Natalie and Tadej talk with Sue Langley, founder of the Langley Group and Academic Director of the Langley Group institute – leaders in the Positive Psychology field. Sue has come a long way from the UK where one of her jobs many years ago was as a lorry driver. She then moved to Australia where her new life chapter began. Sue found what would energize and inspire her: to make a difference in people’s lives. Once settled in Australia she pursued studies in psychology and began forming what is today a global organization, together with her team they empower and inspire people from all around the world. How do they empower them? By teaching them about what tools we should all have in our toolkit to flourish in any adversity.
About Sue: Sue is the creator of the world’s first Australian Government-accredited Diploma of Positive Psychology. She regularly appears at speaking events around the world as well as in international media. Sue is the emotional intelligence expert in the hit ABC TV series Redesign My Brain, broadcast on the Science Channel in the US as Hack My Brain. Sue has appeared as a leading expert in the documentary ‘Make Me a Leader’ (July 2018), which has won multiple film festival awards including the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival and Hollywood International Independent Documentary Awards.
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
Natalie: Share with us why it is that you do what you do.
Sue: Because I want to make a difference. Making a difference in other people’s lives is important to me. I’ve always been able to synthesize science, read research papers, and make it practical for people. And I think so much research goes on that doesn’t often cascade down.
So that’s why I do what I do. Everything we teach is based on science, the science of emotions, the science of human flourishing or neuroscience. And I do what I do to inspire and equip people to be the best version of themselves. My purpose in life since 1997 has been “to breathe spirit into the minds of others to achieve their level of excellence.”
I DID IT MY WAY
Natalie: Was there a role model you aspired to be like?
I can’t say I have a specific role model, and I was never like that as a child. I did not have singers’ posters on my walls or things like that. I suppose that the people I look up to are those who do the science and the research because, without them, I couldn’t do the work I do.
So I don’t necessarily have a role model. And to be honest, from a business perspective, I’ve probably done many things not in the ‘correct way.’ Sometimes people ask me how I started my business or what I do on social media, and I’m like, I don’t. I don’t sell very well; I don’t do social media; I don’t do business development.
My way of doing business was making it up as I went along. I felt intimidated at times because nearly everybody in a consulting business seemed to have worked for a consulting firm and then gone out independently. Usually, they consulted back to the same company they’d just left.
I had no contacts in Australia. I’d only been here 18 months before I started my own business. I’d never done consulting, so I just made it up. And I think that from the role model perspective, I did ask people for their advice at certain times, and I started to think, ‘I don’t know how to do this.’
BE THE BEST VERSION OF YOURSELF
What was interesting was one gentleman when I was saying I’ve never worked for a consulting firm. I don’t know how to do this; I don’t know the rules. And he said, maybe that’s a good thing. And I suddenly realized that perhaps not doing it the way everybody else did could be better.
So, have I made it difficult for myself along the way? Probably. There are lots of people I admire for the work that they’ve done. There’s nobody I aspire to be. I aspire to be the best version of myself.
You often hear people who would love to be like so and so, and I always think, why not try to be the best version of yourself rather than trying to be like somebody else? It’s the most terrible thing that I can hear. “Oh, I would like to be like you.” No, be like you!
WHAT CAN I DO TO EARN SOME MONEY (WRONG QUESTION …)
Tadej: What are the Life lessons learned in your journey.”
Sue: There are a few on that. One of the things that I do constantly is use curiosity. It’s essential to be curious.
One of my life lessons again was an offhanded comment from a gentleman with whom I happened to be having a coffee years ago. And he said to me, “Find your niche and stick to it”. And because I was pretty early in business and earning no money, I didn’t do that for the first year or so.
I was thinking, No, I need to earn. Funnily enough, as soon as I took this person’s advice and said, Okay, my niche is the science of emotions, positive psychology, and neuroscience, and where they intersect, that’s what I do then my business went from strength to strength.
I did a range of things, and at the time, I was still asking what you needed me to do. What can I do to earn some money? A few months after that, I considered, ‘No, these are the things I do.’ And if you ask me to do a team building, I’ll do one around strengths; I won’t do an amazing race or something unrelated to our field.
RATHER ASK YOURSELVES: WHAT ARE WE GREAT AT?
If you want me to do time management, I can teach you how the brain works, how you process time, and why you procrastinate. I’m not going to do a top 10 tips for time management. So I think that was a critical turning point for me from a business perspective. And I suppose the other life lesson that has come more recently was from a COVID perspective because many people in the consulting world when COVID hit, like us, were all face-to-face facilitation. We had one client we worked with virtually.
And it was me putting into practice everything that I preach. So it was about taking the appreciative inquiry framework, turning our business around, and looking at our strengths. What are we great at? How do we do more of it? And we flipped our business in less than four weeks, and ironically, since COVID, so for the past two years, we have been the most profitable and the most successful that we’ve been in the previous 20 years.
This period proved that what we teach works because using these tools can help you handle even some of the most significant adversity.
WHEN BUSINESS FALLS APART (IN TIMES OF COVID)
Natalie: How did you react at the beginning of COVID when everything stopped? Was there fear or panic present? What did you do to navigate through this difficult period?
Sue: It was a huge shock initially because everything we did was face-to-face, and every program was cancelled. I think it was the speed at which I needed to flip things in my head. I had some members of my team who were like, ‘Oh, it will be over soon; let’s just wait. And they were putting off clients, saying, ‘No, we’ll be back to face-to-face by June, July, …
Yet you can’t do that if you want to stay in business. So the first thing I did was I stuck flip charts along my office wall and started using the appreciative inquiry framework to say, ‘Okay, what’s great about us? What do we do? Where have we been the most successful?’
We had one virtual client that we’d run for five years, and we were their top-performing supplier for five years running. So, we thought we were doing something right there, so how do we replicate it? So, we managed to turn things around quickly by using technology and offering free webinars to people, which led to lots more. We were giving back by supporting individuals, teams and organisations to look after well-being.
WE CHALLENGED OURSELVES: HOW DO WE SUPPORT PEOPLE?
And, of course, it then ended up coming back to us positively. Our Diploma of Positive Psychology, which has always been six days face to face in less than four weeks, kicked off virtually, and we had double the number of people that we would’ve had on the face-to-face session.
So I think to your point, yes, it was there. Fear, anxiety. Did I feel like vomiting sometimes? Absolutely. Yet it was always about, okay, what do we need to do? How do we need to make this work? How do we look after the team? How do we support people, and how do we keep delivering for our clients? We were lucky and hopefully made some good choices.
I think because we moved more quickly than many other organizations, we thankfully did well. And also, we are fortunate because we’re in the well-being space, and at the moment, well-being is fundamental.
CHERISH THE RIPPLE EFFECT
Natalie: Is it, therefore, true that your main source of inspiration comes from the fact that you can make a difference in people’s lives….
Sue: Yes, it is. I think for me, it’s the science; the research inspires me, and the ripple effect that you have on people that you won’t even know you’ve had because you might impact one person that changes how they show up as a parent or as a child or as a leader which will impact other people.
You may never know the impact you’ve had, and what inspires me is what people do with what they’ve learned. I think that’s amazing. I think human beings are amazing. If only we’d remember.
Natalie and Tadej: Human beings are amazing …what a wonderful statement!
Sue: Yes, I said this to a group we have worked with recently. I hope you will start to remember how amazing you are because I genuinely think human beings are amazing. We just forget sometimes. One person might not bring world peace, yet guess what? Thousands of people together have a ripple effect on their family, friends, … and can make a massive positive difference.
Sue: embrace life!
Tiskano revijo lahko kupite tukaj in s tem podprete navdihujoče zgodbe tudi v prihodnje.
Spletni portal Navdihni.me pripravlja in ureja Insights d.o.o., družba za odkrivanje in razvoj potencialov.
Če iščete svojo pot, nas kontaktirajte in z veseljem vam pomagamo.
Fotografije: osebni arhiv sogovornice
Komentarji
Vpišite vaš komentarŠe ni vpisanih komentarjev.
Bodite prvi in vpišite komentar.