Dr. Reza Abraham: McKinsey to Coach, Managers vs. Leaders & Likeable Decisions - E201

· Purpose,Southeast Asia,Malaysia,Popular,Podcast Episodes English

Coaching often is really suitable when the person has reached a certain level of competency. It means that they are very good at what they are doing. Your job when you are going in to help that person is more of you having a torchlight. One the best analogy that I can put is that there is a dark room. The person has all the keys and resources in the room. He knows what to do with his company, with his life and all you do is just have this torchlight and help them to find that key. That's it. The way that coach often help the coachee, whether it's life coaching, professional coaching, personal coaching or even a performance coaching is by asking great questions which would trigger their own thinking so that they can actually go back, think about it and come up with a solution.- Dr. Reza Abraham

Dr. Reza Abraham is a Persian author, speaker, ultra-high-performance coach, and the founder of InControl Group. He spent the past 20 years studying and working with individuals from different fields and stages of life and concluded that the system to a successful life is the ability to be in control. This results in the launch of his first book entitled INCONTROL. His distinctive ideas on personal growth and leadership has garnered him invitations to coach organizations such as AIA, Boehringer Ingelheim, Dell, DHL, Honda, KPMG, L'Oreal, Maybank, Shell, McDonald's and many others.

Jeremy Au: (00:30)
Hi Dr Reza Abraham. Pleasure to have you all the way from Malaysia to share about coaching and what you see in high performance teams and organisations.
For those who don't know yet, could you introduce yourself?
 

Dr Reza Abraham: (00:41)
Hi Jeremy. Thanks for having me. You can just call me Reza. I'm actually born and raised in Iran. I started my journey as an industrial engineer and then later on, of course, I took my MBA and Ph.D. and been in consulting, coaching and training business my whole adult life. Earlier in my career I was of course very focused on building system and technology, but then later on, I realised that most of the times the technology and system fail was because of the people who are involved in that.
And that really grabbed my attention and brought me through a journey of really understanding what does it take for two individuals in a same organization, one of them is happier, healthier, wealthier, performing or outperforming themselves and another one is always struggling, blaming, nagging and so on. That really grabbed my attention to understand and the whole journey has been amazing to work with a lot of top leaders, athletes, ultrahigh performers, individuals in different industries and the rest is history. 20 years forward and here we are, with you.
 

Jeremy Au: (01:51)
Amazing. Before we talk about the 20 years back when you started out like many folks as a consultant at McKinsey, you have to tell us a little bit on how did you end up choosing to be a consultant and what did you learn there?
 

Dr Reza Abraham: (02:05)
Sure. Consulting basically wasn't something that I was very familiar with. The reason I got involved into consulting business was because during university time, we had some of our lecturers who were involved in a consulting business, meaning that they were full time lecturers but they also do a lot of consulting job with different organisations.
That really grabbed my attention and it was very interesting because the life of a consultant was always about travelling, meeting new customers, new clients and different industries. That really caught my attention and I was very passionate about travelling at that age. I mean travelling, part of it at that age and then later on of course. Now 20 years forward, travelling has already been removed.
We are not really getting excited every time you have to travel and of course, the family comes first. What I personally can say about consulting all the way until today is the flexibility and variety of the projects and people that you get involved with. Compared to when you are working in one organisation and all you see is everything within that group of people and often, you are only involved with the internal stakeholders.

I love that part of it, like meeting people, different customers, different problems, different opportunities and applying different strategies. How amazing it is that the strategy that works in one organisation doesn't work in another company and it's just amazing how people perceive things and how you need to twist it in order to make it workable in different places.
 

Jeremy Au: (03:46)
I'm also very appreciative for my early start and career at Bain. What’s interesting is that you chose to become a coach which is relatively rare right after McKinsey. A lot of people at McKinsey are consulting. They go into banking, private equity, operator roles or even being a founder. Yet, you chose to work on human coaching and performance improvement. How did you come to that understanding? Was it in you all along or was this something you discovered at McKinsey? How did you come about and say, I want to be a coach?
 

Dr Reza Abraham: (04:18)
The journey for me was a little bit different because I was always involved in people and change. That was one of the main areas that I got really interested. I wanted to understand what does it take to change people? It’s very interesting that at first when you are joining the training and coaching side of the consulting job because for any consultancy project, at the end of the day, there’s always a lot of resistance especially when it comes to the implementation part of it. It's as if you want to have a kidney transplant.
When you want to bring the new kidney inside, the doctors will try to reduce the immunity system of the whole body so that they can put the new kidney inside. They allow the new kidney to basically take over the job that it has and then they will let the immunity system go back up.
This process, when we are talking about the body, it's very straightforward. Science has already discovered that but when it comes to the human being, this thing is way more complicated. That's why, with Japanese people, they often say five people, five colours. People are very different. Sometimes the person that you are talking to in the meeting in front of you, they are okay with it but then they walk out of the meeting room and they just say, it’s a stupid idea. It doesn't work. I don't know what these people are talking about. They don't understand our culture. They don't understand our people. That really grabbed my attention to understand why some people are not onboard. Why some people are so happy and they're willing to do stuff and some people, they don't want to do it. This question really triggered my attention to understand exactly. Okay, consultants often don't want to be involved a lot on the people's side. They leave it to the company. You deal with people. We just stand outside. We guide you through that process. I was very interested to understand how can I help them even better?
That brings me to the business of training and coaching. I had a lot of understanding in the beginning on how people learn. I thought this is the way to teach people and then everybody understood it. Then when I started to learn it in a very professional way and when I get involved in the training, mentoring, coaching and counselling to such an extent which when we tell people training, mentoring, coaching, often they think, oh, they are all the same but they are absolutely different and not the same.
They are not applying for the same person and often times people have a lot of confusion in that area. The love of working with people basically is something that brings me out of just like being involved with the technology or investment side and go move towards the people side of it.
 

Jeremy Au: (07:13)
That's really amazing because lots of people are interested in how people change and how humans grow. It’s just that coaching as a career is one way to do it. You could be a manager and still be interested in how people change, you could be a CEO or a founder to be interested. When you became a coach, what did you learn from the experience about the job itself?
Well, you stayed in it and I guess you must have liked it. How is a job as a coach perhaps different from how people conceive it to be? Perhaps, how was it different from how you initially thought being a coach would be like.
 

Dr Reza Abraham: (07:50)
Okay, cool. That's a good question. So first of all, let's define what the coach does. The general understanding of most people when we talk about the word coach, very often people associate it with a football coach or a badminton coach. That is a general understanding of most people.
You would be surprised to know that even sometimes at the C-suite level, they have the same understanding. It means that the coach will just come in and tell you what to do. That's it but the truth is, that's exactly what the coach does not do. You would be surprised to know that the term coach among the general public is used in the wrong aspect as well because let's say for example, you have no idea how to play badminton and then you go to the court. Somebody is there and people say, okay, that's your badminton coach.
Actually, that's not the coach, that's just a trainer. They become a coach when you are a professional badminton player. That's how the coach comes in, meaning that the role of the coach even in a normal day to day life and in sports is not really applied when you are in a very low level.
Coaching often is really suitable when the person has reached a certain level of competency. It means that they are very good at what they are doing. Your job when you are going in to help that person is more of you having a torchlight. One the best analogy that I can put is that there is a dark room. The person has all the keys and resources in the room. He knows what to do with his company, with his life and all you do is just have this torch light and help them to find that key. That's it. The way that coach often help the coachee, whether it's life coaching, professional coaching, personal coaching or even a performance coaching is by asking great questions which would trigger their own thinking so that they can actually go back, think about it and come up with a solution.
What we believe often as a coach is that there are three main mind-sets that we have when we are working with different individuals. The first one is that coaching, it's often focussed on the person’s strength. We don't coach people on their weaknesses, we coach them on their strengths and we focus on their strengths. Sometimes people say, then what would I do with my weaknesses?
Well, it's up to you. If you want to improve it, then we recommend them to go for training or they can read books. There are many ways that you can actually improve yourself but a coach does not help you in that area. A coach will take your strengths and train you to become better. That is something that most people have no idea about. The second mind-set that we believe in coaching is that coaches are often solution enabler, not solution provider.
We don't provide solution to people. Sometimes people ask, if you ever give any ideas or provide solutions to them. Well, we do in certain areas as a coach but that's not coaching anymore. For example, when I'm having a conversation with the C-suite and then the person asks, “Reza, I really want to know what's your opinion on this one? What do you think?” This is how the coach answers. The coach will say, “well, you know what, if you want to know my opinion and if I'm in that situation, this is what I would do but it may not work for you, so I want you to make a decision. What would you like to do?”. I don't want the coachee to come in the next session and say, “that's what you said. I just followed what you asked me to do”. That’s where all the problem starts, meaning that we don't want to get the blame and we want to empower them. We want them to be in control and to make a decision on what they want to do.
The last mind-set in coaching is that we always believe that people are very creative. It means that they can come up with a lot of solutions but often the problem is that either they are in a rush which means that they are in the midst of crisis. They can't really apply coaching practises because coaching is a very patient process. The second one is that sometimes they're just lazy and laziness by self is a world to discover together. Some of them are stubborn and some of them are ignorant. That by itself is a chapter in coaching world.

Jeremy Au: (12:25)
What's interesting is you're talking about how you try not to provide answers and you're listening to them to draw out their strengths and their own answers. That seems quite, if I may say, contrarian to how most people think about changing people. You change people by telling them what to do and you are saying that you can't change people by telling people what to do.
Why is there a misconception that you change people by being directive with the answers, solutions and then saying, “hey, that's your problem and this is the answer.”
 

Dr Reza Abraham: (12:55)
Sure. That itself is a very big question in the coaching world. Most people or most managers, I don't want to call them leaders. Every time I work with the people, I call them managers because I'm coming from that understanding that the organisations can call you a manager, but only your people will call you a leader.
You can’t call yourself a leader. It's a wrong word that a lot of people use in a wrong way. What is very important is that most managers often come to this understanding that they have been hired by the organisations and they have been paid to tell people what to do. That's what most people think.
They think that if I just tell the person what to do, the person will accept it and they change themselves but that's not how reality works. We know it doesn't work like that. Generally, we put people into two categories. The first category would be the ones who are ignorant. These individuals usually know what to do. They can do it but they just don't do it for some reason. We don't know why but they just don't do it. It means that they have not come to an understanding that I need to do certain things.
The second category would be the stubborn ones. These individuals also know what to do. They can do it but they won't even do it in the future. That is where all the problem begins because the higher you go in an organisation, your ego gets bigger and bigger. When your ego gets bigger, your stubbornness also gets bigger.
It means that it has shifted from ignorance towards stubbornness. Imagine this, much of our character has been shaped in the first 25 years of our life. You are who you are because of the first 25 years of your life. After the age of 25, changing people's character, especially character, not behaviour, requires a major reflection and a major realisation.
One specific individual that has done a massive study in this area goes by the name of Dr David Buss. He is one of the top ten psychologists on earth. He's also the founder of Evolutionary Psychology. He came to this understanding that when people crossed the age of 30, the character will almost never change.
It means that the only way for the person to change is when they go through a massive trauma or when they go through a major pain in their life. That's how they change. Let's assume we don't want people to go through that massive pain. We don't want them to go through that massive trauma. How can they change themselves? Do you think they would change when someone tells them to? They never change. The way for them to change is by taking a step back, thinking about it and reflecting on it. Only then would they be able to make a decision to change themselves. That requires a lot of time. That's why coaching itself is a developmental tool. It’s something that would require a lot of patience and it takes such a long time to really discover something.
Well, here's also another aspect of it that you have to understand about coaching. Often time we tell the leaders that coaching is something that is most suitable for people who are at least an average performer. Coaching is not really the best tool when it comes to low performers. It is really not the best strategy to coach someone who is a low performer.
Do you know why? You ask the person, “okay, you know what? I want you to think about this and I will see you in our next meeting”. The person then comes back to the next meeting and you ask them, “what do you think?”. They will say, “I have no idea”. The boss would then say, “you know, you don't understand. I want you to go back and think about it”. The person later comes back after two weeks and says, “I have no idea”. In that kind of situation, it means that either the boss needs to be very patient as a coach or they just have to switch their hats. They will have to become a manager and tell the person what needs to be done.
That's why we often say coaching is not applicable for everyone. Some people, are just not coachable. There is nothing wrong with the coaching but it is not the only tool. Sometimes, managers overuse the coaching approach. It means that they apply and use the coaching techniques on almost everybody. It doesn't work because not everybody is designed to be a coach. Some people would rather just receive the task and that's all it is. It’s the same concept that we often say not everybody is supposed to become a manager. Some people just want to remain as an individual contributor.
 

Jeremy Au: (17:59)
What's interesting is that you said folks should not necessarily coach all the time. Effectively, you are saying that you may choose to direct them and give them very direct instructions.
Instead of coaching people, you should tell them what to do? You should pay for managers at the end of the rope. They don’t think coaching is working. What are the alternatives? Is it termination or performance improvement plans? How would you recommend them to think about it?
 

Dr Reza Abraham: (18:26)
When you have already reached the end of your coaching with someone and since we are talking about the end of the rope, let's define what does the end of the rope look like? How do you know if someone is not coachable? When you receive these kind of messages from someone like I have coached before and then the person tells me at the end, “I am who I am. Take it or leave it. You don't want me, give me the letter”. That's the point that we understand. This person is not coachable. Now the manager need to make a decision. Am I going to live with this guy? If yes, at what cost? You have to make a decision on what do you want to do with this guy? Sometimes people would just decide and do nothing about that person. They will then say, “you know what? I'm just done with this guy. I don't want to talk to him” or sometimes they’ll just delay them, leave them like this or give them some super easy task.
At times, we advise managers that it's all right. You don't have to fix everybody. You have someone who has 2 years left to retire and we’ll advise them to just leave it as it is. You don't need to worry too much but what you can do is protect the rest of the team.
Here's the thing. Let's say we don't have that kind of situation. We have someone who still has about 10 - 15 years to go and I have already coached that individual. I have put a lot of effort but that individual basically does not change. What should I do? The key thing here is that the managers need to make a decision to not play in the grey area.
 

Dr Reza Abraham: (20:05)
You have to be extremely clear about what is right, what is wrong, what is black and what is white. Don't play in between. Here's how the conversation would look like. You just tell the person, “hey, you know what? I've been working with you and I try to coach you for the last six months, but unfortunately I see no area of improvement happening in the next six months. The things that I emphasise a lot has been happening about three times for the past one month”.
Specifically tell the person like why are you unhappy about this whole thing. “In my hand what I can see right now is two options. Option number one is for you to immediately improve in this area. I don't want to see you late and so on.”
“The second option would be to engage with the HR in the next one month and issue a letter asking to remove you from the organisations. What would you like to do?” It means that it's a very clear instruction that either you need to shape up or you have to ship out.
There is no in between. That is very important. That's what I often tell the managers as I have worked with a lot of them such as C minus one, C minus two, C minus three. I have worked with these people and sometimes they just tell me, “I would love to do what you ask me to do, but I just can't do it”.

I feel like I'm responsible for all these guys. Here's what I always tell them. Sometimes best help to give some people is to just not to help them because your most important job as a manager is to protect the key employees and the assets of an organisation. Not everybody is a human resource. Some of them are just like human being, that's all. They are just a resource in the organisation and our job as a leader often is to protect the best of the organisations.
Here's what we found. This is a study done by Boston Consulting Group. There is a very high percentage of people especially high performers and star players who leave organisations not because they don't love their job or not because they don't love their boss but because they see no action from the managers and there are no consequences for those people who are not carrying their own weight and that is very important.
The job of a leader is to be super precise, concise exactly what you want and offer two options, either shape up or ship out. That's it. Of course, in this kind of conversation, it depends on the country that your audience are coming from. My personal view is always to discuss with HR and understand the law very well.
Here is the most important part. There are two tips. Number one is to always have a black and white of the conversations you're having with your manager. Don't just have a verbal conversation, meaning that when HR comes to you and asks, “what was your conversation look like?” and you say, “oh, the other day we just had a coffee session together and I told him something along like this”. That has no value.
The second one is to work on a time frame. It means to inform the person that “I have one month with you. Today is the 13th of August. I'm going to give you until the 13th of September”. Based on my experience in both consulting and coaching, people often ship out.
It means they made a decision to get out of that situation. Most of the times that's the scenario. It means that rarely you will find people that will stick around, go through micromanagement and go through all the hassles. So they rather exit themselves. They will find a way out.
 

Jeremy Au: (24:01)
What’s interesting is, you said there are some managers but you hesitate to call them leaders. It seems you differentiate quite clearly between managers and leaders. Not all managers are leaders and perhaps not all leaders are managers. Could you share a little bit about what the difference is in your perspective?
 

Dr Reza Abraham: (24:20)
Sure. Let's look at the word the by itself. The word leadership was first used in Navy. If you look at the origin of the word leadership, it started off as lead the ship. If you focus on the word leader by itself, the origin of the word is defined as to go from point A to point B. It's often about travelling or moving from one point to another point. What the leaders often do is they help an individual, a team or an organisation to move from one point to another point. When it comes to individual, they help to surpass themselves.
The word management started from the word itself. It written as, manage me. That's the first definition. The second definition would be manage men. If you look at the root of the word manage, it means to handle, to control or to handle the status quo. It means that managers are often very good people to put things together, making sure nothing goes wrong but not necessary to bring a team or an organisation from one point to another point.

Leadership and management are both a style. Some people really help others. They empower people to become a better version of themselves. Managers often don't do that because that's not why the word management was designed in the first place. One of the key questions that any of your audience would want to understand is if their style leans more to leadership or management.

To know the answer, they just have to answer one question. It's a very interesting and reflective question. As a result of your involvement, did the people, the team or the organisation improved in any way or is just as good as it was when you joined? If there is not much of a change with things being as efficient and as organised as it was, it means that your style leans more to management.
If you are someone who goes in, shakes the staff, changes things, moves people around, improves sales, profit and engagement then you are designed to become a leader. It means that your style leans more to leadership. These two styles are very different. The key question here is that, okay, this is cool.
I love this idea but the problem is that management also comes with a very fixed mind-set. Leadership often comes with a very big growth mind-set. It means people love and basically follow leaders because they are very open to receive feedback. They are really good at connecting with people and their focus often time is on people while managers would point their focus on the process. They are very good at system, they're very good at organising stuff. One of the big question here that often comes up is if leaders don’t really care about the process since managers are very focussed on process and leaders are very focussed on the people.
Well, they do. The way that leaders often take care of the process is by taking care of the person who takes care of the process. Managers on the other hand would just roll up their sleeves and get involved in the process when something goes wrong.
That's why you often find managers quite busy. They're working 24/7 and most of the time they are handling a couple of positions. They are not doing anything wrong. You're absolutely right but the problem is that when they come and complain about not having any work-life balance.
At the end of the day, if you are a manager and if you have that management style for a very long time, you will eventually develop a managerial method. People refer to it as an emperor with a lot of helpers. It means if one-day the manager decides to leave that organisation, everything is gone.
The people under the manager would not know what to do. They don't know how to make a decision. The manager just left a bunch of disabled people that they have no clue on how the decision making happens. However, leaders are exactly opposite of that. They inspire people. How do you inspire them? You walk the talk, meaning that your action, your thoughts and your words are always the same.
 

Jeremy Au: (29:28)
What I've noticed is that in that vein, everybody likes great managers and a lot of people hate great leaders. Something is quite dissonant when that happens there. Why is it that people praise great leadership but also hate on them as well?
 

Dr Reza Abraham: (29:45)
This is also another major difference between leadership style and management style. Leadership is a style that often comes with a lot of democracy. Management style comes with a lot of dictatorship and autocracy. What managers are often very good at is that they are very predictable. Management style is often very predictable because it's the status quo.
The best example that I can give you is that management works in a very systematic way. Now, can you imagine what is the definition of the system? A system can help an ordinary person achieve an extraordinary result predictably. Think of McDonald's. When you go to McDonald's, what you expect in that McDonald’s will always remain the same.
The moment you walk in, you’ll hear someone shout out, “welcome to McDonald’s” from the back and you will go stand in a queue. The worker asks if you are having the meal here? You say yes. The worker then asks, “Can I take your order?” and you reply, “give me a Big Mac”. The worker would also ask if you would like to purchase it as a set and you say, “yes, the large set”.
Everything that happens at McDonald is pretty much the same. It means that either you like it or you don't like it. You don't see the surprise in that process. It's always the same. The reason people love it is because it's very predictable. When it comes to leadership, it doesn't work like that. Leadership is a very democratic process.
Democracy is often very tough because there are people who will love you and there are people who will hate you. When it comes to leadership, we can't please everyone. At the end of the, there will be people who may not agree with certain decisions that you make. That's primarily the reason managers are often loved more and hated less. You signed up for this and I have told you that everything is going to be very predictable. This is the way we do it and there are no changes. If you don't really like it, you can always exit.
Leadership often comes with the promise of change. It means that we are growing, we are always getting better and we are changing things around. At some point, people may not like certain decision or strategy that you have. I believe that even in your background, you often meet people who invest into new technology, business and ventures.
Then there are people who don't like it. The leaders would then try to persuade them to support as they are all in this together as a team. That's how the fractures and the grievances will slowly come in. That is why leadership is often unpredictable as well. This makes leadership interesting as well because this is what we often say. Leadership is not even a noun. It's a verb, it’s dynamic and it keeps going up and down. Now I can be in an excellent relationship with you. We have a lot of much things in common and we love one another and think. I make one decision and you can hate me for the rest of your life. This also makes leadership awesome.
It means that if you want to be a great leader, you can't be a machine. You have to be extremely likeable person. That itself is a very good topic as well. Leaders, if they are not likeable, often have a lot of difficulties. My definition of the likeable may not be clear for some of your audience. They definitely ask, “what do you mean by likeable?”.
Being likeable is when you can make a point and you don’t earn people’s hate towards you. If you can say something or make a decision that is very unpopular and at same time be likeable as well, that is the major skill set from a great leader.
 

Jeremy Au: (33:46)
Amazing. There is so much to unpack here and I love the point about how likeability is important here. You are starting to turn the page here a little bit. Could you share about time that you have been brave?

 

Dr Reza Abraham: (33:58)
Oh, that's a very big question. Which side? Personal or work? Well, I think every one of us is making a lot of big decisions in our life. Every time we decide to be brave whether in our personal or professional life, it requires a lot of courage.
The things about being brave is that sometimes you don't know the consequences of taking a decision. That's why it requires a lot of gut feeling and deep insights. If I want to speak about my personal life, I think the biggest decision is to get married. That requires a lot of courage because deciding to get married by itself means that you are taking a major responsibility and there is a lot of work to be done.
When it comes to work, I think the day that I accepted to become a manager for the very first time is the bravest thing that I have done in my career. Personally, I always believed that if you don’t really love becoming a manager, you should never become a manager.
It's very important because I've seen so many high performing individuals become a manager because they have been forced to become a one. They never wanted it but then somebody says, “come on, I believe in you, you can do it” That individual then becomes a manager. He hates the job, he screws everyone's life and it was just a bad decision.
I made a decision and I had this conversation with my superior. I said, “I want to become a manager. My superior asks me if I’m sure about that and I said, “yes, I want to do that. what does it take?” That is a very brave decision to me. Anyone who make that decision, is brave.
 

Jeremy Au: (35:59)
Amazing. When you think about marriage being a big, brave decision and how that was hard for you, I'm so curious on what about it made it so hard for you.
 

Dr Reza Abraham: (36:10)
Even if you look at the latest studies or research on marriage, 50% of the marriages fails and it depends on the country that you're coming from. Can you imagine if someone tells you that when you walk out of this building, a bowling ball would drop on your head. What are the chances of you not leaving the building and staying in the office?
 

Jeremy Au: (36:36)
I'll tell you. It’s probably 1%. I'll definitely wear a helmet when I’m coming out.
 

Dr Reza Abraham: (36:41)
Imagine if getting married is exactly like that. It's like you're leaving the office and somebody said, there's a 50% chance that a bowling ball will drop on your head. Most people don't do that and they don't even think about that. When I made a decision to get married about eight or nine years ago, I was just brave enough to do that. That was a major decision.
Sometimes you are not sure who is the person that you are going to spend and build your whole life, be it personal and professional. It's like a 50-50 chance and it's a hard work. Sometimes people say, “Oh, you guys might be compatible” and think it works that way.
Yet study shows that compatibility has zero impact on the success of your marriage. Most of the stuff that people explain actually has zero impact. Well, you would know about it very well that it's the hard work. You have to work really hard and there is always a lot of communication required.
The second bravest decision is to have a kid which is a really bold move. I don't think anybody should have kids if they are not ready to have them or if they don’t want them. It's a very brave decision and it comes with a huge responsibility.
 

Jeremy Au: (38:02)
I think that makes a lot of sense. The child doesn't get to choose you, but you get to choose the child.
 

Dr Reza Abraham: (38:06)
Exactly. You brought them in.
 

Jeremy Au: (38:09)
Right, I brought you into my life. On that note, I would like to paraphrase the three big key takeaways I got from this conversation.
The first is, of course, thank you for sharing about your trajectory from starting out as a McKinsey consultant and what you learnt from there but also how you build upon your love for people, operations, change and talked about how you built on it to understand human psychology and how people actually change, therefore becoming a coach and being thoughtful on sharing about what differentiates a coach from a trainer from the popular perspective.
The second is, of course, thank you for talking about the difference between managers and leaders. I think we talked about how managers are not necessarily leaders and leaders are not necessarily managers because managers are about creating predictable results that are extraordinary from the same group of people. Leadership is really about leading people to do extraordinary things but there is still a huge element of unpredictability because of the circumstances required. Amazing content there. I really love what you shared about likeability and decision making because you really talked about the secret to becoming a great founder, operator and executive which is the tricky part as you have to make tough decisions all the time and yet, you have to maximise the likeability at one level and be able to articulate that in a persuasive and compelling manner.
And lastly, of course, thank you for the bonus marriage and child advice at that time. Maybe we have to do another podcast about that.
 

Dr Reza Abraham: (39:43)
Yes.
 

Jeremy Au: (39:43)
Could you just very quickly share for those who need to get a hold of you on how they can find you.
 

Dr Reza Abraham: (39:48)
Sure. I'm available in almost all platforms from LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube. Recently, I published my book ‘In Control’ which is available in almost all of the digital platforms and also the bookstores.
For bookstores, I think it’s mostly in Malaysia but you can also find the book on Amazon, Shopee, Lazada and Book Depository.
 

Jeremy Au: (40:10)
Thank you so much.
 

Dr Reza Abraham: (40:11)
You’re most welcome. Thank you, Jeremy for having me. Thank you.