Nia Thomas [00:00:02]:
Hello, and welcome to the Knowing Self, Knowing Others podcast, where we discuss self aware leadership with thinkers from around the globe. I'm your host, Nia Thomas. Join me as we talk to today's guest.

Nia Thomas [00:00:27]:
The trail As a certified coach and founding fellow of prestigious institutes, Grant's expertise extends far and wide. He's written a book and coauthored a second book, and he has a He's written a book and coauthored a second book, and he has a TEDx talk that has already been watched over a 1000000 times, and 2 of those were me. Join us as we dive into Grant's quite remarkable story of service, innovation, and continuous improvement. Welcome, Grant.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:01:07]:
Doctor Nia, thank you so much. It's a joy to be here with you today.

Nia Thomas [00:01:10]:
Great to see you. So tell us about your career journey to here.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:01:15]:
My goodness. That that that how much time do you have? You know, I'm I'm 52, so I've got a little bit to go. But, no, seriously, I've spent probably the last 25 years in the cruise industry, and it's been a joy, such a pleasure. But as you mentioned my TED talk, if you see my TED talk, you'll understand the, the transition that I made from growing up in Kansas to going into the military and then coming out of the military in California, and I went into real estate there. And after a skiing accident, a very tragic accident that I nearly lost my life, I spent a year in recovery. 2 titanium plates and 2, 12 titanium pins I was the father of. It was how was I gonna start over and through mastering all of the conflict and change, that that incident actually would bankrupt me and make me homeless for a second time in my life. And it was then that I discovered after recovery a year later, the cruise industry.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:02:16]:
And the cruise industry has just been phenomenal. It is a place in travel, in tourism, in hospitality. There's something about putting people on a ship, and the ship departs, and you have over 90 different nationalities from around the world in one location, and somehow peace is possible. You know, whenever we are in land and we watch the news and we see that, oh, well, all the conflicts. And they say that their world is not gonna get any better. You know, that that's just not true when you live and work in the cruise industry. Because we see so many people even from conflicting nations that all of a sudden are brothers and sisters in having a great time together. So peace is truly possible.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:02:56]:
But it's been a long journey in this industry and a very fruitful one. I started as an entry level cruise consultant, just telling people where they're gonna go, what they're gonna do, and how to make the most of their voyage, leading all the way up to becoming, the 1st in the world to graduate the sales master's program, then the sales doctorate in sales transformation, and, becoming an author, a certified coach, and then creating a personal change model. Who does that? Yeah. Indeed. It's Very different role, but it led me to you, and to, your organizations as well. And it's just a wonderful journey to be on.

Nia Thomas [00:03:35]:
Wow. That is quite a a journey and a winding journey at that.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:03:39]:
So true.

Nia Thomas [00:03:40]:
So tell me what your thoughts are on self awareness. As you know, we are a self aware leadership podcast, and it's really helpful to understand what guests define as self awareness as a starting point so that we know the the journey that we're on for the rest of the conversation. How do you define self awareness?

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:03:59]:
You know, it's it's interesting because you don't hear a lot of people talk about it. And, really, your show, from my perspective and my global practice, you're one of the first that I've come across that actually speak of it on a regular basis. Are we aware? Are we self aware? And do we have the conscious ability to recognize that we are? And I don't think many people are. I think as the advance of AI and the advancements of digital technologies, etcetera, a lot of people are just flowing through the journey. And I see so many people, you know, caught up with these. You know, we live in a world of technology, which is supposed to advance us, but here I am with 2 phones. Not just 1, but 2, and I see that so much. And I see people just consumed.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:04:46]:
And all of a sudden, you look up when you, are tired and you're like, wait a minute. Where'd that hour go? Yeah. Exactly. You've lost. You've been trapped in time. So self awareness. For me, self awareness is the ability to have cognitive reflection on what you are doing, where you are, and what your contribution and what your actions are to your surrounding immediate world and to the greater world around you. Self awareness.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:05:15]:
How do you see yourself? When you're consciously aware of what you are doing and what you're contributing and to yourself and to others? And I think that that is a skill set that is very much lacking.

Nia Thomas [00:05:29]:
Interesting. Well, we will certainly talk more about that because I'm interested in how that fits particularly with senior leaders in in organizations. But before we do that, tell us more about scared so what? What is it all about?

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:05:45]:
There you go. Scared so what? So you talk about, awareness. I think this is a critical awareness model. So scared so what was born in my sales master's program, believe it or not. In 2018, I, went here in London to Middlesex transformation. And transformation is to get us out of the 19 eighties consultative sales tips, tips, and how am I supposed to lead sales transformation. And transformation is to get us out of the 19 eighties consultative sales tips, tips, and how it And in doing so, And they said, well, that doesn't exist. And I said, exactly.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:07:41]:
So how am I supposed to lead others through change when we don't even have a model to help them manage their own personal change? And so, brilliantly, thank goodness, my professors at that moment could have said, you know what? This is what we have. This is a 100 years of change management. You need to embrace this and go forward. But they didn't. They used reflective coaching and said, what is at the heart of your feelings right now? What are you feeling? And I said, I'm scared. I'm I'm afraid I'm gonna fail this class. Keep going. They kept pulling it out.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:08:13]:
And that scared theme, they didn't know either where it was going. But that scared theme was there. That fear of this change because I thought I was gonna fail the class that day and fail a lot of people, all my salespeople in my company. And through that, scared, I said, I want to be able to help people to embrace the fear of change. And if we can learn to embrace it, then maybe we can learn to manage it. And we we kept going through the discussion, and so what kept coming up. So what? So what? So what does it mean? So what do you think? And I was like, we need a so what, don't we? So all of these organizational change models say that the change is done, but that's not true. Nobody's asking me as an employee, do I accept the change, do I reject the change, or am I conflicted? Nobody asks those questions.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:09:03]:
You haven't even thought of my so what. And that's where the model was born. So we created scared to focus on your feelings so that you can actually start to break it down and manage change and make an informed decision. No longer assuming. Right? We wanted to remove assumption and the fear of change. And then we wanted to help people make their own so what plan. So that's what it does. So scared is, you know, I'm surprised, I'm conflicted, or I champion the change.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:09:29]:
What actions could I do? Am I receptive or do I reject this change? Is it considers both options? Organizational change models don't do that. Could I explore any other options and what decision can I make? And it's funny. People think that a decision is just that, but it's not. There's a positive decision, which means it's favorable. There's a negative decision, which means I don't like it. I'm not going to do this. And there's also something called indecision, and that's where people get stuck. You know, and I often when I talk about this, have you ever raised your hand if you've ever, been stuck saying, I don't know what to do.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:10:01]:
Could somebody just tell me what to do? Exactly. Right. And that means that you've gone straight into assumption, but if you learn how to assess your feelings and make an informed decision, you're now in charge of it. So what's your so what? What's your strategy? What's your options? What's your way forward? What actions can you take? Do you have hope or know how it's going to work? Your actions. And then how do you take ownership? Building your own so what where organizational change models stop. So that's what scared so what is. We put it into an app. It's a quiz.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:10:29]:
It's a digital quiz that you can use over and over again. You can build a digital so what plan. So now for the first time ever, you can get all of this change fear out of your head and put it into an app, and now it's something that's tangible. You can actually manage it, and you can deal with it, and you can work with it. So it's called scared so what.

Nia Thomas [00:10:49]:
Fascinating. And listeners and watchers, if you really want to know more about that, I definitely, recommend you starting with Grant's TED Talk because it really does help and it it shows you, it has diagrams in it, and you can really see what this means and what it might mean for you and your organization or your team or even your family, and I think it's such a helpful way of setting out what does change mean for me. My thought is that if you're if you're grappling with personal change, that there has to be an element of self awareness in that. Is is that how you see it?

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:11:27]:
Yes. So that's what it it is exactly what the model does. So scared is the process of recognizing your feelings, becoming self aware, and it is the journey of that awareness and just critical reflection and critical discovery. So if you think about change, what people go through, like, you know, especially a fearful change, but the opposite is also true, a positive change. So think like getting married, moving house, getting a new job, all those wonderful things, you still feel stress, anxiety, fear, nervousness, rapid breathing, cold sweats, goosebumps, etcetera. It doesn't matter if it's a positive change or a negative change. To your point, how do we become aware of what we can and cannot manage and what we can and cannot control? Scared does that. So it allows you to break down the change and get out of your assumptive feelings and assumptive directions and knee jerk reactions.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:12:22]:
You've heard that before. And it allows you to break it down so that you can become more critically aware of where you can stand. And then from there, you can actually can control your journey. And so I think from a self awareness perspective, this tool is very enabling and very empowering to do just that.

Nia Thomas [00:12:41]:
What are your thoughts if somebody is coming to change and they don't have self awareness? Does scared, so what, help them to achieve it, or do do you have to work with somebody to get them to a point where they can then work through the scared element? Yeah. It's a good question, and there's 2,

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:13:27]:
we're actually putting it to work for yourself versus just swipe and scroll. But and furthering their education and furthering their own awareness of their identity and their their change management. I like that idea of it being very visual. As you said, it's it's red if you're negative. It's it's red if you're negative.

Nia Thomas [00:15:02]:
It's it's red if you're negative. It's it is

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:15:36]:
So many of them have been manipulated by organizations to suit their narrative. One true and I'll give just a little bit of my book away. The Saara curve. Many people attribute that back to doctor Elizabeth Kubler Ross who created the change curve, and they said that this was her model. Well, I actually interviewed her son, Ken Ross, who is the president of the, her foundation because she's unfortunately no longer with us. And he said, my mom didn't make that. She didn't make the SARA curve at all. People came to her many times.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:16:08]:
She was aware that people wanted to use her models within business practice. And every time she said, that's not what it's for. I built this for people who are experiencing death and dying in a clinical medical facilitation, not for business. And it's amazing how many people just adapted it anyways, and it's always been attributed to her. And, unfortunately, she's no longer here, but her children are. And then so I thought that was amazing. You know, models can be adapted and models can be used, unintentionally or intentionally in different ways. And so what I've built with scared so what, I based the model on energy, positive energy, neutral energy, and negative energy because it has to match the way the human mind works.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:16:53]:
We can accept change, and we can reject change. And sometimes we're just in the middle. We don't know where to be. So there has to be a model that supports that.

Nia Thomas [00:17:01]:
And it feels like where we are in the world of work, we we are moving out of that industrial paradigm where employers did things to their employees, to employees being engaged and being part of decision making. And I think this tool is of its time. It's needed now, and it really does reflect what change is for people in the world of work now. No longer do we tolerate our employers doing things to us. We wanna be part of that conversation. So I think I think it's really useful.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:17:34]:
Thank you.

Nia Thomas [00:17:34]:
Tell me about your cruise industry, experience. I'm particularly interested in the leadership of that. What are your observations of leadership within the cruise industry? Because, of course, the cruise industry is massive, isn't it? It's huge, and it's global.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:17:49]:
Huge. Yeah. You're talking about, 50 plus years of innovation. Royal Caribbean alone, 60 plus vessels around the world, but there are 100 and 100 of cruise ship vessels around the world hitting every country, hitting every port. It's just such a vast industry that affects literally the whole world. But, you know, leadership. How do we define leadership? There's so many different viewpoints on it, and, you know me. I like to stick with a foundation because there are many different variable styles that can be applied to leadership.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:18:27]:
But if we look at what is the starting point, whether it's transactional leadership or transformational leadership. And transactional leadership is about a methodology of tell. I am going to tell you what to do, and I'm leading. Transformational leadership is much harder. It is about fostering empathy care development, and it is about not self recognition, but recognizing the efforts and strengths and successes of the others. And it involves coaching and mentoring. So there's a vast different amount of elements that go into that. And if you look at the cruise industry, we're no different from any other industry.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:19:06]:
We have all all realms of leadership styles, leadership practices. So it really is varied. But I will say that the the cruise industry itself, if I think of the ships, it's very much from, a positive military style of structure. And if you think about it, I I know these both of these worlds because I was in the military on ships as well too. You have this almost the same identical ranking system. Captain, staff captain, officers, senior officers, junior officers. And so a ship is run that way. And so the leadership teams of the ship are structured and they are barred.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:19:46]:
You will have actual stripes and bars and ranks. There's a deck department, and then there's a hotel operations department. So the deck is all the the the ship functions, engineering, nautical, all of the structures, safety, security, all of that life saving forces. And that leadership is very strong and stringent, and it is based upon rules, rules for safety and life of sea. But there's also the empathy that's brought over from the hotel side. So the hotel side has the same kind of structure for the leadership. So you have a hotel director, which is kinda like the captain of the hotel. You have, an associate hotel director, which would be like the staff captain.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:20:28]:
You have, guest relations officers, revenue officers, training, human resource officers as well. So it's all officer ranked and based and structured off of off of respect, dignity, fostering development, and care for all of the employees and their which are the crew members on board. So So the leadership from the ship side's perspective is structured, but it's also with a nice polite balance of hospitality. We want everybody to have a good time. We care about each other. We care first and foremost, for our crew members and our guests. But our crew are the reason why we can have our guests on board. So it is very much a family.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:21:11]:
So, while you still have that military type of a structure, there's also a whole undertone of care, empathy, and development that's there as well too. But, yeah, you do have all spectrums, of leadership types. And there's some good, and there's some very bad as well too. And, fortunately, the bad kinda find their own way off.

Nia Thomas [00:21:32]:
Indeed. And as you were talking there, I was thinking, in other leadership roles, people go home at the end of the day. But in a cruise ship, you are all together 247. So if that care and respect goes a little bit pear shaped, you have to deal with that 247. So as a leader on a cruise ship, there's never a point where you're not the leader on that cruise ship, I guess.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:21:59]:
I think you're always on. We have this this this, knowing, sense of strategy that we are always on. You know? And, it's, there's a a deck. There's a the the main deck, which is called the I 95, and this is where the crew pass through. The I 95 is a thoroughfare that goes from bow to stern, and, that differentiates deck 1 and above is for our guests. And deck 1 and below is for our crew and to where the crew live. And you always have a sense of always on when you go deck 1 up. You know? Then for the officers, just as you've said, when you go down below decks to the crew areas, you're still on.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:22:39]:
But that's where it becomes truly family. Right? Because you're living there. Okay. And we all have an immense a and what you portray and what you give out. And I think self No. You might be great at numbers. You might be great at analyzing, but you might be horrible at leading. Yep.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:25:15]:
And that's the general consensus I'm hoping from

Nia Thomas [00:25:17]:
everybody that I speak to. But, took of the research that had been done. And I and I'm I really do think that this is linked to this this industrial paradigm versus the knowledge paradigm that we are moving into, and and I think that that change is is very very evident.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:25:47]:
I agree with you. And, you know, it's interesting. We talk about leadership and who can practice it and who can't. I remember in my doctorate, doing my literature review on transformational leadership, and it showed the the the vast majority of evidence showed that senior leaders are the only people who could practice transformational leadership. Okay. And they kept referencing CEOs and senior vice presidents and people like CFOs and board members, people of high affluence and high positions. But yet to get into the doctorate program, I had, to qualify for my bodies of public works. And some of my public works within the cruise industry, I did as a junior level manager.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:26:27]:
So how do you practice transformational leadership wherever you are? And in my dissertation, I actually showed the evidence of where it is possible for anybody. It's about you. How can you be the entrepreneur? How do you tell the story, using narrative hermeneutics? And then what types of tools will you give to lead others? Because you can lead from anywhere. You don't have to have a title. And I've proven that multiple times over within the cruise industry, building big departments, building the 1st office of diversity inclusion in the entire cruise industry. I did that as a director, junior level director. How do you do that? 100,000 people strong, but yet all of a sudden you're getting an entire cruise line to shift towards diversity and inclusion. It just shows that it's possible when you learn, what you can and cannot practice.

Nia Thomas [00:27:16]:
And that is definitely something that I'm interested in is the notion of of leaders at all levels and leadership at all levels because, I think you're right that you don't need to have a leadership title or director in your title or or any such thing. And you don't even have to line manage people to be a leader because I think we if any of us listening and watching think about the people that we worked with, there is often somebody who can represent others, lead others. There's that person who is has become the unofficial social secretary because they can mobilize people to organize things, and they can bring people together for social events, whatever they may be. They are leaders in their own right regardless of whether they have it in their title, So I'm interested to hear that. And I was thinking that when you were talking about the different levels of the ship, how actually, know, different people move up and down and and it doesn't necessarily matter what stripes you have, whether you are able to lead or whether you're not. It is not necessarily linked to self awareness and your job description. They may be pulled apart.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:28:25]:
Absolutely true. I love it.

Nia Thomas [00:28:28]:
What are your predictions for future demands on the world of work? Not to put you on the spot or anything, but where do you think we're going to go in terms of the our future demands as employees and what our organization's gonna look like in the future?

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:28:46]:
You know, that's a that's a really good question, and I I would be a fool to say I have the answers, but from all the different conferences I've been at, there's so much more a conversation on AI. And there is a real debate on companies being able to adopt it and use it versus IT department saying with blanket statements, nobody use it. It's not permitted within our company. You know, there's a global movement on technology even further, and I am concerned. I'm fine with AI once I start to understand it. I'm fine that to especially to understand that we've been using the elements of AI for the past 70 years. You think chatbots, you think WeChat, you think all the different types of technologies that are coming through. Those are all form formulations of advanced technology.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:29:36]:
So I I don't have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is the ability for social community, the community engagement, and the community responsiveness, and the community responsibilities of people. With the advancement of technology and mobile technology where people are just sitting here stuck, glued in their phones, we are losing cognitive skill sets. So I'm not talking about, being able to eat and and and walk and fall. I'm talking about how to think, how how to have a conversation, how to articulate a sentence, a structure, how to tell time for goodness sakes, unless the phone tells them what time. We can't read clocks. You you think about penmanship, cursiveness. You think about all the cognitive skill sets that we are losing.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:30:25]:
And what happens when the power goes out. Yes. There's a beautiful example just this week, and this will date this episode. But this week in America in Baltimore, Well, disaster happened. In that scenario, the bridge collapsed. It ran right into a bridge. Same thing's gonna happen one day. You've already started to see stores and retail outlets when the power goes off or the computer has a a functional problem that they shut down.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:30:59]:
People can't think. People don't know how to count back money, change. They don't know how to function. And so I think that we have a wake up call that we need to adhere to and say, how do we make sure we teach the future generation to maintain cognitive skill sets so that we're not stuck in a position of when the power does go out or there is a, god forbid, a glitch or a cyber attack or something that takes it out for us, that we can no longer function in society. And that's a danger. And if we let go of all of our cognitive skill sets and our ability to count, think, cash, speak, you know, reflect in real time in human human talk, we're gonna have a problem. And that's that's concerning to me. So I'm all for AI, but I'm also for keeping up our ability to be human.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:31:55]:
Right?

Nia Thomas [00:31:56]:
I think that's certainly something that I thought about. I've I've gone paperless probably for the last 7 or 8 years, and all of my information is now electronic somewhere, saved, backed up, saved saved again. And when the electricity goes out, I cannot access any of it unless I'm able to go to my bookshelf and and pick up a a book, a solid book in my hand, I I have none of that. And I I think you're right.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:32:26]:
Let me help you with that. I'll give you an example. This just happened to me 2 weeks ago. I've been at my company now for 16 years, and I you can imagine the files that I have, on my OneDrive, on my OneCloud. Right? Somehow, the entire thing got wiped out. I lost years of files. Years. Where do you go to get all of that back? And someone will say, oh, well, it should be backed up.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:32:52]:
It was. It was the backup that was wiped out, which then went into the main file. So I have to start over.

Nia Thomas [00:32:59]:
We are not prepared.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:33:00]:
It's it's already happening.

Nia Thomas [00:33:02]:
Yeah.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:33:02]:
You know? Fortunately, I can I can tell time, and I can count change back at the the retail? So I'm old enough to know how to still run a cash and a till register, but, you know, you you know where I'm going with those discussions. Our younger generation, I really fear for them. They if if the whole world transitions to digital and full complete AI to where we don't have to think or do a thing, that's kinda scary. That's Yeah.

Nia Thomas [00:33:27]:
You know? I think the loss of skill is is quite concerning. And the more conversations I'm having, the the spectrum between high IT technical complex use and the need for more humanized human behavior is becoming more in demand, and that, actually, the the the two ends of of the spectrum is becoming further and further. But those are the 2 things that we need, those 2 things that are furthest away. And how do we bring those together? Because you're right. When the electricity goes out, where are the plumbers?

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:34:02]:
Where's the details? Yeah. I I think of all those people in the trades, the community colleges to where they went and learned, you know, like plumbing, electrical, wiring, engineering, structural designs, how to build a house or build a building, all of those people, those those skills, those are not so much computer and and technology driven to where they are manual labor driven. And it's it's a shame how society looks down on them, but those are the people that built us. You know? And and I I too get it. Scared so what will eventually become, an evolution from the app to an AI that has to because that's the way society is going. So I eventually see, a digital coach to where somebody will come up and hopefully they'll have a personal face and look at least to feel human, but it will be AI helping coach people through personal change, and almost like their own friend. They can have pocket friend right there for them. Unfortunately, things have to go that way because that's the way the world is consuming data and information and knowledge today.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:35:05]:
But if we can remind them, but it put me down for a little bit.

Nia Thomas [00:35:10]:
Yeah.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:35:10]:
Still have to touch the world and feel it.

Nia Thomas [00:35:13]:
Absolutely. Listeners, watchers, we've got quite philosophical at the end of our conversation here, but that is definitely something that you can ponder on about your organization and the work that you're doing. How are you both enabling that AI world whilst making sure that the physical connection that we really did miss when COVID happened, how do we retain that and the skills that you need to have those relationships within that very physical world that we all love to be in?

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:35:44]:
Mhmm.

Nia Thomas [00:35:45]:
Grant Van Elba, it's been absolutely brilliant talking to you. Thank you so much for joining me, and, I really, really love using the Skid So What. The app is on my phone. I use it regularly, and I it definitely helps me to reflect on where I am, where I'm going, and the changes I want to make in my world. Thank you

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:36:03]:
very much. Thank you so much, and I really appreciate it. And for all your listeners, you can go to scared so what.com right now, and you can download the app for free as well. I encourage you to do that so you can start to manage change for yourselves. My gift to you.

Nia Thomas [00:36:16]:
Amazing. We will make sure that there are links in the show notes as ever, but for today, thank you.

Grant Van Ulbrich [00:36:22]:
Thank you.

Nia Thomas [00:36:25]:
Are you a chief executive or a senior leader within your organization? If so, it would be great to have you join me on the podcast to share your journey, experiences, and light bulb moments along the way. Drop me an email at info at knowing self knowing others dot co dot uk if you'd be interested in having a conversation. Thank you for joining me on today's episode where we aim to develop self aware leaders around the globe to generate kinder, more respectful and creative working relationships through reflection, recognition and regulation. Head over to my website at knowingselfknowingothers.co.uk to sign up to my newsletter to keep up to date with my blog, podcast and book. Looking forward to having you on my learning journey.