Living Your Values with Talia Fox

george grombacher 0:02
Fox is the CEO of Koozai. Global they are an organization that’s helped over 500,000 people to maximize their potential. She’s a Harvard University fellow. She’s the author of The Power of conscious connection. Welcome to the show. Thalia?

Talia Fox 0:17
Hi, George, it’s so great to be here.

george grombacher 0:20
Oh, excited to have you on, tell us a little about your personal lives more about your work, why you do what you do?

Talia Fox 0:26
Well, I am obsessed with human potential. Part of it is because I’ve spent some of my life making a lot of mistakes and falling down. And I was on this hunt early on, I became a single mom and just had a lot of struggles. And so I said, There’s got to be a hack for this life, there’s got to be some kind of thing that we could do to make things easier and better. And so I realized that there are skills, so many wonderful skills you can learn, and they can really change every thing. So I have dedicated my life to this idea of improving leaders improving people one skill at a time. So there’s a practical component of the work that we do on how you uplift and change and motivate the spirit.

george grombacher 1:17
I love it. I love I love human potential. I love realizing human potential even more. There’s a lot of it trapped.

Talia Fox 1:28
Absolutely.

george grombacher 1:30
stuck there. Its energy waiting to be activated. Why is it more than ever now? Is it just feel like that? Or is it just always been this way?

Talia Fox 1:42
Well, you know, it’s interesting, it seems like it’s energy trapped. And it seems like people are confused. And this is the big aha moment I had in life, which is, it’s almost like everyone had to learn how to use the computer, everyone had to learn how to use the internet, everyone had to learn so many things that we don’t balk at, if you go into a new office or a building. I mean, you have to learn how to use whatever systems they have. So I think that there are a set of things a set of, I would say leadership skills, life skills, that we actually are under the impression that you’re supposed to know how to do. How do you create great relationships? How do you engage in conflict, all of these things require practice and technical skills in order to achieve it. So there’s the hope that I have gained is that, you know, there are some things that I think there’s a even a spiritual component of how we get unstuck. But likely the reason that we’re stuck, there are habits and choices that we’re making on a regular basis that aren’t serving us well. But we’re not aware of it. And so it’s really important to understand that there are some very practical, normal things that probably explain half of your problems.

george grombacher 2:52
I think that that’s probably true. I work in the in the world of personal finance, and people always lament, I was never taught this stuff. I never learned this stuff in school. And it’s also true of most other practical things. So true. All right. So I guess the thing is, what, what what are some of these? What are some of these habits and choices? Those are? Those are really big, because I do things the way I do things, and I do it unconsciously. And with probably small tweaks in some cases, and other times read probably big tweaks are probably necessary. So it’s subjective, obviously.

Talia Fox 3:32
So yes, you use the word I do it subconsciously. So I love I, of course, I love my book. I’m excited. That’s why I wrote it, which is how do you become more conscious about the things that you’re doing? Instead of being conscious about the things that you’re doing and trying to stop things, what’s really important is to start doing things. So in my book, The Power of conscious connection, the whole premise is about being conscious of and aware of all the things that are going on in your world and connected to your power through these four habits, to alter it and to change it. And so the four habits I’ll just give them to you they make up the acronym love, but that was not on purpose. By the way, I’m kind of not as fluffy I think as I come across at times, but I’ll take it when it made the acronym I had to go with it. It was it was a sign if you will, sir. But I’ve read probably literally, you know, over 250 self help books, psychology books, leadership books, I have been studying leadership for over two decades, working with literally 1000s of people and so there’s so much to learn and there’s way too much information to consume. So this book is the hack for it. There are four things that I don’t care what book you read, you can read it from front to cover. From front to back, you’ll have these four habits makes it acronym love, listen, and listen. You know don’t kind of shut your head down like yeah, I listen listens and a skill that you have to master. It’s almost like you know you want to be The NBA MVP of your listening skills. And there’s some things to do in order to become a great listener that I talked about my book observation. This is where you become super smart. So we have to be geniuses, if you will, like Sherlock Holmes. What’s the difference between George you and I and Sherlock Holmes is his ability to observe connections with with people. This is becoming an epidemic of the lack of observation, because we’re on our phones, we’re distracted by our thoughts. And so we are losing our capacity to make key observations that will solve problems and also innovate, to have new ideas of how to proceed in the world. And then the second two are values. So there’s this whole thing that’s a little bit vague, which is when we get up in the morning, why do you do what you do? Why do you care about your clothes or not? Right? Why do you care about brushing your teeth or not? Well, we have these values. And these values drive our decisions. So we want to make sure that all of our choices and habits are aligned with our values. To do that, we have to have a habit of understanding those values and the skill to align, it takes skill to align with your values, believe it or not. And then lastly, engage the power of the tongue, right? The capacity to take your values, what you’ve listened to, and what you observe what you have observed. And to communicate it with influence with passion with power, you do those four things. And any challenge that is before you today. There is some message and some answer in those four skills. One more thing I’ll just say, is that each of those skills, and I’ll let you talk after this, but each of those skills is connected to a very specific leadership scale. But I’ll share more about that.

george grombacher 6:49
Cool, no, I think that these are awesome. I think that listening is, is underutilized. And we to your point, we can all very much get better at it. It is 100% something that we all do. Do we hear things, but maybe we don’t listen, whatever I’m, I’m there for it. I’m there for the observation piece 100% When you say that we’re observing connections between people, and that helps us solve problems, can you give me an example of what you mean.

Talia Fox 7:30
So going back very quickly to listening, it’s very complex to listen, because it’s the bedrock of emotional intelligence. So this ability to listen to the energy in the room to listen to people for meaning. One of the big deals here is that it’s not something that you will just naturally know, we have to listen differently, because we live in a different world, not just hearing what people are saying, the ability to take it in and understand it is a very different thing. When it comes to observation, and how it can solve problems is that the observation in the values piece, again, the values of your GPS to where you want to go in life, and what what’s the point of putting all this work in the observation, the reason it can solve all problems, because the observation is about connections. So for example, what is the connection between me eating a donut before I go on to speak and my performance and speaking, I have found that I’m Draghi, if I eat high carbs, and a lot of sugar. And I observed that there is a connection, there’s a connection to having conversation with my partner, when I’m really hungry, and how well that conversation ghost, right? There is a connection to the words that I use and how it influences people. So it’s really being able to observe what we call feedback loops. The skill associated with an observation is systems thinking. So sitting back, and observing, not what you assume or what you think is connected, but observing actually what is connected. And you do that by becoming experimental in your own life and in your own world.

george grombacher 9:08
I love it. So, and I think you’ve probably already said this, but it’s doing our best to remove biases. And what I’m sort of assuming you’re thinking or I’m assuming who you are, and just really making myself present and taking everything in and trying to make those connections.

Talia Fox 9:28
And what’s interesting about that is when we remove bias, and when we think about our assumptions, the goal here, again, I love the idea of being a good person and being nice and giving everyone a fair shot. But the real goal is so that we can be more aligned with what’s real in the world. And we don’t deprive ourselves of opportunity. So for example, let’s say there’s this amazing restaurant, and you look on the outside and it looks just like old and you maybe come from Phoenix or from Las Vegas where everything’s new. You And you leave that place you never go in and you find out that literally, I don’t know, your favorite person of all time, I don’t know if Cher was in there having dinner. And it’s the best place to have dinner on the entire planet, but you deprived yourself of that opportunity. Because you weren’t observing other factors, you just had a knee jerk reaction. And you made a very important decision about how you’re going to spend your day based on that knee jerk reaction. So if you think about life in general, whether the jobs you take the partners you choose the businesses you start or don’t start, we often do not have the quality of feedback loops and observations to make decisions that will likely result in more wins. Got it?

george grombacher 10:41
People really like share a lot. Hmm.

Talia Fox 10:43
I don’t know, I don’t even know where her name came from. I

george grombacher 10:48
know, I do like share. People love share. And I think the chair I think shares awesome values. probably always been really important to know what your values are. And I would, especially today probably never been more important. And because it seems like we’re being asked to hold up other people’s values all the time.

Talia Fox 11:22
You know, it’s interesting, it’s tricky. It’s this is a very complex, I don’t want to minimize the complexity of our values, because we have what I like to say a lot of value conflicts, or we have intention, behavior gaps. And so what that means is, for example, as I talk to you, George, and so you’ll, you know, it’s one of those things, you want to be a good person, you want to connect with people, you love talking to people, uplifting people, but then many of us as humans, not that you’re in this situation, George, but as many of us as humans, we may be in a situation where someone is rude to us, or someone holds an idea or a viewpoint that is in conflict with ours, right? Whether it be it could be political, it could be about life. And so at that moment, does that give us the right to violate our value of kindness by being cruel and disrespectful to them just because they’re disrespecting us. So the issue, the thing with value alignment is, here’s the big deal. Values are for when we are faced with conflicts, that’s when you lean on them. It’s easy to be in a room of people that look like you talk, like you have your same beliefs and uphold your values. Like that’s easy. But can you be in a room of people and say, I’ll give you one of my values. If someone is in my presence, I hope that they will feel uplifted or the same but not feel diminished in any way. And guess what? That means even someone in my presence that I don’t care for, and that I feel has values that are in deep conflict with my own, Am I perfect? Absolutely not. But because I have a value on being kind to myself, if I violate that value, or if I make a mistake, I also try to uplift myself in that. So it’s a constant realigning with your values, despite all of the hard choices and things that are coming into your world.

george grombacher 13:13
That is such a powerful thing. It’s possible to hold two things in your head at the same time, it’s possible for me to believe that XYZ is the most important issue of our day. And for me to have a value of kindness. And if I come in contact with you, Talia, and you are the opposite of XYZ, you think that ABC is the best thing and XYZ is really stupid, well, then I might want to attack you because I think that you’re wrong. But one of my other values happens to be kindness. So I’m going to engage with you in a way that honors both of my values.

Talia Fox 13:52
Absolutely, I have something going on with me, right? I’m a single mom, I raised two boys. One is an adult, and the other is just finishing high school. And so my male friends, the big advice I always get is to be really hard on them, you know, to really, they say boys need this and need something else. So I had sat my boys down and I said, Listen, this is the mom you got, I’m kind of impatient. I tried to talk to you in a particular way. And I think that in some ways that could do you a disservice. So what’s your plan? What’s your plan for making sure that my lack of strictness with you does not affect you in any way? And I tell them, this is the data this is what they’re saying. And so let’s let’s talk about that. Because what happened to me is I was I tried to be the certain mother, I wanted to be extra strict, and it just didn’t feel right for me. And so my strategy is to talk things out and to try to be patient and to, you know, allow them to be independent. Again, I don’t know if that’s going to lead to like the best results. One graduated from Emory and neuroscience and the others they’re doing for Be Well, but, you know, the the point is I don’t know where that’s going to lead. But I feel really good about staying true to my values, even though people on the outside have many different ideas about the way I should be, or could be raising my children.

george grombacher 15:18
That’s it, thank you for sharing that. It just makes me everybody’s got an opinion about everything. Right? And that they, and that people are comfortable sharing that with you probably is evidence that they care about you, and they care about your well being and the well being of your children. So you happily accept that and you internalize and question it. And then you have an open and honest communication with your two, with your one adult and soon to be adult sons. And everybody emerges better for

Talia Fox 15:49
it. Yeah, yeah. There’s, there’s always a way to listen and observe, align with your values, and then I engage them. So I really use the love system in all aspects of my life.

george grombacher 16:01
I think that that’s excellent. Does anybody not like it? They say that this sucks, stupid.

Talia Fox 16:07
I love that question. I have not gotten that feedback. yet. I do wonder if some of my clients we work with that quseir Very big clients, and I don’t necessarily use the love system, I got the question, do you take this into like the DOD. And I don’t use that system, I don’t lead with, Hey, we’re going to come into this room and love. But it’s a strategic outline in my head of how I even engage with clients. And so quseir actually is another acronym for knowledge, understanding strategy implementation. So I’m really big on like, there’s something with three or four things that you focus on, that gives you a guide and a system for how to engage with people. And something to focus on to to figure out how to deal with the complexity and all the unknowns that we’re experiencing in this world,

george grombacher 16:55
when it’s so helpful to have a heuristic, or whatever the term is an acronym, it makes it stickier, versus, there are these four things. And I think that one of them was low value, low value some, but when you have L O V, it just makes it easier to internalize. So when people are trying to remember back and make these connections, and hopefully sharing with other people, that’s how the message spreads.

Talia Fox 17:21
Absolutely.

george grombacher 17:25
That is how the message spreads, which one is hardest for you. Talia, listen, observe values or engage.

Talia Fox 17:35
You know, I think that the values piece is hardest for me, because it’s very complex in the book, the skill associated with values is also cultural competence. And cultural competence is its ability to understand other values of their cultures or their experiences, and adapt your behavior to be to operate more effectively within those experiences. So sometimes you have to ask yourself, you know, at this moment in time, which of my values am I going to allow to reign supreme? And so you can imagine, there’s, I’m always in the balance it takes, this isn’t a simple thing. As a as a business owner, I value people, but I have to make difficult decisions. As you know, a strategist, a leadership strategist, there’s so many values of again, as you said, the kindness and but I have to be tough at times. And so really revisiting where my true values are and how I’m aligned with those and making those tough decisions is definitely the most difficult. Yeah.

george grombacher 18:40
And, and deservedly so and understandably. So we’re constantly taking in new information and having new experiences. And there’s that great quote that I’m not going to get correct, but it’s impossible for the same person to step into the same river twice, because it’s a different person. That’s a different river. You have different seasons of life. What are you going to do when both of your boys are grownups that’s going to be you know, a whole new set of challenges and opportunities? Yes,

Talia Fox 19:06
yes. Well, I, I have a plan, I think I might write another book. And one of the things that I’m really looking forward to is I’m going to be going around the world having conscious connections with people in strange, awkward places. When I say strange and awkward, I mean, just, I know someone that that owns 100 of your cheese farm, I’m going to go visit that farm and ask them like how they live in Romania. I will be visiting a love doctor that lives in Czech in Czech Republic. And I’ll be going to South Africa visiting and and talking to a woman that is a business owner but also helps animals and children there with this big nonprofit. And so there’s there’s a plan for the way I’d love to spend my life is just being more aware of how people are living their lives and more connected to The people that I just in my every day, probably would not interact with.

george grombacher 20:05
Yeah, I think that that’s really great and fascinating to have the opportunity to travel to literally different parts of the world to put your, your theories and, and skills and tools to the test. And that’s something that we obviously do every day, and that you do every day in every interaction. Because, you know, it’s so strange to say, Talia, but just the last couple of years have taught me, I’m 45 years old. And I’ve known that people are different. But the last couple of years have shown me Wow, we are so much different than one another. And there’s these massive amounts of people that think, seemingly completely different than I do right here in the United States of America. So I think that everything you’ve been talking about is so immensely important. And I do view all of them as skills which are there to be learned and sharpened and then put to work. And if we’re able to do that, then it’ll make the world a better place.

Talia Fox 21:09
Absolutely. And the last thing I’ll say about this is when I first wrote this book, you know, love is a strategy for Transforming Your Life, and transforming the way you live and how you succeed and achieve things. But the reason I’m doing this global tour is because it’s also the path to bliss and happiness. And, and this idea of looking at the world is this beautiful place to consume and to understand. And so when you love the world, and you love people, and you kind of can let go of all of these requirements and all of these judgments, you open up this really beautiful opportunity to live a life that can I think be epic. If for lack of better words,

george grombacher 21:50
well said, will tell you thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you? Wonderful

Talia Fox 21:57
so Italia Fox speaks is my Instagram Talia Fox speaks and also for those that might be in organizations and they want to get in touch with CU psi. We do corporate development, a lot of consulting we transform culture. You can go to CU psi training.com. And you also can connect with me on LinkedIn. I have a great newsletter and talking about the love system, lots of activity there going on about how to apply and utilize the lift system. Excellent.

george grombacher 22:26
If you enjoy this as much as I did, she will tell your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to Thalia Fox speaks.com It’s t a l IAFOX speaks.com. And certainly if you’re an organization consider bringing her in to share this with your team. Go to quseir training.com. It’s K u s ai training.com and find her on Instagram under Talia Fox speaks and pick up your copy of the power of conscious connections wherever you buy your books. Thanks can tell you. Thanks, George. Next time remember, do your part by doing your best

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.