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LeaderImpact Podcast
Ep. 76 - Nolan Sharp - Overcoming Cross-Cultural Hurdles
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Raised in a reserved American setting, Nolan offers his unique insights on navigating Croatia's expressive cultural landscape and the transitions the country has experienced since its independence in 1991. We'll explore the qualities that make a great leader in Croatia, where warmth, sociability, and community involvement are not just preferred but expected, providing a fresh perspective on leadership adaptation and resilience.
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Leadership Challenges and Adaptation in Croatia
Speaker 2Welcome to the Leader Impact Podcast . We are a community of leaders with a network in over 350 cities around the world , dedicated to optimizing our personal , professional and spiritual lives to have impact . This show is where we have a chance to listen and engage with leaders who are living this out . We love talking with leaders , so if you have any questions , comments or suggestions to make the show even better , please let us know . The best way to stay connected in Canada is through our newsletter at leaderimpactca or on social media at Leader Impact . If you're listening from outside of Canada anywhere in the world , check out our website at leaderimpactcom . I'm your host , lisa Peters , and our guest today is Nolan Sharp .
Speaker 2Nolan coordinates Leader Impact in Croatia . He holds a master's degree in electrical engineering from the Stanford and worked as a chip designer for Hewlett Packard . In 2001 , he moved to his wife's homeland to found what became Leader Impact Croatia . He coordinates the Global Leadership Summit in Croatia and organizes small and large group events for business leaders . For 18 years he trained the rest of the staff of the non-profit that Leader Impact belongs to in fundraising . He has a master's degree in theology and coordinates theological development in Agape Europe . He is also an elder at the Zagreb Malishnica . Thank you , baptist Church . Nolan and Sandra have two sons . Welcome to the show , nolan , and thanks for the correction .
Speaker 1No , it's great to be here . That was a lie in mine . Sorry about that . You should have made sure you knew how to pronounce it .
Speaker 2Oh yeah , and it's funny because I usually go through everything , I highlight all the words I don't know and I don't know how I missed that one .
Speaker 2It got to the end and I'm like , oh , I know it , I know it , I know it leaders right , we don't ask for help no , just go for it , just something I , uh , I want to tell you that it is so exciting , I mean , with our time change , with our difference from you being around the world . It it's so exciting to connect with leaders like yourself , nolan , so thank you for joining us .
Speaker 1Oh , it's fantastic to be here .
Speaker 2Thank you for having me oh , I just I'm enjoying these , just listening to other cultures , other ways to do business , so I'm excited to dive in . Are you ready ?
Speaker 1Yes .
Speaker 2All right , okay . Well , we're going to talk about your leadership style and approach , and our first question is what makes a great leader in Croatia , and do you feel this is unique to Croatia ?
Speaker 1Yeah , that's a . That's a great country , you know . To Croatia , yeah , that's a great country , you know . Croatians are very warm , they're very sociable and it's kind of a traditional culture and the country has been through enormous change since independence in 1991 . So I think here it's important for leaders to be very warm , to be involved in people's lives , sometimes , whether they want to or not , to almost take on a parental role in ways towards the people that they lead , because the culture has some of the very warm and social and personal aspects to it . But also because of what Croatia has been going through for the last three and a half decades , leaders here have to be very , very flexible and resilient and adaptive to change , Because Croatia has gone from being a social part of a larger socialist country to being independent , to being kind of in a nowhere land for a few years and then being on the road to joining the European Union , now European Union member , and change has just been a constant .
Speaker 2Mm-hmm . Union member . Uh , and , and change has just been a constant listening to you . Um , and you talked about warm , social , involved , parental . My mind went to boundaries .
Speaker 1Yeah , we have so many books on boundaries yeah , well , my wife runs a course based on some of henry cloud's , you know , things on boundaries and changes that heal and and and there's we can into . There's always the other side of the coin , right . So you have to accept the reality of how the culture works . But then of course , none of us are totally happy with the cultures we are a part of , and so oftentimes we're thinking like , oh gosh , I wish there was a different way .
Speaker 2Yeah , I mean you were raised in the United States , right , yeah , the differences and I know we'll probably get into , but just when I think of how you were raised to where you are today , that's a big difference listening . Huge for me and I'm thinking we didn't experience that sort of independence and the change and all that Croatia has gone through .
Speaker 1Yeah .
Speaker 2I'm sure we'll get into it .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , I mean , do you want me to talk to that a little bit ? Yeah , yeah , definitely . I mean I grew up very kind of middle class in the United States and much more of a typical we used to say WASP-y , you know kind of cultural moment in the United States . White Anglo-Saxon Protestant , where there's my family , was fairly quiet growing up . We read a lot . There wasn't much extravagant emotion and so not only you know , I didn't grow up here , I'm not Italian or some other , you know culture that maybe has a little bit more similarities in some ways and so , yeah , I've had a lot , a lot to learn and , um , uh , for me , cultural adaption , adaptation has a lot to to do with the idea of really realizing I , I need to understand this place and live here . You know , if you really want to live in a culture , that that's , that's , that's non-negotiable Um .
Speaker 1But there's a process over time to figuring out how , how , um can I be flexible and adaptive and change a lot of the ways I do things ? And realize , if I want to win people's , if I want to win a group's approval for some idea I'm trying to push , I need to do it in a way that works for them but also not to lose myself in the end either , because , again , every culture is kind of also stuck in different ways . I'm never going to be a better crowd than a crowd themselves , but I can . There are times I've , but this takes decades . There are times now when I've been here so long enough that I that I realized , okay , maybe this is one of those situations where I can kind of kind of explain things like how I would do this out of my own natural ways of doing stuff , and people might say , oh , that's actually really interesting , because we tend to get stuck in that same area .
Speaker 2Yeah , I think it's so important to have the conversation because the world has opened up and we are dealing , we can do business around the world . So to listen to you and to understand and just grant some grace and talk about it and this is the way I would have done something . So it's very interesting .
Speaker 1You did mention WASP-y and then you said Anglo-Saxon , what I don't know , maybe in Canada they use a term that's an old term People talk about white , Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture . That was sort of the sort of northeastern part of the United States , the people whose background is in the English , or people from the UK that came , the original colonial kind of settlers of the United States , and so that has a lot to do with patterns of , you know , wealth or of well standing or of being very culturally at home in the United States . Basically because that's that's kind of you know , waspy , that's , I don't know , that's a term that people used a lot more when I was young , grown up .
Speaker 2All right , we're gonna move on to challenges and strategies and talk about what are some of the unique challenges you face as a leader in Croatia , and could you share an example and how you addressed it ?
Speaker 1Yeah , well , I think I mentioned a little bit . So you know , when you just being in any cross-cultural situation , you have to learn to set yourself aside . The kinds of advice I got were things like for the first year you're in a new environment kind of almost make no suggestions or a term , a phrase someone gave me and gave other people who are in similar situations to mine was just keep reminding yourself , it's not wrong , it's just different . Because your intuitions are going to want to tell you all the time in a cross-cultural situation that's just wrong . That's just wrong . But because you don't have enough experience in the culture yet to realize why it's maybe actually not wrong , because a lot of things are different than they are wherever you're coming from , so you have to tell yourself a hundred or a thousand times it's not wrong , it's just different , before you kind of maybe actually have enough experience where there are things that are wrong as well in every culture , but you kind of don't . You haven't won the experience of the right for a long time to kind of to say that necessarily , and so that process is a process . But I'd say , since I've been living here for 23 years , my wife's creation and my kids grew up here . My whole life is around , is around creations . There's comes a point too , which I alluded to , which is that you do have to at the end say you know what I am , who I am , and I understand like I operate as an adaptive person in this culture . But I'm also not going to totally lose myself because that kind of going native . In a sense you lose what makes you different and interesting amongst the people you're around if you completely , almost kind of like , just die to yourself and become nothing . So that kind of figuring out like who am , I question . I mean , we all struggle with that throughout our lives , but you think about it probably a lot intensely in cross-cultural living . I think one area that for me in Croatia was very interesting was the idea of learning . So I read an article when I'd lived here for about seven years and it was about and the author was a scholar who had lived in Spain for a number of years at that point and she wrote about Spain as an honor-shame culture and I'd never heard this term before . But in this article she kept on giving examples where I thought and . But in this article she kept on giving examples where I thought I . That feels really similar to some things that I've experienced , and so it started me on this journey where I spent more than 10 years learning and reading about .
Speaker 1You know what are honor shame cultures like and really quickly it might be . You know the difference between what the another group is called like guilt innocence culture so Canada , the United States would be considered in general guilt innocence cultures and the difference between a guilt innocence culture and honor shame culture . There's a lot of differences , but one quick way to get into it is like do you , how do you feel when you've done something wrong and no one else knows it ? And that's usually kind of conscience , and that's what people generally tend to feel in guilt-innocence cultures Like I did something wrong , no one else knows it , but I feel terrible .
Speaker 1Whereas in honor-shame culture , what's often really difficult for people is when you might have not done anything wrong but other people think you've done something wrong and just the fact that they think you did something wrong creates a burden . That's called shame right . So shame comes upon you sort of . It can come upon you separately from whether you actually did anything wrong yourself and which one of those two kind of tends to dominate more in the way that you interact with other people and live your life , and both of these are everywhere , and I think we've had this huge reawakening of understanding and talking about the topic of shame in the West in the past couple of decades , I think largely because we ignored shame for a long time , because guilt versus innocence was much more the way we kind of adjudicate things , like figure out , well , how am I going to respond in this situation ? Am I guilty or am I not ? And if I'm not guilty , I don't care .
Speaker 1Uh , whereas shame and honor is , um , uh , a much more traditional way of people interacting with the world . It's still much , it's and it's very present here , uh , and so learning how to live with that Um , and even , I think , in a lot of ways , that's again one of the ways , as a , as a foreigner , someone living here , um , I've helped a lot of my Croatian friends also understand their own culture better by saying you know , you guys are much more sensitive sometimes to the , the , the , the reputation of something , the , the , the voice of the group , what other people are putting upon you , whether or not you agree with it or not . Then maybe I am , and you really need to think about that . So learning to navigate some of that stuff was a big part of my journey .
Speaker 2So you're speaking . Well , maybe you're not speaking as a male . So do you think the females , do you think they have any unique challenges , or where do they fit in this ? I mean looking at your wife as a leader .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , Well , I mean , I can talk forever on this topic , but there there is , there is this thing , and I think it's one of these things . That's that , uh , where this has become less visible . Uh , and yet , you know , we , we live in this moment . We don't . We're I think we're close to similar generation , and when we were growing up and you didn't have the internet , you you could live so much your life and be faced with all these kind of factors , and yet if you didn't have a specific class , you didn't pick up the right book on it , you might never put your finger on it . And now we're all information flying at us all the time and we constantly have this experience of maybe just scrolling through you know , your Instagram feed or something , and some video comes up and basically tells you like something like that just feels like it unlocks some crazy part of your life you never thought about , Right ? So we're all kind of being faced with so many new ideas all the time , some of which are really important and interesting .
Navigating Cultural Differences in Marriage
Speaker 1So in traditional cultures , um , shame there's .
Speaker 1In traditional cultures , shame there's a way in which there was an expectation for women to guard their honor by avoiding shameful experiences , and whereas in honor-based cultures , men would tend to go out into the public and risk something and succeed or fail in order to gain honor , For women , in traditional cultures , honor has been something more to be kind of guarded by avoiding pitfalls . So you know , to the extent of to the extremes of , say , sexual shame for women being much more like well , were you , were you , did you go somewhere you were not supposed to go ? Were you , did you put yourself in a position you weren't supposed to ? Did you wear clothes that you weren't supposed to ? And that could seem a thousand years away from you ?
Speaker 1Know many people who live today , and one of the things that's so interesting about me for with my wife and living here is that my wife is basically , I mean , she's had an amazing life . My wife , Sandra , is just just the coolest people I know , but she grew up in a village , grew up without . She's the first person to go to university in her family , first person to finish high school in her family , on starting out and going all the way straight through high school , and so she has these cultural memories that every once in a while we still talk about . Well , she'll be like oh yeah , I haven't thought about that in a long time and she'll tell me some story from , like , growing up in a rural environment that just like blows my mind , Uh , and it was also a helpful part of our conversations with each other to realize . I mean , a simple example would be like um , uh , uh , I grew up , uh , we would go to church on Sundays and do grocery shopping afterwards and come home and I love Sunday lunch because we would eat junk food , basically Like it was the . We'd go to buy groceries and so I'd be like , oh , we can buy potato chips , and then the potato chips would get eaten that afternoon and we would have sandwiches and I was super happy . I was like that's great .
Speaker 1My wife didn't grow up going to church and so for her , but the kind of equivalent of church in the village where my wife grew up was that the mom made this huge lunch on Sundays to take care of her family and show that she was good at this . And so my mother-in-law would ask my wife a question that seems innocent but never felt innocent to my wife when we were early on in our marriage , where she would say , oh , what are you making for Nolan for lunch today ? And because we would go to church together , then like , well , I'm just making a small lunch and we're going to get home later , blah , blah , blah . But for my wife , this question just all was so deep under her skin because it's you know , it's a , it's a very traditional thing that , like this , is how you demonstrate your , your womanhood , to an extent , and and it took a lot of time and conversation to realize like , okay , yeah , you know we don't have to do this , Um and and uh , uh , but we can , I mean , we can figure out ways around it .
Speaker 1Buying a crock pot actually was one of the solutions for this was just like , okay , I can wake up and throw something in the crock pot , we go to church , we come home , we can still have a nice Sunday lunch . But you know , those messages go really deep in people and cultures and I think that they're very tricky and I think it's good that we can just bring them out and talk about them and um , uh , and look at them for what they are and , you know , say yes to the things that are good or say goodbye to some things and , um , yeah .
Speaker 2My mind just flooded things . I grew up with that . I have tried to let go of yeah when you yeah Woo , that's so I'm just going to take a moment , Woo .
Speaker 1That's so . I'm just going to take a moment . That's interesting , right , because you grew up in Canada , right ? So do you think like , oh , that's you know , but that's one of the things that's fun about living here is realizing all these things that I sort of had to learn to survive here , because this felt weird to me at first , and but then , as the years go by , I realized like , oh yeah , we had our own version of that when I was growing up . It was just invisible to me .
Speaker 2Um , you know yeah , I grew up um the uh , a very large , uh , not just Sunday , but very large dinners for the important dates . So if it was so very , very large , my mom would spend all day in the kitchen and I married into a family that , so that was food , and food was important . Where I married into , a family with , people were important . So , um , I now you know you gather all the people and it's it's not about making seven dishes and how many vegetables and two meats and how many , but you know it's about the people and that you don't spend the time in the kitchen , you spend the time at the table . I love it because it's just less cooking .
Speaker 2Yeah , I'll just make a big lasagna , but yeah , I , um , and I the guilt that I felt yeah of you know , when I have my mom over and I don't cook a big , you know , it's all about sitting down for an hour at a table , or two hours and talking .
Speaker 1So yeah , yeah that's another thing of someone . Um , I , I think we learned along the way that having a cross-cultural marriage for us , I mean , there's always challenges . It's kind of like more practical challenges , like now , as our kids , you know , we have older parents on two different continents . Now , like those , those are real things . But I think one of the positive things about having a cross-cultural marriage was we went into it expecting to have a lot of differences and that helped us a lot to just have conversations , whereas I think oftentimes , what people don't you ? Maybe somebody marries someone from their hometown and so they think , oh okay , you know whatever , but every family has its own culture , so that , like what you just said , you can marry your next door neighbor , but there can still be these very big differences in expectations .
Speaker 2Yeah , and just finding your space to make it work ? Yeah , yeah , great conversation , thank . To make it work yeah , yeah , great conversation , thank you . So the next question does talk about cultural sensitivity , global leadership . So I want to ask you , how do you approach leading a team or organization with members from diverse cultural backgrounds ?
Speaker 1That's a great question . So I think a place to start is to say you don't get to live in a culture-free zone . So it's not about saying or that a culture is just a team is just going to invent a culture for itself .
Navigating Cultural Sensitivities in Leadership
Speaker 1Cultures exist in large extent because we have to do so much of our communication and understanding based on shared assumptions and things we're not even aware of . So I think you have to kind of pick a culture to be the baseline for a team and oftentimes , depending on where you are , you have to kind of pick a culture to be the baseline for a team and oftentimes , depending on where you are , you have to pick a language . Then , right , and maybe that's also one of the things that's getting really tricky in the world today is that it's become so common to just use English , as if English is neutral , but that's not necessarily true . You know , english also forms the way we think about things or the way people can express themselves , and the native English speakers on a team of English speakers have a huge advantage in how easily they're able to express their deepest emotions than people from other cultures . Anyway , so I think you have to pick . You kind of have to pick a culture , and it really , in my kind of world , you should pick the culture you're trying to serve , because if you pick the culture of the majority of the team or the whole organization you're representing , then you are going to , I think , make tons of mistakes , trying to go , you know , talking about some topic in a leadership meeting as if this is okay , this is how we're going to define this , this is what's going to work for us , and then going out into a world that basically doesn't match it , and that can be a big challenge , especially if you're , say , sent as a leader somewhere , but then the language and the culture is different than yours . So I know that's a huge order , but I really do think you have to be realistic and say some kind of culture is going to be like a baseline and it probably should be as close as possible to your target or your audience or your customers , and you need to figure out , then , how to show respect for that culture and to work with inside of it . And then you're , of course . Then you can do things like saying , well , there's things we don't actually like here , course . Then you can do things like saying , well , there's things we don't actually like here or there are certain things we want to modify or we want to bring in as much as we can from these different values . But you have to be explicit about it and you have to recognize that some cultures are going to be the default . And again , because there's just , you can't have a two-day offsite and say like we're going to define our values as a team and think you're going to get anywhere close to having enough to actually define a new culture .
Speaker 1There's so much that goes unsaid in culture that it seems kind of hopeless to me that you're going to just define it based on the global value . I don't know something and you'll never get it all right . There'll be a lot of um mistakes and , uh , you have to encourage people to to apologize , see clarity , ask people to explain themselves . But even that's tricky because that's a set . Those are Western values usually actually to to say , speak up and assert yourself and to do these little things . That that that can be a trap as well . Um , because some cultures are big on power , distance and indirect communication and it's very , very tricky . But if you use tools like the Culture Map , the World Values Survey , and you get things as much out on paper as possible , like objectively , sort of even explaining to people what power distance means or what , um , uh , indirect communication means . Uh , uh can be really , really helpful for them to go okay , yeah , that's , you know , that's who I am , but yeah , it's , I mean , it's fun , it's can drive you crazy , it's , it's beautiful , it's complicated .
Speaker 2Challenge . I go back to something you said earlier about just set yourself aside , make no suggestions . Yeah , you know , when you're working with someone of a new culture , it's like just you know you said pick the culture you are trying to serve . Yeah , and maybe just sometimes just step back a bit and just listen , you know . Yeah . I mean it's tricky because I know it's not a women thing .
Speaker 1Did I just put it in , just no , but I know , but it's very tricky . No , I think women there's some , I mean we live , I guess we've again maybe our generation . There was a long , we were told for a long time men and women are pretty much interchangeable and it feels like we're now entering a little bit more of a moment of , because we just can't avoid it , and there's been so much more scientific research done . But women and men , statistically speaking , people can be anything they are , but on the average , women and men have some very different ways of tending to look at things or whatever , and women are , just on the average , so much more aware of what's going on around them than men are . That it's pretty hilarious .
Speaker 1So women , but maybe sometimes , but everything can be a little bit paradoxical . So I think women in new situations , it's kind of like they're more sensitive , but they're getting blasted , their filters are getting blasted all the time by , you know , nonverbal communication or body language or whatever , and guys are clueless . But maybe then guys might be like okay , wait , they told me to focus on one thing , so I'm going to focus on that one thing and I'm going to observe kind of this one thing . So I think that you know it's just , it's just amazing how , how complex it can
Valuing Cultural Backgrounds in Leadership
Speaker 1be . But I , like , I wanted to say that , like I am , I know and understand to say you know , mcdonald's is amazing and they can go into any , almost any place in the world and open mcdonald's and they have a , they have a thing they're trying to deliver and then they have , you know , standards and they train everybody everywhere to an extent to do things the same way or to have the same , you know , operating system .
Speaker 1And so multinational corporations often do have a kind of standardized culture that they employ , which often then is a sort of a smooshed version of the culture of the countries that they came from . And I get that . But I think that that works for certain kinds of enterprises that are basically delivering a very standardized product into a new environment . And you have to ask yourself a lot am I installing a franchise of something else here , or am I trying to really solve a local problem that may demand local solutions ? And if it does , you've just signed up for Alice in Wonderland and figuring out how far down the rabbit hole goes , cause it's like you know , if you really start open . Yeah , you know . So you know I , I understand if you're , if you're thinking about an international corporation or something that's going to move its business into a new place , but you still run into it all the time , no matter what .
Speaker 2Wow , oh , nolan , such a great conversation . You make my cheeks hurt . I'm smiling for life . So when I I want to talk a little bit about personal development and learning and , um , because there are many aspiring leaders , so what advice would you give to inspire aspiring leaders , particularly those from different cultural backgrounds ? I feel like you've touched on this a little bit , but yeah , yeah , I mean .
Speaker 1So your , your life , is a a gift from God and your , your unique person , who has a unique background that really like , is a gift to the world . So , however , you grew up and and good and bad and ugly and a mix of everything and stuff you're so proud about and stuff you're not so proud about it made you who you are and it's made you this very complicated person that is adaptable and yet really has some very , very deeply held values and patterns for doing things . And I think my life has been partially about figuring out how far can you go , how much can you really change by working in another language all the time and working completely with people from another country all the time and working , you know , complete with people from another country all the time , and you can go really far , but you can't . You can't like complete . Only in childhood Are you you know this like a plastic , malleable thing that can completely recreate itself and the more you can do to understand and reflect on how you were raised ? What was my extended family life ? What was my community like ? What was the societal moment in which I was raised in my own culture ? What kind of things did I see valued and held up as good examples of leadership or bad ways . How did people come to consensus in my family , in my neighborhood , in my village ? How did all these things really function ? Neighborhood in my village ? You know how did all these things really function and then use . You know tools , like , I think , what I mentioned . You know the Culture Map , a World Values Survey , to try and start giving some language to those differences .
Speaker 1And so you know , really figure out where you come from and there are parts of where you come from you're going to dig deep in and rely upon in many hard situations . Like I am the fifth generation of hardworking . You know rural farmers and like no one ever . You know , like I'm raised by people who always got up at five in the morning and you know I'm not going to be lazy today . Like you know , dig deep and embrace the good parts of where you came from , but also learn at times that you can say goodbye to parts of where you came from . But also learn at times that you can say goodbye to parts of what you grew up with or modify it . You know and say , like it's great that my background helps me to be really flexible and accommodating to other people . But there are times I need to learn how to speak up for myself , and so you know how do I do that . So you have to be a student of your own life .
Speaker 1There's an activity you probably familiar with that maybe you could recommend to people , called a genogram , where you really kind of look at your family's history , you know , and kind of go back several generations and say what were the really , what's the really crucial part of my family story ? It's kind of where you do some analysis of like , where their broken relationships or tragedies or major events in my sort of parents , grandparents , aunts and uncles , even great grandparents if you know much about them kind of what happened in the background there . Because all of us are much more , I think maybe those of us who are Westerners need to understand that we're much more a product of the way we were raised than we are just this completely individual person who gets to think about things however we want to . So I think understanding yourself is a really crucial thing and that again gives you some understanding for , okay , so other people are different than me .
Speaker 1I can adapt myself , I can do things a certain way , but I'm probably also going to find sooner or later that in teams and in certain environments I like stability versus dynamic environment or I function best . You know I should . It's kind of a I think it's like an 80-20 thing . It's like we can spend 20% of our time doing something that's like completely unnatural for us and hard and awkward If it fits in this bigger picture of like I love and I want that , but I have to do . I have to do sales to get to this other goal .
Speaker 1Even on , I don't love going and knocking on doors but , I , got to do it , but it can be a 20% thing , but if it's an 80% thing and you know in your bones this it's not for me , you know , then you've got to figure out , like probably thinking about how to make some changes .
Speaker 2Yeah , I think , when just listen to , and if the opportunity ever came up for me to work with someone from Croatia , because we're just talking , just being vulnerable and being open , you know , just sometimes yeah , because you said we're a product of how we were raised and sometimes just you've got to put that down my mind goes to just you know I might need a coach . Yeah , just to help you through the conversations that I would need to have in the background before coming to you and going . I just want to push this agenda , you know , because this is what's you know , and sometimes you've got to go whoa .
Speaker 1As you said earlier .
Speaker 2Set yourself aside , you know . Just listen , just be vulnerable , say how you're feeling .
Speaker 1And as a leader I mean , one of the things I've been really fascinated by is watching the stories of Croatia , like many countries in a lot of places , but in Eastern Europe has a huge problem with young people leaving . They go and they live somewhere else and so the population is decreasing . And when you listen to people I love , I'm very , because it's their own cross-cultural experience . So when they go and they move somewhere else , a lot of times people said as they said , like in the end , I'm not , I didn't leave Croatia . I mean I'm being paid more and whatever than I was in Croatia . But the reason I don't think about coming back is because I have experienced leadership , or leadership on the part of people I work for in these other countries , in Ireland or something , where they value me as a person , they are open to my input , they see potential in me and they want to see me grow , and I think that's something . And we have both many cultures around the world , but also this global emerging culture that's happening because of the internet or whatever , and I really feel like I mean , I don't know every place , but I feel like there's so much to be gained from being a leader who says I see things in you maybe you're not ready to see in yourself yet . I believe for more in you . I think that there's more that can happen in your life than maybe what you're seeing right now .
Speaker 1That seems to be something that , for whatever reason , I think is often a hole or wound for so many people , no matter where they're from .
Speaker 1And even it's kind of crazy because , like America is full of this , has been full of this , maybe Canada , the United States has been full of this like you're perfect , you're your own individual snowflake and you're going to do great things in your life . And then the generation kind of like you have young people then grows up and says I've been hearing that my whole life . I don't believe it . It's just like whether or not you've heard the positive , whether or not anybody went out of their way to tell you I you know . But there's something I think about being someone's actual leader , someone's actual boss in a job , or or someone's actual boss in a job or whatever , who says like I see you , I know you , I watch you . I'm not just telling you this as a whatever we need to talk about . Some of you know some of the things you need to improve as well , but um I I see a path for you to grow . I think that's huge for people .
Speaker 2So you mentioned the young people are leaving , getting these experiences . Are they coming back after a few years ? And my goes to you know , there's , there's the family business and someone is raised in the family business . The dad says you know what , go get a job somewhere else . Uh , take your degree , get a job and then come back and run my company because you learn , you've , you've expanded . Is that happening or are they staying away ?
Speaker 1uh , what happened ? The person whose family has . So the stereotype in this part of the world would be if the person who has the family business is like no , I have taken care of you , I have a slot for you , you never need to leave . The people that leave are the ones who are probably more ambitious and maybe don't come from backgrounds where there's the social capital that their family or their group got them an opportunity right away and they start running up against at least the perception that everything here depends on connections . And I don't have those kinds of connections . So I'm going to go .
Speaker 1You know , I'm going to go live somewhere else and , of course , tons of people would love to come home . They would love to come back . You know , they see like , oh man , this it's a tough . It's tough to live somewhere else , even if you can make a good wage and all this kind of stuff , and you're far away from your family and the years go by and then you start wondering if your kids are going to have any cultural identity from your home country at all . So , like I , I I completely understand the desire to come back , but as of yet , specifically in Croatia , people are very slow to come back .
Speaker 1Wow , if they've been gone for a All right . My last question for you , nolan , is what do you hope will be your legacy as a leader when you leave this world ? Yeah , that's a great question , and I think I just really wanted to know that I had a part a small or large part in the growth of other people who became transformational leaders themselves . You know , it's leading leader impact in Croatia , or something like that for the last 23 years . I feel like I've made every possible mistake you can make and I think it's the grace of God that we're still here and doing what we're doing . So you have to learn to look for and celebrate what might , at the moment , seem like small successes , things where you know you . You just get a glimpse .
Speaker 1My son came home from seeing playing soccer and being around a bunch of uh guys , uh the other night and turned out one of them is someone that that volunteers at our global leadership summit the other night and turned out one of them is someone that volunteers at our Global Leadership Summit and he said something nice to my son about how my leadership and taking over this in Croatia and keeping it going and seeing it grow and you know you got to live for
Rediscovering Purpose and Serving Others
Speaker 1the little wins .
Speaker 1I think most of us in our lives are not going to experience fame and fortune and all this kind of stuff , but when you can learn to appreciate the interconnectedness with other people and going out of your way to help , and without ever , you know , you don't look for the reward , you don't look for calculation and sort of . You know , making space for other people or giving them an opportunity or whatever . But you got to allow yourself , you know , to really celebrate when you get the glimpses that it was worth it , because you can start to see change in other people and and and oftentimes you're not , you're not like the crucial person , but you , you got to play a part , um , in , you know , adding a brick in the wall or whatever of someone else's growth .
Speaker 2So oh , I love that Cause I don't think we think of the little wins as enough . And there are .
Speaker 1There can be so many in a day , the little wins , and yeah , we're not all fame um yeah , we live in a generation , we live in an age obsessed with , like , the one person who did the one thing , sort of Steve Jobs or whatever . But , like you know , that's that's a very specific thing about time and history or whatever that made for Steve jobs and that's great that he did what he did and stuff . But you know the impact , I think . I think maybe one of the things that's happening in culture today is like we're losing the value of I don't know , like what a career high school teacher does over the course of working for 40 years and having hundreds and hundreds of young people go through their , their school , and the the incredible impact that that can have . I think we're sort of losing the because and , of course , in a more traditional culture , like if you were the school teacher in a town , you were a pretty important person . And now we live in an age when , unfortunately , I think , people who who serve other people through their work , um are just constantly feeling the pressure and the criticism of like it's not good enough . You're not . You know we , we live in an age of complaints about those who serve others . Right , so it's um , yeah , it's tricky . I just hope that you know , and I often talk about what I do , about like when we do global leadership , some in the way we put a program together .
Speaker 1I often say , like I want to target a program for the leader who's just about ready to quit , because they're like I've been doing this thing and I got into this because I wanted to make a difference and I wanted to make a change and I wanted to be helpful .
Speaker 1But like I'm done , you know , like I I just gotten so much blowback and criticism and I don't feel it's fair . But I don't get to complain and say it's not fair because I'm the leader , um , this is , this is an I'm in agony , I'm almost ready to give up . You know , and and we often try and think about you know how to how to put a program together in such a way that for that person they're going to have that moment that kind of just gives them clarity and insight and maybe a reset of their kind of frame of saying , like you know what , the reasons I got into this thing were actually really , really great and I'd be stupid to give it up now . And I just need to . You know , I need to recenter , refocus or rethink about . You know how I'm evaluating all this stuff because everybody like has enough reason to just say , like , that's it , I'm out , I'm done , I've had enough .
Speaker 2So I feel the reason I keep coming back here and the reason I keep involved with leader impact is for many of that , because I have to be reminded , and you do . You can't just think you know .
Speaker 2Just , leadership isn't a one-time day thing , it's every day and and you have to surround yourself with people that will pump you know , and just be part of your team . Um , there's a uh from the bible I . I interviewed my father-in-law , who's one of the greatest men and one of the quotes I or one of the bible um , from the bible I put in first p.10 , god calls you to use all your gifts , talents and influence to serve others and I just you know , I read that and yeah , and the other part I added was fight the lie that their talents are better than your talents , because we are all different and we all have talents and we are to find them and and use them and serve .
Speaker 2So , yeah , Anyway , Nolan , I want to thank you for joining us . This is just so good . I just feel blessed to be able to share this with everyone and just be able to talk to you , because it's like when I come to Croatia , you are on my list .
Speaker 1Yeah definitely , yeah , come visit and and and your blessing too , thank you , for you know your thoughtfulness and approaching this and thinking that work and put all this together and it's it's . It's been great . We talked , you know , once before to set this up and it's been fun to getting to know your story a little bit and it's a blessing , thank you .
Speaker 2It's awesome , Thank you . Now , if listeners want to engage with you , they want to find more about leader impact in Croatia , or just you . What's the best way to find you ?
Speaker 1Well , my mom made a great decision 50 years ago to give me a relatively unusual name , and so it's pretty easy to find me on the internet . So my name is Nolan N-O-L-A-N , my last name is Sharp S-H-A-R-P , and so it's usually comes up really quickly on LinkedIn or whatever who I am .
Speaker 2All right . Well , if you've listened to this and you want to reach out to Nolan and tell him you're awesome , we all love it . So , nolan Sharp , you'll find him on LinkedIn . Thank you again , nolan , for joining us .
Speaker 1Thank you .
Speaker 2All right . Well , if you're part of Leader Impact and would like to find out more and grow your leadership , find our podcast page on our website at leaderimpactca and check out our free leadership assessment . You can also check out groups available in Canada at leaderimpactca . Or , if you're listening from anywhere else in the world , check out leaderimpactcom or get in touch with us by email . Info at leaderimpactca and we will connect you . And if you like this podcast , please leave us a comment , give us a rating or review . This will help other global leaders find our podcast . Thank you for engaging with us and remember impact starts with you .
