The Security Circle
An IFPOD production for IFPO the very first security podcast called Security Circle. IFPO is the International Foundation for Protection Officers, and is an international security membership body that supports front line security professionals with learning and development, mental Health and wellbeing initiatives.
The Security Circle
EP 147 Dr Grant Van Ulbrich: Change Breaks You. Transformation Builds You.
Bio:
Dr Grant Van Ulbrich is an internationally recognised pioneer in Personal Change Management and the founder of Scared So What®, the world’s first personal change model, methodology, and app. His work empowers individuals and organisations to embrace transformation through leadership development, executive coaching, and scalable technology.
A Forbes, Wall Street, Entrepreneur-featured thought leader and TEDx speaker with just over 2M views, Grant’s career spans over two decades in global leadership roles within the cruise and hospitality industry before dedicating his research and practice to sales transformation and change leadership. He is the first person worldwide to be awarded both an MSc in Leading Sales Transformation and a Doctorate in Sales Transformation, achieved through the Consalia Sales Business School and Middlesex University.
Grant is a Fellow of Personal Change Management at the Integrity Centre, a Founding Fellow of the Institute of Sales Professionals, a Fellow of the Institute of Training and Occupational Learning (ITOL), and a Visiting Fellow at Cranfield University School of Management. His award winning publications, including Transforming Sales Management: Lead Sales Teams Through Change (Kogan Page, 2023), and peer-reviewed articles in The Oxford Review and Change Management Review, are widely referenced in the field.
Through his leadership at Scared So What Ltd, Grant continues to advance the practice of Personal Change Management, helping leaders, teams, and organisations transform with integrity and purpose.
Podcast Summary
🎙️ Podcast Summary: “Change Breaks You. Transformation Builds You.”
In this deeply moving and inspiring episode of The Security Circle, Yolanda Hamblen sits down with Dr. Grant Van Ulbrich — a man who has turned adversity into action, fear into fuel, and personal change into a global framework for transformation.
From growing up in conservative Kansas and serving in the U.S. Navy, to finding himself homeless — not once, but twice — Grant’s story is one of extraordinary resilience and reinvention. He shares how every setback became a stepping stone, leading him to a 25-year career at sea and ultimately to founding SCARED So What, a model for managing personal and organizational change.
Grant and Yolanda explore what it truly means to transform rather than just change, the power of vulnerability in leadership, and why transactional leaders fail while transformational leaders thrive. Together, they challenge listeners to rethink resilience, embrace uncertainty, and find courage in their own chapters of transformation.
Ted talk
Security Circle ⭕️ is an IFPOD production for IFPO the International Foundation of Protection Officers
If you enjoy the security circle podcast, please like share and comment or even better. Leave us a fab review We can be found on all podcast platforms. Be sure to subscribe. The security circle every Thursday. We love Thursdays. Hi, I'm Yolanda And welcome to the Security Circle Podcast, produced in association with IFPO, the International Foundation for Protection Officers. This podcast is all about connection, bringing you closer to the greatest minds, boldest thinkers, trailblazers, and change makers across the security industry. Whether you are here to grow your network, spark new ideas, or simply feel more connected to the world of protection and risk, you are in the right place wherever you are listening from. Thank you for being a part of the Security Circle journey...
Yoyo:What can I say? Dr. Grant? Grant, Mr. Grant Van Ulbrich, thank you so much for joining us on the Security Circle, being super excited about this. How you doing?
Dr Grant:I'm fine. Thank you. And it's an honor to be here with you today and be able to see you again, so, and hear you, uh, for our guest as well too. Thanks for having me.
Yoyo:Well, look, I couldn't but,, invite you on because we do have a professional background together. We have, you know, shared workplace, space and air together, I suppose we could say.
Dr Grant:Mm-hmm.
Yoyo:And there's no doubt about it. Your whole life has just been,, an absolute example of transformation. Let's go back to the beginning and find out what shaped and moulded the very young grant. Grant. Did you always know that this was gonna be you, or did you have desires and aspirations to have a certain type of career when you were a youngster?
Dr Grant:Oh God, no. No. I had no idea. And I think most people probably don't. Um, but it depends on how far do you want me to go back? Yo?
Yoyo:Well, when I was a boy, I wanted to do this, but I ended up joining the military. Well,
Dr Grant:there you go. Exactly. So I'm not sure what your listeners are prepared for, but um, as you can probably hear, for the audience, I am American. So I was born in the Heartland, Kansas. So, yes, and I've heard it home of Dorothy and Toto and the twister. Yeah. I've done, I've done it all. Um, and people say, how did you get over in England? Well, I said, I hopped in the first tornado and said, get me outta here. Oh wait, grab the shoes.
Yoyo:Are you sure you didn't just bash your ankles together at the bottom and make a wish?
Dr Grant:I might have did that quite loudly and said, let's go, let's go. But, you know, growing up in Kansas, uh, again, you know, I'm 54 this year. Um, it was a, a different time. We didn't lock the doors. Um, the neighbor's houses were always open. If you wanted to run into your neighbors and go grab a cookie after school, you could do it. Nobody questioned, but everybody knew where their kids were, right? It was a completely different time. Um, but that of itself has its own challenges with your identity and who you are. Right. So growing up in the Midwest, that's the Bible belt. Um, it's farmland, it's, um, a home of hard work, uh, for men and women, for the kids, for everybody. Everybody plays their part. And I did as well too until I started getting into my teens and started feeling, Hmm, I don't feel that I belong. I don't belong here at all. And, my lifestyle might be very different than what is permissible. Right. And, That started to lead into its own challenges, its own identity crisises. And what I'm speaking about is obviously sexuality and identifying who I am and who I wanna be. Those discussions just aren't, had, not in the Midwest, not back then. And, um, I might even argue still today, maybe not so much. completely against religion, it's unpopular beliefs, et cetera, so many personal, beliefs. So how do you grow up in that environment? The good thing is, is I had two amazing parents who. Even though we didn't speak about it, they were still loving and still nurturing, but still that bias was there, right? Not from just the family. My brother was so protective. He was the typical, uh, for a quarterback, football jock, et cetera. He knew, I swear, he knew. And he was my protector, uh, a lot of the time. But then he left, he was older. He went into the Navy. Our, our family are all Navy, uh, military people. So, it was in insinuated that that's the direction you should go. But when it came to me, uh, I think my mom and dad were like, oh God, is he gonna be all right?
Yoyo:Are, are they thinking? Is he gonna be okay getting through this? Yeah. Is
Dr Grant:he, is he safer here or do we actually let him go? And actually it was my mom, um, who had the wisdom to say, you're going to stumble if you stay. We actually need you to go because you're gonna be in good hands. You'll learn how to be a man. You'll grow, you'll prosper. It'll give you good foundations. And you know what? It gets you out of here to a different life and a different world. Uh, so. In hindsight, I have to really appreciate that you know, the wisdom of two parents who even through triumphs and tribulations and fear, right? Fear. Fear, decision making. Still saw that there was a possibility and a possibility for a better life if you do go. And I can't imagine that that has to take a lot of power to release your child, right. And send them on their way. But it worked out, you know? And so that was the transition into the Navy, which my god, that was a very different scenario.
Yoyo:Tell me about your first day.
Dr Grant:Oh, first day. Yeah. Oh, I remember it very well. I arrived to the Naval shipyard in Bremington, Washington, which is just outside Seattle. And it was a stormy day and you go through the shipyard and I could see, a couple of submarines in dry dock. And then there was just this giant wall, this wall of steel, and it was mammoth. I thought, what the heck is that? And it was the USS, Carl Vincent, a nuclear aircraft carrier in dry dock. And as we went through this tiny little door at the base of the wall, I looked up and there were the props of the ship. And I, my first thought was, oh God, this is going down fast. This is solid steel. I was thinking of a Titanic, but God, it was scary.
Yoyo:Grant, can you tell us what the reference to Carl Vincent is for a big naval ship? Because there might be some people who don't understand what that is.
Dr Grant:Yeah, so those are the, the, they name ships. So the USS Carl Vincent, he was a senator, in Congress, years ago. And it was, um, you know, a naval aircraft carrier. So if you can imagine hundreds and hundreds of, of jets on, on the flight deck. Um, lots of big giant elevators off to the side, just a behemoth. Ship that if you parked it into the main section of our downtown thoroughfare, it would dwarf downtown completely. You know, the ship was just mammoth and, 6,000 people on board. So if you can imagine just the sheer size you think of today's ships, the Royal Caribbean, the oasis of the seas, those types of vessels, same amount of people, but just spread out with a massive flight deck. It was very intimidating.
Yoyo:I think they're having more fun on a cruise ship though, right?
Dr Grant:Yes, yes. Which, you know what, uh, the, my Navy days actually, uh, I think contributed to my future. There was a subliminal message there, um, that you might also see with inside security. Um, and your listeners here, there's a camaraderie. A certain comradery of being on a ship, going out to sea, knowing you're not detached, or that you're completely detached to land, and you have to survive on each other and you have to depend on each other to do their jobs. And it, you don't, you just don't get that on land. I don't know why, but it's a completely different vibe. And years later, as I transitioned outta the military, I was, how do I find that again? And I found it in cruise.
Yoyo:I asked a fisherman once. I know the answer to that. And it's basically they know whenever they leave land, they're leaving everything behind, including their worries and woes.
Dr Grant:Yeah. And
Yoyo:there's always this anticipation of coming back to land that's both joyful to come home again, but also. To open up the heart and the mind to all of the things that aren't going very well. There is this kind of journey they go on. So I guess, would you say that Life at Sea is for a certain type of person and were you that type of person?
Dr Grant:Well, obviously I was, I spent, if I look back on my life now, over 25 years at sea, so yeah, with the Navy was just the entrance. But the Navy also for me was rules, regulations, with. Um, consequences, right? And it's very different from your parents and your type of upbringing there. You know, you can get a spanking if you do something wrong. Well, at least back then you could. I don't know about today. But you learned, you learned quick respect of your parents, right, from right and wrong. But the military, it was very different. It was almost forced, right? Forced discipline. And you learn to respect, rank and position and authority very quickly. And I enjoyed that. I actually thrived in it because it gave me a voice of, okay, I know what my sense of purpose can be. And my job was very interesting. I was an air traffic controller. So I had to go to a school and learn how to b an air traffic controller to control. Uh, yeah, I see you. And if you can't see you, you won't be able to see her. Everybody, but she's waved her hands. But, you know, it was actually the opposite on the radars, so we would be on the voice for the pilots. But yes, thanks. Most people think that that's where I'd be out conducting the aircraft. But, um,, the Navy, uh, it wasn't always roses, especially the ending for me to get out of the Navy. Uh, it was forced. So I served three and a half years of a four year. Uh, assignment and I was fully deployed, went overseas. We did Operation Southern Watch, which is the end of, uh, desert Storm. And so we were, uh, patrolling the, the no fly zones to make sure that everything was in intact, et cetera. So I did my full assignment. But you have to understand, you know, my age, when I went into the military, it was illegal to be gay. So you are actually committing, uh, a, a crime if you lied and said that you, you, you, you were not. Problem was is that before, right before, when we returned from deployment, right before President Clinton came in with, don't ask, don't tell. It was a big purge. So it was finding all of the, all of the gays and whoever, and it was a nice opportunity for them to get the out and not have to pay our RealList bonuses or what have you. But quickly I found myself, in one day I was being escorted off the ship in San Francisco Harbor, in Alameda, in Naval Air Station, Alameda, and I was homeless instantly. I had a bag, of my clothes on my back. I had about five bucks in my pocket and I had nothing. So
Yoyo:Grant, there is an irony in the fact that you were literally dropped off in the gayest city in the whole world.
Dr Grant:Right? You, you know, and now that you say that, I never actually thought about that, but that's so true. There's
Yoyo:this irony of all the, the places you could have been dropped off, right? And feeling the way you, you, you were there with your people. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. I
Dr Grant:just, I just didn't know it then. But how humiliating to be ho homeless off of a naval base. Yeah. And it was, and you know, to your point, and there's some irony there, and it's actually kind of funny because I wasn't homeless very long. It was about three weeks I had a car, but I didn't have enough money to put for gas in it. So I literally slept in the car. Outside the base, underneath the bridge. And I would go into, gosh, I would go into Hardee's, I would go into Burger King, whatever I could in the bathrooms and try to freshen up and just go try to get a job. Right. And fortunately I did. Hyatt Hotels allowed me to have a job, at their regency club. So in a way, Hyatt saved me, and that first paycheck allowed me to get a room, you know, to start to get a leg up on life and, yeah. To your point. Yeah, I was in, a safer zone. I guess you would say, because I could start to make friends. There was a network there, um mm-hmm. And it was much more accepting. And that Hyatt did appreciate the military, which is great. And I still, even though the ending was horrible, I still to this day respect what I did in the journey and the military, what they've taught me. So I will never, it's, I think it's, people are funny. They say, well, why don't you bad mouth, why don't you fight? Why don't you this, I'm in my fifties. What point does it do? I learned from it. I grew from it. I still am friends today with my shipmates from that, and that's telling. Yeah. But that gave me an insight to life to say, how could I find this again? And I had another big bump in the road before doing that to where I actually did climb very successfully within three years. I was a regional director, a property management firm. I had my own condo. I had two cars in the garage. I had a grand piano in the living room, and I thought just doing just fine. And in my twenties, my late twenties life was grand. And I went to celebrate one Valentine's Day with a bunch of friends that I had made there. And, uh, we went skiing. Little did I know that I don't know how to ski. So as my friends, very mischievously pulled me up the lift. When do I get off? No, you keep going. When do I get off? Keep going. But, but, but, but when do I get off? Well, you'll get off at the end and here it is. And as they jumped. The lift went around the loop. Well, it hit me and I went straight off the edge of the cliff. I took a 20 foot drop nose dive down, broke my left shoulder, the scapula, et cetera, just completely pulled this whole left side down about four and a half inches. Little did I know change was gonna hit me again, you know,
Yoyo:stump man tendencies at all. I'm sorry.
Dr Grant:Say what? Stunt
Yoyo:man. Stunt man tendencies. Stunt,
Dr Grant:man. No, no. Uh, pure ignorance. Right. Um, just naivety to trust your friends and say, yeah, keep going. But yeah, I had to have major surgeries. Two titanium plates, 12 titanium planes. Little did I know that you lose out on work. You know there, there is no national health there, so you're going to get hit with massive medical bills. And people don't understand that. When you lose your job and you lose your insurance, you go on state disability. In California where I was, you're making$700 a month now. Well, how does that pay for mortgage? How does that pay for medical bills? My medical bills over the years soared to six figures themselves. So I then had to go bankrupt and then lose the condo, then lose the cars, and found myself homeless again for about two weeks. It was shocking, absolutely shocking. And friends re-homed me.
Yoyo:What was your mental health like? What was, do you remember the voice in your head at that time? What? What was it telling you?
Dr Grant:I'm not going to fall any further. it was familiar for me the direction I was falling into. I knew that I could survive rock bottom, and I knew that rock bottom there would, I would hit it and I was in it, and I knew that there was a choice to make. There was a direction to go and it was up. But I can appreciate so much how veterans, who come out of service, et cetera, with PTSD, et cetera, traumas, et cetera, et cetera, how they go homeless. And how they can stay there. It's dangerous. It's a very dangerous place to be in life. And if I can say, fortunately, I was there once, so this time it was different. I did have friends. My pride was in the way, which is why I went homeless. But then when I succumbed to that pride and reached out to friends, instantly I was rehomed and I was given a place. But it was humble. My God, it was humble. But you just have to accept that of your friends sometimes. And thank God. Thank God you can actually change to say, okay, I'm willing to accept. Right? And then how do I climb back up? So for me, climbing back up was, you know, a year afterwards and losing the home, the cars, et cetera. I read the newspaper and it said, job, you know, job wanted cruise industry. Norwegian cruise line is starting up the first All American crew, in Hawaii. And I thought, oh my God. Well, you know what, what do I have to lose? I've been homeless twice. I nearly died this time. I love the sea is something calling me. So I applied and I got the job.
Yoyo:There's a, there's, there's a lot of ticky boxes there, aren't there? Yeah. And it's not withstanding Hawaii. Yeah. Uh, so, so this is it. This happened. This is your next, you are almost your next career, your next part of your life. How did that go for you?
Dr Grant:It's been amazing. The cruise industry, you know, I found that comradery. It was everything that I had enjoyed from the Navy as well too. And a cruise ship is structure. It's almost, it's semi militant, but it's not, you know, you've got a captain, you have a chief officer navigate, you have stripes, you have structure. I was used to that. So I was going to fly within that environment. And I have 20, you know, 22 and a half years later in the cruise industry. I quickly rose the ranks, and I did very well within it. I found a home. I found an accepting and open population. You talk about security, some of the best relationships I had with, whereas with the security teams on board, the ships absolutely loved them and they liked that I had the military structure as well too. So we had great relationships and great respect. And I clung to senior officer levels. So I was running at times. I ran on onboard revenue, I ran, you know, hotel divisions or I ran guest services, et cetera. So working within the structures of the ship environment just gelled. It was wonderful. It's been an amazing journey and amazing part of my entire life.
Yoyo:But, there's a line here, because you could have stayed there, you could have done that, that could have been very comfortable for you.
Dr Grant:Yeah, but
Yoyo:Grant, it doesn't seem that you've taken, I know that they haven't always been your choices, but now we're getting to a stage in your career where you took different risks to not stay in the same place. It seems that plateauing is something that you are allergic to.
Dr Grant:Well, I, I like that, you know, I do like change, I think, when it's on my terms. Right. And maybe we all kind of identify with that, but, you're so right. You know, there was something that happened again, because change is constant and whether you will admit it or not, you all have feelings. We all do. But the worlds we've been raised in. There's been the absence of how do you manage change. There's been the absence of permission to feel about change and there's been the absence of any clear direction. And my direction came with another massive change opportunity in 20 17, 18, into 1718 when rural Caribbean said, could you go to Europe and could you actually start to make a sales? Program for us. We've been going for 50 plus years, but we've ever actually had a sales manual, and there was an incredible boss that I had, Mr. Stewart Levin, and I owe him everything because through his coaching and his wisdom, my life was transformed yet again. I am still friends with him today. He's incredible. But what they asked me to do was go into a sales master's program, the world's first master's in science from a university for sales. And I did. And I thought, okay, great. I'll professionalize the sales path for Royal Caribbean. That's gonna be fine. But what truly transformed was on module four, it was about organizational change, and they taught us all of the organizational global change models that we would have to utilize in our work practice to transform organizations. And I thought, God, yo, I'm gonna fail this. I don't like it. I was scared. I was, I was afraid of the failure. What am I gonna tell my boss? Uh, I'm not gonna pass this class. And I was in a cohort of executive leaders, you know, vice presidents, et cetera, of, of sales industry. And they're all international. And I'm the only American in the room. And I thought, am I that dumb? Am I just not getting this? So I raised my hand, I found the courage again, hit my rock bottom in the class, faced with, I'm gonna lose. But I just raised my hand to my professor and I said. Can I ask you something, sir? And he said, of course. Can you accept change? Yes. Can you reject change? Of course. And can you be caught in confusion, uncertainty and doubt? Yes. How come none of your models display that?
Yoyo:Nice.
Dr Grant:Right.
Yoyo:Do you remember his facial expression when you asked that?
Dr Grant:It was the one you're giving me right now, kind of like big, wide-eyed. Oh my God. And I'm sure he thought I was being flip and just, uh, in, you know, daft. I think daft was a British word that was used.
Yoyo:Were you being sassy?
Dr Grant:I was not being sassy and I was not being doffed, but what I was being was like, this is my last ditch effort. Explain this to me. Um, and it's true. If you look at all the organizational change management models, they are gonna say it toward, you're gonna feel this way, you're gonna feel that way. And at the end you're gonna so much assumption and it's a hundred years of change management. Why does it fail so much then? And the reason it fails, as I found out, was because it doesn't include you or me. Organizational change is a methodology of pushing change through organizations. You know, this is true because you've probably never had a boss say, Hey, yo, do you accept this change? Are you on board with this change? Can you support this change? No.
Yoyo:Only if it's good change. If it's bad change, I'm like, ah, well even
Dr Grant:then they don't even ask you because that would be expressing vulnerability. Right? Um, you know, we talk about leadership. Um, most leadership is transactional, telling you what to do. So we're not asking you how you feel about the change. This is our company, X, Y, Z, and you're going to do what we tell you to do. Thanks. Mm. And if you don't like it, oftentimes in some very toxic environments, there's the door. Do you need us to open it for you? Um, and the answer is no. I can walk myself out, but, so my master's project was to create the world's first personal change model that bespoke to the individual. Giving you permission for positive change, for neutral change, for negative change, a model of how can you process that for yourself and. That's about the ability of persisting your feelings, and that's called scared. S-C-A-R-D-E-D. You don't have to be scared of change. You just have to be brave enough to learn how to manage it for yourself. Get yourself out of fear, worry, stress, anxiety, which leads to physical pain, right? Headaches, tension, real world body pain can happen from stress and anxiety, and if you can process that and make an information-based decision, now you're in charge, but you can't stop there. So what. So that's why I put scared. And so what together, scared is about processing your feelings, make an informed decision. And so what is, what's your plan? What can you do about this change to make it happen in the way that you want? So to your point, to your question, this journey completely gave me a left turn. I thought I was gonna be leading global sales forever, right? But now. You know, now I've got my own company. Uh, scared. So what limited? We are helping organizations manage inclusive change with their people. Trends for successful transformation. You know, I have two books later, A TED Talk actually. Oh, you're gonna be the first, first to tell. So I just saw this morning, it hit 2 million. I
Yoyo:No way. Million. But I'm not, listen, I Even if you don't know Grant, uh, or maybe you don't, you think he's talking a little rubbish. I doubt. But listen to that TED Talk. Do you exercise a certain communication style in that Ted Talk? TED Talk that I think made you stand out from all of the other TED Talks, and many of them are very, very good. Okay? Mm-hmm. But your communication style and how you delivered that narrative, I found. Utterly memorable. And it isn't just because I've known you and that's why I think it's popular, and I think that's why you'll find a lot of people will comment on it and they'll make a reference to, yes, I kind of wanna go back and listen to it again.
Dr Grant:I've seen that people are doing that. Yeah. Yeah.
Yoyo:You have a very, uh, a beautiful communication style. So I would, I will put a link to it, with the bio and everything so when people download the podcast, they can get access to it. But, so there's a lot of people who, um, would love to do a Ted Talk one day. Let's just talk about that.'cause you have done one. Mm-hmm. How do you do it? What do you do and what was your prep for it and were you nervous? You know, there's,
Dr Grant:it's a journey. There's many different ways I, I went on it blindly on my own, but I have since learned of there's excellent people out there, like Gary with Think Network, who actually, this is all they do. They coach wonderful people with great ideas and then connect them to TED Talks. I didn't know that. I met him at. But I did it the hard way. I applied for 11 different TED talks throughout England, trying to pitch my story and get the courage to tell the story of what scared so what I thought it was gonna be about. Scared. So what? Right. The world's first personal change management, bespoke model. And I got 11 rejections. You know, and I thought, what am I doing wrong? You know, I'm the first doctor in sales transformation. I've written books, et cetera. I've got something pioneering. They didn't want it, and what I found was that you've got to align with their narrative. So Ted talks, most of them, especially TEDx, they will have their own narrative, their own voice of what they want to lift up, and then they try to find people who fit within that narrative. So I didn't know that, but I found one TEDx Imperial College here in London, and it was all about transforming self. And I thought, Ooh, this is exactly what I'm doing. And I went in and they called me back. And this is also hard. Most of these TEDx talks are run by. College students who are, this is part of their curriculum, right? So for me, I'm older and I've got somebody really young telling me how I should speak and what my story should be, et cetera. And he actually interviewed me. This guy interviewed me back and he said, well, before we actually accept you to have your talk, we need to know why you. Why did you do this? And what was the story behind you that made you do this? And I said, what do you mean? What do you wanna know? He goes, I wanna know the nitty gritty. And I said, and I got really angry. I said, do you wanna know that I was kicked outta the Navy for being gay after almost finishing my entire service and I was homeless? And he goes, yes. I said, do you wanna know that I fell off a cliff and damn near died and went bankrupt and homeless again? He goes, yes. Because this story of who you are and the resilience is a pattern. You're not seeing it, but you have this ability to fall, get up, fall, get up, and you're, each time you're getting up, you're going higher and higher. And now look at you within one sector of life, just as you said, yo, you were challenged yet again by your leadership to go left and do something completely different. And now look what you're doing. And it was this student who totally transformed me and he said, we've got to get that voice in your TED Talk.
Yoyo:Yeah, because it's the journey. It's the relatability as well. Yeah. It's really good that you've mentioned resilience. It's a really good segue. I ask a lot of people who are great examples of personal resilience, you know, what they think the secret is. And every single person gives me a different answer and I've always been intrinsically, Passionate about talking about this because I feel that I'm in the same resilience membership group as you because, and I refer this to, when you go for those interviews and they ask you, give us an example where you failed. And I'm like, oh my God. You know, when you are a highly resilient person, you don't see failure as an option. You, you have mitigation plans to make sure you don't fail or that you are not responsible for failure.
Dr Grant:Yeah.
Yoyo:And, and when the worst happens. I remember having a really kind of sad day when I was much younger. I was probably feeling sorry for myself, bit hormonal, looking out the bus window. I was just feeling a bit like, you know, Moo moot. Yeah. And I saw this old man come out, the post office just hunched over his cane. I saw how vulnerable he was to, maybe somebody who was gonna rob him or harm him. And I thought, God, you know, my day's not bad. You know, I, there's people a lot worse off than me, and I just all of a sudden had this. Balance that no matter how bad I was feeling, there was always someone worse off than me. So that's my journey about resilience. Why do you think, and does it go back to being that Kansas boy? Can you put it back to your parents and how they unconditionally loved you? Sometimes that's counterproductive to having high resilience as a kid. Usually you need to have challenges. Do you think you've always been resilient?
Dr Grant:No, I think it's accumulation of my life's journeys. Obviously I won't share and haven't shared all the nasty details. You know, I've kind of sugarcoated, to be honest with you, the younger journey of being gay, in Kansas, it was not pretty. So let's just put it there. It was not pretty. There was a reason why my brother needed to be my protector, right? And finding yourself. And there's a reason why my mother would say, you need to go into the Navy. You know, this is not where you need to be. And that's tough love. That's very tough love. But each of those incidents transformed my life and something that I talk about when I do talks, et cetera, is that. Change gives you the opportunity to learn and to grow. And change gives you sometimes very negative and nasty experiences, but it doesn't have to be the end all, be all. And if you can remember that it's not finite, it's why it's called change. But there's also another word called transformation. And a lot of people get those two words confused. And how I define this, I learned this from Dr. Philip Squire at the Lia Sales Business School. Think of a caterpillar. A caterpillar does not change to become a better butterfly. If you change, you can always go back and you can fall back, which is evident of why so much change in organizations fail.
Yoyo:It's temporary. Yep,
Dr Grant:it's temporary. If you transform into that butterfly, you can never go back. You can only go forward. And that's the difference between change and transformation. So what was the impetus? For me, it goes back to my parents. Absolutely does, but probably not as many people were thinking. It goes back to them because I will not let them down. And every step of the way. When I was being forced out of the Navy, when I went homeless, when I broke my shoulder and arm, when I went homeless again and lost, it was, get up. This is, you are going to survive. You are going to come back and you will give back to your parents who gave to you. That's profound to me. I still have an amazing relationship with the both of them. It wasn't the best, you know, in during those transitions, but in adult life, hindsight is a beautiful thing if you will listen and if you will see it. And it allowed me to have incredible relationships with them still to this day. Um, and, they're every day in, in my mind. The things that I do to make them happy and proud and reflect on them, reflect on myself, reflect on my spouse and our friends as well. So I find my courage within, and that is my, the source of my resilience.
Yoyo:Let's talk about dieting. It's a great example that so many people's diets fail because the diets are only implementing a type of change. Yeah, right, so when you imply transformation to your lifestyle, your exercise, your habits, your food, your diet, everything you eat, it's the transformation that changes your approach. And I think people can relate to that. But I also think in terms of the security industry Grant, I think, the security industry does need to change. Mm-hmm. And I think, I think we all talk quite a lot about what's not right about it, but I'm now starting to think that the right narrative would be that the security industry needs to transform. Rather than just change. Change is almost a way of saying knee jerk, right? We've gotta do this differently. No, we've got to think about how we do this. Going forward is the transformational process. Mm-hmm. Most importantly, I wanna ask you, what's the difference between transformational leadership and transactional leadership? Give me an example of why, what is good and one is bad.
Dr Grant:Well, you know, and you're onto something as well too. I'm working with, obviously in our comp in our company, we're working with great organizations and we've actually gone now into police force and fire forces as well too. So this ties right into the security industry, you know, structured, almost, how should I say, military structured, beliefs and foundations, principles. And they've even realized that we need to change, but yet we do need to transform. And that has to start with a leadership. You start to talk with organizations like this and they say, we wanna transform our culture. You know, we wanna change our culture. And I actually say, well, hang on, let's unpack that. You know, because that's a very big, broad statement. What do you want to change? What elements do you want to change? And it usually comes down to, well, we wanna make sure that the employees follow us. All right, let's back that up. How do you get people to follow you leadership? Okay, so my doctoral research was on, there are so many different hierarchical types of leadership that sit on top, but I wanted to know what's the foundation? They don't teach this and we don't talk about this. We don't talk about what is the root of where we should be looking. There's transactional leadership, which is a foundation of tell. Transactional. I'm telling you what to do. I'm the boss and I'll tell you your assignments. I'll tell your roles. I'll tell you what you have to do. When you come to me for advice. I'll tell you my advice. When you come to me for coaching, I'm going to tell you my advice, and when you come to me for mentoring, I'm going to tell you exactly what you should do. And often I'll take the reward and I'll take the recognition to my boss and to my supervisors for what the team did because it was my leadership. It has very low engagement, very low followship, very low development, very low adoption, but yet it does get the job done. And some leaders seem to thrive with that, but they have very few people who want to maintain and stay under that leadership because it goes toxic very quickly. And what we have found greater, 75% of your life can be lived in transactional leadership. And think about this for a moment. The day is about you. Right as you get up, as you're leading, as you're growing, as you're doing your daily functions, your daily jobs, and let's say if you're sitting there doing your emails and someone comes and interrupts you, but you're deep in thought and they say, Hey boss, what do you think I should do on this and this? You have a choice right there. And what most people will choose is to say, go do this. Leave me. Right? I've solved that. I led, but what you don't realize you just did was you robbed somebody of ideation. Of ownership and re creativity, you robbed them of a coaching opportunity. That is the main element of transformational leadership. Transformational leadership is actually harder, but it means it's not gonna be about me. I have to focus on you. So when you come to me asking for that advice, the first thing I should do is trick right into coaching manner and say, what do you think you should do? And what would happen if you did that? What do you need from me? Great. Can you go do that? You let them ideate, you let them come, but you're the voice there to reaffirm and listen to what they're saying so that they don't go into danger, right? But if you feel a sense through coaching that they're actually onto something when they walk out the door, they actually own it. They'll put forth the energy, and then they'll say, wow, they feel empowered by you. Transformational leadership is harder. But when you foster that environment within your workplace, cultures, et cetera, now all of a sudden you have fellowship, you have engagement, you have development, you have ownership. You have people who are working on all cylinders, companies, and organizations, completely transformed them because you're including the individual. And that's been the missing gap.
Yoyo:Post COVID. We talked a lot about, you know, how some companies really thrived because they were able to adopt Agile frameworks. But I think it's more, I think it's the organizations that were able to transform and adopt transformation, because a lot of businesses have kept up that transformation and they've actually operated very, very differently post COVID because it was so successful and now those businesses look and feel different.
Dr Grant:Yeah. And I think you're right to call that out because agile leadership can be reflexology and it can be, uh, amble and moving in the moment it can be, okay, great. Don't sit and swell and dwell, dwell on this for a long time. Get up, do something else. Transformational leadership is, different in the fact that it's a blend of. It's a blend. If you do it right, it's a blend of transactional. There has to be some direction given it's a blend of agility, but it's also not failing to forget. It has to be about the people. The development must be there. The ideation must be there, the ownership, the inclusion must be there. You know, companies and organizations aren't just the sum of the brand president their job is just minute. It is to set a vision and a tone. And to be held accountable. It's the people within the organization that actually make the functions happen. And we forget that in organizational change management, but what I always call out is that you can put your processes into project manage and transform or send, you know, transformative initiatives through. But unless you realize that it's the people you need to execute your change strategy, it's never going to happen. You've got to start to include people, and that means being transformative.
Yoyo:Most of my know that I write an editorial column each month for the security buyer, and I'm doing a bit of research at the moment on when an employee realizes their company values that are being promoted externally are very different to how they're adopted internally and how that can put a really good employee with a very good ethical mindset and very good values into a position of conflict.
Dr Grant:Yeah.
Yoyo:I'd love to ask you what your view is about this and potentially even quote you, grant, because we have got options. This is, yeah, this is not, you know, there, there is a certain disempowerment, there's anonymity around this.'cause people can't come out and say, come on. Why are we saying we're doing this publicly but we're not, you know? Mm-hmm. Just because we wanna look like a better employer. What's your view on that?
Dr Grant:It happens. I won't deny. It happens every day, in organizations all over the world. And I've seen it in our own organizations as well too. But does it mean the entire organization is that way? No. Usually what I've found that it's pockets, departments, structures, that usually, if you look at it, who's at the top of that department or that area in EM involvement, it might be just a sole transactional leader. And that's often the case. It's somebody who is about themselves. And they're setting a, a tone and leadership pitch to actually pull away from the core values of the company. So I've seen that quite often. But I, what I also will say is that you as an individual have an innate power within yourself. You have a choice. So you can go through, you can flow through with that and just take the corporate paycheck, you know, and turn a blind's eye. Or you can actually practice something called, wait. Have you ever heard of, you've heard of Entrepreneur, right? So an entrepreneur, someone who takes the creativity and the ownership to actually build, usually as an entrepreneur, you're going solo and you're doing it on by yourself. The other term could be solopreneur as well, too. There's a term that's not often spoke about. It's called the intrapreneur. An entrepreneur is somebody who takes entrepreneurial skill sets and style as if they were running their own business, but they're doing it inside a major organization and they, wow. They do it utilizing the organization's resources, structures, and support and people, and they build and invent inside. So what I would say, I've done this actually, the last five roles I've had at my previous company, Royal Caribbean Cruises. My jobs weren't needed. I saw that I needed to change. I needed to change. I needed something different to do. I wanted something to, and I had a choice. I could have left the organization or I could have functioned as an entrepreneur inside and reinvent myself. And in doing that, people see you very quickly. They see your leadership standing. They see you taking notice, and in many times I was a junior level manager, but all of a sudden functioning as an entrepreneur inside reinventing myself. I was getting the whole organization to come through and do something they didn't even know they needed to do. And I give you an example, next Cruise, the Future Cruise Program at Celebrity Cruises. We didn't need it. Nobody was doing it. And I was a junior manager, and I was going to say, how do I take real estate, retail real estate off of a ship and actually make it a future cruise office so we could sell ourselves? That was one of the hardest sales I have ever done internally inside the organization. But in doing so. The company gave us millions of pounds to actually, build out the world's most luxurious travel centers on board ships. And we started to trend making the company hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. So much so that Royal Caribbean, Michael Bailey said, Hmm, I'm gonna pull you over here and you're gonna do the same thing with your team over here. So how do you reinvent yourself when you're faced with those instances inside an organization where you're like, I don't feel very comfortable anymore. I don't know that this is where I wanna be. You have a choice. You can leave, you can try and change it, or you can actually function as an intrapreneur and reinvent yourself. So
Yoyo:it's like that quote, isn't it? Be the change you want to see.
Dr Grant:Well, yeah, yeah. Or actually be the change you wanna be, you know? Yeah. And that's what scared. So what does it helps you to find the courage to actually reflect on that change so that you're not in fear, stress, worry, anxiety. Think of how many people yell. In jobs today are worried about am I the next one to be laid off? Do I like my job anymore? Do I feel comfortable in my job anymore? All these different feelings of sensitivity, or, you know what, I think I'm about ready to lose my job. Do you sit and wait and be a victim, or do you reinvent yourself in that moment and say, you know what? I've got this much time on this planet. What do I want to do? How do I find the courage to change myself? Better yet, how do I transform myself into something new? And that's why I created Scared. So what so people could find the way to do that?
Yoyo:I think in my past I tried to fix things in roles that I was in when really I should have said, this isn't fixable, it's bigger than me. Mm-hmm. And I'm gonna go somewhere where maybe I can. Thrive. You know, there's that whole story about are you being set up for success or are you not being set up for success? And I think when I'm mentoring others, or when I'm speaking, you know, at conventions, I always say, you know, you ask yourself that question, am I being set up for success where I am right now? Those companies that reach out to you, those organizations, what pain are they in for them to come to you? Grant.
Dr Grant:A lot of times it's, we dunno how to change or we wanna change our culture, but we don't know how or our engagement is falling through the floor. Our employee engagement and adoption is not there. I've got SaaS companies sales as a service technology companies that are coming in saying, well, how do we get beyond the first sale? How do we get into renewals? How do you, how do we actually get people to engage and adopt with our services? You have to recognize that, especially in sales, the sales processes that change itself. And as salespeople, we've never been taught, well, actually anybody in organizations we've not been taught how to manage change for ourselves. Security, your own listeners right here. I will. 99.9 0.999% say none of them have been taught how to manage change. Right for themselves. So if we can learn that process, then all of a sudden our discussions become co-creative. If you learn that what I'm doing when I go in to try and change something for somebody or a customer or an internal customer,, what I'm doing is fostering a change institute in situation. And in doing that, if I understand how to manage change, then I can help them to manage the change as well, because it's not just always about you. It's about your customers, your colleagues, your friends, your supervisors as well. How do you help them process that change? So then the discussions become co-creation, which is where great things happen. That's where transformation. Transformation starts to be born. But it's a learned skillset. So a lot of times it's been salespeople, but it's been organizations like police and fire saying, we've got big change coming. We've got organizational structure change coming. We don't know how to get through this because everything we've tried in the past just fails. And we don't wanna just be those brutal people to say, well, you're gone.
Yoyo:Interestingly, before we finish up, I was, watching a video of a business leader who basically said that post COVID, they were using the return to office as a way of, streamlining 10% of the businesses through voluntary redundancy. Now, I don't think a lot of people are gonna disagree with that. Having heard that and having seen and witnessed what they have seen over the last two or three years. It's pretty shocking really. But nevertheless, you can't help but admire the strategy. We wanna lose some fat, so we're gonna request everyone come back because we know at least 10% of the people will say no and go and get another job. Yeah. But interestingly, it was a higher percentage of women left than men, and I suspect that's because they were doing most of the home. Chores and the family commitments and the school and the pt a and the, parent teacher classes and things like that. I suspect they were the homemakers as well. And that's why going back to the office. So it's interesting how moves like that can have a very. Big impact on the gender equity issue as well. So,
Dr Grant:well, I would love to research as well further, I haven't done this, so, this is just a hypothesis. Are women better at change than men? I would love to find out if we could research that somehow, because think of the changes that women go through, just as you've just described. You know, not only doing careers, et cetera, but rearing children, keeping family units together, et cetera. I would love to research that to find out are women actually better at change management than men? Because to your point, how come so many men just go straight back and follow Yes or no, sir? Three bags full. Do what they're told.
Yoyo:It's interesting as well when you look at Human Society grant, that a lot of people think they don't have options. And I've always said, and I'm not a feminist, I genuinely really am not a feminist. But I've always said that if you're a white man in the Western world, you've got no excuse other than your own failures because you have never had a lack of privilege. To not have that backup, you know, so if you are depressed,'cause you can't get the kind of job you want and you are a white man in this country, in England, even, you know, you imagine looking in the mirror every morning and seeing a black man's face there over the age of 40. Then go and try and have the same privilege that you have. So it frustrates me when I see people genuinely, it's like, you know, that. Image of the horse that's, got its reigns under the chair leg, but the chair leg is completely not affixed to anything. But the horse thinks it's, they can't move. I feel humans have that mindset sometimes, and I think we have way more choices. But I also think, grant, in fairness, the older you get, the less BS you take. The more financial freedoms you have to make the decisions where you invest your time. Certainly when it comes to, you know, income and employment gets easier when you get older because you can just say, fuck this shit.
Dr Grant:Exactly. And some people do, you know, and, I'm actually starting to get to that age as well too. I think my mission right now is to. To say what if, because we don't teach, we don't teach personal change management to students, to youth. And I look back of all the, what I've shared with you today, my life stories, et cetera. I only wish I had a model or a methodology or you know, the ability to manage change better. And I think that is a human right, because so many humans think that they have no choice. And actually what they're doing is they're going, they're succumbing to the fear, the worry, the stress, the anxiety, and they're letting assumption lead them. And that's a dangerous place to be. And I know I've been there, several times, but if you can see. Through reflection your options and find an information based decision whether using scared, so what, or a friend, or you know, a colleague or a supervisor that you trust. You can find that there are different alternatives.
Yoyo:Jimmy Carr said something just to finish up. He said, obviously we've got a lot of people that have some serious mental health, so we're not talking about those people in this case. Right. But for those who are depressed, are usually reflecting on the past, those who are anxious are usually reflecting on the future and they're not living in the moment. I think if we can encourage more people to live in the moment, they will have less of those negative impacts on them. Mm-hmm. And the decisions they make, they'll feel more confident, more secure. But back to what you said, I also think that we should be teaching resilience in schools and helping kids understand what resilience is. Because I don't know if it's just about being Gen X, right?'cause it's an awesome generation. I
Dr Grant:agree.
Yoyo:My parents used to always say to myself and my brother, you know, make sure you home before the street lights come on. So if the street lights came on busy, I remember were busy knocking out, conker some conker trees or trying to throw cow pats across the hedger passing, dog walkers.
Dr Grant:I do remember
Yoyo:growing up in the country was awesome, because cow pets, when they get set and dryness, you can throw them like frizz. Bees. It's really funny. Of course you can. They've got a nice little wet, smelly. We had lot of those in Kansas. Kansas.
Dr Grant:I understand. I can identify,
Yoyo:but when that streetlight came on, it was like, oh shit. You know? Literally shit. Get your bike cycle home fast. Yeah, right. It's it, I don't know. Or does the freedom make us who we are? I don't know. It's different, isn't it? It's hard. Would you wanna go back to school Grant? Because I would wanna
Dr Grant:go back to school. I did in my forties. That was enough. Fifties.
Yoyo:You are a very brave man. What an amazing story. It's a pleasure to know you, but it's also really worth my saying that I can absolutely guarantee that lots of people will be very, very sad that you are no longer in their management and leadership pillar, with Royal Caribbean. So thank you for all of your service and for all of the storytelling. It's amazing. I'm really, really proud to have you as a guest on the Security Circle podcast.
Dr Grant:Yolanda, thank you. It's a pleasure. I'll see you soon.