[Music] hi my name is Joel in this episode of unplugs I talk to lost Rasmus Hougaard. Rasmus is the founder and managing director of potential project with hundreds of couches in 30 countries potential project delivers leadership and mindfulness programs to many of the fortune 500 companies their programs improve results well-being and innovation cosmos and I talk about many things including the power of attention his own daily practice and the three qualities of a successful leader so I was wondering how did you end up with

the idea to start potential projects so I have a long background in contemporary practices when I was very young that went to two agencyiq City Paul Metz and great meditation masters that taught me how to manage my own mind and I will bring back that I was 17 when I already started yeah how come you started that early because I felt a sense of emptiness in the Western approach to life basically and so I survived and then I came back and kept up the practices and kept trying the trees but I also became the conventional I did my

university degree I became a research and organization development they end up in the corporate world and after some years I was a good with the Sony Corporation and I start to look around the offices and seeing that people were first of all not enjoying their work you know they would chicken nuts at whatever time in the morning I’d leave in the afternoon they will be stressed out and they wouldn’t be very effective they were not very focused I could just see that they were incredibly distracting from be stressed

I’m just not enjoying their work and I thought that such an incredible waste of human potential and I started to look back at what I was doing and why I was enjoying my work and that was definitely because I had the axes that helped me to have a more clear calm and focused mind I never felt stressed I just felt that I was constantly on doing the right things and I really enjoyed it so that gave me the inspiration I own hey if I can do these things that changes my life and my performance drastically other people

should have that too doesn’t seem fair that I choose for myself yeah so that’s when I came up with the idea hey let’s try and scale this when did you start up that was it was a bad timing though since 2008 you can imagine just up to you just before the financial crisis the first years were a bit that were good tough the 2008 I had my first presentation which was that which was something I was really looking forward to I had a full company that was pulling that leadership team out for the day and

hmm and I had really prepared well which is absolutely ready and came there and the whole morning I put them through meditation practices and Hill told him about amazing donkeys from the Himalayas that had inspired me a lot and there’s a lunch break after lunch they didn’t come back and I like it laughter now obviously back then it was painful because I realized that my approach didn’t work and you didn’t break if you want to want to integrate something else perceived as personal soft fluffy Easter

and all this stuff where the hardcore day-to-day reality of being a leader in the business you need to make a seamless integration that people as a benefit from the moment they start usually that’s about three years to bring together researchers and patients leaders and and mind training masters to find a format that worked well yeah yeah what’s up start your father and I for those three years it’s started resonating with the market yeah exactly those three years we did a accessed where we brought in media and research

is a big concern your European insurance company and we basic just put it all out there no now we’re putting everything on on one ORS and fortune went really well very very impressive results that the researchers had never seen before in any kind of corporate intervention and the me just excited about it then within a few years we were in ten countries and now we’re in thirty countries with no way over 600 global companies so it’s a it’s a very very quick so what when you when you look at all those people you’ve

ditched mindfulness we don’t middle risen all those companies what what changes within a company once I started doing it there are few things that change let’s first talk about the individual level and then the the cultural level the first is people get more calm and when they get more calm they get more focused when they get more calm and focused they have a sense of overview so they are better able to prioritize what’s right what they also find is is that it’s a bigger sense and I know that sounds

fluffy and a little bit flaky but they find a sense of inner peace and when you find peaceful yourself it starts out more at least with others and that has a massive impact on the culture so what the organizations are seeing on the edges you can kinda even a more collaborative collaboration goes more smoothly and if you’ve got generally more focused on the right things not just doing a lot of things and that basically makes people more and higher performing and more productive is it is it necessary that the leadership team is

on board as well or not even if you’re experienced it is if the if the leadership team is not on board people in your organization will not feel that is okay to sits quiet for any moments in the day and practice mindfulness as an example but also what we work a lot with is work practices so something like multitasking which researchers have found over the past ten years useful things to do for our performance efforts have an activity our well-being that is something that all people think is still

a good thing so if there is not an a by in from the top of your organization hey we got to stop multitasking and be more focused at what we do then people will keep multitasking so it’s very important that the top is at least brought into the concepts of what you’re doing so that the culture can actually allow you to change this is growing throughout time in the last few years if more and more leaders are into doing this ingor technique yeah so about ten years ago when when we started it was a it’s a

hard sell like companies did not see the benefit in this and senior leaders certainly not but nowadays you know it’s a it’s made headlines in in all newspapers in all TV it’s everywhere so everybody talks about it and that has an impact on on on the corporate world as well so my estimate is on Houston America and Europe probies 30% of all CEOs are meditating thank you on a daily basis 30 percent say around 30 percent so it’s a very significant impact that has had on on beater ships in the West overall it’s

still growing you think it’s definitely still growing I would say yeah I would say it will probably keep growing as long as we’re having a attention deficit rate crisis which is what we are people like on average that is 47% of the time people really not paying attention to whatever they are doing and that has obviously a massive effect on on the bottom line as long as we have that crisis essential crisis the rise of mindfulness will keep happening I think because it is a direct answer those who

are in ability of paying attention what she is happening in in society because of that crisis hmm the societal crisis or impacts of this crisis is staggering we know that with the introduction of Technology our first all our attention span has has dropped significantly but we also know that will that’s there’s a much higher rate of depression much higher rate of anxiety and much higher rate of even suicide so when we’re not paying attention to what we’re doing because we’re constantly distracting

ourselves we never be depressing and that has an impact on our well-being and that has an impact on how people live their lives so it’s pretty it’s it’s very sad I’m seeing nowadays [Music] I stopped eating sugar all together a lot of juniors okay oh this time January as well already yes for me it was the next step in the eating more healthy another healthy eater by myself so I’m just repress a good thing to cut out yeah yeah it gives more clarity of course and yesterday there’s Spade deepens when you meditate

yeah yeah why did you cut sugar sugar because it was it had a negative impact on my stomach I could feel and it has some negative impact on my mind I can just feel my mind getting more hazy and Saki when I when I eat it’s amazing to see for me a more and more people stuck with the alcohol and start drinking this coffee and really pay attention to being really healthy yeah and they think they understand how it affects their mind and you know that when even in the Netherlands people stop eating as much

sugar training so much beer drink coffee them then something that’s don’t make sense yeah yeah but do you teach it as well so companies how they can help help to your life that is a part of our curriculum but not for all clients some clients are asking for that and then we bring that in but always from that Assante work and if the form is perspective yeah I mean there is a performance aspect of having sugar and going into the blood sugar rollercoaster where we basically alternating between being like basically stressed out

because too much sugar and being being too low on sugar which is very very bad for the formats and the same with coffee for that matter and how much we eat in general yeah what kind of leaders or companies do you see that are in your opinion really frontrunners when it comes to creating a more calm so I’m gonna say it’s generally leaders that are under significant pressure and they have tried to look for all the different apps and all the time management tools and found out that it’s still not enough and and what we see is

they take to the last resort which is the main driver up there up there of their actions which is the mind so it’s the ones that are really under pressure that generally takes rate geography it has definitely been predominantly in the US and then in Europe and in Australia and in Asia regrets at the industry since that may be an IT and tech that has been the main frontrunner and this obviously from Silicon Valley to to other tech hubs around the world and then professional services and finance and so that the bigger industries where

CEOs and senior leaders have segments the practices do you have specific leaders that you say okay those are really doing an effort and they’re really making steps with their organizations I think there are a lot of great role models in in CEOs totally transforming the organization’s one of the good ones is Jeff Wayman from from Lincoln who took the position about ten years ago and he had come from that from a senior position Yahoo where he was known to be just a pretty tough leader and he had realized that that didn’t

deliver the results I’d hoped for and have been contemplating a lot how to do that differently and he made compassion and mindfulness is two main leadership mantras and basically nowadays everything in Lincoln that has to do with people is wrapped around those concepts so the way they’re the true people the way they hire the way train the way they develop meters all focused around how do they become better people that take better care of each other and clients and whether that’s why I LinkedIn as a massive success that

still to be seen yeah but but he’s a good example I can get such a Nutella the new CEO or not so new anymore affair of Microsoft is also good example of a new generation of CEOs that is looking more at people rather than first business and I think those are generally the other types that start to to pick this up and and transform their cultures hopeful for the future of leadership and humanity in this sense those are two different questions Humanity of leadership let’s talk about leadership I guess first if I’m hopeful about

leadership in the future I’m very hopeful evaluation in the future for the reason that what we have seen in a we did a three-year research with the Harvard Business Review where we basically assessed around 35,000 leaders and interviewed 250 c-suite executives David what we found is that leadership and leaders focus is changing a lot these years we used to live in what we call an empty stomach paradigm where people really need a job to get that paycheck so I could fill their stomachs real that situation anymore

people are looking for a great great experience nowadays and if they don’t find that at whatever job they have they’re gonna go and look somewhere else so it companies and companies in general that want to have good employees that are delivering the results they need they need to have good cultures and answer good leaders if they don’t have that what our research show was they just can lose the best talent and there was a reason that the war on Thailand without India so from that perspective I’m very hopeful about leadership and

humanity human is a big question am i hopeful about humanity you know I am deeply deeply deeply deeply concerned about the whole climate crisis and the impact that will have on humanity and the impact will have on leaders because we’re seeing that within 10 to 15 years the costs of repairing what is gonna be damaged by climates is way way way higher than the cost that we know now that means all welfare it’s gonna go down it’s gonna be Australia the food and water and what people do when the neighbours food and they don’t have it

themselves so yeah I’m really pretty concerned about humanity because of what we do into the planet so there’s not really helpful it I’m hopeful I’m always hopeful but I see there are some pretty massive challenges and we don’t if we don’t start to tackle them like seriously now now things are gonna go pretty bad you talk about the about the three qualities of leadership of successful leadership right Kalyan Reddy bittleman yeah so as part of our starting with Harvard’s basically went out and spent

three years finding out what are the most important events of colleges for leaders in the 21st century who creates basically an engaged workforce and also maybe better results with business the first one that was very clear was mindful similarly because if leaders are not mindful first of all they can’t be effective because they’re constantly distracted secondly if they’re not mindful they don’t have self-awareness they’re not aware of their own biases and they will act in ways that are basically against what they’re trying to

do and thirdly if you’re not mindful with the people you’re leading if you’re basically checking your phone while someone is asking for your free or free extension they will know you don’t care and they will not be engaged they will trust they reduce engagement so mindfulness is like the foundation of good leadership in this very distracted age the second quality that we found was leaders need to be selfless selflessness meaning not looking at their own egoistic drivers and being being driven by those which has been let’s say a big

thing in leadership for many years but what we see emerging is a new kind of leader that is looking at the bigger piece better perspective looking at the greater good looking at developing a team and putting the team on the stage rather than then taking the praise giving the praise and saving the blame that is the other Walmart Canada the third one is compassion the intention to be of I mean genuine service for other people’s happiness and well-being if you have a leader that has compassion for

you you will know that that Mita has your back if you screw up and that makes you more innovative more courageous better at your job so mindfulness selfless isn’t a passion are the three most critical skills for leaders in this 21st century [Music] and if leaders want to develop these skills where do they start where should I start so if you want to develop these skills I think first of all go to one of your events or you’re coming conferences I think that’s a good basis right and of course there are other good places to do

that like potential for there I can definitely come and come and talk to us as well I would say for leaders to pick up a daily mindfulness practice is a good starting point it’s something you can do by downloading any free app online from the service a lot of good stuff out there you pick that up get started with that and that will start to develop the qualities of self-awareness a better focus of more presence and in some cases gonna help you to become more self-aware more compassionate otherwise

they’re all so good abs to develop those kind of things and books are for us how does it work for you because you need to accompany yourself with hundreds of employees you travel the world all the time how do you stay in the center it’s safe what is your practice look like alright so for me in traveling if not every day at least every other day on a plane spending a lot of time with clients having meetings in all time zones having an inbox and ever standstill there’s no doubt that that ionisation practice my mindfulness

practice is what keeps me grounded and focused and keeps me in touch with what is important for me and for the organization so I can actually make the right choices on a day to day basis so I would say my main thing is taking care of my mind making sure that my mind is clear calm and focused that’s and as much of a sign that’s yep regular moments in the day that you do a practice or is it yeah there’s some sort of ongoing yeah it’s the name practice for me is in the morning when I wake up I sit up right away and then I

sit for between 30 and 40 minutes in my practice and that kind of builds an amazing foundation for being the being calm can focus throughout the day so that’s the best the main main thing and then I do a lot of micro practices so when I walk you from the station is I basically walk and brief and just take my time to to reload them be ready for for this conversation when I’m moving from here to F Co that I’m meeting just after this I will not pick up the phone or like check my text messages but to

take all those small breaks that are you’re just tuning with yourself and this is just be present for a moment here and then I do a practice of 10-15 minutes in the evening so those three things is what keeps me going so how I was doing these practices change your life or your experience of life mm-hmm those are two different questions that are equally interesting I think it has changed my life in the way that that that over the years even though an immense pressure has has increased on my shoulders because of running a global

organization that I’ve been able to keep managing that pressure so that that I think is a key thing it has also helped spank myself awareness of what’s good for me was but good for me so as we talk about sugar is something I don’t do because I can feel it’s actually damaging my mind yeah but what is doing on my view on life is a whole different thing it is definitely making it more optimistic more positive it helps me to see opportunities and possibilities in the world rather than being limited by a

fight and flight response and constantly like reacting to things I think the practice helps me to be better s and living a life that is positive and happy whether you feel is your next step in your own development as a leader I think I think I’m struggling with the same challenge that most CEOs and most very senior leaders are which is we get promoted because we’re really good at doing stuff and running fast and at some point what we do is not important anymore it is how we do it because we’re managing scenes that

have way bigger impact than we do ourselves so having let’s say 10% focus on strategy having a 5% focus on just doing the things well things that need to be done I think I’m having an 85 percent focus on leaving people enabling people building people developing people so that that’s a good succession when when one is leaving but also so that the organization can really grow and thrive through the people that is my challenge that I think in the work I do the CEOs that is the challenge of most people do

this for all compel to do stuff because we think that’s gonna help ourselves in the organization we need to step back I need to step back and in 20 30 years from now then maybe you’re at the end of your creational part of life maybe we fix your sinks because of course you made a tiny do your mindfulness practices might get old very healthy but in 20 30 years from now when would you be really happy with fit winter accomplished because you’ve accomplished a lot some already of Norseman as always next level

yeah what would it be I so what will make me happy looking back at what I’ve done is two things one is that our own organization is is effective and and optimize the war so that it is harmonious that people have a very strong sense of compassion a very strong sense of being trusted with each other if we miss that then we are completely sold out on everything that we’re trying to do so that is my most important thing that internally we are a good company to work for we are good companies to be a

part of our tribe that’s the first thing and the second thing is that we have had an impact on enough people out there that has had a 7-point effect or a critical mass effect in many organizations that those organizational change their cultures to be more mindful and compassionate and that that has a ripple effect into their families and communities and the whole nation of potential project is very simply to co-create a more peaceful and compassionate world because the futures looking slightly bleak with climate

change and what will be required is people’s calmness focus and care for each other when things start to get a little bit more shaky than there right now so that is what I hope will have happened that we will have massive impact on a number of million people that then can be agents were repetitive in the wall you’re written two books now what is their next round coming up yes but I can’t solve it do you like the writing process it’s important team process I think the writing process of a book is is pretty

hard I think when you’re like most people trying to live a life where there’s a lot of activity and and a lot of details you need to always hold in mind and then you’re trying to write a book which is holding a very big picture of a big philosophy or framework the combination of that big picture and all the needs of release else is two very different mindsets I personally find that difficult and the way everything other books is by shutting off emails and meetings and so on for a number of theories novella

just writing and then going back to life now I don’t enjoy writing books I wrote a book that I experienced anything for me I have to really shout out for a week I think to really sink into it otherwise it’s a waste of time yeah yeah do you see differences across different continents in open leaders and organizations are to dive into a mindfulness yes there are definitely regional differences in that regional and Industry differences and the US were definitely the ones that were first to pick up the whole mindfulness and

leadership movement and and they’re going pretty strong and they’re also challenged by the American culture which is slightly more harsh and demanding than in most other places of the world so that’s the challenge they have but they’re pretty good at picking up something like mindfulness new Europe they also good in Australia they also great Asian little slower how come they just born in a way yes yeah so the whole idea of may take from and conservative practices mindfulness was born in Asia of the people and and I think in the

recent two generations they’ve completely learned all that unfortunately so every time lamination talk about these things people will be sitting and they’ll say things like ah what you’re talking about now is what my grandfather used to told totally teach me and I completely forgot about it so it’s like then you’ve been lost for a few generations now but the good thing is it’s almost in their DNA so they pick it up very quickly attacks yeah yeah for Westerners that’s something else that’s there to go yeah do more effort I thing

– yeah also get the discipline to make it a daily practice yeah yeah [Music] do you see differences in generations in general people are open to interpretive yeah so the the generation that used to be the ones that really picked it up most easily with the duration between 35 and 50 ish the ones that were and the word older they were a little bit skeptic and the one that were younger were also a bit more skeptic but over the past few years with the like insane increasing use of technology and social

media the younger generations are also much more open to it and bring it into their lives because they can see that they’re out of control they’re not managing their lives they’re not getting to sleep because the devices so say mindfulness is really booming for the younger generations right now and I myself currently I’m experimenting with combining meditation with electronic music and techno forgive me events with this for like 20 30 year-old 50 yeah so it’s not that it’s not the pure mindfulness or meditation which shows

some sort of crossover right and people love it like that they’re so open to being more in the here and now and we’re not losing the music or like life itself of meditation I’m usually really help you to be centered with yourself your usual huge music or so but I’m a musician it used to be I can’t call myself a musician mark played the drums for me I still do am I playing a concert is the best way of getting absolutely absolutely or in the moment because you can’t listen it literally can miss a

beat because they’ll screw up do you still play once in a while I do play my two sons and my daughters are all playing so we do a bit of jamming it oh really yeah like I look like a family back yes that’s cool and you had a drummer then I have a John Mayer yeah what kind of songs do you do we do have mostly blues little bit jazzy and rock music please bless your family live in New York they live in in Copenhagen they also come to New York do your kids know mindfulness they today do it in periods

and so when I’m sitting in the morning I never know who will show up right now the past few months it’s been one of my son’s that has been there more than usually busy with because involved in the climate move and then let’s take a lot of his time so he needs that if you need to practice is coming sitting with me in the morning my daughter’s doing it my other son is term is less regular other you look at this can you teach mindfulness to children at a young age or do you lift up spread themselves does

it work he definitely teach you to young kids and it’s very helpful for them I think it’s partly one of the most important gifts that we give to our kids because they are growing up in the world those company you’ll be saturated the stuff and distractions I mean technology mainly so helping your kids to be centered and being you know resting in themselves is really important and you can do that from when their and I to three years then you of course do it in a different way than what nowadays so good good things to do with

kids when they’re small it’s just to when they’re going to bed but it’s heavy bear on their belly and they’re lying on their back and you’re basically ask them to count every time it’s going up and down right so it’s a very simple and you know they find that amusing and funny and you’re with them holding a hand or just touching the head and do that for a few minutes and they will completely calm down very simple and so when you bring these two kids who created about what’s motivating for them and then they

let their lawmakers try the process rather and your ideas about what it should be have you ever wondered if you should with potential projects should focus on schools as well at first um so when I started potential project the idea just before that was if we want to look at and and safeguard the future we need to work with kids of course but there are so many organizations that are doing that and they can do it very well because they don’t have the funds so since your project decided instead to

focus on the culprits because they’re not only can we have a positive impact for people and yet for their families but also we can actually make profits that we can then donate to our new station that bring this to schools to kids in prisons to hospitals and so on yeah so we have chosen not to go there because only to focus on one thing so we can do that well and then help that other movement by generating profits for that if you could give one advice to a leader of an organization what would it

be if I could give one advice to any leader I would give to the first one very very simple our research showed that if you want to have a good career if you want to progress in ranks in your organization the main thing that you need to focus on is your focus our study basically found that the more focus people are the faster the higher they’ll raise in ranks and organization so don’t ever compromise your focus and that means stop multitasking stop checking your phone all the time stop feeling and

emails all the time when you’re with people be with people or one thing at the time yeah so focus is like at the core of performance and people engagement so that will be the first advice never compromise focus the second one which is surprising our study was never come from my sleep because there’s a widespread myth that’s if you want to raise and banks you know you got to sacrifice somewhere and the place that people sacrifice asleep with do long days the kids to bed and then keep working and then get out

of five o’clock again but I research very interesting found that CEOs and c-suite executives are sleeping an average of seven point three hours in I country which is significantly more than all the memos below there in the beginning we thought this is funny because they have a chauffeur they have a lot of secretaries basically people taking care of their lives but looking at their schedule assistants not the case I mean of course they have people taking care of them but they have like back-to-back all day but stuff what we

found was they had generally had to discipline of sleeping enough every night throughout their career whereby they were able to show up every day to focus be present be effective at what they needed to do so say the one advice to leaders is focus and sleep this is some really wise advice the interesting thing is that I think most people down now this the way you talk about focus hardly anyone talks about this or is aware of this in sleep thing and same thing I think yes it’s pretty basic yeah yeah and at the same

time it’s it’s like a big secret it almost is and one other thing that is surprising me in you know spending a lot of time with c-suite executives one would think that these people have gotten to where they are because they’re incredibly smart and they’re incredibly high performing and they’re incredibly good at you know managing that time but most executives are have lost their sense of what is important right now and they’re just doing stuff they’re just in a complete action addiction mode where

they’re just doing stuff all the time when we ask seaspar executives how many of them actually took time every day to reflect and do focus work very few of them did which is surprising because that is the most important thing as an executive is to reflect and in focus so that you can strategize innovate and see the future and not just do what you did yesterday and it is shocking to see how many executives are just not doing that the potential that is wasted is unbelievable you [Music]