Episode 323 · 30 July 2026 · 59:57
Why you believe you're right, even when you're wrong, with Owen Fitzpatrick, social psychologist and author
Featuring Owen Fitzpatrick
Why you believe you're right, even when you're wrong, with Owen Fitzpatrick, social psychologist and author
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Intro — the propaganda you run on yourself
What is Inner Propaganda?
interview#psychology#inner-propaganda#beliefs
Imposter syndrome and the beliefs that hold you back
The 'It'll Be Grand' Effect — why your brain prefers survival over success
interview#survival-mode#success#brain
Selling yourself the story — walking on fire
Why 'logic bullying' fails
interview#logic#persuasion#adam-grant
Leading through AI and future change
interview#leadership#ai#change
Steve Jobs and the reality distortion field
The 17th-century origins of propaganda
interview#propaganda#history#17th-century
Holding beliefs lightly — intellectual humility for leaders
Owen's personal story and what he's gotten wrong
interview#personal-story#mistakes#growth
Top 3 takeaways
interview#takeaways#key-points#summary
Show notes
Why You Believe You're Right, Even When You're Wrong — with Owen Fitzpatrick
Guest: Owen Fitzpatrick — psychologist, international speaker, author of 10 books, and host of the Inner Propaganda podcast.
When you hear the word propaganda, you picture a dictator, a politician, or an ad executive. You never picture yourself. But it turns out you're running the exact same campaign on yourself every day.
Owen joins Al and Leanne to break down his concept of Inner Propaganda — the story you sell to yourself — and why "logic bullying" never works when you're trying to change minds. From coaching billionaires and Olympic athletes to speaking across 100 countries, Owen has spent the last 25 years studying how beliefs form, why they change, and how they shape our leadership, choices, and success.
They dig into why your brain is a prediction machine built for survival (not your success), how founders like James Dyson and Melanie Perkins use "desired truth" to push boundaries, and why Steve Jobs didn't change minds — he changed feelings.
Top 3 Takeaways
- Stop leading with logic. Evidence comes last, not first. Work out how you want someone to feel before you deliver the arguments.
- Catch your desired truth. Ask yourself whether you believe an idea because the data supports it — or because you need it to be true.
- Believe in potential first. The leaders people willingly follow are the ones who believe in who someone can become, long before the evidence proves it.
More From Owen Fitzpatrick
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/owenfitzp
- Instagram: instagram.com/owenf23
- Podcast, Inner Propaganda with Owen Fitzpatrick: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inner-propaganda-with-owen-fitzpatrick/id1441538919
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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Al ElliottWhen you hear the word propaganda, you picture someone else, a dictator, perhaps a politician, maybe even an ad executive. Never you.
Owen FitzpatrickPeople only label it propaganda if they don't believe it. Nobody will turn around and go, yeah, yeah, it's propaganda and I totally believe it. They only label it propaganda if they think it's what other people have been convinced about.
Leanne ElliottTurns out you're running the exact same campaign on yourself, Every day.
Owen FitzpatrickI believe that a belief is the story that you sell to yourself, and that becomes the belief that you buy into.
Al ElliottThat's how founders talk themselves into ideas that shouldn't work. It's why your team won't move no matter how much evidence you put in front of them.
Leanne ElliottAnd it's the same reason some people can get anyone to say yes, not by changing the way they think, but by changing how they feel.
Al ElliottHere's our guest, Owen Fitzpatrick, on how Steve Jobs used exactly that.
Owen FitzpatrickHe asked the guy from Pepsi to come in and he said he wanted him to come in as CEO into the organization. And he said, do you want to keep selling sugared water or do you want to come with me and change the world? Well, that's literally changing the way in which he felt and ensuring that he paints this desired identity for this executive to come in. And I think we need to start to recognize that we are all victims of our own inner propaganda, because once we do and we understand it, I think it allows us to open up to each other, connect more, and build better organizations as a result.
Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to Truth, and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a chartered occupational psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al. I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd we are here to help you simplify the science of work.
Al ElliottOur guest today is Owen Fitzpatrick, a psychologist who spent the last 25 years studying why beliefs form and why they're so hard to change in yourself and everyone else. He's written 9 books— yeah, 9— given a TEDx talk with over 2 million views, and worked with the likes of Google, LinkedIn, Coca-Cola, Barclays, basically coaching everyone from Olympic athletes to billionaires.
Leanne ElliottHis argument is simple, but it'll probably bug you. You think your beliefs are based on evidence. Most of the time, they're not. They're based on what feels true and what protects who you think you are. And if you're trying to lead a team After this quick break, we'll find out exactly how that works, starting with why you believed you could do something you had absolutely no evidence you were capable of.
Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216 files. thousand spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Owen FitzpatrickSo I'm Owen Fitzpatrick. I'm a psychologist. I've spent the last 25 years or so studying everything I could do with beliefs and how beliefs work, why they work, how they change, why they change. I have traveled to just over 100 countries, including North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, Rwanda, learning as much as I can about why beliefs change. And currently, I spend a lot of time delivering talks and keynotes around the world on The importance of beliefs for leaders, what I call belief leadership, helping them to overcome those challenges so that they can not only make better decisions and improve their mental health, but they could also influence and lead others more effectively too, and hopefully reduce polarization. And I have a brand new book coming out. It's actually book number 10 as of August of 2026 called Inner Propaganda, which I'm super excited to get out there.
Al ElliottI think there's a lot of people who would go, why do we need another leadership book? There's so many out there, but yours is very different, isn't it?
Owen FitzpatrickYes, I think the key is, ultimately speaking, it's like, why do we need another leadership book? So many of them produce so many great ideas, and there's a lot of great ideas out there. But I suppose where this book differs is I'm not really talking about leadership per se. We don't talk about the importance of strategy because there's so many amazing books out there on that. We don't talk about the importance of performance or even in terms of coaching or a lot of the traditional sort of topics or areas that would help you become a better leader. What I focus on exclusively is beliefs. How do you cultivate belief in yourself and other people? And whether you're a founder or a leader in a larger organization, ultimately speaking, you are facing constant challenges and your goal is to be able to obviously continue to grow the business and to ensure that you're leading those that work for you as effectively as possible. You can't do that unless you know how to be able to get not just compliance, but full buy-in.
Al ElliottYeah.
Owen FitzpatrickYou can't do it unless you get them to be convinced and to be full of conviction in you, in themselves, in each other, as well as in the mission of the organization as well. So that's exclusively what the book and what I focus on is how do you get people to believe better and how do you get them to help other people believe better too, so that they can be more successful and they can ensure their companies are more successful too.
Al ElliottTell me more about a kind of a belief that I might believe that's actually holding me back. What sort of things are holding me back?
Owen FitzpatrickAnd then we have this notion of what they call imposter syndrome. It's not really a syndrome. It actually came from a concept called imposter phenomenon. And it's this notion where we believe that we're going to be found out, that we're not good enough. And sometimes when people become leaders, they become leaders because of their skill or because of their creativity or because of the way in which they've built something. And before they know it, they're not only responsible for what they've built, like for example, with a lot of founders, but they also now have a team that's reporting to them. And it could be very difficult for them believe that I'm the kind of person that can lead a team. So they see themselves as a founder, they don't see themselves as a leader, for example. And that's a big dichotomy, that's a big gap. And the problem with that is that if we don't help them to close the gap, they're going to continuously, unfortunately, sabotage the conversations they have with others. Now, sometimes people can get around it by practice and experience and having a growth mindset and allowing themselves to adapt on the job. But more often than not, they revert back to their identity. They don't see themselves in those ways. And similarly, when let's say founders founders are trying to sell their products or services online, or when they have calls with different folks and they're trying to recruit people to be able to become customers or even investors or even work for them, they're not always good at being able to have those conversations. And a large part is because they don't see themselves as being good at sales. So there's obviously the skills of sales, but before you even learn the skills of sales, there's the belief that you can. There's the belief that you can get better. And so that would be a simple example, but really there's a litany of different beliefs that limit us, that hold us back, that prevent us from being as effective as we possibly could be. And that's really what I'm interested in. There's some great books out there. There's a recent book by Nir Eyal called Beyond Belief, which is excellent, which looks at like why beliefs matter so much and the importance of beliefs. Where I really go deep in is, okay, so how do we change them? And that's really what I'm most interested in. Because once you learn how to change them, once you learn the mechanics between how they work, Then it allows you to be able to take a belief like, I'm not a great leader, and you can start to investigate. And it's not a simple case of like click your fingers and all of a sudden you go, oh, I'm the best leader in the world. Oh, look at me. I should run for president. Instead, what we're looking at is understanding ways to become more flexible in how you see yourself so you can continuously move in the direction that you want to.
Al ElliottI think when you look at it objectively, a belief like that, like I'm not a great leader, is It's a stupid thing to think because it's actually holding you back. But I read something in your book about how your brain has got this sort of like, it'll be grand idea where it won't— it will allow you to have a belief that is literally holding you back.
Owen FitzpatrickYeah, I think the— what I call it, it'll be grand effect is just the notion whereby our brain likes to be as simple as possible. Our brain basically doesn't care about your success. It doesn't— your brain doesn't care about your success. It doesn't care about your happiness. What's interesting to your brain is it cares about your survival and it cares about stability. And by stability, it means your brain is a prediction machine. So it needs to be able to predict the future. It needs to know what's going to happen next. And so in order to do that, it tries to simplify everything. And so this notion of it'll be grand is its way of being able to go, yeah, yeah, yeah, it'll be fine. This is how things are going to work. And it very quickly orients itself towards thinking the simplest and easiest explanation, the simplest explanation is going to be the one we're going to go with. And if that protects us as well, Then you've got everything that you need. You need a story that's also going to help you to keep safe. And so, for instance, if you take, for example, I'm not a good leader, that's a very sort of simple belief that we generalize very quickly based upon the fact that we don't have any evidence to suggest that we are a good leader. Now, the problem is that it's not that we don't believe we're a good leader. The problem is that we believe that we'll actively be a bad leader, and we don't really have evidence for that either. But yet we choose to believe it because our brains need the sense of certainty. We need to have a coherent story to tell ourselves.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Owen FitzpatrickAnd it's not even just telling ourselves the story. You mentioned your friend that he was going to write a book called The Stories That You Tell Yourself. Well, I believe that a belief is the story that you sell to yourself, and that becomes the belief that you buy into. So it's not a simple case of telling yourself a story because we tell ourselves stories all the time. It's going to go good, or this is going to happen, or I hope this works out well. We tell ourselves stories.
Al ElliottYeah.
Owen FitzpatrickBut that doesn't necessarily mean we believe them, but we sell them when we sell them to ourselves. And by selling to ourselves, I mean we convince ourselves. And this is what I call inner propaganda, the notion that we have a great capacity in our brain to run a sort of a propaganda campaign and build beliefs that allow us to be able to keep things stable and keep things safe. So the it'll be grand effect is one of those. It's a tendency we have to try to keep everything simple and just to go, okay, things are going to work out like this, therefore that's what I need to focus on. And we don't always get a say in the matter. It's our brains that are doing this, like a double agent running behind the scenes, controlling what we believe and controlling therefore how we interpret reality. And that's a big problem for pretty much most of us.
Al ElliottYou've just said there, the story we sell ourselves. I think when we first chatted a while ago, we talked about Tony Robbins' Firewalk, which I did. Now, I think, let me see if I can understand what we're saying. Did I sell myself on the story that I can walk on fire and not get burned? Or was my— did I overcome that story that was being sold to me by my own brain that I couldn't do it? How did that work?
Owen FitzpatrickSo I would say you sold yourself the belief, you sold yourself the story that you could walk on fire, or at least it was possible for you to do so. Ultimately speaking though, a large part of why you were able to do that was influenced by the outside force, right? Tony Robbins is phenomenal at what he does and he's phenomenal at helping people to break through beliefs. One of the main reasons why he's so successful is because the firewalk is one of those things that instantly we see as something that's impossible. Similar to, you know, I'd never be able to jump out and do a, you know, a bungee jump, or I'd never be able to jump and do a parachute jump. We have certain limitations. And when we take action on those limitations, that we do something, we have an experience which actually conflicts with what our old belief was, which is, I'll never be able to do that. It opens things up and it allows our brain to go, if I could do something that I couldn't imagine myself doing, what else is possible? And that's one of the reasons why his work is so impactful for so many people. It's not just the great level of techniques, but it's also the fact that people believe in their capacity to do more than they thought. And it really helps them to shift at least a part of their identity. They become more than who they were before they went through the firewalk. Because again, the experience, and it doesn't matter about the physics of it, because the physics of it means that if you walk across the fire at a certain, you know, you don't stand there for ages, but you walk across, you're unlikely to get burned. But that doesn't always feel Right when you're looking at it, when you're there, when you see the flames and then you see the ash beneath your feet, you might know intellectually, but still physically in your body, you still feel like you're going to get burnt. And pushing yourself through that helps you to transform the belief that you have about what's possible, which can completely change the trajectory of your life. And that's what we need to recognize is that all of these things are different exercises that are designed to help you to make that shift. But ultimately, the reason you change is because It feels different. And feeling is the most important element of belief. A belief is an idea we feel certain about. And that word feel is the most important word in that sentence. And once the feeling changes, that opens up the possibility for the belief to change too. And the problem is most of us go about it the entire opposite way. We're like, I'll just give myself an argument as to why I can walk across hot coals and logically, blah, blah, blah. Most of the time it won't make a difference because even if you try to convince yourself, there's still not enough of a feeling. And what Tony will do is get you into the strongest state possible so that you feel courageous and confident and comfortable. And you're like, okay, I'm going to— I'm determined. I'm going to do this. And that's what allows you to do it. Not the logic that goes, well, strictly speaking, if it re— if you walk on the different hot coals at this temperature for this amount of time, then technically Doesn't work.
Al ElliottSo that's the positive side of telling yourself a story to get you really riled up and get you to break through something you wouldn't otherwise get. I have a feeling you— well, I know that you can go too far the other way and sell yourself a story on something which is just ridiculous. Now, there are so many examples in history, and I know you quite like history. So many examples of history, we won't go into any of them, of people who thought something was a great idea and in retrospect it was a horrific idea. But just in terms of just The average person who says, this is the next Facebook, and puts their entire life savings into it, and then they spend 2 years, 10 years on this idea, and it never goes anywhere, but they've sold themselves this idea that it is going to be the next thing. That's gone too far, hasn't it?
Owen FitzpatrickIt is. And at the same time, a lot of great organizations are successful as a result of that kind of what I call desired truth. So we have different— I talk about different types of truth. So you have objective truth, which is truth because you can measure something. something that you can observe in front of you. You've got personal truth or past truth, which is, it's true because I remember it that way. You've got emotional truth. It's true because I feel like it's true. My gut says it's true. You've got shared truth. It's true because myself and Al agree that it's true, or this whole population agrees that it's true. But then you've got desired truth, and desired truth is, it's true because I want it to be true. And therein lies one of the things that oftentimes marketeers or people in marketing and sales rely on, But also startup founders need desired truth because they might not have the evidence that suggests that their idea will definitely be successful. Like James Dyson created more than 5,000 prototypes, right, of the Hoover before he actually got it out there, right? 5,000 prototypes of his vacuum cleaner. Like, it's insane to be able to go through and to do that for so many years. And if we caught James Dyson at any point before he actually succeeded, and we turned around and we said, mate, what are you doing? And he stopped. We would turn around and look at that as a prime example of someone who just believed something that wasn't true. And as a result of that was a big failure. Now, the problem is you could take a different person who's doing the exact same thing and they could do it for 1,000 years. Let's imagine they could live that long and they would still not be successful. And they just wouldn't give up because they might think to themselves, well, one day this'll work. So the difficulty here is that there's examples where, and Melanie Perkins with Canva is another example. She had no right to believe that she was gonna be able to build such a successful empire. She lives over in Australia, far away from Silicon Valley, and she was teaching at the time and she's successfully managed to do something amazing with regards to that. So there's all of these different founders. Who have this desired belief. But the problem is, with every example of those founders, you have tons of other wannabe founders that have the exact same desired belief. But instead of helping them to become successful, it just leads them into wasting an awful lot of time and money and energy and effort. So the real trick is we need to recognize the difference between our desired belief and objective belief, and to be able to understand the reason why we're doing the 5,000 prototypes. is because we believe in this concept enough to know, but objectively, we can also look at the data and we can see I'm making progress towards it. I'm getting closer. And we need to be able to know the difference between the two, because the big mistake we make is that we often conflate it. We talk about everything as if it's true, and we mean objective truth when actually it's desired truth. And we never say desired truth. Well, very few people will ever say, oh, I believe in it because I want it to be true. No, we say, I believe in it because it's true, right? It's objectively true. As soon as we parse out those 2 and we are humble enough to recognize the difference between them, then it doesn't mean that we stop it just because we don't have objective evidence, but it means we recognize I'm doing this because I want it to be true, but also by the measurement I can see I'm getting closer to my goals. And to me, that's what I try to help people to do is recognize the difference. But we can all be guilty of it. I believe things that I want to believe that aren't true, and I'm constantly Recognizing that constantly, go, oh my goodness, I can't believe I fell for that. And when I say I fell for that, I fell for that from myself. I tricked myself into believing it. If I'm on a diet and I go, oh, I really want an ice cream, and then I concoct some story, I sell myself a story going, well, actually, I read a survey which said that if you eat ice cream on Tuesdays at 3 o'clock, actually, it doesn't really impact because of some bio— No, it's not true, mate. You're just trying to buy into some sort of idea because it allows you to do what you ultimately speaking want to do. And we need to call ourselves a little bit more on that.
Al ElliottYou've just given me like 700 different questions I want to ask you. So let me see, before we get into that, you said there that if you are, and I think I'm getting this right, is that you essentially have some data that you're comparing your what you want to be true against to keep you a little bit grounded. Now, I think I read in your book that something about a data bully or something where managers will come in and— do you know what I'm talking about?
Owen FitzpatrickYeah. So there's a notion that Adam Grant, Professor Adam Grant, he wrote a book, great— well, he's written a number of great books, but one of them is called Think Again. And in it, he introduces the concept of a logic bully. And so there's an awful lot of people in the business world particularly, but in general in life that Our default is to be able to try to convince other people to change their mind based upon evidence and data. So if I'm talking to you, let's say me and you, Al, let's say we disagree on something, right? What I'll try to do is I'll try to go, well, Al, you need to pay attention to this study and this study and this study. And actually all these people agree with it. And I will use all these different techniques to try to convince you, but I'll try to bombard you with evidence. Now, that's well and good if both of us are in a situation where we're both scientists and we're both trying to figure out what's true. And neither of us is going to be influenced by whether or not A is true or B is true, and we're completely objective about it, then that's a brilliant thing. I bring evidence to the table, you bring evidence, we challenge each other's evidence, and hopefully we figure out what the real story is. The same is true in terms of engineering. When you build a skyscraper or you build a plane, you need to make accurate predictions. For that, you need to be using objective evidence as you do so. It either works or it doesn't, and the two of us can test it to see whether or not my idea or your idea works.
Al ElliottThis is Great.
Owen FitzpatrickBut in the majority of the rest of the work that we do, the majority of the world, from politics to economics to anything connected to human psychology, to the everyday decisions we make, to a lot of the business world, problem that we have is that evidence doesn't always change minds because there's other things at stakes. Now, we learned this from behavioral economics, which is a field of the psychology decision-making that came about around the '60s and '70s. great figures like Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. And what they looked at was that our decisions are not completely rational, right? Sometimes we make errors in the way in which we make judgments, and it sort of explained that. And part of it is what we call our biases or cognitive biases, and part of it is the way in which we feel. But a big part of the work that I'm doing is looking at how do you actually change minds? How do you actually change beliefs when there's something on the line for them? And often what's on the line for them is their identity, who they are, but also there's feelings. They might not want to believe it. Remember the desired truth. They might actively not want to believe you. And it doesn't matter how much evidence you bring to the table. They're still going to have a— there's this factor that kicks in called a confirmation bias where they look for evidence to prove that they're right and they dismiss any evidence that contradicts them. So it doesn't matter how much evidence you give them, they're going to react negatively to that. And as a result of that, They're not going to open their minds enough to be able to shift their beliefs. So ultimately, the worst way to convince most people is to use logic. Now, that doesn't mean logic is important, but logic is table stakes, and it's not where you should start, right? Logic comes in at the end and takes the credit for a belief, but it's not the reason we believe what we do, right? Our feelings and whether or not the belief fits in with who we are, they're the 2 most important elements. Yeah. In the majority of the conversations we have. And so being a logic bully has limited impact. Unfortunately, that's the default mode we use whenever we're trying to convince anybody of anything. And I believe that the more that we understand that convincing people is largely about changing the way they feel, the more likely we'll be successful. And I mean, this is something we've known since Aristotle in the sense of he talked about ethos is how convincing you are, Logos is how good your argument is, which is logic. But then pathos is how you make people feel, the emotional appeal of your argument. And as I look around different organizations, and I've been lucky enough to work with the likes of Google and LinkedIn and Pfizer and Citibank and all these great organizations, so often the missing piece for a lot of people is they're not making people feel differently. And if you don't work on that level, then you're going to struggle no matter how much logic you bring to the table. Yeah.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioral science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking. You're not gonna say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in threes—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless, seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. Uh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that Encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is. It's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Al ElliottIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottOh yeah. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this.
Leanne ElliottSo come back.
Al ElliottI'll cut that out. Keep that in. So let's take an actual, actual concrete example. At the moment, there is so much stuff going on about how AI is taking jobs. So even this morning, I think it was Oracle just let go a load of people. Um, I believe that if I was a, if I was a manager or a founder, I'd want to go into my organization, tell my teams and go, we want to introduce AI because it's going to make your jobs easier. But the people listening to that, I believe, are going to think or believe the story they'll say is he doesn't want to do this. He wants to replace us with AI. So given that example of me saying, I want to bring AI into business, um, to help you and then believing that it's there to replace them, how should I actually convince them that I've got a good— True.
Owen FitzpatrickSo if you're a founder and you're trying to get your team to embrace AI, the problem that you're having is that you're thinking very small. In the example that you gave, you're thinking in terms of, okay, I want to convince them to do it. So what I'll do is I'll give them the logical explanation that says this will make your jobs easier. But actually, if you take a step back and you go, where's the future going? You'll recognize that the future is going in a direction whereby AI is going to become more and more important in so many ways. So we would argue that it's becoming the critical skill of the 21st century. If you don't know AI, you're not going to be very successful for very long in probably most of the jobs out there. And so what I'd be looking at is, in order to change the way they feel about it, it's important to try to figure out how can he or she excite the team and get them excited about AI. And that would be painting a picture of the vision of over the next few years, this is what we expect AI to do.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Owen FitzpatrickAnd we can all contribute to that. We can all be a part of that. And what I want all of us to do is I want us to upskill so we all become really brilliant and really skilled at leveraging and using AI. So over the course of the next 12 months, I want us to become AI experts. I want us all to be able to use it effectively, brilliantly, so that we can become the very best versions of ourselves and so we can ensure we are indispensable to the market.
Al ElliottYeah.
Owen FitzpatrickI want us to walk into any organization, any client, and to be able to have conversations to the point that we can add more value than anyone has ever added in their life. We can transform them and at the same time transform our own lives with that. So my goal is for all of us to become great at this so we can ensure that regardless of how things change in the future, we are at the cutting edge, we are at the leading front. We know exactly what we need to do to be at our best. And I wanna make sure all of us have that capability and all of us become that kind of person. Now, if you feel that this is a struggle for you, we're going to give you every bit of support you need. We've got your back. We really want to make sure that you are going to become everything that you need to be to become completely indispensable moving forward. So whether you keep working in this organization, which I hope you do, or you decide to do anything yourself or move anywhere, you are always going to be the kind of person that's going to Enjoying massive amounts of success as a result of this. So obviously I'm just spitballing because we're doing this off the spot, but it's that kind of message. It's getting them to think about themselves and how this can help them to become greater because nothing I've said you could argue with from a logical perspective, right? But yet I'm painting a picture of what's of interest to them. I'm trying to get them to feel excited about it as opposed to, you know, if you do X, it'll make your job easier. But that then immediately lends to the story. Yeah, so easy. I won't have to do it because you'll replace me with this boss that I've just trained in doing it. Whereas when you paint a picture about them and their identity, and again, you always need to be genuine and real with this, but when you paint a picture of who they can become as a result of that, and you include yourself in there, and you ensure that nobody's left behind, you're not going to— if someone is not comfortable, you're not just going to leave them, you're going to work with them and help them, then you're helping them Because it is inevitable. And so you're helping them become ready for this. And future ready is a word that's used quite a lot, but I think of it as present ready, right? We want to be ready for the present and keep being ready for the present so that every single thing that occurs, we're able to handle it.
Al ElliottOwen, I'm following you into battle at this point. That was just, that was off the cuff. It felt like a Churchillian sort of speech thing. Tell me, how do I get as good as you just were then? How do I learn how to position my arguments that way?
Owen FitzpatrickI think first of all, and I don't, you know, my example was based upon my simple structure, which is I'm thinking to myself, what is it that I want them to feel? How is it that I can ensure that this idea of, in this context, AI becoming something that they do and use, How could that become part of their identity? So I always think back to Star Wars actually. And one of the most interesting pieces of Star Wars is how, and spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't seen it, but if you haven't seen Star Wars at this stage, I don't know what to tell you, right? But one of the most interesting parts wasn't just how Emperor Palpatine or the Emperor was able to convince Darth Vader to go to the dark side. It was how Luke Skywalker was able to convince Darth Vader to kill the Emperor, spoiler alert. And when we look at what he did is that the one thing that Luke Skywalker did all the way through the film is he believed in his father. He said, there is good in him, I know it. And so a big thing is our capacity to believe in people and to believe in the potential of people. Now, that doesn't mean that we close our eyes when someone is not performing and we go, oh, I believe in there that they're doing an amazing job. If they're not doing an amazing job, we have to see the objective evidence and to be able to give them the feedback and empower them to be able to do what they need to do. And sometimes they might not even be right for the organization. Who knows? But we have to have the capacity to believe in people's potential. And the one thing that AI will never be able to do is to believe in you. So as a, what I call a belief leader, as a leader who cultivates belief, the first place you need to do that is in yourself. And the more that we believe in people, the more we see the brilliance in them. So in the example I gave, just to go back to your question, in the example I gave, I thought to myself, how is it that I can believe in my team or believe in the group of individuals that are standing in front of me? What is it that I can believe about them that will empower them, that will give them what they need? And since I believe that the future is going to be more and more taken over by AI, I want them to believe in themselves as well, but that will start in me believing in them. And so as I talk to them, I'm believing in their identity and their future. And I'm saying, look, I know that you can become this. And I always believe in other people's capacity to improve and to get better. So when you convey that to them, that's, I think, what does tend to inspire people. Because, you know, to your point, in Irish history, we have some incredible leaders over time that have demonstrated— I've written about a couple in my book, And one of them was Robert Emmet, who, you know, with his final speech, he was this, you know, sort of Irish patriot that was around in the early 19th century, right at the very beginning. And there was a rebellion that didn't work out, and he was being put to death. And in his final speech, he made this incredible speech that was so powerful, it was quoted by Abraham Lincoln, you know, years later. Like, it was, it was so good that Abraham Lincoln would, would recite it at parties.
Al ElliottWow.
Owen FitzpatrickRight. And this is the kind of example of words that are etched in stone. And one of the lines he talked about was, do not write my epitaph. I don't want people to write about— I don't need a grave, right? I don't need people to write about me until Ireland becomes a free nation. All right? That's how much his conviction was. Anne Devlin, who worked for him, there's again another story about her where she refused to talk. She refused to let anybody convince her to talk about anything. And once again, she went through hell but still did not speak. So in one case, we have somebody who spoke and had words that were remembered forever, another person who didn't say anything. And it's because they believed in not just their country, but they believed in those around them. They were the ultimate examples of leaders. And to me, we don't all have that if we're producing some sort of product or service The stakes are not that high, but yet what people respond to is the example of someone who not only walks the talk, but believes in us and gives us the conviction to say, you can improve, you can be better. I believe in you. We all desperately want to be believed in. And when you can do that, you're not necessarily believing, like I said, if a person's performing poorly, you're not believing that they're performing great, but you're believing in their potential. And once you do that, it won't work all the time. But it's definitely going to work a lot better than turning around going, here are the logical reasons as to why you should do what I'm telling you to do, which is unfortunately where our default goes.
Al ElliottOwen, I think in my head when I hear the word propaganda, I kind of think, oh, that's a bad thing. What would you say to that?
Owen FitzpatrickWell, I think in the 17th century, the word propaganda sort of came into being and it was like, it came actually from, I think, the Pope and it was about propagating information. So the spreading of information. And obviously propaganda is a bad thing from the perspective of, if you ask, 10 out of 10 people will tell you the word propaganda is negative. The problem is that it's not whether or not propaganda is good or bad. The problem is the story that we sell to ourselves about what propaganda is means that it's always what's happening to everybody else. So especially when it comes to politics, if we talk to somebody and we go, what do you think of this? And they go, it's propaganda. People only label it propaganda if they don't believe it.
Al ElliottYeah.
Owen FitzpatrickNobody will turn around and go, yeah, yeah, it's propaganda and I totally believe it. They only label it propaganda if they think it's what other people have been convinced about. Now, when I went to North Korea, I saw incredibly obvious examples of propaganda and it's very blatant, very much in your face. Everyone wears a lapel pin with a picture of the leader or the flag. You have to have a perfect sort of picture of, I did the Great Leader, the Dear Leader, in your house and it's like regularly polished. And there's all sorts of small things that would indicate that they're very sort of, inverted commas, brainwashed. But when I went there, I found very smart, very cool people who really great opinions about different things. Obviously they do believe whatever the nation tells them to believe in a lot of cases. But then I went back and I was spending some time in the States. This is before I moved to the States. And somebody came to me and said, oh my goodness, it must have been crazy in North Korea with the propaganda. I said, well, the main difference is, and this is particularly when it comes to the polarization in America, the difference is that in North Korea they've got one point of view. In America, they've got 2. And obviously I'm being a little bit sort of glib there, but if you think about the notion of what people believe in North Korea, it's that the leader is great and the nation is great and this and that and the other. The news channel in North Korea was so positive It was actually, now, you know, it's, it's, you know, 90% of it is lies, but it's still nice to actually have news that's positive for once in a while. Right. So I was like, oh, it's nice to listen to, even though, you know, behind the scenes there's like terrible, like atrocities being committed, which is horrific. But when you go to the States and you see, or not even just the States, it could be a lot of different countries today, you have the opposing news channels. And they have exact opposite stories. And you would look at them both and you'd struggle to figure out, are they talking about the same country if you didn't know? And people are convinced, absolutely convinced, that their side is the right one. And this is the polarization that's happening today. And so the question I sort of ask is that we believe that because we have the freedom in the West, let's say, we have the freedom that other countries don't have. And in North Korea, they don't have freedom like we do. And I would agree with that in many ways.
Al ElliottYeah.
Owen FitzpatrickBut unfortunately, oftentimes with that freedom comes the choice that we often make to buy into one sort of narrative about how things are. And so we buy into that. And so to me, that's the equivalent of in North Korea, you're being imprisoned in a cell and you can't get out. But in, let's say, the Western world, we're being imprisoned in a cell, the door's open, but we can choose whichever cell we want to go into, but we're still in the cell. And that reminds me of Plato's cave. Plato talked about, you know, if you were imprisoned in a cave and you could only see shadows on the wall from the time you were born, and, you know, that was where you were stuck, you would believe that those shadows on the wall were your reality. And then he said, well, what happens if somebody eventually escapes and they go out into the world and they see the, you know, the real world? They would immediately escape. And reason can help us to get there.
Al ElliottYeah.
Owen FitzpatrickBut actually, when we think we've escaped, we're just in a different cave because we go, oh, I see the light now. Well, do you? Or have you just convinced yourself of a different story? And maybe your new story is objectively true, but more often than not, it's not. It's just a difference of opinion. And the more I think we get more intellectually humble about this, where we go, maybe I don't have it all figured out, maybe I'm not right. It doesn't mean that we have to feel bad about being wrong. It means we could feel good about being wrong because it means that we can get more information.
Al ElliottYeah.
Owen FitzpatrickAnd I think intellectual humility, curiosity are underrated for leaders. And it's not that we want to always be unsure in front of the teams that we lead. We want to demonstrate conviction, but we want to balance that with the notion that we want to learn more. We're always looking for information and evidence. We're always trying to figure out how other people think. Because if I'm trying to convince you, if I'm going to try to change your mind, I want to understand the propaganda that you've been listening to. And recognize the propaganda I've been listening to and understand that the propaganda machines are actually in our heads. Because the more we do that, we take responsibility for it and we go, okay, let me figure out how I'm feeling about this. Let me figure out why I believe what I do. And then I can make a more judicious decision as a result. And then if I'm trying to communicate with you, I understand that you're influenced as well. So how can I put this in a way that it fits in with who you are and what you need to know.
Al ElliottI have to ask you, in that particular situation, right? So a leader or a manager's coming with their own propaganda. They've got, right, okay, this is what I believe is going to happen. They have read your book. So now they are open to the ideas and open to listening to some pushback on their ideas. What happens if they then decide, actually, I was wrong in the first place? Have I not just sold myself this story that cannot be changed? Is that not the point of the book?
Owen FitzpatrickLet's say you've read the book or gone through the work, then what you'd recognize is the fact that your belief can change. So Carol Dweck talks about a growth mindset, which means that if you believe that you can improve your abilities or your skills and you practice with effort and you get feedback and you challenge yourself, then you can. And that's the notion of a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed one going, this is what I'm good at, this is what I'm bad at, it is what it is. I like the idea of what I call a belief growth mindset, where you believe that your beliefs can improve, can get better. And this is connected to, there was a guy called Thomas Bayes a couple hundred years ago that came up with Bayesian reasoning. And this is really what's behind a lot of scientific discoveries and evidence, which is the notion that you start out with a prior, which is a belief that you have, and then you try to, you update it as more evidence comes to light. So it's thinking in terms of probability as opposed to certainty. And when you start to think like that, it means that you're engaged in conversations where you always know you have a certain level of certainty.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Owen FitzpatrickAnd that level of certainty will adjust based upon the feedback you get. So I believe in A, like idea A, like we need to use this particular AI model, model A. And so I get pushback from my team and I listen and I'm open enough. And the notion is that it's easier for me to change because I'm now thinking in terms of, I believe this, I feel quite certain about it, but I'm open to new evidence. And then my team member gives me more evidence and walks through the different reasons as to why this works. And as a result of me having the intellectual humility to know that I haven't 100% convinced myself of something, I know that this is what I believe that is probably the right approach. Now, all of a sudden, it's easier for me to then get that probability shifted as more evidence comes to light. So it effectively means that I'm making myself more open-minded to different points of view. It helps me to override some of the problems that can happen when really my identity or how I feel is what's protecting the belief. Because your identity protects your beliefs and prevents those beliefs from changing because I link to that identity. And that's why you see in politics oftentimes someone will decide to go on a certain side. They'll say, okay, I'm going with the Republicans or I'm going with the conservatives or I'm going with I'm going with the liberals, I'm going with the Democrats, or whatever the case may be. They'll make the choice. And as soon as they do that, it's almost like the membership that they pay is the shared belief that they have with everyone in that side. So all of a sudden, they will change their mind on anything else so that they could fit in with the rest of the tribe. And this is something that's built into our psychology from evolutionary times because we had to make sure we're part of the tribe.
Leanne ElliottWhy?
Owen FitzpatrickBecause that ensures we survive. And our brain, as we learned earlier, really wants us to survive more than anything. And that's what it's orienting itself to. And it's also simpler when everyone believes in the same beliefs in your tribe, you're good. So often we make that choice to believe what our groups believe, to lock ourselves in that way. And so it's very difficult to shift. And so for a leader who reads the book, hopefully they recognize these things. They had to develop the belief growth mindset and they go, look, Look, I'm not going to connect all of these beliefs to who I am. Instead, we hopefully will build a, what I call an antifragile belief system. And the notion antifragility came from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who talked about things that get stronger as a result of adversity. And if you start to see yourself as that kind of leader that constantly evolves and gets better, the more adversity that's thrown at you, the more challenges thrown at you, then what that does is it means that every time you learn you're wrong, that's a great thing.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Owen Fitzpatrick'Cause it means you can get even better and you relish that. You love getting that kind of feedback from your team. You love learning about what mistakes you were making because that helps you to evolve and get even more effective. And it completely transforms your mindset about those kind of conversations, which builds psychological trust in the team as well. 'Cause they go, you know what, if the leader of this organization could take this kind of feedback, well, that's what I wanna be able to do too. And before you know it, you're cultivating an incredible culture of people that believe in themselves, that believe each other and that they're open and willing to continuously improve moving forward.
Al ElliottSo how do we balance this idea of being open to ideas without being weak as a leader?
Owen FitzpatrickSo if you look at the work of Brené Brown, one of the things that Brené would talk about is the importance of vulnerability. And she's written some powerful books and has some incredible thoughts around why being vulnerable is such an important leadership skill. Dare to Lead is an excellent book for leaders. And the reason this resonates so well is because when someone turns around like they're the smartest person in the room, that works to a certain extent, but eventually they stop being relatable to the folks that they work with. They stop being fully trusted because when we trust someone, we don't just trust them because they know what they're talking about. We need to feel like they care. We need to feel like they're real. We need to feel like they're authentic. We need to feel like they're not perfect so that we can not, you know, maybe we'll aspire to being more like them. Maybe they'll inspire us with their presence or with their behavior, but ultimately we need to believe in them. And that means seeing the humanity inside of who they are. And so the notion of being wrong, if you believe that people won't respect you as a leader if you're wrong, that belief in and of itself is going to be a big obstacle for you because it's not getting things wrong that's the problem. It's how you respond or react when you get things wrong. And ultimately, business is unforgiving. At the end of the day, it all lands on a spreadsheet, right? You can't get away from the numbers. So if I'm wrong about a decision and you're telling me that I'm wrong about a decision and I refuse to back down because I don't want to be weak Well, I'm still going to be wrong. The spreadsheet is still not going to lie. We're still going to lose out because of my stubbornness and my decision, because I didn't want Al to prove me wrong. And so you're going to be found out anyway. So instead of that, if you adapt and if you're confident, that I call a confident vulnerability, if you're confident about changing your mind and you're open and you're listening and you demonstrate good decision-making by listening and embracing views and then challenging them back and And looking at what's really going on. If you demonstrate you're pursuing the objective reality of the situation, then that I think is inspiring to people because it means that you're completely invested in ensuring that you're moving in the right direction and you're not letting your ego get in the way. Because there's one thing that causes so many problems, it's our ego. And the ego is the desire we have to live up to this perfect standard that we expect other people to perceive us as, like our identity is so fixed into what we believe that I believe the real weakness is the failure to listen.
Al ElliottMan, the real weakness is the failure to listen. That should be on everyone's t-shirt. Is there someone you have in mind who has nailed this perfectly, this whole proper inner propaganda idea?
Owen FitzpatrickNo, no, there's not. There's— look, there's incredible leaders through history, And there's incredible business leaders out there in all different areas. If you talk about business leaders that are incredible at convincing people, any amazing founder that you'll have heard of, any incredible business leaders that you'll have heard of out there, the richest people on planet Earth, they all have a phenomenal ability to cultivate belief. But the mistake a lot of people make is I think that what they do is they immediately start to equate themselves. I'll give you a simple example. A few years ago, I was working with a team in an organization teaching a leadership development course, and somebody comes up to me on it and says, by the way, I know you're going to teach us about leadership and how to work well with people, but ultimately I just want to let you know that I did a leadership survey and I'm what we call an authoritative dictatorial leader. And that's my style. So I don't need to learn about all this emotional skills and all that sort of stuff. And so I said, cool, how's that working for you? And he goes, well, the turnover on my team is quite high, but it's hard to find good people these days. So immediately that's an example of someone who sort of forecloses on an identity of this is the type of leader. I don't want to have to learn anything else. Now, you also have people who another individual I work with turned around to me and said, look, I'm abrasive because that's my style. I'm just like Steve Jobs. And the problem is that they equate the reason Steve Jobs was successful as a leader was because he was rude and abrasive. I would argue the opposite. I would argue the one big weakness of Steve Jobs was this rude, abrasive nature that he had for many years as a leader.
Al ElliottYeah.
Owen FitzpatrickBut he got away with it because he was so brilliant in the other ways. And eventually, I think in the later years, he became less abrasive and less rude. He worked with a guy called Bill Campbell, who was kind of like his coach. There's a great book called The Trillion Dollar Coach written about Bill Campbell's life. And one of the people that he spent a lot of time with was Steve Jobs, and Bill would help him with a lot of that. But the truth of the matter was, is that But if you look at Steve Jobs, his success, one of the things that they talked about, and I think in Walter Isaacson's biography of him, he talked about the reality distortion effect. So he was able to convince people of what he wanted them to believe. So that's a great example of a belief leader, but a large part of it was because he was able to inspire the vision. It's like that famous quote. He asked the guy from Pepsi to come And he said he wanted him to come in as CEO into the organization. And he said, do you want to keep selling sugared water or do you want to come with me and change the world? Well, that's literally changing the way in which he felt and ensuring that he paints this desired identity for this executive to come in. And so I think it was John Mulaney. He made that decision to come on board and was so inspired by who Steve Jobs was. Another time Steve asked one of his engineers to be able to cut the time that it would take in order to do this. And the guy said, oh, that's impossible. And Steve said, well, if every second you could cut would save someone's life, how many lives do you think you could save? Like, who says that? That's insane. But if you think about it, it's changing the feeling that the person has. If I'm doing something and every second I save can save someone's life, and he gave him a logical reasoning later on where he was like, Look, every single second you save of a person, if you add up all those seconds and all those people, that's effectively a person's life, right? But it was that feeling that he created in that. And so they're 2 wonderful examples of a very well-known legend being able to cultivate belief in other people. But every great leader that's helped their nation overcome adversity, demonstrates that. And the problem is they don't— the reason I said there's nobody is because nobody is perfect. While you have great leaders, there's also dark sides to great leaders as well. Some of the greatest leaders of our time, the people that triumphed in some of the wars, they also have very, very dark backgrounds and dark aspects to their beings as well. And I think And in the world, we like to think in terms of goodies and baddies, and we like to think, oh, well, this person was obviously bad and this person was obviously good. And I would agree, there's easy ones like Hitler and stuff that you go, he was just a despicable, horrendous human being. But most of the time, that tendency we have to reduce people to good and bad, that's part of the problem. Because as soon as we look at a person that doesn't believe the same thing as us and we think that they're dumb or they're bad or evil, It stops us from being able to talk to them and it stops them from being able to listen to us. And that's part of the work that I'm trying to do is to get people to start to become humble enough to go, the person has very different beliefs than me, but most of the time we agree on 95% of our values and we just argue about the other 5. And that becomes the decision that we make to say, this person is different to me, therefore they're bad. And I think we need to start to recognize that we are all victims of our own inner propaganda. Because once we do and we understand it, I think It allows us to open up to each other, connect more, and build better organizations as a result.
Al ElliottFabulous. Absolutely fabulous. And also, I remember this just made me mindful, actually, there was an interview, I think, with Christopher Waltz, who played— I can't remember the character, but he played it in Inglourious Basterds.
Owen FitzpatrickYeah, Hans. Yeah. I can't think of his second name. Yeah.
Al ElliottI can't either. But he said, how do you play evil so badly? He says he doesn't believe he's evil. Yeah. He believes he's 100% right. And that's propaganda to its core.
Owen FitzpatrickYeah. And here's the thing, Al, that's what Robert McKee, who's The greatest screenwriting teacher of all time. He's taught the greatest. If you think about anybody who's written a great screenplay, more than likely they've learned from Robert McKee. He's the author of the book Story. He's amazing. And I've been lucky enough to spend quite a bit of time learning from him. And one of the things he talks about is that villains never think of themselves as villains. A villain doesn't walk around going, I'm a baddie. Lex Luthor didn't see himself as bad. Even Thanos in Marvel, the whole thing of clicking your fingers and making half of the universe disappear. Everyone gives themself a reason as to why what they're doing is the right thing. They're on the right side. And as soon as we recognize that and really understand that, it helps us to go, for me to change this person's mind, the least successful thing I can do is to shame them.
Al ElliottRight.
Owen FitzpatrickBecause as soon as you shame them, you will lose all sorts of credibility with And therefore they're no longer going to be open to changing their minds because they don't want to prove you right. Because as soon as they argue with you and you argue with them, since you're never going to listen, since you've already labeled them in that way, why should they? Immediately you lose all sorts of trust. And as soon as we lose trust in the other person, as soon as we tell ourselves a story or sell ourselves a story that the other person is not to be trusted, well, there's nothing that can be said that will get through that. Whereas when we stop and recognize that everybody believes they're doing the right thing, or everyone is coming from that side. It's not that evil might not exist, for example, but it's just that it gives us a better shot at influencing people. And that's kind of why I believe so much in this is because I want people to be better at getting through to the people that disagree with them so that they can start to impact or influence them more. Because logic bullying won't work, as Adam Grant pointed out, and labeling or shaming people won't work. So maybe believing in their potential like Luke Skywalker did, believing that there is good in him, I sense it. That might be the only thing that actually can work in those situations. And once you understand how belief works, then it helps you to get better at that.
Al ElliottI know in your book, you start off with a very personal story, and I won't go into it because I don't want to spoil— not that you want to spoil that kind of story, but it's definitely a story people want to read. Is there something you used to believe in that now you have realized you've been completely wrong about?
Owen FitzpatrickMany, many, many, many things. Every day I realize something that I believed wasn't actually what I thought was true. And back then, what you're referring to, so I struggled with my mental health when I was a teenager. I was suicidal for a while. Therefore, as someone who was struggling with that and wanting to end his life, I believed that I needed to die and the best thing for everyone, including myself, would be for me to die. And for an experience I had there, things changed for me. And I believed that I needed to live. Not that I wanted to live. I didn't go, oh, I want to die. I want to live. It was, I needed to die and I needed to live. And that belief shifted in a very powerful way based once again on something that shifted in me in terms of a feeling that changed at that moment in time. And largely that's what happens is that so many times, I mean, think about it. Al, if you think back to what kind of clothes you wore 20, 30 years ago, are you thinking to yourself, yeah, I look cool then? Or are you going, oh my goodness, I can't believe I had that haircut. I can't believe I listened to that music. I can't believe I wore that. We all have those things that we're like, I believed I was the coolest person in the world, and then all of a sudden I wasn't. And so I constantly upgrade my beliefs. I constantly recognize the areas in which I'm wrong.
Al ElliottYeah.
Owen FitzpatrickAnd I'm going to get a lot more wrong in the future too. But the goal is to recognize the more I get things wrong, the more I learn, the more I grow, the more I hopefully continuously improve. And I also give myself more of a break, right? I think sometimes when people think about the notion of, well, you're your own inner propagandist and you're convincing yourself of this, kind of makes people feel, well, I don't want to blame myself. But the way I look at it is, well, Well, if I'm willing enough to be wrong, then the more I recognize that, the more I understand that, the more I can actually grow and improve and get better. And that to me is a wonderful thing because ultimately I think the goal that we all can look forward to in life is improving and learning and growing and making our relationships better and making our teams better and ensuring that we're improving. And the only way we do that is by realizing that that you don't always have to be right, and a belief doesn't always have to be the right one. Our beliefs are not always factual, but they are always functional. And so the more that you understand the function of why you believe what you do, the more you can upgrade it, the more you can, as I call it, believe better. And to me, that's what I'm hoping more people do as a result of the work that I'm doing in the book.
Leanne ElliottThat was Owen Fitzpatrick, author of the new book Inner Propaganda. Turns out the person you most need to convince first is As always, here are our top 3 takeaways. Number 1, stop leading with logic. If you're trying to change someone's mind, whether that's your team, a client, or an investor, the evidence comes last, not first. Work out how you want them to feel before you work out what you want to tell them.
Al ElliottNumber 2, catch what Owen calls your own desired truth. If you're a founder pushing an idea, ask yourself honestly whether you believe it because the evidence supports it, or because you need it to be true. Both can be valid, but you have to know which one you're operating on.
Leanne ElliottAnd number 3, believe in your team's potential before the evidence proves it. Owen's point about Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader wasn't a throwaway line. The leaders people follow are the ones who believe in who someone can become, not just who they are right now.
Al ElliottOwen's new book, Inner Propaganda, is out on August 4th. Head to innerpropaganda.com to get your copy. propaganda.com for the book and some bonuses that come with it, or find him at owenfitzpatrick.com and of course on LinkedIn. He's also got his own podcast, brilliant podcast by the way, Inner Propaganda, if you want more of him. And of course you will.
Leanne ElliottThis is Truth, Lies and Work. We will see you next week.