Transcript

Kate: Hello and welcome to episode 2 of season 2 of Leading in Conversation. It’s great to have Nelis back with me today. Hi Nelis. Why don’t you introduce our special guest for today? 

Nelis: Hi Kate, it’s good to be back and, yes, we do this together with Peter van Dingenen, a Belgian surgeon who is a friend I met in Kandern, where I live, who has worked for 20 years in Burkina Faso doing medical work, who is deeply invested in working with people, rather than for people. Maybe we’ll come back to that later. And that touches, of course, on conversational leadership. So when we started talking about this concept, he got really interested, “Okay, this is partially reflecting what I already do and partially inspiring”. Peter, tell us a little bit more about what you did in Burkina Faso, and maybe how that touches on conversational leadership? 

Peter: Thank you, Nelis and Kate, for being here. A little introduction maybe about myself. We – my wife and I – we’ve been working since ‘92 in Burkina Faso, mainly in medical missions. We’ve worked there five years, me as a nurse, and she as a chemist. And then after five years, that was 97, we went back to Belgium where I was able to finish my medical studies, that took us nine years. In 2006, by that time, we had four daughters, we went back, but my wife and I, we had this experience already in the 90s where the project we worked for was pretty much top down oriented and we just had to execute the projects that were given to us. Still, we tried to have a very participatory approach to all of this and then to end the story, in 2016 because of the studies of our children mainly, we came to Kandern where three of our daughters attended Black Forest Academy. 

Nelis: You started talking about one of those initial experiences of top-down leadership. Can you say a bit more about that and how that frustrated you and inspired you to do things differently. 

Peter: Actually, I wanted to start by saying, of course, in 92 – with Ineke – we prepared to get there and we read books and we had to do training, but I was very happy that during the first weeks of us being there I read one sentence that really stuck in my head for the rest of my life, where it said “In development work we all too often throw answers like stones to the heads of the people who never asked a question in the first place”. 

Nelis: I love that quote. Kate, what do you think?

Kate: Wow, that’s very profound. Yes, we’re answering questions that people haven’t even asked. 

Nelis: Throwing stones to people as an image of the way we often approach problems is really rich because I think that’s part of what we discuss in our podcast, isn’t it? 

Kate: It implies a distance, it implies one-sidedness. No participation, no conversation. 

Peter: Yeah, it implies also hurting people. Yes. 

Kate: Which sadly top-down leadership can often do and many kinds of leadership can. 

Nelis, So, you said that inspired you, you saw that happening. Say a bit more. 

Peter: Yes, I saw that happening. Well, one of the results of that approach is that today the project where we worked is gone. It’s just one more, big white elephant, like, we call them in Belgium: these projects that look really nice really, in the beginning, and have really nice pictures. And of course, while we were there, we were able to save thousands of children from hunger death. We were able to give information to mothers, how to prevent their children being underfed and how to grow vegetable gardens and so on. But still, it’s very sad that once the promoters of the project moved out of the project, the project just dies. 

Nelis: Because it never responded to the real question people were asking? 

Peter: Right. Well, they do ask the question, they are in pain and they see a problem but they have never been involved in defining how to get the problem solved. 

Nelis: Yes, so it’s for them rather than with them 

Peter: Right, and so one of the examples was my first project. Just a little sketch of the place we were: we were in a rural village. There was a centre for malnourished children and a small dispensary. And around that village there were five other villages and we were kind of responsible for the preventative work in those villages. These villages had been through a program sponsored by the European community to put latrines and it was like for a country wide program where they said like, “One village, one latrine”. Well it was a big latrine with many entrances. The way they approached is they funded a big hole in a place in the village at the villagers figured out, and put a big concrete slab on it and some walls. And yeah, that was it. And so the villagers were very happy with that. Thank you very much for the gift. And when we arrived there it was like six months after they had implanted these latrines in the villages. So I visited them, and saw that most of them were either already broken because of heavy rains. In some the concrete slab was so heavy that it kind of sunk, so no one dared to go on there, scared to fall in. I would not go there. And then, I saw one in particular that struck me. They had built it right next to the marketplace. You can imagine the smells. So, yeah, that was the result. I think, from a very non-participatory way of approach, of a very good idea. And so working as a medical professional of course I knew that there was  an enormous lack of hygiene in the villages, shown by the high numbers of children dying from diarrhoea and dysentery and people being very sick all the time, having intestinal problems. Of course in my agenda, the first thing I wanted to do is find a way to have better hygiene in the villages and not just by washing more your hands. And in that thought process, of course, I was new to the area, I didn’t know the language. So, how on earth am I going as a total stranger trying to convince people to build latrines, as an answer to the problem of all their children being sick, and that on top of it, without money. There wasn’t a budget for my program. 

Nelis: That sounds a little bit like often the leadership challenges many of us have: there’s no money and people aren’t excited about it. 

Peter: But then I saw it more like a challenge. I was very frustrated, of course, by seeing so many projects all across Africa, looking nice on pictures and reports. But seeing that a lot of these projects are – I like to call them big white elephants – and no one wants that. Honestly speaking, no one wants to hear that at the end, that it works out like that. So how will I do this? I think language is a very, very, very important and powerful tool to work with, but also a very dangerous one. I was blessed enough to have a local pastor who spoke both French and the local language. And as I got to know him, when I listened to him, preaching, or translating into French, I understood that he was more translating the idea, not so much the words. I was like, “Oh, that’s an interesting person”. So I got to sit down with him and I exposed him to the problem at hand, that I was responsible to help the people in the villages. And I asked him if he would be okay to translate for me, and he also knew all these people in the villages, so that was a plus. So I decided not to go with the four wheel drive truck to the villages, because when you come to a village like that, they all stare at the vehicle and they say, “Oh that guy has a lot of money. Let’s see how, you know, how you get some from that”, which is normal. I have to honestly say the only thing that I bought for that project was a bicycle so that I could get around to the villages. 

Nelis: Everything else was provided, that’s what you say. 

Peter: Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t put any money into that project. 

Nelis: So what did it take for people to do that? Because that is the conversational leadership challenge. 

Peter: Yes. So I went to the villages and I even said, I decided that I would behave like a total stranger. Of course, I read books and I knew what a latrine was and how to build it, and blah, blah, blah. And I know that there was a need of clean water and education for the kids and vaccination and what not, to get them to a better health situation. 

Nelis: But you acted, as if you didn’t.

Peter: As if we didn’t. So first you, when you go somewhere and that’s anywhere in the world that’s not just Africa. Anywhere also in Europe,  you go and you cannot make statements or say, this is what you need to do or not to do, you just say hi. I’m a total stranger. I’m very happy that I can be in your place. 

Kate: I think that’s a really interesting insight that you share there, Peter, because one of the things about conversational leadership is that the leader needs to take on a new role. We’ve talked about this in some of our earlier episodes last season, that, you know, the whole concept of hero leadership, the leader knows everything, the leader has the vision for the project. Conversational leadership completely flips that around and has the leader coming as a learner, as a facilitator, as a participant. And what you’re saying really demonstrates that.

Nelis: Yeah and I love how it brings that theory into a really concrete practical thing. You know some of the answers but you cannot throw them at people like stones because as soon as you do that, it hurts people and they’re not listening.

Peter: It’s counter productive and they’re not engaged anymore. And they told me about the village and I said, are there any problems you have here in this village? And pretty soon they were telling me that, yeah, the children are very sick and there’s no school and they don’t have enough water during dry season and there’s some housing problems. So, of course, they talked about a few things. And then in a second visit, we would approach these things again, these four or five main items that always show up in villages like that, and just asking questions about it, together with my pastor friend. We decided, of course, that you could try to help them to get clean water. But the first thing that would be done is to protect these waters. So we both agreed that helping people to have better hygiene would be a better approach. So when we went on these sessions we just started by asking questions. “So you told us about your children being sick all the time. That’s actually very interesting because where I come from children don’t die from, or don’t have these diseases. So, help me to understand, what’s going on”. So I took an approach where I don’t know anything. You tell me. 

Nelis: This is neat because, as Kate said earlier, that the role of you as leader was one of guiding to where they want to go, asking, helping them find solutions. Yes. So it’s the very facilitative role rather than the guy with all the answers. 

Peter: Yes, and so they told me. “Oh yes, well our children have diarrhoea all the time and I said yeah, well why?” and they said, “Well, it’s because of the food they eat”, and I said, “Oh, what’s wrong with the food?” And they would go. “Yeah, it’s the women. They don’t cover the food when it’s finished”, something like that. And then I said, “I can’t understand, why?”, and they say, “There’s flies,  and the flies sit on the food and, and our children, they play everywhere”. So they started blaming others, of course. Most of them were men, but there were some women too. And then it became awkward and they go like, “Well, at our place it’s not like your place.” “Yeah I kind of figured that, but tell me more, I really don’t understand”. And they said “Well, when you entered the village, the bushes you saw there, left, that’s where we go, if we need to go”, something like that. I said, “Oh, okay”. “Yeah, well and then the flies sit there and get on the food”. So very interestingly, they already knew a few of the basic hygienic reasons why things happen, it was not all spirits, apparently. And so it went on and on, not to go into too much detail, because such a conversation can easily take up to two hours if everyone is relaxed and everyone wants to pitch in something that he knows. And that’s interesting too because all of a sudden, someone knows something that the other one didn’t mention and they’re kind of proud to tell that to everyone. 

Nelis: I love again with your saying here, because what you’re saying is you can’t take a shortcut to the solution. No. So the conversational leadership approach is one where you’ve got to kind of go with the flow and allow time to guide you in a way. 

Kate: Yeah. And letting things emerge. At the beginning of conversation, people might not think that they know the answers, the solutions to their own problems. But the act of talking then, you know, somebody says something and that triggers something for someone else and then they build on each other. And by the end you got quite a comprehensive set of causes that have emerged because everyone had a little part of the solution perhaps. 

Nelis: But it also shows that your a role as leader in that conversation was not just one of passively listening because the normal around-the-fire conversation would not have resulted in this? Right. It was very much a guided conversation.

Kate: So you were asking leading questions and bringing in new information, such as “Where I come from our infants, our children don’t all die of these diseases”. So that was a new piece of information you were bringing into the conversation, stimulating a discussion about, well, why does it happen here? 

Peter: Yeah, there we got to the point where, yeah, I even brought in at some point where I said, is the food not good? Did God give you – because everyone over there believes in God, so everything is related to God what they do. And so I said, you know, “Did God give you a bad harvest or something or is it the food you eat? Is that the cause maybe?” They said, “No, no, it’s not that”. So they kind of really started to take on, kind of feel that there was some responsibility from their own part where they could actually… to get them where they could actually decide, “Oh maybe we could do something about it”.

Nelis: And then they were motivated. 

Peter: Yes. Yes, at some point I really asked the question, I said, “So, is there anything you could do about this situation” and in most villages I have to say there was already a few people who kind of have dug their own latrines and they were using them. Then you all of a sudden have two, three people who are very proud to explain to the others, what they did, and how that worked out for them. What was even more inspiring and interesting for me is that all of a sudden you have these people discussing what types of wood you have to use to cover the pit. And then someone even said, “Yeah, and you have to take leaves of the néré tree to put on that wood so that the termites don’t eat the wood. I could never have found that in any book, not even on Google. Google didn’t even exist back then. It’s just so amazing that all of a sudden you see a much better solution. 

Nelis: And it’s really interesting because what you’re saying is that concrete slab could not work because it was too heavy, it would sink into the ground. 

Peter: Yes, as soon as the rains began, it starts to sink.

Nelis: But the people knew how a proper latrine would work. Yes.

Kate: They already had the knowledge, the information needed there – I love that – and the external solution was doomed to failure, the concrete was just too heavy in that context with that kind of ground. That’s fascinating. 

Nelis: And that’s fascinating isn’t it, because that applies to leadership situations in any context. 

Peter: Yes. Yes. We have to be open, people have to be open, and they want to get somewhere or help people to get somewhere, you have to be open to what they know, not so much to what we know. 

Nelis: So you start building those, to make a long story short? 

Peter: No, I didn’t build anything! So the other thing was, someone said, “Oh, it smells very bad to have such a thing”. I said, “Well what I could do to kind of join in the project, I could go to the capital every six weeks and I have a pickup truck so if someone wants a pipe – they figured out that you need to put a pipe in there and then it’s 2 metres high and then the bad air just flows up and no one smells it”. I said each one should pay, it was an equivalent of two dollars just for that pipe that I could buy it for them, and I said, you know, make a list of those who paid, the transportation will be for free because I’m going to the capital anyway. Something like that. Well they never showed up with a list, nor the money. So I figured that wasn’t that important to them. It was just  a part of a conversation and the thoughts they had. 

Nelis: That’s interesting. So you didn’t insist on your pipe. You basically said, they don’t think that part is important, then we’ll do it without the pipe. Yes. I love that. But they didn’t build it next to the market place.

Peter: No. And that was, so I really asked the question, “So, how do you want to build that? We just had a project here, I saw that big thing. And they said “No, no, no, that’s not the way to do it. Actually, every single family should have a latrine next to their house.

I said, “Oh, that’s an interesting idea. From what you’re saying I think that might be a very good solution”. At the end of the conversation, as soon as I saw that people said, “Hey we need to do that, we just need to do that’, I stepped out of my role actually and I said, “Hey, listen, if you build these latrines, that’s fine. If you don’t build these latrines that’s fine with me. Nothings going to change in me being a, you know, good friend to the village. But of course, you have to understand, since you said that the water you’re drinking might be infected, the next time that you offer me water to drink it will be difficult for me. I will drink it but I have to take into account that it might make me sick”. Because in Africa, as most of our listeners know, it’s very rude to refuse water that is offered, when you come to a village, that’s a cultural thing. I thank God for that idea that he put in my mind at that moment because I think that shows that cultural knowledge of where you work is important. And so you have to know the people and what is important to them. When I visited them, the first village was very interesting. That was the week of Ramadan. That meant that it was in April, it was the hottest month of the year. And so, for the next four days, they wouldn’t do anything. And I had promised them to visit them as part of my participation, just to visit them to see how the work was going, and what they were planning to do. And so, I would do that on a Friday because that’s their kind of day off. I went there on the next Friday. They didn’t work until the Tuesday. On Wednesday was Ramadan and they started digging on Thursday. And to my amazement 17 families had started digging. The most difficult thing for me was to walk for over two hours to visit each family, just to see what they were doing. But I tried to put it into more like a game where I, you know, visited and they were explaining what they were doing. And so someone who already was like over two meters deep and then I went to the next one and these young guys had just started and they were all sweating terribly and they would say, yeah here, that’s our pit. And I said, “Oh that’s interesting. I just went to your neighbours there and they already have like two meters”. And they were, “No, no, but we are just starting” Put some competition in there, just approach it not too seriously, have some fun doing that and they enjoy that and they appreciated my weekly visits just to see how the work proceeded. 

Nelis: But it’s interesting because, that again in conversation leadership, there is a significant leadership role, isn’t it? You didn’t pay for anything, you were not officially in charge of anything. These villagers were in charge of their own thing, but you had a hugely significant role in encouragement, in helping them arrive at their solution. All of that. 

Peter: That’s true. 

Nelis: That’s massive. 

Kate: I also love that you didn’t have to tell people to do anything, you facilitated the conversation.

They figured out the solution and then they implemented it. And often as leaders where we fall short is on the implementation. But if people come up with solutions themselves to their own problems, they are relevant, they are motivated to do it and they’ll make it happen. And 17 families had already started digging holes. All you had to do was go around and encourage and visit. Whereas, I think some of our efforts to implement things, perhaps, as leaders, where we haven’t involved people in developing the solutions. It’s much harder to get people, to persuade people to get on board with implementing things. 

Nelis: Also, the element of staying with people in the phase of implementation is very important. You don’t step out after facilitating the conversation. 

SPIKE

Peter: So, in the end with the five villages, we were able to have 46 new latrines built by themselves. I was thinking, how can I show my participation more tangibly? As we all know, family is very, very important in Africa. And I decided that I would do a family picture and put another little bit of competition there. And then they will all stand in front of the latrine and I’ll make a nice family picture. So you don’t see the latrine. 

Nelis: But you started off saying that you joined the organisation you were working with and you started doing all this work with the villages. And I’ve heard you talk to me before about an agricultural project you started with them as well, but then somehow it all came to a stop. It fell apart. You referred to this earlier. Because you said that was an example of top-down leadership. So what happened to contrast this beautiful picture of collaboration, conversational leadership, with the alternative. What happened? 

Peter: I can say in one sentence, I decided to go back to Europe to study medicine. I was a nurse back then. Saw a big need for medical care. And after five years, the biggest donor of the project sent a nurse to replace me. And during the three weeks’ transition, she literally said, even all the projects, income generating projects that I started like a vegetable garden, chicken farm, other things, she said, “Well, I don’t know anything about these kind of things, so we’ll stop that, and anyway, the donor will pay again 100% for the project”. Me having worked very hard to get it to 50% self-sufficiency. Yeah, after a few years, the donor retracted their funds, and the project died a slow death. 

Nelis: So that is the result of non-participation, no conversation, imposed solutions. Right. Because they’re always kind of short-term fixes. 

Peter: Yeah and I think people mean very well, but money is rarely the solution to the problem. It’s mostly counter productive. 

Nelis: That’s quite a meaningful comment, isn’t it? 

SPIKE 

Peter: After finishing these medical studies, Ineke and I, we decided to go back to Burkina Faso, now closer to the capital because we had to send our kids to school. But for us, it was very important, whatever we would be doing, it had to be participatory. We went back to help a doctor there to start a medical facility. But it became impossible for me to work at that place. I left that project and I was pretty much without a job. We happened to live in a street where like five houses down the street, there was another medical centre. One of the coworkers there came to see me and said, “Hey, why don’t you want to do some consultations at that place?”. And they said “We’d want to pay you for your job”. And that’s what they did. And thus started the money that we needed for whatever was coming next. Gradually, there was just someone who said, “Oh, you would like to do medical work and maybe hospital, maybe you need a piece of land?”. So we found a piece of land and bought that in a process. We also started to do mobile clinics in the villages in the primary schools and here again to be able to visit 250 children, in two days and do that properly, you need a lot of participation of local people. I needed the extra hands and since our children were going to the International School, we had some of them join us. And we have students join us for these medical visits. And again, in a very participatory way these students were involved in weighing the children and helping them through the visits and doing their eye tests and urine tests and so we can get a lot of information in a very short time indeed. 

Nelis: I love what you’re saying here because that’s what I’ve observed in your stories and your work. You tend to always see the possibility to bring in people from everywhere, that sense of creating more of a movement, rather than a structure. It’s one that I think characterises a lot of what you do and from a conversational leadership approach that is actually quite interesting. You didn’t have authority, hierarchical authority over anyone in the process.

Peter: No. I never actually had a very like… an official, like director of this or that. 

Nelis: So you create through conversations, through involvement, through inspiration, kind of a movement of people who are all sharing ideas.

Peter: Yeah, I have to say that for bringing in the school, it was actually a teacher at the school that said you were doing these medical visits, so that the kids have to do some community involvement thing, so could they join you in those visits.

Peter: So that’s what happened and for years in a row I think we visited over 25,000 children in total and for years in a row these students between 13 and 18 accompanied us on all these trips, including even the children of the President and the ministers of the country. It was amazing to see how they even got involved. We didn’t get any money from their parents to do that. And again, I didn’t need that money because the kids were there and I’m sure it will influence them for the rest of their lives. What they, you know, what they saw there? I know for a fact, there’s several students that became doctors and nurses because of it. 

SPIKE 28:50

Nelis: So now you work in Germany as a surgeon and I’ve heard you refer to our podcast on conversational leadership saying, “I wish that more people in the German healthcare system would listen to this”. So what are you seeing? How does the principles we talked about, that you applied in real life in Burkina Faso,  apply in a larger organisation like a German hospital? 

Peter: Well I see often how it goes wrong because it’s done wrong. You have new young people who want to become nurses and they come on the  ward and there’s a big whiteboard with their names on it. It’s like a big plan. So they have one side and on the x axis you have the names, on the y axis, you have the 20 actions that a nurse can do to patients: you know giving pills, injections, washing whatever. And they come in and it’s their name and the all red magnetic dots, like a red light, “don’t do that”. 

Nelis: You’re not qualified yet! 

Peter: And so I see, like, three, four young people standing there and really be, you know, they’re blocked if they ask a question already, people are like,” Well, I’m busy. So wait a minute”. This is not a very great atmosphere to start learning. I would say, I would probably, if you want to use that graph, I would put all green dots and say, “You have to go with a nurse, today you’re looking and watching what they’re doing and tomorrow, you’ll start doing it yourself. By the end of the week I would like you to be able to do different things that are on there”. With adults or young people I would not start using blue and red dots. 

Nelis: So it’s a sense of telling people what they can’t do rather than exploring what they can do. 

Peter: Yes. You’ve got to be positive, I think, from the start and open, and even ask them, “Hey, have you any experience in this?” and just start from there. I remember that this is a very strong one, in this story. I even told it to a colleague yesterday. As we were going with these high school students doing these visits, they had to do the eye test, where a child has to cover an eye and then say the “E”  is like this, like that, and just test the eyes. And so, they also had to do that with very young children of five, six year olds, who just started to go to school in a rural context in Burkina Faso, and the students didn’t speak the language, so there was a huge language barrier. So they had to try to explain to these kids how to do this test properly. That’s a very difficult thing. And I remember one student just trying and trying and after half an hour she came to me and said, “Dr. Peter it’s not going to work, this child doesn’t get it”. I said “That’s fine. It’s a very young child. She’s running around, I didn’t see her run into anything. I think she sees well, it’s just very important to check it. If it doesn’t work it’s okay”. But the student who was more courageous than I, behind my back, after talking to me, she just continued to try with this child. And another, I don’t know, 15 minutes or 20 minutes later I hear her shout, “She did it, she did it, she did it!”. So the student had really succeeded in having that child understand how to do this test. And I’m sure that stays with her for the rest of her life. It will help her to grow and to try and to… 

Kate: I think what’s really lovely about that story is that the focus is on the person not the task. The chart you were talking about was… when we try to systemarise things, we try to get organised in a way that I’m sure the hospital was trying to do with the very best of intentions, you lose sight of the people. And what’s most important is the people, their experience and how to train them… and you know, just thinking about “Well, let’s frame this more positively”. Often the systems we develop to track, to systematise, work against that people element, that focusing on the individual. And I think that’s a challenge for all of us in leadership to make sure that our systems… you know, however good the motivation, that we don’t lose sight of the people.

Peter: Yes, we have to play a big role in that as the leader. Yesterday, again, at the hospital ward a young nurse came to me and there was a task to be done. And she said, “Oh, I’ve never done that and I’m not allowed to do that” and she left the room. So afterwards, I went to her and said, “Hey what if you stayed with me and you look how I do it and I promise the next time I will let you do it but I will be responsible. I will look at how we do it and help you with that”. And she just brightened up so much and for the rest of the evening at the ER, she just was there all the time asking me questions. “Hey, can I do this? And “Is that okay?”. Just we have to create this openness so that people have space to move and to explore. 

Kate: and to grow.

Nelis: I think that’s such a huge principle, isn’t it? Focus on the person, focus on their growth and their potential and guide and support that. 

Peter: Even, I said it explicitly to the villagers back then. I said, if you do that, if you think you want to make sure that they adopted the idea and not because of you. So I said, if you build the latrines, that’s fine. If you don’t, I have my latrine at home. So it’s fine, you know. And you leave people you, 

Nelis: I think you’re touching on an interesting principle here, and it’s hard as a leader, because we’re so committed to getting results that you give people freedom to say, “It’s not gonna work, I don’t want to own this”. And that’s hard because for my personality, because I want to see results, but what you’re saying is you actually get more results if you’re willing to step back. 

Peter: Yeah and not own the thing, it’s not yours. The people said “Oh we want to put your name on the hospital or we want to do this”. I said, “Please don’t, it’s your hospital, it’s not my hospital, I live somewhere else and so we have to stress it every single time, and also for our own best because otherwise we would attach our hearts to something that is not our own. See, it was painful for me to see that the first project we worked at, that it’s gone. I visited it several times and it’s like our houses is in ruins, where we lived back then. And the rest,  yeah, it’s just, it’s still a dispensary but it’s not like it was before. Yeah, I then decided that I would never attach my heart to a project or I thing but I did attach my heart to the people I met during that time. Knowing that every single interaction with them somehow helped me and them to move forward in life and the results that came out of that, I might never know. But for myself, I know and for them, I hope that was beneficial. No that I can own as a…it’s for me that’s eternal and, and not the building or whatever structure we put up. 

Nelis: I love that. 

Kate: Yeah. I think that’s a really good note to end on actually, thank you Peter. It’s been fascinating, hearing your stories of conversational leadership in practice and kind of figuring it out as you went along, not knowing that there was a concept called conversational leadership, but just sensing what needed to happen in that context for the benefit of the people. And also, thank you for the reminder of making it all about the people, and their growth, not our goals. I think that’s really critical. 

Nelis: thank you, Peter.

Peter: Thank you too. 

Kate: As usual, the show notes and the transcript are going to be on the website. If you have any comments or thoughts in responses to what Peter’s shared, please do go along to leadinginconversation.net. Let us know what you think. Thank you for listening!