#009 Gail Cameron | Coaching and African Leadership

Gail Cameron, guest · [04:57]So it's, again, life experiences. So having just got divorced, I had two small boys, and the youngest was not even a year old, and I had to support them. I had no other means of supporting them. And so I, I realized I'd have to get a job, a real job. And then, you know, I'd started off lecturing at FUBA, the Federated Union of Black Artists, and so I'd had a lot of experience in being a voice and speech coach. And I'd written a book called How to Improve Your Accent. And so I went to the bank and I said, I need a bank loan. I want to get this book published. And the bank manager said, come back with some cash flow projections and budget. And I can remember phoning a friend of mine and saying, how do I do this? I've no idea. And he helped me put it together. They lent me the money. I published the book. And what was overwhelming was, was when the book was published. Then People would start calling and saying, I've suffered the same social and professional discrimination. Can you help me? And that's when I realized I, you know, I had a business case.

Petro du Pisani, host · [05:58]So it started off very much with voice and communication type coaching, but then you evolved from there. So how did that evolution happen?

Gail Cameron, guest · [06:07]Yes, it was more communication, and then I sort of got into leadership, but I was a very kind of hard-nosed, you know, leadership coach, and you were either right or you were wrong, and if you didn't want to sort of get the stuff, you had to get off the bus. And then in 2000, I almost lost my youngest son. He had a brain tumor, and basically he was, he was going to die. And a miracle happened, and basically his life was saved. And I can remember that night as he was dying, I basically, in the ICU, I sort of went on my knees and I started praying, and I just said, if you let him live, I'll do your work. And then it was the strangest thing, because it was very imperceptible how my work changed, but I was not even conscious of how it had shifted. A lot of clients started coming to me then who had serious obstacles in their lives, and how could I help them? And then my work moved more into life coaching. I guess that's what it's been over the last 18 years.

Gail Cameron, guest · [08:19]So it's interesting how the whole business coaching and the coaching concept has evolved. So we started off with voice and speech communication. We did a lot of image consulting in those days. And then the leadership evolved, and then I thought, well, you can look good, sound good, but if you don't command the language, you're not going anywhere either. And I'd come from a second language speaking environment. So then we started doing business English. That became quite a big focus. And then I realized, no, Is, is definitely another piece missing here because, you know, especially when a client had an obstacle, it was impeding them from performing at the optimum. And that's really how emotional intelligence came into it. From emotional intelligence, the communicative arm of that, which is social intelligence, evolved from about 2003. I think that's where it was first observed at a Swedish conference. And then, of course, I realized, well, it's an inside job. It's really about how people are coping with what's going on in their lives, not necessarily their professional skills, and that's really how the life coaching evolved. So it really has, you know, come full circle, I think.

Petro du Pisani, host · [09:29]That's so interesting. What are some of the biggest transformations you've seen, and how has that made you feel?

Gail Cameron, guest · [09:35]I think some of the biggest transformations have really been about People suddenly waking up to their own potential. I think that's the most rewarding one. The greatest dysfunctionality I've seen in thirty years of being in this business is the lack of self-regard. And I think all of us, to a greater or less extent, suffer from a lack of self-regard. So the greatest transformation will come from when suddenly that person realizes that they actually had it all the time and that the power has been restored into their own hands where it was all along.

Gail Cameron, guest · [10:44]So the great thing is that very few people know this, but that a South African leads the field globally in emotional intelligence. So Professor Baran did his PhD at Rhodes, and it took him seventeen years to develop this instrument, and it's called the Baran EQI. And what emotional intelligence does, it looks at intrapersonal competencies, which is kind of how you know yourself, how you can regulate those emotions, but it also looks at the way in which you can read other people and how you would respond to that. So it's a beautiful instrument. It gives a scientific detail. But the interesting thing about EQ is that ninety-three percent of leadership effectiveness is entrenched in emotional intelligence. In fact, technical competency today is regarded as a baseline competence. It will get you the job, it will get the job done, but the biggest difference lies in the way in which you do that job. So therefore, it's different to personality assessments, because you can't really shift the personality. It's completely different to IQ, because that deals with cognitive elements, but you can develop every aspect of emotional intelligence, and I think that's the great thing. But the important thing with developing emotional intelligence is how the emotional intelligent brain learns. So it learns through awareness, dedication, and commitment. So it doesn't learn through a logical linear process. So the best way to do this with clients, although they really kick against it at times, is to video them, put them into role-play simulations so that they can see themselves. And especially people who've got these very high processing left brains, you know, like accountants and like engineers, especially, when they see themselves is when they realize, okay, so perhaps I can tweak this or that. And that's the awareness that precedes change that creates the behavioral change.

Gail Cameron, guest · [17:23]The only way to avert this is to open the pathways to mindfulness. So there's actually three pathways we open. So the first is conscious awareness of self. Heart, mind, body, spirit. And it's answering those big questions like, who am I? So there's a lot of people I coach who have no idea who they are. They have no idea that your thoughts create your life. A gift we've been given is that we can create with our thoughts. Equally, we can dig a big hole and bury ourselves, and that's where the sacrifice syndrome comes in. But you can also use those thoughts, you can change them to a positive frequency. You can change your thoughts, feelings, and intentions, and when you do that, it changes your life. So first of all, go in and find out who you are. And you can do this by looking at exercises about your personal vision. You can look at your future vision. So what is your philosophical orientation? There's nothing new about this stuff. Sophocles said, know thyself. So this is a way of excavating and, and really getting in touch with who you are in a very deep way. Understanding your values is critical. Our greatest conflicts occur when those values are compromised. Why? Because they're not negotiable. Most people don't even know what they are, and they evolve over time. So it's actually quite an easy exercise. And what we'll do is I'll send you some exercises that people can do to excavate and know themselves if they want to explore this further. It's really not complicated. When you've opened mindfulness, it leads to hope. And it is when hope is aroused, it leads to compassion. And compassion is empathy and caring in action, and it starts with the individual. You cannot save anybody until you put your own life jacket on first. So basically, when you work on those three elements, it opens up neurons begin to fire on the left-hand side of the prefrontal cortex. The good hormones flood the body. You do that over a long period, it leads to feeling excited, optimistic, hopeful, looking forward to the future. So it's really not a complicated process at all.

Gail Cameron, guest · [20:10]We are powerful energetic beings, and the interesting thing is that You can increase your frequency. So the whole map of consciousness has happened. We measure it in microwatts of energy, and they are very low frequency vibrations, so at the very bottom sits shame, which is twenty microwatts, and we can see it in shame cultures, where women are banished, stoned to death. Then as you go up the ladder, it's kind of guilt, and then grief. We are all plunged to levels of grief at moments of our life, but it's to stay down there is destructive. And then it goes up through fear, anger, and even pride. Pride is a negative. So one of our big banks had it in its strapline a few years ago. They've removed it because they've been exposed to the map of consciousness. And then we get up to courage, and courage is actually the point at which everything moves into power. You know, I've coached some of the greatest leaders in this country, and I've absolutely no doubt in my mind that the leaders who made a difference were in power. They were either at courage, neutrality, freedom, love. So it explains why a small, feeble man with the construct of Satyagraha could overturn the British Empire. So Gandhi was completely in power. It explains why a man with love and forgiveness in his heart, despite being in jail for 27 years, could come out of jail and negotiate his country out of a revolution. Mandela was completely in power. These different energetic frequencies have been measured. When you're in the lower frequencies, that's where all the crocodiles are swimming, and that's when life is difficult. People are taking chunks out of you. So the responsibility of life is to increase your consciousness. When you do that, you, to a certain extent, raise the consciousness of everybody around you. So we measure it in laboratories. So just as an example, I bring two people into a laboratory, measure their heart rate, temperature, and they're completely different. We put them together for a fifteen-minute conversation, measure them again. They were incomplete, some part ago with one another, beginning to reflect one another's body rhythms. So people catch feelings. The person who adds a stronger seasoning into that is the leader. So therefore, being a resonant leader, being positive, catching people doing things right, and believing in people, you create a whole virtuous cycle where reflective parts of the brain open, and you will be able to stretch and reach. But your dissonant leaders will obviously have the opposite effect. It's all physics.

Gail Cameron, guest · [26:01]So the key is self-awareness. We also measure it in terms of emotional intelligence, but without self-awareness, it's very, very difficult to create the change. So if we look at an intentional change journey, and this is a scientific process, you first need to be aware of who you are, and that is knowing where your strengths are. That's equally important because those strengths need to be bolstered, but then also understanding, so where are my growth areas? And then developing a learning agenda from that, but it's got to be done through trusting relationships with your coach and other people who are around you. So that may be a line manager or it may be your partner in your life, but trusting relationships. And then you should get an opportunity to practice it. So in safe environments. And then you get to try it in higher risk environments, and that's where the new neurons develop, and that's how behavioral change occurs. So it's actually quite a simple process, but the self-awareness is key. So we've sometimes had hostages, people who've been sent there because they're not achieving, for whatever reason, the objectives that company wants. And it's very, very difficult to kind of turn that person around until they begin to realize, well, actually, this is going to contribute to my personal development. It doesn't matter where I go, what I do, but this can improve my life, and that's when they take ownership.