Blog / Leadership

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Dr Fred Grosse has spent the last 40 years travelling the globe working as a coach, motivational speaker and mentor to some of the world’s most successful global captains of industry. Dr Grosse holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and for the past 30 years has drawn upon his unique understanding of the human psyche and human behaviour to enable individuals and corporate cultures to smash through self-imposed limits and to surpass their own expectations.

Many years ago, he established the highly regarded Institute for Management, Organisation and Motivation, an international seminar and management consulting firm now based in Christchurch, New Zealand that serves clients throughout Australia, New Zealand and North America.

Dr Grosse says that the most satisfying moments of his life are when, “People who I’ve worked with 20 years ago and I haven’t seen since, tell me that since they met me their life has changed for the positive and that they’ve influenced everyone around them.”

He believes that a defining moment in his own life was when he decided to take a punt on himself, and take his ideas to the world. “I don’t want to look back on life and have regrets,” he explains. His personal philosophy is to constantly engage with the present, while acknowledging the past at the same time. He makes sure that he “keeps up with technology for instance. I always get the newest toys, and by making that decision to keep up, as it were, with the continually changing world, it allows me to be able to see myself as a true international with historical perspective. It’s sort of like I’m detached from time and place, and yet can be in any time and place. I find that very refreshing. That’s why we keep travelling around the world and doing adventures. Tax deductible, of course.”

Dr Grosse works on the premise that the ultimate definition of wealth is ‘having it all’ with wealth encompassing financial and emotional health. He believes that life is the most important thing – family, friends, personal satisfaction – and that building wealth and succeeding in business are simply elements of this overall quest for fulfilment.

Today’s super-achievers turn to Dr Grosse when they are ready to design lives and corporate cultures where affluence and quality of life are one. He helps both corporations and individuals harness their potential and become more dollar-productive while achieving a harmonious work-life balance.

Some of Dr Grosse's key ideas are:

The value of master minding and goal setting.

Dr Grosse firmly believes setting goals is the key to success. However, he also understands that as social creatures, humans are not islands – we need to, and must, share our stories and successes with others. Just like the song says, Dr Gross knows that ‘people who need people are the luckiest people’ - particularly powerhouse performers. In Dr Grosse’s experience however, he has found that highly goal oriented people tend to “have fewer and fewer friends because you leave everybody behind.”

Dr Grosse is of the opinion that paradoxically, power performers in order to meet their goals, need “to have somebody else beside themself to talk to”. He says, “If you don’t share your story with someone, it’s self-defeating and it’s like entropy. If you don’t share your successes and celebrate the meeting of your goals, you lose energy.

It’s not the same sharing your successes with only yourself. It’s almost like you need somebody to tell your story to. It enlivens us.”

For goal setting, Dr Grosse says, “the technology is really simple. All you have to do is start with a beginner’s mind and a fresh piece of paper every day for 30 days. Do not look at the previous page.

Then write down whatever goals that come up, what you have to do to achieve the goals and dump onto the page anything else that comes to mind in that time as well. Take three minutes, so it’s really short. And then the next day, turn the page and do the same and the next day turn the page and do the same.”

After a month Dr Grosse advises going through the same process once a fortnight and then once a month. When you review your goals and progress, what happens, according to Dr Grosse, is that people realise that “the implementation of each of those goals is within themselves”.

The tall poppy experience - how to create a culture for tall poppies to thrive

Dr Grosse also believes that the challenge for top performers in real estate is to see life in 360 degrees. He says, “It is important to remind yourself of what harvests genuine pleasure from inside. Many people forget.” He knows that while most power performers may think they want to make more money, “the real thing they’re seeking is to make sense of their life”.

He continues, “Some of them are really good at making money but they have no friends. They don’t like to talk about that but they then focus on work as a way of avoiding intimacy and then they’re lonely. Or there are others who work hard because they have nobody else or nothing else to do. What we deal with is that ‘something else’.” Dr Grosse seeks to make a work environment where peak performers, or tall poppies as he calls them, can flourish and live life in 360 and fill in the gaps. He defines tall poppies as “people who externalise their hopes, their dreams, their beliefs, their goals and then put that into their time books and live that. That’s the tall poppy experience. Where you create your reality and live it.”

However, in his experience, he has found that tall poppies need help as they can’t maintain a culture by themselves. He says, “There’s no cultural environment for the tall poppy. And so what happens is, I believe, that tall poppies are in exile in a small poppy world. So that all of the cultural medium, the schools, the television, everything is designed to retard people and make heard consciousness and a tall poppy who is living his own life feels like an outsider. They can participate, they can sell to these people but they’re not of that nature; they feel alien.”

What Dr Grosse does is to “build tall poppy communities where people get together and set up structures where they hold each other. Otherwise they’re out by themselves and it’s very difficult to be out in space without a spaceship.” The way he helps build a tall poppy culture is to work with people on an individual basis, through coaching and tutorials. He believes “you can’t do it by yourself - it’s just very hard. You lose perspective so easily. Until you get started anyway. Everyone needs a third party – someone outside to wake you up when you’re off.”

Know thyself

Dr Grosse believes that people will be successful if they truly know themselves, and their strengths and weaknesses. In his experience he has found that “a lot of salespeople are not good managers and leaders. They would do better to be on their own and I’ve actually helped people go back into sales from ownership and they have made more money.” Similarly, Dr Grosse has helped people who are owners of a business to hire a manager. “They are a selling person who owns a company that has a respectable manager. And they make good money too.”

Thinking of time in boxes

Dr Grosse recommends seeing time as a series of boxes. He says, “Human beings naturally create chaos. Or they wait to see what will happen - they go with the flow. And for people working in real estate, the flow is always manipulated by the telephone, by email, by other people – all things that have nothing to do with your priorities or goals.”

Dr Grosse sees no problem in going with the flow if it’s around your goals, your dreams, your hopes, your creativity, and your wealth creation but this is generally not the case. He suggests that, “a way to counter going with the flow is by having boxes of time where you’re meant to be doing lead generation, following up with appointments, or working on your wealth portfolio, whatever that is.” What happens when you create those boxes in the 168 hours that exist in a week, is that you create a block of around, 25 or 30 hours a week where, as Dr Grosse says, “you make all your money and do the best stuff”.

Dealing with stress

While it is difficult to get a group to agree on what constitutes high or low stress levels, Dr Grosse recommends that employees agree on an acceptable level of stress. For example, a manageable level of stress is one which, “stays between 20 and 30 and they do that through breathing and meditating and creating a habit of staying between 20 and 30 unless they need stress”.

Dr Grosse explains, “Stress levels is an arbitrary measuring device to see if it’s more or less. So everyone’s numbering system could be different but you can tell if it’s twice as much or half as much.”

Dr Grosse believes that there is a use in identifying stress because it “lets people know how stressed they are. Some people are chronically running at 50 or 60 out of 100, which means as soon as they have something bad happen, they go above 70 or 80 and they become symptomatic. They can either have a hissy fit or they can have road rage, there’s no room for the natural hurly burly of life to top up their day.” The mission for an agency (where possible) is to aim for each staff member to be able to monitor their own stress.

The past and the future are inside you.

To succeed in life Dr Grosse believes we must connect to the past and the future. The past and the future are within us at the same time, according to Dr Grosse. He believes that “the past is inside of us and it’s pretty active and it’s just a matter of remembering it.”

Dr Grosse explains, “People take photos when they travel to remember. Or when they have a wedding, they basically remind themselves of the event and retaste the experience, which is very satisfying. I also believe that when you get older this is the juice of life. You just remember your life and renourish yourself.”

Thinking about the future though is harder. Dr Grosse thinks, “The future is more challenging because people have a linear perspective of time. As if time is like a straight line and the past is behind us, the future’s in front of us: I don’t have that. I have the belief that all are present right now and the key is to be able to access it. And the paradox is you access the future by putting down your goals. The goals are by their nature in the future, you haven’t achieved them yet. And if you have a core belief that life is about achieving important goals, you actually create and use time to get to the goals, which means you create your future.

“Yes, you could get run over by a bus. Yes, you could change your mind along the way. But barring that, you are going to aim for the goals that are important and as you do that you create your future. Does that mean all elements of your future? No. But the core of your future, which is your goals, is the most important part.”

If you would like to explore more of Dr Grosse’s ideas and approaches please see: drfredgrosse.com  

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