Team Fusion International Ltd – Part 2

Business Type: People and Culture – Leadership Coaching | Personality Profiling Specialist | DIY Recruitment Support | High Performance Team Culture

SUMMARY:

Part two of the Biz Bites interview with Gaelene revolves around the significance of purpose in driving a business. Gaelene advocates for motives beyond providing financial stability, citing instances where monetary success did not equate to contentment. She underscores the need for meaningful driving forces to sustain motivation. She also highlighted the importance of understanding the purpose of each team member and linking it with the company’s goals to foster loyalty and motivation. Gaelene then shared her personal experiences of abuse and how it led to her purpose—through empowering people in workplaces, she hopes to foster better communities and happier families. She praised younger generations for knowing their ‘true north’ and urged older ones to embrace this. The conversation culminated with a discussion about B1G1, an organisation to which Gaylene contributes, that aims to do good with business transactions.

00:01 Introduction and Welcome

00:26 The Importance of Purpose in Business

02:31 The Power of Purpose: A Real-Life Example

05:30 The Role of Purpose in Personal Transformation

09:21 The Power of Storytelling in Business

17:15 The Impact of Generational Differences in the Workplace

19:12 The Role of B1G1 in Business

25:06 The Aha Moment: Realising It’s Not All About You

27:39 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

TRANSCRIPT

Anthony Perl: I hope you’ve had a chance to listen to part one of this interview on Biz Bites. Stay tuned now for part two. Welcome to Biz Bites brought to you by CommTogether, helping businesses like yours build their brand through telling amazing stories to engage and grow audiences on multiple platforms. Galene, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about purpose, because I know that’s an important part of the way you drive things as well.

So talk to me about what that means from your perspective in the first instance.

Gaelene Adams Love: I think especially in small business, we get very focused on the money. And what’s the reason for this business? And ultimately it comes down to, well, I want to provide for my family, or I want to provide an income for myself, but you know what? That only lasts so long. And if you don’t have something that’s more meaningful than that for yourself, then one day you’re just not going to be able to get out of bed.

The driver of the money is not enough. And, you know, I’ve talked to so many people over the years who’ve said, I hit that income target that I thought would make me happy and it didn’t, or it lasted in temporarily. And then, it kind of became so what, and, this might not be true for everybody and you know, who’s listening right now, but you’re either wanting to get to that income target or you get there and you find that it’s so easy that it becomes a bit boring.

So purpose. sits underneath that. And I’m sure we’ve all heard of Simon Sinek’s start with why you have to have a reason that’s bigger than you and not just about providing for you and your family because your family will grow up and they’ll leave, um, you know, your children. So then what? So for me, it’s about let’s get really clear on what What is driving this reason for you to have a business and earn the income?

If we took the income away and we could, we said to you, You, all your financial needs are taken care of. So why are you now coming to work every day? That’s the bit that we really want. And then when we flow that down into a team and we ask every team member, what’s your purpose? Why are you really doing this thing?

Then, and then connecting that to the purpose of the business, then you start to create loyalty and motivation like you’ve never seen before. And I worked with a company who it was a financial institution. They helped people to get mortgages and one of the mortgage advisors, we went through a process with him and he connected in with the fact that he, he was from South Africa and he was really sad that his.

Children and his children’s children may not see some of the, the wild animals that we see today. And, you know, the plight of the wild rhino, there’s only two left in the world and they’re both female. So we’ve got a massive problem there. So he, he got truly connected into why he was doing what he was doing in his day job, was he wanted to be able to make a contribution to save.

More rhino, obviously not the white ones, but the others. And so this is what happened for him, I kid you not, within a week of identifying that, he messaged me about a clip that he’d seen on TV. And it was an organisation that was literally flying rhinos out of South Africa or out of Africa and into a sanctuary in Australia.

And he said, this now shows me the path of how I can make a difference. And I don’t have to earn a fortune. I’m doing really well, but I can make. Even just a small difference that will allow me to contribute to this legacy of trying to save this particular animal, this breed. And you know, that guy, from that moment on, he was just totally on fire.

On purpose, knowing exactly why he was doing what he was doing and hitting his targets, which of course then made it possible for the company to hit their targets overall. So, you know, it just, it was one. Small, small difference, an hour and a half of time with him and me getting clear on what that thing was and it turbo powered him.

So we all can connect into that if we just allow ourselves to truly be honest about what is the real driver here because the money is not it. If money is an outcome, it’s not. It doesn’t, to me, it shouldn’t be the reason why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Anthony Perl: I share that love of going into those exercises because I’ve done that with a number of clients.

It’s something we do regularly and, it really does make a huge difference when you understand that. I have a friend of mine that we delved into that. For him. And it was went back to something that he hadn’t thought about since he was a young kid. And it’s been a year or two now, and it’s completely transformed the way he does business.

It’s not that his business itself changed. It’s just the way he goes about it because he understands what is actually driving him and why he needs to do what he does. And , I love that. So. In the interests of full disclosure and asking these things, tell me a little bit about your why and purpose. Why are you doing this?

Gaelene Adams Love: Yes. So the premise for me is around being better together, right? Better relationships create better communities and happier families for kids to grow up in. So part of my own personal journey was that at a very young age and not by a family member, I was abused. And so there was a time in my life where I used to drive past schools and think, how many kids last night?

How many kids are in a disempowered situation? Where they have no voice and they have no power to change it. And so I had to stop doing that because that was really demoralising. But the driver was there and I thought about, well, how can I make an impact? And I was thinking, well, Sexual abuse is not about sex.

It’s about power and control. So then I started thinking about business and how every one of us in our work situation could either be empowered or disempowered. And how do we feel when we are empowered and go home after work? Versus how do we feel if we’re disempowered? So this was my thinking. It might be like totally weird left field, but I went, well, what if I could make a change?

What if I could have people feeling inspired, empowered, and engaged at work? So that when they leave work, they go home and they’re a better parent or a better adult. To the children around them. And then I thought about what’s that flow on effect into their immediate family, their extended family and their community and the business itself.

So it took me a while to kind of put all the pieces of the puzzle together. It’s not, it’s, it’s not as simple as just a couple of words, but that’s the driver for me. I think disempowered people make disempowered decisions. If we can do things in my business that help to empower others in a positive way that connects them with real purpose and shows them how they can be successful, how they can be in flow, making a meaningful difference and being on purpose.

And, the ultimate is when all of your team members know. Everybody else’s purpose, because then you got a group of people that are highly engaged and helping each other to fulfill the business needs as well as the individual personal needs. And we have this need to belong and to feel connected.

And if we can honestly say, this is what drives me, this is why I’m here. This is why I’m doing what I do. And I happen to be an accountant, or I happen to be a customer service person, or I happen to be a, you know, I don’t know, pick any other profession. It doesn’t matter what, um, but this is why I’m really here.

Then that’s a whole different level of engagement in that business. So that’s why I do what I do.

Anthony Perl: I think it’s fantastic that you’ve turned what was obviously a horrible situation into something that has defined you, but in a positive way, because often people, when bad things happen to them, um, and sadly bad things happen to people all the time and it can be an illness.

It can be all sorts of things. And that can define them and can define what they do and how they do it, but often in a negative way. I think the fact that you’ve taken that and looked at it as that whole empowerment, , idea is, is amazing and, and connecting that with purpose. How can people not be inspired by that?

And is that something that, and I appreciate you sharing that with me today and with, with our listeners, is that something you find ease of benefit in sharing regularly in terms of, as you’re taking on new clients, so they understand where you’re coming from.

Gaelene Adams Love: When I’m working with my clients, I, the focus is on them.

So I don’t often tell that story, say in a, in a sales scenario or even a new business because really, um, or new business coming in to my business because it’s not about me. It really isn’t. But what I do find is that I’ve got such a storehouse of story. And the right story always lands at the right time for that particular client.

And often when I’m doing leadership development coaching at the end of every session, you know, we might, we may have said, this is what we’re working on today. Right. Well, we do say that right up, right up the front of the. Coaching session, but nine times outta 10. It’s that random story that I didn’t plan on saying, but it was just right in the moment.

And that is the, the thing that they say was their biggest learning or their biggest takeaway. Because stories, as you know, stories create memories and, and the story that we tell ourselves is the most powerful story. So we need, we need to choose who we tell, when we tell, and why, most importantly, why we’re telling.

It’s not, I don’t tell my story to manipulate others into making a choice. You asked the right question, it was the right timing for me to share that piece of information. So, yeah, it’s, it’s not, I don’t use it as a tool or a weapon against other people. It’s my journey. It was a tough journey to go through to get to this point.

And. Yeah, but it doesn’t define me. It doesn’t own me. I own the story. But yeah, the situation no longer owns me. That makes sense.

Anthony Perl: It absolutely does. And you’re completely correct about that, the power of story and the right to choose the right story in the right situation. It’s one of the challenges in a world that is being dominated by AI and something that, you know, we’ve spoken about before on Biz Bites.

You getting that authentic story and choosing the right one and the right way of telling it because you could tell that story, I’m sure, in about 20 or 30 different ways, depending on the audience and depending on the length, you know, you’ve told a fairly brief version of that story here because. We don’t have a, you know, three hour podcast to be able to go through it, but equally in the right situation, I’m sure that there’s a lot more detail that you might give in certain scenarios and focus on different areas, depending on who the audience is.

And that’s the same for any story, and that’s the power of it but extracting those stories and being able to share it. And I think what’s important as well. Is that that applies for your team. If you’re a business in your leadership role, sharing stories with your team, so they understand where you’re coming from, what you’re trying to achieve is also a difficult one.

I, I, you know, I know I’ve had these experiences myself in, in teams where you’ve gone away and done something. They’ve not had that experience and you’ve come back really inspired and said, we’re going to go in this direction now. But if they don’t hear the story, then they’re not going to come on that journey with you.

Gaelene Adams Love: Oh, absolutely. And it is all about the journey as much as it is about the destination. And you do have to take your team on the journey. And, Brené Brown is amazing at talking about vulnerability. As a leader, you have to be vulnerable. You can’t put on that, you know, everything’s perfect in my world.

Um, because it doesn’t create connection, you know, what creates connection is being real. One of my favorite stories is the Velveteen Rabbit for anybody who doesn’t know it was a story about a toy that this boy, very short story, loved so much that his eye was falling off and his fur was all rubbed off. But that was the thing that actually made it beautiful was it was real.

You know, it wasn’t the sanitised version, the perfect version. And we are all like that. We’re human beings having a spiritual experience in a human body. We’ve got to bring all of ourselves to work. But obviously, there’s some censorship that, you know, like you’re saying, you don’t want to be blurting out the whole big story all the time, but the appropriate information.

At the appropriate time does create connection and it allows other people to bring themselves to work as well. And I can tell you in my career, I had literally had jobs where I’ve paused at the left and gone. Okay, I’m taking you out and I’m going to leave you here by the lift. I promise I’ll pick you up on the way out.

And that’s a demoralising way to, um, to spend your day. So, you know, the world’s definitely shifted from those days. And young people, especially millennials and Gen Zs, they want to be seen, they want to be heard, they want to be understood, they want to have a voice, and they want to know that you, as their leader, are not going to judge or condemn them, and that you will accept them.

And this is the whole diversity conversation. So, yeah. And I think the world’s a better place if we can be real and authentic. And in fact, I heard a couple of weeks ago that the most Googled word in 2023 was authentic.

Anthony Perl: There you go. And I, look, and, and I like to say I started that trend because I’ve been talking about it for years.

If I could claim that, I wish I could. I’m sure I can’t, but it, it is a, it is an important word, and I what, what is, uh, frustrating sometimes with words like that is, is that people can say, oh, we’re a bit over it. Where people are using it all the time and they’ve heard it, but I think this is different. I think authenticity is something that can’t be replaced and has to be there for businesses to be successful, and that’s what separates.

One business from the next, I know from a marketing perspective that, you know, we’re a product of our own experiences and accountants as an accountant is an accountant. Not true because each accountant has had a collection of experiences that makes them approach something in a different way. Does, you know, and, and, and how you want to deal and engage with those, with people is dependent on those kinds of experiences and the kind of people that they are.

And I think that’s an, such an important lesson for business to learn in the way they’re managing people across the board.

Gaelene Adams Love: Without doubt. And you know, we’re heading into 2024 is the age of the query of Aquarius. There’s a shift we had to go through. The COVID experience of a little bit of isolation and time for reflection, for us to honestly do some assessment of ourselves and say, is this really working for me and what can I do differently?

We’ve seen the impact on the planet. David Attenborough has been talking about it for decades, and yet we’re only now, you know, especially after COVID, where we could see the immediate impact on pollution and wildlife. And how they started taking over the cities again, um, you know, things are really out of balance and we have to listen to what’s going on internally to know, to have the right compass to move ourselves forward, whatever that is for each individual person.

So yeah, people are waking up, I think, in a way that they haven’t before, and it’s a good shift. This is the first time in history that we’ve had four generations in the workplace. We’ve got the baby boomers, and then we’ve got my generation, Gen X, and then we’ve had the Gen Ys, the Millennials, and now I’ve got the Gen Zs.

Four generations, and if you’re trying to apply baby boomer thinking, which, you know, baby boomers taught my generation. This is my business. We’ll do it my way. I’m in charge here. Do what I say. Don’t do what I do. You know, all of that sort of stuff. My first day at work was don’t bring your personal life to work.

I don’t want your boyfriend drama here. I’ll tell you when it’s time for you to have a pay rise. And I’ll tell you when you’re due or promotion, don’t ask me, it’ll take longer to get both. You know, imagine having that conversation with a 20 year old today. It’s just, they’d walk out the door. So we’ve got to adapt.

There’s more of them than there are of us now. 60 percent of the population is either a Gen Z or a millennial. There’s more of them in the workplace than us. We have to listen to what their needs are and stop rolling our eyes and embrace that because they are the future.

And they’re way more connected than the older generations are, on the whole. They’re way more connected to themselves. Um, and we criticise that, that it’s all about them, but they actually know where their true north is. And so We, we, we need to involve them in our businesses and take our lead from what they can bring to the table and embrace that instead of feeling threatened by it, which some businesses are not all, not all, but, um, you know, some business leaders are, um, and this is a beautiful opportunity to, to learn a new way of doing things that, that’s less stressful for everybody, which is exciting.

Anthony Perl: It’s such an incredible journey that you’ve taken us on with all of this, and particularly around purpose and the compass. I love those concepts. I also know that in your business, you take that a step further because you’re part of B1G1. And a shout out to Paul Dunn, who is a mentor of mine, and he’s promised me he’ll appear on the program very soon, so we’ll make that happen, everyone.

But talk to me a little bit about B1G1 and how that And for those who don’t know what it is, um, explain what it is perhaps and how that sits within your business because I know a lot about it and I know that it’s going to align completely with that whole idea of purpose.

Gaelene Adams Love: Absolutely. So B1G1 stands for buy one, give one, and they have a website B with the number one G number one dot com.

So I was really privileged, probably 2006, to be in a room with Paul Dunn and Masami Saito, who’s the founder of B1G1, the creator, the founder, and Paul is the chairman. So, uh, and Paul just celebrated his 80th birthday in 2023. So that’s amazing. He’s a legend. So the whole premise was, uh, you’re hearing Masami and her Japanese English accent saying, what if every time a meal is purchased by you, someone else gets fed?

What if every time you purchased a television, someone got the gift of sight? This was the premise of B1G1 and you fast forward many years that it’s an incredibly well established organisation now of businesses and individuals who buy into that premise of what if when something happens in my business, something good can happen somewhere else.

And so there is a network of business owners and individuals that support worthy causes through a giving program. And the giving impacts are measured by the number of smiles. So it’s a very cool concept. So when you give, it could be 10, 10 US cents, or it could be 1, 000. It’s up to you. But when you give, you choose projects that you want to support and you can give maybe for a day for one person for a day to receive could be books, school shoes, a bicycle, um, entrepreneurial training.

It could be a blanket for a newborn. Um, it, it could be something to do with the wildlife. And so B1G1 has linked all of their giving, um, worthy projects to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. So if you said, I really want to help support the oceans, then you can look up projects in the, in the platform and it allows you.

To select projects that will, will directly align to making a positive impact for the oceans. So in 2019, I traveled with Ms. Masami and Paul and several others on a study tour. We went to Kenya and, and, um, on that tour, we went into communities that were doing amazing things for their local community. And one example was, uh, one community that the tribal rules were that if If my husband died, I became the property of his brother, and he would look after me, but not my children.

And so those children, in order to get educated, the local community set up a separate, um, structure which allowed those children to go and live with a house mama. And the house mama fed them, clothed them, and made sure they were educated. And in order to give her an income, they had a farming, um, a farming portfolio for want of a better word.

So she might raise goats or grow mango trees or avocado trees, or have a fish farm or a combination of any of those. And then after the school, the children would contribute to the running of the farm. And the, when the children got to the end of high school, they were expected to gift a year of their life.

To help their mama to look after and raise the younger children. And the promise was, we have, um, we have invested in you until the age of 18. Give us one year of your life and then we will continue to invest in you for your tertiary education. And the kids that I met that were 18 years old who were in that scenario were the happiest young people I’ve ever met.

They were so full of purpose and promise and, um, and gratitude for what they had received. Um, so, I mean, that’s just one example of how one community that we went and visited to learn from, from a leadership perspective, um, was managing their own situation. And then, you know, float on from there, the milk from the goats helps with controlling HIV, so it doesn’t blow out to AIDS.

There’s massive integrated, um, ecosystem through this one project. So that’s an example. There are others that are less complicated, you know, complex than that, but you could just support a beekeeper to learn how to, or a farmer to learn how to be a beekeeper, or provide books for children so they can learn to learn.

Anthony Perl: It’s such an amazing thing that they’ve built and, uh, I definitely encourage anyone that is listening in that this, uh, you know, has triggered them in any way, please go and look up B1G1. Uh, they are a fantastic organisation. And as I said, we definitely were going to get Paul Dunn onto the program, uh, very soon.

I want to wrap things up, um, with you, Gaelene, just by asking a question that I do ask all of my guests on the program. What is the, uh, hot moment that clients have with you that you wish more people knew about in advance that they were going to have?

Gaelene Adams Love: Oh, that’s a really good question. There’s so many aha moments, depending on their circumstances, but when they can see that it’s not all about them, it might be their business, but it’s not actually all about them and that they can go from feeling like all the burden is on them to transferring that to their team and showing them how to create a self managing team.

That’s like a huge light bulb moment for them. Absolutely huge because then they actually start to get and receive the thing that they went into business for, which was more time, more money, and more freedom. So that’s, yeah. Yes.

Anthony Perl: That is a perfect, perfect way to wrap up this conversation. I really, you know, that is such an amazing aha moment for people to have.

And if you’re out there at the moment listening into this. And you want to have that. We are definitely going to include all of the information in our show notes of how to get in touch with, with Gaelene. Thank you so much for being so generous in, in the stories that you’ve told and, and the amount of information that you’ve given.

I think we’ve, we’ve covered a broad range of things here and there’s so much for businesses to learn. And, and I think we are in a changing world and we have to change with it and having companies like yours that are. Teaching that and making that possible, I think, is a huge win for anyone in business.

Gaelene Adams Love: Thank you. Thank you. I mean, it all starts with you, right? It’s you’ve got to have self awareness and we ask the question, what’s your genius. We’ve got to watch your genius quiz. That’s a really good starting position to say, yeah, well, what am I really good at? So that I can let go of some of the other things that I’m not good at.

And that’s where we start to create more flow. And that’s where it gets exciting. So thank you for the opportunity. It’s been great talking with you and your audience. You know, thank you everyone for listening all the way to the end. That’s, you know, that says you’ve got some stickability and I appreciate that.

That’s a great trait to have in the business.

Anthony Perl: Fantastic. Well, we love our loyal listeners to, to the Biz Bites program. So everyone, thank you again for joining us and stay tuned of course for the next episode of Biz Bites. Biz Bites is brought to you by comm together for all your marketing needs, so you can build your brand, engage audiences on multiple platforms.

Go to come together.com au, follow the links to book an appointment for a free consultation.