Lead Yourself First with Nick Jonsson

What is self-leadership and why is it so important to you as a leader?

Pete speaks with Nick Jonsson, the co-founder and Managing Director of one of Asia's premiere networking organizations, Executives' Global Network (EGN) Singapore, Malaysia & Indonesia about the importance of leading yourself before leading others.

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Transcript

Pete Behrens:
What is self-leadership? Welcome to another episode of (Re)Learning Leadership, where we explore a specific leadership challenge and break it down to help improve your leadership, your organization, and, just possibly, your personal life. I'm Pete Behrens, and today I'm honored to have a chat with Nick Jonsson. Nick is a best-selling author and Ironman—top one-percent—world athlete and an executive mental health advocate. Welcome to the show, Nick!

Nick Jonsson:
Thank you so much, Pete. It's great to be here.

Pete Behrens:
Well, I'm pleased to have you on the show. And I want to start simple. So, let's just start with the basics. How do you define self-leadership?

Nick Jonsson:
Well, Pete, I can first start by saying I live both. I lived a life without practicing self-leadership, and I lived a life with practicing self-leadership. And everyone—you don't have to go that far to define it, you know, to find out for yourself. Because it's painful, and I'm happy to explain today from both sides. But how I define it, basically, is—especially as a leader, as we're talking about today that—well, it is about being able to influence yourself or being able to, perhaps, parent yourself. So, let's look at it like this. When we grow up, as children, our parents made sure that we went to bed by 8PM. Our teachers were there to tell us to do our homework. There was someone there who told us what to do. Then, suddenly, in the teens, we are breaking free from all these rules. We are fighting over it. We want to demonstrate to the world that we are in charge of our own life, and we do it quite well. And most of us do it quite well. And, suddenly, we are on our own devices. There's no one anymore who's telling us when to go to bed. There's no one who's telling us what we should do. So, we are basically in charge of our own life. We have to parent ourselves. And with that comes a big responsibility on our shoulders. And either we fall into the habit of being in a “Pity me!” or feeling sorry for ourselves and having that self-talk and influence ourselves out of things. Or, on the other side, we can have a positive story and discipline ourselves. Getting out of bed early, making our bed, starting the day with a good habit, and then having positive self-thoughts. And the actions and the goals and the lives that then follow is completely different.

Pete Behrens:
Okay. So, what I'm hearing from that is discipline—right? Self-discipline, ability to self-direct, ability to self-choose wisely, in some ways. I know a lot of my colleagues, you know,—we work independent coaches and trainers and things like that. And a number of them have jumped into this field, admitted—right?—like, this is really hard. Because nobody's telling me what to do, like, when to do it, how to do it, right? Everything is coming from within. Is that—am I reading this right?

Nick Jonsson:
Yes. Absolutely. What we keep getting to here, Pete, is indeed self-discipline. And again, this is something that has to come from within. And I have a teenage son now, who's soon turning fourteen. And as much as I would love him to go and attend, you know, his handball classes, I would like him to continue his swimming academy, there's only so much I can do. I mean, it has to come from him; he has to want this. He would need to really want this hard. If I push him, he's going to push me away, as a father. So that's why—what we're talking about here, already starting from a young age—that has to come from within. And he has to discipline himself. He has to start already at that age, understand that the actions of him doing exercise, disciplining, looking after himself, versus skipping this, which would then, perhaps, set the scene for the rest of his life.

Pete Behrens:
Hm. So I can see this for, you know—as you described, that teenager coming-of-age. I can see this for the entrepreneur, you know. You've been, obviously, a world-class athlete, maybe still are a world-class athlete, right? That discipline to train and drive yourself to a peak performance. Connect us to the everyday leader. Connect us to the person who is in the system. “I've got a boss. They tell me what to do. I don't, maybe, see myself, necessarily, as the leader or having that power and status.” What can they take from this?

Nick Jonsson:
I think it comes down to the basics here, Pete. And, indeed, you don't have to go as extreme as I have, and we'll maybe touch on that later today. And also, because I hit the extreme at the low end, when I hit the rock bottom as well, and when I was broken both physically and mentally. And now, yes, I am at, perhaps, at the peak, at the other end. But for the average people, the average leaders, or most leaders, let's say, that are out there, I would say that most don't look after themselves. And Pete, I'm working with, you know, 700 Senior Leaders here in Singapore, most original directors for the big multinationals. It's all the big American companies—they are placed in Singapore, in expat packages and deals, right? And they're working around the clock, 12, 16-hour working day. They are flying around to different countries. Yes, they're flying first class or business class, and they have a good apartment, they have a car and a driver, they have a maid and nannies, the children are in private school, and all the rest of it.

So, on the outside, this looks wonderful. But the basics is—they're not getting enough sleep. They probably don't have enough time for more than one or two gym sessions or exercise sessions in a week. They're eating whatever is served to them. They don't really have the time to think about that. They have no time for meditation, self-care, and getting that peace of mind and quietness that they deserve. And what they should do if they were looking after themselves—it's almost like you're running after that hamster wheel. And they only look at themselves, perhaps, when they are in their 50s and they end up in a hospital, you know, by a burnout or by high blood pressure or a stroke or—as happened to many during the lockdowns, people, you know, ended up in hospitals because they were burnt out, because they were neglecting themselves. So that is not at the extreme end. And this is what I'm seeing on a day-to-day basis. And that's what I wrote the book about.

Pete Behrens:
Hm. And the book you're referring to is Executive Loneliness. Is that right?

Nick Jonsson:
Yes, exactly. Because it's very typical for leaders to work too hard, to focus too much on the outside. “What does the career look like? How am I performing?” And then, behind the scene is a completely different picture, where the leaders feel isolated, feel lonely, feel that they have so much pressure on yourself to keep up with this. And in order to cope, what I've seen—and I will talk about this in my book—leaders typically then find addictions. And it can be everything from gambling, social media, food addiction, or alcohol or drugs. Just something to get that escape. Instead of taking a step back and, you know, looking after the basics with health, nutrition, and sleep and exercise. Which, according to me, is the foundation we're talking about here, for self-leadership.

Pete Behrens:
Kind of getting back to the root, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? You know, food, sustenance, eating well, sleep—right?—getting enough rest. You talk about mental, you know, maybe a meditative—right?—to kind of clearing the mind. What are some of those challenges that leaders are facing that prevent them, maybe, from taking more action here?

Nick Jonsson:
Yes, I think, Pete, it comes down to the basics here. And, I mean, if we look back a bit in history—and I recently read a book called The Oxygen Advantage, talking about breathing and, you know, looking back at the breathing patterns and exercise and so on. And they were saying, you know, us human beings—they said we were not born to become Olympians. They're exercising five, seven hours per day. That's too much, at the intensity level. But neither were we born to walk around 20 minutes a day, and that's all we are moving. So they were looking at somewhere in between. And in this book, The Oxygen Advantage, they said that, probably, we need to move around around five hours per day. That could be walking around and moving around. And that's what we did back in history, when we were perhaps walking around picking berries, doing things, moving our body around. And they believe that probably around two hours of quite a physical exercise, doing something. So, that can be, you know, a bit of jogging, cycling, or going to the gym, doing some weights. So, that's what they say, per day. And that's basically the recommendations we get now, to do per week.

So I'm saying here that, you know, we are sitting in an office. We're working too much. We are not looking after ourselves. We are not getting out. We're not getting out into nature to relax, and so on, and reboot ourselves. It's just a constant drive. And that is what I'm seeing with, at least, with Senior Leaders that—you know, they just don't look after themselves. And so, that's why I'm saying that it starts at the foundation. It starts with the basics. And, again, you're right there, Pete. It's Maslow's hierarchy of needs. How can we jump to fulfill ourselves at the top? And that's what we are trying to do now. We forgot about looking after the basics. We go straight to the top. And when we want to do that, then we fall to shortcuts. And that's where, perhaps, bad habits and addictions come in.

Pete Behrens:
Hm. Well, I know, you know, you talk about hitting a low and maybe getting, kind of, that wake-up call. I know, personally, you know, getting an extremely high cholesterol reading from your doctor, and a, you know chew-out from your cardiologist, that says, “If you don't change your lifestyle, something's going to, you know, change it for you.” Does it take that call to action, or have you seen this, where, you know, there is change without hitting that rock bottom?

Nick Jonsson:
Well, you know, there's something called the gift of inspiration. But in recovery—as I was in recovery myself in 2018 after I hit rock bottom—there's a saying in recovery, the gift of desperation. And I believe many times, we, as humans, especially—or you, if you're very busy and you're running your own business—sadly we need to end up in hospital. We need to have a close friend who, perhaps, dies of suicide, or something terrible needs to happen for us to get that wake-up call to change our habits. It seems like, you know, working ourselves, changing our habits is so difficult, perhaps the hardest things we can do. Because we have to admit to ourselves that we have a problem. We have to be willing to change it. And then we have to change, and then we have to show to the world. We have to become vulnerable and honest. So that's why it really takes that, perhaps, gift of desperation in order to make dramatic change.

Pete Behrens:
So, blessed the leader who can discover that without hitting rock bottom. What advice do you have, like, when you're engaging with a leader who might be, you know, challenged in some of these dimensions? What do you do? How do you help them? What might you recommend to our listeners to, maybe, a first step they could take towards a better self-leadership?

Nick Jonsson:
Yeah. And, again, here it's making it simple. And it's baby steps and perhaps working with a coach or a mentor or—in many other programs, it's called a sponsor. Someone who takes—who helps you to take an honest look at yourself. And what I did in my first step in the book I wrote—is about taking stock. And let's look at it like this, Pete. If you are a business owner or you run a business, you—or especially if it's a shop or you're a shop owner—you would do a stock count every month, a quarter, once a year, where you look at your inventory. And you will have a good look at what is there. But how often do we do this as human beings? So, as leaders, bring out the pen and paper and write down everything. And it can be everything that—“I'm, you know, 30 pounds overweight. I'm spending too much money on gambling. I'm spending three hours on social media. I have broken relationships with my parents. I don't speak with my sister.” All these things need to go on this inventory list. And then we need to take this list to a coach or a mentor, someone who can help us to go through this and clear this baggage. And so, it's about, you know, taking an honest look at ourselves first. And we don't have to tackle everything on the list, but getting a couple of small wins.

And for me and many others—it starts with exercise. If you start addressing the exercise, then it's easy to get that right. If you exercise well, you naturally want to eat better. And if you exercise and eat better, you're naturally going to sleep better. So then you get the three foundations. And here, again, comes Maslow’s hierarchy of needs back. Then, once you get that right, you will start to get more peace of mind. Your resting heart rate will go down. With that, all your blood levels will be better, and you're already on your path. But what I find—and as we talk about leaders here, it's also about deflating the ego. It's really, really to take a look at themselves, in the sense of, you know, am I too much of myself? Am I too important? Am I the center of the universe? Is it me who's running the show, or is it something I can do for other people? Being of service, perhaps signing up for local charity as a volunteer; those can be the steps to start with, Pete.

Pete Behrens:
Hm. Yeah. Getting past the cognitive bias, getting past, you know, that veil we put over ourselves, right? That's incredibly difficult. And I like your advice about—get some help, right? All of these programs that help people improve in some way, you know—they're built on a mentorship, a sponsorship, a partnership. Doesn't have to cost, right? You can get a peer to be helping you through this journey. So, Nick, any final words you'd like to share, I guess, as a parting thought, or words of wisdom for us?

Nick Jonsson:
Yes. I think the most important thing—and a friend of mine—he wrote a book called Just Ask. His name is Andy Lopata from London. And, you know—just ask. If there's something on your mind. Write it down, and come back to this. Write it down if you have an issue, a challenge. Write it down, and then think about, “Who can I ask for help?” There's so many people. There's so many people around you who love you. And don't be shy to ask for their help. Or anonymous organizations, coaches, and mentors are all there. And just take that first step towards taking control of your own life, and lead yourself.

Pete Behrens:
Phone a friend. I love it. Well, thank you, Nick, for joining us today, and enjoy the journey!

Nick Jonsson:
Thank you.

Pete Behrens:
(Re)Learning Leadership is the official podcast of the Agile Leadership Journey. Together we build better leaders. It’s hosted by me, Pete Behrens, with contributions from our global Guide community. It’s produced by Ryan Dugan. With music by Joy Zimmerman. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave us a review, or share a comment. And visit our website, agileleadershipjourney.com/podcast, for guest profiles, episode references, transcripts, and to explore more about your own leadership journey.