business and about life. And right before we recorded, you told me this interesting idea about when you coach leaders of all kinds, and when they they say, well, here's my identity or here's my problem, you kind of can run and and run around that and say, Well, hey, you think this and you're coming from this position, but it's really from the outside perspective. It's different. And so can you help us understand that? Like, how does it work? As far as the magic you work on people,

Andreas Pettersson 17:13 if people knew the answer to the problem they were having, they wouldn't need an advice, or a coach, a mentor, or they just know the answer, and they don't have the guts to actually make the right decision to move forward. But I will repeat like every time someone comes to me, they say, I have an issue with my product, or I have this one department, it's not working, and or I have this partner, and I think they need leadership training. Do you do training for other people? And it's almost every single time, almost every single time, what they have identified to be the problem is just the symptom, not the root cause. I often have to work with the person I'm working with, or I have to work with them for at least two to six weeks of them truly understanding why they're feeling, perceiving a certain situation, why they choose to do certain decisions and certain outcomes. First, when we have done that, then we look at action and like, what do, what changes needs to be happening right now, then they make the actions with the awareness of themselves, not just, let's just make changes, because then they're going to put up the same problem again and again and again. So I'm very focused on what's the root cause. When we figure that out, we figured out who they are, then we make the changes. And so many times, clients go, oh, it's like the fog lift that I finally understood, or I'm hyper aware now what's going on in my business, or I should have fired this person 10 years ago for like, these are the type of comments I hear on a weekly basis, and I don't have all the answers. When I was a CEO and I worked for I report all the way up to the top of the top guy at Canon before we merged the company. And I can tell you this, the amount of leadership training I've been getting over the years. I have had business coaches, leadership psychologists, just strategy mentors, mindset mentors, and I can tell you, I did not find all the answers myself. The number one thing that will define if you're a successful entrepreneur or a successful executives is your level of curiosity. If you're not open to change, if you say you are who you are, you can just as well give up. If you're curious of understanding yourself and curious of truly solving the problem, then you should go seek help from someone else that have already done it, that have already built companies and scaled it. But I would also say the opposite. There are so many coaches and mentors out there that just suck. They're amazing at sales and marketing, but they have never walked the walk themselves. They have never been. CEO they should not be telling CEOs what to do.

Robert Plank 20:05 Okay, well, this is good life advice. And I just we're living in this information age, right, where, like, anything can be Googled. You can ask the AI all kinds of questions and but that only gets you so far, doesn't it? Like, it's good to be when you think about curiosity, it's like, well, it's good to research, it's good to read, but then at a certain point you need these relationships, you need these coaches and mentors to be running a different program than we ourselves are running, right? You said that, well, you have your own way of thinking, and that's gotten you these outputs. But it's like using the chat GPT from five years ago versus the modern day one, right? It's like some like you're stuck, because you can only get so far. So you need your support system, you need your team, and as far as where you come in and the people you help, how does someone know if they're a good fit for you and your amazing ideas and techniques? How do they know if they're a fit and if they are. What kind of action should they take?

Andreas Pettersson 21:03 I in? So they should go to my website, leaders, adapt.com or they should go follow me on Instagram or another social media, reach out DME directly. I have a waiting list right now because I took on too many clients and I couldn't give the right service that I wanted to give. So I scaled it back a little bit with that. Said, coming in here to February, I have a few people that are graduating from the four to six months. I work with them. They should start a conversation. I will do a first long discussion with people. Usually take an hour, an hour and a half, because I want to make sure there's a culture fit both ways. If you can't handle brutal, direct honesty, or just my perception of things, you don't want to work with me. I don't sugar coat shit. It is what it is. Take it or leave it. If you can't handle it, I can't work with you if I get someone who doesn't take action on the things we talk about, if you if you can't basically deliver on the commitment you make to yourself, don't waste my time. But then what I do is I usually fly out and I sit a full day with someone, and then I make up the choice if I'm going to work with them or not. Now, with that said, I do start the engagement prior to that from a financial perspective, but I say I give you your money back if I feel like I can't work with you, life is long if you know how to use it. And so many people choose to walk around saying Life is short, and I think I don't want to be one of those people, life is long if you know how to use it. So I'm very selective of who I work with. But yeah, reach out on social media with that said, Robert, I do want to say one thing, I get a lot. I charge a premium for what I do, because I know I get you the results. With that said, I want to help people. I really want to help people. So for the last few months, I started taking some of the practices I'm doing, and I'm just dropping them for free. I've usually put the link on my Instagram. So when you were talking about chat GPT, I've actually been using how you can learn more about your leadership profile using chat G, P, T, and I created this 12 steps to finding your north star document. Again, you can get it free of off my Instagram. In there, I'm like, go take these personality assessments, upload them to these AI tools prompt them the following way, describe your problem, describe your core values, and it will most likely spit out something that is pretty good for you, so that you can start working with right away, without working with me, basically. And I've seen a lot of people download that one, and my my my pledge is like, I want to keep releasing free things, because my mission is to help 10,000 entrepreneurs before I stop doing this. And I won't get to 10,000 if I only do one on one coaching. So then and then, I didn't have the energy to do group coaching at this point, so I'm just like, Here, take these use these methods and these tools instead.

Robert Plank 24:02 I love it while you're definitely on an amazing path, a trajectory, and you always think about that business model of saying, Well, here's the the service I want to provide, and I'm, you know, get on podcasts and you say, here's who I can help. But it's maybe, like, probably let less than 1% of the listenership. And so how do you help the other 99 plus percent with some kind of lead magnet. And what do you do? Well, do I make a boring PDF or a checklist, like, that's five years ago stuff. And so this, this is amazing. You say, Here's how to guide chat, G, P, T, do this personality test. Get me the the real solution. And because, like, the little times I've done that when I'm I gave it like a ton of my writing. And like, Give me 25 attributes about my writing. It's kind of fun right to learn about yourself and say, Hey, I didn't even see myself that way. Is that how others see me? Well, maybe. And so do I like that? Do I do more of that? Do I kind of change my appearance? Do I get that dreaded word alignment? And so that can help us to do that. And so. You said that's on your Instagram Andreas the CEO to get that freebie correct,

Andreas Pettersson 25:05 and you can just click it. I do ask for emails. I won't spam you, but it's actually I've been collecting emails for a year, and I haven't seen it send an email once. Oh no, but I'm collecting it for the I haven't had the need to, but I'm collecting it for the future. Over time, I want to do more things that reach a larger audience. I'm just really enjoying myself right now, and I don't see the need for it. But with that said, I also don't want it to just flow around, fly around, everywhere. And I also have, like, lead magnets, where I have a store where I put a ton of guides and other things, but everything is free, like I don't want to, I don't want to have people pay for the basics. Most leaders stuff are what I call insecure over achievers, and they don't have imposter syndrome. They're just insecure in their execution ability. But they're still overachievers, so they burn so hard, and I've been trying to help that specific avatar and Persona people that know they can do better, but they need to understand who they truly are in any leadership position. And that's sort of who I've been writing to when I've been doing a lot of these different things. And some of the writings is literally how I coach people or advise people the first two to six weeks, and I just started putting it into documents and giving it out. And I've had several people reach out and asking me, like, can you make a version two of this? How do I expand this specific step? It's coming. I haven't had time to do it yet. It's coming so and then the the other thing I'm trying to do to sort of give back, I'm kind of announcing it here. Now I haven't even done any marketing on anything on this, the people reach out and say, How do I find a mentor? How do I find a mentee? And I'm trying to figure out if I can do some free match making community where I don't coach and mentor people, but I can find other leaders who want to give back, and hopefully we can find ambitious people that they can work with free of charge, or if they want to charge like fine, but my idea is to match people for free, because then I also think I can help a lot more people with limited efforts.

Robert Plank 27:18 And I imagine that might tickle your software tendencies right, because now you're getting back to the UI and the algorithm with the matching, and that can be a lot of fun. And so I always have massive respect for someone who can be on a podcast and iterate with their ideas and allow them to get beat up. And I think you're definitely onto something. When you have people asking you to improve your own lead magnet, even someone looking at your lead magnet is an accomplishment. And so you have a lot of amazing things going on. Andreas, the CEO on social media, especially Instagram, you said, leaders adapt.com. I feel like I have to go back and re listen to our recording like two or three times, and run it through chat GBT and get it, get summarized, things like that, because you dropped a lot of great knowledge bombs. But it's the point of this show. The very end Andre that I'm here to stump you, put you on the spot a little bit before we say goodbye, I like to ask my guests around this time about a fun or interesting or helpful quote or lesson that has assisted them in life and business that they want to pass on to us. So what comes to mind, as far as a quote or lesson to pass on to us?

Andreas Pettersson 28:31 The brain dies twice. The first time is when you say you are who you are and you're not curious anymore and you're not willing to change. The second time is when your heart stops beating. The most happy people try to time those two in the same second. I love it. Very good. So make the most of your life, right? And don't give up too soon. Accomplish amazing things, and don't go it alone. So with the help of yourself or other coaches, because there's plenty of fish in the sea. Ask for help if you need it. Don't get stuck. Don't get trapped in your own thinking. Avoid the self sabotage, self limiting, negative self talk. We don't want that. We want to encourage ourselves, be kind to ourselves, help others, be great leaders. And the very next step, after listening this to this conversation, and do that step one, go on your favorite social platform of choice and type in the search box, A N, D, R, E, A, S, T, H, E, C, E, O.com, Andreas, the CEO especially Instagram, add him. Find that lead magnet, find that freebie, and then go to leaders adapt.com it's a beautiful website, amazing branding and colors. I think even the colors like match your background behind you in some way, and you'll learn a lot. There's a lot of great content, and Andreas has a lot of a lot of business and life figured out we're all learning, but he's definitely someone that you can and should learn from. Leaders adapt.com Andreas, wonderful speaking with you today. Thank you so much for having me.

Robert Plank 30:07 You wish you had a podcast just like this one. Do you wish you did more with your podcast, like getting more traffic, being active on social media, getting more guests, better guests, or you being a guest on other podcasts, or maybe you just want your podcast to stay the same, but you don't want the time commitment you currently put into your podcast. If any or all of that sounds great to you, go right now to dfy podcast.com/free to claim your 12 podcast boosters. You. Transcribed by https://otter.ai