Martial Art Leadership Skills
My guest is all the way from Finland. His name is Aslak de Silva. He’s the CEO of the Nordic Business Forum. He’s also a keynote speaker. He feels that personal and team development are what makes him thrive. He is a world-class experience leader at C-levels. He has the Nordic Business Forum where he tracks over 10,000 executives a year to visit the conference and more than 20,000 people watched the live stream. He’s an international speaker doing 30 to 40 events a year. He speaks about sales and digital marketing, leadership in general. He also happens to have a background in martial arts. He gets people like George Clooney to attend his events. He’s great on knowing what makes a good talk and how to make a good pitch.
I want to ask you to take us back. You can go back as far as you’d like. You’ve got your degrees in business. You went on to get your Master’s in International Management, but how do you go from that to being the CEO of something as big and exciting as the Nordic Business Forum?
My first big career step was in martial arts. I started to train when I was twelve. I had a Korean master who was a very old school of martial arts. Even if you entered competitions and it didn’t matter who won the medals, it was more than you develop every day. You become better every day that way. The training wasn’t only about doing a particular technique or winning a tournament, it was more than every day you need to be better. It’s a harsh school because you can’t celebrate anything, that you see your mistakes. That got into me and I started to understand that, “How can I make every day better?” It means don’t make the same mistakes today as you did yesterday. Do something a bit better. In the end, it comes down a lot and you start realizing that you can learn a lot every day from anybody you meet or you can decide the way you want to go. If you want to go do yes or no or right or wrong, then life becomes quite simple. Long story short, I trained intensely for fifteen years. I was competing, I won a championship in one particular martial arts. I had about twenty clubs. I was teaching in the Nordic and in different countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark. I had a couple of injuries.
I knew at the same time that you can’t play only one card. You need to have a backup plan. At the same time, I was studying, so I thought studying is a good thing to do because it’s about development. You learn new things and you want to focus on something. I thought in martial arts, you look people in the eyes all the time and you learn how to develop yourself. To me in the end, that was leadership. That’s dealing with people. That directed me to study also International Management. I felt already the international background living in different countries. I was intrigued by learning leadership and international management a lot.
Let me ask you a couple of questions there. This concept of becoming better every day, does that help you let go of being a perfectionist and not beating yourself up when you do make mistakes?
Yes, I’ve been reading your book, John. You are a fan of that too. It is true. In the beginning, it’s hard because you do see mistakes and you get frustrated. I remember when I went to the competition, you felt that you could do better, but something is pulling you back in a way that somehow you’re stressful or nervous or you’re afraid of something. Those were the worst feelings. You control yourself and your mind. What I learned was how to prepare myself for the fight in a way that I could do my best. That felt good. If you do your best, you’re happy. It’s not about you’re perfect because you’re going to put yourself down on saying, “I made a mistake.” If you did your best at that time, you learn from the mistakes. You know that next time you will not do the same thing again. That’s a relief for you when you understand that perfection is something that you will never get into, but also sometimes you don’t know what that is, but you can always become a bit better. That’s very motivating for your development, that you know how to become better every day. You’ll know that you’ll be better. Even if now you didn’t win, you know that tomorrow you might win again.
As far as that mindset, because it is how I’m anxious, I’m stressed, I have some fear. I’m big on putting faces on the fear. Is it fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of the unknown and figuring out how to deal with it? A lot of people are afraid of failure, especially when it comes to leadership. If you are a leader, you are like, “I can’t let my team ever see me fail or my team is so afraid of failing, they’re not taking chances.” What are your thoughts on that?
I do remember the times when you say, “Fake it until you make it.” You want to be something that you are not because you put it up in a way that you pep talk yourself that you can do it. You can get far with that and that’s totally fine. It also collapses the moment that you realized that, “I’m not that person.” As long as you’re honest to yourself, mistakes happen all the time. I was talking to my daughter and I was laughing, whatever I do, she says sometimes that I do a mistake. As a father, what do you do? When you realize that she’s unhappy about it or there’s something wrong, it’s just happened. Sometimes she thinks a different way. The same way in leadership also, I strongly believe that because it’s a human attraction that we’re talking about. We are not the same. If you can feel yourself doing your best and truly believe in yourself that you are doing the best you can with the right attitude, right spirits in all way and helping people. The outcome will be good. You’re not perfect. You’ll still make mistakes. If you worry about them too much, you cannot control yourself either and collapse there.
Take us on this journey that you’ve been on. You graduate with this International Management degree. You get involved in selling media. Talk about what that experience taught you. What are some of your secrets on selling?
When I was training martial arts, we did demos to people showing and going through what the martial arts is about. I did about 500 of those in different countries. I performed on TV. You can show physical sometimes, but you need to be explaining something. I learned how to explain. Even if I was exhausted, I’m always talking. People were asking, “How does this differ from other martial arts? What do you learn there?” I’m talking about these things and nuances. I always started in a way that, “What do you know about martial arts?” If the person said, “It’s not too much. Maybe karate or judo,” then I explain with that level that, “This is a bit similar to karate or judo, but maybe train more on your physical side as well.” If somebody was a super expert talking about nuances, “I’m going to mix martial arts training and I know these things there,” then I would talk on that level. I noticed that when I talk with people, you need to be able to talk the same language that they understand. Whereas I noticed that many people and I also, in the beginning, was super excited about what I’m doing. I try to teach everybody everything that I knew. I was talking about this is something that I learned. They’re looking at people in the eyes and seeing that they don’t understand me.
Martial Arts Leadership Skills: If you did your best at that time, you learn from the mistakes.
We have an expression here that’s like drinking out of a fire hydrant. It’s too much, too soon.
I realized that is sales in a way. That’s a conversation with people that you’re trying to teach something there that you love and you know about. You need to level up with the other one that you’re talking with the same language. You clarify for them. I could see that I could sell martial arts class to beginners or even the advanced one. That makes them intrigued about what I know and what we are training. I noticed how to talk with people. The other thing is in martial arts, when you go into a fight, you look at the person in the eye all the time. You’re reacting to what they are doing. You sense the feelings that they have. Are they confident or are they nervous? You can see when are they moving forward, what happened?
I was focused on observing what the other one is doing based on how I move, how they move. The fight in total to me, in the end, was observations of things that are happening. I graduated in International Management. I also thought that I have no technical skills or anything. The only thing I can do is to be with people. I thought that sales is something that you can also have the same attitude as with martial arts that you start somewhere, but you can develop yourself to become better. The results are quite easy to measure. I thought that this is something that I would love. That’s how I ended up in sales.
Sales is a conversation. Meet your audience where they are now. From there, you know exactly how to customize what you’re talking about, not too high, not too complicated. You went into media sales. You got some experience with selling using your martial arts experience. How did you get involved with the Business Forum?
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