Understanding The Chimp Paradox: How To Become A Better Leader with David Heron

In the latest episode of Extra-Ordinary Leaders, I sat down with David Heron, founding partner and CEO of Wilton & Bain, which has won more than its fair share of workplace awards. They were listed in the top 100 companies to work for and named by The Sunday Times as one of the best places to work in 2023.

That’s quite an achievement, and naturally one I wanted to learn more about. How can more companies establish themselves as great places to work whilst still hitting their targets? How important are systems and processes? Is there something deeper that we need to be focusing on to become leaders of a truly great place to work? 

Let’s find out. 

The full conversation with David is available here.

What’s salt got to do with it?

When I think about having a soul in business, I think about salt. 

Hear me out! 

Salt: you don't need a lot of it, but it's very potent when it's there and it works as a preservative. 

Soul in business is much the same.

Those businesses who have soul have that little something extra added to their ordinary, and I truly believe it is this little something extra that preserves their success. 

The head and the heart

When David Heron joined me on the Extra-Ordinary Leaders podcast and discussed the importance of understanding our purpose, I took the opportunity to ask him how we can strike that optimum balance between leading from the heart and the head. It is companies that operate within this middle ground that have both soul and commercial success – a winning combination. 

David: “In leadership, you've got to know people. You've got to understand what makes them tick, where the fire comes from, what's the chip on their shoulder. You need to know the why.”

The “why” as David puts it is our purpose. Now, I’m sure most people reading this will know their goals and have at least a vague idea of where they want to be in ten years. But are you actively thinking about how you can get there sooner?

David: “I remember years ago I was talking to a colleague and I said, ‘What’s your objective for this year?’ And he said, ‘Well, it’s to earn X amount of money.’ And I said, ‘Why? What’s it for?’ And he said ‘I want to buy a house.’ 

He estimated that it would take him three years to save. So we worked backwards from the house and we looked at, what are the elements of your job that you need to get really good at to get up that hill faster? We broke it down into, you’ve probably got to meet this many clients, you probably need this many of your client discussions to turn into leads, etcetera. And we tracked it every month – how much money did you earn, how much money did you save. And it took him two years, not three years.”

This is a fantastic example of a number of things:

• Leading with the heart and the head: taking the time to truly get to know our team and understand what they’re working towards - whereby the perfect marriage of motivation and results can happen

• Identifying purpose and putting actionable steps against it – turning ideas into action

• Measuring and tracking progress – ensuring actions are accountable in the midst of busyness.

This is the soul at the heart of those businesses that have a little something extra: an understanding that employees are not motivated by the idea of helping their CEO retire early or earning more money for them. 

They’re motivated by their own objectives. Taking the time to understand each and every individual goal, and setting actionable targets to help them to achieve it, makes a business more than just a profit-making machine: it gives it purpose.

What threatens the “soul” of a business?

To David, another crucial element in the soul of a business is how willing leaders are to invest in themselves and to develop an understanding of their own weaknesses. 

For example, a leader who is described by their employees as impatient and intolerant is unlikely to be seen as the extra-ordinary leader of a business full of purpose and soul. 

However, some of these tendencies – impatience, anger, passive aggressiveness – are almost involuntary neurological reactions that can be difficult for people to override. How can an investment in the self and an understanding of our own weaknesses help us to become the extra-ordinary leaders a purpose-driven business deserves?

David: “It's classic Chimp Paradox. A lot of our partners [at Wilton Bain] have read The Chimp Paradox and quite often when we end up in a highly emotional conversation about something, someone will go, 'I think I'm just going to take my chimp for a walk'.”

What a fantastic way to conduct a difficult business meeting.

The Chimp Paradox

The Chimp Paradox is an incredibly powerful mind management tool developed by professor Steve Peters who specialises in mental health and the functioning of the human mind. 

In his acclaimed book, Peters explains that we can view the human psyche in three parts, one of which (perhaps the most difficult to manage) is the Chimp: the emotional side of us that responds very quickly to stimulus, thinks almost independently of us, and triggers thoughts and feelings that can be either constructive or destructive.

We can think of our Chimp much like a dog, one we have to train and get under control. It relies on instinct and drive, and is easily triggered into fight, flight, or freeze mode. The Chimp can be either our best friend or our worst enemy, and sometimes both at once.

We have a responsibility as leaders to understand our emotional triggers and have control over our reactions to stimuli. This ability is crucial in creating a workplace environment where purpose, passion, and diversity are able to thrive.

David: “It’s not about being scared of the Chimp but recognising that we’ve all got one.”

With this approach, David manages to be both in the business and have a peripheral view over everyone in it: because he understands his Chimp, he encourages his team to understand theirs, and he invests time in getting to know where the fire comes from in each of his employees. That’s a business with purpose, inclusivity, and soul. 

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The full conversation with David Heron is available here. 

For more information on David, head over to LinkedIn, or check out Wilton & Bain.

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