Growth Hacking Culture

We humans dont enjoy talking about suicidal thoughts (specially men who are the population with the highest suicidal rate). The most awkward thing is that if don't talk about it - it becomes worst for people struggling in silence and shame.
About Chris Haill
My guest is Chris Haill founder of MindForce - a couple of years ago, he was running his own company, developing new business in media and publishing. 
I remember clearly the day I met Chris in February 2020 - some days before a life changing event had occurred to him. This was also an important moment for me to reflect on this brief conversation that had a long lasting impact on me… after a long battle of depression, Chris became a suicide survivor.
If you wish to #justreachout contact Chris Haill via his LinkedIn profile or the MindForce DXB LinkedIn page or Chris.Haill@mindforceuae.com 
About Mindforce:
MindForce is a business platform dedicated to helping people of all nationalities, religions and economic backgrounds to address mental illness and addiction problems. MindForce offers help, support and advice, not just to recover but to get people's lives back on track.
Mindforce is based in Dubai, UAE https://mindforceuae.com/ 
If you wish to discuss partnerships or business opportunities with MindForce, contact, Simon Walker at Simon.Walker@mindforceuae.com or through the MindForce DXB LinkedIn profile.
The key questions answered by Chris Hail:
What are the groups that are most affected with high suicide rates?
What are the origins of suicidal thoughts - is it the same for young people vs the 40+?
Why is it a shame to talk about suicide still today?
The series 13 reasons why was speaking about suicide in teens - according to the producers the aim was to create awareness but many reacted negatively - what is the right way to create awareness?
Suicide rate in men is higher than in women - I got the impression that we men have a hard time to open up about their struggles… is that true?
How can we provide peer support: a friend of somebody in our family with symptoms of suicidal thoughts
If you had a magic wand - how would you impact the numbers of people dying of suicide?
What is the mission of MindForce, what type of support can people having suicidal thoughts get?
 
This episode of Learn With Bessern is hosted by Ivan PalominoIf you enjoy this episode follow this podcast and write a review. Thank you
 

Being vulnerable is certainly not the top mindset of the typical leader. Most leaders get promoted into their roles because they project confidence and self-assuredness.
Leaders are humans with their own set of challenges on being open about their limiting-beliefs - and yes it is kind of a taboo to talk about it in organizations.
Some of the most common limiting beliefs in leaders are: imposter syndrome, incapacity to cope with change, believing in the capacity to learn for themselves and their teams. 
About our guest Chris McNeil - from the Thought Leadership 
In this episode of Learn with Bessern - we deep dive on the topic with Chris McNeil. Chris is an NLP Master Practitioner who has developed innovative methods of using NLP in sales and marketing. He is also the host of the podcast Thought Leadership Studio.
To reach Chris McNeil:
Thought Leadership Studio Podcast Site  https://www.thoughtleadershipstudio.com/
Get his ebook Marketer's Guide to Strategic Thought Leadership for free https://www.thoughtleadershipstudio.com/F/Free-Marketers-Guide-to-Strategic-Thought-Leadership
 
The key questions on The Taboo of Limiting Beliefs in Leadership:
What are the most common limiting beliefs in leaders at work
Detecting limiting beliefs is difficult as our brain controls the perception of our reality - what are the cues to spot limiting beliefs
Why is it so difficult for leaders to show vulnerability at work?
What can be the impact of leaders with limiting beliefs in their teams and their organization
What are the practices that leaders in the workplace can start by themselves
There are many approaches to become a better leader - you are a Master Neuro-Linguistics Practitioner - what does NLP means compared to other ways of coaching
How possible is it that if you dont take actions on your limiting beliefs - it can have an impact on your mental health
If you had a magic wand - what would you like to see on leaders today?
This episode of Learn With Bessern is hosted by Ivan PalominoIf you enjoy this episode follow this podcast and write a review. Thank you
 
 

Micromanaging is a hard habit to break. You may downplay your propensities by labeling yourself a “control freak” or by claiming that you just like to keep close tabs on your team, but those are poor excuses for excessive meddling.
For starters, let's agree that there are in fact very little things that we can control, especially in the world of work. Where essentially our main job as leaders is to manage, motivate, inspire and lead our teams. Being a micromanager and controlling every step is just simply not an effective use of your time as a leader. And let's be real this need to control stems from fear, fear of failing as well as lack of trust. And these issues are coming from something beyond the working space. These obstacles are the ones stopping you from being an awesome leader. The fact that these people who have a tendency to control are often the ones who are dealing with their own anxiety.
Controlling other people is a means to alleviate it to make it a little bit more relaxed. Individuals who have control over their emotions are better managers and have a better work-life balance than individuals who stress about taking care of their emotions.
In todays fast moving world every business has to come up with unique innovations in order to stay profitable and continue to grow in the market. Some managers panic with the thought of failing which results in them getting anxious and controlling their team.
 
Managers must learn to trust their employees and be flexible with them in order to avoid being a know it all and to start managing well. 
 
This episode of Learn With Bessern is hosted by Ivan Palomino and Elena AgaragimovaIf you enjoy this episode follow this podcast and write a review. Thank you

Can we now be candid about the real situation of mental health at work?
I was quite optimistic at the start of this year - we had 2 pandemics that has redefined the way we think and live - one viral and one related to mental health. Obviously I said hey that's the year where corporations are going to get the right actions and make a substantial reduction of mental health challenges at work - it didn't happen.
I zoom in to the place I live, the UAE: 55 percent of employees are saying they are thinking about quitting, far higher than the global average of 36 percent. Not only that, the UAE workforce as ‘the most stressed in the world’.
For my friends outside the UAE - the situation is not improving either in most countries. This is a special episode of Learn with Bessern - where we will talk about what we dont say about Mental Health at Work. I needed to have a guest who is known for his candid way and depth to talk about this subject: Scott Armstrong
About Scott Armstrong
Scott Armstrong is a monument in the Arab world, he is the former editor-in-chief of Arabian Business Magazine and recently he decided to go full blast on a purpose driven venture, he is the founder of ‘mentl’ – a platform providing a holistic approach to mental health issues in the workplace.
Learn about mentl at their website http://mentl.space/ 
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mentl.space/
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/mentl/
or simply reach out Scott at https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottarmstrongeditor/ 
 
What we discussed on this chapter of Learn with Bessern on Mental Health at Work:
is there a personal story behind launching mentl?
what are corporations doing wrong on the way they deal about mental health?
Let’s be graphic - what are some real stories by managers or workplaces that you find that are contributing to the deterioration of mental health
what is refraining organizations of taking (more) action
what are the actions that individuals take that are detrimental to their own mental health?
what is particular about the middle east and mental health?
Imagine that we have a time traveling machine and we travel 10 years from now while nothing has changed, no actions have been taken in terms of mental health - what is happening in the workplace and in our society?
How is Mentl different vs the existing solutions?
 
This episode of Learn With Bessern is hosted by Ivan PalominoIf you enjoy this episode follow this podcast and write a review. Thank you

We are living interesting times: my question is in 10-20 years will we still call the COVID times or it will be called the the great reflection times ? 
In recent times employees attitudes have changed from just earning money to creating value at work. They want to contribute the thing is that this search for purpose at work is in the back of the minds of the majority of people and finding alternatives is becoming critical. Something that is essential for us, the search for meaning through spirituality is something that is sometimes misunderstood. In particular, when we think about Buddhism, we think about religion or we think about meditation and yoga mats. But but But it's more than that.
About our guest Ryan Estes
Ryan Estes is the founder of Kitcaster and Wildcast. He is a also a marketeer and tech founder. He is disrupting the podcast industry but more than that his vision on how to lead companies that are purpose driven is what makes him the appropriate guest for our episode today: He practices Buddhist principles in life and business.
How to reach out Ryan Estes?
On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/estesryan/ 
Check out https://kitcaster.com/ryan-estes/ or https://www.gowildcast.com/  
About Buddhism in life and work
When we talk about Buddhism some distinctions about American Buddhism because certainly, the culture is very prevalent. In America, the Buddhist tradition is very young. And so we're trying to grapple with what is Americans contribution to Buddhism? What can we offer the community as a whole and also how are we going to incorporate some of these principles into our practice? We have heard about Westerners converting to Buddhism, mainly in the early 20s. There was people like writers like Herman Hesse, who was German or Austrian, one of those, so converted to Buddhism. And they both had other writers who were following but in the USA, I think it came wide after the 50s that there was an integration into this culture. There was an integration of these spiritual principles in the in this ideology.
For people who aren't aware of Buddhist principles, what does it mean to live and breathe? These principles in your day to day life? Buddhism has a way of soaking into a culture or into different religious traditions. 95% of them don't have any contemplative meditation practice at all. It's really more of a religious practice. In Ryan's practice, and this is kind of taking the lead from the Dalai Lama, where the Dalai Lama said, you know, if you're reading our scriptures, and there's a section where it said that the Buddha walked and flowers bloomed from his footprints, he's like, take that with a grain of salt. That's poetry. We understand with physics and science that like actually that can happen, which is really refreshing. So that's to say that in Buddhism, there's a very small lift when you're talking about things to believe. And in fact, particularly with Zen Buddhism, there's nothing to believe there's there's you don't need a doctrine that can be helpful. You don't need a teacher, it can be helpful, but there's nothing to believe here. Rather, Buddhism is something that you do. There's different techniques, as far as like contemplative techniques that will evoke different consciousness states and different states of being so with the end goal being like I want to be the best person I can for the people that I love and for the people that have expectations on me, what are the practices that will lead me to that is the main question?
Furthermore, if we want to change the culture of the company to make it a little bit more human, more human changes that's at the top. What would be your message for a founder or a CEO to consider creating a business culture, centering, kindness, mindfulness and purpose what could be the years the message if you have the magic wand and you have the opportunity to say it face to face? You know, you could see what happens when good intentions go terribly wrong There are a lot of times, those late night ideas that pop into your head, probably not a good idea. You know, I think the first step is to really become sensitive to it. Like really, if that's really something you want to I want to change the culture you realize right from the beginning, like how almost impossible this is going to be to do how long this is really going to take how much of a sacrifice this is really going to be in like, are you fit for that? Are you fit for the kind of cultural change that needs to happen inside of you so that it can emanate to everybody else?
 
Misconceptions about Buddhism
What could be the things that you consider as a misconception of Buddhism? 
The main one is the idea of enlightenment. We have I think, I have kind of a cartoonish representation of that if you see someone in a cartoon that's been enlightened they're in this like pose and they're hovering above the ground. And of course, a lot of that has been informed by folklore, like monks that you know, can melt snow and they can, they can levitate and stuff. You know, that, that that and somehow, the idea of enlightenment is something to be pursued. And then once you have enlightenment, it's a thing and you're some kind of Christ like deity now that that drifts off into the sunset. I think it's counterproductive to the essence of Buddhism, which really speaks about like, Hey, if you're pursuing enlightenment, this isn't the place for you.
So maybe a more accurate way to understand enlightenment is, again, enlightenment is a mental state. You know, you can be in a state of enlightenment. There's maps within within Buddhism that will show you as you're approaching those states, what kind of things will kind of be arising in your mind and in your body? So if you want to pursue that, that's great. But like, once you climb to the mountaintop, you still got to come down, you know what I mean? Jump wood carrying water. So I think that that the idea of enlightenment is, and there's a kind of a purity associated with it. 
 
Components of Spirituality
Ryan's favorite definition of happiness is happiness is freedom from the pursuit of happiness. Yeah, you let that go. There it is, which speaks to the other component of spiritual practice. Again, not something you believe rather something you do you know speaking to like the secular spirit, scientific materialists. You know, there's benefits to it.
The other side from a spiritual component is the insights and meditation or insights and wisdom traditions. 
 
How is Ryan's changing the world with his two companies, Kitcaster and Wildcast? 
Ryan says: I think my best opportunity to change the world to love my children and steer them in the right direction. You know? If you want to be real Buddhist and one thing you do have to believe in is reincarnation, because there's no scientific evidence to that but it's encouraging because they've been kind of released you from the stress of having one life so I can if I take this one life and change the runner direction, just 10% in 100 lives, you know, my progeny are going to do great. I like that. But if I can, do you know there's a principle in Buddhism called right livelihood, and the fact that I work in podcasting to me really feels like right livelihood, because, you know, whereas you you're a creative and you're out here creating opportunities, and creating new thought we actually facilitate that opportunity, which feels like a really great place for us.
 
This episode of Learn With Bessern is hosted by Ivan Palomino
If you enjoy this episode follow this podcast and write a review. Thank you
 

In recent years in corporations, a lot of focus has been placed on emotional intelligence – our ability to manage our emotions at work and those of others. As leaders, it is certainly a skill one must have and continue to practice and improve on. Each level of our career and life will require us to evolve in all aspects in our personal growth as well.  
In this episode of Learn with Bessern - Elena Agaragimova and Ivan Palomino discuss on How to proactively power up your emotional intelligence at work.
 
Emotions are part of being human. Think of emotions as waves of energy that flow through our bodies and communicate to us. We are built to feel a full spectrum of core emotions such as anger, fear, joy, sadness, excitement, and disgust. These core emotions help us understand, connect, and communicate with others. They also help us to connect with ourselves. However instead of getting to the last step of managing emotions in this video we talk about the initial steps of how to be proactive instead of reactive.
Something as basic as understanding the endorphins, the little chemicals that are released when you are doing certain activities like exercise can put you in a better mood. Another factor to keep in mind is the food we put into our body,. What we intake is what we give out and this works in a flow. The more wholesome, rich and nutritious food we consume in place of processed and sugary items the more good bacteria we generate to fight illness and negative emotions. Lastly it is necessary to acknowledge your emotions as an when you feel them instead of controlling them. It is not easy to learn how to accept emotions because they often do not feel very good and we have instincts that may tell us to avoid them. With persistent practice, though, you can learn how to be more accepting of your emotions. Mindfulness meditation, or the practice of being aware of both your internal and external experiences, can be tremendously useful as you are learning how to accept your emotions. It helps us build relationships as we see ourselves in a better mood most of the time. 
 
About Learn with Bessern
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Your values in life help you navigate through career choices, partner choices, and overall, how you spend your days and how you behave. Furthermore, values help you establish a sense of purpose and direction for your personal brand. Values act as guides that drive your choices in your life based on what you want to be known for. Your core values at work and personal brand (how you show them) will speak loudly without you even saying a word.
They are the core principles that give meaning to your life and are defined as a set of standards that determine your attitudes, choices, and actions. Values change as you change; they reflect what’s important to you at any given moment. It’s not always easy to identify the values that mean the most to you, but it warrants serious reflection so that you can pay more focused attention to what really matters in life. Look at your weekly schedule on your computer, phone or diary. If you value health and put it at the top of your list but you work 70 hours a week, then you need to make some serious changes to align yourself with this value. Very often we do the wrong assumption that values will not change upon the time. But what we have to consider is what happens in our brain when we are aligned in terms of our values. It happens a little bit like a stock exchange and it's almost like a currency reward system that is automatically put in place where the dopamine reward in the values that you are displaying in that are aligned with yourself. So it's super important to understand that when you know your your values, you know the exchange rate of this currency dopamine if I do this, I would receive so much of a rush of this molecule of pleasure called dopamine. But imagine that you don't know your values for the funny thing is that you you feel cheated? All the time. You feel unsatisfied because you don't know if you receive enough or not enough reward for this plane, the good behaviors that are aligned with your with your values. Another thing that is super important is that when we are talking about about values, we need to consider that the context of the situations may change or shaped your values.
 A few ways branding yourselves helps you in your daily lives are:
1. It Helps You Stand out from the Crowd.
2. It Leads to Opportunities.
3. It Inspires Trust in Your Audience.
4. It helps you Build Relationships. 
 
🎙️ This episode on Keeping your Values and Purpose at Work is hosted by Elena Agaragimova and Ivan Palomino.
🚀 Subscribe to our monthly 📧 newsletter https://bessern.substack.com/   and Get superpowered for your self-development: learn stuff that makes you proud of you, manage your wellbeing, have the mindset to make your life awesome.
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This episode of Learn with Bessern is about the flaws of traditional coaching at work and what actions can be taken to fix it. This episode is going to be interesting for leaders wanting to create a coaching culture in their organizations.
Many companies have started programs to individualize the development of people and traditional coaching has become the tool of choice to make it happen. And the reason is that companies have realized that developing people cannot be done simply with training. The current need for agility transformation requires a model to develop people rather than the simple transfer of knowledge that you have in simple training.
But Traditional Coaching is failing to deliver the impact required by organizations
About our guest Meredith Bell
Meredith is one of the most respected leadership development advisor - She is a reference in the coaching world and has written a couple of impressive books. Meredith is also the president and co founder of Performance Support System - a company focused on communication and leadership development.
One of her books 'Connect with your Team' has been recommended by no other than Ken Blanchard (Author and Reference in Leadership Development). 
How to reach Meredith: https://growstrongleaders.com/ 
Her 2 books are on Amazon:
Connect with Your Team - Mastering the Top 10 Communication Skills
Peer Coaching Made Simple - How to Do the 6 Things That Matter Most When Helping Someone Improve a Skill
Excerpt of our discussion:
Some of the misconceptions on how corporates deploy coaching:
There are a couple that really stood out to Meredith and one is not realizing that everyone in an organization needs coaching. Most of the time, it's reserved for executives or higher level folks, because, of course they have a great impact within the organization. And that's that's the traditional perception is these are the folks who kind of qualified to have a coach, when in reality in time we are attempting to improve a skill or improve the way we do things.
Coaching will accelerate that process dramatically. And so it's logical that everyone can benefit from having enough but the thing is, the other misconception is often they think we've got to bring in an external person, you know, to with the right credentials like qualifications to perform that function. When in reality there are internal resources that can be tapped into, such as people coaching each other or managers learning how to be coaches, to their employees. However many times corporations are not deploying in a wider scale to the different levels of organization because it's costly. One spectacular way to enhance coaching is by speeding up the process.
Trends that companies can follow while coaching:
One of the the trends is looking at how can we provide just in time coaching for people around the specific things that they need so it's a shorter engagement and and maybe even shorter bursts of time because everyone is feeling so overwhelmed so much to give these days. Just in time, real time, kind of coaching opportunities is what the world needs today.
One of the best investments I think an organization can make is in teaching managers, how to be effective coaches as a part of their role in working with the people on their teams.
How employees feel opening up to a manager about a challenge?
When managers evaluate the performance of an employee, employees are often overwhelmed and they think twice before opening up and becoming more vulnerable.
According to Meredith it takes time to create what I would call a coaching culture where people feel comfortable opening up about a problem they're having or a challenge they're facing, to seek guidance from that person who's also in the role to evaluate them. And I think there are a couple of different things at work here. Number one is we do have this perception that to be an effective coach, you need to be certified. Well, if you're going to be a paid professional coach, definitely. But if you're looking at taking on a role of coaching someone is simply a part of the way you interact with them at work. There are really a few basics that can be learned and they're things that we all do naturally with people we care about in our other parts of our lives.
The second important task is learning to ask questions. One of the challenges that I think managers face, especially when they are newly in their positions is they think they have to provide all the answers. That's part of their job is to be the answer person. So if somebody comes to them, they're, you know, they they feel like they need to have the answer instead of asking questions that help the other person, think about it for themselves and often come up with their own solution.
One of the best ways for a manager to become a good coach is to first be coached.
 
🎙️ This episode on coaching in organizations is hosted by Ivan Palomino.
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Problems are a part of our everyday life. Whether it is at home, in the workplace or even in our relationships, every individual has to face them. But what if we look at problems as something as a good thing? And what if it's just about getting better at solving those problems, whether on an individual level, or in this case, in particular, as a leader in your organization.
If you think that you got analytical power and you can pull it out nicely to solve problems –that might not be enough. Research shows that beyond making sense of complexity, problem solving requires skills some other skills that are more “human”: such as Creativity, Decision Making, EQ, Persuasion.
In this episode of Learn with Bessern,  we discuss about some principles that if you train yourself to follow –it can easily make you great at solving problems.
 
🎙️ This episode on Creativity to Solve Problems is hosted by Elena Agaragimova and Ivan Palomino.
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The only constant in life is change. In this episode of Learn with Bessern we discuss neuroplasticity - creating more connections around our brain so that we can maximize the use of this 70-80% of the brain that we are not currently using and that is done through processes and systems that need to be created. 
We often hear how the older you are the harder it is to change. The reality is that change is hard at any age, and it really depends on the various factors –how big is the change, the process one creates to make change simpler, what motivates them to change.
🎙️ This episode on Training your brain to deal with change is hosted by Elena Agaragimova and Ivan Palomino.
🚀 Subscribe to our monthly 📧 newsletter https://bessern.substack.com/   and Get superpowered for your self-development: learn stuff that makes you proud of you, manage your wellbeing, have the mindset to make your life awesome.
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