The Unlock Moment: find your purpose for leadership and life

Today it is my huge privilege to welcome George Mumford to The Unlock Moment. George is a globally-recognised speaker, teacher, and coach. He’s worked at the highest levels in elite basketball - Michael Jordan credits George with transforming his on-court leadership, and he has also worked with the late Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal and countless other NBA players, Olympians, executives, and artists. Kobe Bryant said: “George helped me understand the art of mindfulness. To be neither distracted or focused, rigid or flexible, passive or aggressive. I learned just to be.” George’s first book The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance is a memoir and instruction guide to accessing your inner masterpiece. His new book “Unlocked: Embrace Your Greatness, Find the Flow, Discover Success” was just published in HarperCollins in May. While at the University of Massachusetts — where he roomed with future Hall-of-Famer Julius Erving — injuries forced Mumford out of basketball and into addiction to pain medication and drugs. With the help of meditation and mindfulness, he got clean and made it his mission to teach and work with others. When you meet someone with this kind of client list, you know it’s time to sit back, listen and learn. But there’s also this real depth to George’s personal story and I can’t wait to hear more. You'll learn from his great wisdom about mindfulness, finding flow and unlocking your inner masterpiece - this is the type of episode you're going to want to go back to and listen again and again! -- George Mumford: https://georgemumford.com/ Buy "Unlocked" here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unlocked-Embrace-Greatness-Discover-Success/dp/0063210096

Now, I really like having big thinkers here to talk about their experiences, their learnings and their perspective. I met Yannick Jacob recently and was fascinated by his outlook on the meaning of life and how he brings a sharp clarity to the complexity of how our minds work. I know you’ll enjoy hearing from him too. Yannick is a coach, trainer and supervisor with Masters degrees in Existential Coaching and Applied Positive Psychology. He is part of the teaching faculties at Cambridge University and the International Centre for Coaching Supervision, and he’s the Course Director of the School of Positive Transformation’s Accredited Certificate in Integrative Coaching. He's an in-demand speaker and author of the book, An Introduction to Existential Coaching. And if that wasn’t enough to keep one person busy, he also founded Yannick’s Coaching Lab and hosts three podcasts – Coaching Uncaged, Talking about Coaching and Talking about Coaching and Psychedelics. Now what I’m particularly interested in getting Yannick’s take on is the really big questions that help you find connection, meaning and purpose. If you’ve listened for a while then you’ll know about my passion for fostering ownership and intentionality in the people I work with. Yannick said this: "The thing is that those who make the most out of their time on this planet, the ones we look up to as having really lived, they allow themselves to experience the whole spectrum of what life has to offer – “good” and “bad”, pleasant and uncomfortable, success and failure, happiness and anxiety. To not merely endure life, but to enjoy it in all its facets, that‘s what I call “a life well lived”. And it’s a choice away." Wow, I can’t wait to hear more! -- Yannick Jacob: https://www.coachingandmediation.net/ Yannick's Coaching Lab: https://gocoachinglab.com/ Yannick on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/YannickJacob

I was honoured to be a guest speaker at the recent Retail Trust Together Fest employee wellbeing event and today I’m absolutely delighted to be welcoming Chris Brook-Carter, the CEO of the Retail Trust. From 1832 onwards, the Retail Trust has been caring for and protecting the lives of people working in retail. They believe the health of retail colleagues is the foundation they need to flourish in both work and life, creating a more sustainable and successful future for the retail sector. And in recent years the retail industry has been extremely hard hit by economic turbulence. Their services have never been more necessary. Last year, over 270,000 retail colleagues reached out for help. The Retail Trust took 14,000 helpline calls, that’s one every 37 minutes, provided over £400,000 in financial aid and delivered over 10,000 counselling sessions. Chris has been a passionate supporter, advocate and champion of UK retail across his entire career. Prior to joining the Retail Trust, Chris was the Managing Director and Senior Vice President of Retail Week - the most influential media brand in UK retail – and the World Retail Congress, the single biggest gathering of global retail’s leadership each year. Chris led these brands for ten years, transforming the business from a weekly print title, into a digital-first information and global events brand that continues to sit at the heart of global retail by delivering on its mission to inform, connect and inspire the leaders that continue to colour this great sector. I’m looking forward to hearing about Chris’s life lessons in retail and the Unlock Moments that helped him to figure out the path ahead. -- Chris Brook-Carter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-brook-carter-3891474/ The Retail Trust: https://www.retailtrust.org.uk/

I met for lunch today with an old friend of mine. We were talking about how much of life is determined by our work – it shapes where we live, how much time we spend commuting, where we send our children to school. In reality wherever we’ve lived for the last twenty years has always been strongly influenced by the work we do, how we get there and how late we need to be in the office. My friend said to me, “I’ve always thought you should start with where you want to live, and then figure out from there what work you can do.” My immediate response was probably like yours – in the real world we don’t have that freedom. But then I thought, well who owns that freedom? We do. Who's driving your big life choices? It's today's question for reflection in the Box of Keys. -- Dr Gary Crotaz, PhD: https://garycrotaz.com

Today is really special, because it’s the 100th episode of The Unlock Moment podcast. Joining me in this special centenary episode is a fantastic guest, NASA astronaut Dr Charlie Camarda. He's a world-leading expert in how to get to space and back in one piece, and he doesn't hold back here in his views on the NASA culture, what has and hasn't been learned since the Columbia shuttle disaster of 2003 and where there still needs to be focus in order to keep the astronauts safe. Dialling in today from near Port Canaveral in Florida, where he’s been watching Space-X launches with the family, Charlie is an American engineer and NASA astronaut who spent almost 14 days in space in 2005 aboard Space Shuttle Discovery, in the “Return to Flight” shuttle mission, the first shuttle flight after the Columbia disaster in 2003, in which the shuttle broke up on re-entry killing all seven astronauts on board. After his space flight, Charlie was Director of Engineering at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and was then Senior Advisor for Innovation to the Office of the Chief Engineer, NASA Headquarters. Charlie retired from NASA in 2019. He holds a doctorate in engineering, 9 patents and over 20 national and international awards. We’re going to hear about his journey through life, and through space, his leading role in the Columbia disaster investigation and his perspective on the culture at NASA and how mistakes can start to creep in in high stakes scenarios. And he'll bring to life his visionary work to inspire children across the world to get involved in space science, through his Epic Education Foundation. Let's get into orbit with Dr Charlie Camarda! -- Dr Charlie Camarda - Epic Education Foundation: https://epiceducationfoundation.org/

I was reminded this week of the Maya Angelou quote, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Time and again, my guests on The Unlock Moment talk about how the remarkable clarity they found was about how they realised that their purpose was to serve others. I was in conversation with one of my coachees recently, an extraordinary person who has made it her personal mission to impact the lives of young children around the world who have been abused and abandoned. It made me reflect on what I was doing to impact the lives of others. Feelings matter and the smallest things you do can have a massive impact on others, if it helps them to feel seen, to feel heard, to feel valued. -- Dr Gary Crotaz, PhD: https://garycrotaz.com

I was approached for a big role recently. The kind of role that would be higher profile than I’d ever had before, more responsibility than I’d ever had before, higher pay than I’d ever had before. It was seductive. Shiny things are seductive. But in the back of my mind I also knew that it would represent a step back, from the life I’ve built today around the things that really are my purpose in life, to a past life that was more disruptive, higher stress and higher risk of burnout. In reality I know that material wealth does not and should not trump emotional health. It’s the foundation of human, humble, vulnerable leadership. Nevertheless, the magpie part of my brain was still going, “ooh, follow the shiny thing.” For many people I’ve worked with, their Unlock Moment has been when they’ve figured out that the shiny thing was actually not so shiny. The glare is blinding them to what really matters. Their talent. Their passion. Their strength. Their purpose. Material wealth does not, and should not trump emotional health. Don’t get blinded by the shiny thing. That’s my moment of clarity for today. -- Dr Gary Crotaz, PhD: https://garycrotaz.com

When your Unlock Moment of remarkable clarity starts with you letting go of the bridge and then talking about what happened next ... well that's just the beginning of this powerful story of self-discovery and renewal that mental health advocate and executive coach Uwe Dockhorn went on. He's a brilliant storyteller and you can't help but get drawn in to his world. Based in Germany but working globally, Uwe calls himself the Lifestyle Liberator and founded a programme called The AIM Experience for busy executives and their VIPs, their Very Important Partners, at home. He's also the host of the podcast, "Lift-Off With Energizing Results." Uwe is on a mission to unlock the latent potential within high achiever families, elevating the standards of leadership success and triggering a ripple of positive impact that echoes through generations. He strongly believes that to become a better leader, you must first become a better partner at home. -- Uwe Dockhorn: https://www.uwedockhorn.com/ Uwe Dockhorn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/uwedockhorn/

My regular listeners will know that I have many world-class leaders and coaches coming on the podcast. And I also invite people who I like to call ‘ordinary people with extraordinary stories’. I love the power of vulnerable storytelling to help people to unlock their thinking, feel connected and less alone and lonely in their own journey. For today’s guest, Paru Radia, there is much more to her story than what you see of her today as a highly successful executive strategist, but it is that story that has shaped her into the powerful thought partner to senior executives and entrepreneurs that she is today. Paru styles herself the ‘C-Suite Whisperer’ – a sought-after executive strategist who helps her clients take control of their businesses, careers and lives, whilst staying true to who they are. Born into an Indian entrepreneurial family here in England, Paru faced constant challenges that moulded her into a fearless conflict resolver. Over the years working for blue chip organisations and high performance leaders, she has gained invaluable insights into how to read the room and read between the lines to communicate with and motivate diverse personalities to achieve exceptional results. But today we’re also going to hear much more of Paru’s origin story, the challenges she faced along the way and how she overcame them to become the person she is today. And of course the Unlock Moments of remarkable clarity that helped her to figure out the path ahead. I can’t wait to learn more. -- Paru Radia: https://www.paruradia.com/

You want authentic leadership? I'll give you authentic leadership! This is the straight-talking, unflinchingly honest account of how a successful tech CEO took accountability for his own failings and drew back from the precipice to shape a successful business and a hit podcast, 'Honey, I Blew Up The Business'. You'll learn how as a leader you can't hide behind spreadsheets or excuses. When you're in the hot seat, the buck well and truly stops with you. Dan Kirby is CEO of The Tech Department, a business specialising in helping startup founders build reliable, scalable, tech. He has an eclectic set of interests, having starred in a movie pilot, launched a festival in London and run the Marathon des Sables in the Sahara Desert raising £14,000 for a children’s charity. We’re going to talk about what it feels like when things start to go off the rails, how you deal with it and how you can build to come out the other side resilient and ready to grow. And I’m looking forward to hearing about the Unlock Moments of remarkable clarity that helped Dan figure out his own path. -- Honey, I Blew Up The Business: https://www.honeyiblewupthebusiness.com/ The Tech Department: https://www.thetechdept.com/

This episode of The Unlock Moment with rugby league star and mental health campaigner Stevie Ward is just so special. He’s such a powerful storyteller, he paints vivid pictures that bring you right into the moment. For a guy trained to put his body on the line, he’s remarkably in touch with his emotions and his vulnerability, and he’s got an extraordinary personal story to tell. This is not really a conversation about sports, it’s a conversation about challenge and adversity, aloneness and togetherness, redemption and triumph. This is an episode that’s going to give you that and so much more. Stevie Ward is a keynote speaker and former professional rugby league player, part of the golden generation at the Leeds Rhinos, one of the most successful teams in super league history. Stevie became the youngest grand final winner ever, going on to win two more Grand Finals and 2 Challenge Cups, and was named captain at just 26. In UK elite sport, he’s a huge name. In 2019 Stevie suffered a head injury in a game against Wigan. He was diagnosed with debilitating concussion, which led to him retiring from the game at just 27 at the start of 2020. His long journey of physical and mental recovery from brain injury, through lockdown and beyond, has shaped a passion for opening up the conversation about mental health. Throughout all of the winning and losing in life, Stevie believes that the truest form of resilience is to realise the potential of our true selves. Stevie put this to the test by leading culture meetings as a captain of the Rhinos team. Promoting authenticity formed championship-winning teams and formidable relationships. He channelled his own mental health challenges into Mantality, a movement where men can be vulnerable, address our mental health and then take up the responsibility to do something about it, to go find meaning and purpose within our lives. 25% of people in the UK suffer with a mental health problem each year, so Mantality is committed to donating 25% of all profits to offering immediate psychological support to young people who need it. And Stevie launched the Mantality podcast to discuss mental health openly and freely with athletes at the top of their game and role-model celebrities. I’ve listened and it’s a really great conversation. Stevie’s is a tough journey but I’m so impressed with how he has turned personal adversity into a mission to make a difference around mental health. I can’t wait for this conversation and to hear about the Unlock Moments of remarkable clarity that shaped his path along the way. -- Stevie Ward: https://stevieward.co.uk/ Mantality: https://mantality.co.uk/

We’re in disruptive times here in the coaching world, with a massive acceleration of coaches being trained, a plethora of new digital coaching platforms like Better Up, CoachHub and Ezra, and new non-human digital coaching experiences like KultraLab where I'm Chief Coaching Officer. And then on top of that we’ve got ChatGPT, Google Bard and a myriad of other AI platforms landing and expanding. Can they reproduce a human coach? Well today’s guest is going to help us figure it all out! Sam Isaacson is an enthusiastic coachtech thought leader, as well as being an active coach and coach supervisor. He writes a popular LinkedIn newsletter and has written two books on the topic: How to Thrive as a Coach in a Digital World (Open University Press, 2021) and Superhuman Coaching (Hanwell Publishing, 2022). He is the founder of the Coachtech Collective, a global community of coaches grappling with technology, and works closely with the big coaching professional bodies on the development of thinking around technology and ethics. He is Chair of the Coaching Professional apprenticeship, the biggest coaching qualification in England. With a background in professional services and a disruptive global coaching technology startup, he's the first person to have delivered executive coaching in virtual reality. His coaching consultancy practice Coachtech Ltd, based in London, supports clients with a particular focus on maturing organisational coaching ecosystems and enhancing coaching using technology, through coach development, coaching supervision, and advisory projects. Let’s go virtual! -- Sam Isaacson: https://www.isaacson.uk/ Superhuman Coaching: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Superhuman-Coaching-technologies-coaching-possible/dp/B0B6LHYWQ6

As my regular listeners know well, I consider it just such a privilege to get to spend precious time with world-leading coaches on this podcast and today is no exception – my guest is someone who I’ve been hoping to convince to come on for a very long time! Alisa Cohn is simply the best startup coach in the business and has worked with C-suite executives at prominent startups like Venmo, Etsy and Tory Burch as well as Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft, Google, Calvin Klein and Pfizer. She is the award-winning author of ‘From Start-up to Grown-up’, and the host of the podcast of the same name which provides insights and tools .. for the journey that founders (and all leaders) must go through as they scale their leadership. Alisa was named the Top Startup Coach in the World by none other than Dr Marshall Goldsmith, who you can hear on Episode 36 of The Unlock Moment, and she was ranked globally as the #1 Global Guru for the past three years by Global Gurus Research Organization. She’s a member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 group of coaches, many of whom I’ve been privileged to speak with on this podcast in recent months. A sought-after speaker, Alisa was named one of the top 100 leadership speakers by Inc. She has keynoted events for IBM, PwC, Dell, and Citi. She is a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Inc, and she's been featured as an expert on BBC World News and in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. If all of that wasn’t enough, she is an angel investor and a Broadway investor. We’ve heard some amazing Unlock Moments from entrepreneurs over the last year on this podcast and I can’t wait to hear Alisa’s take on emergent leadership as well as learning about the Unlock Moments that shaped her own path in coaching and in life. -- Alisa Cohn: https://www.alisacohn.com/ 'From Startup to Grown-Up': https://www.amazon.co.uk/Start-Up-Grown-Up-Grow-Leadership-Business/dp/1398601381

We took our dogs swimming last week. They’re both Pomeranians – not much dog but a lot of fluff. And they both have a bit of an aversion to water. One hates it on her feet, so the merest contact with a puddle and she’s frantically wiping herself on the curtains to get dry. The other hates to drink it, so will go for hours avoiding hydration until she’s virtually a dry cracker and then inhales half a bowl of water when she finally realises it’s the source of life. So we really didn’t know how they’d take to water but we went to a local doggy spa where they have a dog hydrotherapy pool. And they were wearing their lifejackets with handles that we bought to go on a boat trip last year. Often people stand in the way of their Unlock Moments. They can’t see the route to fresh thinking. They don’t believe they can do a thing they’ve never done before. But like Mochi and Beansprout at the doggy pool, maybe you just have to find your lifejacket and get in the water to discover that actually you can swim perfectly well. -- https://garycrotaz.com

Today we’re talking about talking – finding openness and trust in our leadership and our relationship with the people around us, and unlocking authentic leadership in the process. Peter de Silva is a highly experienced financial industry executive and board member. A former Harvard University Senior Fellow for the Advanced Leadership Initiative, he is the author of ‘Taking Stock – 10 life and leadership principles from my seat at the table’ just recently published in March this year. As Retail President for online stockbroker TD Ameritrade, he was responsible for the $5bn retail business segment and 5,000 employees. He also served as President of Scottrade Financial Services and UMB Financial Corporation, as well as being a senior leader at Fidelity Investments. As well as his extensive business career, Peter is also shaped by his experience with a debilitating neurological condition, Charcot Marie Tooth (CMT) disease, something he chose not to share with others for decades. He says “I believe that life experiences test the impressions people hold, values they set and believe, or a set of actions that people might want – or not want – to emulate." I’m looking forward to hearing more about his journey in business and in life, how he balanced wellbeing and work, and the moments of remarkable clarity that shaped his path. -- Peter de Silva: https://peterjdesilva.com/ Peter de Silva on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-j-desilva/ Taking Stock: 10 Life and Leadership Principles from My Seat at the Table: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Taking-Stock-Leadership-Principles-Table/dp/B0BZF9GG7Z

I had the great pleasure of meeting Simon Sinek the other week. He was doing a speaking engagement at the Royal Festival Hall in London with Steven Bartlett, raising funds for a new piece of choreography for Rambert, where I’m involved as a board member. We were talking about my idea of ‘Alone, With Others’ – that sense of it being just you in the midst of the maelstrom. Most of us are lucky enough to have people around us who love us, care for us, support us, mentor us and are simply there for us when we need them. But at a moment of remarkable clarity when you suddenly figure out the path ahead, there is often this overwhelming sense of ‘it’s just me, here in this moment.' What others think, what others believe, that pales into the background. Like a macro zoom lens, what’s in the periphery fades away and what’s in sharp, sharp focus is me. Who I am. What I know. What I choose. It's today's Box of Keys episode, here on The Unlock Moment. -- Dr Gary Crotaz, PhD: https://garycrotaz.com

The forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books of one of the world’s leading business thinkers, Dr David Burkus, are helping leaders build their best team ever. He is the bestselling author of five books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. Since 2017, David has been ranked multiple times as one of the world’s top business thought leaders. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, CNN and the BBC. And his TED talk “The simple way to inspire your team” has been viewed over a million times in just 8 months. A former business school professor, David now works with leaders from organizations across all industries, including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Adobe, and NASA. His most recent book just out is called ‘Best Team Ever, the surprising science of high performing teams’. Talent doesn’t make the team—the team makes the talent. Why are some teams more motivated, innovative, and successful than others? Why do some groups of talented people fall short against lesser teams? And how do you go about building a high-performing team? I’m appreciating more and more how The Unlock Moment is a powerful route to discovering your deepest underlying sense of purpose. I’m looking forward to hearing about how David thinks about purpose, how you find it, how you use it and how you leverage it in the team, and of course what his Unlock Moment was on his own journey to the person he is today. Let’s dive in! -- David Burkus: https://davidburkus.com/ David Burkus on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkus/

David Noble is a deep expert in leadership and strategy, and a more recent convert to the coaching world. With over 20 years at the top echelons of global finance and consulting institutions including Morgan Stanley, Kearney and Oliver Wyman, these days he is the founder of leadership and strategy consulting firm VIEW Advisors, a senior advisor to recruiter Egon Zehnder, the Institute of Coaching and Oliver Wyman Group. He was named by Thinkers 50 as one of the world’s top coaches and is a member of the Marshall Goldsmith MG100 group, many of whom have previously graced this stage of course. He's the co-author with Dr Carol Kauffman (Episode 61) of ‘Real-Time Leadership, Find Your Winning Moves When The Stakes Are High’. Whether you're making a split-second decision when your business is hit sideways … or finding the best strategy to navigate business-critical long-term circumstances, how can you be at your best in the most crucial moments? I love how the value in coaching leaders comes from such a variety of perspectives and I’m looking forward to hearing how David leverages his experience to help senior leaders be their best at work. And of course to hear about the Unlock Moments that helped him find clarity about the path ahead. -- David Noble: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-noble-468222/ Real-Time Leadership: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Time-Leadership-Winning-Moves-Stakes/dp/1647823935 VIEW Advisors: https://www.view-advisors.com/

In this special episode, I’m bringing you a live recording of The Unlock Moment. In May 2023 I presented The Unlock Moment on stage at the Climb23 Innovation conference in Leeds here in the UK. Climb is the UK’s festival of innovation, industry and investment and is brought to you by Investor Ladder and CRSI. You can find out about next year’s event by going to the website climb24.co.uk In this session I was in conversation with Georgia Kirke from Write Business Results, a business that helps entrepreneurs to share their ideas by getting published. We talk together about the origin of The Unlock Moment and how it is a powerful way to uncover your deepest underlying sense of purpose to fuel your success in business and in life. We do a live demonstration of The Unlock Moment with Georgia herself. And of course we bring to life many fascinating stories from here on The Unlock Moment podcast. I hope you enjoy this special live recording of The Unlock Moment, in conversation with Georgia Kirke at Climb23! -- Dr Gary Crotaz, PhD: https://garycrotaz.com Climb24: https://www.climb24.co.uk/ Write Business Results: https://writebusinessresults.com/

Now if you’ve been listening for a while then you’ll remember a powerful conversation with a friend of mine, and a brilliant coach, Beatrice Zornek. It’s one of the most downloaded episodes of all time on The Unlock Moment. So when Beatrice approached me recently and said ‘why don’t we turn things around and put you on the spot’, I thought it might be fun and interesting. And that’s what we’re doing today! We talk about my life in dance, my journey to coaching and much more in between. How balance and imbalance are central to my coaching practice and how I embrace the state of 'figuring out' in a journey of continual learning and growth. This is a conversation where you'll find out more about why I'm the person and the coach I am today - hope you enjoy it! -- Dr Gary Crotaz, PhD: https://garycrotaz.com