Dr John Demartini on Leadership, Motivation and the Science Behind Distraction

Jan Terkelsen: Another day, another podcast.

Michelle Terkelsen: Yes. This is a very special podcast though.

Jan Terkelsen: I know. I'm just gonna jump right in. We have a really special guest on this podcast and his name is Dr. John Demartini. Now Dr. Demartini is a world renowned human behaviour specialist. He's also an internationally published author, a global educator, and the founder of The Demartini Method.

This is what I've known about him because I've followed Dr. Demartini for over two decades now. It really is a revolutionary tool in modern psychology because what he does is he transforms any form of conflict or stress into states of vitality, energy and love, through a really systematic predetermined set of questions. And you know, Michelle, we love questions.

Not only that, he has authored 40 books, two of which have been pivotal for me, The Breakthrough Experience and The Values Factor, and they've been translated into 39 different languages. And he's presented his insights alongside the likes of Sir Richard Branson, Deepak Chopra, Steve Wosniak.

So welcome.

Michelle Terkelsen: Welcome.

Dr John Demartini: Thank you for having me.

[01:40] Natural Leadership Traits
Jan Terkelsen: Oh, we're absolutely stoked, which is such Aussie common terminology. All right, so let's get into it. John, I'd like to ask you about leadership because a lot of our listeners are leaders.

So some of them are new and emerging leaders, some of them are already entrenched in running multiple teams, and in your literature, you talk about the belief that everyone has an inborn leader inside of them.

And while much of today's formal training on leadership, which is what we do, is aimed at improving capabilities, behaviours and skills, you believe that the key lies in recognizing where natural leadership traits already exist, and I'm fascinated by that. So could you expand on that a little?

Dr John Demartini: Absolutely. For about the last 45 years of my 50 years of teaching, I have been really fascinated by intrinsic drive for people, and every human being, regardless of gender spectrum, culture, age, lives moment by moment by a set of priorities, a set of values, things that are most to least important in their life.

And that set of priorities are completely unique. It's completely unique to that individual. it's fingerprint specific. Now it's evolving as they go through life, but at any moment, their perceptions, their decisions, and their actions are being governed by that.

Whatever's highest on that list of values, they're spontaneously inspired from within to fulfill, but as you go down, they become more extrinsic and it requires outside motivation to get them to do it.

[03:26] Intrinsic Motivation
Dr John Demartini: I use an analogy of a young boy who loves video games. Nobody has to motivate him. You don't have a Mom who says, "Now Johnny, go do your video games." He spontaneously does his video games, but she may have to use reward or punishment, extrinsic motivation to get him to do his chores, homework and clean his room.

So whatever is spontaneously inspired from within, which is the most intrinsic value, is where people excel. Now, if they align their mission with that, that's their mission. That's where they're going to not let themselves down. That's where they're gonna walk their talk. That's where they're going to be spontaneously creative, to get answers and solutions to whatever the challenges they face.

In my particular case, for the last 50 years it's been teaching. Nobody has to remind me or motivate me to get up and do that. I do that every single day.

I had three hours of sleep this morning because I just finished a program at two something in the morning, three in the morning and I'm still going. So, whatever's intrinsically driven is spontaneous, and there is a natural born leader in that.

[04:36] Feedback Mechanisms
Dr John Demartini: Now, what happens is people compare themselves to other people. Inject the values of those people they put on pedestals into their life, cloud the clarity of what's really, truly intrinsically important to them, try to envy and imitate other people, beat themselves up because they think, "Well, I'm not driven by what they're driven by. What's wrong with me?"

And they think they've got limited beliefs, but they're actually trying to be somebody that they're not, and the symptoms of their physiology are trying to get them back onto who they are.

I really believe that every symptom in our physiology, every symptom in our psychology, every symptom in our business is a feedback mechanism to get us back to what's authentic, and whatever's highest on the value our ontological identity is revolved around, and that's our most authentic self.

When people say I wanna be an entrepreneur, they may find out that their highest value is maybe coaching or maybe leading or managing people or whatever, but anytime they get bogged down in lower priority things, they feel that, "Oh, this isn't meant for me," because they're frustrated and they haven't learned to delegate.

You're not going to be an inspired leader unless you delegate lower priority things and find people who are inspired as leaders in that area, to free you up to do what you're here at your core competence to do.

[05:58] A Master Delegator
You're not gonna live an inspired life without delegation. I only do three things. I teach, I research, I write. Everything else is delegated. I mean everything. I don't cook, I haven't driven in 32 years, nothing. Cleaning, administrative, I only teach, research and write.

Dr John Demartini: I, even my girlfriend, I even delegate sexuality to her because I tell her, I say, "Listen, if I was to have Hugh Jackman and Brad Pitt or George Clooney or Gerard Butler to take care of the sexual needs of you, would you still love me?"

And she said, "I will love you even more." So I'm a firm believer in delegating, delegating those things. That's a joke now. I'm not really serious about that. I wouldn't do that. But the point is, I'm a master delegator. I don't do anything other than what I am spontaneously inspired to do. Anything that you require external motivation for is wise to delegate.

[06:50] Passion and Suffering
Michelle Terkelsen: How do you get to that point? Because there are a lot of leaders in that exact situation, that they have this passion for what they wanna do and be, but there are all these pressures on them to be a certain way. What could be the first step that they take in order to live their passion and be truly authentic to their values?

Dr John Demartini: Well, pardon me for being a little etymological, but the word passion actually means to suffer. It comes from the root pati and passio, means to suffer, and so anytime you're not doing what's intrinsically driving to you, which is your inspired mission, you're going to look for immediate, gratifying passions. And many people confuse passions, which end up burning out.

Pardon me for using that language, but if you look up the etymology of those two things, they're two different things. An inspired mission, an individual on a mission, is unstoppable, but passions burn out.

The passions were immediate, gratifying amygdala-driven systems instead of the executive function where we govern those amygdala's impulses and instincts. By its original definition, in 1985, when Passion for Excellence came out, it tweaked that term. But that's what it really meant.

[08:02] The Time Trap
Dr John Demartini: Now, So how do you do that? You get up in the morning, and you ask a very simple question because my life changed at age 27 when I figured this one out. I got this from Alec Mackenzie's book, The Time Trap.

I made a list of every single thing that I did in a day. Every single thing that I did in a day, over a three-month period, and I sat down and made this exhaustive list from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed, what do I do? And that is day by day, I may do different things, but I listed everything.

I made this exhaustive list, multiple pages, because I was doing a lot of stuff at home and at work, et cetera. Private, public, everything. Once I made that list, I was already intuitively sensing, "Wow, I'm doing a lot of low priority stuff."

So what I did is, I went through that list, and then next to it, I did the best extrapolations I could. How much does it produce per hour? Wow, that was amazing. How much is this really producing? Cause if I'm really making a difference in somebody's life and serving somebody's needs, they're gonna pay for it.

And if I'm not doing anything that people are paying for, I must not be doing anything of service. And if I'm not doing something of service, I'm not in business.

[09:14] Majoring in Minoring
Dr John Demartini: Cause if you don't help other people get what they wanna get in life, you don't get what you want in life. So I basically put a dollar value in front of each one of those things. And what was interesting is I went to 10 years of college to get to be a specialist, and I found out that that specialty was not the most producing thing I could be doing, which was a bit shocking.

Me going out and speaking and leveraging myself with speaking was way more productive than me doing cubicle work clinically, which was eye-opening. So I went out there, and made a list of everything I did and what it produced per hour. And then I extrapolated, and there was a whole lot of zeroes there.

I was doing a lot of stuff that wasn't generating anything. And as long as I'm doing something that's low in priority and it's not generating anything, I'm devaluing myself. Nobody else is, I'm doing it, and until you change that, nobody else is gonna change that.

So I made a list of that, and then I prioritised that entire list according to what produced the most, all the way down to what was least. And that was amazingly eye-opening cause I realised I was majoring in minoring, and minoring in majoring all over the place.

There's six columns. The first column is listing everything. The second column is what does it produce per hour.

[10:18] Low-Meaning Things
Dr John Demartini: The third column was, how much meaning does it have? On the one to ten scale, if it's incredibly inspiring and deeply meaningful and it's part of my mission, not my passion, but my mission, it's a 10.

If it's something that I find myself saying, "I gotta do it. I have to do it. I must do it," it's down at a one. "I should, I ought to, I'm supposed to," it's down at a two or three. Right?

"If I need to do it," well, these are all extrinsic terms saying that I'm doing it because of an deontological duty, not because of design, not because I'm intrinsically wanting to do it. If it's not something I love doing and it's not something that's a choice that I truly am picking out of the things. It's gonna be low meaning.

And anytime you do low-meaning things, you don't want to tap dance to work, you don't wanna get up and go for it. Then if you're not wanting to do it, I'm a firm believer that if you're not dedicated to getting up in the morning and being of service, people aren't gonna be interested in getting it.

When you can't wait to get up in the morning and be of service, people can't wait to get it, there's an enthusiasm there.

[11:19] One Up On Wall Street
Dr John Demartini: It was Peter Lynch who wrote One Up on Wall Street many years ago, who said, after he's done his quantitative and qualitative analysis on stocks, he then goes and flies over to the headquarters and meets with the people, and he looks for six things.

He looks for people that are grateful for their job, which means engaged, love what they're doing, engaged, enthusiastically working, engaged, inspired by the vision, certain about their skills because it's their highest value, and they're present with the customer, whatever they're doing. If he sees that, he knows that that company's going to appreciate in value, and he can buy stock in it.

So that's the soft stuff that, not the quantitative, but the soft stuff. And it'll show, they'll perfectly correlate with the rest of the data, the value, intrinsic value of the company.

So I go in there and I look at what's the meaning of it? And I find out because if I'm inspired to do it, that's part of the energy of the company, and when people are all engaged, anything that can raise engagement, get people engaged, it raises the vitality of the company, and it definitely produces more.

[12:16] Motivation's a Symptom
Dr John Demartini: As McGregor said, "It's Theory Y people, they're intrinsically driven instead of extrinsically motivated." Motivation's a symptom, never a solution for human beings and companies.

I don't ever motivate people. I say, "Look, you fit this. This is your value system. Let's put you where you're gonna be excelling. That's where you'll be a leader. Where you're intrinsically driven."

The next column is how much does it cost to delegate that? And I don't mean just their salary. I mean, everything down to the paperclip. What does it cost to delegate that?

Now in the process of doing that, that's every detail, that's a training cost, bloopers and blunders costs, insurance, parking, equipment, telephone, every cost. What does it cost for me to do that?

And then what I do is I prioritise it according to spread. What does it produce per hour for that job duty? What does it cost to hire somebody to do that job duty? And I look for the spreads, and I prioritise that.

So that way I know which ones are gonna be the ones I'm gonna delegate first and to last. Because you always delegate the lower priority things, and the last thing you do is delegate a duplication of yourself, which is a franchise or a duplication of you.

Then I go, next column is how much time is actually spent in a day on average? How much actual time am I spending on it? So I know how to structure a job description.

[13:32] Liberation
Dr John Demartini: And then the last one is the final prioritisation factoring all the variables. All those variables across what's the final prioritication? I did that at age 27 after reading The Time Trap. And I summarised the book into that little form, and I did that, and I had a one little assistant at the time, just with me working a little 800, 970 square foot office, little office.

18 months later, I had a 5,000 square foot office, 12 staff, five doctors. I was going out and lecturing, had a TV show, and I was tenfold net to return. And all I had to do was go and speak and train doctors, period. Rest of it was delegated. And I had specialists doing all that.

And I learned that don't ever hire anybody unless their highest value is what you're going to delegate. Don't waste your time on anybody that's not inspired to do a job. And that liberated me and I have not turned back since. I was 27. I'm 68 in a couple months, so 40 years ago.

[14:29] "I Don't Grow the People"
Jan Terkelsen: Yeah, I love, I love, that, like just unpacking some of those insights, for anyone who's listening, who's an entrepreneur or leader who knows that their highest value is the business, "I love, my business." So they think about it, dream about it, "but now, in order to grow the business, I actually have to focus on the people."

That's what you were talking about. So how would someone in that position be able to expand their focus? Because part of their remit is to grow people, if you're gonna grow a business.

Dr John Demartini: Okay. Well, I don't do that. I don't grow the people. I hire people who, absolutely at the top of their value list, love growing people.

Jan Terkelsen: Right.

Dr John Demartini: I inspire people and get managers in place. See a lot of entrepreneurs go out there, "I wanna go out and be an entrepreneur." And then they get bogged down in administrative work and sales and marketing and stuff like that and they burn out, and they're not inspired to do that, and so they don't grow very well because they're not doing to their core competence.

I had a doctor who is, was, he loved clinical work, but he didn't want to do administrative work. We got him an administrator. Man, he went to work, and they went out and boomed his business.

[15:35] The Cost of Delegating Inappropriately
Dr John Demartini: I've seen coaches and consultants and everything else. Same thing. What they're great at is what they need to stick to, their core competence, and not get outside their core competence. Hire people to do that. And they think, "Well, I can't afford that." No.

People say, "Well, because you're independently wealthy and a high, high-ultra-net-worth guy, you can do all that."

No, I became that way because I did that. It's the other way around. People don't realise that you make more when you're doing what's inspiring to you in serving people in your core competence, if you get people around you that do their core competence. You make more income.

Jan Terkelsen: Yeah.

It costs to delegate inappropriately, but it doesn't cost if you delegate where people are loving to what they do, it doesn't cost. It produces.

Jan Terkelsen: Yeah, I love it. And even the criteria, like when you actually stepped out what I need to, to delegate, your high priority values, even for a leader who doesn't have their own job, who are working for an organisation, just to do that as an activity, to get really clear about what their high priority values are, and also what their higher priorities are because everyone's only just got 24 hours.

And that's what a lot of executives tell us, is they just do not have enough time in the day.

Dr John Demartini: If an individual says they don't have enough time, they're doing low priority things.

Jan Terkelsen: Yeah.

Michelle Terkelsen: Yeah.

Jan Terkelsen: Yeah.

[16:51] Intrapreneur to Entrepreneur
I had a guy in Dallas, Texas who was making about $250,000 a year doing fairly good , but he wanted to go on, start his own business and his own consulting, everything else. He didn't wanna be under somebody’s roof. So, what we did is we sat down, we did exactly that exercise. We prioritised everything else. And then we found out that we could actually produce more hiring somebody, sub-hire somebody out of his own salary to do something so that he could produce more because he was on commission.

Dr John Demartini: And then what we did is we ended up making him more money, had somebody to do all the administrative work inside the company. And then, he showed the company how important that was, and he showed the profit margins, and so he ended up taking on overseeing all the other people doing that, because they weren't doing that.

And then he ends up turning in and says, "Well, I'm starting my own business now. And I'd like to have you as a client. And as long as I get more productivity for you guys and I can save you money doing it, can I have you as a client?"

And he made them the first client and started opening up this door for other clients and made more income, and hired people to do it. And he transitioned as an intrapreneur into an entrepreneur inside the company because he showed them how to make more money.

Nobody's gonna turn down more efficiency, effectancy, and productivity, and more brand growth. They're not gonna turn it down. If you can show them how to do that and build your own entrepreneurship inside that, they'll let you do it.

[18:06] Limited Minds and Limited Companies
Jan Terkelsen: Yeah, and it's actually having a system about how they can do that. When people say, "Okay, I want you to put a business case together," what you've stepped us through is a really good systematic way of doing that, or even just starting that process.

if you know what the profit margin is, and you can make them more profit margin, and you can take out a portion of that for yourself, you win and they win. You can't take out more than what their profit margin is. They're going to say no.

Dr John Demartini: So you need to care enough about the company to know what their actual financials are, to know where their margins are, to know how to improve those margins, to be able to go in there and offer them services inside that.

But people think they're limited in a company. There's no limited company unless you got a limited mind.

[18:46] There's Leadership Skills
Michelle Terkelsen: So I'm putting myself in some of the new and emerging leaders' shoes at this point in time and, they're listening to us, and, and I love that idea of doing a bit of an audit of, how you spend your time and that sort of thing. and so I'm looking at that now, and I want to grow and be the best leader that I can.

Can you give us some insights as to what a new leader could then do in order to live their mission within the context of an organisation?

Dr John Demartini: I've been studying leadership a long time. I don't know if there's a new or an old leader. There's leadership skills.

Michelle Terkelsen: Yeah.

[19:23] Distractions are Amygdala Based
Dr John Demartini: And whether you're doing it in a government or an organisation, it doesn't matter. Anytime you're doing something that's high on your value, you're gonna wake up leadership because the blood glucose and oxygen goes into the forebrain and goes into the executive centre.

And the executive centre is involved in inspired vision, cuz it has connections to the E5, E6 area, the occipital cortex, where the visual centres are, the associate centres. And the second you're doing high priority things, the blood glucose moves into the forebrain.

It activates the executive centre, mainly the prefrontal cortex. Inspired vision comes along. Strategic planning comes along between the priolin frontal cortex. Through the associate cortex, spontaneous action occurs, and the sending fibres with GABA and glutamate go down into the amygdala and calm down the volatilities of the amygdala, the instincts and impulses that most people are distracted by.

All the distractions are amygdala based. All the infatuations and excitements and all the resentments and those are all the distractions, all of those are calmed down if we prioritise.

If we do, we automatically increase the probability of walking our talk. We increase the achievement level. We increase then, taking on bigger space and time horizons, we have a bigger vision of what's possible.

[20:33] We Can't Outgrow Our Vision
Dr John Demartini: We can't outgrow our vision. If we don't have a bigger vision, we're not gonna go farther. We spontaneously are inspired from within. We have a charismatic energy. Why? Because we're searching for problems to solve instead of trying to avoid problems.

So the difference between a leader and a follower is they pursue challenges that inspire them, instead of avoiding challenges that don't. When you're in your amygdala, you have a natural tendency to want to avoid predator and seek prey, avoid challenge, seek ease.

When you're in your executive centre, you pursue challenges that inspire you to solve. There's a gentleman here with us who donates about a half a billion dollars every year to charities and stuff like that. He's got 4,030 patents under his name. He's an amazing guy.

He's constantly looking in the world for the biggest problems he can solve, and then he finds a way of getting him and his engineers together and going to create a solution for it.

Real leaders are pursuing challenges that inspire them that they want to solve. Musk is looking, "I'm going to go to Mars." He's gonna say, "I'm gonna create the most efficient fuel systems on the planet." Whatever it is, he's gonna solve a problem and they're gonna be problem-solution oriented instead of problem-avoidance oriented.

A leader is looking for something that's a cause that serves vast numbers of people and wants to go and solve it. And when they're doing that, and that's their highest value, they're unstoppable.

[21:51] Everybody has Leadership Potential
Michelle Terkelsen: I love that idea because all of us have leadership, and what I'm really encouraged by now is that a lot of organisations, particularly in Australia, are talking about leadership at every level. Like everybody has leadership potential, which is what I'm hearing you say, which is fantastic. How do we help unleash that at the employee level as well?

Dr John Demartini: I love that.

Michelle Terkelsen: Yeah. A lot of resources go into the leaders, people who manage other people. How do we do that?

Dr John Demartini: Okay. Everybody's got an intrinsic leader in their highest value. So here's how I do it. So I train consultants. We've got about, I don't know how many consultants, thousands of them. So here's how it works.

Because everybody already has a set of priorities and values in their life, it's intrinsic. The first thing I do is, I don't ever even think about hiring anybody or associate with anybody or affiliated anybody until I know what those values are. Because that's what I know they're committed to. The only thing anybody's reliable to do is to fulfil their highest values. If you understand that, when you're married, they're not committed to you. They're committed to the fulfilment of their highest values, and if you can help them fulfil it better than anybody else, they stick around you.

Even your kids will only hang out with you, and they'll only go to school if they get their values met.

[23:01] Values Drive Everything
Dr John Demartini: So you gotta realise that values drive everything. Now, once I identify what they are and there's a free value determination process on my website. It's complimentary, it's private. Millions of people use it. But if you go in there and take the time to do that exercise, it's 13 questions to help you identify what you're intrinsically driven by.

Because most people, if you ask them what their values are, they say peace and honor and integrity and all this other crap that's out there, that they think is important to them. It's all social BS. I'm interested in what your life demonstrates.

My life demonstrates, I teach, research and write daily, seven days a week. My life doesn't demonstrate international sex symbol like I fantasized, I thought I was going to be Hugh Hefner at one time, but there's no sex in my life. So I, I delegate that out. That's supposed to be funny.I can make up a bunch of BS, but I'm interested in what my life demonstrates. Every decision I make is based on what I believe will give me the greatest advantage of a disadvantage at any moment in time according to what my values are.

[23:58] Actions That Fulfil Values
Dr John Demartini: So first, I do my value determination process. Now, when a company's hiring somebody, they'll have a job description. Make sure it's broken down into all the action steps, not vague things like sales.

What are the action steps that they're going to be doing and be accountable to do? It's gotta be down to real actions.

Now, once you have a job description, it's really clear, and that's accurate, and it's real. Plus a bunch of dittos at the bottom for unexpecteds. Now you go and have them do the value determination, and then you ask this simple question.

If I've got their values and I've got them a hierarchy of values set up, and I ask them this question. They may have great credentials, they may have great references, they may have great things, they may say they can do all kinds of stuff. But I ask you this question, "How specifically is doing this action gonna help you fulfil your top value?"

If they pause for a 100th of a second, and have to move their eyes to look for an answer, I put an X. "How is this first one helping you in your second highest value?" If they pause, X. If they go fluently, the greater the congruency between the job description and the value, the greater the fluency in the language and in the answer.

And so if there's no fluency in the answer, there's no enthusiasm in the expression, X. And I go through there, and I go through that entire job description and I can tell in advance before somebody's hired what they're going to do spontaneously and what you're gonna have to motivate 'em to do and micromanage them on, guarantee it.

[25:35] Congruence
Dr John Demartini: So I go through there and identify what exactly is their values, and how congruent there is. And I put a rating on there. I give 'em a rating on a one to 10 scale. If it's really engaged and it's fluent, put a 10. If it's not engaged, I put a lower number.

And I go through that job description, and I get an idea of overall how much engagement they're going to end up having on that job. If it's low, if it's under 75 to 80%, I don't even think about hiring.

Thank you, but no, thank you. No matter how much skill you have, no matter whatever it is, if this is what you're going to do and you can't see how it's going to help you get what you want...

Nobody goes to work for the sake of a company. They go to work for the fulfilment of their values. And, until we get that, we live in LA LA Land and autocratic projections and motivations on people and wonder why they're not productive.

Dr John Demartini: So once we find out what that is, once we do that screening, we save ourselves an enormous amount of aggravation, thinking they were going to do something, then trying to do that for months, trying to get them to do it and trying to motivate them and trying to train them over and over because anything that's high in your values goes into long term remembrance. You remember it long term.

[26:42] Linking Values to Jobs
Dr John Demartini: Anything that's low on your values, it goes into short term memories. You constantly have to train them. So there's more cost and training, more personnel cost, more motivation cost, more incentives, more time off, more weakness, more illness, more distractions. We're distracted in our lowest values, but not in our highest one, because that's our mission.

So when somebody has a job that they feel it's their mission, they go, "Oh my God, I get paid to do what I love. What can I ask for?" That's one.

Now, if you've already got somebody that's hired, that's been there and you're afraid to let them go because you got this loyalty issue and you're not interested in the company. You're interested in holding onto them for fear of rejection and all kind of reasons.

Now you go in there and find out what their job description is and find out their values, even though they've already been working there. And there's a science on how to re-engage them, by asking, "How specifically is doing this action going to help you fulfil those values?"

And now that's my expertise. I can show them, and I can relink them. I get paid sometimes by companies to take an executive that's not quite producing what they want, spend a few hours with them, find their values, take the job descriptions and link them and engage them further. And their productivity goes up that day. Literally that day, Bam!

Because people, once they see how everything is on the way, not in the way, they're engaged, their energy levels go up, their vitality goes up. Their spontaneousness go up. But if we don't see the relationship of what we're doing to what we value, we're not inspired, we're not engaged. And engagement's a huge factor in productivity and competitiveness.

[28:11] Self Started
Jan Terkelsen: Oh, absolutely. And like every company, or most companies, do engagement scores and they're usually pretty low. What I love is this understanding of the key priorities to know your highest values and then link them to the activities that you are doing because then you don't have to do any external motivation.

Dr John Demartini: Link the activities to your values.

Jan Terkelsen: Yes.

Dr John Demartini: Different. The activities to the values. For 45 years, I've been doing value determinations and value trainings and things. And whatever's highest on your value...

If you have a boy who loves video game and when you ask him, who are you? "Man, I'm a video master." Your highest value is pole dancing or pole vaulting or running a business or whatever it may be. I don't care what it is. Whatever's highest on your value, that is what your identity is going to wrap around.

So if your basic highest value is running businesses as an entrepreneur you're gonna call yourself an entrepreneur. If your highest value is raising kids, it's gonna be a mother or father.

So finding out what that highest value is, that's their identity. And the moment they're doing a job that's helping them fulfil their identity, their fulfilment, there's a feeling of ownership. They feel there's an ownership of their job.

They talk in the first person, "My job, my company." They don't go, "That company I work for", which is a dissociation and a third person statement, which is a sign of low engagement. "That company I work for. Oh, I should do that. I know how to be doing that. I have to do that. I gotta do it." they're not engaged.

Dr John Demartini: "I love it." When you hear people going, "I love it. I love what I'm doing. Look, what I get to do." Now, you got somebody that's gonna be self-started.

Now imagine you're leading, and you're doing your highest priority thing, and you’ve got people around you that are inspired by what they do and engaged, there's less micromanaging. There's less cost. There's more profit margin. People are more inspired to go to do the work. They feel blessed to be able to do the work. They don't need extra money to be paid to do it because they don't need extrinsic motivation.

Jan Terkelsen: Hmm.

Hmm

Dr John Demartini: That's one of things that Buffet does when he does his Berkshire Group. Those people are not needing money. They're already past that. And that's why they're doing it cuz they love to do it. And you've got people that love to run those companies.

Michelle Terkelsen: Hm,

Dr John Demartini: Huge difference.

[30:22] High-Performing Teams
Michelle Terkelsen: John, we're also interested in people, working in teams, creating high-performing teams, and I can see some applications already about people sharing their higher order values with one another. Could you speak to that?sharing your values with team members.

Dr John Demartini: Okay. So this is a really powerful exercise. And in Japan, I had 66 consultants for major corporations and I was training them. And we had to pair off into 33 pairs.

Okay. So they're going off, and they pair off around the room, and these people didn't know each other. We made sure nobody knew each other. Their first exercise was determining the values because I train 'em on how to determine people's values. The second exercise is linking values.

So what you do is you ask how specifically is their top highest value helping you fulfil your top highest value? Hmm. What they're committed to, how's it helping you fulfil what you're committed to?

If you can't see it, you're going to talk down to them and be an autocrat. autocrat Because you're going to think you're right because the amygdala automatically thinks your values are right compared to somebody else's.

The executive centre is more objective and more neutral and it sees people as equals. The amygdala sees people as threats or infatuations.

[31:37] Dialogue vs Alternating Monologues
Dr John Demartini: So the second we go through, and we identify, how is what they're dedicated to helping you fulfil what you're dedicated to? And then, in reverse, how is what you're dedicated to helping fulfil what they're dedicated to?

And they have to come up with 25 links this way, 25 links this way. Then they go to the second one.

How is it helping to do the second highest value? And then how's your highest value going to their second high, then the second to the second one, then the second to third, first to third, first to the third, second, second, second to third?

We just go,until we run out of time, we do it for like three hours, and they just go through for three hours and do it. Out of 33 pairs, 26 were in business with each other after that meeting, because the respect level, the love and appreciation level, the relationship level has dialogue, not alternating monologues after that.

It's amazing watching. I do this in relationship couples. You sometimes see CEOs are going through a divorce with their spouse, and they don't realise that if they don't learn how to appreciate what they're dedicated to...

[32:38] Keep Some Ring on the Finger
Dr John Demartini: If you're getting all these accolades out there in the world for being a great CEO, but you're getting nailed at home, you're going to want to avoid home and want to go out there and get all this acknowledgement.

But when you get acknowledged and you get puffed up and go into pride, and that's not authentic. When you go down and you get shame, that's not authentic. You're authentic when you love people, and love your teams and love your customers and have an appreciation, not the arrogance of pride.

So the moment you go in there and bring those into balance and link those, you realise that they're not above you. If you're talking down to them, you're careless. If you're talking up to them, you're careful. If you're talking across, you're caring, and that keeps some rings on the finger.

Jan Terkelsen: That's brilliant. I love it. This has been such a rich conversation. John, I really appreciate it. And I really encourage everyone to do your values determination. I know those 13 questions, and I love the way in which you explain the relationship about how you know your values by what your life demonstrates to you.

And that's always been ringing in my year after 20 years of hearing you first speak at a conference. And I just want to say, we really appreciate your time and also how much you offer people because the big takeaways are, do your values determination, understand your priorities, and see the alignment, and also have those rich conversations, whether or not it's a colleague at work or a partner.

[34:07] Find Out What They're Dedicated To
Michelle Terkelsen: Oh, well, without a doubt. my brain's ticking over and I'm looking from an organisational perspective and if you can bring values into the recruitment, into the performance conversations, into the team development, so I've got goosebumps.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Dr John Demartini: Sales, management. Look

When I was 20 years old, I got to go to a Zig Ziglar seminar. Maybe you've heard of Zig from the old days. Yeah. Okay. Zig Ziglar said, "If you help enough other people get what they want to get in life, you get what you wanna get in life." And that's been a great truth.

Dr John Demartini: If you help people fulfil their dominant buying motive as a customer, they're gonna want to refer a lot of people to you. And if you help employees fulfil what they value most, they're gonna want to be there.

And anytime you talk to somebody, if you don't know what their top values are, you're very likely to project your values onto them and make assumptions about who they are instead of find out who they are. Care enough about other human beings to find out what they're dedicated to and help them fulfil what they're dedicated to and they'll take you to the top.

Michelle Terkelsen: What a beautiful message for leaders. That's leadership.

[35:11] The Seven Secret Treasures
Jan Terkelsen: Yeah, Thank you, John. We've really appreciated this time. I knew it was gonna be amazing anyway. I'm just looking forward to hearing the podcast over and over again, because I know that there's some applications for coaches and leaders and people who operate in the world of work.

So thank you. Really appreciate it, John.

Dr John Demartini: Thank you. Thank you for having me on the show and thank you for the opportunity and for the great questions.

Jan Terkelsen: Oh, the other thing I wanted to say is that I know you've authored 40 books, but I know you're doing another one at the moment and it's The Seven Secret Treasures. Is that correct? Can you tell us a little bit about that? Just a little bit of a

teaser?

Dr John Demartini: Yes, Yes, I've got 10 new books coming out and this is the first of them. Seven Secret Treasures is how to engage and empower, and wake up your leadership in every one of the seven areas of life.

[36:04] Wake Up Your Intellectual Genius
Dr John Demartini: How to wake up your intellectual genius. How to wake up your leadership in business and grow your business globally and scale it. How to build your wealth, because the hierarchy of your values dictates your financial destiny.

If you don't have a real value on wealth building, it's not going to happen. If you want immediate gratification and you want to have a higher value on buying consumables that depreciate in value, you're not going to grow wealth. You're not going to buy assets.

How to communicate in relationships to have love and intimacy and reflective awareness. How to go and have social leadership skills. How to have more vitality in life. If you're not inspired and vital every single day, you're living to eat instead of eat to live, as they say.

And if you're not inspired and do something that you feel is your spiritual mission, if you're not inspired to do what you're doing on a daily basis and feeling that that's your spiritual mission in life and not necessarily religious, although it could be, you're missing out on amazing thankfulness in your life.

[37:01] A Mastered Life
Dr John Demartini: So The Seven Secret Treasures is how to do that. How to empower all those seven areas because to me, a mastered life is all of them, not one area.

So many people do really well in business and then they go through crazy relationships, or they're great in their health, but they don't have any money. I'm interested in helping people master all seven areas.

So this is The Seven Secret Treasures, and there's treasures sitting inside that you can mine, and this is the book on how to do that.

So, okay. So how do we get it?

Michelle Terkelsen: When it

Jan Terkelsen: available?

Dr John Demartini: I think if you type in Seven Secret Treasures, it comes up on Amazon and you can get it right away on Amazon.

Jan Terkelsen: Awesome. Okay.

All

Michelle Terkelsen: Alright.

Jan Terkelsen: Thank

Dr John Demartini: Yeah. Just came out. Just, just kinda

Michelle Terkelsen: Oh, good. Good, good.

Jan Terkelsen: Yeah.

Michelle Terkelsen: Thank you so much.

Dr John Demartini: thank you.

Jan Terkelsen: Thank you, John.

Dr John Demartini: Thank you. Love you. Thank you.