We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ian Hatton a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Ian, thanks for joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

The leadership development industry that I work in consists primarily of people who do coaching and people who do training. Now I believe in both of those, but what I do differently is to start with the concept of transformation. I ask: what can we do that will actually transform people?

Typical leadership development is very much the behavioral side of things. And of course, behavioral changes assumes that you want to change behavior! That you feel the urgency, that you feel the need to. But behavioral change is not going to happen in an emergency. It’s not going to happen under pressure. It’s not going to happen when people don’t see the need or they just want to go back to their old habits.

By contrast, with a transformational approach to leadership development, you’re actually looking at the mindset as the starting point. What do people need? What do they actually want to achieve where are they stuck? What are the mindsets and beliefs that are holding them back? What is the legacy they want to leave? Is there a bigger picture of what they’re trying to do?

Because without a mindset change, you do not have sustained change. And so my approach is that mindset change sustains change and transformation.

Let’s say an organisation spends a budget on traditional leadership development. Statistics show the actual behavior change that sustainably happens is around 10% — if you’re lucky, 15 or 20%, but definitely not above that. What if you took that same budget, but you had a 50% transformation and implementation. That is a much better return on investment because you’re getting genuine transformation. You’re not just getting two weeks of transformation and then 90% of the people are back to their old behaviors.

This is my approach to leadership development in my company, Totally Morpheus. We say that this is NOT training; this is transformation.

Ian, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My career started with 19 years in the IT industry — and a passion that spilled beyond my work life. I’d grown up in the deeply divided, apartheid-era South Africa, and as a young adult I started doing youth development work among disenfranchised communities. As my own career progressed, I invested my evenings and weekends in mentoring youths through their struggles. Today, several of those youngsters have gone on to lead organisations and communities of their own. Raising up these leaders has created a far greater impact than I could ever have on my own.

Eventually the call to develop and leaders led me to further my studies, and armed with a Masters degree in organizational leadership I moved into the world of training and leadership development. It was not an easy road, but in time I’ve had the opportunity to work with tens of thousands of leaders from over 100 countries.

Today, with my phenomenal team at Totally Morpheus, we liberate leaders, their teams and organizations. We say that this is not training; this is transformation. Clients have come away from my keynotes, workshops, bootcamps and other programs with breakthroughs that have shifted their leadership, their relationships, their work and their bottom line.

To make the most of my first sessions with leaders and their teams, I often invite them to start with the Totally Morpheus EGG3 Leadership Assessment. This simple assessment delivers startlingly sophisticated results, which we unpack in a detailed report and follow-up strategy session. As a diagnostic tool, the assessment helps leaders to understand what transformation will deliver the best results. My team offers this through coaching, mentoring, workshops, retreats, bootcamps, and other bespoke services based on clients’ needs. My favorite offering is leadership keynotes, which I deliver around the world, in person and online.

To empower more leaders who might not have the chance to work with me directly, I have also published my first book, ‘Lead Like Morpheus: The Genius of Conscious Leadership’. It was a pleasant surprise to find that it reached the #1 bestseller lists in 3 categories on Amazon within days of release. It seems the idea of conscious leadership is resonating with leaders at this challenging but promising point in history.

If there is one thing I would like people to remember about me and my company Totally Morpheus, it is that we liberate leaders.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

When I left the corporate world, I went on to complete a Masters degree in organizational leadership. The plan was that the world would now fall at my feet and everything would be really, really simple because I had corporate experience, plus I had qualifications and a message the world needed.

As it turns out, it proved to be struggle for a very long time. It was a reality check to find that I wasn’t immediately having the impact I had hoped, or attracting clients the way I really wanted to.

What it really took to kickstart my new life was a triple crisis. After much disillusionment, I sold my shares in my first business. I went through a heart-breaking divorce. I left my spiritual community of many years. It was devastating, but it also led me to embrace self-leadership. In the wake of the triple crisis, I learned to make myself my first priority. That meant putting everything down for a recovery sabbatical that lasted 18 months.

In that time, I learned to self-lead, to make myself my number one job every day, and get over my limiting mindsets. I had to unlearn the belief that it is selfish to put oneself first. In fact, I discovered it is one of the most selfless things you can do. Making yourself your number one job is a powerful way to grow your own self-leadership. From that self-leadership you set yourself up to be able to lead better. For me, it was a struggle because it was so contrary to the way I was raised. Yet this shift resulted very quickly in seeing a shift in the results I was getting. As I returned to working with leaders, I was discovering that they were transformed. They were reporting back to me that they were experiencing permanent change.

Basically, my own impact and influence as a leader was dramatically shifting. That has continued right to this day where every step I take in myself self-leadership journey is resulting in a deeper and more significant impact to the people that I’m leading and influencing through my work.

This was my story of resilience. It was a story of pushing through and discovering that what I thought was a total failure could actually become a solid foundation on which I could build not only my own life, but that would actually significantly build my influence in other lives as well.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

One of the deeply significant influences on my thinking on leadership and life has been Marcus Buckingham’s work. Buckingham’s work on individual strengths has played a major role in the way I mentor leaders and their teams. His earlier books and assessments remain a cornerstone of some of my programs, and I am always curious when he publishes or comments on new research. The StandOut Assessment from TMBC (The Marcus Buckingham Company) is a priceless resource for any leader in charge of a team.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.totallymorpheus.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianhatton
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@totallymorpheus
• Other: https://amzn.to/3S2IgVv

  https://www.amazon.com/stores/Ian-Hatton/author/B0D5DCW6YY

Image Credits

Photography: Maria Capazario of Photo Maria Studio

Book Cover Design: Luzonne Mentz of Design Mojo